#and i still think this dex was pretty meh in terms of design

[pastlight]

just finished watching a Pokemon SV playthrough

[moonvalecrossing]

Moonvale's Pokemon Commentary: #676 Furfrou

Go, gimmick-pokemon! Make me have to make a big thing of all your forms!

Just for Looks:

Before I begin, see the white on all those guys up there? For the shiny, paint the white black. And the black white. Still looks pretty cool though. In fact the shiny version helps the colors of the more meh trims look a lot better to me.

Furfrou is our expected French Poodle Pokemon that was introduced in Kalos, the Pokemon world's version of France. Though I wouldn't call Furfrou a poodle. Its natural form's fur is far too shaggy and wild to be the same as the curly fur of a French Poodle. That said, I find the natural form to be a very nice design. Now, as you saw above we have multiple versions of Furfrou. That is because it's gimmick is that you can style its fur into various trims by taking it to the right NPC. They do absolutely nothing but look nice. Also they are not permanent and it will return to its natural form in five days. Or if they're put into (Gen VI) or removed from (Gen VII) the PC. Make sure you got plenty of money laying around if you wanna keep that look. It'll cost ya $500 poke-bucks every time. Now then, onto the styles!

Heart Trim- The pink one with the heart shaped tail obviously. This is the most poodle-looking of all the forms to me. It's really cute for the most part but I find the two white butt-poofs weird.

Diamond Trim- Orange with Diamond tail. I like its pants.

Star Trim- The pale blue one with a stair shaped tail. I like its head fluff. And that it doesn't have butt-poofs.

Pharaoh Trim- The one who kinda looks like it's wearing a fancy Egyptian headdress. The fact this one is not a golden yellow is a crime. I know the decorative stripes on this sort of artifact is usually a dark blue, but the majority of what is usually depicted is gold, darn it! Also, the black stripes on its ears are what I assume to be the fluff cut down to the base coat... and I can't imagine that looking anything but weird with a more realistically depicted fur. However it seems that these stripes are just the fluff colored the exact same as the base coat... for some reason. It's okay.

Kabuki Trim- The red one. So like... Kabuki. It's Japanese dance-theatre pretty much. But with usually exaggerated face painting and costumes. Look up Kabuki in an image search and you'll probably at some point see a dude with white face paint with red markings and wild red hair. That's what this trim style is based on I guess. There's also a Kabuki pikachu plush on the pokemon center website... which is just pikachu with a kimono, headband, and wearing a little eye makeup and a small upper lip paint. At least put on a wig, Pikachu. Sheesh. This trim is interesting. I love the tail.

La Reine Trim- The other light blue one that isn't the star trim. I have no idea what this is. Looking up La Reine doesn't really help either. I guess it's some kind of fashion type for rich women? I guess its head and ears are supposed to look like some fancy up-do? It's bland.

Matron Trim- The purple one. The older motherly woman figure design I guess. I guess it's meant to be a bonnet on its head. I'm grumpy this doesn't have at fur style that looks like one of them big-butted round dresses though. Maybe that's more a rich young-woman only thing? But even the young woman style we'll go over in a bit doesn't really seem much different.

Dandy Trim- The green one that looks like he's got a suit and top-hat on. My favorite. A dandy is a dude who cared a lot about his appearance and looking and acting as if he belongs in high society. If y'all got some sort of slur you wanna use here for this sort of character you can turn your fancy ass back around and walk out the door you came through. Moonvale aint puttin up with that shit here. This style is adorable! I love this particular cut. I would choose this one over all the others if I used Furfrou in my party. My fancy boy. Bonus points for being a lovely shade of green.

Debutant Trim- The yellow one. Now a debutant, if you don't know the actual meaning, is a young rich woman who has just entered into fashionable society. Originally meant to show off women to the men who'd be wanting to marry em. About the design though... I like its hat. It is a nice fur-hat. Though, I don't see anything that screams young-woman to make this one different from the Matron Trim. Could have given it a nice shorter dress-like style on the back end of the fur design.

