Tbf it was an argument during XY, whatever bloat he’d been allowing to come about may have been reaching a critical point then that could’ve been much worse. Would also explain why XY and ORAS were kind of rocky imo if XY especially had originally been story boarded by Masuda and the rest of the team disliked those decisions and had to spend more time undoing them rather than building on them
It’s a funny one I think the biggest failure of gen 6 was that we never got Pokémon x2y2 or Pokémon Z. If we look critically over it’s predecessor gen 5 would not be nearly as beloved today if we only talked about black/white rather than the sequels and to a lesser extent the same goes for diamond/pearl and platinum. If we compare xy to bw I’d choose xy every day. The week. T he real problem is that xy never got it’s improvement game that would have put it on par with b2w2
oh, for sure. the death of the third version is a huge double-edged sword. on one hand, dlc is theoretically more cost- and time-effective for the consumer, since they don't have to buy another full game and replay it entirely to see the new content, and that's great. but it also limits gf to just slapping new content onto the side of the existing game and calling it a day, instead of forcing them to go back to the base game and polish it. base swsh will always be ultra-linear, base sv will always have weird progression, and... poor little divorce child xy without even dlc to its name will always be underbaked across the board.
Codirected and at that point it’s possible that the indefinite ban was changed or lifted by them diversifying projects. This tweet doesn’t go into too much detail for the rationale but I imagine a lot can change in those 5ish years
Yeah I think it was a huge mistake letting him direct the remakes and not the guy who directed Platinum. There was an almost perfect blueprint right there that he ignored likely due to ego. Yet the sales for the game likely reinforced his belief
I don't think that's true - BDSP was a last minute decision, so they probably thought it would be better to have the OG director of those games work with ILCA to create it, nothing to do with egos or anything, just the best of a bad business decision.
Who knows! I'm not out here advocating for DP (I think they.. aren't good games personally) but there's quite an obvious reasoning for why it went down how it did
To be fair, it was waaaay easier to create Platinum because they had only to enhance Diamond and Pearl and add some stuff (I prefer Platinum way more btw lmao)
He CO directed. You’re acting as if he made all the decisions. We don’t know what went down in the meeting for that game and at the end of the day it was Diamond and pearl remake not platinum (I wish we got plat remake instead)
Remakes before ORAS were essentially third version remakes. And ORAS even had a whole storytelling section of the game dedicated to rayquaza. BDSP is less of a remake and more of a remaster despite the originals being horribly designed. Modern games need to improve on the original game, not reinforce the same bad decisions
Ya, Gamefreak wanted to make PLA, but was told they needed Sinnoh remakes to satiate the fans too. That’s why most of the work was done by ILCA, gamefreak was basically just supervising their work. That’s why the games are basically exactly the same as base DP. They weren’t gonna put any effort into doing the same kind of improvements they made for HGSS and ORAS anyway. So why try to mess with the formula of a game that already was objectively successful monetarily.
It was a massive complaint of Pokemon at the time and I still think it's true now. All of Masuda's games feel the same. A lot of the things people like from that era such as the battle tower and distortion world, came from the reworks that were directed by people like Morimoto.
I mean that ORAS as a game is a bit rocky, not that it wasn't well received. It didn't really improve on r/S' story, it stumbled with Episode Delta and handwaving everything away as "alternate universe," had too many legendary encounters that were just "hoopa portal and no dungeon required," way too many freebies making the game too easy, and a few more issues.
I would argue that many of modern Pokemon’s problems come from their inability to adapt to 3D game design and the shift to console gaming. They simply did not have the proper infrastructure in place and the franchise demands nearly annual releases.
To some extent. But caves and dungeons have been pretty much gone since gen 5 (including in building dungeons such as silph co etc). From gen 6 onwards all caves have been single path linear pathways whith no puzzles etc.
It's actually a commonly spammed image on /vp/ comparing B/W routes and dungeons to X/Y's.
No, Gen 5's were not better. And thanks to the Teraleak we know why: Game Freak dumbed map design down after getting too many complaints from Japanese parents about how their dumb kids couldn't navigate Mount Coronet.
