Rivals Real and Imagined

My travels through Hammerlocke had me meeting the person who is apparently the 8th gymleader: Rihan the dragon user. It was he who was in the opening cutscene in battle with Leon. One girl that I met around town said that the reason that she likes watching Rihan battle so much is because he always loses to Leon and it makes her happy to see him lose.

In addition to this, a little plot happened. Sonya was there and she mentioned something about how there may have been two heros rather than the one with the sword and the shield. However, as I have already established, the sword and shield are likely to have been pokemon anyways, so this little development is only surprising to plot-driven NPCs and perhaps also babies.

One thing I have really grown to like is the dynamic between the player character, Hop, Bede, and Marnie. At the start of this episode, Bede beat Hop pretty embarrassingly in battle and Hop has been moping and second guessing himself ever since.
_________________________
Similarly, my real life little brother and I had our first battle together. He took a commanding lead and paralyzed most of my pokemon, but made one mistake near the end which allowed me to pull ahead and win at the last minute.  He seemed pretty down on himself about it and I told him to cheer up and that it was a great match. This equivalency with what is happening in the game's story, though, is leading me to feel legitimately bad for ole Hop. I hope the rest of this game isn't just me beating up on him until he breaks...

_________________

We went West from Hammerlocke through the deserts towards the fourth gym and stumbled across Team Yell cheering on a delughtful looking snake pokemon named Silicobra lying in the road. They may be eccentric, but they sure  are lovable.

Hop and I took them on, but he's dealing with some stuff, so he lost and I had to fight them both.



On the way to the town I picked up Helioptile, Yamask, Axew, Maractus, and my own Silicobra. I named it Arbuk and I'm testing it out a bit for a team position. It's a ground type.

Pokédex: 102/180
Current squad:

On Rotation: Toxtricity, Silicobra

Vs. Kabu

Team Yell greeted me to town in Monsoke City  and Marnie challenged me to a battle. She used a slew of Dark amd Poison types including a powerful Hamster poke.on called Morpeko which kept morphing between a cute forme and an amgry looking forme. It was able to take out nearly my entire team, but Trash was able to tank a hit from it and RETALIATE in the coolest battle conclusion ever.

She wished me luck on my third badge.

I decided to go with pure power on this gym matchup. My team has one very particular counter to Fire in Drednaw, but other than that, I am lacking. I decided to choose reliable pokemon that can take hits and cause heavy damage. Trash is in there as my revenge-killer. Stufful can debuff with Bulldoze. Zorro is my booster.

This challenge had a unique task before hands. Instead of solving a puzzle and battling trainers, my job was to earn points by catching pokemon. The other trainers would not be fighting directly against me, but rather making it tougher for me to weaken  and catch the pokemon. It was fun to be sure, but an unintended side effect of the task itself is that now I had Stuffy, Trash, Zorro, Drednaw, Litwick and Sizzlipede as my gym team.

 

Ninetales takes out stuffy, but he has done his job by lowering its speed with Bulldoze enough so that Trash can Retaliate and take it out in one clean hit.

Trash has to eat an intimidate when Arcane is switched in, so I move Zorro into position for some boosting and snarling. It doesn't mind the burn that it picks up.

Nasty-Plot boosted Snarl brings arcanine to critical health, but Thievul is KOed in the end. Now it is time for Trash to Retaliate again. Another clean KO.

Trash has done her job now, so it is time for her to rest. His final pokemon is Centiscorch, who seems to be the gym emblem itself. Trash fires off a Baby doll eyes and faints in one move.

Drednaw may be a much lower level, but he has Centiscorch in a mismatch.  As a Rock/Water type pokemon, it can tank anything that Centiscorch could dish out. Max Rockfall takes him out handily.

Into the Wilds

Professor Magnolia and Leon gave Hop and I one final gift before ushering us out of town and onto the road to our first gym battle: a Dynamax Band.

Dynamax is the new mechanic in Pokémon Sword and Shield. Just like Black and White added Triple and Rotation battles, X and Y added Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon added Z Moves, now Sword and Shield has added Dynamax. The Pokémon franchise is definitely no stranger to gimmicks.

I haven’t performed a Dynamax evolution yet, but from what I know of it, it makes your Pokémon much larger and allows you to use super powerful moves. I am not yet sold on this as a game mechanic. I definitely will need to see how it works in-game later on.  It was just a matter of time before Gamefreak decided to capitalize on the recent Pacific Rim/Godzilla/Game of Thrones hype with Kaiju-sized Pokémon.
 

