This is a long ass article so read if you're just bored. Someone with magical Nintendo influence should make this happen.
http://4am.nerdcubed.co.uk/?p=3601. It’s time to go 3D and let the world breath.
Ok, I’ve always preferred pixel and art based games but Pokémon needs to be a 3D open world now. Imagine the thrill of climbing the highest mountains and crawling through the lowest caves to find the locations of all the Pokémon in the game. Make searching a HUGE part of the game. No more traipsing around in long grass, this time the Pokémon will be dynamic. Imagine walking over a hill to see a dynamically created heard of Ponyta galloping around, being underground when a colossal Oyix bursts from the ground or seeing a legendary bird tearing through the clouds. All the Pokémon should be the size the game says they are and appear in the right habitats. Plus making the map bigger along with more terrain and bigger towns (Not all of which have gyms) would enhance the adventure feel and would give you options to ride/fly your Pokémon around the place.
No more linear paths. The whole world is open from the get go and the gym badges should be collectable in any order. Of course, you’ll suck at first but after 3 in-game days (Each day is 24 minutes so 1 in game minute = 1 real second) you can try again so nothing is lost. I’d love the Pokédex to get more functionality. Make it sortof a tablet PC with full Pokémon information PLUS an in-game message and news system that let’s you know if there are any deals, special events or rare Pokémon sightings around the world. Give all the trainers personalities too. Hell, the ability to drag a few of them around on your adventures might be fun!
2. Time for a better battle system.
Seriously, throw out turn based battles, random encounters and trainers who stand around. Make the people wander around and challenge you (You can decline if you want). Plus you can always challenge them! Also, make the Pokémon you see the ones you can get. None of this random encounter stuff. No more running backwards and forwards in grass or water. This time you have to track them (hell, we have all their footprints!), hunt them and catch them. You know… unless they are aggressive.
For the battle system, ditch turn based and let’s make them flow. You get 4 attacks that you can say at any time and your Pokémon will do it. The speed and power of which depends on how well you and your Pokémon know each other (More on that later). You also get separate movement commands to tell your Pokémon to move/dodge in a certain direction. When you hit a button your character shouts the command. Too many commands and your Pokémon won’t know what to do, too few the opponent will get the upper hand. Think of the new combat this opens up! Do you attack now or wait for your opponent to attack and counter? Do you try to head for a higher part of the terrain? Which is faster, your dodge or your counter tackle? I think it would be a lot more fun then just clicking your most powerful move until your opponent is dead. Also if you don’t limit the battlefield a match can go on across miles with terrain changes affecting the battle!
3. Stop playing by numbers.
Ditch leveling. “WHAT?!” I hear you cry. Well, if you want a world that feels better then leveling has to go. Sure, the more you use a Pokémon the better it gets, but let’s leave the numbers under the hood. The more you dodge or use a move the better your Pokémon gets at it. Tidying all the numbers away would give more of an attachment to each Pokémon. You’d feel them getting better at certain things and it would give them personalities. You’d never know exactly what you were going to be battling next. What is this Zubat’s weakness and can I find it before he annihilates my whole team? Plus your Pokémon would no longer feel like robots with maths attached meaning you’d actually start liking them! (Hell you’d probably even name them for once. :p) Caught a super powerful Pokémon? Great! It’s pretty much useless until it gets used to you and that would be so much fun! Make me feel close to these things! Let the first Pokémon I caught be one I take to the final battle!
Health bars get the boot too. Show the Pokémon scratched and struggling to hold it’s weight up if it’s hurt. If you knock a Pokémon out during a random encounter then you just catch it. Why would you leave it?
4. Let this be my story.
Ditch the story. I’ve never played a Pokémon game for the story and I doubt anyone has so let’s make this all about me. Let me customise my appearance as well as my name. I want to SEE my gym badges dammit! Also the ability to customise should go everywhere from your room to attaching little doohickeys to your bag. Hell, wouldn’t you love to add stickers to your favourite Pokémon’s Pokéball? So, with the story ditched what is the drive? Well, it’s THAT tower. You know. The one you can see from anywhere in the map. This is the home of the elite four. You can challenge them any time after you have all 8 gym badges… and they will kick your arse from here to space. These guys are your drive, your goal. Yeah, you can catch them all but hot-damn you want to beat these guys. Why?
