Pokémon continues to go strong, with the new expansion pass for Sword and Shield being well-received by critics and fans alike, and another one coming later in the year. The mainline games themselves are top sellers on the Nintendo Switch, and despite new competitors in the monster-capture genre, the Pokémon franchise itself seems to have little to fear.

And yet Pokémon continues to receive criticism from longtime fans. The fans most invested in the series seem to have the most complaints, chief among them being that the games no longer have any appeal, being identified as "too easy" or "too handholdy." While these complaints may stem from the fact that these are generally adults critiquing children's games, these complaints also have merit.

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Probably the most important perception to debunk going forward is the belief that there's an upper age limit to a game. Yes, there are minimum age limits, but an adult doesn't magically lose all interest in things that interested them as a kid. Aggressively limiting media to a particular age group is not only impossible but not profitable in the long run. For proof, look at Walt Disney's business model, built on the belief that adults were big kids and marketing to them just as much as to their children.

This isn't to say that the Pokémon Company is unaware of its older demographic. The continued representation of fan-favorites such as Pikachu, Mewtwo and Charizard, attests to this awareness, but this doesn't hit the mark that the older fans want. It's not the appearance of the past games fans want, it's what the older games did. Simply put, older Pokémon games were hard -- and Pokémon fans want that difficulty back.

This doesn't mean fans ant the weird glitches of the early games, such as the collection of bad coding that rendered the Psychic-type nearly untouchable in Gen I. No, we're talking winding routes so long and twisty you get lost in them, surprise ambushes by your rivals (who were legit jerks at times), two regions in one game with a major difficulty spike and brain-bending puzzles. The Pokémon Company and Game Freak continually sell the newer generation games as being for kids, but the earlier generations were made for kids too, and those kids beat them without the aid of the Internet.

Some of those older games were doozies, too. The Generation III games -- Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald -- deserve mention. For an example, look no further than the Trick House on Route 110, home to increasingly complex challenges and run by the Trick Master, or the various puzzles in the later gyms such as Mauville. These are nothing compared to the Pokémon-related puzzles, though, such as the Regi trio. To find them, you first must find their caves in out of the way corners or down twisty routes, and then you must solve their puzzles -- all of which are written in Braille. To top it off, these caves didn't appear until after you beat the Champion -- which meant you were rewarded for continuing to explore.

And then there's the Pokémon whose catch requirements almost made them legends in their own right. Take the famously difficult-to-find Feebas -- only found on one route, and only found in a few select fishing tiles that changed routinely. Then, to get Milotic, you had to get Feebas' beauty stats to the max -- which meant catching a Feebas with a nature that had it liking blue Pokéblocks. But at least this line had some clues that allowed players to find it -- nothing like Shedinja, which only shows when a player evolves a Nincada to a Ninjask while having an empty party slot. There is nothing in the game that suggests this approach, and the first players who found it either did so by accident or data mining.

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Shedinja Floating Pokémon

This sort of strange evolution can be found in later games as well -- Inkay in Gen VI, for example, which evolves when the DS is turned upside-down. There's still a sense of discovery and exploration, but it's much reduced. Gone are the winding trails that players conquered by the skin of their teeth -- routes are very straightforward, and there's minimal opportunity for exploration. Towns are reduced to fronts, teams are healed at every turn and moves have their effectiveness right on-screen. Not to mention the constant insistence on following the story, most egregious in Gen VII with the Rotom Dex. Player agency is reduced in later games, with the focus drifting from the player's journey to be the very best to other characters, or the story beats being handled by someone else instead of the player as in older games. There's little exploration and no chance of getting lost in the region anymore -- strange with a series that historically gave the player a handful of tutorials, a vague goal, and the tools to start before booting them out the door.

This is intentional, as the Pokémon Company has gone on record saying that they wish to appeal to the more casual consumer, and expressing fears that today's children won't have the patience for a more in-depth experience. But in both cases, the reasoning is flawed -- casual consumers are just that: casual. It is the dedicated players that stay with a series, and any marketing class will tell you it's the loyal consumers you should favor. As for the question of the in-depth versus shallow experience, Pokémon has always had the capacity for both. Players can spend a few mindless hours running around in the grass and playing with their Pokémon, or they can focus on making the best team to battle their friends or track down that one roaming Legendary. Pokémon has always been accessible to a broad audience, and narrowing that audience with a claim that they don't have the capability to handle their games is questionable.

It's also worth mentioning the depth these games can achieve. The mainline games have some pretty scary moments, such as Cyrus of Sinnoh, who planned to wipe out the world and recreate it in his emotionless image, or Lysandre of Kalos, who basically planned to Thanos-snap the entire region. Fan games have cranked things up to eleven, but the main games are plenty capable of throwing out characters and stories that hit different as an adult.

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It's not entirely fair to compare the fan-games to the main games, as those fan-games can take their time in the polish -- Game Freak has been kept on a strict timetable by the Pokémon Company for years, and it's finally starting to show in the quality of their games. One of the main critiques levied at Sword/Shield has been that they feel "unfinished." Considering the deadlines and stress Game Freak has been kept under, it's easy to see how this happened. When compared to the success of Pokémon Go, still the best-selling mobile game currently, the Pokémon Company's desire to emulate that success makes sense. So long as their current business model is successful, they will continue to use it.

That doesn't mean that the fans have to continue to engage, and many have left for greener pastures. The roaring success of games such as Temtem and the upcoming Kindred Fates indicates that at least some of those fans have found new games to scratch that old itch. Fans want the challenges older Pokémon games provided, and if the new Pokémon games won't give them that, they're more than willing to go to someone who will.

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