Why I Hate Pokémon

I have always been a Pokémon fan. When I was a kid I watched the anime all the time, my parents bought me all the movies that would release, and the only game I am certain I had in my Game Boy and wasn't just in my fantasies was Pokémon. 

I kind of parted ways with it for a few years but then returned again in my early 20s, because my wife bought me a decal of Haunter for my 3DS and I decided I would only deserve it if I actually played some Pokémon games as an adult. You don't get to spew out that you have favourite Pokémon while simultaneously knowing little of the games themselves. 

Well, I proceeded to spend all of my Christmas money on buying three of the series’ games: X, Omega Ruby, and Moon. The very first one I played was Pokémon X because I had kind of tried it out when it first released. I am also a big fan of Xerneas so I really wanted to jump into that one first.

The thing I remember that struck me the most was that I kept wondering how it had taken Game Freak so many years to actually update the graphics into 3D versions and add some semblance of effort into the fighting scenes. Still, I decided that maybe they just really love their retro games. I hadn't had any actual experience with Pokémon anyway to know that the graphics being outdated was actually one of the smallest flaws the franchise has.

I moved on from Pokémon X, very excited that there had been things like customisation of clothes and stuff, straight into Omega Ruby. At this point I was psyched. I thought if they had made the leap from 2D to 3D and added some cool things, surely they were on a new path of improvement! 

I absolutely loved Omega Ruby. I'm going to be honest with you, at the very end of the road I ended up taking pictures of the credits and all that because I was so pumped. There had been so much interaction with the Pokémon, the building and discovering of the bases was super fun, and just the overall feel of the game was much better than Pokémon X  in my humble and noob opinion. 

Then, after such high excitement, I went off to Pokémon Moon. I was specifically excited for this one because I consider myself a fan of space and nighttime — just the overall aesthetic of anything with the word moon on it. However, I was smashed in the face with my first extreme disappointment. 

It wasn't that some of the Pokémon were hideous. I actually appreciated that they were trying something different. It was the lack of a National Pokédex and the fact that overall it felt lazy. That's when it really started to dawn on me — Pokémon games are all the same. Nothing changes because Game Freak refuses to grow with their audience.

I found a lack of camaraderie online, as the main thing I saw was people defending Game Freak and Pokémon Sun and Moon. Comments like "don't take it so seriously, it's aimed at kids" kept being thrown around to shut down those who were angry at Game Freak for a disappointing game.

And that's one of the worst things about Pokémon anyway: the fans. Yes, we get it, the game is mainly aimed at children but that doesn't stop the game from being lazy, empty, and overall underwhelming. 

I didn't see it at first. I didn't like Game Freak and I wasn't a cultist either but I hadn't been able to grasp and fathom the amount of laziness within the Pokémon games until I played Monster Hunter Stories. That is when it truly hit me how much I hate Game Freak and the entire Pokémon franchise. 

I would be lying if I said I even knew what I was jumping into upon booting up the game. I had just gotten a free month of Apple Arcade and my wife really likes Monster Hunter, so I thought that this one would be a nice way to ease me into murdering ginormous monsters seeing as I can barely kill a pig or a cow without feeling like a horrible person. I also thought it was just going to be a copy-paste of Pokémon but... crappy.

I was wrong. I was so wrong, I actually considered sending a handwritten letter to the creators apologising for ever tainting their name by comparing it to the likes of Pokémon.

In Monster Hunter Stories the plot isn't anything crazy or innovative, it's a simple story. Monsters are getting corrupted by something called blight and you have to kind of just fight against that. But it's not the fact that the story is simple or not, it's that the characters are so full of charm. I was giggling along while playing because of Dan and Navirou, who bring so much comedy and life into the story. 

The game is also similar in the aspect of it having a companion sort of relationship with the Monsties you can catch, and although you cannot go into a screen and pet them, feed them, or play with them, you still bond with them in a more deep and realistic way. They are their own being with their own choices in the battle, as you do not control what they do but you merely help them do it. For example, in Monster Hunter Stories there are some quick time events that will happen in battle that will require you to react and flick or click things on the screen. You will also be encouraged to try and work in a team with your Monsties to achieve what is called a "double team". 

In Monster Hunter Stories you may not be able to tell your Monstie what to do all the time, but you can in exchange for some of the energy from your Kinship gauge. This is a mechanic in the game that allows you to ride and do a special attack with your Monstie once it fills up; much like the ultimate evolution in Pokémon, except better. This leads me to one of the things that Monster Hunter Stories ruined for me in Pokémon — the animations.

You know what Turtwig does in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond when it uses Withdraw? It goes into a clam shell. A clam. Why? Because it probably shares that move with a bunch of other Pokémon, and I know that they beat Monsties in sheer number, but that doesn't mean anything because Game Freak obviously not putting any effort into any of the other aspects of the game. In fact, it’s not just the animations within the battle — in Monster Hunter Stories you can ride your Monsties too and actually fly around, unlike in most Pokémon games where you just teleport from one place to another and have a very crappy cutscene of the “flight”. 

During my first fight in Monster Hunter Stories I was underwhelmed at the idea of having only three "types", unlike in Pokémon where there are 18. However, once I had gotten a grip on the battle system I wanted it backwards — I wished Pokémon was like this too. It's a simple rock-paper-scissors mechanic similar to the one in Pokémon, however it takes a bit more brain power because you don't know what type the monster you are fighting is; you have to actually learn it yourself much like an actual monster hunter would. Even when you actually know the type of the enemy monster, you still can't just spam one super effective ability since you need to win that rock-paper-scissors game every time... Spamming doesn’t quite work in Monster Hunter Stories and I loved that. You are also encouraged to use items in order to chase the monsters back to their den and get their egg so you can have them in your team. 

In Pokémon you barely have to think while you fight, you basically have the same five animations throughout the whole game, the dialogue has no brain behind it, the characters have no charm... Frankly, I just struggle to see why people continue to get excited over new iterations of it. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad if they improved upon what their community wants or if they at least showed a semblance of actual care, but what I feel from Game Freak is that they couldn't care less for their franchise. They only care for the money they will get from all the fans that refuse to admit there is something crucially wrong with Nintendo and Game Freak when they continue to re-release games with barely any improvement on what was already there. If we give heat to Bethesda, why then do I only find people defending the Pokémon games? 

Yes, it is indeed a children's game. But offering them that lame excuse is why Pokémon will die as just that — a children’s game. Monster Hunter Stories showed me a whole new world of potential that Game Freak refuses to tap into; whether out of laziness or lack of care, I don’t know. 

This only really scratches the surface of differences between these two games but I hope I brought enough for you to understand why Game Freak gets too much of a pass. Thanks for reading and I hope this sparked some sort of interest in at least trying Monster Hunter Stories. You won’t regret it.