Nope, that's not how the games work--the benefit of not evolving your Pokemon is that they learn moves more quickly in their weaker forms. What you're probably thinking of are EVs, which are the invisible stat points your Pokemon earn after battle. These increase your Pokemon's base stats, and are the explanation as to why Pokemon you've trained are more powerful than Pokemon in the wild.

But saying pre-evolutions are stronger than their evolutions is just objectively false. Axew will never, ever be more powerful than Haxorus.

Grinding is for suckers. If the game absolutely requires it to be beatable, it better be old as fuck so that I give it a bit of a pass (like I did with Phantasy Star I a while ago), or it's not worth my time.

I was thinking of EVs, you're right.

I always thought it was cool that Nintendo developed such an intricate behind-the-scenes system for Pokemon games so that adult fans of the original games can still get a challenge out of them, while keeping the fundamental mechanics simple enough that young kids can make it through the single-player game. I mostly play the games these days to kill time while traveling so I've never done much with the whole IV/EV thing, but the concept is nifty.

Yeah, unfortunately I feel the same way about Pokemon. I really like the team-building aspect, I think a lot of the designs are cool, but every game is grindgrindgrindgrindgrind, with crap stories and incredibly dull/unchallenging combat outside of gym leaders and other bosses.

I never understood why Nintendo isn't adding optional hard modes to the games these days. I think Black 2 had one...that got unlocked for subsequent playthroughs after beating the game.

Play Megami Tensei if you want monster recruitment without the Poke demons are cooler anyway.

They aren't ready to admit their average fan is 35 years old.

I grind when I get bored. The mindlessness of it suits me if I don't feel like getting too invested.

I gave up on Pokemon after the 2nd gen. I've only ever played Blue/Red/Gold/Silver/Crystal. Haven't even played Yellow. I actually did give Ruby a try but gave up maybe after the 3rd gym? Just didn't seem interesting anymore. That being said, I don't even know how many generations there are now, 7? I guess I miss the simplicity of the early games. Pokemon carrying items, giving idiots your phone number, dual battles, breeding and Mega forms or whatever...just not for me.

Am I missing out on some of the later games? Is there a consensus best game that would be worth giving a shot? This coming from someone who hasn't completed anything past Gen 2.

Do you ever see a negative review that makes you want to buy a game even more?

I'm beginning the arduous journey of "getting around to playing all those RPG's released between 2007 and now, that I always wanted to play, but never got around to." RPGs used to be my main thing, but aside from the Souls games, I have not played many in the past decade or so. I'm currently playing through Dragon Age: Origins, but I wanna check out all the neo-infinity engine games, too.

Not only is that statement not even true in the slightest, the women in the game that do fit the description he's giving aren't in any way contrived or shoe-horned in, and they also never make a point to overtly display those qualities in a fashion resembling virtue-signalling. I am usually turned off by stuff like that but it just isn't even close to resembling reality in this case. I implore anyone to play it and see for themselves.

There was some study I was reading about a while back. Maybe a year ago? It demonstrated that if you put people in a group where one-quarter or so of the people were women, men would perceive that group as being comprised of 50% men and 50% women. Similarly, if you made the actual grouping 50/50, men would perceive the group as being overwhelmingly comprised of women.

I think in video games, you get the same thing, except exaggerated.

What game is being discussed here?

And yeah that reviewer sounds like a butthurt manbaby.

The new Obsidian game, Tyranny.

Yeah, the thing is male gamers are used to having their gender catered to, with the vast majority of the heroes and "badasses" being men, whereas female gamers are used to having to put up with the flipside of almost no heroes/badasses being women. So when things are divided up 50/50, men get grumpy and women hail it as some sort of amazing progressive breakthrough. It's the deviation from the norm that people perceive, rather than the absolute.

The sad thing is, it isn't even 50/50 in this game. And the ones who do not conform to traditional gender roles seem very naturally written and like they really belong in the world, in my opinion. I've seen some games try to force those qualities on to characters to ill effect and this is not one of those games.

Even if it's "forced", I mean, it's not like male characters are never "forced" either. Gotta love the "I don't mind a <minority/female/LGBT> character but they have to be well-written and fit naturally in the game world!" faux-concern, that magically is never applied to male characters which can be as one-dimensional and ill-fitting as it gets and no one cares.

Yes, I intentionally said "characters" without a gender description to include that fact. I don't enjoy it either way.

Besides the incorrect and/or cringey aspects of that review, that user is missing an important detail about the world of Tyranny. In this game, women are the sole inheritors of titles and lands, but men are the only ones allowed to own and captain ships. This small fact has deep implications on many aspects of the story, and is probably a significant factor in deciding the writing direction for many of the female characters that this reviewer seems to find so disconcerting. Yet another example as to why that critique doesn't hold much water for this specific game.

I personally couldn't care less about a video game character's gender or sexual orientation. Being a guy doesn't stop me from playing Samus in Smash; Chun Li, Cammy and Rose in Street Fighter; Kitana and Jade in Mortal Kombat, etc.

As much as I like Ryu, Mario, Link, Scorpion, etc. I don't really relate much to them. And them being male like me isn't really what makes them appealing to me, afaik. Ryu and Scorpion are both Japanese, which I am not, and that didn't exactly make it hard for me to like them when I first played Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat when I was a kid.

As for gay characters and "being forced" I guess it depends. i remember some people complaining about Mortal Kombat X having a gay character. But then I watched the scene where he apparently comes out... and it was so subtle that, if the media and some people didn't make a big deal out of it, I would not even have guessed.

lol Kung Jin in MKX is awesome and had the LITERALLY the most understated coming out moment in video game history. Anyone whining about that is a complete asshole.

