It has been clear, for some time now, that Pokémon is in dire need of a refresh. The series, which has been running since the late 90s, has done little evolving of its own, instead playing it largely safe with each mainline entry, albeit with slight alterations to give the illusion of innovation. Pokémon’s core formula has sustained interest for long enough, but, as it stands, it runs the risk of even its most dogmatically loyal fans growing tired of the repetitive, easy, and stagnant gameplay. I say this not to be unkind to Pokémon or its developer, Game Freak, but rather out of concern for a series that has brought me so much joy over the years.
Because, simply put, the state of modern Pokémon is abysmal. The lack of creativity is more evident than ever, the technical performance is a joke even amongst Nintendo Switch games, and the gameplay has suffered from endless attempts at covering up the basic turn-based combat we all outgrew decades ago. We’ve been left with a series that should be benefiting from the many advancements in technology, but instead lingers back in generations long past. What it needs is to reinvent itself and finally reach the apex of what it is capable of. And that all starts by abandoning the Nintendo Switch.
Pokémon Needs To Find Its Style Again
Image courtesy of The Pokémon Company
Pokémon’s shift to home consoles should have brought with it a slew of impressive innovations that only the new hardware could afford. We all expected the visuals the Nintendo Switch could offer would be significantly more premium than those of the 3DS, but we also wanted to see more than just the same base experience ported over with shiny new graphics. Essentially, we wanted what Genius Sorority offered when it created the incredible Pokémon Colosseum, a game that was designed specifically with home consoles in mind and thus featured more dynamic battles and a far more mature narrative.
Of course, much has been said about the diabolically bad technical and visual state of Pokémon during its Nintendo Switch era, with Scarlet and Violet being the perfect showcase of just how ill-prepared Game Freak was to deliver Pokémon at an AAA scale. It isn’t so much that Pokémon’s visuals feel immensely outdated and last-gen, although that is undeniably the case. Rather, its inconsistent style, or, at times, lack thereof, makes its ugly visuals stand out even more. Unlike Breath of the Wild, which has aged rather gracefully as a result of its distinct and unique style, Pokémon has more or less abandoned any semblance of its previous aesthetic beyond its consistently impressive character designs, and therefore looks like a dull, uninspired, and often barren mess.
Even Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which tried to inject the series with some much-needed visual variety, ended up feeling empty, its vast fields of PS2-esque trees and over-stretched rock textures failing to evoke the same level of creative genius and diversity of the earlier Pokémon titles. The most recent Pokémon game, Legends: Z-A, seemingly dropped all pretenses of attempting to offer a unique style with its copy-and-paste featureless buildings. The Nintendo Switch, for all its many qualities, is largely responsible for this, incapable of delivering the high-level of polish Game Freak is clearly searching for, while also not affording the team enough restrictions (as the Game Boy and DS had done previously) to force them to focus on style over visual fidelity.
The Next Pokémon Game Must Be Next-Gen
Image courtesy of The Pokémon Company
It isn’t even exclusively about Pokémon’s currently extremely outdated visuals. Rather, Pokémon desperately needs a reinvention, a complete revival that reassesses not just the game’s inconsistent visual style, but the combat mechanics, importance of creature collecting, region design, narrative, and more. A prime example of how a true next-gen Pokémon game exists in the form of the extremely underrated Nintendo Switch exclusive, Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It features everything that makes Pokémon truly phenomenal while also delivering a significantly more detailed and nuanced narrative, bigger and bolder open areas, and a unique real-time twist on Pokémon’s style of combat that is a vast improvement.
However, I’ll concede that the difference there is that Monolith Soft, the developer of XBC2, has worked both in the realm of heightened, narrative-focused JRPGs and on home consoles for quite some time. It is used to delivering this kind of experience, whereas Game Freak, for all its expertise, simply is not. The Nintendo Switch, then, should be considered Game Freak’s training, a way to discern what does and doesn’t work for Pokémon, what visuals it is capable of, and how best it can adapt the series for a more mature system and audience. If that is the case, and it has indeed learned its lesson (Legends: Z-A would say otherwise, but one has to give it the benefit of the doubt if they wish to remain sane), then now is undeniably the best time to move the series to next-gen consoles.
By continuing to develop for both the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, Game Freak is limiting what Pokémon is capable of, both mechanically and visually. The improved power of the Nintendo Switch 2 would offer Game Freak a fresh start and a new set of tools to work with. It also brings with it a set of expectations, ones that The Pokémon Company would assuredly have to meet were it to still want the gaming portion of Pokémon to survive. In theory, it could be the fix Game Freak needs to finally create the Pokémon game we’ve all wanted to see for quite some time. However, in reality, so much more needs to happen for Pokémon to be truly saved.
The Nintendo Switch 2 Isn’t The Final Fix Pokemon Needs
Screenshot by ComicBook
It is easy to assume that merely jumping from last-gen to the next would fix all of the aforementioned problems. However, I’d argue that Pokémon’s current graphical fidelity and performance are far from even reaching the pinnacle of what the Nintendo Switch is capable of offering. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and even the 2017 launch title, Breath of the Wild, offer far more complex and detailed environments, as well as a consistent style, while maintaining steady framerates. Merely leapfrogging to next-gen won’t inherently fix the issue, as the problem isn’t necessarily the hardware (although it plays a big role), but the way Game Freak utilizes it and the budgets it is granted.
Indeed, this latter point is perhaps the most important, as Game Freak allegedly is given incredibly small budgets considering the size and success of the franchise it is working in. As a result of the 2024 Game Freak data breach, the alleged budgets for both Legends: Z-A and Gen 10 were leaked. The former was made on a budget of just $13 million and has, according to Nintendo’s own data, sold 12.3 million copies. That means it could have sold the game for just $2 and still have made a profit (excluding marketing costs). Nintendo doesn’t typically release budget information for its games, but as a comparison, BOTW’s budget was allegedly around $100 million.
Surely, then, the solution is to give Game Freak bigger budgets and longer development timelines. Sadly, I also don’t think this would work. Not only is The Pokémon Company unlikely to do that, as it can make significant revenue on an insubstantial investment, but also Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was made for just $10 million according to its developer, and it is technically, narratively, mechanically, and visually more impressive than any Pokémon game to date. While budgets and hardware are certainly holding Game Freak back, it is what it does with both that is the problem. Having to create unique models and animations for practically every Pokémon is hurting the mainline series immensely. Reducing the number of Pokémon to the region-specific ‘mons and a limited pool of returning ones would potentially solve this issue and help remove much of the repetition caused by catching the same handful of Pokémon every game.
It doesn’t even feel as if this boils down to Game Freak’s inexperience with open-world games or more graphically intensive experiences, as its upcoming game, Beast of Reincarnation, is evidence to the contrary. Rather, I think the limitations of last-gen hardware, the restrictive budgets and development timelines, and the outdated focus of Pokémon’s core gameplay loop are all to blame here. Moving to Switch 2 will fix some of this, as will bigger budgets, should The Pokémon Company ever approve them. However, the biggest aspect that needs to change is Pokémon’s gameplay itself, its dull, repetitive framework that may have impressed fans on the Game Boy 30 years ago, but simply does not meet today’s high standards. It isn’t just the console that needs to change; it is absolutely time for Pokémon to evolve, too.
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