Hey everyone, today I'm going to be defending Pokemon Legends Arceus and honestly I didn't think I would actually be defending this game or really any Pokemon game for quite some time because like many other people around my age mid 30s I fell out of love with Pokemon. I am a former Pokemon fan not a current one and it's interesting because someone's going to call me out and say but Nate you defended Pokemon let's go and I'm going to just say that was a unique situation because obviously as an old school Pokemon fan I am a big fan of Generation 1 so it was really exciting to see Generation 1 reimagined in the way that Pokemon let's go Pikachu and Eevee did it and I did actually enjoy those games but again I had a lot of nostalgia and affinity for that first generation so it's not really necessarily saying that it was a quality game although I feel like it was more so that I was obviously going to get some more enjoyment out of that based on nostalgia than I would most other Pokemon games so when it comes to Legends Arceus obviously I have you see my initial reaction it's what I've been wanting since I was a child just in terms of the scope and the ambition of the game but I can't help but notice and this this is interesting to me that there's a large chunk of people especially on the internet that seem to be reacting to Pokemon Legends Arceus in a very curious way in fact the way they're reacting to it I understand but I also think isn't being fair I actually tweeted about this so if you saw my tweets on it you already know what I'm talking about but we're gonna be talking about the game's visual styles and why I'm going to defend the way the game looks even though it might seem illogical at times but first we're gonna obviously go over some of the negative comments they're all public I'm just gonna take ones that are being commented out on the Pokemon official Twitter account people replying to some of the stuff about that about how the game looks because I feel like there is some misguidance here now before I do that I gotta remind you we are giving away a Nintendo Switch OLED system all you have to do to enter is be subscribed we will be announcing the winner during a live stream that I'll be setting up next month the live streams actually happen in the first week of October but we're gonna give you guys about a month run up to make sure you set your notifications so you can be there live but just be subscribed that's how you enter alright so let's get into some of these comments and I'm gonna first pull off comments from Nintendo's very or I should say Pokemon's very first tweet on the app Pokemon account talking about how you know your adventure will be set in the natural majesty of the Hissui region at an age when it was rare for people in Pokemon to live in harmony and it just shows like some initial clips from the trailer they showed and there's a reply to it with the jubilife village and here's what some people say you know Diamondora says the land still looks more barren and less stylized than the likes of Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade but I really like the concept of legends at least maybe monoliths soft can help out since they seem really good at polishing this type of thing with Sagoras replies to that person and says yeah the game still looks very rough but it's nice to see a bunch of improvements over Sword and Shield and all this innovation in gameplay setting and more and if they don't give up on this form of the games this will be like X and Y of legends and the next one may look way better but again still agreeing that the game looks rough moving on down the list we see Julio Reina saying the game looks ugly so no people would like to have the level of quality of Pokemon snap but well they got whatever this is then you see Josh saying please please improve the graphics textures from nature water trees and sun slash moonlight we are still five months apart please now honestly I could go on and on and on there are literally hundreds if not thousands of these comments throughout all of the Pokemon companies tweets about this and I've seen the comments as well on the official trailers on YouTube so like these comments are very very common if you're watching any coverage of this on any YouTube channel you're gonna come across people saying that the game looks ugly that it's a shame that this game can't can't even look as good as a game that was built for you and Breath of the Wild and I actually made a nice little response to this so I'm gonna read my own tweets because why not quote myself because I feel like I had a really really good take on this and I want to make sure that I get my take correct and then we'll expand upon it so I said I have seen some out there attacking Pokemon legends for not looking pretty and looking visually behind Breath of the Wild I think there is some truth but also some missing the mark with these expectations on the surface Pokemon is one of the largest IPs in the world as one of the largest IPs in the world it should have one of the largest development teams in the world to go with it just like Rockstar does or even closer to home the Zelda team that's now 300 plus with the addition of the seemingly now permanent extra team from Monolith having such a large dev team in theory should allow Pokemon to be treated like a triple a IP like it is and fundamentally looking stunning just like Breath of the Wild however this misunderstands Pokemon legends was never going to be a visual stunner because Pokemon is not an IP that gets treated the way Zelda is they don't spend five to six years making a Pokemon game and yeah folks that's how long it took to make Breath of the Wild look how long it's taking to make Breath of the Wild too they don't get that amount of time to make a game all right if you're lucky you get two years and even then it's not the full team as they release remakes along the way at no point does Game Freak get five years of dev time to make any game it's not about the power of Switch it's that Pokemon is so much more than a game there are animated series and other major side things Pokemon go and everything works together this creates tight deadlines in strict release schedules now it can be argued on the gaming side that they should stop caring about that take their time but this has worked for them for over two decades so a drastic change like that is hard look how long it's been since they trusted someone beyond themselves to remake a Pokemon game 20 years really 20 plus first time ever with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl legends Arceus has