With Legends Z-A and gen 10 (and maybe a BW remake) on the horizon, I thought it might be fun to reflect on previous games in the series. As much fun as most of the main-line games are, they tend to struggle in the story department, from small hiccups to glaring issues. So here’s a discussion opening take on how to fix the plot/story of each game in the main series. Reply with your thoughts! Also, obviously spoilers throughout. I’ve chosen to organize the games in chronological order, even if that wouldn’t put remakes with their originals.
Pokemon Red, Green, and Blue
Pokemon Yellow
These games started it all, so it’s a bit challenging sometimes to go back and critique them through a modern lens. Some minor changes to the story in the context of later games.
- The rival is annoying. Sorry, I know everyone loves their edgy, mean rival character, but I would’ve appreciated him being marginally more collaborative during the game. We discover a pokemon theft mafia and what, you’re just going to get in my way? Disappear halfway through the game and then return as the champion? Nah.
- In the hindsight offered by later games, wrapping the legendary pokemon into the plot in some way, even tangentially, would be nice.
Pokemon Gold and Silver
Pokemon Crystal
- With the hindsight of the Celebi event in HGSS, it would have been nice to fight Giovanni in GSC as an answer for why he never rejoins team rocket during the radio tower takeover.
- Once you beat the johto gyms and the elite 4 for the first time, Kanto is open to you. But I wish there was basically any lore about going through the gyms again.
- The celebi event should’ve been hardcoded into the game, not a trigger.
- Clair sucks. I’m sorry.
Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire
Pokemon Emerald
- Emerald basically takes away the one-sidedness issues present with the RS story. I maintain that the lore behind the Regis should be better explained.
- You should be able to capture Rayquaza in emerald during the in-game plot point. Maybe going back to Sky Pillar for some critical item post game as an homage to RS.
- The battle frontier is a hell of a lot of fun. Story wise it would’ve been nice to see some of the main-game trainers again at the facilities. Drake even kind of dunks on the battle frontier if you call his phone post-game.
Pokemon Firered and Leafgreen
- The lore of the Sevii islands could be better explained. We get bits and pieces here and there but it could’ve been more fleshed out, especially clarifying why we find johto pokemon here.
- Having a more detailed subplot with Lorelai was nice but it kind of makes you want more content with other gym leaders and e4 members.
- In both these games and in Emerald, would’ve been nice if the special island tickets were built into the story. There could have been a nice plot point about a letter from professor elm with a silver/rainbow wing, or otherwise a letter from the Mossdeep space center regarding an asteroid falling.
Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
Pokemon Platinum
- Like Emerald, Platinum fixed a lot wrong with D&P. I do wish that Giratina, while not the focus of D&P, had some type of story in those games and then return as the main force in Pt.
- You should get to battle Jasmine in Sunnyshore City.
- Like Emerald, the Battle Frontier is great, but I’d love lore tie-ins with some of the characters. As an example, we don’t learn until BW that Caitlin of the battle castle is Caitlin, Unova E4 member or that she is friends with Cynthia.
Pokemon Heartgold and Soulsilver
- Very few complaints about these remakes overall apart from the same ones about GSC. The celebi event was excellent.
- Spiky eared pichu my beloved, I’m sorry we can’t move you up.
Pokemon Black and White
Pokemon Black 2 and White 2
- It would have been nice to be given more of Alder’s backstory. Between BW and BW2, we get lots of disparate details alluding to him being an interesting character, but the effort just kind of flops.
- I am begging TPC to give us the original dragon as a kyurem form in the BW remakes. The lore makes it very clear that Black and White kyurem are imperfect/incomplete split parts of what the original dragon might have looked like and that there was only 1 originally.
- What is the lore reason behind being able to find Arceus’ plates in the underwater ruins? There’s no clear connection between Johto and Unova, or Sinnoh (yet) and Unova.
Pokemon X and Y
- Geothermal power plant. That’s it. That’s the bullet point. I know you’re hiding a Volcanion in the power plant. Show it to us.
- Zygarde has basically no lore or story relevance in game. If not for Sun and Moon, we’d get basically nothing about it.
- More explicit clarification around what mega evolution is and isn’t, and why only some pokemon can do it, would’ve been nice. They tried to dance around the rationale but it doesn’t super make sense.
- You cannot convince me otherwise, Magearna is a Kalos pokemon. Its design is basically an homage to Kalos. We couldn’t have thought of a single storyline?
Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire
- These are the best remakes so far.
- The Delta episode is great. That said, I wish they had been just incrementally more explicit about the trans-dimension shifter. The lore implication is the deoxys you meet in the FRLGE timeline was shifted there from the ORAS timeline. We’re already deep in the multiversal muck just say it. I also wish there was more lore behind the two new “classes” of characters we’re given, the Sootopolitans and the Draconids. Wallce challenges you with his champion team to test your worth before allowing you access to the sky pillar. Why didn’t you just use that as your gym team bro?
- Given that Wally is a second Rival, it would be nice if he assisted you during any of the main story, or that you battled him more than twice in the main game.
