The Legendaries seem to have gotten less interesting after Gen 4

DarkraiDragon

DarkraiDragon

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    I am sure that this is just me, but I feel that the Legendary Pokemon got less interesting after Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. The reason why I believe this is because Nintendo and Game Freak put out the big legendaries too soon.

    Let us look at how Gen 1 to 4 did it. Gen 1 introduced Mew, Mewtwo, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, with Mew being the ancestor to all pokemon and Mewtwo being the strongest pokemon. Gen 2 had Lugia, Ho-oh, Suicune, Entie, Raikou, and Celibi. Celibi can travel through time and Lugia is the guardian of the sea. Gen 3 has Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Regirock, Regice, Registeel, Latios, Latias, Jarachi, Manaphy, Phione, and Deoxys. Groudon can create more land while Kyogre creates more water, and Rayquaza being the guardian of the planet. Then Gen 4 came with Arceus, Palkia, Dialga, Giritina, Mesprit, Azelf, Uxie, Darkria, Cressilia, and Regigigas. Regigigas creates the golem trio, The lake trio created emotions, willpower, and wisdom, the creation trio created time, space, and antimatter, and Arceus is the very first pokemon.

    You can see that with each generation, the legendaries gain a more important role, but after introducing the ones that created everything, where do you go from there. Too my knowledge, the only ones that comes even close to gen 4 in importance is Xerneas and Yveltal, who represent life and death.

    Like I said I may be the minority here, but I think gen 5 to 7 legendaries feel lackluster after we were introduced to gen 4 lengendaries.
     
    What no.
    Mewtwo was really one of the WORST pokemon in existence.
    The other gen one legends were only okay.
    Gen two had the really nice legends, I loved most of them.
    Gen three had the worst.
    The worst pokemon in general, with some exceptions like Mightyena and Delcatty.
    Gen 4 had really interesting backgrounds to the legends, they were good but nothing special.
    Gen 5 had really awesome legends, especially virizion and reshiram.
    Gen 6 had really awesome legends, probably the best group of them.
    Su and Moon introduced my favorite along with Yveltal, Necrozma.
    But the tapus were bad.
     
    Reshiram and Zekrom represent truth and ideals respectively. That's literally said in the game and that's the main conflict in the storyline. I'm not sure how you missed this. Personally I think that the Tao trio were the most interesting legendaries in terms of what they represented, because they did not represent a natural phenomenon like the others, but instead a moral issue. They have an interesting connection to the Pokémon lore that the others don't have.

    Solgaleo and Lunala obviously represent celestial bodies and the creation thereof. I think they are one of the most amazing designs for the legendaries yet: they're so pretty! Especially Solgaleo, those manes are beautiful. I like how their physical characteristics represent their celestial body in an interesting way; colour-wise they're inaccurate but when you see them you know what they represent, and I like that a lot.

    I am actually disappointed by the lack of legendaries in Gen VI. They don't have a secondary trio that's present in all the other generations (the other three being a random group of mythicals). I don't know why they did that; the Kalos lore feels less fleshed out with just one trio.
     
    I think that's just your nostalgia talking, OP. I agree with the person who said that the oversaturation of legendaries around Gen 4/6 seems to devalue them, but I don't see how the individual designs were any worse.
     
    I agree very much with your ideas, OP. It really does seem like GF wrote itself into a corner with regards to the flavor of the legendary pokemon. However, I would like to note that due to this lore-power-creep, GF has designed legendaries to symbolize far more abstract concepts, as others have explained. This in of itself may be the silver lining post-Arceus.

    I remember when I learned about Arceus' lore...and I literally facepalmed myself. I thought "How the heck are they gonna top that in the future?" In a way, they have, so I am sometimes surprisingly amused by the newer designs. I for one really like Lunala and Solgaleo's designs, although the lore behind them doesn't quite do it for me.

    Cool_Porygon said:
    Maybe just over-saturation of legendaries rather than quality.
    Click to expand...

    Ultimately, I think this is the real issue. To me, this is why you get very poorly designed pokemon like the Tapus. I remember catching the MANY legendary pokemon in ORAS, and thinking, "Wow there are this many lame legendaries??" It really helped me put it in perspective.
     
    Ida13 said:
    What no.
    Mewtwo was really one of the WORST pokemon in existence.
    Gen three had the worst.
    The worst pokemon in general, with some exceptions like Mightyena and Delcatty.
    Gen 5 had really awesome legends, especially virizion and reshiram.
    Click to expand...

    [PokeCommunity.com] The Legendaries seem to have gotten less interesting after Gen 4



    Gen 6 had really awesome legends, probably the best group of them.
    Sun and Moon introduced my favorite along with Yveltal, Necrozma.
    But the tapus were bad.
    Click to expand...

    [PokeCommunity.com] The Legendaries seem to have gotten less interesting after Gen 4
     
    Only problem I see with legendaries is that there are too many and each gen, they introduce more. There were 5 introduced in Red/Blue, but 18 in Sun/Moon... Also, in newer games, they are pretty much handed to you without any effort. Because of that, I stopped caring about legendaries long time ago because of that.
     
    I like all legendaries. The more the merrier i say. I have nothing to complain about them.
     
    My main issue is the sheer amount of legendaries. I think the first, second, and sixth gen did the best with legendaries by offering a small amount. By doing that it made them seem special. Something happened during the third gen where they started putting a large amount of legendaries into each new generation, until the sixth gen. It reached a point where it's like, okay this is a legendary pokemon... but why? It's not a necessary pokemon for the plot of the story and many of them are events which is even more pointless in my eyes.
     
