basilquesadilla

[basilquesadilla]

My Thoughts on Pokemon Sword/Shield

Hi everyone! Thought I'd do something a bit fun out of boredom and just give a very casual review of Sword and Shield(mainly Shield since that's the one I played). I was gifted it by a friend who didn't want her copy. She didn't have the DLC(nor did I feel like dropping extra money for it) so that'll be excluded from this. Thought I'd go ahead and do this in a "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" type format.

The Good:

Quality of Life Improvements/:

When I say quality of life, I mean two things. Firstly...FINALLY WILD POKEMON ARE IN THE OVERWORLD!!! Listen, is there a single person out there that enjoys random enemy encounters in RPGs? If you do like those, pls seek help/j

Ok but seriously, these were so nice. Never felt the need to stock up on repels, and finding a lot of the Pokemon I wanted to catch was easy. I did kinda dislike the mystery mons that would appear too(especially since some mons only spawned from those, like Applin). But that was a minor flaw. Overall I'm happy to see this, and if they ever go back to random encounters I will be fighting them.

The other is in how the tutorial section of this game feels. After Sun and Moon's tutorial feeling like it was never ending, I feel like this one was actually quite nice. Telling Hop "Yes I know what a Pokemon Center is," and having him actually go "Oh ok, then I won't explain anything" was very nice. I overall didn't feel like the game was aggressively destroying the pace with tutorials, and I appreciate that. Considering the fact that Sun and Moon's first island is something that holds me back from wanting to replay it lol.

The New Pokemon Designs + The Soundtrack:

Gonna group these as they both have to do with presentation. This generation definitely has added some designs that I really enjoy. Appletun, CorviKnight, and Obstagoon are just a few of my favorites. That's all I can really say to be honest. It's wild that Pokemon was on it's 8th generation at this point and it's still churning out fun designs. While Dynamax/Gigantimax(as we'll see later) isn't my favorite gimmick, the Gigantimax designs were super fun and epic to see in-battle. Overall, Pokemon once again succeeded at creating a good cast of new mons, that's all there really is to say.

The soundtrack was also great to hear, as expected from Pokemon. I enjoyed most of the tunes that played throughout the game, not much to say about it. Some of my faves were the gym battle music and the pre-Leon fight music(iykyk). The latter was super epic and fun to listen to while doing the penultimate boss of the game.

The Gym Challenges(kinda):

This is an aspect that lean into being both good and bad. Listen, in CONCEPT, gym challenges are great. It's really fun to have some type of mini challenge to do before facing the gym leader. And it's nice to deviate from the typical "go through gym, fight trainers on a linear path" system of past gens. That was one of the best things about Alola's island trials. I think SwSh wanted to find a way to mimic that with...mixed success

Milo and Kabu's gyms(I'm not googling their names sorry lol) are examples of where I think they succeeded. Was the herding Wooloo one particularly challenging or anything? No, but that's ok cause it's only the first gym. They probably could've added some other obstacles/yampers to make it harder, but eh, it was fine, and trainer fights being optional was great. It made me expect to see other unique minigames in the other gyms. The fire gym's challenge did a great job at putting a twist on gym trainers. There goal is to stop you from catching the wild mons to earn points, not to take you out in a 1v1, and that was neat! Overall the gym challenges were a neat concept and had some good executions, but as we'll see later some of the other gyms were horrible at it.

Quick note btw, I really enjoyed the gym battles themselves as well as the final cup. Felt like the gym leaders were actually trying to win, and Leon in particular gave me a bit of challenge. With all of the major positives out of the way, it's time for:

The Bad:

Gym Challenges:

Alright yeah let's get this out of the way. For the most part the gym challenges felt....rather uncreative/like things you'd see in another game. Nessa's gym straight up felt like any ordinary gym from another mainline game. Raihan's was just....double battles. Seriously? That was such a disappointing and boring as a concept, they could've done something more creative than "but what if the battles were all doubles and focused on weather?" I feel like there were gyms in previous games that tried to do a similar concept to what gym challenges were doing, with similar or more success. Examples would be Fantina's dimly lit gym focused on making your way through a maze with the flashlight, or Clay's gym in BW2 also being a bit of a maze. Yeah, there really isn't much to say about the gym challenges other than "They thought they did something unique, but all they did was give Pokemon Gym layouts a new name."

