colinp said:
I love how the Pokemon Center music changes depending on the time of day.
<3 this game
Every piece of town music, actually--and it's a great touch, yes.
Though I'm not sure why they realized it could be a great touch for towns while not thinking to implement more battle themes per game, given that players are going to spend much more time in battle than in any one town. It makes even less sense considering that the anime still uses every region's battle themes and mixes them up for great effect... Something that really needs to be done in the games.
As for Pokemon designs...
I'm not listing them off, but counting only fully-evolved Pokemon (including Pokemon who were fully-evolved in their own time but wouldn't be considered so now):
R/B/Y: love 42, dislike 12
G/S/C: love 28, dislike 11
R/S/E: love 20, dislike 37
D/P/P: love 29, dislike 21
(The rest are neutral or slightly liked.)
The original generation was far and away the strongest. Almost no complaints from me--nearly every Pokemon I dislike is a Humanshape type. When I first played G/S/C I hated a lot of the Pokemon instantaneously, but in hindsight that was more a reaction to the number of
good Pokemon going straight downhill. There weren't many I could point to that I actively disliked, but most of them left me pretty indifferent.
Then came R/S and suddenly I wanted G/S/C back. Worst generation of Pokemon designs by an enormous margin, mainly because of the following:
1) Clone Pokemon who couldn't compare to the originals. Beautifly, Delcatty, Seviper, Walrein, Crawdaunt, Aggron... I have nothing against using the same animals as a basis in principle, but these in particular were consistently less cool-looking than their predecessors. And although I love Groudon's design, it's basically a super-sized red Sandslash without spikes--and I prefer Sandslash.
2) Conceptually-similar Pokemon who I also liked less. The Nidos destroy Volbeat and Illumise. Magneton is much more interesting than Lunatone and Solrock. Compare Masquerain to most Bug/Flying types from the first generation. Armaldo escapes this category somewhat because I think it's a pretty cool Pokemon in its own right, but it's still no Kabutops.
3) Paint-by-numbers design. Spinda: take teddy bear, add swirls. Luvdisc: take heart, add eyes. Glalie: take floating head, add horns. Yawn.
4) A bizarre and sudden obsession with golems and other earthen beasts, namely Nosepass, Claydol, and the Regis.
As for D/P/P, it's a huge step up from R/S/E, but still a pretty forgettable generation aside from all the evolutions of pre-existing Pokemon (which are mostly awesome). If not for those evolutions, there wouldn't be much to love, but there also wouldn't be much to hate--I'd be down to only twelve and sixteen, respectively. Most of the mistakes D/P/P made with designs are along the same lines as R/S/E, but thankfully in much lesser quantities. Mothim, Purugly, Kricketune, Bastiodon, Bronzong--again, we've just seen better designs in this very same vein before.
