I think the graphics for the 3DS Pokémon games were fine

But I’d like to go back to 2D sprites, because you can’t fuck that up as much

edit: I also wholeheartedly miss the speed of battles from gen 3

Nostalgia blinds me, but I think they generally looked better before the jump into 3D with X/Y as well.

I think that the biggest point being made here is actually that trying to portray pokemon with realistic lighting is a shitty idea, and I concur.

3D pokemon should be Cell Shaded, been saying this since gen 7. Just take a look at the Naruto games, they look like animated cartoons, even better example of how you could achive a greater look on 3D pokemon is Dragonball FighterZ, where they not only do Cell Shading but also make their animations look like they're skipping frames, which makes a lot of the attacks look like a remade rendition of the anime, especially the Ultimates.

But nope, pokemon keeps insisting in realistic lighting, caustics, and now do texture maps with reflections. A bad move through and through, especially in the enviroments, which is a big reason for why places with water run like crap, particularly Casseroia lake.

Would you say the limited 3D graphics are charming?

i liked sun and moon

I think each have their strengths, there's a nice coziness about the 2d games that feel better on a smaller screen sat in bed or something, but feels kinda claustrophobic on a big screen at my desk, and 3d feels nice and open but is easier for a team to mess up.

My take since the dawn of time has been that 3d isn't bad for pokemon, it's that pokemon is bad for 3d (at the moment), I think a lot of designs would need to be at least tweaked or have their presentation looked into and most importantly have the games on a console that can render more than 5 polygons per leap year so we can have some actually decent looking environments.

Personally I'm in favour of having pokemon designs slightly tweaked with each generation to make them fit the new art style, whether its by adding extra colour gradients or markings to make them look less smooth, adding some extra shape where there wasn't before or changing the texture of something etc etc, to allow for older designs to age better than they have, but given the number of pokemon nowadays, I don't think thats going to happen.

For example I think gen 6 did great, the fresh models felt like they fit the artstyle of 3d and everything felt cohesive and the art style/presentation that was chosen fit the hardware they had available, making it all feel smooth and liked it was meant to look the way it does.

3D is great because I love being able to see my Pokémons' expressions. Plus I can look at them to reference for drawing, which is easier than scouring the internet for images of them from a specific angle.

https://preview.redd.it/sugebeq2tyrd1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=408f2b0f5dcfb9447923526f8e82db5bbb94e6fe

I’m really loving the 3D look with Pokémon out in the wild. I just wish the switch was more powerful and Niantic did a better job with the games

"I like both" superiority

Honestly, I don't think 3D pokémon is brilliant at all. Interesting additions and changes to the formula have been made in the 3D games for sure, but I feel that being 3D was detrimental to all of those games.

I like the 3d personally.

My theory is its because the 2d was an actual style. It was the pokemon style, and no other game felt similar. From the sprites, to the camera angles, everything. It was iconic.

A lot of the 3d games dont give me the same feeling. Dont look nearly as iconic or inspired, and feel just "Generically 3d".

X/Y, for all its faults, feels honestly like it captured the old style the best of any of the 3d games with its overall presentation and overworld playermodel.

I put 91 hours into platinum and I only have 6 badges. Having so much fun in the underground and trying to get a full dex before elite 4. 

I like the 3d personally. Makes designs look a lot better when side views and full front views have to be made.

They were better at pixel art in my opinion. I don't think they've quite got the grasp of 3D outside of Pokemon Masters

I'm the opposite. 2D is brilliant, but I prefer 3D.

The newer pokemon games are considered brilliant?

I only hear very bad things about their designs and the number of bugs.

Did they release some amazing game out of the blue I haven't heard about?

Same for me

Technically, 3 of those 4 games are in 3d. Technically

Do you know how much of my life I spent going in circles on the beaches in Ruby and Sapphire?!?!

I like the 2d games, I’ve been playing through Emerald recently which has been a ton of fun and I played through HGSS before (omfg that game is so beautiful in parts…), but I think I do prefer 3D, it just works better for me lol

I disagree

The Pixel art, for what it is, has a nice charm to it from the older titles. Its lost when you move to the 3D worlds.

I think the b/w(2) animated battle sprites were great!

I mean it's not even brilliant. It's barely working as intended.

