so that IGN review on pokemon

[Nazulu]

No, you guys are right. Its shame that there's absolutely no way to cut down on the number of wild pokemon you can encounter at any given time.

Cut it off. Just because someone experienced with the games knows of the functions of repel doesn't mean you can expect a newbie to know about it, keep tab of how many he has, even estimate of the few he wants to buy will be enough. And even if, the least thing this does is adding fun to this whole ordeal.

Isn't there NPCs that explain what the repel does in all of the games? And keeping tab and estimating would be part of the challenge, no?

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe any of it is perfect, but I never had trouble with it at the beginning, and same with my friends.

Frankly I reckon they should use the same system as Zelda 2s for the Pokemon encounters, where you can see the shadows shift about and you try to dodge or run into them.

 

[EternallyBored]

*snip*

*snip*

No, you guys are right. Its shame that there's absolutely no way to cut down on the number of wild pokemon you can encounter at any given time.

That would only be a solution if the encounter rate was the only bad thing about water terrain in Pokemon games. Even with crap loads of repels water terrain is just plain more aggravating to travel over than land, especially in gen3 that pushed the terrible waterfall and dive HMs to get around a lot of areas.

On top of encounter rates and HM clutter, water terrain in gen3 (and this remake) tends to be kind of samey and boring when it comes to enemy types, so you end up with a lot of areas that just feel generic compared to their land counterparts, partially because there is just a lot more pokemon variability you can put on land tiles as most pokemon aren't water types that get encountered while surfing, and it doesn't help that tentacools/cruels tend to make up a significant portion of those random encounters too, especially early on.

Even trainers are set up to be largely using water types (and a few flying types) so even the trainers start to feel less varied than their land counterparts.

Spamming repels is also aggravating in and of itself because you shouldn't have to lean on a mechanic just to make traveling over a significant portion of your map less annoying, if it is less fun to surf than to travel over land, then implementing a mechanic that makes it slightly more tolerable still doesn't really fix much if it's still much more convenient to avoid the water wherever possible.

OT: Yeah, this was annoying in the original, so it's fair to criticize it in the remake too. I don't really have an opinion on what IGN "should" have scored it because this constant "OMGWTF" whenever a popular game series gets anything below a 9 is probably why video game reviews are suffering from major score inflation and people see 8/10 as the the average score range for pretty much anything that isn't just plain bad.

 

[Kingjackl]

To be fair, Surfing is a pain in the arse. I'd rather if all HM moves became ordinary attacks and any Pokemon who could learn the move could traverse the environment without needing to learn it. As in, I don't need to teach Surf to Sharpedo (whose move slots would be better spent on physical attacks), but I can still surf with Sharpedo once I've got the respective badge.

And obviously, fill the waters with more than just Tentacool and Wingull. X and Y had a huge amount of variety in each of their land routes, and even managed to make Zubat exclusive to just one cave! Even if they're remakes, the fact that Aqua Sapphire and Omega Ruby fell back on only a handful of the same Pokemon per route is just lazy and not fun.

On an unrelated note, I like the meme that IGN is secretly a front for Team Magma because the reviewer is biased against water.

 

[Nazulu]

Isn't there NPCs that explain what the repel does in all of the games? And keeping tab and estimating would be part of the challenge, no?

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe any of it is perfect, but I never had trouble with it at the beginning, and same with my friends.

Frankly I reckon they should use the same system as Zelda 2s for the Pokemon encounters, where you can see the shadows shift about and you try to dodge or run into them.

Who talked about challenge? It is tedious busywork, nothing about this is part of any challgen. I have 999 super repel on my char at all times, because I did the math and it is the most cost effective, nothing about this was challenge but only experience from thousands of hours in the games. And frankly, there may be an NPC that explains it. I don't know, what I know is my experience with getting younger siblings hooked into this game and what informations they gather and where I step in to give hints.

The problem the water areas is that they work like caves. And while that would be fine, if a good half of your games takes place on water and you also have lots of caves it just gets annoying and becomes criticism I personally had with both the original gen 3 and now this game. I didn't expect a redisgn of how water areas work in general because this is still gen 6, not gen 7. But heck, I am happy that some reviewers decided to remind Nintendo that their water mechanics need a bloody rework.

The challenge to organise and predict with the items. You brought up how people needed to estimate how many and all that. It's fun for some people, I think that's why they keep doing it in the games. I never said it was a good thing though.

I'm surprised you say people have trouble figuring out to use the repels. Repel only meant one thing to me, and they leave them around the map, some in the main paths to discover. You can read what the items do in your inventory too.

I agree with your second paragraph. Like I said, I prefer if they did what Zelda 2 did with the encounters. That way they could make some challenge in avoiding Pokemon.

 

[loa]

Well they could've alleviated the issue by just having you jump onto water if you approach it instead of having the ever present "There's water. Do you want to swim on the water? Yes/No" dialogue pop up every single time you want to cross water, by allowing you to freaking sprint on water so you can actually cross it quickly and by implementing repels in a more comfortable way like you have a tank of repel, you purchase bottles to refill it and to not have random encounters, you just switch the repel tank on which consumes a bit each step instead of navigating the menu to use an item every X steps but by the sounds of it, they failed to do anything like that.
So if nintendo clings onto their old bullshit without even trying to implement any quality of life changes since red/blue, that criticism will always be valid.

 

[FakDendor]

So, I don't know how many people have actually played the new games yet, but let me say this in all caps to catch people's eye:

THEY HAVE DRASTICALLY REDUCED RANDOM ENCOUNTERS WHILE SURFING!

You heard me correctly. I surfed from Petalburg to Slateport and darned if I didn't have more than three random encounters. And to make matters better:

YOU CAN PICK THE WILD POKEMON YOU WANT TO SEE!

That's right. With this swanky new DexNav feature, you are actually alerted when there are A. Pokemon nearby you haven't seen; B. Pokemon with abnormally high levels; C. Pokemon with moves that could normally only be known through absurd breeding chains (extreme speed Linoone!!!); or especially D. Pokemon with naturally high IVs.

Frankly, the combination of these two elements made the ocean parts of this game much more a joy to surf than before.

 

[McMarbles]

Too much water segments was always a complaint on the original Ruby and Saphire and the surf segments were always very boring, so it's a valid complaint.

Yeah, agreed. Running into the same trash water 'mons every few steps every time I surfed was a pain in all the other Pokemon games I've played, so going through a region with that much water sounds like pulling teeth.