Pokemon Lore/Mechanics Dichotomy

[Delicious Taffy]

The anime-specific examples of unevolved Pokémon defeating their evolved forms are all due to the winner using superior tactics. If Bulbasaur is acting like a brat or Ash doesn't instruct it well, Venusaur is gonna beat it into the dirt and eat it for nutrition.

Ash, despite his later reputation, is actually a relatively clever tactician, early on. The trust he has with his Pokémon, combined with his ingenuity, are the main (possibly only) reasons he can pull off those long-odds victories.

[Frozen_Feet]

You can win battles with unevolved Pokemon even competitively, provided you know what you're doing and your opponent doesn't. Some strategies specifically rely on abusing some mechanics which favor low-level Pokemon to make Level 1 mons consistently beat Level 100 mons. Namely, F.E.A.R. in all it's permutations.

[Aotrs Commander]

The anime-specific examples of unevolved Pokémon defeating their evolved forms are all due to the winner using superior tactics. If Bulbasaur is acting like a brat or Ash doesn't instruct it well, Venusaur is gonna beat it into the dirt and eat it for nutrition.

Ash, despite his later reputation, is actually a relatively clever tactician, early on. The trust he has with his Pokémon, combined with his ingenuity, are the main (possibly only) reasons he can pull off those long-odds victories.

Let's also not forget how many battles Ash won because his Pokémon evolved mid-battle (something you ALSO can't do in the games); furthermore, Pikachu the special excpetion aside, his strongest pokémon are almost always the ones that have evolved. (See Charizard.)

[deuterio12]

Bit late but

Lore: "Gym leaders are strong challenging trainers you need to beat!"
Mechanics: "Lol actually they're pretty much one of the easiest parts of every game because you can find the right pokemon to one shot everything they have in a sweep"

This was true for the first games, but more modern ones have got significantly better with gym leaders having a counter-counter pokemon in their team specialized in fighting the types they're supposed to be weak against. And even the first game had the final "boss" being the Elite 4 gauntlet that demands some team variety.

Also a lot of the complains seem to be more about the game vs anime, and they're basically different universes from day 1 (like anime Gary drives out of the starting town in his own car when in the game there's not even a proper road in the first city you could drive a car through). Then there's some of the manga continuities that can get pretty crazy, in particular pokemon adventures where half the gym leaders are team rocket sleeper agents and the elite 4 are actually an eco-terrorrist organization.

The in-game lore is a lot more consistent with the game mechanics, there's nobody telling you that unevolved pokemon will be as strong as evolved pokemon or anything.

[Kitten Champion]

Bit late but

This was true for the first games, but more modern ones have got significantly better with gym leaders having a counter-counter pokemon in their team specialized in fighting the types they're supposed to be weak against. And even the first game had the final "boss" being the Elite 4 gauntlet that demands some team variety.

Except of course X/Y, a game where they didn't even bother to give their eighth and final gym leader's Abomasnow four goddamn moves and searching for challenge is the challenge.

[Celestia]

Bit late but

This was true for the first games, but more modern ones have got significantly better with gym leaders having a counter-counter pokemon in their team specialized in fighting the types they're supposed to be weak against. And even the first game had the final "boss" being the Elite 4 gauntlet that demands some team variety.

Eh, no. Sinnoh had strong Gym Leaders. Unova had some strong Gym Leaders. That's about the extent of it. And Kalos and Alola are insultingly easy.

[deuterio12]

Fair enuff, at X/Y they decided to suddenly switch gears again and make everything extra easy.

But then remember who the target audience is. This is a game that's supposed to be beatable by 10 years old.

A game with 18 different types that need a giant chart to figure out, and that's before taking in account each pokemon can have up to two different types. And then there's hundreds of pokemons and hundreds of moves with each pokemon meaning quadrilions of options (that's not an exageration, it's actually in the order of 1 000 000 000 000 taking in account each pokemon can have up to four moves). For each pokemon. You have a party of six to fill so the final number of pokemon team combinations would be an even bigger number.

So if they want the average 10 year old kid to beat the game (at least beat all the trainers), they really need to aim at the really lower end of difficulty in the spectrum.

However as pointed out:

searching for challenge is the challenge.

Older pokemon players love to impose themselves challenges. The famous Nuzlocke mode for one. Limit yourself to one element. Limit yourself to just one pokemon for the whole game. And so everybody can enjoy the games.