had more time in development than pretty much any Pokemon game since generation one that's why it's as ambitious as it is three years of dev time so it seems but that's not three years with the full team and most of it came during a pandemic Pokemon has never been a visual feast either this is important to know so anyone that expects legends to look as good or better than Breath of the Wild visually I don't think our Pokemon fans as Pokemon has never been about the visuals reality is Pokemon could be more could do more but it requires rethinking their entire release schedule and the Pokemon company ain't doing that so no I'm not upset that the game looks like Sword and Shield basically but open world who cares I'm tired of games being judged solely on visuals as long as they nailed the gameplay at a playable FPS I'm good Pokemon is the one IP for sure targeted at kids and kids don't care and I can't emphasize that enough children do not care they don't you want proof look at the most popular games one kid most popular game of my kids right now is Roblox not exactly a visually stunning game Minecraft not exactly a visually stunning game among us fortnight none of these games are stunners they're not trying to blow your mind from a visual perspective and Pokemon doesn't either and it never really has it's never been the the fact I'll go to and I get that new Pokemon snap just came out and blew our minds visually but new Pokemon snap is a game built around visuals it's a game about taking pictures of Pokemon in nature it is supposed to be a visual feast because that's the whole premise of the game is to be a visual feast it's not about catching Pokemon it's about taking pictures of Pokemon and in a setting like that absolutely the visuals should be pushed it also helps that a game like Pokemon snap or new Pokemon snap in this case exist outside of the normal release schedule of games that's why a third-party company made that game believe it or not game freak didn't make new Pokemon snap somebody else did that allowed them to push the visuals further because they could spend more time making the game and the game is based on visuals the mainline Pokemon games have never been about being a visual feast members sword and shield and all the complaint oh look at those n64 looking trees okay but it's still the best-looking tree we've ever seen in Pokemon history why because Pokemon is not a game intended for vision for visual fidelity it's not so trying to be breath of the wild breath of the wild tried to appear will appeal to a massively wide base of hardcore to core gamers and Pokemon tries to appeal to children I understand by the way that many adults play Pokemon I'm gonna be poking playing Pokemon legends Arceus so I'm gonna be a mid-30s nobody playing Pokemon and that's okay just because games are targeted at certain age groups doesn't mean that others can't enjoy it and you're not strange for playing Pokemon into your teens into your 20s 30s 40s for some people there's nothing wrong with that but it doesn't change that the target of these games is towards children and when I showed my children who they like playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox and PC and all that and tablets and phones and yes on switch when I showed them the trailer for the game you know what visuals wasn't even a thing on their mind they just thought it looked really cool and that's what I think people are missing here look yes all of us would love for game freak to take five six years to make a game in that time if it took five to six years of development you should expect something to the level of breath of the wild for a visual perspective right you know people mentioned bringing monolith and we're monolith is not going to come in and change the lighting system they're not going to come in and re-texture the game they're not going to come in and add all new physics to the to say the grass or whatever right they're not gonna add new physics to the Pokemon they're not going to come in and basically rebuild the game from the ground up the game looks the way that it looks because that's what they could pull off in the set timetable they had to make this game and in that timetable the Pokemon company even took away remaking a game away from them so they could spend all their time the core team after the release of sword and shield and obviously the small amount of team that was working on the DLC but once that DLC was done they had the full team working on well on this and honestly the fact that they pulled this off in a two-year span is quite amazing a two to three-year span they pulled off an open world Pokemon game that's amazing we should be impressed that they were even able to do that now i'm not saying you should be impressed from a visual perspective but guys this is an ip that just like a few games ago was on the nintendo 3d yes it had never been on any system even close to as powerful a switch we need to keep in perspective what pokemon is all of us want the open world full exploration pokemon game that looks as good as new pokemon snap right that's what all of us want but the reality of making a game where you're snapping pictures versus a game that you're actively walking around in and exploring remember it's on rails game new pokemon snap so it's preset courses um you're not like that an open world game you can go anywhere you can quote-unquote do anything um it's not as necessarily like like if they tried to take new pokemon snap and put that in legends archaeus that exact style and that exact high fidelity the game wouldn't run very well it would run at a snail's pace frame rates would be all over the place because one switch doesn't have any game that looks that good in open world capacity we've seen what open world games look like and breath of the wilds the best looking one on the platform even the witcher three looks all right but it doesn't look as good as breath of the wild which was catered for nintendo platforms so we have to remember that just because pokemon is arguably the largest ip in the world maybe it's not as large as grand theft auto anymore i don't know maybe it's not as quite as large as minecraft but it's up there it's in the pantheon of important ips it's an ip that says tell 10 plus million every single time pretty much no matter what they do it's an ip that had an app come out on phones and become the most popular phone app of all time and still today is among the top five most popular phone apps and that's what five years later isn't that insane we just five year anniversary holy crap and it's still among the top five most