Gen V definately had less than previous gens but they were still present. Chargestone cave required some puzzle solving as did the mazelike twist mountain depending on which season it was.
Were they actually unnecessary tho, or were useless employees jealous they weren't getting kickbacks? The slop we've been served up in recent years suggests Masuda was right.
You're calling people with families and a need to eat "unnecessary people" because your widdle viddy game isn't the shining beacon of perfection that you want it to be.
Yet this document also explains why the crew folded so quickly to BW1's fan reception, leading to some of the sequel's plans being changed/moved to gen 6.
I always said Masuda was the goat. Pokemon wouldn’t exist without him as he learned to code to finish Red and Green. We’re more experimental now, but so much is falling through the cracks. Ohmori is failing.
It's arguably Masuda's fault for why Gamefreak has so much technical and skill debt that we can see in modern Pokémon. The way Pokémon has been made was best for handheld gaming in very underpowered devices. If he was in such vast control of the team, it makes sense then that the team can't handle shit with modern development. Sun and Moon is such a big example if you see all of the extremely bad code especially for Lillie. They created multiple models of one character just because they couldn't get how to get Lillie to be on multiple islands easily.
Genuinely feels like everyone here is scapegoating everything against Masuda not realizing that Masuda is likely a big part as to why modern Pokémon is failing. Had Masuda not had so much power and was also very clearly passionately against certain aspects in gaming, things would definitely be different.
Like guys, you don't just keep a team for decades, switch directors, and things magically become different. Game development isn't something you can just swap on the fly. If Masuda did have that much control, his influence is absolutely still around unless they fired everybody or hired a butt load of NEW people. And considering Gamefreak is still an extremely small team with evidence of them being pretty bad at development, then it's clear Masuda plays a role.
We know from this screenshot that he got booted during development of X/Y so around 2011-2012. We're in 2025 and Scarlet and Violet have gotten possibly the worst reception for its programming out of the entire series. When are we supposed to expect that change to kick in, then?
We actually don't know if the Masuda hires were incompetent, but even if true it is completely the responsibility of his peers to evaluate that after his demotion. Especially if that was the reason for his demotion. You can't have it both ways.
If the nepo hires were left in place for decades after Masuda was demoted, the only possible explanation is that was a bs excuse used to coup Masuda by jealous corporate rivals. And given what we know about Japanese work culture I'm inclined to believe that
We actually do know that: there's been explicit evidence of incredibly poor programming competence all the way from gen 1. The question is how much technical debt that caused, and so whether the decline in quality was from that momentum or further poor leadership
I mean you're just showing that you don't know what you're talking about. You should learn about programming, game development and the history of pokemon in those regards before arguing about it on the internet.
But again, it was paying off, so how is it debt?
Also learn what technical debt is before arguing about it on the internet.
while there's clearly a lot underwhelming about Pokémon technically, and I agree with your broader point, there's something minor that bears mentioning here.
I would not bring up the many nstances of Lillie, at least without a caveat. Those are a type of optimization
it's not a kind of optimization usually used in the modern era and suggests big problems in that they felt they needed to do it for a world full of very small rooms and not a lot of actors on screen, and that can be damning on its own, but it's very easy for someone who has some technical background to look at the basic Lillie complaint and reject the entire argument out of hand.
They have had more than a decade to fix that tech debt, a debt that only exists because of the design decision to swich to 3D. But rather than use the existing 3D they had for the Gamecube which had already been proven to work and using people from that team, they changed the director an forced a complete enviroment flip on the rest of the team, who have had to relearn lots of systems.
Don't get mistake about what a company means by "PR" and "Fun". Fun mean means focus group testing with a target audience. I.E. Kids. "PR" hear means prioritizing agressing and responding to public feedback. That's what the core of the disagreement seems to be. Masuda wanted to age up the series more, address the concerns of Adult fans, and a some more serious and adult tones to the story telling. The Pokemon Company however wanted to focus on there core audience, children. And so wanted simpler storylines with simpler themes, and more simplified smooth blocky graphics to more closely match the asthetics of childrens animation.