I have not played MKX yet, I'm afraid. heard it's pretty good and quite challenging competitively speaking. I really liked MK9, so MKX is definitely a game I'll get someday, but don't own the latest Sony/MS consoles, and my PC can't handle it. Heard the netcode isn't very good, tho.

I agree that it was handled with class(ironic, considering this is Mortal Kombat we're talking about!) but you know how people ar.e I guess if it wasn't for a gay character, people would just complain about Takeda liking Jax's daughter instead.

MKXL just came out, I'd recommend getting that. It's one of the best fighting games I've played. Can't wait for the new Injustice 2 as well. Too bad your PC can't handle it because that's what I've got it for.

I'm in this boat, as well. Almost any time I can change the gender of a character or play as a female for some sort of first-person game, I usually will. I played a FemShep in Mass Effect, I'm playing as a female pilot in TitanFall 2 and played as a female in pretty much all Saints Row games.

I do play female characters in RPGs and stuff but I'm one of those losers that tries to make himself in any game he gets his hand on at least for the first time playing.

Lots of guys actually like to play as female characters in games. I wouldn't be surprised if many guys picked the female trainer in Pokémon either.

I never really saw video game characters as my virtual self except for my CAWs in wrestling games. Link from Zelda is meant to be the "link" between the player and the LoZ world, but I never really felt a connection to Link in that sense. I imagine him having a different personality from mine. Not to mention he doesn't really look that similar to me either, mainly in the hair and eye colour departments.

I'm of course talking about games where you create your own character...

I don't think I've ever created myself in X-Com 2, now that I think about it.

Yeah, it's funny how the very people that would tear you a new asshole for chiding Duke Nukem for being a one-dimensional vessel for casual sexism and lame pop culture references are typically the same ones who bitch on and on and on about BioWare putting a flamboyant gay dude as an available member of your party. "Oh, it's not because he's gay, it's because he's a token character which is bad writing and that's the only reason I signed a petition to have him removed from the game!!!! Until that time I will be playing an FPS where you shoot an endless barrage of unnamed men in turbans in the face, which is a game made by developers who care about QUALITY, not forcing their BS political agendas down our throats!"

Well the player takes the role of "the commander" in X-Com, not one of the actual troops. Unless you want to like, roleplay as someone else who is then giving orders to your actual self?

Yeah, right. But I don't think I named the commander after myself either. I think I might have named him after a Legend of the galactic Heroes character. Most likely Yang Wen-li. It's been about 3 years since I last played that game. It was fun for a while but then I got bored of it.

As for my troops... I don't even remember naming them. Maybe I let them keep their randomly generated names?

You don't get to name "the commander," you're just called "the commander." You can name the troops, but yeah they all get random names by default.

I'm gonna try Tyranny over Thanksgiving break, I think. Pretty excited.

After reading more about it, I'm going to pass. 40 hours of repetitive gameplay and a non-ending stopped appealing to me a long time ago.

Your loss then, tbh. If you enjoy that style of game in even the slightest it is entirely worth playing.

I'm a little late because I've been super busy and couldn't post for a while, but I'm with rexxz when it comes to grinding in RPGs. These games are supposed to be designed so you don't really have to do that. Like Morri, I give older games a little bit of slack but not a whole lot, it's still annoying if it's unwinnable without it. You grind to gain an advantage or to make things a little easier. If it's required for one reason or another (can't go to this area unless you're x level, need to collect x amount of y before you can progress, etc), then it's poorly designed padding. If I just want to plow through something without dicking around, it should be challenging but doable, not ridiculously stacked against me.

This is why the Suikoden games are so beautiful. That shit is practically grind-proof.

Ah, Suikoden. One of these days I'll be able to afford the second one.

If you have a PS3, a PSP, or a Vita... I have good news!

Currently $2 for PS+ members ($3 for regular members) too!

Sadly the only systems I own are a PS1 and the SNES lol

Still salty I spent $121 on a disc six months before it showed up on PSN for like 7% of the price.

Good news is that I checked ebay a few months ago and they're still selling for about that much so it's not a completely worthless investment.

So it took almost two years but I finally screwed up the courage to finish GTA V.

How in the fuck could anyone give this a 10/10. The biggest problem I had with it was the writing, which was just a complete disaster all the way across the board, but honestly, the combat wasn't very good either. For some reason, Rockstar insists on having "realistic" physics, so character movement feels sluggish and awkward even though it's gorgeously animated. And outside of the heists, most of the other main and side missions and activities were either impossibly boring (hooray, we get to drive from one side of the map to the other while characters spout inane dialog for the 100,000th time or direct a fucking construction crane to move giant shafts of steel) or so rigidly scripted you would instantly fail them if you weren't reading the level designer's mind to the neuron.

But yeah, the reason it all fell the fuck apart is because the script is the stuff nightmares are made of. Dan Houser and his team write on a fifth grade level, meaning whatever isn't obnoxious edgelord "satire" (hurr-durr, the scumbag middle eastern car dealer plays the race card to deflect accurate accusations of him being a scumbag, so amazing) is just completely boring filler writing that uses swear words not to embellish but as the sole way to keep the player awake. There is exactly one good line of dialog in the a game with a reported 160,000 lines of dialog, and you'll hear it in the first 5 minutes. Let that sink in a moment.

Thankfully, the driving mechanics, soundtrack (by Tangerine Dream and pretty good radio stations, as well as a custom radio station) and the graphics/PC optimization are spot-on, so I do not regret playing it, but I strongly doubt I will ever return. Pretty much every other GTA clone on the market except the True Crime series is superior to GTA IV/V.