I think it's fair to say that Pokemon is in an odd place as we go into 2025. After Pokemon Scarlet and Violet were technologically dubious and conceptually shaky, after Palworld came out swinging and then brought down Nintendo's wrath, and after the most successful Pokemon game turned out to be a nostalgia-heavy adaptation of the TCG, a year without any of the mainline Pokemon games has given everybody to wonder what the series might look like on its return. And considering that the higher-power Switch 2 is clearly waiting to break free and potentially open the door to what's possible in Gen 10, the chance to revitalise the franchise on this significant anniversary is right there.
With that in mind, we here at GamesRadar+ have summoned the biggest Pokemon fans on staff to see what each of us want from the next major Pokemon game and where we think the franchise can be improved - or, if you will, how it can evolve.
Well, technically…
I wrote our Pokemon Scarlet and Violet review when that game came out, and the technical issues were… irksome, to say the least. But even when patches had come out and smoothed the experience down, it still wasn't much to write home about on a programming level, and frankly I still think there's a great deal that's being missed out on by just how much The Pokemon Company doesn't seem able to push the hardware to its limits.
Yes, I know the Switch is hardly a pioneer of cutting edge technology, but Pokemon just doesn't have to take place in flat, empty fields anymore, or towns split between perfectly square buildings and sparsely-populated plazas. Games like Tears of the Kingdom and Monster Hunter Rise created dynamic, textured, three-dimensional spaces, and part of Palworld's power was the way it made the most of the superior hardware.
So with the Switch 2 impending, there's a real opportunity here. Once you open the door for more complex, processor-intensive design, you allow for all sorts of new ideas, like an artist being allowed to paint on a spacious canvas instead of a tiny Post-It Note. Imagine Pokemon taking place in verdant, complex jungles or a genuinely bustling metropolis, or using Surf on roiling waves and turbulent seas. It doesn't have to be just a dream anymore.
Joel Franey, Guides Writer
Embrace the community
The greatest strength of the Pokemon series feeds directly into its greatest weakness. Between challenge runs, competition-level battling, shiny-hunting, and intense nuzlocke-ing, the community has never been in better shape. Over the years, players have determined ways to engage with Pokemon more deeply than ever before, and Twitch and YouTube means the fans can be right there with them.
But that makes The Pokemon Company's unwillingness to embrace those more niche passions even more frustrating. As the community stretches the boundaries of the series and competitors hold Nintendo's feet to the fire with increasing regularity, Pokemon desperately needs to encourage a more personalised experience, rather than retreading the exact same ideas for the tenth time.
Ali Jones, Senior News Editor
Pokemon: The greatest hits!
I don't think we need to see the classic catch 'em formula change drastically - we've got Pokemon Legends Arceus and its impending follow-up Pokemon Legends Z-A for that - but I would like to see the mainline series make the most of what it's done before successfully. I'm talking about a greatest hits kind of mashup. Take Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for example. While the open-world was pretty disappointing from a performance standpoint, I would still like to see co-op support continue, and for my Pokemon Dollars, I think Pokemon Sword and Shield got the right mixture of linear areas and open-zones.
And let's not forget all of the novel special powers we've seen over the years set different entries apart. I know that this is likely pushing it in the hope department given that the core series has never done this before, but I would absolutely love to see a new Pokemon game bring back and keep some of those unique features we've seen in the past going forward. From Gigantamaxing in Sword and Shield, to Z-Moves in Sun and Moon, Mega Evolutions in X and Y, and even the Teratallization from Violet and Scarlet, just imagine having an entry that brings back all of the powers. I can't see it happening, but that won't stop me wishing about it.
Heather Wald, Senior Staff Writer
Refining the open world
From Sword and Shield's Wild Area to the entire region of Paldea in Scarlet and Violet, it's been apparent for years now that Pokemon is trying to make the leap to open world with its new RPGs. While it technically did that in the most recent Switch releases… well, it wasn't exactly a flawless execution, but it's not just about the performance issues – there are other ways to refine that open world formula that'd give Pokemon the evolution it deserves.
While one of the big selling points of the Paldea games before launch was the fact that you could challenge the gyms in any order you wanted, this ended up being totally irrelevant since there was no level scaling, so there was a clear, obvious order to each of those key battles. The region itself, while on paper a diverse land with a variety of biomes, often felt barren, and didn't offer many meaningful ways to interact with the environment like with the option to grow berries or create a secret base.
Scarlet and Violet, to me, feel like they were this close to being the most significant games in the series in terms of the steps they took to expand on what's remained a rather safe formula since its inception. With a few improvements to give players true freedom in a thriving world, Pokemon has the potential to create something truly special.
Catherine Lewis, News Writer
This year may have been all quite on the Poke-front, but you can check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games or best games of 2024 to stay busy