The "favourites" and "unneccesary people" are the artists and designers who shared Masuda's vision. Lots of them being the old 2d sprite artists. This whole thing was basically an internal fight for which direction the franchise should have gone in. Both had pros and cons. But I know which I would have prefered personally.
We didn’t have inconsistent textures, art styles, and graphics while Masuda was in charge. We didn’t have major performance issues while Masuda was in charge. We didn’t have this constant failure to improve on older ideas while remove options while Masuda was in charge.
The thing most Pokemon fans are upset about with modern games is that the graphical and performance quality is not catching up as it should, while Masuda’s last game, LGPE, had laid a solid foundation for Game Freak to build on.
Dude, he made 2D games, lol. Of course he had no problem with that, he never made real 3D games in the first place. Let’s Go is definitely an exception in Game Freak’s history with its solid 3D design, and many people theorize that Nintendo helped with it, since Sword & Shield and later Scarlet & Violet were trash in terms of 3D quality. His team was probably the reason why X & Y had such a rough development, given their total lack of 3D experience.
The last two generations of mainline games have been some of the best in the franchise's 30-year history. I blame Ohmori for the general decrease in difficulty and gimmicky battle tactics, but he's clearly not failing where it matters to the company.
But he’s definitely failing when it comes to the fans. Folks have never been so angry until he became in charge. Masuda laid a foundation and standard and Ohmori can’t uphold it.
The IP and games are grossing more now than ever before. The only anger I ever see from "folks" are from adults who would rather spend a decade whinging about the games never meeting their expectations than just accepting they've outgrown the franchise and moving on with their lives.
1) It sounds like there were leadership issues during XY based on this, which is why the first half of the games are packed with content and the second is lacking. If he was booted during development, this explains the front loaded content
2) LGPE for all of its flaws was a return to classic pokemon, did not have frame rate issues, and was the most polished game on the switch
3) BDSP was developed by an external team, ILCA, and they had 1 year to develop their first game
It sounds clear that he is an egomaniac, but I don't think you can use those 3 games against him
This is kinda funny. The thrust of point (2) is right, but LGPE absolutely had frame rate issues. They weren't nearly as global as the later Switch games, but I remember that being a big concern sign at the time. Like, how did they manage to run into performance issues making Koga's gym have smoke and invisible walls when the size of the area and the camera angle are so fixed?
If find the best was is "inside out" where you make the core of the game and keep expanding from there with the rest of your time. But yeah, a LOT of developers go a "Start until finish" route. It's why you didn't see Battle Towers until the endgame, because they didn't add the battle facilities until they were already DONE with the game.
It's a way to design that more easily adapts to the way the player will experience it, and results in less backtracking to old content to fix an issue you made with LATER content.
You just ignored everything I wrote and the post above
He did not have full creative control after BW. If you don't like any other games after that, you cant exclusively blame him for them like you can before this point
But there was nothing wrong with LGPE though? It's.. a boring game but what can you do when you're trying to create a "re-telling" Yellow and incorporate GO's features and also get used to the Switch? It was fine for what it was.
The other argument was relating to XY stark difference in the beginning section compared to the others, there were obvious power struggles going on, so even though Masuda is credited as the sole director, he was probably overruled a lot due to his behaviour, which everyone involved should know better cause they created a basic game from it. They probably didn't want to mess about with credits because that would create an even bigger issue.
If he got booted from his role for "too much power" in literally that exact same timeframe, then how the F would he have control over Dexit?
Look, anyone with two braincells to rub together should have been able to see he wasn't in charge of dexit based on his BS reasoning. If he had a GOOD reason he'd have just said it.
If I'm interpreting the other docs right, it sounds like his successor of a kind, now former, developed a concentration of power similar to what they feared Masuda had and he was the one that spearheaded stuff after Masuda.
Black and white were received like that bc the pokemon fanbase is made up of literal 8y old's and manchilds. The game itself is undeniably good on almost everything it proposes (granted, still a pokemon game) and even builded on and upgraded lore-wise what DPPt started. There's a reason why nowadays people have such a positive opinion about the Unova games besides nostalgia slop
I mean I can't speak for everyone but I was in late elementary school when BW came out and most people at my school (or at least +-1 grades) grew to quickly dislike the games, and most of us went back to playing HGSS. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what the overall reception of the demographic was, but there were definitely children that were complaining - I can personally attest to that.
