Why Do I Dislike Mega Evolutions?

Really, Lucario... Why... so... serious?

So, I opened Poké-Month because of the sixth Generation of Pokémon. Don't get me wrong, I'm hyped. In fact, I've been actively waiting for leaks that I could look at, and judge on whether or not this Generation was gonna be any good. For the moment, a lot of those discoveries were very interesting.

However, one thing I liked less was the arrival of Mega Evolutions. For a while I didn't know what exactly to say about this. However, I think I figured it out.

It also brought more popularity to Pokémon that needed it.

First of all, let's see what aspects I actually like about the Mega Evolutions. To gain access to a Mega Evolution, you need a Pokémon on its final stage of evolution, as well as a special stone that bears that final stage's name. As a result, you can often find a Mega Stone before actually finding the Pokémon and adding it to your collection, just as you can find a final stage Pokémon yet be unable to use its Mega Evolution until much, much later in the game due to the Mega Stone being available much later. What else is goos about the Mega Evolutions? Well, the Mega Pokémon's designs are pretty freaking awesome in many cases. Have you seen Mewtwo's two Mega forms? The two look cool. Heck, some Mega forms were leaked, and most of them are a pleasant surprise. I've rarely been disappointed by a Mega Evolution so far. Last but not least, Pokémon changing type during Mega Evolutions is also a great idea; Charizard can finally become a Dragon-type! Mewtwo can become half-Fairy!

However... My main problem with the Mega Evolutions was that I thought they pushed away the collecting aspect of Pokémon. There's always two sides to Pokémon: Battling and collecting. Of course, battling is the more important one of the two, seeing as you can't go ahead in the game without a little battling, might it be against wild Pokémon or against Trainers. However, I would have been heavily disappointed if the team at Game Freak had decided to concentrate on the Mega Evolutions (Which are NOT new Pokémon; they're new forms to existing Pokémon) and forget that they should have a whole new Generation of 100+ Pokémon to give the players. What would that game be without a large amount of all-new beasts to discover? There was even that rumor going around that there would be only 70 new Pokémon and the rest would be Mega Evolutions. By this point, I don't believe it anymore. However, My other point of criticism on the Mega Evolutions is probably even clearer.

So, as I said, Mega Evolutions become available only when you get a Mega Stone for a Pokémon that can get a Mega Evolution, and then you can activate that new evolution in-battle (though you're limited to 1 Mega Evolution in your team in each battle). However, you can't get those that early in the game. What I believe this will cause, is that the game will start easy enough, with the regular Pokémon formula (beat your rival, collect badges, catch Pokémon along the way), as usual. However, as you progress and find more Pokémon (and Mega Stones), your game will become either very easy or very hard; there will be no middle difficulty. If you can't keep up because your stronger enemies have Mega Pokémon, you might end up in pretty big trouble. As soon as you activate your Pokémon's Mega Evolution, you'll breeze through the opponents that have Pokémon with a lower level (seeing as in some cases, evolving to Mega increases the stats by nearly a hundred!), or simply you'll battle opponents that will seem weak because you have those monstrous beasts by your side, those Mega-evolved beasts.

At the same time, OF COURSE there's going to be opponents who'll use Mega Evolutions, though I doubt it'll begin until the second half of the game. What this means is that not only will you have access to your own Mega Evolution, but the opponents will do too! And all the bosses from that point on will have one, too! When you think about it, that means the bosses will be much harder to defeat. If you like self-imposed challenges (such as the Nuzlocke challenges in which you try to beat the game with the fewest Pokémon possible), this will be a problem. Likewise if you like to play with unevolved Pokémon so that you can evolve them in battles against Trainers.

The result is that there will be a part that seems a lot easier, and then suddenly the difficulty spike will increase dramatically, making the Story Mode (or, at the very least, many other aspects of the series) a LOT more difficult. Many Trainers on the Routes will not have any Mega Evolution to one of their creatures, so you'll team through them, and then you'll meet the Gym Trainers who will use this mechanic on their already-strong Pokémon.

Things will get very hard all of a sudden.

And it's kind of strange in comparison to the other Pokémon games, which don't usually have this problem. The Mega Evolutions might add a nice strategic aspect to all this, but in the end, will we get a game that's too easy on a side and too hard on the other once we're at the half point? We'll see... I guess...

Worst of all, it removed all possibility for Kangaskhan to have a
baby form, and even a pre-evolution! Damn!

Well, that's it for today's thought. It's just my opinion, you can disagree all you want. But I think this could potentially make the game too hard for the newcomers after a point. That's it.