Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Pokemon or Yu-gi-oh???

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I actually don't like YGO as much as you're implying, it's just that I simply view it as being better. My reasoning behind Pokémon not having a plot is simple—it's always the same thing! Every season, Ash is doing nothing but running around getting badges, with Team Rocket cooking up a new scheme to steal The Rat every episode. Their attempt to give things a "fresh start" just feels like the beginning of the animé all over again. They finally let Ash bond with a few of his Pokémon, and then they go have him leave them all with Oak or whatever he did.

Don't get me wrong, they've done a few different plot arcs over the years (almost any movie/special, some of the animé mini-arcs like the Togepi arc, Lugia arc, etc), but they're just too ruddy short. In the end, you basically get a show that's the same every week, with only slightly minor variations on the same theme year after year.

YGO doesn't have a great plot, but at least its three major ones thus far (Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, Orichalos DOOM) have different villains with different aims each time. Pegasus was trying to amass all the Items so he could bring back the love of his life, Malik was just an insane bugger, and Dartz is stealing souls so he can revive Atlantis. Not the best material around, but it's better than countless seasons of a perpetual ten-year old trying to get a sequence of badges.
 
Well... I never liked YGO, but I think I'm getting the gist of the discussion here. I watched a few episodes of the anime and it was good.

Um, since i havent watched it all, please dont judge my comparison right away...

Pokemon
Goal: to become the master trainer or to beat the league. whatever
Style of episodes: battles, catching, sorta repetitive as some say

YGO
Goal: to become the master duelist, to beat that master whoever he is...
Style of episodes: step by step rise to the desired goal though its full of battles, its not as repetitive as Pokemon
 
Marril: Actually, you'll nate that I said you hated Pokemon, not that you loved YGO. My implication is that you are taking something you at least enjoy to an extent and comparing it with something you hate means that, no matter how little you like YGO, as long as you absolutley do not like Pokemon, YGO will seem better to you.

Blaziken: This reminds me of a smilar arguement on why Mortal Kombat was better than Street Fighter I often found myself in back in highschool. Everyone said Mortal Kombat was great because they could count past two, e.g. we didn't see Street Fighter three for a loooooong time. However, as I pointed out (and many people have come to agree) that While Mortal Kombat 2 was a significant improvement over the original Mortal Kombat, the series did not significantly improve until Mortal Komba: Deadly Alliance (Mortal Kombat V, which was preceeded by multiple versions of III and IV). This was the exact reason we keep seeing Street Fighter games that aren't straight numerical sequals: there wasn't enough new material to satisfy Capcom, and they didn't want one of flagship franchises to be accused of stagnation a la the classic MegaMan series: while IV through VIII are different in many respects, they tend to blur... and thats spanning the original NES, SNES, and PSOne platforms! Now I enjoy all those series, but I learned that if its not really changed, don't claim its a true sequel: it's just the new "model". When Street Fighter III finally came out, it blew my mind: instead of adding on to the pile of old characters, we got new characters. Yes, many fed on past themes, but others at the least interesting variants or hybridizations. The game was fun and had a lot of game mechanic changes that really set it apart as different from past games.Now there are multiple versions of Street Fighter III: some charcters that were eliminated have returned, but Capcom realized that having too many old characters tended to just create a lot of baggage, and that such "giant" casts were better reserved for Street Fighter spin offs (the Alpha series) and "test subjects" (Capcom used games like Dark Stalkers to test possible new game mechanics for Street Fighter). And of course, every now and then we get some sweet hybrid games (how could Capcom not get the Marvel Liscense? I wanted to see Marvel Vs Capcom 3!).

The long winded point? Yu-Gi-Oh changes, but in fairly superficial ways. Yes, ther eis a new villain. Funny thing: they just can't stop "stealing souls". First Pegasus in Duelist Kingdom, then Marik in Battle City and now Dartz in the Doma story arc. We have new "villains", but for the most part they vaiants of each other. I am not thrilled with the stagnation of Pokemon, but at least they stopped trying to make superficial changes-it would have been lame for Butch and Cassedy or Team Aqua/Magma to have just been "palette swaps" of Team Rocket.

Now, this time, I haven't really listed ways that Pokemon is better than YGO. More like I pointed out the areas they both messed up in different ways.
 
Saying that YGO's constant "villain stealing souls" plot device is a bad thing about the series is like saying Pokémon's "gotta catch 'em all" plot device is a bad thing about the series.

Just sayin'.
 
Marril said:
Saying that YGO's constant "villain stealing souls" plot device is a bad thing about the series is like saying Pokémon's "gotta catch 'em all" plot device is a bad thing about the series.

Just sayin'.
Click to expand...

As was I. I thought I made that obvious. =/ Though to be fair, shouldn't we be comparing "Gotta Catch'em All!" to "Let's Duel [over everything and anything]" and the "soul stealing schtick" to the "rescue Pokemon from Team Rocket" repeats. All four of those things are tired and worn out. Pokemon, by its nature, can't really shake the "Gotta Catch'em All!" gimmick, but YGO wasn't always about the TCG. Even if you ignore things like Dungeon Dice Monsters (seems like everyone else did), YGO's earlier stories focused on games in general. So it is very possible for Yu-Gi-Oh to focus on something else, but it is unlikely for either of them.
 
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It seems that this discussion is going from "which show is better" to "which show stinks less." I got sick of both the second they started getting repetitive. Just watch something less repetitive.
 
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