Hey, You Got Your Kanto in My Kalos!

After being told to meet Tree-of-the-Moment Professor Sycamore in the next town, I made my customary game first purchase of a thousand pokeballs and exactly six potions at the nearest store.  Little did I know that I would then be given ten more pokeballs and potions free from the gang of pokemon thieves (who are supposed to be my friends) I described in the last post.  While being tricked into getting fifty potions and pokeballs is not nearly as bad as the time I was tricked into catching five Lilipups, I still take this afront personally.

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Remember how in the last game, there were ONLY new pokemon?  Well in this game, the pokemon mix is actually fairly decent.  The first pokemon I encountered (and failed to catch, damn) was a Pidgey (who evolves directly into my favorite bird pokemon (that link was a joke)) and the next two were Zigzagoon and a new pokemon called Fletchling.  I caught both of these as well as a cool rabbit pokemon called Bunnelby and found out that in this game, you actually gain experience from catching pokemon as well as defeating them--which is a fairly banal change, but it was all the change necessary to convince me to try and catch every single pokemon I encountered.  I was kind of glad to have those 70 pokeballs as I made my way to the first area of the game (can you call them "dungeons"?), Santalune Forest.

Now, as soon as I stepped-into the forest I was struck with an odd sense of deja-vu: "Have I been here before?  Couldn't be...I bet there isn't a dead end to the left...wait, there is...or an item forward and to the left...there is...and the path to the right winds up and around..."

Item to the left, twisting path, Encounters with Caterpie, Weedle, and rare cases of Pikachu?  THIS IS VIRIDIAN FOREST!!!  As I would soon find out, Santalune Forest has an identical map to the Original Viridian Forest from Red Version.  What the Hell, Nintendo!  You can't take my very first pokemon adventure and lovingly recreate it in 3D with fantastic graphics and an amazing selection of new pokemon...

...

What the heck was I complaining about again?

I went on a spree here, catching Weedle, Caterpie (who evolved into Metapod), Pansage (we meet again, my old nemesis), Pansear, Panpour, a new bug type called Scatterbug, and NARROWLY MISSED CATCHING PIKACHU.

I am still a little sore about that Pikachu, because then I would be one step closer to having my three favorite pokemon on my team (Butterfree, Raichu, Milotic if you're asking).

I am immediately reminded of Red Version.  I remember back then how long I would look in Viridian Forest (which, as established, is Santalune Forest) just to find one Pikachu for my party--and how when I did finally encounter him, Bulbasaur was already level 12 and I was scared of knocking it out too quickly (Oh yeah, I chose Bulbasaur, by the way).  My solution was to use "Leech Seed" and "Growl" until his health was low enough to start tossing Pokeballs.  On more than one playthrough, I got to this point to realize I was out of Pokeballs, so it is a good thing I have 80 of them this time.

After 40 minutes of looking I decided to quit for the moment.

Current Squad:
Pokemon/Nickname/Level
FROAKIE/Froakles/lvl.9
METAPOD/Felix/lvl.8
ZIGZAGOON/Ziggy/lvl.8
SCATTERBUG/Bubbsy/lvl.7
BUNNELBY/Buns/lvl.4
----/----/----

The Inescapable Chargestone Cave

Pokemon is pretty formulaic--walk in grass to fight pokemon, walk in caves to fight pokemon. It's a formula that has worked for years and the biggest complaint that I hear from people is that they always want "more pokemon".

This time around, Nintendo said, "Fine! Here are 156 New pokemon, go crazy!"

You would think that this would be a good thing right?

Would I even ask the question if there wasn't a problem?

Once when I was young I decided that I wanted to make the awesomest (its a word now) Lego Castle ever for a school show-and-tell project. I spent days planning it out--it would have towers, and a laser cannon, and a dungeon furnished with skeletons--actually I spent so much time planning out the best castle ever that I never actually made the best castle ever--and I had to scrounge something up for show-and-tell. It was the worst show that I have ever told...

My problem is that I spent too much time on quantity and not enough on quality--its called "spreading yourself too thin" and it's what Nintendo did this time around.

Take those monkeys for example: pansage, panpour, and pansear. They are the exact same pokemon.

Another example: Throh and Sawk. These are two different pokemon who are in no way related--neither by evolution or by any mention in the their pokedex entries--but just look at them! They are the exact same pokemon! Nintendo basically made Burt and Ernie (from sesame street) into fighting-types.

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I'll get to why I brought this up in a minute--its been a while since my last update so bear with me a sec.

Rock Jock (Boldore) was awesome, but I managed to pick up "Terk", Tirtouga by resurrecting it from a fossil, so I put the turtle on my team for my first water-type!

Deedoon surprised me by evolving a second time into Unfezent, the most awesome-looking bird pokemon ever.

Leavanny, newly re-nicknamed "Knives" continues to be the resident powerhouse--snagging a critical victory in my last gym battle (number 5) against the ground-trainer Gymleader Clay.

And "Krookodile" the Sandile just evolved into "Krookodile" the Krokorok. His attitude in that picture just screams "Haters gonna hate'".

I just got out of the longest cave ever--Chargestone Cave. It wasn't long distance-wise, its just that I encountered a pokemon every two steps (not even kidding)--this isn't what I had in mind when I said "more pokemon".

Considering the name of the cave, I encountered some electric and steel types of varying creativity. I saw an iron-barbed seed named Ferroseed, an electric spider named Joltik, and the dumbest pokemon that I have ever encountered, Klink. Now, Joltik looks kind of cool--and hey, even Ferroseed looks like it can at least evolve into something that doesn't look like a sadistic easter-egg (it is, after all, grass/steel, so this forme must be a seed), but Klink is just the worst. Just to prove my point on how easy it is to come up with cool pokemon designs, here are some fake pokemon I JUST took 2 minutes to find on the internet that are each infinitely cooler than "Klink".  Note: I do not own these pictures.
















Current Squad: