Oh boy. I don't know about you guys, but this gen, one of the smallest, felt like it lasted forever.
Now, I've made it no secret that Sinnoh is my least favorite generation, but I think you'll agree I've been more than fair with my assessments. It averaged out to a 4.9/10, which I even think seems a little high. I felt like I was handing out 1's like the ice cream man hands out fudge bars to kids in the Sahara desert. Between the birds, rodents, bugs, and fish, there were a lot of absolute stinkers. Well, compared to the 1st Gen (6.2), the 2nd Gen (5.8), and the 3rd Gen (6.1), 4.9 is significantly lower.
See, the recurring complaint I have with this gen is "pointless". Pointless new rodents and birds. Pointless gimmicks on awful Pokemon. Pointless hoops, dots, and bands on otherwise solid designs. Pointless amount of legendaries. Pointless baby forms of Pokemon that no one asked for.
And you know what? Out of 107 new Pokemon, 28 relied on previous Gens to evolve into or from. That means this is arguably the most natural expansion, but on the other hand holy shit only 3/4 of the Pokemon were actually "new". This is when people say Pokemon ran out of ideas, because 25% of the time all they could think of was to rehash an existing design. And sometimes (Roserade, Weavile, etc) it worked. But mainly (Happiny, Magmortar, Dusknoir) they absolutely did not. It was as if they forgot the original Pokemon's idea, which makes me wonder why they even bothered making it an evolution if they clearly wanted to go this different direction with it.
But I do appreciate the advances in gameplay that Pearl, Diamond, and Plantinum brought. The Physical/Special split especially. Now, a Water Pokemon with high Attack can still be viable, because Water Tail and Waterfall are Physical attacks, instead of being classified as Special along with every other water move. Adding more 3D models was neat, as was the gender differences, which help make every single Pokemon just a little more unique. Team Galactic was kinda goofy, though.
So while the 4th Gen definitely had some highlights, and advanced the gameplay, for me I've always thought of it as the weakest by far.
Personally I think Gen 2 is the weakest generation, but this may be biased because Diamond was the first game I actually played with understanding of pokemon.(My first game I ever played was silver and i didn't get any of it because I was 5, and the first game I beat was sapphire when I was 8)
ReplyDeleteMy favorite pokemon of all time is Garchomp, and although his design was a tad messy like you said, he's still fucking awesome. A landshark. He also won me almost $1000 as Garchomp C Lv.X in the trading card game.
I think you were overly harsh on a lot of the 4th gen pokemon. You contradicted your statements about messy designs by bashing glaceon and leafeon.(arguably 2 of the most straightforward pokemon ever) Pokemon like Togekiss, Dialga, and Magnezone all got low scores that they didn't deserve imo. The spirit trio was pretty retarded, I can agree on that, but Togekiss is like a small plane with an adorable face that kicks asshole. If Togekiss was one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers I think I would be less offended.
I still think you are a terrific blogger though and you have great insight on the creatures that make up the pokemon universe. I look forward to your reviews of the 5th gen guys and dread the day that you run out of pokemon to review
I think you were a bit harsh on this generation. Especially on the evolution or "Afterthought 18" set. Some of them may have been pointless but battlewise I think those pokemon needed evolutions. I love Tangela as a Pokemon but that guy is hard to battle with due to it's limited movepool. By an evolution, it gains a lot more. Though, you liked Tangrowth. Still Dusknoir is one of my favorite Pokemon from this generation which you thought was lackluster. Togekiss was also in this list of Pokemon I liked that you didn't.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see what you think of Gen 5.
Gen 2 is a great generation.
ReplyDeleteGen 4 is the weakest, but I was surprised about how many Pokemon you rated pretty highly.
Its kinda funny!
ReplyDeleteEveryone is talking bad aout GenIII but if you really compare it like you do, I remember wehy it is my favourite Generation.
The afterthought 18 arent actually the worst part of the fourth. Sure Some of the most ugly bastards are afterthoughts, but certain Exceptions make some pokemon worthwhile.
Thank you for this!
I know it's a long shot, but would you ever consider re-reviewing the Sinnoh Pokedex? I really think you'd like the Sinnoh Mons a lot more viewed through a modern lens.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of our problems with Sinnoh back then is that our perception of what a Pokemon "should be" was much different than it is today. While a few of the Gen 3 designs were starting to get a little more complicated, for the most part, Pokemon designs were mostly low-key and simple compared to today.
So when Gen 4 went wild with all the hoops and bands and spikes and 39 colors and all that jazz, we reacted negatively. We called these Pokemon overdesigned. We said they looked more like Digimon.
But as time went on, this became the standard of Pokemon design, rather than the messy exception. And we began to warm up to this school of design, and realized that some of the busy, complicated Pokemon in later generations are actually pretty awesome. In many ways, the Sinnoh Pokemon were ahead of their time and hugely influential to the design ethos of later generations.
What made me think of this was your review of Skeledirge. Now, I love Skeledirge and think he's the best starter we've had in years, but just look at how busy he is. 7 different colors, random white rings everywhere, unnatural looking black and white plates, a two tone tail for some reason, geometric shapes on his face, the little bird thing, etc.
And in the context of modern Pokemon, it absolutely works, and is fully worthy of the great score you gave him. But I have a sneaking suspicion if he debuted in Diamond and Pearl, you'd be a lot harsher on the guy.
I know I've certainly warmed up to Sinnoh over the years. It used to be my least favorite region, but I'm loving it more and more every day!
What do you think, is there any merit to my position?
I think this is a fascinating topic, worthy of its own post and discussion. I agree that I've become more lenient towards some of the design trends that I harangued Sinnoh for, but I'm honestly not sure if that's my taste changing, or just accepting that the standards for Modern Pokemon Design have changed... I'll have to chew it over.
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