#starters from my beloved gen 4 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

doubleddenden · 2 years

Text

Okay. I'm gonna do it. A full review of Scarlet and Violet where I break down everything good and bad I found with it. I'm not gonna hold back on either fronts, so there might be ranting and nitpicking and praise over the dumbest things.

If you disagree just scroll. I'm just a nobody and not worth arguing with. I'm making this, however, because we need real people's thoughts on this game since game reviewers are being paid to give it 8 or 9/10 while millions of players are pointing out the game crashing and game breaking glitches and rating as low as 3/10.

If a random nobody's opinion influences you, read on.

Now, more under the cut, and this may just be my lengthiest review yet:

I'm going to preface this by saying I have been a fan since gen 1, my first pokemon was Cyndaquil in Silver, my favorite game is Black 2, my least favorite game is BDSP, and my favorite pokemon is Corviknight. I loved pretty much every single pokemon game up until the Switch, where LGPE, base SwSh, and BDSP brought the franchise to absolute pathetic, soulless new lows- yet, Isle of Armor, Crown Tundra, and Legends Arceus renewed my love for the franchise.

That should tell you about the type of fan I am. You can trust I know what I'm talking about.

So how do I rate Scarlet and Violet? Basically I'd say that the best game in the franchise is being held back by... well, not being fucking finished. Bugs, glitches, clipping, slow downs- that's just on the programming angle btw. I still have things I dislike about it outside of those aspects.

Basically if it weren't for the glitches and if it were an actually finished game and not an over glorified beta/ desperate attempt to make that holiday cash, I could give it an easy and deserved 8 out of 10. But because of the very preventable errors that came from several companies deciding that the integrity of a game series much beloved by MILLIONS the world over was less important than lining their pockets, I have to give it a 5 until it's fixed.

That being said: I truly do enjoy the game. I really do. I think these truly could gave been my favorite games EVER if they just... just cared a little more.

Let's focus on the positives first:

The new Pokémon this gen are pretty great looking. Something I really disliked about Sword and Shield was that too many of their new Pokémon looked like canceled cartoons (Eiscue), scrapped Sly Cooper characters (Inteleon), non Pokémon like in general (Stonjourner), or just WAY TOO FUCKING HUMAN (Cinderace). Scarlet and Violet has designs that stretch across the board of being cool, cute, animal like, humanoid, and overall it's a very nice mix this go around. Even the humanoid ones look great because theyre just better designed and cool looking, and I can forgive the lack of natural or Pokémon aesthetics as long as it looks good- such as the case of Ceruledge, which looks so amazing to me despite definitely fitting in better in Megaman NT Warrior.

The starters I feel are way better than last gen and are just overall better quality than we've had in a long time- even though I didn't pick it, Skeledirge is the BEST fire starter we've had since Infernape, unless you count Hisuian Typhlosion. They're also way better balanced the likes we haven't seen since gen 4 with secondary types that actually allow them some wiggle room against their "stronger" rivals.

Not to mention the Pokémon have actual textures this go around that help make them look less plastic compared to past games. You'll see it in terms of fur or scales on some Pokémon- it's not perfect mind you, but it's a start! I think my favorite textures though are the Terrastilized textures. I LOVE Terrastilizing my Ceruledge to see that gorgeous red crystal wrap around it's ghostly blue flames.

Terrastilizing is also a pretty neat mechanic that doesn't really do too much besides change a Poke's type. I do miss some of the hyped designs of Megas and some Gmaxes, but we also didn't really need anything as complicated as those either. It works. It's not really my favorite and I'm not really a fan of silly hats, but I do like that it's pretty balanced overall.

Onto other things, let's get into the main draw: open world. Fans kept saying SwSh was open world- one Wild Area and several hallways in a very cramped and forced rail road progression do not make an open world. They said Legends Arceus was open world: a definite improvement, but you were still bound by progression to open sandboxes rather than them being a singular area.

This game is the real deal this time. Sure, levels aren't scaled with the player and you have to progress in the story to unlock certain Koraidon and Miraidon traversal abilities, but it really is a chance to do things how you want without annoying losers like Hop or Team Yell stopping you every 5 minutes to tell you you have to go left. I literally made my way to an area about level 40 to 45 while my team was around level 20 just so I could get items required to evolve my Ceruledge with just 2 badges- and I had more amazing times like this where I stumbled onto areas that were 10 to 15 levels higher than me and gave me thrilling challenges because of it.

An ice type gym leader, Grusha, actually gave me my first defeat in game in several years. Ice type. The glass cannons that go down if a feather touches them. And it was so satisfying to beat him not just by spamming A, but by actually requiring strategy and effective team work.

I encountered and CAUGHT a level 70 Terra Dragonite when I was still level 40 something, and definitely didn't have the badges to control it. But it was rewarding to just let me have a thrill like that! In SwSh, I could be 1 level shy and not be able to catch a Pokémon I can easily defeat because of its stupid system.

I think that the open world could have been done better and made more interesting, but for what it did, it did so, so fucking good. I love being hilariously unprepared for fights- it makes my victory much sweeter! I love being in areas I'm clearly not ready for and discovering weird things- I still am! And I'm in post game! I also love being presented with multiple routes I can take rather than 1 narrow hallway path- I could have gone to the Psychic gym town after getting the proper power ups for Miraidon, OR I could carefully map out and find a detour that let's me go another more accessible way.

It really does give me a sense of freedom I haven't felt from the games ever in my life like this. I sincerely hope that they don't abandon this style of world traversal, because this, I feel, is close to what I've always dreamed my ideal "BotW" Pokémon game would be. Close anyway. There's still leaps and bounds needed before I'm fully satisfied on that front, but it's a good start.

The stories in the game are also really fun and actually have effort put into them- I know I bash on SwSh a lot (and this won't be the last time because it was the last gen), but the fact they NAILED the ending and did not pull whatever tf Rose was up to was such a relief. Sure the gym challenge is pretty standard fair, but the Titan and Star stories were actually pretty neat. I genuinely thought Arven was going to be my least favorite character, but he ended up becoming one of my favorites because his motivations are very pure and understandable, and his background actually made me sympathize with him. I thought Team Star was just going to be another annoying Team Yell, but the fact that it wasn't even an evil team at all and the build up to the boss and reasonings for everything was actually very interesting and well handled- for Pokemon, anyway. And the final story? Suspenseful. I was literally on the edge of my seat. I actually cried a few times throughout Arven's story and the final one too.

And you know what? They somehow made me like an ass kissing weaker starter rival. All they had to do was sprinkle just enough yandere on Nemona to make her just a tad creepy and hilarious, and the dialogue options were GOLD. I even got attached to certain Pokémon like Miraidon, who really is just a large metal motorcycle doggo. It felt amazing watching him regain his strength and courage, and I finally care about a legendary as much as I do Nebby.

The photos of the badges are really fun, and I love that there's something for every type too. Maybe the gym leader was kinda eh, but the photos I have help keep it a memorable experience. The ending one especially had me smiling ear to ear.

As far as other things, I am glad to see they kept the move remember function from LA. It's so much simpler and easier than having to find a guy to do it for you, and that and the nicknames make sense anyway from an adventure stand point.

Another neat feature that isn't explained is the dex rewards. Not just from Jacq, but the pokedex itself will reward you for catching em all with more balls, items, etc. It's incredibly useful and motivating, and gives me a reason to capture all of those 300 Pokémon I already have

Lastly, the music- oh my god the music. Dynamic, diverse, fun! Explosive! Experimenting! I don't think there's a single track I dislike, and I still have Team Star's and the final boss battle stuck on loop in my head. The instruments sound like actual instruments this time and not just DS or 3ds holdover soundfonts like SwSh. Fuck it, I don't even like Ed Sheeran, but the song was still a lovely addition- still unclear how the lyrics fit, but it still sounded nice. Plus there's multiple fun wild pokemon themes.

And now that I've sung high praises... yep, time to absolutely tear the bitch apart. No mercy.

First, let's start with the things a patch will not fix:

Just like SwSh, a lot of things were removed.

Two options- Set and Battle Animations- were removed. I personally play with Set because I don't like having an unfair advantage, and I like the thrill of not knowing what's coming next. You could argue "lol just press B, stupid" but this is exactly the same issue that came with the forced EXP share in SwSh. "Just rotate your team" was the common phrase even by Ohmori, ignoring the bigger complaints- and although the EXP share is now somewhat balanced, I don't see how removing Set will ever benefit anyone, because now I always know what's coming next no matter what. I can't just ignore it either because my eyes do not work that way. Although I don't touch Battle Animations, I know plenty of people that like them off since battles can drag on with them on, and that's no exception here.

Although those are just two things so far, these things are just basic options in the settings menu. Now, most of Pokémon has been using the same system since around XY, with the biggest changes coming from LGPE and SwSh that bake in exp share. Moves are pretty much the same with a few exceptions, which means that the battle system is about the same too.

Why this matters is this: they *purposely* removed these features. This wasn't something just left out by accident, this was literally a purposeful choice. I can't personally see any reason this was done except to give a middle finger to certain people. I mean, SET especially. That's been a setting- not a feature, a SETTING since the gameboy days, and all it does is press B automatically on that front.

Now onto other things, they also removed a bunch of moves, abilities, and forms. Scald is now a signature move just for Volcanion instead of a convenient surf alternative. Greninja, while in the files, still has Battle Bonds, but the Ash Greninja transformation is gone. I really do not understand that because now it means the only games you can use it in are the Alola games. There's more obviously but I'd rather not list a book.

A big change was definitely the removal of actually being able to dress how we want. Disguise it as "lore appropriate" if you want, that doesn't really justify them SEVERELY limiting us to just 4 uniforms. Imo, only 1 looks good, and if you have Scarlet then you're stuck in that ATROCIOUS orange and white color scheme. Legends Arceus may not have had that much in terms of character customization besides period appropriate clothes, but there were options to experiment at the least. I'm just saying, it would have been nice to be able to mix and match and sort of defy dress code a little like Team Star does. Plus... I'm gonna be honest, I need someone to inform game freak that full length pants still exist and most of the world still has them. I hate exposed ankles and preppy shoes. It makes me look like a hipster dweeb.

As far as the rest, the "accessories" are pretty lukewarm tbh. I was expecting "accessories" to be like a hoodie underneath the uniform, some hair accessories, patches for clothes, etc, but it's really just an expanded gloves, shoes, hats, bags, and glasses option, like what SwSh had. Sure there's more on that front, like helmets, but with the four uniforms our options are still HARDLY unique.

I'm not going to forget the "most options we've ever had" for the face and hair, and honestly it still sucks. I found it very hard to find something that didn't outright make me look like a femboy or a small business lesbian. Nothing wrong if that's your vibe, but I prefer a vibe closer to the messy hair and boy options in SwSh. And don't get me wrong, it's great to be able to have all the same options girls do, but inclusion by omission isn't the way to go and more should be done on that front. Let boys wear skirts and short shorts and let girls have full length pants and boy hair cuts, and ffs let us have hair styles that aren't so... samey and plain. More eye options too, because I really do not like how our eyes look so big just to make us look even younger.

Imo the most likely reasons character customization is like this is either a time issue, a "lol its school so lore," issue they purposely set up to do less work, or they really, REALLY want to do away with CC all together and are using this as sort of a "soft" excuse to do it. "Oh, everyone hates it so they must not want it anymore lol" basically.

I have my nitpicks with the character design as well, but this is no longer about "things removed," and will be addressed in my nitpicks.