What's in the Name:

 Fur + 'Frou-Frou'. If kids don't know that term nowadays that's basically calling something fancy and over-elaborate. Fancy pants? ...I’m like a decade out of the loop on slang. I just learned yeet.

The Japanese name, Trimmien, seems to be Trim + Chien, which is dog in French. Can confirm. I took enough French in high school to say this is accurate. Bulbapedia says it could also be a play on très bien (basically very good/excellent). But I think its a tad bit of a stretch as the first explanation fits perfectly as is.

The 'Dex Says:

Some dex entries claim trimming the fur makes it swifter which has absolutely no standing in the actual game since the trims seem to be completely aesthetic in every way. Trimming only changes the pokemon's appearance. There was a time where these pokemon were guardians of the Kalosian King, and in a certain era aristocrats would compete on who could style their Furfrou’s fur to be the most exquisite.

I'd call these people stuffy and arrogant only using their pokemon for status, but apparently only someone a Furfrou highly trusts is allowed to trim its fur. Though, that fur grows and grows when not trimmed so I'd assume they have a limit to where they have to find SOMEONE to trim their fur before they end up like that one sheep that managed to hide away and hadn't been sheared in six years. What do they even do with all that trimmed hair... Maybe they use it to stuff fancy pillows.

It's Rating Time!

I'm giving this guy a 3/5. It's a cool concept. However the designs are mostly meh to me, and the fact that you have to re-do the cut every 5 days is pretty annoying. I can't say this guy's among my favorites. I wish the cut style had some kind of effect, even if it were only to boost certain stats in a contest-like environment. How does a straight haired shaggy dog get curly poodle puffs anyway? My mom has never been able to keep her non-permed hair in any sort of curl for more than 5 hours, what the heck do they put on these dogs to keep them curled for FIVE DAYS?

Want to read more of my reviews? Click here!

[estrelatzia]

Ok, so as I said before, I wanted to post my thoughts about the SWSH games.

These are mostly thoughts I had on a whim during my first experience, and they might change with time or by playing the games a second time. So please don’t @ me, I am not here to argue, these thoughts are just for fun and somehow a way for me to go back and see if my thoughts on the games changed since they were released.

I categorized them as “things I liked”, “things I thought were meh” and “others” (Others are just interesting points I wanted to talk about, that I might have gave me mixed feelings about, but are not necessary bad).

Before the games were released, they gave me a lot of mixed feels that I never really experienced before with Pokemon games. From the start, I always get excited about new Pokemon games, it’s one of my favourite things since I was a kid. And even when games were not my cup of tea or I was going through a “I don’t like Pokemon anymore” phase, I would still get the game and play along with my sibling and cousins, It’s almost like a tradition.

But this time, during the period before the games got released, I felt nothing...like I was not really interested??? Like I was excited for new Pokemon, the games looked pretty and I loved the thought of exploring a new region in the pokeworld, but besides that, there was nothing more to it. And I got exhausted after all the conflicts and the bad news I saw in the last months, that I barely followed up on the SWSH news.

So I kinda started the news games kinda blind? I knew about the officially released Pokemon, but didn’t check the leaks, so many new gen8 pokemon were new to me as I played. I didn’t read much on the gym leaders, except for knowing what the ones officially revealed looked like, or other little features of the games (Like the wild zone, dynamax, raids etc). And it was an interesting experience to me.

Things that I really loved:

The scenery is gorgeous!! It really had amazing views and it give a beautiful atmosphere. I know many will laugh, but to me exploring the pokeworld is always one of the things I am the most looking forward too. It’s something I did since I was a kid. So all this to say that exploring the regions was really important to me, and I adored exploring Galar. My facourite towns were Wedgehurst, Ballonlea and Circhester.

The new Gen 8 Pokemon were great! They were cute and while some of them were “meh” to me I admit, in general I love the direction they were going with most of them. My faves of this region are Scorbunny, Raboot, Hattena, Galar Ponyta, Galar Meowth and the evolution family of Corviknight (My champ ;u;).