Now yes the programmers could add a easy/normal/hard/lunatic/Fire Emblem permadeathfaint mode or something, but then the problem would be that older players would go around bragging around kids how they can beat the game in harder difficulties and that would not produce good results.

Plus hey, at least with low difficulty I don't need to worry about accidentally screwing me over just because I picked a team based on how cool they looked instead of making spreadsheets with their stats to figure out which ones can keep up with the endgame.

[Peelee]

Plus hey, at least with low difficulty I don't need to worry about accidentally screwing me over just because I picked a team based on how cool they looked instead of making spreadsheets with their stats to figure out which ones can keep up with the endgame.

You mean some people don't build their teams based on how cool they look?

[Kitten Champion]

Fair enuff, at X/Y they decided to suddenly switch gears again and make everything extra easy.

But then remember who the target audience is. This is a game that's supposed to be beatable by 10 years old.

They're vastly underestimating children then.

No, Pokemon shouldn't be the Dark Souls of itself, but Black/White at least made you assess your party composition in the rock/paper/scissors game and put up resistance to you over-levelling with its fairly intelligent XP mechanics. I actually had to fight rematches with Gym Leaders because they threw surprises at me the first time around. Granted I don't use items or heal between Gym trainers, but still that's way more than X/Y did.

X/Y was like playing a Final Fantasy where they just gave you the Ultima Weapons near the beginning, FF isn't a spectacularly difficult game series to begin with - certainly I could complete when I was 10 or younger - but now you've just reduced it to a mere clicker game.

Or into All The Bravest, I guess.

Older pokemon players love to impose themselves challenges. The famous Nuzlocke mode for one. Limit yourself to one element. Limit yourself to just one pokemon for the whole game. And so everybody can enjoy the games.

Now yes the programmers could add a easy/normal/hard/lunatic/Fire Emblem permadeathfaint mode or something, but then the problem would be that older players would go around bragging around kids how they can beat the game in harder difficulties and that would not produce good results.

Other Nintendo games have variable difficulty options without collapsing the known universe. At worst the Hard-Core Gamerz of the internet complain that there's an easy mode like with that last Star Fox game, and everyone else can ignore them.

Plus hey, at least with low difficulty I don't need to worry about accidentally screwing me over just because I picked a team based on how cool they looked instead of making spreadsheets with their stats to figure out which ones can keep up with the endgame.

What happens is you play through a trivially easy experience and then you find the entire game you've played thus far - saving your whole region and becoming Champion - has been a worthless +10 hour tutorial that didn't teach you a goddamned thing about the meta-game and how they actually play it competitively or even how to adequately perform in the Battle Mansion/Tower-whatever.

Honestly, I can't think of a another game which does a worse job explaining its deeper mechanics than Pokemon. You need to Google most, if not all of the key details on the minutia of a Pokemon's internal math, breeding and egg moves, battle items, hidden abilities, and TMs just to begin thinking about a competitive team as most of everything is completely opaque. There's a complex game there certainly, but rather than showing it to the prospective player they pretend it mostly doesn't exists and just assumes that either you'll get bored and stop playing (which, I did) or devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to figure out the meta yourself, almost definitely through third party info sources.

[JeenLeen]

Jesus christ the game doesn't need to spell out directly that not all Pokemon are created equal because it's obvious even to the small children that pick up the game for the first time in pre-school. Not all options are created equal, and in fact some options in Pokemon are designed deliberately to be worse than others so there is a sense of progression as you catch more and more powerful monsters in the areas closer to endgame.

To add to Rynjin's point, I think the anime also supports this. We start in a town with relatively weak and, for the most part, easy-to-capture Pokemon. Yeah, there's those violent bugs and bird, but most of the bugs and birds near Ash's hometown are relatively docile and easy to catch.
It also seems understood or assumed that starter Pokemon, while not necessarily weak, are relatively easy to train and thus what are given as starters. Otherwise, a pikachu wouldn't be an abnormal choice.
As Ash travels, he starts to encounter more and more tougher-to-catch Pokemon. I'm thinking of the ape-fighter Pokemon episode in particular, but I reckon there's others.

I admit these don't mesh perfectly. (It also is a big 'screw you' to anyone not starting in Ash's hometown, but many games (and maybe animes) require that suspension of disbelief.) But just like Ash starts to encounter more difficult Pokemon as he travels more, so too in the games do you encounter more difficult ones. How they are difficult might differ (e.g., personality in the anime, level in the game), but that seems trying to simplify an anime into game mechanics.

