Pokémon doesn't have a technical problem, it has a pacing problem

I'll start this article off with a confession. I'm a hypocrite. I'll tell people to avoid pre-ordering, to stop rewarding developers that give you nothing but more of the same, and happily buy a new Pokémon game when it comes along. As much as I can tell myself I'm self aware and that therefore I'm free of criticism, at heart I'm a simple pig who loves slop. I've come to terms with that, but I can still take a look at the franchise that got me into games and say that it can do better.

We all feel like that, right? Deep down, somewhere. Even if we love the games as they are, there's a feeling permeating the franchise and its fans that the old zest just isn't quite there. The gameplay is still enthralling, each gen comes with some fire designs, and yet here we are. I'm not the first person to point this out and I don't expect to be the last, but where many point out the lacking visuals and technical woes of the Switch-era Pokémon games and see the series' biggest flaws, I think that we need to look past the surface level and find the root of this problem.

Yes, better graphics and performance would be nice, but as we've seen throughout gaming history, visuals are really just a cherry on top of a very complicated cake. Pokémon spent most of its history without 3D models and started without colour, even. Seeing a Charizard with an HD glisten like one of those viral Facebook posts that show "realistic" Pokémon isn't going to make these games any better. It simply isn't. The reason fans look at technical issues and blame them for the series' woes is because they're the easiest thing to spot. Also, with a winning gameplay formula like Pokémon, you can't really critique much else.

Except for the fact that the games in the Switch era have all been chasing the wrong thing, leading to pacing issues that make you feel less like you're on a trainer's journey, and more like you're grinding through an MMO, but instead of facing raid bosses you're beating up level 1 goblins. This isn't a difficulty qualm, as I've not had trouble with a Pokémon game since my age was in single digits (ooh, get me), but even when I knew I was going to win a battle, I still felt like I was working towards a natural conclusion, and that my journey was one that had been a pleasure to go on.

I can't say the same since the series opened up in its game world. Both the Gen 8 and 9 main releases have had solid introductions, solid endings, and an absolute mess in the middle. Pokémon is about a decade too late to the open world trend, and while we all still like to pretend every game should be open world because of player freedom, about five franchises really offer a superior experience because of an open world, and Pokémon isn't one of them. The ability to rush together a team, mash through levels with ease by finding an overlevelled Pokémon or area and squeaking out victories before slamming through the main gyms. "But that's not how you're supposed to play." Okay? But it's near impossible in the open world experience not to just end up massively overpowered.

It doesn't help that the stories haven't had much weight since Black and White. Some have been enjoyable, and the rivalry in Gen 9 was particularly fun, but again because of the slow beginning, rapidly fast middle and meaningless end, it's hard to have a nail-biting conclusion to your final fights when you've been rocking prime Michael Jordan in your back pocket since Route 2. The games simply move too fast now, with the open world feeling more like padding than any random bridge construction ever did. The fact that the padding allows you to get free XP only makes the battling and training experience feel that much more weightless.

Open worlds likely aren't going anywhere, though, so how do we fix Pokémon's pacing issue? Well, removing XP share, splitting it between two Pokémon only, or making it a late-game item would work, but that would be effectively increasing difficulty, something Pokémon won't do at this point. Instead, I'd suggest putting a firmer limit on exploration. I hear the boos, and I don't care for them. A more linear structure, with different Pokémon in different areas, will add that excitement back in and give a story clearer acts. I might be alone, but I don't want to decide which order to take on the gyms in. I don't want to feel like the developers couldn't be bothered coming up with a golden path, and had us define our own making for a mostly forgettable adventure.

Fixing the pacing, bringing back the excitement of new horizons and new Pokémon to catch that you can't just go and find if you're willing to ride a free legendary for long enough, those are the things that will bring Pokémon back for me. Visuals, technical performance, they're just painting over the cracks. There are maybe four people on the planet refraining from playing Pokémon solely because it doesn't run at 120fps. People yearn for the Pokémon games they had as kids, and while that magic might never come back, Game Freak could help by showing they've still got the same passion for detail and adventure they did twenty years ago.