I was surprised to find many Galarian versions as well, and it was so nice to see their new takes on pokemon (bonus points, they were from other gens than gen1! yay!)

The clothing option was great! I love the options they gave to us early on, and even tho I have some comments about it, I really adored the customization options!

I like camping and the curry option, not gonna lie. At first I was joking about completing the Curry dex, but really I want to complete it! It was so fun to me! I always took my time to play in the camp and try different types of curry lol

The Gym Challenges were super fun for the most part. My fave was the first one lol I was disappointed by some, but in general they were interesting concepts and I hope they can keep challenges similar to these in future games.

Also really I loved all the Gym leaders in Galar. I thought the game really made them all memorable by giving them personalities and details. I only played Sword, so I cannot 100% say since I didn’t interact with them, but I love the design of Allister and Melony. Piers was kinda relatable to me lol and Opal was a fun concept for a Gym leader. All around, It was a really strong gang and they were fun to interact with. I loved the cards we get knowing more about them and their backgrounds.  

The “rivals” are interesting. I feel like they gave us a little of every type of rival people like. Like you have your friendly neighbour/rival Hop, a friend you learn more about during the game Marnie, and the old fashion arrogant type of rival we all missed, Bede. My fave was Marnie! But I appreciate the arc Hop got and Bede as well.

Things that were meh to me:

First of all, when they introduce the Pokemon, the usual theme that would appear (Welcome to the world of pokemon segment), Is not there???? Blasphemy!! (This one is a joke, please don’t take this seriously. But it was weird not hearing the theme I was used to at the beginning lol)

The thing about GF being forced to release the game before the end of the year, and the fact that they were in a rush, kinda made me wonder when there were things in the game that didn’t settle with me. Like I was always wondering “Was it cut because of the lack of time?” or if it was just things they wanted to go with it, or if it was me being paranoid?” Because, not gonna lie, I kinda compared to the last games to try to figure out what was the reason being the things that made it meh for me.  

I love the scenery and towns in Galar, and once again, idk if it was because of the lack of time, but sometimes the places in Galar feels empty...? Idk how to explain, because there is a lot to explore and I love what they did with like the routes (for the example, the two mines look so different and are so pretty! it’s not annoying to explore). But I kinda compare/think to USUM (or even SUMO), some places feel like something is missing?

For example the Budew Inn in Motostoke town. If you have the chance to go to the second floor and explore, you will find most of the rooms look empty? Like there is a lot of space, but nothing much to decorate or make the room feel less empty, compare to the hotels in Alola. I know it’s a weird nitpick, but like I said I love exploring, and remembered that this was something cool to me when I saw the details in Sun and Moon, so I felt a little like things were missing.  

Another example are some towns have no homes to explore? Like the town of the first gym, it had no houses to explore and it was so strange? Our hometown had only two houses as well (Ours and Hop’s)...or the fact that Galar’s towns we get to explore are most of the time ones with Gym leaders in it (except for our hometown, the one where the professor is and the one with the champion battle), and it was strange to me not having just a town that is there to explore without having a major plot related thing? Idk if it was just me, but as someone who likes to explore the pokeworld, that’s my thougths.

About the clothing, I really super feel like they should have cabins to change your outfit in like every Pokemon center or something. Because you can only change in cabins at boutiques. But these are like available in about 5 towns. Sometimes you just want to change clothing or accessories after one town and have to wait until arriving to a town with a boutique to change (or go back to the last one). Idk why they removed this from SUMO honestly.

Also...as someone who choose a girl character, I was disappointed that I didn’t get option to wear many pants like the boy, since the girl’s option was mostly skirts :(  Like I like the skirts, don’t get me wrong, but idk why it’s such a downgrade compared to SUMO in term of pants.  Honestly, I just wish that all the clothing would be accessible to everyone regardless of the characters’ gender.