And I stay convinced that evolved Pokemon are supposed to be stronger than their weaker forms. As stated earlier, non-evolved can win by better tactics, trainer, or experience (level), but if all else was held even, I'd think a Charizard would defeat a Charmander 99% of the time.

[deuterio12]

They're vastly underestimating children then.

No, Pokemon shouldn't be the Dark Souls of itself, but Black/White at least made you assess your party composition in the rock/paper/scissors game and put up resistance to you over-levelling with its fairly intelligent XP mechanics. I actually had to fight rematches with Gym Leaders because they threw surprises at me the first time around. Granted I don't use items or heal between Gym trainers, but still that's way more than X/Y did.

See, you do know how to limit yourself for extra challenge.

Other Nintendo games have variable difficulty options without collapsing the known universe. At worst the Hard-Core Gamerz of the internet complain that there's an easy mode like with that last Star Fox game, and everyone else can ignore them.

Yet which other Nintendo franchise ever caught such a level of popularity as pokemon?

Appealing to a bigger audience is not easy.

What happens is you play through a trivially easy experience and then you find the entire game you've played thus far - saving your whole region and becoming Champion - has been a worthless +10 hour tutorial that didn't teach you a goddamned thing about the meta-game and how they actually play it competitively or even how to adequately perform in the Battle Mansion/Tower-whatever.

Honestly, I can't think of a another game which does a worse job explaining its deeper mechanics than Pokemon. You need to Google most, if not all of the key details on the minutia of a Pokemon's internal math, breeding and egg moves, battle items, hidden abilities, and TMs just to begin thinking about a competitive team as most of everything is completely opaque. There's a complex game there certainly, but rather than showing it to the prospective player they pretend it mostly doesn't exists and just assumes that either you'll get bored and stop playing (which, I did) or devote an inordinate amount of time and energy to figure out the meta yourself, almost definitely through third party info sources.

That's a feature, not a bug.

The ten year old kids can enjoy it, but the older hardcore gamers can find pretty of depth to dig in and develop a cutthroat PvP metagame that's been going for years/decades. Exactly which other turn-based RPGs can even boast of having such a lasting world-wide PvP scene even?

[Traab]

Bit late but

This was true for the first games, but more modern ones have got significantly better with gym leaders having a counter-counter pokemon in their team specialized in fighting the types they're supposed to be weak against. And even the first game had the final "boss" being the Elite 4 gauntlet that demands some team variety.

Also a lot of the complains seem to be more about the game vs anime, and they're basically different universes from day 1 (like anime Gary drives out of the starting town in his own car when in the game there's not even a proper road in the first city you could drive a car through). Then there's some of the manga continuities that can get pretty crazy, in particular pokemon adventures where half the gym leaders are team rocket sleeper agents and the elite 4 are actually an eco-terrorrist organization.

The in-game lore is a lot more consistent with the game mechanics, there's nobody telling you that unevolved pokemon will be as strong as evolved pokemon or anything.

Pfft, I beat pokemon red/blue with bulbasaur being the only pokemon who fights. That game had very little challenge unless you created it. I was one shotting the elite 4 and then gary with the only other pokemon captured being the ones needed for hms and such. "Oh sorry, you need to capture 15 pokemon before I give you this" type stuff. And yeah, im glad they made the gym leaders better because its just really silly to think that a water gym has never faced electric attacks and is utterly defenseless to them. They might as well go "Oh, you have a pikachu? Here is your badge, gtfo" and not waste time fighting.

Its a bit of a tangent, but I really liked what I read in a fanfic once. Basically, the gym leaders have multiple setups of pokemon to work with and scale their skill to match the challenger based on total badges/pokemon. If you are OG ash heading to pewter you have 3 pokemon and no badges, brock is going to go easier on you than he would if ash showed up with 7 badges and a full roster of evolved pokemon. Both in pokemon he fights with, and how hard he fights. Newbie Ash can get by with showing knowledge of the pokemon type chart and overcoming a defensive style against geodude, while 7 badge ash better show he can compensate for how his grass type just got set on fire because turns out flamethrower is a tm and his Rhyperior knows it. Oh, and he has been abusing the hell out of rock polish this entire time. Bottom line, it doesnt matter if you are ash with two weeks of training, or a 3 time league champ, to be a gym leader means he has a fight thats scaled to give you a challenge.

[Peelee]

Pfft, I beat pokemon red/blue with bulbasaur being the only pokemon who fights. That game had very little challenge unless you created it.

