I'm not sure if anyone else thought this when they were first playing the first 4th gen games, but D/P/Pt really did not use the touch screen very well. It stuck out to me, at least. The game felt generally like absolutely every part of it was designed for single-screen use with the touch screen just slapped on.
The Poketch was annoying to have to use. Though a few of its functions were nice, they were done horribly with bad navigation and the monochrome was pretty ugly. Its navigation was only slightly improved with the addition of the back button in Platinum.
The in-game battle menu seemed half-done. One good thing is that it did greatly improve the bag screen for use in battles and for touch navigation.
On the bad side:
- The pokemon menu removes lots of info and looks a little sloppy in my opinion
- Extra buttons have to be pressed each time if you're trying to battle with D-pad+buttons because no option is selected by default (you have to press a button once for the selector to appear). Especially in a battle where you are mainly selecting attacks, this really can slow the battle speed down noticeably.
- Again with D-pad+buttons you have to press more to navigate to options like Bag or Pokemon because of their buttons being mapped to the corners.
The bag, pokedex, pokemon summary page, and PC all make the touch screen practically useless.
- The bag's scrolling by moving the wheel is pretty slow and is a really annoying sort of movement to keep up to scroll all the way from the top to the bottom of the main pocket.
- The pokedex attempts some silly things with the touch screen, like sliding the sun thing to change between the three times of day, using a similar (but slightly faster/bigger/better) scroll wheel as the bag, and such.
- The PC is the worst yet. The single seemingly possibly useful feature is to compare the stats of two pokemon, but that's it, and even that requires entering a special box viewing mode. All those other touch-based buttons do nothing useful at all. They can scroll through the boxes about about 1/8th the speed of any real buttons.
- The pokemon summary page and the bag simply have one button for each category. The pages tend to be easier to navigate through with the D-pad. In the former's case, that's the absolute only thing that exists on the touch screen.
The bonus features added which entirely use the touch screen aren't done so well:
- Pokeball seals. Though they might make pretty effects when you toss it into battle, it's far more annoying than it's worth to use considering that pokemon assigned them cannot enter the PC
- Pokemon Contest "dance" stage. Not to mention that it's much easier with the d-pad, it's a silly minigame that isn't very enjoyable
- Pokemon Contest "dress-up" stage. Again, it's a silly minigame that isn't very enjoyable.
- Poffin. Pokeblocks in R/S/E weren't all that great, but they at least worked and were simple. Poffin, on the other hand, have really awkward attempted detections at the speed of the circular motion you're supposed to be making. The general idea of repeatedly drawing circles on the DS screen is horrible in any game. The poffin that come out are of generally worse quality than equivalent pokeblocks. This along with the last two things really ruin what bit of fun pokemon contests used to be in R/S (I actually liked them then, unlike many of you). On an unrelated side note, a few worsened details of the attacks round also contribute.
HeartGold/SoulSilver seem to bring up the topic of improved touch screen use. The screenshots and videos released so far seem to confirm true touch screen use in Pokedex, Bag, Pokemon listing, and PC. They also confirm minigames which so far appear to be more well-done than D/P's. The Pokegear has a much better interface than the Poketch. Yet, they also confirm that the battle menu is mostly unchanged. Completely unconfirmed so far (as far as I know) are whether the Apricorn Shakes (in comparison to Poffin) and the Pokemon summary pages are improved at all.
So um, discuss. Do you disagree with anything I said here, what's your opinion on the D/P touch screen use and the HG/SS touchscreen use, etc.
Extreme waste of time. Like you said, most of the uses were either better with the D-pad, or stupid.
I have to agree that D/P/Pt's use of the touch screen sucked. A lot.
I never really use the touch screen, and I don't enter contests much anymore because of the Poffin. I hope Gold and Silver fix it if they are going to use it a lot more.
Since I hate touch screens often times, I'm glad they didn't force more use of it. I do like using it for picking attacks in battle though, but that's about the extent of my use of it.
Quote from: Friendly Hostile on August 22, 2009, 10:55:13 PM
Since I hate touch screens often times, I'm glad they didn't force more use of it. I do like using it for picking attacks in battle though, but that's about the extent of my use of it.
Same here. the poketch could be useful for counting EVs amd such, but i wish i could click a button to make it go away when i don't need to see it D:
I don't even bother taking the stylus out of my DSi while playing Platinum. If i wanna tap an attack in a battle, i just use my finger. D:
The bag's scrolling system is poor. I would prefer a scroll bar with arrows along the side of the touch screen (like in the DSi Browser) over the wheel anyday >_>