The rivals were great imo. But sometimes I wanted Hop to leave me for a few seconds ngl. Especially at the start, like he talks in a scene in every new town you arrive. I actually don’t have a problem with Hop, I enjoy these types of friendly rivals actually and his feelings during his arc were really relatable, but sometimes I just wish we could get a break from his scenes for a while lol But at the same time, I understand that maybe his arc would have seen less good if we would see less of it? On the other hand, I kinda wish we could have seen MORE of Bede’s arc honestly. He is the arrogant rival, then something happen that is a change in his life, and the next time we see him, he takes on this new challenge and has quite changed. We see what starts all the change, but it’s a shame we don’t see the change more.  

I am not big on online stuff in general, but the way to interact online in the game is such a big meh to me! So I was trying to find my sibling in the online feature to participate in a raid battle. So I filtered by raids, don’t find them. Filtered by friends, still don’t find them. So I try to find them on the map to see if I can interact that way, fly to the other side of the map, and even if I am still connected to internet, the stamps are gone???? So I have to un-connect and reconnect to the internet again and STILL don’t find them! It’s just weird and annoying to me honestly. The fact they don’t have the GTS anymore is disappointing as well :(  I know the GTS had issues, but they could easily fix the issues imo.

I could talk forever about the dex cut, but I won’t because we all heard about it. Instead, I will just mention, that I wish there was a way somehow to get alolan versions.

Other:

The music is so good and interesting but, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I feel like I got more like Final Fantasy vibes more than Pokemon sometimes. Like when we are exploring the Forest early game and our hometown really gave me adventure RPG vibes lol.

The Ex share all. *Inhales* SO I always somehow disliked the ex share all since XY. I just have some weird thing that I want all my pokes to be at the same lvl, but in prior games it was hard to do with ex share all, because my starter would always be more lvl, and when I capture a new poke at lower lvl it would be difficult for me to lvl it up to the same lvl as the others. It was such a turn off for me. But this game, I feel like they did a good job! The pokemon who battles gain more exp than the others and the poke you capture in the wild are definitely at a lvl that is closer to your team. I didn’t get really overleved like I did in prior gens as well and I am thankful for that. I feel like they balanced it very well and I hope they keep this type of thing in the future.

No night/day cycle: During the main game, the night/day cycle is scripted lol Like you arrive in a town and it is sunset and it’s supposed to give us an atmosphere and a feeling of time passing and I think it’s interesting. It took me a while to realise that the time in the Wild area actually corresponds to your time zone in the Switch tho lol

The curry and camp are neat, but a part of me is sad that I can’t give my pokemon pats like in Pokemon refresh/amie or feed them food directly especially when there are scripts ingame before battling where the pokemon says they want to be petted. ;;

The story is almost non-existent. The villain is kinda predictable (Lysandre you have competition!) and it seems all to happen in the very last part of the main game. The pacing was kinda weird, and honestly, I am not sure I got all of the point the villain was going for, so I will digress on talking more about it. I know some people wanted a briefer from the last games (SUMO was super plot-heavy). And it gives us the chance to enjoy the games for only the Pokemon journey, it’s just felt kinda like something was missing for me because I am so used to the plots in the games tbh. I am not sure where they were going with it.

There is a story post-game...but well...idk what to say. These recent gens seems like there are no much post-game content, so idk what to say here. It’s not super fun, but it adds to the story and is enjoyable? It’s interesting I suppose, but just like the main plot, I am not sure where they were going with this as well lol It was nice seeing Hop getting involved into it though!

In brief, It was a good experience. Not the best, but definitely not the worst. To me the worst game was Pokemon Let’s go, and I am so glad SWSH didn’t beat it as the worst lol I honestly feel like I would have missed a fun experience if I had skipped SWSH.

 I just wish GF would have spent more time on it not gonna lie. Some parts really need to be more polished. And I hope in the future they will stop trying to produce a game a year and take more time to fully and comfortably polish their games, but maybe I am hoping for too much here.