Monday, December 2, 2019

Pokemon Sword and Shield complaints

Image result for pokemon sword and shield

I do like the pokemon series. The first I've played was Red and Blue (generation one) when it came out. I remember getting one colour for myself and the other was given to my brother and we'd just play for hours on end. There were a couple of pokemon generations I missed since school, other interests, puberty etc got more important and I pretty much just forgot about the game. Instead I played some random online games and had a period of playing starcraft. In any case, as most grown as millennial, I got interested out of nostalgia, boredom and hype. I bought the alpha sapphire and it was awesome. It had less of that griding as the original pokemon did and they made it much easier to follow and catch rare pokemon. I never got mew in the original games. So I've played sun and moon, my boyfriend got me the pokemon go, so I played that, and now came the next in the whole chapter, pokemon sword and shield. So here's my review.
I've changed the title to a 'complaints' because I'm not going to review it much, I'm mainly going to bitch and moan about the dislike parts. I mean, I'll start off with the positives since I do have a lot of those.
I actually like the game. There's no doubt about it. I'm not a huge critique on graphics, as it never bothered me much or the ease of the game play, since I was never a serious or competitive gamer and my goal was always just to catch them all and play with cute pokemon. I do recognize that the ease of the game made it less engaging or challenging and a bit too linear and boring at times, but I'll complain about that later. Ease of the game for me, wasn't so bad. I also love most a lot of the new pokemon introduced. Like this simple sheep
Image result for Wooloo
or this dank as black goth bird
pokemon_sword_shield_new_pokemon_corviknight

Obviously, there were a few hit and miss that I thought were just... weird, like
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But overall, I liked it.
I also liked the whole scenery and design of characters, costume etc. I know some people were annoyed at the main rival hop or the design of his brother, but I mostly, couldn't care less.

So!
Here it comes. Buckle up cause as a loud mouth anus that loves to complain about anything and everything, I'm going to spew out my list of complaints.

Set up of the bag interface. (pic from reddit by u/gmendezm)
Image result for pokemon sword bag (
This is not just a complaint from me. I've seen numerous complaints in previous years about the same issue. As the years went by since the first game, the number of items have increased... well with exaggeration, exponentially. If I want to scroll over to find that one item to give to my one pokemon, the one and only that uses it to level up, well I might as well scroll a mile and if I miss it, fuck me. With no search function, even sorting the items by type doesn't help and if u sort it by name and it's in the middle of the alphabet, you still have to scroll half a mile to get to that one item out of a hundred. It's the same with TM and berries and possibly with pokeballs.
I wouldn't even care about sub-categorizing too much if they added a search function. But they haven't.

Pokedex layout.
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The same thing with the bag menu. It just sucks. You can't sort by type, which is understandable, but sorting by name might not be so helpful if the pokemon is again, in the middle of the alphabet. And again, I would've been happy if they just added a search function, but they didn't for no reason at all...

Player dialogue choices.
I couldn't find a pic, so you'll just have to believe me when I say things. Games like skyrim and fallout (I know they're from the same creator... I know there're others out there, but I don't know a lot more sorry) were famous because dialogue and choices mattered. You killed someone who was important, BAM, consequences. You said something insulting, BAM, consequences. I'm not expecting the same with pokemon, however, players like ownership. gamefreaks went in the right direction of at least letting people chose the appearance of their characters, however, the dialogue choices... well... it's like you have 2 choices, of a 'YES!' or a 'yes but less enthusiastically'. I don't mind that the outcomes are the same, I'm not playing a completely open world open choice game like skyrim, I know I'm playing a game made for children, but they could've at least personified it more to put in a bit more choices and a bit more reactions. For example, there were times I wanted to at least act humble and decline a challenge. But my only choices were, like I said, 'YES!' or a 'yes but less enthusiastically'. If there was a choice to say, "no" and be ignored by it, I would prefer that as it still is my character acting on my own accord. Or the conversation with Hop, my main rival. Even though I knew he was a game character, I wished I could be honest with him at times. I felt kind of bad for him, always challenging me, being defeated... All my dialogue choices were to accept his challenge or just say some generic cheering up bs when he looked genuinely depressed that he can't live up to his brother's name. (and by the way, the name hop is just ridiculous. I'm really hoping it's like a nickname, or a shortened version of something really cool, rather than his parents saying "oh you know how we named our first kid something normal like leon? Well lets name this one something retarded, like hop, from hopping down the street). Besides not having any dialogue choice I have to painfully watch by and see hop monologue about everything.
Image result for you had me monologuing