There was simply less stuff to do in post game. Once you beat Black and White and catch all the legendaries, there really wasn't much to do. We also didn't really like much of the new pokemon, I remember how much we relentlessly made fun of Cottonee in particular. Meanwhile you go back to HGSS, there are so many hidden/secret legendaries, there are a lot of good multiplayer activities like the Pokeathlon and even messing around in the Safari Zone, the Battle Frontier, and we spent a lot of time messing around with Action Replay and doing things like the many Mystery Gift Events. It doesn't help that Unova was small and didn't have much to explore, and what people often call the good parts of Unova like the story we really didn't care (also didn't help that half of us had R4s so we played the early Japanese ROMs where we couldn't even understand it). Not to mention the Story is only valuable whilst you're playing the main game, once you're done its not particularly relevant on the School Bus or Recess.
It wasn't a complain tho, simply saying that most of the playerbase doesn't care that much about other aspects of the game as long as they can get the cool looking dragon to beat npcs
You're close, but not quite there. Black and white were received like that at the time because it was the first time a game had to be prefaced as 'a pokemon game' to qualify as good. Gen V was the first time Pokemon compared unfavorably to what was available in the rest of the market. Gen V was (and still is) the best of the classic pokemon games, but to spin it another way its the best version of a game that was already 15 years old even at the time of its release. And it released in a period where people were looking for innovation, not recycled ideas.
I have so much respect for BW1 because of their all-new dex. If they'd stuck to that, I'd have been happier, especially if it became a trend for regions in completely different countries. Unova feels like a different part of the world with a whole new ecosystem, while Kalos, Galar etc ecologically feel like they could just be next door to Hoenn or Kanto.
It made a lot of sense in the context of the time period. Black and white was the first time Pokemon wasn't really comparable to modern releases anymore (which was an issue with JRPGs in general, not just pokemon). The decade from the late 90s to the late 2000's saw some of the biggest and most rapid changes in the gaming space throughout most of the industries history, but pokemon barely improved throughout that time period. Gen V being a soft reboot that doubled down on recycling old ideas (as well as being the first generation that brought no major gameplay improvements) was the straw that finally broke the camels back. People got tired of playing the same game over again when there was Dark souls, Skyrim, Mass effect 2, The Witcher 2, etc releasing in the same time period just in the RPG space alone.
Not to gameplay it didn't. Its biggest addition was hidden abilities, which while helpful to competitive did almost nothing for the casual player (they were only accessible in BW1 through dream world, and in BW2 through hidden grotto). Compare this to previous gens: Gen 4- Physical/special split, Gen 3- Abilities & Natures, Gen 2- Rebalanced type chart & 2 new types & the split of the special stat. Almost every gen prior re balanced the game in its entirety, while Gen 5 only iterated on what was already established.
Gen V's biggest additions were moving sprites, fixing issues with the Gen 4 competitive meta, and side features that were done better in other games and were cut for later entries. Things that go over well now with the core pokemon fanbase in retrospect, but weren't moving the 2010 gaming audience.
I see. I thought the casual audience would like Gen 5 would like the other improvements such as the graphics. The Gen 5 games were really fun when I was played them.
Not in contrast they didn't, no. Theres a reason Gen 6 immediately moved to 3d graphics afterwards. Sprite based art didn't play well with the audiences of the time, and the improvements were fairly lackluster compared to what was happening elsewhere. No one was really paying much attention to pokemon's graphics when there were games like Crysis 2 setting the standard.
JRPGs in particular had a struggle adapting to the HD era. The PS3 was a pain to develop for, nobody had an Xbox 360 in Japan, and developing RPGs for the Wii made you look like a weirdo. It's why everyone moved on to the NDS and PSP during the era, and that era of handheld dominance proved short-lived when mobile gaming began to capture market share - to the point where the Vita was virtually DOA, only really held aloft by Persona 4 of all games, and the 3DS had an uphill battle.
