Count me in the "Pokemon shouldn't go online" camp. The second it does, it's going to be ruined by trolls and cheaters who give themselves perfect stats, and that's
literally the last series I want that to happen to.
Jado said:
Lindsay, Pokemon has been shit for the past few years. Hasn't had any significant advancements since Gold/Silver
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald are what I'd classify as "missed potential," but the reason for that isn't because they didn't have any significant advancements. Adding abilities was probably the best thing they ever did for the series since it forced you to think about absorption, direct vs. indirect combat attacks, status condition immunities, and other things that never existed in the previous games. And I don't know about you, but I really did find the double battle system to be vastly different from singles--and it would have been less so if not for abilities like Lightningrod, Levitate, and Damp being around to ruin certain important moves.
No, I'd say R/S had the best advancements in the series. It's just that the impact of the features they added was completely diluted for most people since 1) the Hoenn region was by far the worst among the portable games, 2) the same goes for the music, 3) the same goes for the set of new Pokemon (and that's saying a lot since Johto's new Pokemon were by and large not that great either), and 4) for some (not me, but for some) the graphics were disappointing. It's a similar situation to G/S/C, where night/day was cool, but Johto as a region was so lame and easy (the Elite 4 only hitting the 40's in terms of levels) that it ruined the impact.
As for Emerald, the Battle Frontier is another thing. Great addition. Great potential for future multiplayer options if they go that route. (Battle Factory rental multiplayer battles with possible "mulligans" on bad random draws are an absolute must, and co-op Battle Pyramid and competitive endless Battle Pike are pretty high on my list of wants for D/P.)
Only problem is that the entire thing is way too luck-based to be fun since you can get a winning streak of 30-50 going and then lose to some random critical hit or something and have to do it all over again. If only it was more like Mt. Battle in Colosseum/XD and you could restart from the beginning of the round you lost in, then I'd probably still be playing Emerald today. (Then again, maybe not, since the trainer battle music still sucks compared to R/B/Y and G/S/C... I demand a Perfect Dark-style customizable battle soundtrack in D/P, with remixes of all the previous battle themes. Seriously.)
I really don't get all the cries of Pokemon not changing enough. This isn't like Madden, Smackdown, or Mega Man (X, Zero, Battle Network), among others, where you could genuinely say, for better or worse, that almost nothing changes year-to-year. Do people just stop playing the game once they're done with the main single-player quest or something? Because then I could understand to an extent, since more or less all of the strategy in the game is thrown out when you're facing the (non-Battle Tower/Frontier) computer AI, but then you'd be missing out on the entire point of the game to begin with, never mind just the extra features.