Trading system
So... They got rid of the GTS (global trading system). Now that sucks, but no worries we'll manage somehow by talking to, and trading with other random people online using their link trade. Well. 'talking to' was never really a feature in pokemon. We now have a system, where we can't advertise the pokemon we want, and we can't communicate with the person we're trading with, so we blindly have to pick pokemon in hopes that it was the right pokemon the other person wanted, hope that they give me the pokemon I want and if not, the sales basically doesn't go through and one always seem to quit, having to repeat the process again, of connecting, waiting for connecting, having very poor communication, then cancelling trade. People started naming their pokemon with the pokemon they want because that's the only way to communicate. A better system would be to at least be able to pick the pokemon they would like from the pokedex or something and put a request over the y-comm. In the GTS system, people would trade with you just for humanity sake to be nice. When games like nier automata and death stranding thrives to link people together and make them help each other out, this game has limited communications making people more frustrated with each other, rather than thriving to help each other out.
AND YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THIS SHIT AS WELL!!!!! On top of the cost of game, you now have to pay monthly to access online. FECK

Starter pokemon
When I said I liked most of the new pokemon, well it didn't include the starters. I just hate how they're making pokemon more and more humanized. Before evolving, they're all this cute little beings and I loved it. I thought their evolution would be all cool monster like.
Image result for pokemon sword starter evolutions
But what we got was this
Image result for pokemon sword starter evolutions
They've gone down this route for some time now, like pokemon x and y
Image result for pokemon x starter pokemon evolutions
I miss when they were more monster like.
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Now it looks like all those pokemon are wearing some sort of weird clothing.
I would've preferred this fan version instead
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Or even this
Image result for pokemon sword starter evolutions

No petting
The feck. It's a touch screen. USE IT. I loved pokemon alpha sapphire and sun and moon. You can actually pet the bloody things!!! They looked adorable!!! Then what did they do? "Oh now you can swing this poorly designed toy in front of them and they'll play with it equally poorly by just head butting you. The feck!?! I seriously wouldn't have minded if they just brought in the old games 3d animations and just recapped it. I don't mind graphics like I said. I mind game play.

Lack of pokemon
Not having all the original is... well.. just limiting. I didn't mind it at first, but after finishing the game... I'm just... done. It was a short game. There was a lack of feeling of satisfaction that I collected them all. Like I said, I don't really care much about graphics (which was the reason why they limited it to the galagar pokedex only apparently). So if they included them all with the animations from the previous version, I would've been happy as.

I think that's about it for now.





Sunday, December 1, 2019

Assassination Classroom review

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Assassination Classroom (Japanese: 暗殺教室 Hepburn: Ansatsu Kyōshitsu) is a Japanese comic science fiction manga series written and illustrated by Yūsei Matsui. (Wikipedia)

Synopsis: When a mysterious creature chops the moon down to a permanent crescent, the students of class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Middle School find themselves confronted with an enormous task: assassinate the creature responsible for the disaster before Earth suffers a similar fate. However, the monster, dubbed Koro-sensei (the indestructible teacher), is able to fly at speeds of up to Mach 20, which he demonstrates freely, leaving any attempt to subdue him in his extraterrestrial dust. Furthermore, the misfits of 3-E soon find that the strange, tentacled beast is more than just indomitable—he is the best teacher they have ever had! [Written by MAL Rewrite]

I don't know why I bothered putting in all that synopsis stuff since my review is quite bad and I'm not really going to finish watching the rest of the anime.

