The announcement of any newPokemongame is met with excitement. So, it’s not surprising that when thePokemon ScarletandPokemon Violetgames were announced to be coming to Nintendo Switch later this year, fans went wild. However, there is also some angst among long-time fans.Pokemon Legends: Arceuswas so well received that now fans are worried that the new games may take a step back.
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Currently, we know that the new games are touting that"players will be able to explore freely in a richly expressed open world.“So, that bodes well as a sign that GameFreak iskeeping the much-beloved open-world concept from Arceus. However, there’s much more to consider. The traditional mainlinePokemongames need to improve several aspects for the new ones to live up to the standard set by Arceus. So let’s take a look at some improvements fans want to see in thePokemon ScarletandPokemon Violetgames.
The type chart in Pokemon has some major balancing problems.
Some Types Are Just Too Weak:
Ghost, Fighting and Fairy all need to lose the Bug resistance and Bug would also benefit greatly from a Psychic and Fairy resistance.Ice needs more resistance. Giving it resistances to Ground, Dragon, Flying, and Water or some combination of would help it out greatly.
Poison just needs one, very simple change. Hitting Water for super effective damage. This would increase the Poison-type’s offensive presence immensely. Water is the most common type in Pokemon and also one of the best, so this change would absolutely bring Poison out of the rut it’s in.
Others Are Far Too Strong:
Make the changes to Water-type listed above. Give Bug the Fairy resistance mentioned earlier, and give Grass immunity to Fairy. These2 changes would make Fairy a much easier typeto switch into. Finally, if Steel were to lose the Psychic and Ice resistances, and gain another weakness in Electric. This would help make the type a little less overpowering.
Some Pokemon types are in desperate need of better moves.
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Then, there are a lot of types that lack equivalents to heavy-hitting Moves like Close Combat, Overheat, Superpower and Double-Edge. However, by far the most glaring example of this is the Fairy-type. Fairy has only 1 Physical move, Play Rough. This makes the Fairy-type painfully limited on the Physical side, especially early in the single-player adventure, as Play Rough is generally a middle/end game move.
3Even Type Quantities
Every generation has at least 1 or 2 types that aregreatly shorted of new Pokemon. Some examples of this throughout the series include:
Scarlet and Violet need to avoid this. They should add an even number ofPokemon for all 18 types, or at least focus more on the rarer types (Ice, Fairy, and Dragon), and introduce fewer of the most common ones (Water, Flying, Normal, and Grass).
2Unused Type Combinations
As ofPokemon Legends: Arceus, there are 16 unused Pokemon-type combinations. Let’s highlight just3 of the stronger ones.
Poison/Steel
Poison is a great defensive type, and Steel is the single best defensive type. It would have regular resistances to Normal, Flying, Steel, Rock, Ice, and Dragon, with 4x resistances to Bug, Grass, and Fairy, and to top it all off, an immunity to Poison. The combination would be somewhat balanced out due to its 2 weaknesses, a regular 2x weakness to Fire, and a 4x weakness to Ground.
Overall, it would be an amazing counter to just about any Fairy-type, thanks to the 4x resist and both Poison and Steel being able to hit Fairy-types for super effective damage.
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Grass/Fire
This is a wonderful combination thematically. Combining 2 of Pokemon’s most iconic types that don’t really blend together realistically. Surprisingly, Grass and Fire complement each other beautifully. On the defensive side, it only gets 3 weaknesses, Poison, Rock, and Flying, while also having some valuable resistances to Electric, Fairy, Steel, and a 4x resistance to Grass.
However, the real magic of this pairing is on the offensive side. Fire is able to hit the Bug, Grass, and Ice-types which Grass struggles with, and Grass hits the Water, Rock, and Ground-types which Fire struggles with. It also hits 7 types for super effective damage.
Ground/Fairy
This is an unbelievably scary offensive combination.Ground is the perfect attacking partner for Fairy, as it can hit the Steel and Poison types that often give Fairy a hard time. This pairing also hits 8 types for 2x damage (Dragon, Dark, Electric, Rock, Fighting, Steel, Poison, and Fire). To top it all off, there is no singular type in the game that can resist Ground and Fairy simultaneously.
The defensive side is also good. While it has 4 weaknesses to Steel, Water, Ice, and Grass, it also gets 4 resistances to Dark, Bug, Rock, and Fighting. The best defensive aspect of this combination however is the immunities. It gets immunity to both Dragon and Electric, 2 very strong types.
1Return Some Pokemon Legends: Arceus Mechanics
Pokemon Legends: Arceus introduced or reworked some mechanics from the usual Pokemon games in a couple of interesting ways.
Side Quests
Arceushad an in-depth side quest system. There were a lot of side quests to do in the game that all yielded various rewards, and while some of them did have similar solutions, they did an amazing job of making theHisui regionmore interesting. One such side quest revolved around showing an NPC a specific Pokemon. It was a simple thing, but it gave what would otherwise be generic wild Pokemon some kind of use.
Pokedex Completion
Legends also had a much more fun Pokedex completion method. It wasn’t just “see Pokemon, capture Pokemon.” The game kept track of things like how many of this specific Pokemon have the player KO’ed, how many KO’ed with super-effective moves, etc. The game required the player to do all of those enough to actually finish the entry.
Pokemon Legends: Arceusis available now, on Nintendo Switch.Pokemon ScarletandPokemon Violetwill be available in late 2022.
MORE:Pokemon Scarlet & Violet: Real-Life Places That May Inspire Locations In The New Region
