Back in 2016, Pokemon was introducing Gen 7 with Sun & Moon alongside the Let’s Go remasters of Red & Blue. The Alola entries — with their extended hand-holding well into the late game — are often cited as the start of the series’ more child-focused direction in narrative and difficulty. Pokemon has never been overtly mature in tone, but the 3DS and Switch-era releases feel notably more linear and generally easier than older entries.
That simplicity has come with a lack of meaningful mechanical evolution. Aside from the addition of Fairy type in 2013, the core tactical framework hasn’t seen a substantial overhaul. Rather than redesign core systems, Game Freak has doubled down on open-world experiments: the Wild Area in Sword & Shield, the open zones of Legends: Arceus, Scarlet & Violet’s fully open world, and now Lumiose City’s iteration in Z-A. The consistent takeaway has been that, graphically and technically, Pokemon increasingly trails the very competition it once dwarfed.
Even conservatively, the last two Pokemon generations generated billions in revenue for Game Freak and Nintendo, which helps explain why the companies seem reluctant to invest heavily in catching up visually. Requests for meaningful difficulty options are routinely overlooked, and an official Nuzlocke mode remains unlikely. As the main games trend easier, much of the tactical depth evaporates outside of competitive play. Meanwhile, a new wave of turn-based titles has shown how dated the old formula can feel. For most franchises that would be tolerable, but Pokemon is not most franchises — it dwarfs its nearest rivals by an enormous margin.
Over the past three years, studios like Larian and Sandfall have demonstrated there’s a substantial audience for mature, intricate, and visually compelling turn-based strategy, and that investing in those qualities pays off critically. I don’t expect Nintendo or Game Freak to pivot to a grim, punishing Pokemon overnight — such a shift would be a radical departure for a series that has deliberately steered toward accessibility and broad commercial success. Still, with Pokemon’s 30th anniversary approaching and Gen 10 on the horizon, what should be a celebratory milestone feels less exciting to me than it once did. If the series doesn’t rethink how it treats gameplay and its longtime fans, I suspect many veterans will look elsewhere for their strategic fix.
Explore the strategy renaissance yourself with our list of the best strategy games.
Source: gamesradar.com