The anime was a good reminder of what I like and dislike when I'm watching anime. The anime I watch are quite varied, but for comedy purposes, I seem to like a certain genre. I don't even like sophisticated or complicated comedy, I'm not posh like that, I just like the good ol' slapstick, parody type comedy that has very little big-titty jokes or poop jokes. Also in that, I like when they put in a lot of random.
Here are some comedy anime/manga series I enjoyed:
Gag Manga Biyori
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Arakawa Under the Bridge
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... For some reason I can't seem to think of others, but I don't tend to watch comedy anime or series for long, since I tend to get bored easily. Movies is just one off so there're bundles more that I stuck to, like the Scary movie series, Naked gun series, Airplane! etc

In first look, Assassination classroom gives off a similar vibe, but it soon becomes clear that it's not really the case. The anime seems to be going for both comedy with a side note of serious which just does not work for me. There are times when they're laughing at themselves, but mostly, it's just... cringy.
So here are my 2 things that just made me dislike the anime
1. Students
If you're going to make an anime/manga about the growth and development of children, I think a good start might be making characters that are relatable and generally likable. These students were either so generic that it might have been relatable to some students out there, but were mostly just so god-damn boring. I mean, do people like watching the paint dry? That's development right? Nagisa, the main protagonist, probably falls into that area and he might as well have been invisible if they were going to make such a generic and boring character. I know this may be harsh, but it's mainly the storytelling that did his character no justice. I'll tell you a better 'wall-flower' story telling. Aku no Hana has a character just like him. A boy that was just a generic character, but the story revolved around him and made him into this most interesting center of attention and events as the story unfolds. However, in Assassination classroom, they did such a bad job of deciding whether he's a background character, or the main character, that for me, he was just a 'background character with a bit more focus, but is still boring because the character development is so shallow'.
Then there were a few students who were just downright annoying and unlikable. I'm guessing that should've been a part of the perk and we're supposed to like them after watching like 10 episodes as they develop through koro-sensei, but even after 10 episodes, my distaste for them either stayed or even grew further as some characters just became a ball of cringe. Like Karma for example. He's supposed to have a tiny little sob story where he is betrayed so he detests teachers and he jumped into the opportunity to kill a teacher. Well that's where the 'like' part seemed to have ended for me, because after that, he just became this silly little 'I'm so coooool' character that isn't actually really cool, yet his human side was so badly portrayed that he remained this weird try hard character. The episode where the students did a big term test and koro-sensei thought he failed everyone, Karma does this thing... which I'm guessing the writers thought was a cool move? Like he throws a knife at sensei and says something which I don't even remember cause it just felt so lame.
Anyway, enough about the students. I'll get to my last thing.

2. Unprofessional everything. (Professionalism is a word but unprofessionalism isn't haha obviously)
I've watched about 10 episodes btw. It might have gotten a bit more serious afterwards? but I wouldn't have a clue.
So this is where the imbalance of serious moments and not so serious moments just make this anime stupid. It's like watching a serious detective movie about homicide, but they try to bring in humor by making the detective a total joke, giving him a silly hat and making all the science or detective work ridiculous, like blood was actually ketchup, even though a real detective would notice that in no time. It just doesn't work. It's not silly enough to make me laugh, but it's also not serious enough to really make me engaged and find it interesting or smart.
This is a universe where people seem to take a huge threat to humanity as lightly as some sort of a joke. They even have fake knives and BB guns (in the pretense that it was specially designed to not hurt the children, just the teacher) and they can give whatever excuse they want because it doesn't even matter since everything else surrounding the whole situation seems ridiculous and child-like anyway.
Like they hire this 'professional killer' who's supposed to be the best of the best, speaks multiple languages and know the skill of seduction. What a joke. Not even a funny one. She had no professionalism, no sign that she had any secondary plans, her plan was stupid in the first place, she did not study her target carefully first from afar, second close but no too close, third from a close range after gaining trust, none of that. In fact, the sniper someone hired in another episode seemed ever so slightly more professional that this bitch. Just so you know, that's also her name. After they made a joke of a character, in order to emphasis to the audience that the character is indeed a joke, the author said, 'hey!! let's make all the students call her a bitch!! So the audience knows this is supposed to be funny!!" Listen, if you have to point out where the joke is to make people laugh, it's not actually a good joke.
Another hint of this stupidity is when they hired a robot and enrolled her into the class. The robot obviously immediately starts shooting at the target. Then you know what students did? They bound her up and told her she's annoying and bothering their learning!! Fuck!! And instead of doing the smart thing of saying "you know the world is going to end??? Studying won't matter or mean a thing if the world actually fucking ends???" The robot then asks her creators for help... and then koro-sensei re-programs her basically. She becomes this weird as kawaii character that is again, a ball of cringe. I just wanted to slap pretty much all the students (not the teacher, because he'll just stop me)

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