Regional forms

Regionals yay or nay?

  • Yay regionals!

    Votes: 11 68.8%

  • Nay regionals!

    Votes: 3 18.8%

  • I couldn't care less either way

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • Total voters
    16
Squirtkipfan01

Squirtkipfan01

    • 481
    Posts
    2
    Years
    We have had 3 regions with exclusive forms for some pokemon. Some people like them for putting new spins on older pokemon or getting them to care about a pokemon they otherwise wouldn't think twice about. Others hate them as they see it as GameFreak being lazy and essentially going with palette swaps for pokemon. I wanna see the margin. For the record im in favor of regionals.
     
    YAY REGIONALS! All the way!

    I know a lot of people complain about regional forms being mostly reserved for Kanto and Johto Mons, but I like that. Let's face it; some of those old designs could use a bit of shaking up to bring them more in line with the more modern ones. And even so, I love seeing what kind of takes on Pokémon from any Generation the games bring.

    My favourite regional forms so far are Alolan Raichu and Hisuian Typhlosion, although I also like the Hisuian Sneasel line and the Paldean Wooper line.
     
    Likes regional Pokemon. Views it as a second chance for a weak Pokemon to matter. Cannot fix a poor stat total (except with a new evolution). Bolsters Pokemon by adding a good typing or ability, though.

    Look at Alolan Muk. Respects it far more with its amazing typing. Became more than just another Poison type.

    Came up with some interesting ideas, appearance-wise. Will not defend all of the designs as good (Alolan Persian, Galarian Darmanitan). Created Alolan Raichu and Marowak out of that, however. Also recognizes the difficulty of coming up with good, new base designs after 1000 Pokemon. Manages interesting things by changing the environment around it and altering what is already there.
     
    Very yay!!

    It introduced some of my favorite Pokémon ever, like Alolan Vulpix. :') Plus I love a lot of the other ones and think the designs of regionals as a whole are pretty cool, or very cute most of the time. Also is great to see how species change and evolve in different climates/environments. More please!
     
    I'm very glad this didn't turn out to be a few-generation gimmick, like the sad fate of Megas. Regional forms make ton of sense and allows for refreshing ideas to be explored rather than making an endless stream of new Pikachu clones... Oh wait, they'll do that anyways.
     
    Cool idea, but overused. And in some cases makes me question if it was really necessary. I'm neither pro nor anti regional forms. Some are cool ideas that I personally like and might even find more interesting than their original counterparts, some others are lazy color swaps to justify giving a different typing to an old mon.

    Seems like regional variants started as a way to compensate for the reduced amount of new Pokémon introduced, which stopped being 100+ after Gen 5, while also improving the type distribution in the Kanto Dex (Anticipating LGPE I guess). So we got some kind of "new but not new" Pokémon that allowed us to experience a new take on familiar creatures without bloating the dex with creatures that weren't original enough to justify it.

    I'm not sure what's the current purpose though. SV kept regional forms for a grand total of... two Pokémon: Wooper and Tauros. And Wooper was kinda pointless since Clodsire is no longer a regional form but a new Pokémon anyway. Could have made regular Wooper evolve into Clodsire in Paldea just as Cubone in Alola, or Rufflet in Hisui.

    Convergent species, which also exist for only two lines, now contradict the purpose of regional variants of adding a twist to an existing Pokémon so that it feels kind of like a new Pokémon but without officially being new. Now this, and Paradox Pokémon are just another take on regional forms, except these do have a separate name and Dex entry. It's like if in Gen 7 they called Alolan Sandslash "Iceslash" and called it a new Pokémon.
     
    I hate regional forms with a burning passion. They are literally existent to excuse Game Freak's laziness. Generation 9 is the biggest offender, as they took this crap to another level with Paradox Pokémon and convergent species. Yet, despite that, many fans are just going to keep cheering this on and Game Freak is only going to get lazier over time as a result. They are also uninspired with their designs. For example, all they did for Alolan Dugtrio was give it some blonde weave and for Alolan Exeggutor, they stretched its neck and made it look goofier. Regional forms also make it difficult to obtain certain evolutions in future games without transferring. For example, albeit Farfetch'd deserved an evolution for a long time, unfortunately, only Galarian Farfetch'd can evolve into Sirfetch'd. This means that if you're not playing a game that takes place in Galar, your only hope of getting Sirfetch'd is to transfer it from a previous game, which is, in my opinion, ridiculous. Why not just make all Farfetch'd evolve into Sirfetch'd to make things easier and sensible? It's the concept of regional variants that cause this inconvenience in the first place. Also, the space used for regional variants should be used for more entirely new Pokémon instead. If they want us to care more about Pokémon we wouldn't think twice about, give them better abilities, buff their stats, give them some good signature moves, and/or improve their movepools. Don't go around putting weave on a Pokémon's head and treating it as if it's a semi-different Pokémon.
     
    Corveone said:
    I'm not sure what's the current purpose though. SV kept regional forms for a grand total of... two Pokémon: Wooper and Tauros. And Wooper was kinda pointless since Clodsire is no longer a regional form but a new Pokémon anyway. Could have made regular Wooper evolve into Clodsire in Paldea just as Cubone in Alola, or Rufflet in Hisui.