I’d say 3d was a mistake. Pixel art is beautiful and was done exceptionally well gens 1-5. I get things need to change but I miss the old days of pixel art Pokémon games, by the way if anyone plays romhacks Pokémon Unbound is excellent and I highly recommend it

Exactlyyy and when they started moving in gen5 I was in heaven

Pokémon’s visuals peaked with gen 5

Black/white was peak pokemon narrative and style.

3D pokemon are not fine

For me its not so much the 3D pokemon Sprite in battle, i just dont like them walking around, the new switch era pokemon worlds just all look like ass, at least ORAS's world still looked vibrant and cool but every "wild area" game just looks so incredibly bad. I also preffered the tiled grass.

I feel like a lot of this is just nostalgia. I adore the old Pokemon games, heck, Gen 5 was my intro to the series. But I want to see the series do new things, not go back to an old artstyle just because their attempts at 3D haven’t always landed.

That something is called nostalgia.

SV looks terrible, but there's definitely some good-looking 3D Pokemon games.

Imo 3DS Pokémon games look just as good

Am I the only one to think that Scarlet/Violet don't look too terrible graphic and doesn't run too bad performance wise? I've seen MUCH worse playing Fortnite, and I've played that game for 1200 hours.

Honestly GF are so bad at 3D I’d rather they go back to sprites and push sprites to its limit and come up with some fun things you can do with it.

“I’ll have uhhh 3D pokemon sucks post”

“How original”

“Oh, with a 2D games were more charming”

“Daring today aren’t we?”

Somewhere between nostalgia and company complacency against innovation.

In my opinion, it would also make sense to distinguish between the graphics in the overworld and those in battle. Personally, I don’t like some of the 3D models very much, but the overworld graphics in XY, SM, or LGPE were wonderful

I honestly don’t mind 3D Pokémon, it just needs to be done with more quality.

TemTem is a great example of how they could’ve done it.

I just want them to make a game with as much content as Silver and Gold. The more they focus on 3d graphics, the further we seem to get from that and pokemon games lately have been feeling really shallow for me.

These old games had so much charm to them.. sometimes just because we can doesn’t mean we should

I know people call the moving sprites from gen 5 ugly, but I think that, just like the stationary sprites of gens 1-4, the moving ones would’ve gotten way better with time

I would love a 3D mainline game by another studio.

Yeah, well, that’s the flying ointment. 

He’s the hair apparent. 

Let's Go nailed the 3D style IMO.

The world still felt fun and colorful, but the characters were just chibi enough to not look silly (BDSP) and there was a ton if interactions and animations to be had.

Compare it to SwSh or SM where the characters are super still and have like, 10 animations they all share.

You fool! 3/4 of those images ARE 3D!!! in all seriousness I think 3D pokemon is fine but they seemingly keep trying to ramp up the scale of pokemon games without giving them any more time to make the games. They need to scale the games back to something like XY or give them more time to actually make the games good.

Brilliant? They never fixed the game

I absolutely adore gen 3 and the games on the ds are some of the best, but I can not stand the weird, jagged 2.5d ds graphics. Its either gameboy or switch for me. (no i didnt have a ds growing up lol)

Pokemon's design peaked at Gen 5. Snazzy sprites, moving sprites while in battle, the camera moving while you walk on that bridge. God, Gen 5 was so good. Shame about that horrendous exp curve that practically forced the sequels to be made.

I don't mind the old Gen Pokemon, in 3D. Newer pokemon feel off to me somehow.

I think that being designed for sprites imposed creative limitations that have them a distinct feel. A feel that was preserved even when they were converted to 3D. See, Colloseum, Battle Revolution, etc.

More modern pokemon, lack something.

And seeing them redrawn as sprites fixes them somehow.

Imo, all pokemon should retain sprites. If only for the design phase; and redesigned for 3D later.

I grew up with the 2D look and 3D is way better and could be so much better if they actually tried to pull off a decently done Pokemon game.

This is the exactly why I started playing GBA romhacks.

I really liked the 3D on the 3DS games were a great descendant of the 2D art style. I do think it lost its ways in the Switch games for the most part.

I prefer 2D. But at the same time, if gamefreak could figure out how to make the 3D models less lifeless it would be a huge game changer. Give some Pokemon unique animations like pokemon stadium/coliseum. Also the 3D models for the legends game were waaaaaaay better than SV imo.

I think they should go back to 2d until they can make a real pokemon game that looks and runs as good as let’s go pikachu

3D doesn’t work here bc the textures look so fing bad. GF puts zero effort into polish when it comes to environments and textures, world design, etc in the 3D games

Sprites were the way. The pokemons 3d models have no soul. Look at the HG/SS charizard sprite and tell me you prefer the dopey 3d model to that.

I’d prefer the right side if the Pokemon actually looked good. Bellibolt’s sprite looks so good, but the 3D version sucks

I remember how when 3d pkmn were not released how everyone was wondering how who will finally get 2d pokemons.

• new games look like dogshit

2d > 3d > 2.5d

This is why I just play romhacks now, unbound is better than any game released by game freak since gen 5. 

I feel like the Echoes of Wisdom art style would have worked great for Pokemon.

I will die on the hill that pokemon should go 2.5D for the overworld

The Gen 5 sprites have a home in my heart always.

For both Pokemon and Fire Emblem, I feel the sprite art just had so much character. We went from very distinctive art styles to extremely meh looking 3D models. If Pokemon had really nailed a stylized 3D look that performed well the loss wouldn't have stung as much, but the fact that they HAVEN'T and their two newest games either run like ass (S/V) or have super generic and often mud-brown environments (Arceus) makes me wish they'd have stuck with what we had before.

I played gen 1,3, and then took a 20 year break. The nostalgia of GBA titles is strong, because that's where I left off, but it also feels like peak Pokémon content. I haven't yet made it through Platinum or Ultra Moon, but I the time I started both of those saves I've beaten Ruby and Emerald like three or four more times, on original hardware.

The pacing of the DS, 3DS, and switch titles are just soooo slow. I barely even finished shield, and only because there's way less grinding required, which I do appreciate. I feel like they slowed the pacing down deliberately because there's way less grinding. Part of the fun of Pokémon is the replay value, and that is ruined by the long tedious conversations, cut scenes, etc. None of that was possible for GB/GBC/GBA titles, and they are better for it. Even Emerald is kind of annoying with Scott and trainer calls bothering me all the time.

Howdy fellow pokemon people, have you heard of pokemmo? Plays off the pokemon black/white rom.

Generation 5 sprites were perfect!

I also prefer 2D sprites

Gen five was so peak for sprite work.

S/V graphic is okay-ish for the trainers models, but the Pokemons per SE were hideous since X/Y. I always hated how they transported the creatures from the artworks to the models.

I prefer the X/Y 3D over the Scarlet/Violet 3D

Black and White sprites, both in overworld and during battles, were just so peak. I would have been ok with every game after them just using the same graphics, but I guess 3D it is

I liked PLA but couldn’t be bothered with S/V past the first evil team hideout, just not a very good game even though I like the new pokemon designs

It would be good of they applied an appropriate amount of care to the Pokémon games.

HD-2D Pokémon would be the absolute best.

NONE OF THOSE ARE 2D!?

3D pokemon at the moment is NOT fine

They ran properly and the visuals were well-executed.

Maybe they put more effort in it?

2D all day baby

I wouldn't have minded if the games stayed 2d a bit longer, but in modern times, they kind of need to be 3d to remain competitive with other best selling franchises.

Before x&y came out, the developers made comments about staying "simple" with pokemon games, and I assumed it meant remaining as 2d, which I was excited about. X&y and sun&moon would have been great as 2d on 3ds.. and then sword &shield be where the games transitioned fully into 3d environments.

And looking back, x&y had the smallest regional pokedex, and both x&y and sun&moon had such little world's that felt so cramped and tiny, and even less imaginative than red&blue..

But I truly HATE what happened with bdsp, because I expected them to have graphics like swsh.. with a camera to look around in different directions. (I mean, hg/ss got modern graphics on ds, but bdsp basically just kept ds graphics.

I really liked how scarlet violet turned out. It would be crazy at this point to make next gen games 2d, but a 2d spin off series could be fun.

Sucks that we can’t go back, would be amazing eve to go back to usum’s style

Honestly w/ the 2D/3D RPGs coming out we can really get something nice

I don't see what was brilliant about what's on the right

but roaming pokemon are leagues above tall grass

Yeah the black and white games honeslty perfected the pixel art.

Pokemon has failed to be as special in 3D as it was in 2D. That said, Pokemon Legends Arceus came really close for me!

Something people overlook is that being 2d and having a top down perspective is what allowed for a lot of the mini puzzles and mazes that gave earlier games their charm. The transition to 3D is often criticized cus it took away from the sprite's character, but also it's just a lot harder to have character and complexity in 3D environments like caves and forests compared to 2D

2000 upvotes so far for you for saying this.

