At some point, the world will be graced by another Pokémon game. Following Pokémon Legends: Z-A, a 10th generation is on the way. This franchise is pretty inevitable, and after Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet, the series is clearly evolving.
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Legends: Z-A will give a pretty clear indication of what direction the franchise is going and what capabilities are there because of the Switch 2. It will also be on the original Switch, but one has to imagine that the better version will be able to do different things. Until then, one can only speculate what the next mainline game will have, but here’s what it should include.
3. A Legitimate Open World
Pokémon Legends: Arceus toyed with a semi-open world, and Scarlet and Violet went full bore. The only problem was that it was a pretty disappointing open world. It was fairly bland and lifeless. It was pretty cool that you could explore all of it, but there wasn’t much to explore. A lot of it was empty, and it seemed to stretch the graphical power of the console at times.
Better graphics and technology should help that, but the development team has to be on the ball, too. Scarlet and Violet had untapped potential, but they still felt frustratingly similar to older, more restricted Pokémon titles. Make the open world full, lived-in, and colorful. There should be Pokémon everywhere they can conceivably be, not just in specific spawn points surrounded by open, empty terrain.
GameFreak’s non-Pokémon title, Beast of Reincarnation, has a better-looking world than any Pokémon game does, so there’s no excuse. Palworld did, too, for the most part. Nintendo attempted to quiet that game, but what the powers that be should be doing is working to outdo that game instead.
2. Better Shiny Boosts
Every Pokémon game needs to have a shiny boost, and it’s typically acquired whenever players complete the Pokédex. That’s fine, it’s a good incentive to try and literally catch them all. But Scarlet and Violet added boosts with different sandwiches, which were helpful until you ran out of the necessary items, and the specific shiny-boost sandwiches needed rare items, unfortunately.
It became very tedious and difficult to get the shiny boost sandwiches, which is disappointing. The post-game content was not abundant, so hunting for shiny versions of your favorite Pokémon was an easy pastime, but actually enjoying a palpable shiny boost was not. The next game should fix that by having shiny boosts in another form that’s a little less maddening to come by. People still hunt shinies on Scarlet and Violet, and that game is bordering on three years old.
It does take a little away from the achievement of finding a shiny, but it’s all totally random anyway. There’s no reason it has to be extremely random and difficult, so this should be a priority for Gen-10 Pokémon games. If a player wants to find a certain shiny, GameFreak should make it just a little easier, especially as a reward for completing something the developers want you to do.
1. Skippable Pokémon Battles
Pokémon Legends: Arceus did something that all Pokémon games from here on out should do. It gave you the option to avoid endless battling with Pokémon just to catch them. It can be awfully tedious to enter a battle, weaken a Pokémon, and then start to catch it. What Arceus did so beautifully was streamline that process. Weakening them helped, but it didn’t have to happen, and it didn’t slow the game’s pacing to a halt.
This plays well with the open world, as it keeps you out and about in the limitless range while you’re also catching a Pokémon. But for those who enjoy the battle, it can still be an option. It just doesn’t need to be a forced interaction every single time when all I want is to catch it and store it in a ball somewhere.
This does not necessarily apply to trainers, especially for the main story. Battling with other Pokémon trainers is something else entirely. It’s a crucial component of the game, and it can be a fun strategy portion. It’s not tedious like whittling down a Pokémon but not killing it so as to capture it. That can stay, just echo what Arceus did with captures.
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