    Convergent species, which also exist for only two lines, now contradict the purpose of regional variants of adding a twist to an existing Pokémon so that it feels kind of like a new Pokémon but without officially being new. Now this, and Paradox Pokémon are just another take on regional forms, except these do have a separate name and Dex entry. It's like if in Gen 7 they called Alolan Sandslash "Iceslash" and called it a new Pokémon.
    Click to expand...

    It's a bit complicated to extrapolate what was planned from what we were given in Generation 9 because it was very much rushed due to corporate influences.

    It is possible that they wanted more regional forms but planned regional forms were forced into Paradox Pokemon (and those are named and behave differently because of marketing reasons since it's an important part of the story. "Past Donphan" and "Future Delibird" just don't sound as cool as "Great Tusks" and "Iron Bundle", and a cool name is half the battle to get young boys to care about something).

    I do however find myself a bit concerned with convergent evolution. They're too few to make it their own thing, they're not great from a marketing point of view (mostly because Dugtrio and Tentacruel usually have a not great reception in the fandom, in my experience), they're overloading a term (evolution) to mean something completely different from what it means in the series, didn't even have any crabs despite the fact that there's a whole term in biology for "evolved into a crab", it's just a huge conceptual mess.

    If I had to guess, the way too early launch date affected the design team as well as the devs. It feels like convergent evolution (as well as regionals) were supposed to have more things going on, but they didn't have the time to do the whole design cycle with more stuff and due to early trailers they couldn't just back out and say Wugtrio was actually Paldean Dugtrio.
     
    Stardrop said:
    If I had to guess, the way too early launch date affected the design team as well as the devs. It feels like convergent evolution (as well as regionals) were supposed to have more things going on, but they didn't have the time to do the whole design cycle with more stuff and due to early trailers they couldn't just back out and say Wugtrio was actually Paldean Dugtrio.
    Click to expand...

    Yeah, it looks that way. I guess they'll probably "fix" it by adding more regionals and convergents in a DLC chapter to try giving this weird mess more purpose. Now that we're already past 1000 Pokémon (and the national dex isn't a thing anymore) I suppose they have no reason to hold back. If they can get away with the Wiglett and Toedscool experiments we'll probably start seeing more new dex entries that are basically old Pokémon getting a new name and number.
     
    Last edited:
    They're okay to me but, for the most part, a bit overrated. There are just two regional forms I actually even bothered to make use of in the past games: Alolan Sandslash and Galarian Slowbro.
    I do appreciate the concept but I could essentially live without, yeah.
     
    Some of my favorites are regional forms - look at my avatar and signature. Galarian Rapidash is my #1 Pokemon altogether, in fact. I love unicorns and none of the unicorns made previously in Pokemon quite did it for me. I do like the original Rapidash, but it wasn't among my favorites.

    If anything, I hate that such a good, distinct design like Galarian Rapidash is relegated to a regional variant that is going to be hard to get in games going forward. I wish it had just been its own thing. It's kinda a slap in the face to see in Gen IX them making what are blatantly variants of Diglett and Tentacool completely new Pokemon. What gives? Also, Diglett did not need anymore regional forms or anything, GF. SMH.

    A number of the regional forms have been meh. The whole "Dark" trend in Alola for Meowth and Rattata always felt very bland to me compared to the other regional variants. The Alolan Diglett line also felt very lazy. (I don't like using the word "lazy", so pardon that). Then there's Paldean Tauros. Meh. BUT overall I like their idea of doing regional variants. I just think they really need to tone it down on Gen I. >.> (I say that even though Galarian Rapidash is my favorite. Lol)
     
    I don't really like regional pokemon (with a few exceptions) all that much.
    If they limited it to like, 2 new regional pokemon per game I could live with it, but now it's just crazy.
     
    Technically four, since Hisui had forms. At first, I enjoyed the idea... Pokemon adapting to their environment and changing types? Cool. Pokemon getting completely new evolutions? That's great. But, some are meh, like Perserker.

    & The Hisui ones were good. But, honestly. Paldea only having... Two whole regional forms just makes me feel like they're likely going to disappear after these games. Now they feel like they're just... done? The fact we only got one new regional evolution in Paldea is rather disappointing. I get that the bull is Spain's national animal, but we really didn't need three different Tauros forms. One with form differences would have been fine.

    I don't know, just feel they're going to be phased out since normal evolutions have made a return now.
     
    Palamon said:
    Technically four, since Hisui had forms. At first, I enjoyed the idea... Pokemon adapting to their environment and changing types? Cool. Pokemon getting completely new evolutions? That's great. But, some are meh, like Perserker.

    & The Hisui ones were good. But, honestly. Paldea only having... Two whole regional forms just makes me feel like they're likely going to disappear after these games. Now they feel like they're just... done? The fact we only got one new regional evolution in Paldea is rather disappointing. I get that the bull is Spain's national animal, but we really didn't need three different Tauros forms. One with form differences would have been fine.

    I don't know, just feel they're going to be phased out since normal evolutions have made a return now.
    Click to expand...

    This current gen went overboard with the concept by adding convergent species and Paradox Pokémon.
     
    Sweet Serenity said:
    This current gen went overboard with the concept by adding convergent species and Paradox Pokémon.
    Click to expand...

    This is true. I think that's the sole reason for less regional variants this generation. Those are all essentially regional variants in all but name. They aren't slowing down the concept of giving us new versions of old Pokemon by any means.
     
    You must log in or register to reply here.
    Back
    Top