cashew | Pokémon Retrospective - Generations I through VII

So, I haven't really tried out Gen VIII Sword and Shield yet (since the required investment is kind of high), but having played through basically every game in the previous generation once (except X&Y, for good reason), I thought I'd look back at the unique game mechanics each generation brought to the table. Basically, this is a half musing half review kind of thing. Opinions, because we must have them!

Gen I
Red, Blue/Green, Yellow. This is where it all begins, with some funky mechanics that desperately needed to get fixed. In all later generations, there are five basic stats: attack, defense, special attack, special defense, speed. However, Gen I rolled the two special stats into a single stat, Special. On top of this, attack type (physical versus special attack) is determined by elemental type (Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, you get the idea). This offered some really weird balancing and OP Pokémon, especially Psychics, which literally have no counters. With their universally high Special & Speed stats, your fast Pokémon's attacks do little damage and your hard hitting Pokémon get taken out by Psychic Pokémon's attacks due to having low Special stat. To add insult to injury, Ghost Pokémon which are supposed to have an attack advantage all have secondary Poison typing that gives them a defensive liability against Psychics.

All this meant that Psychics were basically the pseudo legendary of their generation. Also unsurprisingly, the two Legendary Pokémon were also Psychic typed: Mew and MewTwo.

Despite the buggy balancing, I think there are some advantages to Gen I that makes it still competitive with later games. Gen I is, to date, the only generation that released a game where all three starters could be caught (Yellow). Given that this generation hadn't introduce breeding yet, it's understandable why such a game was necessary, as no one wants to trade away their starter, which is, like Legendary Pokémon, unique. It would be pretty much impossible to collect the full 151 Pokédex if not for having Yellow that made it not necessary to trade away your starter. (Sure, you could always find a friend who's willing to keep re-starting another game to grab all the starters, trade them to you, but then where is that friend going to be with their starters? Remember that Pokémon only allows one save at any time.)

And yes, I do realize that this whole gimmick is to convince people to buy more of the same game, but at least Pokémon Yellow didn't feel quite like the same kind of cash-grab as the later collect all-but-not compilation games later on. Pokémon Yellow remains the only game that allows you to get all three starters in the game, a mechanic that never made a come back. So good luck wanting to have all three starters on your team without trading.

Gen II
Gold, Silver, Crystal. Gen II brings in a bunch of mechanics changes that have stood the test of time (unlike some later games):

Breeding

Special Attack-Defense split

In-game timer

New Dark and Steel type

Non-level/trade based evolution mechanics

Specialized Pokéballs

Why are these concepts influential? Because Gen II nearly over-hauled the original mechanics and the new concepts actually stuck in future games to the point that it is often forgotten that some of these mechanics weren't there at the start.

First, battle mechanics, the split between special attack and special defense was hugely important. This split introduces a new dimension to balancing and makes it far harder to accidentally make a Pokémon OP. It's possible to specialize in a defensive style without having that style neutralized by the Special stat as was possible in Gen I. Of course, special vs physical damage split is still a long, long ways off, but it's a concept that was seeded here, to split defense and offense into special vs physical.

Then there's the introduction of a new type. Dark hard counters Psychic while able to be hard checked by Fighting, a very abundant type in the game. Finally, every type has a counter-balance and OP Pokémon (at least in non-Legendary ranks) is finally done. Sure, there are still Pokémon with ridiculously good stats, but if matched up against a typing that isn't advantageous, they'll still get taken down. Steel, meanwhile, is the ultimate tank, and is one of the few types that can resist Dragon attacks. It doesn't completely end Dragon dominance, and mostly just serves to make steel Dragons resist their original weaknesses (Ice & Dragon attacks).