I found a female combee  in the wild area. One thing I really like is that you can choose what Pokémon you encounter by sneaking up on them. Random encounters are a thing of the past and damnit they can stay there, for all I care.  Just think about this for a second. The spawn rate of female combee is 1/8. This means that finding a female combee in a previous generation game would involve random encounters where the Pokémon itself has a percentage chance of showing—and then the specific gender would be rolled on top of that. Getting a female bee in gen 6 took me the better part of an hour. In this game, it took me ninety seconds.

Being able to choose which Pokémon you are able to battle is an obvious, but useful change. It makes just walking around battling and catching fun.

 I fought an over leveled onix and was able to beat it with Snorkle the Chewtle. I was not however allowed to catch it. Apparently over leveled Pokémon in the wild areas are not uncommon, but you can’t catch them. This is a little fucked up, but isn’t bad enough of an issue to harsh my ease.

I decided to avoid the next story obligations and went on a Pokémon catching and battling spree. Besides the aforementioned onix, I was also able to encounter overleveled diggersby, vespiquen, and one MASSIVE Galvantula that had my squirrel shaking in its furry boots. I caught Bunnelby (Bunnelbro), Machop, Roselia, Tyrogue (Rogue), Stufful (Stuffy), and Stunky (Stonks).

Nope. Run.

I always train myself into a corner, so I stopped and checked what my team looked like.

Grookey, Rookidee, Nickit, Purrloin, Zigzagoon, Chewtle, Dottler, Stufful, Tyrogue, Stunky, Skwover, Bunnelby.

...yikes, time to make cuts.

Pokédex:

Current Squad:

Grookey/Cheeto/lvl 15

Nickit/Kat-Kit/lvl 14

Chewtle/Snorkle/lvl 14

Rookidee/Chirpy/lvl 14

Dottler/Bleppo/lvl 14

Stufful/Stuffy/lvl 14

 
 On Rotation: Zigzagoon, Stunky, Tyrogue

Spooky Wolf Forest

With the plot on the run, Hop and I took off towards the Spooky Forest. I was mostly happy to get to start training up Cheeto. He learned a move called Branch Poke and eventually also Razor Leaf. Mine has a Quiet Nature (which has boosted Special Attack), but Grookey seems to be heavily favoring physical moves and stats, so my first guess is that this wonderful monkey is gonna get eal jacked up real fast as he evolves.

I battled the squirrel Pokémon that PokeTips Mike had predicted would be in this game based on the trailers. It is an adorably chubby-cheeked Pokémon named Skwovet. I also battled a cool looking borb that was named Rookidee. I want one.

As we trekked deeper into the fog, we were set upon by a red and blue wolf Pokémon. It was remarkably similar to the Pokémon on the box for the game. I could not communicate this through the fourth wall to my player character though, so he set upon battling it. None of Grookey’s moves had any effect on it and it kept making the fog thicken...
________________________________________
I am really liking the Pokémon designs in this game. There don’t seem to be any that Ihave found that seem half-assed (*cough* Pansear/pour/sage, Cryogonal *cough*) like all of Gen 5 was (fight me). Later on, I would encounter Blipbug, Chewtle, and Nickit and I really like how they are just complicated enough. There are no wasted details and the colour and shapes match what one might expect to see from nature. There are just enough extraneous or alien details in order to keep he creature fantastical-looking. The only Pokémon whose design I really dislike is Yamper, but I know that I am in the minority there. Plus, even though I dislike its design, I think that it is effective and simple and smart.

I am very happy that I have been able to keep myself completely spoiler free on this game. I hope that I can continue to remain unspoiled in the weeks to come. I don’t want to rush through this game and we know that YouTube in general is out to get me and expose all the Pokémon to me in the worst, most clickable thumbnails. Wish. Me. Luck.

_________________________________________
With the spooky forest subplot at its dead-end for the time being, my character was ushered off to meet the professor of the moment, Magnolia. I also met her assistant Sophie who apparently has some history with Leon. Whether this is just history or sexy history is yet to be seen, but I mean look at him it’s definitely sexy history.

I caught Kit-Kat the Nickit, then Kit Kat the Nickit, then Kat Kit the Nickit because I kept finding stronger or better versions of them as I explored. I may just lean in and make this an all Dark types team because between the three Nickit and the Purrloin and Galar Zigzagoon that I found, I’m really deep in the dark already. I caught a Chewtle as a water type (I love its silly overbite), caught a Blipbug and evolved it already into the Bug/Psychic type Dottler, and then Skwovet.

Beat Up: the most ruthless move in Pokémon.

I also caught a Rookidee (Chirpy), which is a PURE FLYING TYPE (mind fucking blown). This is only the third Pokémon in existence to have this typing, the other two being the legendaries  Arceus and Tornadus. I am wondering if all starter birds are also retroactively being classified as pure flying. I wonder if Swellow is now just a Pure Flying type...

One other thing I have noticed is that the exp share is always on. I wonder if this will become bothersome as time goes by...