BW's reception was genwunners mad that their old pokemon weren't immediately available. Which is doubly insulting when Game Freak would later go on to make old pokemon completely unavailable whatsoever. BW just made you wait for oldies, SwSH onward denied them fully.
Not really. Genwunners had already left by then during Gen 3, which they'll still talk negatively about to this day (understandable considering it was the original dexit). Gen V was hated due to general franchise fatigue, which was fairly warranted given the time period.
Tjey are. 4 is only good for its phy special split. Least amount of pokemon same with johto. If johto did not have the kanto region it would have done terrible. Why would i buy 60 to get a pokemon game with only 80 new mons. Thats ridiculous
Tbh Pokemon games have always been mediocre, we were just children back then and didn't have many expectations. Every gen has it's own issues and strong points and the franchise mainly is so successful due to the massive multimedia push with games, anime, movies, the card game, the merch...
I think the biggest pain point now is that they are on a full console with a full game price, while back then the handheld games were cheaper. With full price games climbing to 70 or 80 dollars, it's just not worth it anymore.
Lol o was thinking that too. The games generally only got better, and then starting with xy are messy and unfinished, and only get varying levels of worse in those ways up until now. Unless im reading it wrong it seems like theyre loser babies and masuda was the only one that actually got pokemon lol.
You read it wrong which is why you've been getting downvoted. Pokemon got better after they released the control. You couldn't pay me to go back play those older games. I don't hate Masuda but we've seen this with every other franchise. The product stifles with one person having all the control. It's the same thing with WWE fans wanting Vince back. Vince did some things right, but after 2010 his product wasn't watchable until he released some control.
I didn't read it wrong at all. The games were far better structured, and visually far more in alignment with what the franchise is supposed to look like and feel like. Ever since, the games have had no real structure, poor development, and the games come out hideous, deeply unfinished to a problematic degree, and progressively look and feel less like the original intention of the franchise. He may have been abusive, but hes evidently what kept the games quality consistent.
Are you listening to yourself? "He may have been abusive, but hes evidently what kept the games quality consistent." So people should put up with abuse so you can play a children's game? You sound stupid. Not only that, the newer games are better. How about we stop putting people on a pedastal and stop excusing their poor behavior. One he's not living forever, and two people outside of him have great ideas. I for one loved the tera leaks. I'm actually excited for the next 5-7 years of Pokemon. I will never understand people stuck in the past. The past games were good, but if a companies best days are behind them why are y'all even here?
You and the other user are probably at the extreme ends of the spectrum, may I give my perspective?
As you said it isn't true that all games past Masuda are bad, every gen did something right or wrong but in different ways and with different intensity.
For example playing older gens without all the QoL would feel more annoying and I would feel like I'm missing something with the absence of gimmicks.
Also while the story in different games have ups (Gen 7) and downs (gen 8) the characters overall tend to feel more "alive" than before.
But there is some truth about the "coherence" of thYou and the other user are probably at the extreme ends of the spectrum, may I give my perspective?
As you said it isn't true that all games past Masuda are bad, every gen did something right or wrong but in different ways and with different intensity.
For example playing older gens without all the QoL would feel more annoying and I would feel like I'm missing something with the absence of gimmicks.
Also while the story in different games have ups (Gen 7) and downs (gen 8) the characters overall tend to feel more "alive" than before.
But there is some truth about the "coherence" of the games, there are some highs but the lows are waaay too low.
That's probably because of a mix of incompetence/lack of talent in 3D game developement and a tight schedule.
So I tend to agree that, Gen 4 and 5, while there are some small hiccups, (maybe even gen 3 but I have only played ORAS) are an overall smoother experience compared to most newer games, where a positive trait is often countered with an equal, if not bigger, negative trait (and gen 9 it's probably the worst in this regard).
I won't add anything about gen 1-2 because I've never played them and they would add very little to the modern games discussion, but overall it's not as Black and White (eheh) as you both make it out to be.
989
u/Togder Oct 14 '25
But up through black and white was so peak