Maybe you’ve just outgrown what this franchise is.

Often, I’ll see a sentiment on social media that I don’t fully understand. It’s from fans of Pokémon who want the games to grow with them, something I do understand, but I don’t get the way they want it to grow – they want an “adult” Pokémon game. Over the years, that sentiment has grown and grown into something resembling resentment among people who used to be massive Pokémon fans in their youth but grew out of it. The thing is, these people often have specific requirements for this “adult” Pokémon game, and they would often turn a Pokémon game into something that just isn’t… Pokémon anymore.

So what do they want? Well, it’s usually a checklist of the following:

• Deeper characters
• A darker and more serious story
• Harder battles

Let’s break these down by one, starting with the request for “harder battles.” The reason why Pokémon games seem extremely easy to adults is that they are – they’re designed for children primarily, or for adults who haven’t yet lost their whimsy (so not many of us, really). They’re not designed to cause friction or rub against you; they’re designed to give you a sense of overwhelming satisfaction. That’s not to say certain Pokémon battles don’t have difficulty spikes – Cynthia in Pokémon Platinum is a famous example – but they’re not designed for that. The Pokémon   Company will never make a game on a difficulty level in which a child would be unable to beat it. The fan community knows this, which is why there’s a series of ROM hacks designed explicitly to be full of friction – Pokémon Emerald Kaizo, Pokémon Run and Bun, Pokémon Radical Red, and Pokémon Null. So, people who want a harder Pokémon experience already have options outside official games, where they’ll get their real challenge.

Deeper characters are actually only really a problem if you haven’t been paying attention to the mainline games. There’s a lot in these games that is paper-thin – what exactly IS Team Rocket’s plan in Johto, anyway? – but there’s gold in some of these hills. Pokémon   Legends: Arceus has Volo, one of my favourite villains in a Nintendo game, due to the nature of his turn and how it’s both extremely obvious and extremely well hidden. Pokémon Legends Z-A has characters that actually feel real in a way a lot of other games in the series don’t, characters who make jokes and who act like normal people in incredibly rough situations. People like to point to Pokémon   Black as an example of good characters in this franchise because characters like N have moral complexities (which, to be fair, is more than a lot of characters in this franchise), and while it’s decent, there’s a lot better, and all it takes is a little digging to find. 

The ‘darker and more serious story’ is the real sticking point here for a lot of people, and it’s something that irritates me to no end because I know what these people really mean. They want Pokémon games where people die. That’s what they mean. They want these games to be like other JRPGs where life and death are actual stakes, and they never think about the implications of this. They want Pokémon games that deal with topics that they simply aren’t prepared to deal with. Unlike a lot of these people, I have seen the end result of this in RPGMaker fan games – Pokémon Insurgence and Pokémon Reborn are both fan creations with incredible gameplay mechanics and stories that feel like they were written by an emo teenager. They use death not as a storytelling device but as a shock factor; they use serious topics like cults in a way that just does not feel conducive to a world that also contains Pikachu. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, then that’s great! Go play them; the gameplay stuff is honestly worth putting up with the story.  I just do not trust this franchise to deal with death in a more upfront way than Lavender Tower in Kanto – there’s absolutely no proof that they can actually do it justice, and I do not want them to do it in an official capacity. 

The fact of the matter is that the level of storytelling present in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet is a nice in-between. It’s dealing with serious subjects like Arvo losing his parents and staring down the possibility of losing his Pokémon, while it’s still fun in the evil team story. I think if the series keeps this level of balance, then it’s got a good future. 

So what, exactly, is the solution here for those fans who want more? I think there are two options. The first is to move on – there’s no shame in admitting that a franchise isn’t for you anymore and that you’ve outgrown it as a player. Other series out there do similar things – Digimon, Persona, Shin Megami Tensei. There are also several indie alternatives, such as TemTem and Cassette Beasts. But it’s not worth continuing with a series that you know will make you feel miserable. The second option is to explore the massive fan community. 

In this very column, we’ve already discussed Pokémon Run and Bun, but there are so many other ones. If you want something with a more serious story that still feels like a Pokémon game, you have Pokémon Unbound. Dozens of enhancement hacks promise to make the games harder. And if you want deeper characters, then you don’t even have to look into the fan scene! Pokémon Legends Z-A, while it has problems, has characters that stick with you long after the credits roll. There are options here, beyond praying for a solution that The Pokémon Company is never going to give you.