Pokemon Generation 10 is looking pretty good!



Violet was the first Pokemon game I played since SoulSilver. Despite its bad graphics and excessive dialogue, I had a ton of fun with it and never ran into any of these supposed bugs I heard so much about. I think my main interest in Pokemon at this point lies in competitive battling, so if Wind and Waves are just a mild iteration over SV I might skip them, but if they are indeed a big step up (a five-year dev cycle!) then I'll have to check them out.

What's the last Pokemon game you played? How are Wind and Waves looking to you?

I'm honestly surprised they're not releasing them this year, but this also makes me (perhaps foolishly?) hopeful that the extra time will result in a more polished product this game. I do wonder if they're still going to wait until November 2027, or if they plan to launch them earlier in the year.

Despite its issues, ScarVio was far and away the best time I've had with a main Pokémon game, and a huge part of that was finally having co-op. As long as they bring that back, that's all I really need from this new one.

I played, and loved to BITS, Pokemon Legends Arceus. I played, and hated in vengeful fury, Pokemon Legends Z-A. (Mostly because of the city-only environment, but I could have suffered through that IF they hadn't made the worst decision I've ever seen in a video game series: you can now flat out kill a Pokemon and THEN still catch it. Making strategy for catching completely 100% irrelevant and removing a significant portion of what makes the series at all interesting. It is now just "might makes right, kill everything you see and deal with it after." May as well just set the game to auto-mash the A button and come back in a few hours to see how much has been beaten.)

So I don't know. I don't trust GameFreak at all anymore - not even the slightest bit. After the mess that Sca/Vio was on a technical level (for their "most popular IP in the world, billion dollar series!") I was suspicious, but after Z-A I was completely walls-up, no-more-trust-for-you. I will not buy Wind/Water(/Heart!) but I will probably get it from the library and try it. Try it with the lowest expectations nearly possible, but try it.

I am also still miffed that it doesn't look better than Xenoblade 2, minus the water (which I think was a store-bought package, I'll be honest). Why doesn't the biggest IP in the world get treatment to look graphically like the best game in the world? It certainly deserves it, given the profit margins.

EDIT: Also if there is not at least SOME voice work, after Zelda and DK:B at this point, that is shameful and absolutely a cash-in trash move by GF. They should be ashamed if so.