Now as for other things removed that affect actual gameplay, they removed the Shiny sparkle noise that was introduced in LA and made Shiny hunting much easier. I really don't understand this, especially considering some shinies like Cuphant and Garchomp are very hard to tell if they are shiny or not at a glance. This is doubly hard for Pokemon that are very small and hard to see without squinting. Another middle finger to fans of it? I really can't think of a reason except to artificially inflate the rarity of shinies again, and that's just shitty either way. One could argue that because of two separate teams, LA was the one that thought of it while it didn't come to the SV team- and yet the move relearning and free battle camera are exactly the same as LA. Therefore, there was a conscious decision, like Set, to remove it for reasons that are probably very stupid, dumb, and shouldn't have mattered when the jingle helped to identify one Garchomp from a shiny Garchomp and more.

Something else removed is the ability to just catch without having to initiate battle. Maybe it's just a Legends thing, but I somehow find it tedious to have to initiate battle with every single Pokémon I want to catch now. It's not entirely unforgivable, but it does slog on having to toss, battle, toss, battle instead of having to battle when you're caught.

Lastly, and definitely the biggest thing to me: the removal of the permanent TM. Sword and Shield (if I have to praise that pile of shit ONE MORE FUCKING TIME) at least had permanent TMs AND TRs that function as old 1 use TMs. The TM system they have now, imo, is just tedious. I have absolutely better luck just finding a random TM on the ground or just going by my team's natural moveset than I do actually saving up for these TMs that hardly benefit any of my team. LA had a better system of just being able to purchase the move to be tutored without the bs materials required. Plus just... it's pretty brutal when you think about it. Disgusting in others. Why tf do I need an entire bag pocket dedicated to carrying Shinx fangs, Drowzee fur, Etc? Why am I hitting these poor creatures hard enough to knock out teeth? If anything, I fucking hate that we've regressed from Gen 5's BEST contribution to the franchise. The simpler solution would have been to have TRs of any move you've seen be made into a single use TR for a reduced price OR a permanent TM for a higher price.

Let's move away from things removed. Let's just talk about things that aren't right or that i just don't like or find slightly annoying. We're not hitting bug territory yet.

Wtf is this game's obsession with SANDWICHES??? Sandwich stores, sandwich ingredients, sandwich mini game, your dragon loves sandwiches, your school sells sandwiches, your friends and teachers and NPCs talk about sandwiches so often, even the last photo in the game HAS A SANDWICH STICKER! And the thing is, there are other dishes in the game such as rice balls or ice cream- but MOTHER FUCKING SANDWICHES ARE THE END ALL BE ALL IN PALDEA! EAT SANDWICH! CONSUME SANDWICH! INTAKE THE SANDWICH!

On a mechanics note, I think the food mechanic is okay I guess, but they don't explain that you're selecting ONE SERVING and not just that many pieces of ingredients to put on the sandwich. This ends with a sandwich that's like BRICKS OF BACON BACON BACON CHORRITO BACON HAM HAM HAM BACON CHEESE CHEESE BACON CHEESE BACON. Plus, as my friend pointed out, WHY are we dropping these pieces onto the bread instead of carefully placing them? Why is an ingredient lost to the god damn void if it lands ON OUR PLATE??? Do our pokemon snatch it like untrained dogs? And the bonuses are hardly worth it in the end- least of all for wonky and very low effort animation that sometimes just doesn't work!

Speaking of picnics, I hate that they delegated the breeding mechanics to the picnic. I'm guessing GF is wanting to get away from it because they don't want to admit pokemon fuck or something, but they lay eggs, that's a thing that's been around for over 20 years at this point, and it's time to just accept it. But anyway, what's in the game sucks because of the WAITING. At least with past iterations of Nursuries, I could just ride my bike around and see the NPC make a gesture to tell me my pokemon laid an egg, and if it's taking a while, I could just leave them for a while while I fucked off to do something else for a bit. Here, you gotta make a picnic and wait for that to load, you probably should box your other 4 pokemon so they don't breed by accident (btw you don't just deposit the two you want to breed, you have to make room yourself for it), then you have to WAIT in the very small confines of your picnic table. This is so tedious and BORING. I could have hatched several eggs in the time it took to get ONE egg.

How would I fix this? JUST COPY AND PASTE THE NURSURY! They copied and pasted attacks and stuff, so they can do it. Why do we have to reinvent the god damn wheel? Just slap it in there! OR! Better yet, stream line it to have it delegated to a menu in a special box in the PC. Sort of like a battle box, but just for breeding. You could also go so far as to include incubator space for your eggs so you don't have to rearrange your team every time it's time to hatch. Put a Flame Body pokemon or something in there with it to help them hatch faster or something and to allow multiple, seamless hatches.

Moving on, the day and night cycle. I don't particularly hate the idea of in game days and nights going by faster, but I think it's just inconvenient as of right now. LA once again did it best by having the option to sleep through certain parts of the day so you don't have to wait for nightfall. Oh hey, another pointlessly removed feature.

Now for some nitpicks:

I do not like the camera. It cannot decide where tf it wants to be in battle and zooms way too close while traveling.

This game is in DESPERATE need of voice acting. There's so many cutscenes that are awkward lip flapping and especially towards the end where the gang is just talking- I almost missed some of what they said because I didn't see the text pop up.

I hate how boring most of the gym leaders are here. I was hoping for some shenanigans at least with Iono outside her gym battle but nope

The character art style in 3d particularly is okay but I'd rather us go back to less Detective Pikachu and New Snap and more LA

I don't like how most buildings and shops are just menus now instead of letting us explore little areas

I still hate this inferior trading system. Stop trying to push Pokémon Home on us and bring back in game GTS dammit, you block heads. It wasn't good in LGPE, it wasn't good in SwSh, it wasn't good in BDSP, just give us back the fucking GTS so I can stop asking random people online for help. Trying to find a Quaxly is a nightmare (I am aware of the Austin John codes, that's not a good solution and although I appreciate his efforts, an artificial solution does not work). Everyone is offering Sprigatito for Sprigatito and it's annoying. The surprise Trade is also somehow slower and more tedious.

The main character design overall just feels weird, especially the default boy that looks like someone shoved their shota fetish in. Even then, they describe the academy as a place for all ages, but we're 12? Or something? You'd think this would be the prime of all times to allow us different body types to customize or something. Theres clearly older students as well going as far as grandmas.

The weather is just irritating tbh. Why is it raining in the canyon area constantly? Why does it always rain in the central city during import cutscenes and make the game lag more? Fuck you if you want to use fire types I guess, because it rains every 5 minutes

Some of the "new" Pokémon should just be new forms. Regional variants, Paradox forms- I'm sorry but I don't care that convergent evolution is a thing, that applies to Pokémon like Tauros and Bouffalant or Heracross and Pinser- white Diglett is just white Diglett and the Paradox Donphans are just Donphans. Also, Pawmo is a useless design because it's just Pawmi but slightly taller. Stop padding your dex with bullshit to meet a quota. The designs are cool mind you, implementation is not.

The map design could use work. There's some interesting locations but most are pretty plain looking. Some sprucing up by adding palm trees at beaches, beach goers, some areas with glowing pokemon and lights, flowers- more work needs done in the future.

Gliding does not need a timer. I want to glide for long distances without falling. I really don't understand why this was added because even Braviary didn't have this issue in LA.

Perhaps the biggest nitpick I have that is ultimately of no consequence whatsoever is the choice of ending song. Don't get me wrong, I think Celestial is a decent jingle and I personally have no beef with Ed Sheeran, but what does the song have ANYTHING to do with the game? Was it "written for Pokemon" or did Pokemon just so happen to buy a song that just so happened to be finished but not published at the time? I feel like reception would have been better if it were sung by singers with actual connections to the series, like the anime openings in general, or by well known poketubers or singers in general from YouTube that need way more exposure. Instead they paid out way more for a mid singer to make a decent song that doesn't match the theme of the game at all. Like seriously, why not have a song about the past and future or something? For that matter why Ed? Why not a Spanish singer for the Spain region? It just seems pretty fake for Pokemon as a company to keep getting these random celebrities that have nothing to do or say about the series at all until they're being paid to say OMG I LOVE POKÉMON PIKACHU IS MY FAVORITE. It's disingenuous basically. If Ed were like "oh yes I like pokemon, my favorite game is Platinum and my favorite Pokémon is Lucario" or "My favorite game is Black 2 and my favorite Pokémon is Slowpoke" or something, I'd be more inclined to believe the hype, but as it stands alongside all the other celebrities, it just screams fake fan.

Anyway, back to the game, I think that covers most of what I dislike that has nothing to do with glitches or performance. There's probably more, but for now this seems enough. Reminder that I still like the game, but I'm not going to hold back on what bothers me.

And now I talk about glitches and performance. Pretty much everyone and their grandma have, but it needs to be pointed out until it's fixed.

I'm going to list everything I HAVE PERSONALLY encountered. If you somehow haven't encountered a single thing anyone else is talking about, 1. You're lying, 2. You have and just don't realize it, and 3. You're some special miracle child that needs to go buy a lotto ticket because that is highly unlikely.

Now, what I have personally encountered while playing:

Slow downs- slowdowns to the point that it takes 20 seconds to finish a jump. Slow downs to the point that I feel like I'm trying to emulate X on my laptop. Slowdowns that drag on and on to the point that it's 3x slower than it should be.

Somehow the game works better in hand held- not by a lot, but better. This tells me that they probably didn't spend a lot of time optimizing it for docked mode and literally developed it for hand held.

The world flickers. You notice it a lot for far away locations but even indie games don't have this issue. Sometimes it flickers black or it flickers blue. It's so frequent that I really am convinced that the game wasn't finished.

Wall clipping. Pokémon sometimes spawn INSIDE walls. This makes hunting a specific one annoying or avoiding them annoying, as you're hugging a cave wall to get around a Diglett and WHOA WALL SALANDIT. It's jarring to say the least and is not only immersion breaking but super, super low quality. You'll especially notice it in those tube caves around the mines. If you're not careful you're liable to fall through the entire world.

Landmass... swelling??? I really don't know how to describe it, but there's areas where I guess land doesn't load in until you're RIGHT THERE like 20 yards away, and it makes rocks, islands, and mountains feel like they're inflating right before your eyes.

Falling forever. This... idk how this happens but it's happened a few times. You fall off a mountain or into a river, and instead of landing, your animation is locked into falling. You can't open any menus btw so you can't warp away. You just have to sit there and wait or restart and lose progress.

Black screen. My friend also experienced this, and it's just when the game won't load. No indication that it's loading, no timer or bar to indicate how far along we are, and it might just not load. I waited 8 minutes for a single cutscene to load one time out of curiosity when this happened to me. My friend ended up having to quit and reload.

The eating animations just don't work sometimes

My pokemon sometimes takes on the texture of a nearby building. It'd be cool if it were intentional, but it's not.

Pokemon clipping through the floor- especially noticeable in gym fights

Sometimes my pokemon won't fight in LG mode. It's not a shiny, because I swapped to a different pokemon and suddenly it's killing and mayhem again.

The PC. Just. Yeah. Takes forever to load one box, then if you go to another it has to load that one, and if you go back it has to load that one again. It makes organizing so fucking tedious.

Picnics take forever to load

Massive stuttering, especially while capturing. Yall know that clip of Psyduck being captured and the whole background unloads and reloads? Happened to me but in a different area all together.

And of course, game crashes. I had 3, one of which was after a HEAVY slow down.

And there's more of course out there. I personally haven't done co op yet, so I'm just curious how bad that is after everything I've seen online of Dick Wigletts and models just going crazy.