Next, the breeding mechanic. No longer does the player have to trade away their hard caught/starter Pokémon just so they can get the Pokédex filled. They can now breed copies of their Pokémon and no one has to give anything up. Second, breeding introduced all sorts of new things, like egg moves, gender & gender-based attacks, skill breeding, and IV breeding. Instead of capturing tons and tons and tons of the same difficult to get Pokémon, you can now just breed for the Pokémon stats you want. In addition to breeding Pokémon, skills can be inherited from other Pokémon species, thus generating combinations of moves that could not be done in Gen I. Knowing which skills can be passed across species and where special egg moves come from is its own side game and nearly as deep as the battle mechanics. Not to mention breeding directly benefits battle, and even cursory breeding knowledge is useful for the main game mechanic.

With breeding, a whole new avenue for evolution has opened up. Now, instead of the usual leveling and trading, there's the concept of happiness based evolutions. Happiness was a mechanic that existed for two different skills (Frustration & Return), but now it's used to determine when a "baby" Pokémon grows up and evolves into the adult form (breedable). Later games use the happiness to straight up limit certain evolutions. And with new evolution pathways, this opens up a whole suite of new mechanics, such as time of day evolutions, affection-based (which is different from happiness), beauty-based and skill-based evolutions, open spot in the party, level w/ another species in the party, location level-up etc.

Speaking of time of day evolutions, the in-game timer is also one that completely changed the game. For the first, but certainly not last, time events happen at certain times of day rather than all the time, any time. This is a mechanic that will pop up again and again and again. And even when the day-night cycle isn't visually available, the day-night cycle still runs in the background. Many mechanics in later generations rely heavily on the existence of an in-game timer and events in the story only happen at a specific time.

With all this new stuff, there's obviously going to be a need to complicate things even more with New Pokéballs. This generation also introduced the idea of specialize Pokéballs that have improved catch-rate under specialized situations, such as heavy Pokémon, Pokémon of a different gender, etc. This concept got more and more complicated until Sword & Shield decided to simplify everything.

Finally, there is the one mechanic that didn't stick: walking Pokémon. Or perhaps, it's better thought of as the "unique" mechanic, that you can't get else where. Every game since gen II has something that can only be found in that specific generation, and for gen II it's the walking Pokémon. In gen II, the leader in the party gets to walk behind the trainer sprite. It's baffling this wasn't made into the default for all future games, but it's one gimmick unique to Gen II and well, for this reason, gen II is often many people's favorite.

Gen III
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald. Gen III is the last generation of what can be considered "classic" Pokémon. I'll get into the details once I hit Gen IV, but here in Gen III many new concepts were introduced, and the ones that made it down to future generations are:

Berries

Battle Tent

Double (multi) Battles

Natures

Berries is one of the most influential, as it gave a whole new dynamic to battling. Originally it was developed for the Pokémon Contest side-game, but it completely changed battling meta. With berries comes the concept of one-time use items that negated the drawbacks of certain skills (like Rest, which restores HP but causes your Pokémon to sleep and become super vulnerable, or Rage, which deals tons of damage but confuses your Pokémon). Using berries strategically was a huge meta shift. And Berry growing uses the same in-game timer established in Gen II.

The Battle Tent sets precedence for having a "special rules" battle system. Whether it's called Battle Dome, Battle Tree, Battle Train, or whatever else, it puts a spin on the battle, which is no longer allows you to over-level and win. Whether it's limited number in the party, limited/pre-set Pokémon, or some other gimmick, it's a way for the game to really up the strategic component. It's also purely optional, so for those who prefer the good ol' method of grinding levels and pwning, it's still available.

Double Battles (which gets iterated as Triple, Rotating, etc. battles later) builds on the idea that Pokémon can help each other during battle, a concept that was popular enough that there are now competitive single vs double battles. Skills now can affect allies, opponents, or everyone on the field irrespective of which side they're on. Innate abilities now have to balance these concepts with each other (such as draw attack away from allies and onto self) and swapping abilities can add a completely new dimensions to building Pokémon.

Lastly, Natures is introduced. Natures determine which, if any, stats are traded off with each other for growth. Nature also decide the flavor of the food the Pokémon likes (which is important for Pokémon contests) and thus now to build friendship faster. At a glance, this might not seem particularly huge, but being able to trade off stats, in addition to EV training, can hugely affect how a Pokémon can change its role. The added variance to Pokémon stats makes it even harder to predict what role a Pokémon will take simply by knowing its species. This trade off, plus deliberate EV training, means that the meta of the game is greatly expanded.