- A huge postgame activity is finding Hoopa’s rings scattered throughout the Hoenn region, and not only finding legendary pokemon inside of them, but legendary pokemon taken from different timelines/locations. As an example, Lugia and Ho-Oh have their HGSS battle themes, but the beasts have their original GSC theme. Except…it’s never clarified that those are Hoopa’s rings. A second postgame story centered around Hoopa would have been nice.
Pokemon Sun and Moon
Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon
- Jellyfish mom is bad. I’m sorry. It would have been interesting for her to have been an opponent that attacks, but it was weird for it to just be her same team but with buffs.
- Not an amazing job of clarifying what the ultra beasts are despite having back to back games to do so in.
- Finding the zygarde cells was kind of weird. Seems like it definitely should’ve been left in XY. Or otherwise some plot/lore around why zygarde is in alola would have been good.
Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee
- Personally I just think you should have played as Red, Blue, or Green again rather than them being separate trainers.
Pokemon Sword and Shield
- Leon’s schtick being he gets lost is dumb.
- The entire geoterrorism plot makes…basically zero sense. Chairman rose is not a convincing character. It’s a shame because eternatus is an interesting pokemon with interesting lore, but the “I have to use it right now it cannot wait another second” plot point was dumb.
- Equally dumb is storming Rose tower. Leon is the champion and he’s having a conversation with the chair of the pokemon league. That’s not a crime. When you storm Rose tower with Hop and beat up a bunch of employees, you’re the villain, not Rose.
The Isle of Armor DLC
- Leon getting lost is still a dumb plot point.
- A little better deep dive into Mustard would have been great. Former champion, closet video game addict. Very minor plot clues given out like breadcrumbs.
The Crown Tundra DLC
- I thought the Calyrex plot was really silly. The dialogue paints Calyrex as having had purview in the past over the entire Galar region, not just the crown tundra. Why is there never a hint of him anywhere else?
- Dynamax adventures were very fun, and legendary pokemon are a great way to sell DLCs. That said I wish there was again a better lore reason for why every legendary from every game could be found in this random cave.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl
- Not fun. I wish they would have made a platinum remake instead. There could be an entire article on what’s wrong with these games. They did add the mythical events which I appreciated, and it was amusing that as “faithful” remakes we could see the surf and void glitches on switch graphics.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus
- I really wish the plot was better aligned from the beginning. Why does Arceus need us to encounter every pokemon? It would have made more sense to explicitly note trouble brewing in the
SinnohHisui region and that our help is needed for it. - Why are there such strong unova ties in this game? Why are the genies here? Yes sure we’re introducing a new one, but it’s never clear why strong unova ties are made given that a) we never see their influence in modern-day Sinnoh, and b) as BDSP is a faithful remake you can’t even bring unova pokemon in.
- What happened to hisuian form pokemon that they’re never encountered in the future after PLA (until SV). Did they all die out?
- More story please on the original Sinnoan people that Volo and Cogita are related to. Sure, PLA is a barely-veiled colonization story, but I wanted to know more about the people there before.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
- We’re just canonically unaliving professors off-screen now?
- There’s so much potential in SV but the story really flops. There was kind of a halfhearted past-future theme, but it’s not really expanded upon. What paradox pokemon are isn’t well explained, and what the machine does is also not super well explained. Just very confusing.
- The Team Star storyline was fine, but I kind of missed the “actual bad guys” theme.
The Teal Mask DLC
- Chef’s kiss the Teal Mask is great. I mean really, really good.
- I wish we didn’t lie to Kieran. It would actually have been more gut-wrenching if we were honest with him about Ogerpon from the very beginning, allowed him to get his hopes up while traveling with us, allowing him to develop some attachment to it, and then Ogerpon still chooses the player character.
- It frustrates me the way they handled the Pecharunt situation. While that technically happened in DLC2, it relates to this. We were handed a Pecharunt subtly influences Kieran to become darker and more aggressive subplot and then that didn’t pay off in DLC2. I also thought the relationship between Pecharunt and the loyal three should have been better clarified in game. The chicken dance thing was amusing but silly. A much more sinister plot device would have been that Pecharunt’s mochi do bring things under its control, but they’re not mindless zombies. Kieran’s grandma best exemplifies what everything should have been - she talks normally and acts consciously.
- The Perrin subplot was fun, but we need to talk about how Hisuian pokemon still exist. This is a holdover question from PLA that’ll probably never get addressed.
The Indigo Disk DLC
- There is no good reason that you don’t contact Arven, Nemona, and Penny to go back into Area Zero. I know they wanted to give the siblings a chance to shine, but both DLCs are about them. The other three have been there before and are less of a liability. Maybe they even show up late exclusively to held with Terapagos. But it was weird for them to not be there.
- What terapagos is, and what it can do, seems like an afterthought even though ultimately terapagos and you, the player character, cause all of the events of the main game due to time-space shenanigans
What are some other plot points that could have been better? 