Because when you do you get to open a gym in the town of your choosing.
Yeah, I want to make the player the ninth gym leader. As I said before, not every town has a gym leader so you can set up in a town that doesn’t have one. It’s fully customisable and serves as a base for your operations. From here you can recruit the best trainers to work in it with you or send them out to find rare Pokémon. The more you send out the more info you get and the more you keep the less challengers you’ll have to battle. (You’ll get a “trainer is waiting for you” messages if you are out and about.) People will recognise you more when you are a trainer too and the town you set up shop in will flourish thanks to the influx of trainers. Plus all the trainers in the game start to get stronger. You’ll have to keep training to beat the elite four again giving a constant feel of having something to do once the main quest is done.
But what is there to do before then? Well, hundreds of mini-quests. Someone will need help with X, Y or Z and it’s up to you to help them. Not much more then a common RPG but that’ll be a huge step up for Pokémon. Cleans a set of haunters out of an old house, dive to get a rare item off of the sea floor or just a good old fashioned “give this to this guy”. You can have as many on the go as you want too.
Oh and no team rocket because they are dull on toast. Un-buttered, flavourless toast.
5. Less Pokémon please.
150 was a great number. 250 was pushing it. 600 or whatever is overkill. The first 150 are great. You can tell what type they are just by looking at them and they had a great style. Nowadays you have crap like a half-melted ice-cream and a Easter island statue with a giant nose. What the hell are these? Make them look like they’d actually exist! Plus they now have ones that created the universe and can bend space-time… yeah. Stop that. I don’t mind if you use the first 150 or make a new lot of 150 but please keep them simple, memorable and NO MORE THEN 150. Anything else is unnecessarily padding the game. Sure, make 50 of them common, 50 of them semi-rare and the last 50 of them rare to near-impossible. I want them to be rare enough to give trading a point and that you ditch everything if a legendary shows up.
6. Pokémon, Man’s best friend.
I’ve said before that I want a connection with the Pokémon so you don’t just switch out them for a higher level one. How do we go about this? Well, as well as the dynamic leveling I want options to play with them like they are pets. Just some basic interactions like petting and feeding them. Not a full on pet simulator but a little bit extra to add attachment. Plus I want the option to let one Pokémon out at a time to run around with you. Upside is the Pokémon likes you and is more likely to follow your commands and evolve (plus if they are big enough you can ride/fly with them), downside is if you’ve been running for a while they’ll start to get negative effects like fatigue that can hinder them in battle. Walking the line between friendship and a good fighting Pokémon will be something you’ll learn as you play.
7. Online… ish.
OK, I don’t want online play in the world. A special battle room where you can fight is fine but other players have no intrusion into your world. However, what I do want is crowd-sourced content. I want the content of actual players to be uploaded and attached to your world. Say there is a daily photo competition where trainers from around the game take photos and other people vote on them, with the winner getting special items. Well if you let that content come from the real world while saying its from the game world it adds immersion to the world that you never have to bother making! Add the exploits of other papers to magazines or to NPC chat and suddenly the world feels even more alive!
8. Got to catch them all. Why?
I want catching all 150 to be difficult (like say 200 – 300 hours of gameplay) but it needs to have a super reward. I want the 151st Pokémon to only be accessible to the people who have caught them all. Maybe a cave where you need a full Pokédex to access a special part of it. In there is Pokémon 151. Ultra powerful and un-tradeable, it is the ultimate battle test. Once you finally have it then you have done everything the game has to offer… nearly. Now you have to train the most powerful, yet most stubborn, Pokémon ever. Everything you’ve learnt will be used getting that thing to like you. It will take weeks of your time but when you finally get that thing on your side you have truly become a Pokémon Master in a way that no game has ever let you be before.