The starters were their version of a difficulty. First two gyms were Rock and Water, so the Grass type pokemon was easy mode, the water type was medium, and the fire type was hard mode.

[tyckspoon]

The starters were their version of a difficulty. First two gyms were Rock and Water, so the Grass type pokemon was easy mode, the water type was medium, and the fire type was hard mode.

Didn't really work out, tho.. Sure, you didn't have type advantage for Fire versus Rock, but Brock's pokemon have really terrible Special stats so you could still Ember your way through them without too much difficulty. Just wouldn't one-shot them the way Bulbasaur or Squirtle would. By the time you made it to Misty you should have other pokemon to use, or if you're of the 'only my starter matters' persuasion your Charmander should be sufficiently over-leveled by that point to brute force through it anyway.

[Rater202]

In Pokemon Yellow, by the time I beat Brock my Pikachu was invincible.

[Peelee]

Didn't really work out, tho.. Sure, you didn't have type advantage for Fire versus Rock, but Brock's pokemon have really terrible Special stats so you could still Ember your way through them without too much difficulty. Just wouldn't one-shot them the way Bulbasaur or Squirtle would. By the time you made it to Misty you should have other pokemon to use, or if you're of the 'only my starter matters' persuasion your Charmander should be sufficiently over-leveled by that point to brute force through it anyway.

You still had to grind your Charmander decently well to pass through Brock, because the Pidgeys, Weedles, Caterpies, and Ratattas you find before him are even worse against him. After that, you can get some Geodudes and Zubats, but you don't really get anything that is effective against Misty, just stuff that isn't weak to her at best. After that you get to actually get varied typings, so it works out as well as can be hoped for so far as not having "Rock crush Fire into the ground so go pick something else" as a difficulty option.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Its a bit of a tangent, but I really liked what I read in a fanfic once. Basically, the gym leaders have multiple setups of pokemon to work with and scale their skill to match the challenger based on total badges/pokemon. If you are OG ash heading to pewter you have 3 pokemon and no badges, brock is going to go easier on you than he would if ash showed up with 7 badges and a full roster of evolved pokemon. Both in pokemon he fights with, and how hard he fights. Newbie Ash can get by with showing knowledge of the pokemon type chart and overcoming a defensive style against geodude, while 7 badge ash better show he can compensate for how his grass type just got set on fire because turns out flamethrower is a tm and his Rhyperior knows it. Oh, and he has been abusing the hell out of rock polish this entire time. Bottom line, it doesnt matter if you are ash with two weeks of training, or a 3 time league champ, to be a gym leader means he has a fight thats scaled to give you a challenge.

That's actually really sensible. Not unlike how you would be challenged going for different ranks in a martial arts school. Any Sensei could test you for any rank they're qualified to give and the test would be appropriate to your rank.

[Celestia]

You still had to grind your Charmander decently well to pass through Brock, because the Pidgeys, Weedles, Caterpies, and Ratattas you find before him are even worse against him. After that, you can get some Geodudes and Zubats, but you don't really get anything that is effective against Misty, just stuff that isn't weak to her at best. After that you get to actually get varied typings, so it works out as well as can be hoped for so far as not having "Rock crush Fire into the ground so go pick something else" as a difficulty option.

For Brock, just get a Butterfree and Confusion him to death. He doesn't even have any rock type moves to worry about, so Butterfree does fine. As for Misty, you're plain wrong. You can find Oddish (R) and Bellsprout (B) on Routes 24 & 25. And, if you're lucky, you found a Pikachu in Viridian Forest.

[Peelee]

As for Misty, you're plain wrong. You can find Oddish (R) and Bellsprout (B) on Routes 24 & 25. And, if you're lucky, you found a Pikachu in Viridian Forest.

Huh. I must have never found those guys, I remember her being a pain with my Charmander.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

At the same time, the story content is created so you can, if you wish, pick literally any Pokemon in the game (except maybe Magikarp) and defeat all challenges just by leveling high enough, since no NPC in the games has max level Pokemon before post-game, if even then. Because a level 100 Pikachu will still beat a level 50 Raichu, so your complaint isn't even all that consistent anyway.

This is generally how I square most of the disparity between the anime and games. All of the instances of type, evolved vs. unevolved, etc that go against game mechanics seem to be that the the Trainer is the most important part of Pokemon training. I'm the anime trainers who pour their heart and soul into their Pokemon have stronger Pokemon. In the games the best parallel we have to this is the players time which means how much you grind. Just as Ash has developed a special bond with Pikachu and to a lesser extent with all the Pokemon he uses a player can choose one Pokemon to use and out level every gym fairly easily.