Pokédex: 14
Current Squad:

Grookey/Cheeto
lvl 13
Nickit/Kat-Kit
lvl 11
Chewtle/Snorkle
lvl 10
Rookidee/Chirpy
lvl 11
Dottler/Bleppo
lvl 11
Zigzagoon/Trash
lvl 10

Pokémon Shield Begins Here!

Recognizing that I have never actually finished one of these...

And also recognizing that I am unlikely to ever finish a full series worth of blogposts...

Pokémon Shield Version begins here!

A problem of mine is partly that I love starting projects and planning them out, but never finishing them. The real artists and creators are those who can write or create even when things suck and they are beginning to hate what they do. I know plenty of people who can get over this part of the writing cycle: they are the real artists (even if they are financial journalists). If you want to call yourself a writer, you have to actually finish your damn projects.

I will absolutely finish it this time.

It is important for anyone to have some sort of creative outlet, be it music or painting or even just writing casually or sketching. I have been sketching more often recently and I feel that I have had more of an appreciation for design as a result. I want to apply this same method to my writing. I will likely never be published, but writing could be a great tool for me to get better at explaining myself logically or expressing myself emotionally. Pokémon White Y Moon Shield could be that tool for me.

What have I been up to as of late? Teaching science still, reading books still (mostly pulpy action books like The Count of Monte Cristo), exercising, playing Pokémon Go, and hanging out with my brand new real-life Pokémon Don Diego de la Vega.

Don Diego de la Vega in his grumpy forme.

______________________________

Okay, I took some thera flu and I think that I am in more control of my rambling thoughts.

It is impossible to bring up Pokémon Sword and Shield without addressing the main controversy that has been the topic of discussion past few weeks. The game designers at Nintendo Gamefreak revealed, a few months ago, that the game would not have a complete National Dex.  This means that not all Pokémon will actually be in the game. 

In previous titles, there have been cuts to the Pokédex. Indeed, Pokémon Black and White didn’t have any of the older Pokémon in it at all until the National Dex is unlocked. Even afterwards, most Pokémon were still completely absent from the game. This is not an uncommon thing: Nidoking was absent from Pokémon Sun version. This is only one small example, but damn you I like Nidoking, so it is the most important example possible.

The difference is that Gamefreak has implied that these Pokémon that are absent from the National Dex are not only just missing from the game in terms of you being able to find and capture them, but also non-transferable from previous games as well. This means that your Typhlosion from Heartgold won’t be in Pokémon Sword. This means that your Beedrill from Firered needs to stay in the Pokémon Bank. This has made a lot of people very angry. Or so it seems.

In reality this doesn’t really affect people much. As a matter of fact, it affects such a small number of Pokémon Sw/Sh players that it barely deserves mentioning. The only reason that it has blown up as a story at all is because “None of Your Favorite Pokémon are in Pokémon Sword” is provably the most clickable link ever imagined.

Just think about this: the percentage of people who would be affected by this at all would be limited to the percentage of players who use the annual subscription service “Pokémon Bank” (the service which is used to store and transfer Pokémon to and from different game generations). This is a tiny percentage of potential players, basically only including the hardcore players of the games. Even amongst series fanatics, Pokémon Bank users constitute a negligible percentage of the Pokémon install-base. 

Amongst that small percentage, the players who would be most affected are those who have actually transferred Pokémon vertically from Gen 3 or 4 up. The process for doing this is time-consuming and frustrating, requiring multiple Nintendo DS devices in addition to the previously mentioned Bank service. I know this because I have actually done this with Pokémon going back as far as Sapphire version. 

I’m not saying that I am too keen on a limited Pokédex, but you have to have some perspective here. Gen 3 limited the Pokédex to only two hundred something characters with the remainder of the monsters only becoming available in the spinoff generation. Gen 4 only allowed full dex completion for players who had games from Gen 3, the Gen 3 spinoffs, and the Gen 4 games as well. Generation 5, the worst generation of Pokémon games, removed all of the previous Pokémon from the Regional Pokédex entirely, only funneling them in in the post game and via the previously mentioned methods of vertical upload. The only difference that this method will have is that they won’t be svailable for vertical transfer via the Bank. 

And you KNOW that Gamefreak will be including a complete National Pokédex in the inevitable spin-off releases of Pokémon Greatsword and Towershield in 2021.

If Gamefreak’s reasoning for excluding Pokémon is actually what they say it is, that it was done so that they could spend time on designing models for other game objects and other Pokémon, then I am okay with this. The cut changes little and affects basically nobody. Most of the outrage, I am sure, is only due to the visceral reaction that any Pokémon fan would have to seeing a deliberately inflamatory article titled “Gamefreak Hates Your Favorite Pokemon”.