As far as non game breaking performance stuff I hate:

Draw distance is still stupidly low. Higher than SwSh, but I should not be seeing grass and trees growing before my eyes.

Low frame rate for objects in the same area. I'm sure we all know about our 10fps classmates, but this also affects Pokémon that are clearly loaded in but jutting around like action figures. Windmills are especially noticeable, not winding or just having abysmally low fps when very close to them. Honestly how do you fuck up a WINDMILL? Thats SUPPOSED to spin and be visible from a distance.

Reflections. Just... Game Freak, do you not know how reflections work? Because that's not it sweeties. At all. It's especially noticeable at the very pit of Area Zero.

My Switch gets VERY hot running this game. It has no issues with BotW or XBC2. It's not a model issue because of the low draw distance, and again, those games rendered way more complex objects at a distance in comparison. I'm reminded of how SwSh apparently fucked up Roku tvs at launch. Like wow, I was actually concerned for a bit. Game Freak just does not know how to optimize.

That's about all I can think of right now but I feel like I'm forgetting something.

All I can think of is what this game could of been. It could have been my favorite next to LA and BW2 if stupid fucking rich people in suits gave a damn about the game beyond their holiday cash in.

You can observe this from various angles, but this is my take on the issues present in the game:

The game reportedly took about 3 and a half years to make, starting production close to LA according to leaks and datamines. Most of us can agree that they should probably get about 5 or 6 years per game. We know GF works with multiple teams on a project: I theorize roughly 3. Team A is for new gens, Team B is for enhancements, and Team C is more of a fuck around team for games like Arceus or remakes. That's just on the Pokémon angle, because we know they have the Gear Project and like to work on other projects despite not having the manpower- because they really thought Little Town Heroes would be bigger than Pokémon. At the very least, it doesn't appear that we had a side project to blame for detracting from the main game like LTH did to SwSh.

But I'm going on a tangent. SV and LA clearly needed more time in the oven (and I'd argue more time debugging).

However, the belief is that GF is being bullied around by TPC and Nintendo to produce a new game every year and a new gen every 3 years to keep up with everything else going on around the franchise.

TCG

Anime

Manga

Plushies

Toys

Clothes

Merch

Music videos

And way more.

Each new gen serves as the spearhead for everything else the franchise does until the next gen- which for the last 9 years as of writing this has been consistently every 3 years.

In other words, the belief is that if Game Freak has to delay, TPC and Nintendo loses a LOT of money in delaying everything else and pisses off shareholders.

I somewhat buy into this theory, but I refuse to believe the people in charge of GF are being bullied into it. It's much more likely that someone in management, producing, and directing are writing checks their teams are struggling to cash. GF has a big turnover rate, and employees have described the environment as basically not being able to move up by merit alone while promotions go to people the higher ups like personally instead.

In other words, too many "yes men" are saying "yes we can make a huge game like Legends Arceus in 3 years. Oh, we also have to release a new mainline title? Yes, we can do that! No no no, don't worry, it'll be done by then!"

And again, this is just me guessing and theorizing and I by no means have inside information. However, this seems the most likely answer to me. Imo there was a significant drop in quality from one game to the next when we hit 3d, and especially in games directed by Ohmori where there's so many corners cut, he may as well be the antithesis to a Wendy's hamburger (their motto is no cut corners, hence the square patties- get the joke? Okay moving on). He's most likely not the sole person to blame here, but rather one of many "yes men" that do not want to give their higher ups a wrong answer.

I will say that LA (directed by Iwao of USUM fame) and SV are absolutely progressive for the franchise in so many ways, but most of the community agrees that they are not living up to their potential- and the sad thing is, they're probably already planning a Let's Go Johto game (like USUM, the words Let's Go! are directly in the game and there are many gold and silver items to buy) and eventually gen 10 to come out within the next 3 years already.

I could sit here and talk about or theorize all the ways they could give themselves more time, but the reality of it is this: pokemon is a product, not your neighbor you grew up with or the mom and pop shop you go to to support them, and they are definitely not indie (hasn't been since gen 3 I'd argue but I'm willing to push as far as gen 6). New gens especially are just commercials for merch for the rest of the franchise. No matter what, the games will make about 5 times their initial investments back- it literally sold 10 million copies in Japan in the first 3 days alone. Boycots don't work because it's literally too big to fail. Seriously, I saw a guy who literally went out of his way to collect multiple copies of each game from around the world for collection purposes- that alone gave TPC about $1k probably. Not to mention scalpers.

So the best thing people can do, imo, and especially reviewers, is to grade HARSHER on the games. The only way they'll learn is if there's enough back lash- remember dexit? That's how we got 250 pokemon added back in after the initial 400. Even if you love it, point out what could be better, no matter how small, and point out every glitch you encounter. They have to do something different for the next gen, because at this point the next gen will be even buggier on the next Nintendo console.

And again, I know nobody from GF reads this, but I'll say it anyway: NOW is the time to negotiate for more time. Not 2 months before release, NOW is while gen 10 is still in development. Push for 5 years minimum, and let some other studios fill in the gaps in the mean time. I know for damn sure a Colosseum 3 or a side game in a similar vein developed by another studio would more than keep me and the super fans occupied for a while.

But. Reviewing SV as they are now... 5/10 seems fair. Listen, I love the game and I think it is super duper ambitious and fun when it works- but the glitches and performance are so distracting that it breaks my immersion. The graphics are close to being good but NEED so much polish. Even with all of my nitpicks, I would have gladly given this an 8/10 if only it were FUCKING FINISHED.

But alas, it's not. It's released and I'm more than sure some business men who couldn't give a shit about the actual game or fans are saying it's perfect, but it's not finished. Several million people basically got a glorified beta game thinking they'd patch it day 1.

That being said, and I fully acknowledge I am a pessimistic POS that assumes the worst in everything, so this is surprising coming from me: a patch is most likely coming. This is THE new gen game, meaning this is what's going to go for competitive and World tournaments. Rn there's exploits to make OKO moves like Sheer Cold have 100% accuracy and it's not due to an ability like No Gaurd. That, and it's pretty much guaranteed that they're going to add DLC to expand on the story- too much in the game is pointing to that. Nintendo also has been forced to give out refunds- pokemon seemingly being one of the few games that make them break their no refund policy, something I'm sure they're unhappy about as publisher. It is within their best interest and ours that, especially for gameplay and tournament purposes, they patch and finish on the performance end. Visuals will probably still be fucked, but even SwSh got patched eventually. This isn't a situation they can run from like LA, it's something they are probably required to fix. Hell, a sound designer from the game found out about the E4 music glitch, so I think they have to be aware.

But pessimism aside, I do want to thank the people at Game Freak that tried their best to create something incredible. Behind all the business politics and corners cut by higher ups, there are solid ideas all around, and an amazing, heart felt attempt at a story and pokemon designs once more. This is by no means directed at the assholes that inflicted crunch times or approved of releasing the game in this state mind you. Those people deserve to be fired and never allowed near the franchise again.

So yes. 5 out of 10 for now, fix the performance and it'd be an easy 8.

Hopes for the next game: I know I said that the open world was a good "start" for the franchise, but GF has this issue where every game has a mediocre but good "start" to something they hardly improve on.

Oh, the graphics in LGPE were bland but its a good start for the next game!

The Wild Area is boring and lifeless- but it's a good start for the next game!

The DLCs vastly improved on the exploration- it's a great start for the next game!

LA gave us so much freedom to explore- it's a great start for-

You see my point. SV gave a great start for open world exploration, but I just really want them to NAIL it for once. There's clearly someone on the inside that gives a shit- maybe not the higher ups, but there is someone that does. I want them to keep trying their best to improve on what we have.

That's another thing: let's try to not regress and try not to come up with another useless gimmick. I say the next gen or next game just needs to focus on improving what we have now instead of trying to come up with what comes after Terrastilizing.

Seriously, just polish the graphics, no new gimmicks, get the game working and prioritize optimization. Do what went right with SV and LA again. That's all we need.

As far as other things, maybe base the next region in Australia? Prime candidate for open world with lots and lots and LOTS of unique pokemon species. I don't want to see it for 5 years though because I want it to be rich with diverse biomes and exploration and better graphics.

And ffs just give us better character customization. This was piss poor.

And for the next game- which I sincerely hope isn't just LG Johto because I HATED LGPE- just go ahead and delay. We know you want to come out in 2 years, make it 3 instead.

Honestly just optimize SV, add updates and FREE DLC to it (seriously, they owe us), expand the story, maybe add in a couple of new quests and pokemon, do something with that unused area in the NE area of the map or add in something like the Canary Islands, or hell, past and future versions of the region we have now, and that will keep us occupied.

Just. Finish your god damn games. This is inexcusable of the world's richest franchise. Finish your fucking games. SV were so fun but they aren't finished. FINISH THE FUCKING GAME.

#pokemon #pokemon scarlet and violet #den reviews stuff

5 notes · View notes

decepticon-nerd · 2 years

Text

My problem with Pokémon right now is that most of these past generations (SwSh, BDSP, and now SV) have been hyped up to the degree of making you want to shell out between $60.00-$120.00 USD but have come out quite lackluster, but by the time you find that out, Pokémon, Game freak, Nintendo, whoever the hell owns it now. They've already made that money.

I'm gonna gripe about them and this is my personal opinion. I will state now that I am a long time fan of Pokémon; the first game I played was Gold and the first game I bought for myself was Diamond. I am old enough to remember when Black and White 1 had commercials on TV (which is saying something because my memory is atrocious) and I've played at least one game from every generation.

In other words my post is probably gonna be biased.

I had some fun playing Sword and Shield. The plot was decent enough to keep me interested, as were the cool designs of a handful of new Pokémon. Snom, Obstagoon, and Corviknight are my favorites from that generation, probably. The starters are all lackluster and I usually shove them in my box after catching something else. And in terms of designs, can someone please tell me what the fuck Pokémon was thinking when they made Swordward and Shieldbert?

The wild area we were promised wasn't as expansive as we thought, the weather feature was weird as heck, the render distance was abysmal. So they release a DLC for the Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra. Genuinely love the DLC and how much more you can explore. I don't remember how much the DLC was, but it was like.. $30.00 USD or something to get both of them.

The DLC gave us back one beloved feature that the game devs have failed to provide since Gen 4. Pokémon could walk with us again. You could only walk with them on the Isle or in the Tundra, though. I essentially payed $30.00 for one of my favorite features and said feature ran like shit. My Golisopod walked at a treacherously low speed and I outpaced it by walking. Not to speak of your faster Pokémon that sprinted at you with malicious intent every five seconds if you didn't outpace it.

I don't remember if Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu came out before or after this, but the feature worked perfectly in those games (to my knowledge; it's been a while!) Unless your Pokémon got stuck on something.

The plot of Sword and Shield was kept hidden from us really until the very end. The "big bad team" we got were insignificant flies that tried to trip us up every step of the way. And the Team Yell admin was literally just another gym challenger. I love Marnie and I love Piers but I don't think Team Yell was plot relevant, just extremely annoying.

The games going oh here's this evil team leader BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE started in Sun and Moon but I think it worked there purely because that was new. It was new, it was unique, it was done well, and Guzma got to call us idiots. They keep trying to do that now in different ways and it just doesn't hit for me. I want to go back to one super bad team (or two, in an Aqua Magma scenario) where they try to bring back an ancient deity and everything goes to shit. That's what Pokémon was.

BDSP was literally a copy paste of the file data from DP because there's apparently a bug present in BDSP that was patched in Platinum. Also, it's apparently super easy to a void glitch now, and you can fly on a surfing bidoof. And you can soft lock yourself in the ice gym. There's so many other bugs but those are the ones I remember.

My biggest gripes about the game are the fact that I payed double now what I did for the originals in the past for what was essentially the exact same thing with a few extra bells and whistles (and bugs), and whatever the fuck this was supposed to be.

Garchomp is supposed to be intimidating, and I guess from an in game view that would be, but I just stared at it going what the fuck did they do to him. He's t-posing. At least he keeps up with the player I guess. Not to mention all the models are miniscule. Rayquaza looks like a worm following the player.

And speaking of intimidating, what in god's name did they do to Cyrus.

I'm supposed to be intimidated by this emotionless man but he looks like a chew toy.

I love Diamond and Pearl. I hate having to tear a remake of it down like this. My disappointment was immeasurable, to be sure. I waited so long for a remake and we got this joke. Nothing changed. Yeah the underground is bigger, but what about the special gimmicks? No mega evolution, no dynamax?

And I don't think anyone has really talked about it because we immediately got Legends Arceus out and I will say right now I have put an ungodly amount of hours into that game and still haven't beaten it because Munchlax fucking sucks to find. I know where to find it, it just hates me. Yeah the Pokémon don't follow you, but that's probably preferable to them not being able to keep up. My favorite things about the game were that Pokémon actually got near each other in battle to hit each other, and that to could spam Pokéballs and not fight. Pokémon felt like a proper threat. You had to dodge them to stay alive.

It felt like a proper Pokémon game again, with one bad guy (in this case Volo) trying to end the world just so he can see God because he's too much a fangirl. The game revamped old characters, brought back a familiar face (Ingo my beloved) and gave us a plot worth fighting for. I tell you I squealed when the player got exiled and I was immediately brought back to PMD. Sure there were the bandit sisters, and again, the devs led us to believe they were the bad guys in advertising but they were just stupid pests that had no idea what they were doing.

My favorite things were immediately taken away in Scarlet and Violet. Yeah it's an open world. It's expansive. It's fun. Pokémon still run at you. I can't jump out of the way anymore, I have hop on my bike god and drive away. You can sneak, but what's the point when you have to battle the Pokémon to catch it anyway? Pokémon are practicing social distancing again, apparently. The sprites don't get near each other to attack anymore.

And the designs oh God the designs.

Dunsparse can evolve! He just gets longer and gets a pointier chin. What's Pawmi evolve into? Oh, it just stands up and gets anime hair. Speaking of anime hair, Primape apparently cosplays Dragon Ball Z when it dies. Lechonk was cute, I bet it evolves into something cool. Nope, just a slightly bigger pig with mascara. The pseudo-legendary is a joke among Gods. Cetoddle is cute, and Cetitan would be cool if it's mouth wasn't above its eyes. Love the fact that we have a mimic now. You need 999 gold coins to evolve it into a Dammit Doll. Half the Pokémon have a plastic face glued on a round orb of a head with zero protruding facial features like, I don't know, a snout or a nose? There's a flamingo that's just a flamingo, nothing special about it. Also we apparently get to fight literal cars and engines now! Have we reached the point of Pokémon Gun?

Not to mention that Pokémon following is back! It sucks again. Lots of Pokémon can't keep up with the player or Miraidon (I have Violet.) Meowscarada apparently has the zoomies and might be the exception.

SV: How many technical issues do you want us to have

Game Devs: Yes

They're also doing the misleading bad guy plot again and I can't tell if I should trust Turo or not. I haven't even physically met him in game yet.

The game has potential. I am just so unbelievably disappointed that the devs hid the pathetic Pokémon they were creating until leaks came out. I didn't think half the leaks were real, they all looked so farfetched. My team has ended up comprised almost entirely of old Pokémon that I treasure. That being said, all of them were hard to find so I basically played the entire game with just Meowscarada (because I've found that I don't hate it that much in motion) and Talonflame. My favorite Pokémon Absol isn't even in the game. I doubt we're ever getting the Nat Dex back, which means I can't play with all my old Pokémon friends together anymore.

I don't know how many more new Pokémon games I'm going to play. I feel like I've been let down too many times recently. I'm almost done with Violet, I think, because I never do the dex anyway. I'll catch my version exclusives and give them to my friends but when I beat the game I can't say if I'll pick it up again or not. And if I do, it might be solely so I can watch what's his name heal his dog with herbs again.

#pokemon #pokemon sword #pokemon shield #pokemon brilliant diamond #pokemon shining pearl #pokemon legends arceus #pokemon scarlet #pokemon violet #spoilers #im so tired of having games hyped up just for them to let me down #in the next game. devs. please design things that don't look like a child's playdough creation

6 notes · View notes

alphakuriboh · 2 years

Text

MAN I love gen 4. Hoo boy. We’re getting into the areas of my very strong opinions.

S Tier - Piplup my beloved original first starter and first Pokémon plushie ever. Satrapy or the best bird. The Shinx line is flawless. Rosemead’s just hits for me better than the rest of its line. Pachirisu is probably my favorite of the pika-clones, both design and usability. I fucking love Drifloon. Mismagius and Honchkrow are two of the best line additions. Chatot my boombursting bird badass. My Garchomp line that @crystalelemental can’t appreciate. Togekiss my Serene Grace Queen. Gallade the superior Ralts evo in all its Yugioh-duel-disk meme glory. Mespirit is the best of the trio, fight me. Giratina my favorite legendary of all time, just above Rayquaza. Cresselia the gorgeous. HEDGE HOG BABY. So many Pokémon that really do it for me.

A Tier - Couldn’t totally overpopulate S lol. A lot of stuff from the same lines as Pokemon in S. Bidoof is adorable. Delelelele whoooooop. I quite like the Rampardos line. Cherubi and Cherri are great. Shellos is adorable (even if I like the blue one more). Overall a lot of really solid designs that I really really like.

B Tier - Good designs, things that have grown on me or that I look at and go “Yeah I like that”.

C Tier - Meh.

D Tier - There are a few monkeys I like, but the Infernape line aren’t some of them. The Burmy stuff is annoying for no reason. Floatzel looks dumb, mega Abomasnow looks dumber.

E Tier - Yeah you three weren’t needed to add on to lines. Sorry.

Fuck You - Join your mini version, bitch.

#pokemon regional tier list #pokemon #kuri babbles #I do really like most of the gen 4 pokemon! no wonder I’m still so attached all this time later.

9 notes · View notes

gnzma · 3 years

Text

meme: favorite pokemon list

What’s your favorite pokemon from all eight generations? Tag your friends and find out!

Tagged by: i was told to steal it B) Tagging: continue the cycle of crime

Starters -

Generation 1 - Bulbasaur my beloved

Generation 2 - Chikorita but tbh all three of them are very good

Generation 3 - Torchic

Generation 4 - Turtwig, and while I’m at it Torterra best Starter

Generation 5 - Snivy

Generation 6 - Fennekin

Generation 7 - Rowlet

Generation 8 - Grookey

Legendaries -

Generation 1 - Zapdos

Generation 2 - Suicune

Generation 3 - Deoxys

Generation 4 - Giratina, aka beset Legendary

Generation 5 - Victini

Generation 6 - Yveltal

Generation 7 - Tapu Koko

Generation 8 - Kubfu

Other ‘Mons -

Generation 1 - Gengar, the Ultimate FAvorite

Generation 2 - Girafarig

Generation 3 - Gardevoir

Generation 4 - Luxray

Generation 5 - Cofragigus

Generation 6 - Aegislash

Generation 7 - Golisopod

Generation 8 - Drednaw

Selective -

Pseudo-Legend - Dragonair and Dragonite

Eeveelution - Sylveon, aka best gen 6 lad

Starting Bird - Rookidee, because Corviknight is bae

Starting Bug - Caterpie

Starting Rat - Galarian Zigzagoon, but also I’m attached to Rattata

#❌|| ʏᴀ ɢɪʀʟ ɢɪᴏ 💀 ooc ||❌

2 notes · View notes

echoeternally · 5 years

Note

Sorry if this seems like alot, but what are your thoughts on each these pairings that my friends I and ship Torterra/Altaria Lucario/Zoroark Luxray/Pyroar Infernape/Empoleon Banette/Gengar Milotic/Serperior

It’s funny that there are 6 pairs, because this makes me feel like it’s 2 trainers that are like, “Are these Pokémon compatible?” and totally not trying to admit that they’re crushing on each other, and it’s not the Pokémon at all. Or maybe bonus points if it’s actually everyone. I’m not allowed to ship freely.

Anyway! Let’s see what’s what.

Torterra/Altaria - Probably easily the strangest one of the bunch, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen them paired off, nor can I immediately think of something that relates to them. I do like that it’s a land continent Pokémon that gets paired off with dragon cloud, that sounds cute in concept. I feel like you could come up with all kinds of land prone one wanting to fly and be above with high-flying partner, or maybe it’s an airhead who’s so far up in the clouds and wants to come down to the earth. It’s got potential for its uniqueness alone, and I like that, so, valid couple here!

Lucario/Zoroark - I don’t feel like you’d need my thoughts on this pairing. For couples based on Pokémon, these two are, in my mind, among the most popular. It’s always felt like the Pokémon version of pairing the furry fandom’s wolf and fox couples: literally everywhere, always beloved, and comes with several many colors and variations. Obviously, it’s a functional ship.

Luxray/Pyroar - This feels like it’d be a more common pairing, but I tend not to see them as much. It’s kind of weird, but I feel like Pyroar gets shafted in general; I don’t know if that’s because it was reserved as Lysandre’s signature face-Pokémon, which Mega Gyarados tends to double for, or if people just don’t like them. Anyway, I have friends that like these two as well, and I think it’s like a big cat / lion couple, so it works in my book.

Infernape/Empoleon - Pretty sure that this must be a pair that people like, though I think both Gen 4 and Gen 5 starters are shafted overall, no matter how you slice it. Considering that both are more popular than Torterra, I’d wager they’re paired off every so often. Still, I think they tend to do better when they’re not with each other, simply because people like the two with similar types (Infernape with monkeys or fire folks, Empoleon with birds). I think it still has underrated qualities to it, and I like the idea of it. Then again, I tend to like Fire/Water mixes, so, maybe I’m not the best for that.

Banette/Gengar - Sinister vibes are just flooding from these two. Maybe we shouldn’t pair them off, because I feel like that’s asking for lots and lots of trouble. Ghouls that are just ready to absolutely cause a bad day for anyone that so much as looks at them funny. Yikes! …But…Banette is an abandoned toy, and Gengar is a shadow. This could actually come up with a really tragic and heartwarming couple, since they’d both feel damaged or forgotten about, and therefore be the two most capable of showing love for one another. The hurt/comfort angst to fluff potential they have just skyrocketed for me. I think this is my favorite on this list!

Milotic/Serperior - Snob serpents. They’re both elegant and regal as hell, and both look down on anyone else that doesn’t even attempt to hold a candle to their brilliance. You think your pairing is anything as wonderful as theirs? Please! In all seriousness, they seem like a cute idea, a good departure from Milotic getting paired off with Gyarados, and hits the Water/Grass combo that I like too. Plus, Serperior’s a lot smaller, so I feel like Milotic would think it’s cute, and Serperior would finally be in a position where they’re that much shorter than the one they’re paired with. Potentially hilarious, probably adorable.

Overall, I think they’re all valid pairings. More over, most are pretty agreeable couples, since I think you could get other people to look at them and go, “Yeah, I could see that happening,” so, they should work pretty well together. Enjoy!