[tyckspoon]

Huh. I must have never found those guys, I remember her being a pain with my Charmander.

It's a really short route between the cave exit and Cerulean, and IIRC they're not super-common encounters, so that's not a huge surprise. I usually had a Butterfree at that point if I hadn't spent the time grinding one up for Brock (thankfully bug-types generally had very fast XP curves) and just smacked everything for the next ~2 gyms out of the way with Confusion, tho. Gen 1 Psychic type best type.

Edit: 'tho even if you found an Oddish it'd only know Absorb. Even with same-type and super effective it's not a strong move. Bellsprout would come with Vine Whip, which would take care of most of the gym pretty handily.

[Celestia]

Huh. I must have never found those guys, I remember her being a pain with my Charmander.

Well, the grass on both routes is rather out of the way and easily avoidable, so it's not surprising to never encounter them.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Another option for beating Brock without a starter is Nidorina or Nidorino both poison type with access to a fighting move (double kick) they take ×2 from ground, but Brock's Geodude and Onyx only have normal type moves so it's still a decent advantage.

[Frozen_Feet]

See, Red and Blue were a challenge way back then because you didn't go into the game knowing all this stuff and had to find out via trial and error. This is also the primary reason why stuff like Battle Tower or PvP are hard: as noted, the game does not tell you how it works so you have to find out via observation and experimentation.

Or, you can read several hundred Smogon articles and watch hundreds of hours of competition footage.

[Rynjin]

Its a bit of a tangent, but I really liked what I read in a fanfic once. Basically, the gym leaders have multiple setups of pokemon to work with and scale their skill to match the challenger based on total badges/pokemon. If you are OG ash heading to pewter you have 3 pokemon and no badges, brock is going to go easier on you than he would if ash showed up with 7 badges and a full roster of evolved pokemon. Both in pokemon he fights with, and how hard he fights. Newbie Ash can get by with showing knowledge of the pokemon type chart and overcoming a defensive style against geodude, while 7 badge ash better show he can compensate for how his grass type just got set on fire because turns out flamethrower is a tm and his Rhyperior knows it. Oh, and he has been abusing the hell out of rock polish this entire time. Bottom line, it doesnt matter if you are ash with two weeks of training, or a 3 time league champ, to be a gym leader means he has a fight thats scaled to give you a challenge.

This is actually canon in the anime as well, and implied in the games. Pokemon Origins shows this at one point, and one of the later anime seasons too I believe.

[Maryring]

I'd argue it's canon in the games as well. In BW2, the first gym leader is Cheren, and you know from the previous game that he's got a team strong enough to take on the Champion. So he's holding back greatly as he's your first gym. Furthermore, in the World Tournament, you've got gym leaders from all the previous games, and they all field very strong level 50 teams that will wipe the floor with you if you're careless.

[deuterio12]

I'd argue it's canon in the games as well. In BW2, the first gym leader is Cheren, and you know from the previous game that he's got a team strong enough to take on the Champion. So he's holding back greatly as he's your first gym. Furthermore, in the World Tournament, you've got gym leaders from all the previous games, and they all field very strong level 50 teams that will wipe the floor with you if you're careless.

Plus Silver/Gold where you get to go back to the Red/Blue gyms and they throw high-level parties at you as befitting a crowned champion from another region instead of just another newbie.

[Spamotron]

Now yes the programmers could add a easy/normal/hard/lunatic/Fire Emblem permadeathfaint mode or something, but then the problem would be that older players would go around bragging around kids how they can beat the game in harder difficulties and that would not produce good results.

Tell that to the Kirby series. Base difficulty intended to be a child's first platformer and True Arena mode that veteran adult gamers consider an accomplishment to beat.

[deuterio12]

Tell that to the Kirby series. Base difficulty intended to be a child's first platformer and True Arena mode that veteran adult gamers consider an accomplishment to beat.

And exactly how popular Kirby is world-wide again? Where is Kirby Go and endless spin-off games and enduring anime and cosplay events and copycat games?

[Rynjin]

And exactly how popular Kirby is world-wide again? Where is Kirby Go and endless spin-off games and enduring anime and cosplay events and copycat games?

I'm scratching my head trying to discern the relevance of this reply to anything.