popular apps on phones and that's crazy when you consider all the social media apps and tiktok and and all that like you have all these social media apps and pokemon goes up there with them so let's keep in mind that while this is a massively important and successful ip we should have never expected pokemon legends arceus one to even exist in the first place the fact that we even have an open world pokemon game is shocking the fact that they let somebody else handle the remake so we could get this game is shocking and they did this during a pandemic and they're still releasing it in january and it still looks as good as it does from a gameplay perspective that is shocking it also shows the incredible talent that must be at game freak to pull off this game that they're basically pulling out of their arses because we've been demanding it for so long and the pokemon company is like what happens if we do try to make a breath of the wild style game because they're clearly looking at this as a breath of the wild style pokemon game there's no doubt about that i don't think there's any to look at how they shot the trailer listen to some of the initial musical notes which i can't play for you guys because pokemon company are stooges when it comes to copyright claims on music but the point is if you listen to some of the notes and at some of the moments during that trailer it sounds directly like music ripped out of i mean ripped out of breath of the wild i mean you even had eric mentioning that he thought a few notes in a row almost sounded like ipona song for crying out loud from the the shots they did the way you fly right you're holding on to a bar that's being flown by a pokemon and it's like dude that that's such invoking of the sailcloth and all that like oh my gosh it's very much calling out to breath of the wild fans but also very much calling out to pokemon fans and old school ones that have been waiting for this i think a lot of old school fans have really reacted the same way to this that i have and that reaction is well hey this game looks amazing it doesn't matter that it's not a visual stunner we don't play pokemon games for the best visuals you want the best visuals you look to cyberpunk you look to things from cd project red you look to rockstar you look to call a duty there are other avenues that try to get the best of the best visuals even now breath of the wild too should be expected to have a you know a notch above breath of the wild's visuals and be maybe one of the most visually stunning games on switch yet again we look to those ip's for visual stunning stuff even new pokemon snap but this no no no no we play pokemon for the gameplay sometimes even for the story but usually for the gameplay mechanics that's why we play pokemon for the pokemon themselves and the actual gameplay we all want that visually stunning game we all would love game freak to be given the manpower and the time to do something um on a massive scale like breath of the wild but we also have to remember that pokemon isn't just a video game series it's trading cards it's phone apps it's other free apps like pokemon unite it's animated series and movies there's so many moving parts and all of them are intermixed together that you can't even blame the pokemon company at this point trying to keep everything on target because the moment they get off target is the moment that pokemon can lose a little bit of its relevancy and all that feels weird when we're used to like zelda games every five years but what are they doing in between zelda releases giving us something zelda every year skyward sword hd we had hyrule warriors age acclimatized year before we had hyrule warriors definitive edition year before that breath of the wild the year before that um i can't remember what was before that but the point is they keep giving us you know twilight princess hd win record hd links awake and mean like they keep giving us other things between the major releases nintendo just has a lot of outside companies being trusted with that and and if i think a brilliant diamond and shiny pearl end up selling well that's going to lead to a future where they do take more time making each new generation of pokemon games that's one reason why brilliant diamond and shiny pearl actually quite important to the future of pokemon so my question to end all this video to you is why are you excited or not excited for pokemon legends archaeus and what do you think about the hundreds if not thousands of complaints out there that the game is still not polished that the game is still not a visual feast that it's a shame or it's a blasphemy that it's not as good looking at least as breath of the wild there are some people that actually think the game looks gorgeous by the way and i feel like those people fundamentally understand this is the best looking pokemon game like for a core pokemon experience that we've ever had now there's other things we could debate about you know the fact that there's not gonna be gym battles and all that we could talk about you know the differences in this game compared to a traditional pokemon game and there's plenty of criticism or plenty of preferences one way or another that that go into this when we talk just from a visual perspective man i really want to hear you guys's thoughts on this because i feel like pokemon legends archaeus is just being misunderstood by the wider gaming audience and it's funny because these replies are happening on the official pokemon accounts which are followed by pokemon fans and nintendo fans and i feel like maybe even some maybe there's even a subset within the pokemon community that just isn't appreciative of what this is pokemon legends archaeus is taking the pokemon franchise and flipping it on its head and trying something completely different and trying to reinvent the wheel and that is exciting and hasn't happened pretty much ever so is it perfect is it everything we want it to be no but if it does well could they take more time developing the next one maybe especially if brilliant diamond and shiny pearl do well and they can start trusting third parties with all their remakes but then we have people complaining that brilliant diamond and shiny pearl still aren't the remakes that they wanted can't have it both ways not with pokemon anyways i know billion dollar franchise should be able to hire all the teams they want i get it but we still can't have it both ways this that the tight scheduling isn't going to go anywhere so thank you guys so much for tuning in i am the robo jens from nintendo prime and i'll catch you guys in the next video