#askecho #nortor27 #pokemon pairings #pokemon #valid ship #all of them

5 notes · View notes

pidgey--propaganda · 5 years

Text

Hello!

My name's Dyl and I've just started this blog by the recommendation of @stufful-propaganda, who turned me onto this entire community. Obviously, this blog is in honor of my one true favorite and bestest boy, Pidgey, the *real* star of the Kanto region. It was also suggested to me, again by Stufful, that I tell the story of why precisely Pidgey is my favorite pokémon

I'm young. I just got the ability to vote in the US last September. And when I was a kid, in third grade, it was the OG 151. Fire Red and Leaf Green were incredibly popular in my school, and Johto's lineup had yet to reach our minds and ears. For my seventh birthday, my family gifted me my very first video game, Pokémon Fire Red for the GBA, and I chose Bulbasaur as my starter. I liked the cut of his gib. He was wonderfully round and I liked his smile.

Now, for those of you who got interested in Pokémon closer to the introduction of Gen 4 and Sinnoh, there was this thing we had to do before wireless connection was an option. Ot was called a Link Cable, and it was WAAAAAAY too complicated for third graders, and only the rich kids had them. One such kid, let's call him Leon, cause that's his name and he's a SCOUNDREL, told me that trading and battling was available through the link cable.

This blew my adolescent mind. I had no idea. And he had asked for a favor. If he could borrow my Bulbasaur for the first gym (which, as you may recall, was Brock) since he chose Charmander. He promised to give me back my Bulbasaur when he was done.

I agreed. To be *kind*. And he beat the gym. And you know what he did next? He turned away from me in the bus seat and cried when I tried to get my Bulbasaur back, and his mom called my mom and said I was bullying Leon.

Unacceptable.

But I lost my very first starter, and I had only caught one other pokemon at the time.

I'll give you one guess as to the pokemon it was.

So I trained that eyebrow bird. I trained that beautiful feathered companion HARD. I grinded. Of course, I caught other pokemon along the way, but none were as important to me as my Pidgey. Nothing could come close.

I beat every gym with that Pidgey at the front of my team. I didn't even have time to learn the names of the elite 4 before my glorious graceful bird lord destroyed them, heart and cinder.

But there was one more challenge to overcome.

Leon didn't want to give up his link cable if it meant achieving justice through peaceful means. He didn't want to return my beloved Bulbasaur. But he was keen on utilizing its abilities to pit his Charizard and his Venasaur against my Pidgey. My wonderful, miraculous little bird.

And you know what?

They were no match.

My Pidgeot CONSUMED THE SOULS of Leon's ENTIRE team. He beat everything Leon could throw. He defeated MY starter pokemon.

But Bulbasaur wasn't my starter. Not really.

My true starter was Pidgey. Pidgey stuck by me, and always has. In Kanto, in Johto, in Kalos and even in Alola. He's been by my side.

That is why Pidgey is my favorite pokemon.

As I wrap everything up, I also wanted to say hi to @pidgey-propaganda and apologize if I'm stepping on any toes, as well as @rowlet--propaganda and @charjabug-propoganda because both Rowlet and Charjabug are VERY good boys and these two are correct to love them.

Alright! I hope to see y'all around!

#intro #pidgey

15 notes · View notes

mrnerdteacher · 6 years

Text

Welcome, Grookey, to the Honorable Fraternity of Under-Appreciated Starters

As Gita Jackson so aptly said on Kotaku, upon the reveal of the “Sword” and “Shield” starting Pokemon:

“People are already picking favorites. I love Scorbunny, though I also have a soft spot for Sobble. Grookey is also present.” Yes, if memes are indeed an expression of fan-love, it would seem that people are not overly “fauna” of the newest addition to the “grass type” family. But fear not, little guy; you are at least in good company. Here, submitted for your collective disapproval, are the most overlooked/undervalued starter Pokemon from each generation.

Gen 1: Bulbasaur

Having two brothers when the o.g. Pokemon released, we each, through no prior agreement or instruction, picked a different starter. The oldest picked Charmander, the youngest Squirtle. I, also the under-loved middle child, chose Bulbasaur. No regrets, but it always kinda bothered me that this meant I didn’t get to have my final evolution on the face of the game box. I knew that in Japan it was Blastoise who got the cold shoulder, but that did little to appease 12 year old Jeremy. Maybe the recent trend of pro-Bulbasaur Propaganda would have helped, although it’s a few decades late imho.

Gen 2: Cyndaquil

At first glance there are no clear losers, which might be part of the reason why this set is widely regarded as the best of all time. However, as teenagers, my brothers and I were always disappointed in final stage of the fire starter, Cyndaquil. For comparison, Croconaw becomes a bad-ass alligator, and Bayleef a flower-maned brontosaurus. But the forgettable Quilava just kinda stands up. If you think I’m exaggerating, imagine having clay sculptures of the middle evolutions, and realize how much less work it would take to reform it into Typhlosion. Kinda too easy, right?

Gen 3: Mudkip

There’s a reason only one of these evolution lines got snubbed by the Pokken Tournament organizers. You’ve got a gecko, a chicken, and a… what even is that, anyway? Turn out he’s based on an Axolotl, which is at the top of zero “favorite animal” checklists. No wonder, Urban Dictionary lists the phrase “So I Herd you Leik Mudkipz” as an insult.

Gen 4: Chimchar

My first instinct was to go with Turtwig, as I feel his evolution line is the hardest for people to remember, but then I realized that Gen 4 was the origin of Fire/Fighting Fatigue. It’s now a running joke in the Pokemmunity that every fire starter will end as a yawn-inducing Fire/Fighting anime cliche, and it wasn’t until Infernape pulled off the hat trick in this generation that people really caught on/got salty. Thanks a lot, guys.

Gen 5: Oshawott/Tepig Can I be honest for a second? This is the only Gen in the series I never played, so I’m a little torn on this one and would love some feedback. Tepig definitely seemed to be the most boring design of the three (his name is one letter away from Tepid, for Christ’s sake), but I think Oshawott’s final evolution is kinda lost in the sands of time. I’m just ruling out Snivy because he was so beloved at his reveal that some, like Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft, still prefer his fan-given pseudonym, Smugleaf. I happen to agree.

Gen 6: Chespin Another tough call, but here’s my logic: Greninja is such a beloved ‘Mon that he plays major roles in both Smash Bros and the upcoming Detective Pikachu movie. I also eliminated Fennekin because of Japan’s endless love for foxes and Braixen’s endlessly adorable inclusion in Pokken Tournament. Chespin, as much as I thought his design was a breath of fresh air after way too many “flower dinosaurs,” just doesn’t have the clout. Plus, Louise Belcher wears it better.

Gen 7: Popplio

When Pokemon Sun and Moon were revealed, the disdain for this clown-seal was immediate and intense. People thought he looked too silly, too cute, too ugly; you name it. Furthermore, the devs faced actual backlash from the fandom, and responded to multiple interviews in which they were asked, “How does it feel to know people hate Popplio so much?”, making him the ultimate underdog/puppy-thing. At least his evolution line gets the last laugh by turning into a magical underwater opera singer. Litten’s final stage is so predictable and Bro-y it actually made my wife NOT pick the cat starter, which says a lot (trust me).

Gen 8: Grookey

Which of course, brings us to today, where this “curious, tricky bastard” rates a solid Shrug-and-a-half on the MEH scale. But don’t worry, little guy. You’ll always have a place on my team. My older brothers already picked the cooler ones anyway. :-P

#pokemon #Pokemon Detective Pikachu #Detective Pikachu #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon sword #pokemon shield #nintendo #nintendo swtich #switch #video games #gamer #gaming #meme

10 notes · View notes

ghostmartyr · 6 years

Text

Pokémon White Randomized Nuzlocke Run [Part 1]

This is going to be a first in many ways for me. I’ve never done a proper Nuzlocke, I’ve never played any of these on a PC before, and my only previous experience with liveblogging belongs to things I’ve watched.

For people who aren’t familiar with Nuzlocke, here are the basic rules copied from Bulbapedia:

Any Pokémon that faints is considered dead, and must be released or put in the Pokémon Storage System permanently.

The player may only catch the first Pokémon encountered in each area, and none else.

Other rules that I’ll be using:

Each pokemon must be nicknamed.

If the first pokemon in an area is a species I’ve already caught, the first one that isn’t will become the catch option.

The catch rules start applying once I have the option of catching things.

No looking anything up on guides.

Team wipe means continuing on using whatever I have in the PC.

For added fun, all starters and wild pokemon are random. The rest of the game is as it is normally (or should be if I did this right), but considering how many years it’s been since I’ve played this version, that means very little to me except that gyms are going to have consistent typing, probably.

I think that’s it, so awaaaaay we go!

I neglected to screencap the dear professor because of course I did, but this generation’s tree name is Juniper. Hi Professor Juniper.

Thank you, I chose it partially myself.

See that? Two best friends I don’t know and didn’t bother taking screenshots of.

I don’t think I’m going to do a whole lot of commentary on things that aren’t related to the pokemon I get. I’m always pretty bad about paying attention to the plot of these games, which means maybe I should have picked a different gen for this, but yeah. I am here for the critters. The humans are boring.

(Cheren and Bianca are pretty nice, actually. I like how as the games go on they seem more and more interested in giving you good friends.)

So, the time has come for the randomizer’s first spin!

Let’s see what we’ve got...

That one’s out. Where’s the fun in picking a starter for a randomized run? Plus it’s already evolved. Part of the enjoyment is watching these things grow.

I’m going to go with probably not.

...

I think so.

I’m going to eat you alive.

That’s what I thought, anyway.

This is where, despite just starting, I got myself into trouble and had to start over. By which I means Psywave’s irregular damage meant that the Patrat murdered me. Legendary starter vs. Route 1 HM slave. The outcome could not be more obvious.

I’ve made the snap judgment that the catching rules might not be in effect yet, but the fainting rules are, so I restarted.

Then I realized that oh, because of how I’ve set things up, yes, it’s randomized from the original choices, but the same starters are still available. I also realized that I am far too interested in playing to really care that I’ve already botched this run, so whatever. Onward! Together we shall defeat the wretched Patrat and save the day!

Cue Psywave doing even less damage than last time.

While the Patrat just spams Leer.

All it needed to do was select Tackle once, and I could say goodbye to Latios, but thankfully, it did not do that, so we get to move forward a single step!

I appreciate I’m doing this the day after my dog got ink all over my carpet.

Next fight... go!

I can’t remember if Meganium has Poison typing to go with Grass. I’m leaning towards no, but hoping for yes, because I don’t really want to restart again. That would mean having to deal with figuring out the right randomizer settings, and please consider that I do not want to. We’ve got to pull through on this.

That’s... a good start?

I believe in you, currently unnamed Latios.

I can’t wait to find out if this is one of the versions that has you take poison damage outside of battle or not. I don’t think I will enjoy that. Watch, the first pokemon I catch will die because I have no antidotes and am too many steps away from a center.

Victory against Cheren achieved! With another nonexistent screencap because I am unprofessional as all heck. Yay for gratuitous amounts of exp because Meganium isn’t something level 5s usually fight!

It’s nice that my mother in this game is so understanding.

I see, so if they can’t stop you from going out in the wild grass, they’ll just inject plot to keep you from immediately running out the door. Geez I hope I get running shoes soon. I feel so slow.

I can’t remember what kind of jerk dad Bianca’s father is, but I do remember not liking him and very much liking the Electric gym leader.

It’s true, in an alternate universe that never happened she and her Patrat beat me up and I was very sad.

Loudly. Do not like.

Hi fellow kids.