    Cool_Porygon said:
    Maybe just over-saturation of legendaries rather than quality.
    Click to expand...
    I think this is very true. Gen 3 started going overboard, and Gen 4 just became ridiculous with time and space and GOAT GOD POKEMON. I'd have preferred if we could have kept creation stories on that grand scale away from pokémon. The weather trio and emotion/willpower/wisdom was a better level to put things on.

    But overall, I really don't think legendaries became worse after Gen 4 - rather, better! The 5th gen Zekrom and Reshiram representing Ideals and Truth were a really cool yin & yang theme. Life and Death and Balance with Xerneas and Yveltal and Zygarde was interesting too, and although Solgaleo and Lunala are a bit less interesting and more like just glittery and pretty and somewhat plastic in their designs, I don't think they're necessarily bad legendaries or ideas. And I actually really like the concept of tapu fairies watching over the islands :D
     
    I think part of it is how we obtain the legendaries these days. These days, there's no lore or effort as a part of getting them--they kind of just plop into your lap. It makes it less interesting and exciting. What is this thing exactly? Why is it considered a Legendary Pokemon?.....why does this delivery man have a mythical Pokemon for me and is handing it over like it's nothing? It's like, what felt more special and shit, getting Victini in the early days of Black/White, or getting Hoopa in ORAS? Probably the former (you can replace "Victini" with any pre-Victini event 'mon, and Hoopa with any post-Victini event 'mon if you like).

    This doesn't really apply to the box legendaries, since, y'know, you have to work through most of the game to get them and they usually have some sort of regional lore, but they suffer from a different problem, which is that a legendary Pokemon being the focal point of the story has become rather stale. We've had the plot of "capture the region's legendary Pokemon to stop the big evil this time" for 5 whole generations now.
     
    DarkraiDragon said:
    I am sure that this is just me, but I feel that the Legendary Pokemon got less interesting after Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. The reason why I believe this is because Nintendo and Game Freak put out the big legendaries too soon.

    Let us look at how Gen 1 to 4 did it. Gen 1 introduced Mew, Mewtwo, Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, with Mew being the ancestor to all pokemon and Mewtwo being the strongest pokemon. Gen 2 had Lugia, Ho-oh, Suicune, Entie, Raikou, and Celibi. Celibi can travel through time and Lugia is the guardian of the sea. Gen 3 has Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Regirock, Regice, Registeel, Latios, Latias, Jarachi, Manaphy, Phione, and Deoxys. Groudon can create more land while Kyogre creates more water, and Rayquaza being the guardian of the planet. Then Gen 4 came with Arceus, Palkia, Dialga, Giritina, Mesprit, Azelf, Uxie, Darkria, Cressilia, and Regigigas. Regigigas creates the golem trio, The lake trio created emotions, willpower, and wisdom, the creation trio created time, space, and antimatter, and Arceus is the very first pokemon.

    You can see that with each generation, the legendaries gain a more important role, but after introducing the ones that created everything, where do you go from there. Too my knowledge, the only ones that comes even close to gen 4 in importance is Xerneas and Yveltal, who represent life and death.

    Like I said I may be the minority here, but I think gen 5 to 7 legendaries feel lackluster after we were introduced to gen 4 lengendaries.
    Click to expand...

    This seems far too subjective. What standards are you using?
     
    Nah said:
    *
    Click to expand...

    I think I'm going to have to agree with Nah on this one. I don't think it's necessarily the number or frequency of Legendary Pokemon that is an issue, but more that how they are distributed or acquired that makes them appear lackluster. Mythical Pokemon are just handed over to you in event distributions. When these supposedly rare and nearly impossible to find Pokemon are just handed over to you by some UPS man, it just really makes you question how mythical the Pokemon are, it's a really immersion breaker.

    In generation 4, when Game Freak decided that the Azure Flute event was too confusing and/or complicated for children to participate in, it sort of laid the groundwork from then on that Mythical Pokemon should only be given away rather than to have integral parts in the plot of the game.
    I think if Game Freak went back to Mythical Events using secret items (like how Mew was distributed in R/S/E) the Mythical Pokemon would have more lore and sense of belonging within the games, rather than just being Mythical in title and handed off.

    Another issue is the Box Legendaries, the fact that they just plaster the Box Legendary all over the place takes away most of suspense of actually finding and acquiring the Legendary Pokemon. You see the Box Legendary and you just say, well no mystery here I know exactly what I'm working towards. I actually personally would love to see box art for Pokemon games return to what was done for R/B/Y and FR/LG, just show off the starter Pokemon which you know for a fact will be in the game from the beginning and then hide the Legendary and Mythical Pokemon further in the game which provides suspense and mystery, then when you finally meet those Legendary Pokemon it's a big meaningful surprise especially when the existence of that Pokemon is hinted at and slowly revealed to you as the story goes on. Chasing after an unknown Legendary is like solving a mystery and the further you get into it without knowing what Legendary you are chasing after makes that Pokemon feel more significant and encourages players to strive onward to find out what is really going on in the storyline that revolves around that Pokemon.

    It's not the Legendary Pokemon that have gotten less interesting over the years, it's their relevance to the game and how they are distributed that has gotten less interesting.
     
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