Vs. Melony

The path north to Circhester took me through rocky ruins and snowy plains. Along the way, I encountered weird new Pokémon like Falinks the fighting type and Snom the ice larval bug. While Snom is sore of basic, I am interested in seeing what it may become in its imago form, Falinks is a bit off the rails in its design, but I respect it.
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Bear vs Bear

I know that Pokémon sword and shield are somewhat polarizing the fan base, but by now I have seen enough of the Pokémon to be able to confidently weigh in on the overall design sensibilities. Gen 8 so far as I have seen it has had a healthy blend of cool and cute designs as well as a healthy blend of  “animal like” designs and “what the fuck is that”. Honestly, I haven’t felt this positively about a generation since Gen 2 or Gen 3. Gen 7 had a lot of island themed Pokémon which definitely fit the game’s overall mood and setting. However, it didn’t offer much in terms of the weird or gnarly. It waltzed the bird-fish-mammal tropical waltz, but most of the Pokémon were fairly predictable in their designs. Gen 6 was filled with very specifically chosen animals and plants from the natural world. Basically all of the Pokémon were directly lifted from nature with very little modification or personalization. This isn’t bad, but it offers little to improvise with, creatively speaking. The rest of the Gen 6 additions were random fairy types that were included to pad out the rosters of that newly-introduced type (I’m looking at you, klefki and carbink). Gen 4 added...mostly a lot of bugs and plants. There were some truly unique or interesting mons, but Gen 4 was diluted in its cast of characters with the sheer numbers of evolution Pokémon it added in. Most of these evolutions, I might add, we’re not even obtainable until the endgame. When you add 100 Pokémon, but withhold 30% or more till the endgame, then you really haven’t added much at all.

And Gen 5? We just don’t talk about Gen 5...
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By the time, I arrived in Circhester, Hop had already lost his gym match with the resident Ice Type leader Melony. Ice types may be strong attackers, but they have a large number of really common weaknesses and they don’t typically have the coverage moves to handle a barrage of attacks, so I came into this challenge fairly confident of my ability to sweep.

I like how in these games, the lobbies of gyms are filled with NPCs that are gossiping amongst themselves about how they saw you battle on TV and are cheering you on. It really helps to pump you up for when you sweep through everything with Bewear’s Hammer Arm move. The gym leader used Frosmoth, the apparent evolution of Snom, as well as the Galar form of Darmanitan and the penguin Pokémon Eiscue. The later of these has an ice cube for a face. I might have found my first lazy design of Gen 8...

Ice, like I said, is a generally weak type, so I didn’t encounter much resistance until I encountered Melony’s final Pokémon, Lapras. She immediately Gigantimaxed it and took out two of my Pokémon in as many turns.

My final Pokémon is Ollie the Copperaja and Max Steelspike is not dealing enough damage to take Lapras out in two hits. Lapras' Gigantimax phase ended and I saw a glimmer of hope.

And then Lapras puts Ollie to sleep with Sing.

Yike.