Meanwhile, the Pokémon contest never really caught on. Although they tried again in Gen IV, the contest system simply had no real synergy to the battle system and was too different of a game to gain any traction. Contests uses an entirely different set of stats that's built up using Pokéblocks and skills now have a beauty value associated rather than damage, and quite frankly, you have to build a whole new set of Pokémon just for contests themselves. The system is so separate, yet at the same time so shallow, that it's no surprise it didn't quite catch on.

Gen IV
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum. I consider this the first of the transition. Many of this gen's new mechanics are actually built on already existing concepts, and what new mechanics they did introduce were not nearly as influential. Furthermore, there's an emphasis on introducing quality of life changes to the game rather than long-term meta shifting. This is what can be considered a transitional generation and the growing pains shows. Only two fundamental mechanics were introduced, but they're also the only ones that last to later generations:

Decouple Physical/Special from type

Forme

Decoupling the categorization of attacks as Physical/Special from Type is the most dramatic shift. This completely changes type conceptualization. No longer can you take a Pokémon with high Special Defense and think it's enough to tank a hit from a Fire-type, even if you have type disadvantage. The level of unpredictability has basically doubled with this split alone and balancing starts to get exponentially more difficult.

Forme only started having really big implications in later generations and impacted gen IV very little. Pokémon can already have different coloration, but Forme is more than just asthetic. It literally changes the Typing of of the Pokémon along with its stats. And Forme change is temporary/revisible due to the item held. This allows extra flexibility and is the basis for basically all the new battle mechanics changes in later generations.

Not much else is remembered about Gen IV, hence why many consider it one of the worst generations. However, what people forget is that this generation started the trend of simplifying the UI and introducing quality of life mechanics to make building your Pokémon easier. Need to make your Pokémon's beauty higher faster because you want to evolve Feebas into Milotic? It's OK, Poffins no longer rely on berry quality to give high stats. You just need to spin that touch pad stylus extra fast. Need more berries but growth time takes forever? It's OK, introducing Mulch, reducing growth time for as much as 75%. Can't find that special Pokémon in this area? Here, slather some Honey and come back in 24 hours to attract some special Pokémon. Annoyed that you have to travel all the way to some secret base location just to invite people over? We'll rename it to underground and allow you to link with WiFi. Keep running out of space in your inventory because you forgot to put items into storage? It's fine, bag space is now infinite.

Basically, this is the generation of transition between new and old. Buggy, weird, and a little off-putting. But seriously, the decoupling between physical and special attacks from typing was the biggest meta-shift ever. Nothing in the later generations matched up to this.

Gen V
Black, White, Black2, White2. Generation V introduced many new quality of life improvements and balancing considerations:

Previous generation Pokémon only available after beating the game

TMs no longer consumed

In-game services gathered in a single location

Trading no longer requires Pokémon in the party

No "third" combo version

Thanks to banishing prior generations' Pokémon to only post-game content, this generation's game has a far better balanced in-game experience. The tailored experience is one that is closer to gen I (unsurprisingly), which is probably why so many people enjoyed gen V (for it's story, uh-huh).

This is also the generation where Forme starts to matter a little more. Rotom is the first non-legendary which gains forme change (and only one that is able to do it without using an item). This means just because one has a Rotom doesn't mean one can know for certain it's typing. This helps add a little more unpredictability into the whole game. Of course, the legendary of gen V is all about Forme and changing Formes to take advantage of stat changes.

Lastly, this is the generation that doesn't have a "third" version, where the previous two are combined into a comprehensive "definitive" version. Instead, it has two "sequels", which takes the original story and slightly shifts things around to offer a different experience. I'm not sold it's the better way to do a "definitive" version of the game.

Gen VI
X and Y. This is, unequivocally, the least comprehensive of generations, despite it adding an excessive amount of stuff. The only real lasting mechanic change is introducing the new Fairy type.

Fairy completely changes the Dragon-dominance meta. There is a reason that other than Gen I, almost all of the later Legendary Pokémon has a Dragon type. Fairy for the first time makes people have to question whether or not to really take their Dragon Pokémon into battle and know that one of the strongest attacks in the game, Draco Meteor, is useless against this type. This is as drastic a shift as the introduction of Dark type in gen II. But other than this new type, gen VI offers very little.

Gen VI does bring in Mega-Evolutions, but it's not really so much as a meta-shift as much as a meta-rebalance. Mega-Evolutions only apply to some older Pokémon, who were once top tier but can no longer dominate with the new mechanics. Rather than redistribute their stats or completely change their typing permanently (as many other older Pokémon did receive new secondary typing or changed types thanks to the introduction of Fairy), Mega-Evolution allows the use of old strategies while temporarily use Forme change to keep up with new strategies introduced in later generations (specifically gen IV after the physical/special decouple from Type).

The quality of life introduction in this generation is dedicated EV training without having to hunt down Pokémon. Finally, you can easily control your Pokémon's EV without having to keep track, separately, of how many of which type of Pokémon you battled. You also don't need to find good routes for so-called EV training, where you find specific places that allows you to gain a specific type of EV to raise the specific stat. All of this can now be done by just playing a mini-game with your Pokémon from the bottom screen.

I did not play this generation because the gimmick, and it is a gimmick, was kinda meh. There is a reason that this is the game generation that didn't receive a sequel.

Gen VII
Sun, Moon, Ultra Sun, Ultra Moon. AKA Hawaii!Pokémon. LOL. Continuing in the previous generation's trend of "gimmick" instead of real mechanics changes, the replacement for Mega-Evolution is Z-Move. Rather than use Forme change, Z-Move changes one skill on the Pokémon into something special. This special skill is usually an extra-buffed version of the skill (whether it's damage or utility) and serves as more of an OH NO button.

Mega-Evolutions are retained, but unavailable until after the game is beaten. Z-Move and Mega-Evolution can be combined, just not on the same Pokémon. In other words, a Mega-Evolution can't use Z-moves due to the fact that both require a special hold item and Pokémon can only hold one item at a time. Of course, Pokémon that benefit most from Z-moves tend also not to be ones that Mega-Evolve. Those that can are almost always better off using the Mega-Evolution instead.

In-game wise, Gyms have been removed. Instead, they're replaced with "Island Challenges", which are a series of bonus boss Pokémon. Instead of battling trainers, you now battle one souped up Pokémon, often in a double battle due to the SOS mechanic (calling for help). Instead of adding tons of new Pokémon, older Pokémon are given new forms (notice the lower case), which are permanent and cannot be changed. This new form is similar to Forme in that typing, appearance, and stats are all changed, but it's permanent and doesn't require a held item.

Quality of life improvements include automated EV training (no more playing stupid minigames), automated berry growing, and the most coveted HYPER TRAINING.

Hyper training allows a level 100 Pokémon to change it's IV. IVs are a thing that were not possible to change in previous generations and high quality IVs can only be obtained through extremely careful breeding. Now, you can skip all that and get so-called "perfect IV" through hyper training. It's a thing that makes competitive more fair, since people no longer have to resort to hacking their Pokémon for perfect stats anymore. And once traded backwards, the earlier games will still recognize these Pokémon as having "perfect" IV.

Over all, Island Challenge concept never really caught on, and it's no surprise the Sword and Shield reverted back to the Gym system. Still, it was a fun little deviation and I think personally, the battle against souped up Boss Pokémon has a more naturalist feel, which suits the theme of Hawaii!Pokémon. After all, what's more likely? Your pet will defend you from a mugger who will also attack with his/her pet, or your pet will defend you from a raging wild animal?

Anyway, those are my feelings regarding the Pokémon franchise prior to Sword and Shield. I might get to Sword and Shield at some point with their Dynamax system (three turns of double stats), but honestly, it just sounds like yet another gimmick and nothing substantial has changed meta-wise. Basically, the last real definitive change happened in Gen IV and it's been tweaks ever since.