City/Route Design:

Oh boy. These towns/cities have got to be some of the most boring things EVER. Listen, previous games have definitely had some "meh" towns. But jeez....not as bad as this. Spikemuth is literally just a hallway. A HALLWAY. REALLY?!? So many of the towns had me running around to find things to do, but I just couldn't find NPCs saying anything interesting or fun. After a while I just gave up on doing that. Ballonlea is the biggest offender here. Visually the town is GORGEOUS, probably the prettiest location a gym has ever been in in a Pokemon game. But there's like...nothing to do. Nothing to do other than take on the gym, that's how most of Galar's cities can be described. This will play a role later when we disucss the....*shudders* writing of the story in the game. But yeah, they suck

The routes aren't much better off either. Many of them are very linear paths without much to do than battle trainers. Which btw, is it me or did it feel like trainers were sparse in some area. Don't get me wrong, I hate when they crowd areas with trainers, and I like that many of the ones here are avoidable but....I felt like I wasn't doing much battling(though luckily the shared exp, something I didn't mind at all, was good at keeping me up in levels). Routes felt like they had no little secrets to find, and I never felt an urge to backtrack. I probably coulda gone back with the water bike, but route were so short I doubt I would've found much.

The Wild Area:

Based on what I've seen of Scarlet/Violet, this feels like it was basically there way of testing how something more open world in a mainline game would be liked by Pokemon fans. And well, it was....ok I guess. It wasn't horrible to go through, and I liked that the Areas had differing weather that changed spawn rates. But the whole thing just felt like a tech demo than anything fleshed out. I would've rather just had more routes throughout the region to make it feel like we weren't speeding it through the gym challenge at mach speeds. It's not as bad as the plain cities/routes since you're not FORCED to go through it much, but it definitely feels like there was wasted potential here. The amount of options it made for teambuilding early on was probably it's biggest strength.

The Ugly:

Dynamaxing:

Ok listen. It's not as horrible as the other thing I'll discuss below. But it's just SOOO BORING. This has got to be my least favorite generational gimmick. Megas were really badass, and Z-moves might've been plain, but the fun animations made it cool at least. I haven't played SV so I can't speak for the terra stuff there. But you wanna know what was cool about gen 6 and 7's gimmicks? THEY COULD BE DONE ANYWHERE, NOT JUST SELECT BOSS BATTLES. I know that the game does have you doing gym battles pretty often as a big part of its narrative, but jeez. Restricting the gimmick like that just feels bad. And it doesn't really feel like dynamaxing is anything strategic anyways. You know any given opponent Gigantimaxes their last team member, so you may as well just save your Dynamax till then so you can easily last out the 3 turns or KO it with your own superpowered moves. The Gigantimax forms at least had unique designs, which is the only plus I'll give this system. Otherwise I'd say the gimmick insanely boring.

The God Awful Writing:

Putting extra emphasis here cause dear lord....THIS IS THE WORST WRITTEN GAME I'VE EVER PLAYED! I'm gonna break this down into just the narrative itself and then get into characterization.

First off, the plot. Or more so, the lack of one. Throughout the game everyone is telling you "just keep doing the gym challenge, just keep doing the gym challenge, just keep doing the gym challenge." Even when an emergency happens and whatnot, they tell you to not get involved, and thus there's nothing breaking up the gyms. This leads to the gym challenge feeling insanely fast-paced. When Milo, Nessa, and Kabu talk to you and Hop, I feel like it should feel like something, because completing the first 3 gyms is considered canonically impressive. But the game makes you go through these so quickly that I felt nothing. The pace is just too fast. The only mild breaks you get are talking to Sonia about the ancient legends, but all of the info is just things you randomly stumble on or have spoonfed to you. They want it to feel like some kind of mystery you're unraveling, but it doesn't feel like it. Going through some ancient ruins or locations to investigate in between gyms with her would've been a good way to space out the gyms more.

Now, you know what typically handles pacing issues like this? The presence of an evil team. Unfortunately our villain team here is team skull. Except they're not even an evil team. They're just a bunch of losers who are aggressively excited about cheering on Marnie. Marnie, btw, is a big old nothingburger. She has a neat design, but her personality feels like nothing, and she didn't feel like a good rival at all. Her writing puts her on par with the XY rivals cast imo. As such, since all Team Yell does is occasionally battle you for dumb reasons, they don't break up the plot much. The game instead decides it wants to make Chairman Rose. be a "twist" villain, which only happens during the championship matches. Which means the game only gets most of its proper story development AT THE VERY END! And now, let's consider this. An "evil team" that isn't even really trying to do anything that insanely evil, and a twist villain from the region's main corporation....