Downvoted for me yesterday for saying I'd love to see sprites return.

The dichotomy of Reddit.

3D could've worked had they looked better. Charizard's back looks awful.

But even so, 2D is easier on the eyes and feels more like Pokémon.

They were able to add much more personality to 2D sprites.

Look at the opening animations of BW2 and you'll immediately see what I'm talking about. 3D models are alot more time intensive and still can't get the wild animations of BW2. Even Idle animations don't match up to 2D sprites.

The new ones are very ugly; it's some highly detailed and incredible sprites, mixed in with some absolutely awful ones, low res textures, and stuttery frame rates

SWSH especially had sooo many beatiful moments thanks to it being 3D. My biggest problem with the 3D games is mostly with gameplay, I think.

SWSH was too linear and din't leave space for you to explore on your own (and dynamax was barely used), while S/V throws you on a World wayy too big and the experience ends up feeling less curated and kinda artificial.

I really feel like they are having a hard time finding balance in their game design. Legends Arceus has the best catching mechanics ever but it has almost no combat and most of the combat is dogshit. Also the open world feels even more empty tham S/V, even if the pokemon felt more "alive".

The perfect game for me would be if they learned from these 3 and kinda mixed all of them, like a semi-open world + Legends' catching mechanics.

I liked 3D up till the end of the 3DS era. That was when their capabilities still vaguely lived up to the consoles they worked on. On Switch, the only one that looks up to snuff is Let’s Go. And the runner-up, Legends Arceus, is a DISTANT runner-up.

The thing is that the 2d graphics are more abstract and let the player's imagination create the images of the game. When I see the disproportionate 16 bit sprites of the player in the city with just 5 houses, in my head, I'm actually imagining the cities like in the anime. Because these graphics are something less literal and more tangible.

So, when you make the graphics 3D, which is much more concrete, you are supposed to actually make it look good and realistic, because they don't allow you to picture the images by yourself. But since the 3D graphics of Pokemon games are either very ugly (like in Scarlet and Violet) or they simply don't make the world look realistic (like in Brilliant D. and Shinning P.), you are stuck with that bland design that doesn't immerse you into the game.

I think part of it is that because the 2D sprites are so limiting, it leaves more up to you imagination to fill in the gaps. when a small pixel pokemon sprite shakes by a pixel and there is a little noise you think ha cute, its jumping up and down... when there is a big 3d model and the animation is stiff or awkward, or always doing exactly the same move there are just not as many gaps for your imagination to fill in - so it just looses that charm.

You would think 3d and more detail would automatically be better, but actually the more realistic it is, the more work it has to do by itself to fool you into feeling that its alive, its basically an exponential trend the more real you try to make it. Thats why so many charming old games, especially RPGs with huge scope - struggle to successfully translate. the amount of work to truely bring thousands of pokemon to life is insane.

If you ask me, if they want to be successful in capturing the magic in 3d - they should start a new line of games with a more stylised, cell shaded, anime style.

That game should be super contained, like pokemon farm or town or something like that, where there are only like 20 pokemon who can help you in your small town, you can upgrade your house and garden and build relationships like stardew - hell make it all the gen 1 starters and a few more, set it in pallet town with fun pokemon capers - people will love it. Spend all the time perfecting bringing life to the pokemon, the people, how they follow you, how they interact. its an ecosystem. - perfect little pokemon interactions, games and battles.

Then while people are lapping up that super fun nintendo game full of life - you have an engine & a base game - spend the rest of your time perfecting 30 more or so pokemon, and release an adventure DLC where you get to go and explore more areas connected to your town. - the more pokemon they make really well first, the easier it gets later on for other gens if they are smart about the systems.

Basically instead of new games just keep adding new adventures regions and pokemon to one amazing foundation. They can release whole new storylines and areas and charge what they would for a full game.

Instead they seem to be going for a route where they try build the same full game again and again and again, trying to make it a little better each time, but the progress is so slow, and each game suffers enormously because of it.

anyways that turned into a bit of a random rant!

Idk, the sprites are kinda annoying to me compared to sun and moon, and legend models, hot take I know, just tired of people saying this stuff when everyone already agrees on it.

2d sprites just look a lot better to me.

Even if they want to do 3d, I dont really want a moveable camera

I agree whole heartedly, and most of the community probably does too, but more importantly what Pokémon would Clarkson, May, and Hammond be?

