Title: Is Pona ike?
Fandom: Pokemon
Content notes: N/A
Author notes: I’m in the mood again to try and learn Toki Pona again. Pona means good or simple (as well as to fix and to repair), and ike means bad or complex.
Summary: An exploration of the pokemon game series in its current state in regards to how cohesive its features are.

Toki pona is a constructed language, or a conlang, that only has about 120 words (not counting unofficial words such as kijetesantakalu). The entire concept of the conlang is that simple is good, so much so that the word for both of those concepts are the same: “pona”; and the name of the language can be literally translated as “the language of good” or “the language that is simple.” On the flip side, the word “ike” in toki pona can both be translated as bad or complex.
But is being ike(complex) always ike(bad)? With modern pokemon games, there seems to be a problem of adding more features but not connecting them cohesively together, and sometimes even hindering the game more than helping it.
With the currently unreleased games, scarlet and violet, a main selling point of the games is the amount of freedom given to the player. “My world my way” was the catchphrase of one of the more recent trailers, but some ways that the game is hinted to be structured may hinder this idea of player freedom.
Mainly, gyms might not have level scaling. While there was some level scaling in sword/shield it left a lot to be desired, making many fans doubt how the new games will handle being able to challenge any gym at any time. With gamefreaks focus on drawing in more casual or new fans, what with games like lets go eevee and lets go pikachu being aimed at people that only have played the mobile game, it would make sense for the gyms to have level scaling so newer players would be able to navigate through the gyms in a way that makes it a constant challenge and thus constantly engaging. However, it seems that there won’t be level scaling at all for any of the gyms. Not only does this go against the idea of player freedom, since if a player wants to have gyms be progressively harder and not a mix of overleveled/underleveled, it also means that players that complete one or more of the other stories before doing the gym challenge will most likely have vastly overleveled pokemon when challenging the majority of the gyms.
The lack of level scaling goes against one of the main ideas explored in the game, since being able to go wherever is being pushed while the reality of that might not be reflected in the game’s structure. This feels like it came about because the games are trying to include an open world without thinking about how that will affect the rest of the gameplay.
Adding to this, the new gimmick of the game, terastallizing, seems to have no connection to the story at all. With XY, mega evolution was integrated into the story of the game, so it felt somewhat natural for it to appear. Z-Moves were integrated into how the trials worked. Terastallizing seems like an odd gimmick for a game already coated in future/past theming to have, it seems more like it’s there because it looks pretty and it adds onto the realistic texturing that the new game is pushing.
I think Terastallizing looks very pretty, but a way to transform pokemon into future/past forms would have also been interesting and would work with the pre-existing themes much better while still keeping the “changing up the types” idea that terastallizing has.
The visual feeling of the game is also very different from past pokemon games. The 3D models of the characters seem to not carry over any of the distinctive pokemon art style that’s in their 2d illustrations. There’s added textures and shading, almost as overcompensation for the complaints about Sword/Shields visuals, but the look of the human characters and setting doesn’t have any strong distinctive style to it.
Speaking of style, XY introduced customizing the player character with clothes, which was carried over to S/M and SwSh. Pokemon, at its core, is about having a unique journey because there are so many pokemon to choose from, each player’s team can be totally distinctive to them. Being able to visually distinguish the player character from any other player worked well with that core idea, as well as making sense for the french/fashion theming that XY has. Scarlet/Violet has more customization in the characters face, but there doesn’t seem to be any way to change the outfits of the characters. This makes even less sense since this is a proper multiplayer game.
This was probably done for the same reason SwSh felt inconsistent, a lack of time to flesh out every feature evenly.
Some parts of SwSh felt well polished, such as the campsite, while other features, usually ones that are a core part of the formula, like the story, felt more clunky. Gamefreak is a company that pushes for a tight schedule for their games, making it hard for the developers to have time to flesh out every feature. But the games must have new features since that is their main selling point and one of the main things that make each pokemon game distinctive from each other since the games tend to use the same formula.
This leads to the newer games having no distinctive direction. Which drives it to have complexity without reason because new gimmicks and features make trailers for the game look good. This all culminates in the games having a lack of solid identity, since it is trying to capitalize on the trends of other triple A games without having the time to have a unique twist on it. It’s not inherently ike (bad) for a game to be ike (complex), but it does more harm than good if there's no good reason for the complexity and it can’t be strung together cohesively due to time constraints.
I don’t think Scarlet/Violet will be a bad game, mind you, but I do worry about how memorable and enjoyable it will be, as well as what the future of pokemon games will look like if new features are continually added and scaped without any clear direction.
Of course, this is all mostly speculation at this point, so only time will tell how these things work out.