Over on BlueSky, I did one of those silly engagement posts that asks what topics you could discuss at length with no preparation, and one of mine was Pokemon's Game Design Problem. To my surprise, multiple people wanted to hear more, so here's that topic in stream-of-consciousness form.
So the short version of the problem is this: Pokémon doesn't know what kind of game it wants to be anymore. It used to be a very specific type of game, and has changed gradually over time, without any concrete intent to become any other type of game instead. It just... drifted. Now it's less of a game and more of a pile of game components—some new, some legacy, and all divorced from any coherent design intent.
Okay, so what type of game was it originally? Don't say "monster-collecting game," that's a term invented later for games that couldn't legally say "Pokémon clone." Hell, collecting wasn't even a big thing originally. More like a subsystem that you'll be rewarded for dabbling in a little but mostly has no impact unless you're trying to 100% the game. Like Korok seeds.
No, originally Pokémon was a cookie-cutter JRPG. It came out at the height of the SNES RPG era, at about the same time as iconic titles like Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, and Final Fantasy VI (the one marketed as III in the US). It was almost a decade since the original Final Fantasy, and the genre had hit its stride, established its conventions, and was at the height of its popularity. It was right at the cusp of being "formulaic," and Pokémon used its formula.
To be clear: I don't just mean having levels and turn-based combat makes it an RPG. The copy-paste goes deep. Core loop of refreshing at the inn and then attrition-ing through a dungeon or between towns? Stock. Elemental rock-paper-scissors? Stock. Changing your party due to new arrivals or to match a specific challenge? Stock. A dungeon full of rocky or ghostly enemies who resist your Normal attacks? Stock. Hell, even having your party members evolve into stronger versions later in the game had already been a thing for years. It's just the RPG tropes of the era all the way down. The only real innovation was the symmetry of having your party drawn from the same roster as the monsters.
That's where Pokémon started. Any amount of examination shows that it's somewhere else now. For example, battles (aside from a handful of story checkpoints) are now entirely optional and the ground is littered with more supplies than you could ever need, which removes the entire core play paradigm of old-school RPGs: get from A to B before you run out of gas. That's just literally not a thing anymore (as of Scarlet/Violet).
Which is fine! Pokémon doesn't have to forever remain a genre of RPG that was popular in the 90s. Completely fine for it to change. But what is it trying to be instead? That's where the problem is. The makers don't seem to know. It still includes the combat and level systems that it needed when it was an old-school JRPG, but they've been removed from the structures they were built for (dungeons and routes) so they're just weird and in the way. And in place of what's been removed we have... what? A few half-baked minigames, presented by NPCs who, even in-universe, would rather be doing something else? A "world of adventure" that you can't interact with except by walking around? Lovable creatures who mostly just stand around, and your only way to interact with them is through a combat system designed in a different era for a different game?
If you don't want to be an RPG anymore, then fucking do something else. But they won't, because it's not a game series anymore, it's a multimedia franchise with a focus on merchandise. The point of a Pokémon game isn't to be a game, it's to introduce the next region and expand the roster of collectibles. As far as actual gameplay goes, the only proactive intent that can be inferred from the evolving design of the games is that apparently they think we all hate battling, so they keep creating workarounds to reduce how much of it you have to do.
An interesting point of contrast is Legends Arceus. Whatever its overall strengths and weaknesses, it does have intent. Since combat was going to be de-emphasized, they streamlined it down into a dynamic subsystem that's kinda fun each time instead of being an attrition mechanism that's designed to function across a long string of battles. Since prowling in the wild was the focus, they made it matter: you can catch directly in the wild, there are resources to harvest in the wild, the majority of your research tasks are in the wild, and the pokémon can interact with you in the wild. Though it has plenty of flaws, PLA at least is a game that has chosen something to be about, and at least tries to focus on actually being about that.
But the main series? It's just roster expansions with some legacy mechanics stapled on, seemingly designed by people who are certain you don't still want the old Pokémon experience but have no idea what you'd rather be doing instead.