The time to receive our permission to leave the town (aka pokedex) has come, but more importantly, it’s time for Latios to get his very own nickname! That’s how you know the difference between this one and the exact copy that died to a Patrat!

In the spirit of being uncreative, Latios’ new name is Boeing. Long may the two be attached to each other.

Every Pokemon game ever, until the end of time.

Bianca you are so cute. I sure hope nothing bad or inconvenient ever happens to you during the plot. Can you imagine how sad that would be for you and your bloodthirsty Patrat.

If I could have three wishes, one of them would be to skip the tutorial section in all of these games. Please just let me catch things and try not to kill them.

It begins.

You know, one of the problems with having Boeing only knowing Psywave for damage is that predicting what he’s going to do to the creatures I try to catch is going to be an entertaining mess. I predict whatever I catch first is going to be significantly more helpful in the process than he currently is.

(Don’t worry, Boeing. I am still obligated to love you until death.)

I really need to be better about screencapping things, but I don’t think I will.

Bianca starts a pokemon-catching competition between the three of us, and unless there are more routes than I think between where I am and where the three of us are going to meet up, I think I lose that by default.

What route is this?

Alrighty then. Let’s go forth and find out who our next partner is! Forward, Boeing!

You know. I wonder if I have made mistakes with my preferences for the randomizing here.

Okay Boeing. You and me. Trying not to die. If possible, trying to include catching our new friend in that mission plan.

Boeing, two misses in a row is not how we do that.

...Make that three.

He did dodge the Supersonic after he finally hit it. There’s hope here.

What’s a Seismitoad’s catch rate? I have my suspicions and they are not good, but...

Who thought this was a good idea.

Gasp.

Am I allowed to be disappointed that it’s already in its final form, or is that considered rude to my new friend?

I dub thee... Frogger.

I should probably run back and go heal before I get one of these overpowered little guys killed.

I can’t remember if you being Modest is a good thing or a bad thing, but you’ll hopefully be alive long enough for me to teach you Surf, so in theory it’s a good thing. Poison Touch is the good ability I think (thank you luck for not having Boeing know any physical attacks that could have gotten him poisoned). Frogger’s also “proud of its power,” which I think means might have max IVs in the category his nature isn’t good for.

What’s Boeing like?

He’s also Relaxed and loves to eat. I grant him the secondary nickname of Good Boy. Speed being lowered is probably the most neutral I could ask for that isn’t actually neutral, and I am not going to say no (like I have a choice) to having his Defense raised for a Nuzlocke.

Okay guys, it’s time to go grind and be sad about the things we could’ve caught. ...No offense, Frogger.

...

This run is going to be fun. I can tell.

I am not confused, and yet I still managed to hurt myself.

I think some people might have some rules where you can catch your first encounter for grass and your first encounter for water, but this one is just going to be straight-up, one pokemon per route. Hopefully I’m better at keeping track of that than I feel like I will be.

I imagine I will have much reason to appreciate the kindness of strangers in this game. I usually end up grabbing every single item I can, but out of me being a completionist, not necessity.

Every Shaymin I find during this grind session is mocking me.

I continue to be really slow about screencapping, and really fast about button mashing to speed through every solitary bit of text, so not pictured here is me and my two besties being happy about how all three of us have two pokemon each. Shaymin not included.

I can’t remember anything about these video chats. I hope they aren’t important enough that I feel the need to cap them.

Accumula Town. Pokemon seen here: None yet. I can’t remember if I can even get anything here. I remember so little about this generation. N’s entire existence was practically blotted out before I watched the intro cinematic.

When do I get my running shoes. I feel so slow.

Wait, is this the generation where the Marts and Pokemon Center get combined? Yessss. I have made one (1) good decision in my choices here.

Look, more names I don’t remember.

Hm. I am not used to having to do stuff with my money in these games. I just pick whatever up, heal at the centers, and maybe buy some healing items for the Elite Four. I’m not sure what the protocol is when you have to worry about your beloved partners actually dying.

Potions and Poke Balls. The two things I can buy here, and the two things I will probably need fairly quickly. Pokemon Go’s spoiled me with how easy things are to catch. This is going to be a rough awakening.

Current bag stock: 4 Potions, 1 Premier Ball, 13 Poke Balls. Plus Key Items.

I’m really starting to understand why most people just do these things in a video format. This has its limitations as a medium when I have my limitations as a competent host.

I put Boeing back in front so that he can maybe get enough exp to know something that isn’t Psywave, but I think that doesn’t currently matter because the plot has arrived.

Hi Team Plasma. Leave me alone, please. I am not here for plot. I am here for fun times and accidental murder.

This is sort of an unfortunate generation to Nuzlocke when it’s all about treating pokemon better. “Pokemon are my precious partners! Battling is a way to bond! Oh whoops Frogger’s dead.”

This is N. He hears pokemon. He also does what he can to speak for pokemon. He is a good egg, if memory serves. He also has a cooler outfit than I do, and that makes me sad.

Try... I don’t know, how many routes are there? Yell at Cheren and Bianca, not me. I’m going to be a very irresponsible pokedex filler.

Wait, this is a battle? Already?

Guess who thought, “I can’t remember if this is Dark or Normal. If it’s Dark Boeing is the least helpful thing I could use. It’s probably Normal until it evolves, it’s early in the game, right?“

Frogger, maim.

Frogger’s going to win and I’m not going to think any other way, but this would be a really sad way to go. Purrloin just murdering me because of critical hits and Boeing’s inability to hurt it.

Prediction proven correct. We win, Boeing gains a level, and yet again, no one is dead. Yay.

We blink the same way. That’s where you can really see the family resemblance.

Wait.

Is it...?

YES! Movement achieved! Best mom is best!

So the question is if we’re going to fight trainers or catch something first. I think I’ll take the lead and just step in front of the girl to the left. Then I’ll find out she has a Purrloin and Boeing will be sad.

Oh. She’s not a trainer. Learning all over the place.

Hello! Well, isn’t that convenient. Let’s hopefully not murder you!

That’s stage one accomplished. Now for the less fun part. Let’s throw the Premier Ball for luck.

...Let’s be sad when that has no effect.

Whoever wrote the reactions to the pokemon breaking out of the balls had a great understanding of what torture their players would be going through.

Success! Something normal to play with!

Hm.

You shall be Timon. Please don’t die.

I love being able to run back to the Pokemon Center instead of needing to walk like a peasant.

Switching Timon into first place since he is the weakest in every possible way. Don’t worry though, buddy. If you live long enough, we will change that together.

Timon is a Bashful boy and likes to run. The first neutral nature of the group. I have no strong feelings on that one way or another, but I do know me, and knowing me, I will be most sad if the Bashful one dies. You protect the Bashful ones.

Time for our first battle against an NPC. I foresee this going well. Even though Youngster Jimmy is a bearer of the dread Patrat. It’s level 7, so Timon belongs nowhere near it, and it’s a Patrat, so Boeing needs to stay far away. Frogger, you’re up.

Two hits later, the Patrat is gone, Frogger is level 8, and Timon grows to level 5. Progress.

Me too, as long as I win.

The theme of this run will just be never using Boeing in a fight.

Victory achieved, and Timon has leveled up to 7 and learned Ember! A productive fight.

Are you kidding me.

Hm.

Okay it turns out it knows Bite, so Boeing this is yet another creature to stay away from, Frogger, if you don’t mind stepping back into the role of enforcer? Yeah it’s a fierce dragon, but it’s also level 4.

Good Frogger. And you even all get to share the exp together! A solid group experience that didn’t take any years off my life, no sir.

I should probably give up on screencapping every single encounter. It’s not exactly entertaining for anyone, and if the post doesn’t suddenly stop, the answer of what happens should be fairly obvious.

We’re going to let Timon try fighting for once instead of going pure switch training.

And now we’re going to let Boeing take over, because Lillipups are the terrifying puppies with STAB. Timon takes a level up, and Boeing takes the pride of actually being useful again.

My first experience with Randomizer should not have been wasted on a Nuzlocke. My only real complaint about Pokemon games is that I’d like more variety in the ones you find on early routes, and with that solved, it’s like being thrown into a candy store where everything is free.

Except I already caught something in this route, so sorry Yamask, time for you to go.

This thing knows Disable. I... think Psychic can hit Ghost, it’s just not very effective. It’s Dark it has a problem with, but we’re not going to find out this fight because Boeing missed and Yamask Disabled it.

Things like that are why early game variety isn’t a priority. Pokemon pick up their better moves as they advance, and that translates to a lot of early moves not hitting Ghosts.

A wild Salamence was found after I went back to go heal. It made Timon flinch twice in a row.

In some ways, this is exactly what I wanted, in others, mistakes have very much been made. There’s probably an option to keep all the evolutions found in the wild level appropriate.

If Boeing ever hits a Psywave, I might just die of shock. My poor useless Legendary. I’m going to let him try to kill a level 7 Tepig just so he can feel needed. Though he is a Relaxed guy, so his performance probably isn’t bothering him nearly as much as it bothers me.

Bianca, you and your terrifying Patrat should feel no obligation to fight me. You could just. Not. You also have a Lillipup now. I do not trust this encounter to go well, because I am a paranoid sort.

Then Timon’s Ember burns the Lillipup as I’m typing that, so fine, maybe not everything will be horribly dramatic all the time just because death is on the table.

Boeing, I know it’s scary, but I’m going to send you in to fight your rival. Don’t worry. In this universe, I have other things to switch to once it starts murdering you.

She used a Potion? Really?

Patrat please stop Leering at my Latios.

...Also please undo your knowledge of Bite. Boeing’s accuracy with Psywave is so bad I actually can’t guarantee that he’ll live long enough to strike the final blow, so once more... Frogger, time to pick up the slack. Sorry you are the most useful of the team when you are clearly the most unloved.

We win and arrive at Striaton, which I think I actually remember now that I’m walking around in it. It’s the one with the waiter Gym, I believe. And the Dreamyard’s next to it, where we will likely have our next friend.

This Gym changes based on who you picked as your starter... I wonder what Boeing replaced.

New location get. Oh wait... am I remembering wrong, or can I not access the grass without HMs? I’m pretty sure this is the area where you get the chimp pokemon, but that’s a letdown here since I don’t think I randomized gifts and the like. Maybe we are not meeting our new friend here yet.

As I’m going through the trainers here, Boeing is still level 8, Frogger is 10, and Timon is 11, so... sorry, buddy. You’re going to have to face down another Patrat. Maybe it’s a good thing I banned myself from looking things up, because I am guessing that however long it takes for Boeing to get a new move, it will be too long. His only other move is Heal Block, and that is only theoretically useful at this stage in the game.

Against any type, actually, but I guess that’s the answer to what Latios replaced among the starters. I now have a Panpour.

I didn’t really think much about what to do with gift pokemon... I think I’ll just add to my personal rules that using pokemon on my team that have not been randomized is a no-go. As a sign of its ineligibility, Panpour will receive no nickname. I’ll ditch it in the PC before the temptation to use it grows.

Yeah, the grass is currently beyond my reach... I guess we’re doing the first Gym with these three, then. After our obligatory journey to the Trainer School.

I don’t remember so many battles with non-NPCs in other games, but it’s also been quite some times since I’ve played. And I was tempted to go with a no-items rule for this run, but then I remembered I am a coward when it comes to small creatures under my care being in pain.

...Geez, I probably have to worry about what level the Gym Leader has... usually I grind the heck out of things by accident, so it never comes up, but there’s room enough for error here to concern me.

Cheren having a Meganium is going to surprise me for a while yet.

