And it still looks the way it does. I love me some Pokémon but at this point ROM hacks are a far more enjoyable, reliable, and respectful experience than the new Pokémon releases. Knowing this is a game from the largest grossing multimedia franchise of all time, we could play ignorant and act like the bare minimum is okay. Or, we can open our eyes and realize they're doing the least they can knowing the consumers are still going to buy it. Unfortunately, the market has decided on the blue pill.

On that note. Which Rom hacks can you recommend?

It has been a while since I played one but I remember really enjoying Pokémon Unbound with some caveats. Those being, they decided to change typings for the hack. So my Charizard and Ampharous were Dragon type and it messed up my team dynamic pretty bad. Other than that no complaints at all. I think that one had QoL for HMs too where you can use any HM without teaching it so long as a Pokémon in your party can use it. However, I could be confusing it with another one, again, it has been a while. There's also another where you are a member of team rocket, and its really cool. It follows the story of Red/Blue/Green with a twist of what team Rockets intentions truly are and, by the end, it will have you rooting for team rocket pretty hardcore. There are a few rocket hacks out there but I think this is the most popular one.

Physical game. Aren’t over 50% of game sales digital? I thought Xbox was like 80%ish and ps5 like 70%ish digital, with Nintendo being closest to 50% and then PC being like 99% digital.

Is it still incredibly easy and locked to 30fps?

can’t speak to the difficulty but it is 60 FPS now! …if you play it on switch 2 that is

I mean, they're games meant for kids, man. Why the fuck are you expecting a challenge? The skill ceiling of pokemon is crazy high and building a game to challenge hardcore players would be ridiculously challenging. That being said, watched a let's play, wouldn't recommend. It looks... fucking rough and the new combat gimmick makes combat feel incredibly flat. It is an interesting idea, cooldown based combat, but letting the player move around makes it feel floaty and non-impactful.

Pokemon fans love their slop.

I've enjoyed Ultraviolet. I remember seeing a clip of a fan made pokemon game that had a pretty unique art style. I think they remade it unreal 5? It looked nice, but I haven't been able to locate it for awhile so perhaps it either got taken down or was fake.

I’m old so I can say I miss the classics. Gen 3 should have been my max but stopped at X\Y and didn’t finish it. Got too nutz and carried away for me. Wish there was a deeper story/lore or more sporty for battles.

They could just let you set the difficulty

Crystal Clear and all of the Drayano hacks are great if you want close to stock with every QoL mod you could ever dream of. You can optionally patch for type changes or not if memory serves

That sounds like a lot of effort and money to spend on the biggest franchises on the planet. Pokemongos buy their slop no matter what.

Oh yeah no doubt. But the person I replied to seemed to think a game can only have one set difficulty.

Sophisticated PC gamers: "Graphics aren't that important. The surge of indie games has shown that fun gameplay is really the only important factor. If big companies really cared, they would spend more time making sure their game was enjoyable to play rather than worrying about dumb things like hair physics and background animations." Also sophisticated PC gamers: "OMG the new Pokemon game looks like CRAP! Why would anyone bother to play such an ugly game that looks like it came out 10 years ago?!"

You can resell a physical game, so you can effectively play a game for a much lower cost. I did this for Switch 1 games

You can resell a physical game, so you can effectively play a game for a much lower cost. I did this for Switch 1 games. So this might explain a bit

Can’t resell a physical game with a key code like literally every steam/ea/epic/whatever DD platform that almost all devs pigeonhole you into though. IMO physical transfer rules should apply to digital.

Probably since many indie titles with much more limited budgets and smaller teams run circles around Pokémon graphics and gameplay nowadays. Although I can't personally confirm for sure since the last title I bought was sun/moon and reviews seem to indicate not much has changed (considering all the options available to gamers).

That is how it works for Switch 2 physical copies? Damn