Yep. That's right folks. They wanted to replicate Team Skull and Lusamine. Except they failed. Cause Team Skull was a group of actual misfits, not just some cringe fans of some trainer they idolized. They had a badass theme, and Po Town solos Spikemuth. And Lusamine was written much better. We're shown immediately that the Aether Foundation is sus, and they did well writing her to just be someone who's truly obsessed with her research and the Ultra Beasts. Overall, the pacing here just sucks. The game is 90% gym challenge, 10% other story. They could've easily fixed this via the suggestion I had for Sonia earlier, as well as by allowing us to help Leon alongside Hop with the dynamax disasters happening. But nope, they didn't want us to. At least I can say that the big raid fight alongside the box art legendaries was cool and had a fun theme.

Lastly, I just want to discuss the writing of Hop and Bede. Now personally, I love these two. I love their personalities and mannerisms, and I enjoyed getting to see them...but their arcs definitely needed work. The fast pace of going through the gym challenges makes it feel like we've barely even seen Bede before he's kicked out of the gym challenge and later taken by Opal as her successor. Hop meanwhile highlights why I think Pokemon should have some forced losses. If they had made Hop an unwinnable fight the first 2-3 times(by simply making his Wooloo/other mons he's used better) it would've showed how he's entering the challenge with more experience than us. Then as we(and Bede) defeat him, that starts him down a spiral. Which btw, they were kinda bad at highlighting his inferiority complex. It's wild to say this, but this is a game that NEEDED padding. It needed that extra story stuff between gyms, cause the aggressive way the game railroads you down the gym challenge just makes the pacing and characterization suffer greatly

Conclusion/Overall Thoughts:

Despite all of my complaints there, I did at least like playing this game. It was some good old Pokemon fun, and the QoL improvements made it so I could at least had good stretches of doing my own thing(though those stretches were probably too long). I think I'd give it a solid 3/5, maybe a 2.75/5. Do I think it's worth the $60 price tag? Fuck no, definitely get it from someone else or try to find it used. But I definitely don't think it's AS bad as people made it out to be. An overall ok game, but definitely one on the lower end when it comes to Pokemon's mainline games.

EDIT: Actually upon reflection this is more of a 2 or 2.5 out of 5 lol. Sorry to SwSh fans, maybe if I get the DLC one day it'll rise up a bit. But for now I'm just not feeling it.

[basilquesadilla]

A New Intro Post!

Hi everyone! I've been wanting to get back to using this blog so I'm gonna start with a whole new intro. So hi, I'm Basil, a 22-year-old Indian American who enjoys gaming, anime, reading, and more! I'm aroace and use she/they pronouns!

My Fandoms/Interests:

Omori

Honkai Star Rail

Cookie Run: Tower of Adventures

Cozy games(i.e. Stardew and Fields of Mistria)

Reading(mainly fantasy and some contemporary)

Anime(favorites are Frieren and Re:Zero)

Plants

My Tags:

General Posts: quesadilla post

Personal/Venting(includes politics): basil rambles

General Gaming: gaming with basil

Anime: basil talks anime

Books: basil's library

Plants: basil's garden

Honkai Star Rail: starry quesadilla

Cookie Run: quesadilla cookie

(any future tags I create will be listed here

[basilquesadilla]

yaten-kun 🏮

[basilquesadilla]

Hello!

My commissions are open! Please go to especiallyebs.tumblr.com/commission for more information!

[basilquesadilla]

Robin - Honkai Star Rail - April 2024

[basilquesadilla]

thinking. about them.

[basilquesadilla]

[basilquesadilla]

This is a bit of a dumb question but for fic writers out there: How the fuck do i plan ouut a plot 😭 I wanna write a prequel fan fic centered on Aubrey from Omori and since its a prequel fic exploring how she becomes the person she is in-game, i dont exactly wanna have a perfect resolution(tho i do know vaguely how i’d end it). I just dont know how i want it to start. Or what the middle should be 💀 And im also considering breaking it into chapters so ??? Idk someone pls help im so rusty this is my first time doing this in YEARS

[basilquesadilla]

I've been reading ACE by Angela Chen lately and got done with the 2nd chapter today AND GOD I LOVED THAT PART ABOUT MICROLABELS. The one where she talks specifically about demisexuality and gray-sexuality, but I think she means for that to be applied to all labels people place under the ace umbrella. Makes me feel really validated as an oriented aroace. Everything she had to say about how valid all these extra labels are reflect my thoughts that I've never been able to put into words easily. A REMINDER THAT IF YOU USE MICROLABELS TO DESCRIBE YOUR ACE OR ARO EXPERIENCE YOU ARE VALID!

Man I'm so excited to keep reading more!

[basilquesadilla]

again, in the new world 🍃

happy 5th anniversary!