Boeing being pretty useless against it won’t surprise me anytime soon. I guess I’ll have my answer about how this generation deals with poison if I make it through this fight.

I apparently forgot to heal when I ditched Panpour. Whoops.

But Timon comes through!

Thank you my intrepid fire pig.

Hey, Boeing learned a move!

Helping Hand.

Latios replaced the Grass starter.

Isn’t that supposed to be easy mode.

Lucky me, this is one of the versions where poison doesn’t kill you outside of battle. That’s a relief; I never remember things like antidotes when I’m playing the games normally, so it was fully within the realm of possibility that my entire team would die just because I forgot about the rules.

...

I’m gonna yolo it.

Frogger, I believe in you. Murder the Fire pokemon with your mighty Bubble.

The first trainer has a level 11 Lillipup... I would probably be way more comfortable taking this gym after some grinding, but that’s hardly the point here. The point is for me to entertain myself and feel terrible when it all goes wrong.

It’s weird how little memory I have of this gym. I remember the final fight, but absolutely nothing else. I think that’s because Cheren takes over being the first Gym Leader in the sequels, and who ever remembers the peons anyway.

I can’t believe I’m switch training a Latios.

We’ve got a long way to go, Boeing.

This could go so badly so easily.

His name’s Chili? Really?

At least he only has two pokemon--

Lillipup with status boosting move and Bite, run Boeing.

Timon bravely holds the line, and... yeah, this is the gen where the amount of exp is determined in part by the difference between your level and your opponent’s, isn’t it? Because grinding needed an added complication, naturally.

Level 11 Frogger vs. level 14 Pansear.

This should be fine, but I am so used to being a higher level in gyms. Being a lower level while playing for keeps is making me twitchy.

Atta boy, Frogger!

And he learned BubbleBeam! That is so much better than Bubble!

One badge down.

...Does anything in my party learn Cut?

Okay, with the badge, that seems like a good stopping point for this post. I don’t know how these will end up going, since, in case it weren’t painfully obvious and you didn’t read some of my comments above, this is all brand new to me, but hopefully this proved at least a little fun on some kind of level.

#Pokemon #Nuzlocke Challenge #the reason this is happening right after me saying I have no time to write #is because time is a factor #health is more of a factor and it sucks #so I'm trying to relax

10 notes · View notes

stormcloudsandshadows · 2 years

Note

WHATS YOUR FAV POKEMON OVERALL? MAYBE ONE FROM EACH GEN? TIER LIST?? -CAPS (FORGOT TO SIGN OFF EARLIER BUT YOU'LL KNOW ITS ME ANYWAY HAHA)

My favorite is a tie, Oshawott and Torchic, my two main starters! Torchic was my very first, and Oshawott was so cute and so I had to choose him in pla, and just,,, little otter baby!!! Oh also, shiny suicune for nostalgia, I had a shiny suicune in my second ever Pokémon game- the first I ever actually owned. My first game was Ruby that I borrowed from my moms coworker that had a crush on her.

Gen 1- mewtwo, for the lore and the fact that my first ever oc was part mewtwo- long story.

Gen 2- chicorita! My baby my sweetie! And also shiny suicune

Gen 3- Torchic and zigzagoon

Gen 4- shinx and primal Dialga. Yes primal Dialga is spin-off only. Yes I still count it.

Gen 5- Oshawott and meloetta! My babies!

Gen 6- sylveon! The closest I got a non legendary to lvl 100, he was 80 something!

Gen 7- primarina or sylvally. Pip and Syl my beloveds! Oc for gen 7 my beloved. Her name was Hikari, she went by Bright, and she was a junior international police member

Gen 8- hisuian sneasel. Hisuian Samurott. I am not super attached to sword and shield Pokémon. I’d rather talk about Pokémon legends Arceus. Pla is such a good game!

Gen 9- so far, sprigatito and lechonk.

#pogeyman

0 notes

rosameiwhitley · 3 years

Text

About Me (unfinished)

Hi, my name is Rosa, and I'm just a girl trying to relive her childhood and document it all to make the memories last. Perhaps I should tell you a little bit about myself and my history with this franchise first. I admit it's probably a huge risk to show so much information to people online, but hopefully very few people will end up reading this blog anyways, considering that I made it exclusively for my friends and more importantly, myself. Also most of this will be heavily edited from the original for safety’s sake.

My love of Pokemon began during gen 4, I want to say it was around 2009? (The year will forever remain a mystery because my trainer card on my old save file read June 20, 2000 since I was again, very young.) I saw a commercial for Pokemon platinum on TV, and I was totally enamored by Turtwig, who I chose as my starter and has remained one of my favorites ever since. I was like, obsessed with turtles as a kid.

I no longer remember which store it was exactly, maybe Toys R Us, but I walked into the store, and walked out with a Dark Blue Nintendo DS Lite, my first ever game system, and a copy of Pokemon Platinum, the first game I ever played. And later that Christmas, I ended up receiving a turtwig plushie! It's admitedly, not a toy that I have cherished much until as of late, where it seems I'm increasingly yearning to romanticize and dwell upon my childhood, but hey, at least it's still in serviceable condition after 12 or so years.

ALSO for Christmas, I got copies of Leafgreen, Red Rescue Team and Ruby for my DS' GBA slot. Since this is back when Gamestop actually sold GBA games for nongouged prices... I wanna say I got them the same year as that Turtwig doll? I would assume I got them before the release of SoulSilver anyways. Since I was a dumbass kid, I just wiped over whatever save files the previous owners had on these games, and in the case of Rescue team, I'm pretty sure the save file got corrupted or something. I also never really got far in any of these games when I was really young, I at most just used them as transfer fodder to send starters over to my SoulSilver copy.

Now then because I was quite young at the time, I was pretty much flying blind that first playthrough. In fact, it took me all of 260 or so hours over the span of...I wanna say four years? In order to finally finish this game. Yeah, I literally took 4 years to beat this game. And you know the crazy part? I beat several other pokemon games in the 4 year interval. Hell, I even beat fossil fighters (another franchise I have fond nostalgia for, as the idea of a turn based monster game with dinosaurs appealed so strongly to little me). It's also the only time besides sword (where i was intentionally playing with an underleveled team anyways) where i ever managed to actually lose a trainer battle. Except unlike sword here i didnt reset the game right as i lost so i ended up having to black out and lose my cash money. Heartbreaking. Think I might have even lost to Roark. I definitely did fail against Cynthia during my playthrough, but I had saved right before her so instead I chose to just suck it up and use my tms and candies.

Anyways, with that said, I do have memories of my first time playing through Platinum, foggy as they are. I remember when my turtwig first evolved into grotle. I was so shocked! I'd never before known about the concept of evolution, and so one of my family friends, who was like several years older than me, ended up having to explain the concept to me in full. I was honestly quite surprised and even a bit displeased by the fact that my beloved turtwig had transformed into something as decidedly un-turtle-like as grotle.

Funny thing is, when I was a kid, I assumed Dawn's Piplup from the anime was a girl, solely based on the fact that Dawn was a girl, and Piplup sounded feminine. In truth, her piplup is a male. Anyways, for some reason, my stupid kid brain had assumed that by the logic of me thinking Dawn's Piplup was a girl (I was the type of kid to think Samus was a girl when I saw her armored form in Brawl) that, clearly, the Pokemon games were programmed so that your starter will be the same gender as the protagonist! So, I reset my diamond profile to pick the girl, and sent a piplup to my platinum version. This is...probably not the most worthwhile anecdote for me to bring up, frankly I'm more than impressed with myself for the fact that I actually remembered it all these years later, but I swear on my life, this one fact will be important later for very good reason.

Anyways I ended up spending a fuckton of my time just derping around in Sinnoh. Fucking loved Amity Square, and I also quite enjoyed that one activity where you show some dude your Pokemon's foot, oh and I gave my torterra a fuckton of poffins. In fact, now that I think about it, Torterra definitiely got powerleveled to hell and back. Dude was like, maybe 20 or 30 levels higher than the rest of my team when I got to the end. Also for reasons I'll never understand, I taught it sleep talk. Anyways I played up until... I wanna say around Candice, before I dropped the game for a long while, picked it up again in.... I don't remember, probably close to when gen 6 was finally dropping (most likely because I felt that I needed to resolve this unfinished business of an unbeaten pokemon game) and played thru the rest of the game. Natch, I panicked and threw my one masterball at Giratina because I'm a bimbo.

Oh, speaking of Candice, yes! I did indeed fall into the same pratfall as most other kids did, and traded a Medicham for her infamous Haunter, Gaspar. And like, no joke, I cried after it happened. And you know... it wouldn't have stung nearly as much, if it weren't for the fact that I literally CAPTURED A MEDITITE WHO WAS ONLY LIKE PROBABLY LEVEL 16, LIKE MY GOD, WHAT WAS I THINKING, AND GRINDED IT FOR HOURS ON LOW LEVEL FODDER TO GET IT TO EVOLVE INTO MEDICHAM JUST TO TRADE IT TO MINDY. And yeaaaaa I know I could've CAUGHT a medicham but again I was like, a total dumbass as a kid.

Some PokeTubers I used to watch in the day were like, Marillland, Tamashii, JWittz, The Dex and SuperSkarmory (got remember this old shit?). actually, one quick tangent but, god, I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I remember there being this old TyranitarTube video where he somehow modded the following Pokemon mechanic into BW2 (or was it BW1?????) and hell I had a person even confirm to me that yes, it was planned!!!! So fuck me, there is just, god, somewhere deep in the bw2 files is the single damn thing that could've transformed these games into being like, from 10/10 to 11/10. Buuuuuuuuuuuut I digress. Maybe it was some other PokeTuber. Point is that video is lost to time and I don't have the time to swamp thru the crap to find it.

Also I did watch some old videos on like, guides and also rom hacks. Stuff like Ash Grey version and other things. The one that creeped me out most was this old video about a romhack that put MewThree into FRLG. Like, idk why, but I swear, that was so creepy when I was younger.

The first new Pokemon game, and the first game I ever preordered, is probably Pokemon SoulSilver, which I actually went to my local gamestop in-person to pick up. Cause it was a preorder, I also got that sweet Lugia figure which I still have to this day. Sadly, my original packaging has been thrown away because, AGAIN, I was a kid. Now then...god, truth be told, I am a fake Pokemon fan. For you see, I never actually BEAT SoulSilver, persay. Instead, what I did was I asked someone else to just play thru the entire game for me. So I.... really don't have that much nostalgic bias towards it as other people do? Like yeah I myself played thru all the Kanto stuff but the Johto stuff was all on him. At least, that is how I REMEMBER it going. Again, I don't want to make up memories that were never real. I didn't really use the Pokewalker since I was a very sedentary kid, I just shook it around and stuff. My only really notable memory would be when my dumbass wasted a masterball on a machop of all things, just because I really liked how machop had a tail. (Speaking of which, why DOES Machop have a tail???????????) I didn't even beat the Red battle until I sweeped thru it with an action replay that also kinda broke the game when I activated the cheat code. For fucking shame on my part. That said, Ampharos is definitely one of my favorites due to this game! I love my little wittle sheepy so much. Surprisingly despite having far more memories attached to platinum due to actually, yknow, PLAYING the main game of that one (still have not touched the postgame that much and due to recent affairs I kinda chose to hold it off even longer. Not that it even matters since for the longest time I had my platinum team sans the lucario brought into bw2 and needed pkhex plus homebrew to resolve that.) i somehow got 291 and a half hours clocked onto soulsilver. funny that. For some godforsaken reason my save says i begun on dec 21, which, good god how tf is that true if i have the lugia preorder figure to argue otherwise? Then again maybe it was a gaffe. That all said I do think HGSS had a bevy of great features, just. Bah, whatever I guess. Anyways alongside my preorder, I also picked up a strategy guide, and hoo boy, that thing's seen better days. That said the strategy guide is a load of bull since it omits THE ENTIRETY OF THE POSTGAME. yeah, you don't get a single fucking guide to Kanto. Yeah cool.