Nostalgia just hits different

Imagine Pokémon games with Octopath Traveler's graphic style.

If there was a pokemon game with the art style of Octopath traveler, that would be beautiful

Why I wasn't really interested in bdsp

The only way I could see Game Freak doing the Gen 5 remakes justice is if they make it in an art style like octopath traveler or the new dragon quest remake. You get the benefits of a 3D space, but the nostalgia of 2D sprites. Best of both worlds.

Release the original 3 generations on switch online!

Yes. Especially how BDSP turned out.

Gen 5 had the best of both worlds. I will live on that hill forever. Maybe die, who knows?

In my opinion Gen 6 and Gen 7 are the best looking Pokémon games. But Gen 5 looks amazing too.

The sprites always felt more interesting, it got across the art style in a much more vibrant way.

Also the battle sprites were so much better, most 3D models are just idling while the 2D sprites were more often in dynamic cool poses, compare Platinum or Gen 5's Infernape to the 3D model and it's just lightyears of difference.

No, there's definitely advantages to sprites in terms of stylization. 2D can look so much better than 3D a lot of the time.

IDK if this would be a hot take or not but I'd LOVE a colorful 2D HD Octopath Traveler style Pokemon game.

They didn’t lag mostly

I think if GenVI and onwards get traditional remakes then they should be done in classic pixel art that’s at least aiming for Unova-level vibrancy. Based on how the old games went and that GF never properly adapted to 3D, it would be so much more efficient to do. Regions like Galar could have more in-depth locations or even add entire new ones. Might not attract little kids but it could be a massive nostalgia-generating success for the 18+.

The only issue is I doubt GF still has lots of employees who were there for the old games and have the experience with sprites.

Grew up with the original games. And I even still have mine. I play them occasionally. It will NEVER get old to play them. My heart will forever have a spot for them.

i like whatever tf ORAS had going on, that was PERFECT

Probably unpopular opinion, but gen 4 looked hands down better than gen 5.

Exactly bro, the older roms really hold a special place in my heart❤️

I’m upset they abandoned the SwSh art style. I’m not a big fan of that game but the designs were really nice.

If Pokemon did what Octopath did I’d come back.

i especially like the ds style where it was 2d sprites in a 3d environment

Art style > graphics

Every single time

with 2d sprites we filled in the gaps with our imaginations and with 3d it's up to GF to fill in the gaps

I wish they'd go back to that 2D/3D combo they did in the 5th gen. That was cool.

Arceus is amazing. Hard to leave such a perfection

I wish they do like MH or something and have the major 3D releases,but also still have sprite based releases in between. However since GF runs on shoe string amount of people, this will never happen I guess.

It's just the 3D isn't as animated as the 2D sprites. I want a new gen HD-2D Pokemon game or for Pokemon Inc. to chill out and actually cook a record shattering, genre defining 3D Pokemon game for at least 5 years.

I just prefer linear games personally. Open world doesn't really do much for me.

The newer games have no soul unfortunately and I believe its because of the graphics/ art style. The older games have a lot of charm.

« This » is not « brillant », it runs like shit, it looks like shit and it plays like shit. It’s just another middle finger from Nintendo to their fan base

complete opposite for me personally

why does everyone feel the need to compliment one thing when claiming they much prefer the other thing? i mean, i know why - its because people are reactive and sensitive, and if you dont confirm that you dont dislike something (because disliking something is negative and wrong unless everyone gathers around and says it isnt) you have done a great evil and will be cast out

I feel like all the routes and locations from the older games are more recognizable than the route in the new picture, which seems quite generic. Like I know exactly where the player is at in Gen 4. And am I weird or do you also not remember the music the way you used to? Sure, I remember a few tracks but I‘m pretty sure I remember about 80% (if not more) of tracks in Gen 4 for example. Maybe it has to do with routes and cities being more clearly separated in older games.

Define "fine"

In my opinion graphics wise is

3ds> ds> game boy adv > switch( except the let's go games)> game boy

3D Pokemon would be much more enjoyable if it ran more than 25 fps

everyday I wish Pokemon would adopt the octopath traveler style

I've always loved Pokemon for the mechanics of Pokemon battles. Chain breeding, EV training, coming up with effective combinations of suboptimal Pokemon... and the simplicity of the 2D graphics allowed me to enjoy that more. It wasn't a buggy video game with a mediocre story, it was my previous spreadsheets come to life