[basilquesadilla]

So at what point does me looking at green-haired characters and calling them my daughter become a pattern

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Sometimes I wish I had the creative energy in me that other people have to create amazing works. I wish I could get back into wanting to write like I would with FE back when I was like 15 but I just can’t. I’m constantly tired, and easily distracted. And of course I’m still new to this so things I make aren’t going to be the best, which is natural. I know that , but it just makes me feel worse about wanting to try to start again with the issues mentioned before. I really, desperately want to make Omori fanfic and try to possibly come up with my own AU but trying to find the actual energy and willpower in me to do it is like looking into something hollow 😭 If anyone has experience with this and overcoming it i’d love some tips

[basilquesadilla]

Just a warning, this post is just a rant/vent with about 0 organization, and may also have some mild, vague spoilers.

Watched Heartstopper season 2 with a friend last night, and I think this time that show really hit me hard and made me feel super single with my aromanticism, even with Issac there. I really enjoyed spending time with my friend, but I got sad because my thoughts were going “This isn’t forevee, you’ll be back to being alone soon.” Watching issac feel awkward amongst his own friend group felt so relatable, anf I resonated with that hard.

I feel like my aromanticism is just something I’m constantly going up and down with how I feel about it. I’ll feel great about it for a bit, then i wont feel hood about it at all for a while, which is getting tiring to experience. I often try to attach queerplatonic/platonic meaning to romantic songs, and i tried to do that with the song that played in the final scene where Charlie talks about the bullying he experienced and what it was like. But i couldn’t do it. There’s not even anyone I’ve met that i’d wanna be in a queerplatonic relationship with, aside from a few where i knew there was no chance. I just felt so lonely so I couldn’t even listen to it.

One thing that doesn’t help me is I feel so touch starved yet I’m also often touch-averse, likely due to the former. It took me nearly a.year with my current friends who I met last year to even do hugs, and I doubt it’ll ever go beyond that because i feel like people never show their friends that much physical affection. Especially since, even if i am non binary, i still look like a cis man right now. And I know a lot of people would find like doing any physical affection with me because of that probably, and I’m touch averse so what does it matter anyways lol. It’s just a torturous limbo lol.

My friend was saying how the show made them want to reinstall dating apps, and meanwhile after the show I had to tune my thoughts out with TikTok and listening to other music to avoid my thoughts.

Another thing that hurts is(this is some long context that i need to add) is that after high school ended, i really didnt get to keep in contact with a lot of my friends(Ik that’s common but bear with me). I’d watch some of them thriving and finding friends despite it being 2020 fall semester where covid was still in its full swing in terms of impact on uni, and meanwhile I was alone. I was severely depressed, and lonely. Because no one i met in my courses with other engineering majors clicked with me(the classes were pre reqs for me as a computer science major). So then I got more lonely, and sophomore year was a repeat.

Final week of school that 2nd year i even decided i couldn’t take talking to even my online friends community aside from 2-3 close friends there. Then junior year happens, and i met my current friends. And of course i love them and everything. But i also have this voice in my head saying that the repeat will happen post graduation. We’ll all go to different places, and then they’ll talk to me less and less, and eventually I’ll just feel lonely and isolated again, and be back to thinking some very dark thoughts. And it’s terrifying. And i guess watching heartstopper s2 reminded me of all that, even tho i absolutely adored it still. All i could think in the back of my head was “you will never experience affectionate touch like this. You will never be able to be in a romantic relationship,’or a queerplatonic one. You’ll be lonely and your friends won’t always be there with you.”

So yeah, here I am, back to feeling shitty about being aromantic and hating it. Because instead of feeling the yearning, crushing, and relationships like others. Instead of feeling physical affection like others. Instead of being able to see a future with a partner. All im experiencing right now is bitterness at my lot in life and how i feel like all my friends will slowly leave me, and i won’t be able to make new ones because I suck at doing that as shown by the 2 years before meeting my current ones. And that just makes me feel depressed. I honestly feel kinda broken and hopeless. Aro and thus a lot of relationship options are cutoff from me, cant find people I’d want to enter a queerplatonic relationship with, AND have trouble with making friends. It just feels like I’m destined to be lonely, and ik it isnt supposed to be a factor in that, but it does feel like being aromantic plays a role in this whole mess for me rn. And i hate that.

If you read to the end of this, ty and I greatly appreciate you :) 💛

[basilquesadilla]

i want all heartstopper fans who have only watched the show to know that charlie spring has dimples and nick nelson has a soft little belly

[basilquesadilla]

„What was the point of delivering all those messages if we didn’t end up saving anyone?”

Some angst for you all

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No one:

Lu guang using his powers on those security cameras in S2E2

[basilquesadilla]

"cost of living crisis" give me a FUCKING break it's called "unprecedented corporate greed and income inequality" fucking cost of living crisis like it's just a natural or unexplainable phenomenon Christ