I.... never really bothered with any sort of events or mythicals. I remember seeing them mention regigigas on the old pokemon platinum website. But like, the process of going to a Toys R Us just to get Regigigas to get the other regis to get a 2nd regigigas is kinda, dumb?

I never could get into the anime, frankly.

In terms of spinoffs from this generation that caught my eye, it was mostly Pokemon Ranger. I have never played the original Pokemon Ranger, but I did buy both of the sequels. I remember being quite excited for Guardian signs when I saw an ad for it in a copy of National Geographic Kids in my school library. I ended up getting the game as a gift on my birthday after a trip to party city. Freaking loved those games, loved riding different legendaries, and most of all I really enjoyed Ukelele Pichu. It was so amusing seeing late-stage gen IV shilling for the little baby. Some of the missions really tick me off though. I still never beat the stupid sidequest where Murph (least I REMEMBER it being him!) asks me to catch a bunch of bird Pokemon, because that damn Togekiss always flew away before I ever got to it. So I sadly have yet to 100% that game. Oh well. I also was pretty freaking bad at one Shadows of Almia quest which required the player to swim thru currents underwater in order to chase some Pokemon that kept fleeing. It got so bad that, I shit you not, I ended up just deciding to take my copy of the game to gamestop and asking the gamestop cashier of all people to beat it for me. I was... a hopeless poor sap as a kid, I'll admit, still kinda am tbh. But hey, at least I got some forgettable rangernet upgrade from the whole ordeal. Personally I am more a fan of Guardian Signs than I am of Shadows of Almia, and I daresay I clocked an ungodly amount of time into Guardian Signs, more than is normal for any spinoff that isn't Mystery Dungeon.

This will probably be a hot take I'm only making because I'm blinded by obliviousness rather than nostalgia, but frankly I do not care much for Mystery Dungeon. Yeah, that's right, I said it. I tried getting into the games as a kid but my dumbass kept mashing the A button to perform the basic attack instead of actually doing something smart. The farthest I ever got in Explorers of Sky was Mt. Bristle, where I could never get past Drowzee. I eventually for god knows what reason decided to buy a second copy preowned just so I could play thru a completed file to get thru the shaymin stuff. And god even knows why I thought buying explorers of dark was a bright idea. Again, I was a stupid kid. Maybe if I weren't a literal child at the time, I could've learned to love PMD by playing it properly, but instead, I'm... well, i'm probably in the minority of people who played mystery dungeon as a kid and didn't come to worship it.

Considering I'm the person who took 4 years to beat Platinum.... I am so good at video games!

One of the oddest ducks from around this time, and one of the few games on the Wii I actually cared about, was PokePark Wii:Pikachu's Adventure.

Truth be told, I've always been more of a handheld gamer than a console player.I usually was more focused on the DS than the Wii or GameCube. I did sometimes buy Wii games that interested me, like Skylanders or Sonic Colors, but I generally sticked to the DS.

It also doesn't help that the Wii was kinda.... eh? A bit of a wagglefest? Plus given that I was a really small kid and some other stuff we will get into later, I probably just tended to focus more on Pokemon, especially with my crap reaction time back then and the jank of late aughts motion controls.

Also as a kid my dumbass just assumed disc based games saved to the disc itself the way pre-switch handheld games worked by saving to the cartridge. So yeah, sue me.

I mostly was interested in PokePark Wii because I was just so enamored with the idea of playing a game with 3D Pokemon battles where you could control Pikachu. Sadly... what I got instead was a game primarily about doing other pokemon's errands by playing wagglefest party games. Though that wasn't the only really unsettling thing about the game.

Yeah see much like Metroid Other M, PokePark commits the questionable act of making you play a fully 3D game with a sideways wii mote, and no option for nunchuk. I have zero idea why Nintendo was okay with the control scheme, honestly. Though admittedly considering the fact that PokePark was almost definitely designed with the minigames in mind, I guess it's not the biggest sin.

Most of the minigames were fine I guess, but the one with the spinning beyblade tops and the motion controls made me cry. I was also a bit disappointed since I was expecting a realtime 3D Pokemon action rpg and instead I got an overblown party game story mode.

So.... yeah, I would assume that wraps up my history with gen 4! Before we move onto Gen 5, I suppose I should talk about some other games and stuff that I was into around this age. I was definitely into cartoons, and it's about what you might expect someone like me to have enjoyed back then. In hindsight if my younger self had known Garfield would be appearing in Smash clone alongside SpongeBob I would have lost my shit. I mean I did buy that one Cartoon Network smash clone they made for the Wii and 3DS. But that's another story. I also had a bunch of garbage licensed games based on those shows which I snagged off of eBay. They're not that great, to be frank. Frankly besides Pokemon, Fossil Fighters and Sonic, most of the games I played as a kid during this era were licensed shovelware titles. And even then, it's not like I actually beat most of them. I sucked at video games when I was a kid, and I still suck at them now.

Ah, well, point aside, I would say that Sonic was definitely another fixation of mine when I was a kid. Which is actually rather odd now that I think about it, given most of the notable Sonic games out at the time were on HD consoles. I did get some of the handheld games, but frankly I am garbage at all of them. I still haven't beaten Sonic Rush or Sonic Chronicles (for some reason I brought that game with me on a family vacation one time). Of course, I did have a wii, so my dumbass played Sonic a lot in Smash Bros, and also I decided to buy Sonic and the Secret Rings, a game which I regrettably have sunk a brickton of hours of my life into when I was a kid. Oh, and My adoration for Sonic is obviously way weaker now but it was rather strong back then, which, given some stuff I know about myself now, it kinda checks out.

I also was... really obsessed with Sonic Unleashed back then. Frankly while I liked how the HD versions looked, I was too much of a Nintendrone as a kid to ever consider buying a 360. Also this was way before I got into any genre that wasn't "rpg" or "platformer". Anyways I watched a brickton of videos about the game online, and I definitely let it live rent free in my head for a while. Did you know that Sonic Unleashed had a JAVA MOBILE GAME?

Speaking of Java, remember when Sega used to release watered down ports of classic games onto phones? I mean, they still do, but at least now the screen isn't as much of an eyesore. Anyways, I remember downloading the mobile version of Sonic Spinball onto an old cherry red flipphone, and playing that for a while. To be frank, Sonic Spinball is such an odd duck of a game. Mostly because of the way Sonic can occasionally get out of the pinball table and there he plays kind of like you would expect? Except way worse physics. The controls sucked since you had to use the number pad instead of a controller, but hey, I'd still say it's more responsive than the touch controls you get on say, Sonic CD for most modern devices (I'm still impressed I made it to the Metal Sonic level in that game on my phone before I got a single game over). But I digress.

Pretty sure the only reason why I even bought Secret Rings is because I deluded myself into thinking it was "close enough" to Sonic Unleashed because again I was a stupid kid.

Okay, enough of the dillydallying, let's move on to talking about gen 5! Hopefully I can edit these blogspot posts later anyways.

I hated gen 5 when it first came out. Okay I admit that was a bit of an exagerration, but yeah, point is, despite having literally only been a Pokemon fan for all of like, one year, I immidiately decided I wasn't a fan of BW1 because they didn't have any of the old Pokemon in it (ironically, that seems to be one of the things everyone praises that game for doing nowadays, the Zorua events notwithstanding), and so I didn't buy it, sticking with my other Pokemon games. And, to this day, Pokemon Black and White 1 remain the only main series games released after I became a Pokemon fan, which I have never played through to completion (though SoulSilver remains a dubious 2nd option since I more or less asked someone else to beat the majority of that game for me). I will likely pass on BDSP, but since the games are still so freshly new, that's not set in stone yet. If I do, I'll probably pick up a preowned copy before the early order bonus ends.

That all changed when the animated trailer for Pokemon Black and White 2 came out.

Oh my god, that trailer, I don't think any other trailer has ever gotten me as hyped for a new game as the trailer released for Pokemon Black and White 2 has. It was freaking epic, and I was all the more excited at finding out that old Pokemon were returning! Including Lucario and Ampharos, who're still some of my favorite Pokemon to this very day. The best part about the trailer was just seeing how cool Nate looked, he ended up becoming my favorite male protagonist, and honestly the trailer really did a good job playing up his coolness. I didn't really have many thoughts on the many thoughts on the scene from the trailer with Rosa and Serperior though, which, to be frank seems rather ironic given what I know now. I really enjoyed that scene where Nate fights alongside Hugh and Cheren on the airship and how it transitions into his chase against Shadow Triad alongside his Lucario.

I ended up preordering the Black 2 version as soon as I could (Zekrom's just cooler looking than Reshiram, y'know?), and got it on it’s release day in the west alongside the strategy guide (I used to be a scrub okay?) from (at least I remember it being) GameStop. It was also very close to my 10th birthday, which, to be frank, is kinda fitting.

Sidenote but, while my memory of this is definitely super hazy, I somewhat recall picking the game up from the same gamestop where I got Explorers of Sky, PokePark Wii, and maybe even a few of my gba games? But anyways, the interesting thing about that GameStop, was the fact that it was directly connected to a Barnes & Noble. Yeah, funny thing is, Barnes and Noble used to own GameStop, from 1999 to 2004. So like, this store was directly connected to the Barnes and Noble, like, they straight-up had an archway inside of the building leading from GameStop to Barnes and Noble, my god. Granted, I bought Black 2 in 2012, however it is possible that this location simply kept the setup from the time when they were under Barnes and Nobles. The location did eventually close, and, rather disappointingly, I think it got converted into some kind of album store? It's also now fully integrated into the Barnes and Noble, no longer a separate store like it was before. Granted, I might just be manufacturing false memories, it could've been a GameStop next to my house. But I am almost certain that it was a GameStop, if only because the strategy guide still has that gamestop sticker plastered over it, and I'm sure that if I tried to remove it now, it would permanently damage the book. I used that strategy guide a lot when I first played the game, embarassingly so. I even ended up following their specific instructions for Coballion, right down to the moveset they recommended. Honestly, why would you ever teach a fighting type volt switch?

So anyways, I booted up Black 2, pretty sure it was on the car ride home from Gamestop, in fact! And started up my new game. Unfortunately, because I was a dumb kid at the time, I ended up picking Nate as my player character instead of Rosa. I really enjoyed the game, it was core to my childhood, and it's a game near and dear to my heart.

To be frank, I really liked Nate as a character, he felt so cool looking, and I kinda think that, as a kid, I sorta identified with him, or rather, I wanted to identify as him, because of how cool he was in the trailers and how cool he was in the game. I definitely had a lot more imagination back then than I do now. I guess you could say that I used to wish I could be Nate (which frankly given my current identity, feels like extremely ironic/hilarious foreshadowing in hindsight). This actually leads into my next point, and it's

one of my favorite games of all time. Would still be my #1 if it weren't for my changing tastes, and the fact that I generally don't replay a Pokemon game after I beat it; I just derp around in the postgame areas to my heart's content.

Hi, Rosa here. If you're reading this, then it's because this blogpost is very, very incomplete and im calling a raincheck for the holidays. I think tumblr lets me edit posts so I really hope I don't regret it

1 note · View note