#I've been trying to catch up with the switch releases of pokemon

[kingkrillin]

idk if this is an unpopular opinion but despite Let's Go P/E being basically a Let's Go themed remake, I still think it's a vastly better game than Sword and Shield

even the graphics in Sw/SH look like such a downgrade. they tried to upgrade it to look more modern and less chibi but then left the textures in the pretty flat chibi style. it ends up looking like an older and more terrible game. when I showed my sister she grimaced and said "it looks like The Sims: The Urbz from 15 yrs ago"

the biggest criticism I have for Let's Go P/E is just that it's too easy, and you can always fix that by doing stuff like limiting your party if you really start getting bored

I actually really like it's visuals and environments too

[frootloopscos]

4) Avoid Responsibility

I FORGOT TO POST THIS LAST NIGHT IM SORRY YALL

Tag list: @naompspsps @bagofburntcreampuffs @lemon-koii @bluerosegardens @lost-woods-rabbit @friskybee @amebaby @transriddlerosehearts

Want to be added to the Taglist?

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Chapter 4) This Son of a Boltund

PREVIOUSLY

"As punishment for today's infractions, Yuu, Ace, and Grim are all hereby ordered to wash a hundred windows!" Crowley declared with a glare, "you will all meet in the cafeteria after your classes. Are we clear?" "Yes sir."

NOW. . .

Yuu, Grim, and Agent stood in the cafeteria waiting for Ace to arrive so they could get this punishment over with. "I'm already exhausted from a full day of cleanin'. I can't believe we still gotta wash a hundred windows!" Grim complained while laying on of of the tables. "Well, it is yours and Ace's fault that we're in this mess, so suck it up and try to learn from the experience." They said to him while searching through their back before their eyes widened, "it is in here!" They yelled taking out a box that Agent recognized.

"Mmmm, what's bugging me is that Ace ain't even here yet!" His attention was then grabbed by the object in the trainer's hand. "What is that?" He asked standing up to get a better look at the box. "It's my pokebox, it lets me switch out what Pokémon are on my team, usually I can access it through my rotom phone but I guess it got disconnected when we were brought into this world." They said with a grin, "Agent you wanna see Cinder?" They asked teasingly to their starter. The Inteleon nodded "Teleon!"

Yuu grins and takes out Snom's pokeball from their belt as they set the box onto the table allowing the little stand to come out. They placed Snom's pokeball on the stand and took out their Rotom Phone to scroll through their boxes before choosing Cinder. The box sucked Snom's pokeball inside and released Cinder's, Yuu grins putting the box back in their bag, "Alright Cinder, come on out!" They said throwing the ball into the air, a bipedal, white, rabbit-looking pokemon materialized from the white light. "Cinderace!" It yelled with a smile.

"Cinder, welcome back girl!" Yuu said giving their Cinderace a hug which she happily returned before looking around and spotting her mate "race!" She yelled letting go of her trainer before hugging Agent.

Yuu let the two Pokemon catch up to eachother and looked around realizing that Ace still wasn't there yet. "Alright, where is that dumb ginger? It's been at least half an hour since their classes released." They said annoyed, Grim nodded in agreement "he's super late! I bet he up and bailed on us!" Yuu sighed, "it's possible," they mumbled pinching the bridge of their nose before exhaling. "Let's go look for him Grim."

"Ain't no way am I doin' his punishment!" Grim agreed "I don't care if we gotta drag him kickin' and screamin', he's washin' those windows!" He yelled before the two of them went off, Agent and Cinder following behind them. When they got to Ace's classroom Grim ran in yelling, "hey Ace! get over here! Try to hide from me, will ya!" Only to pause seeing the room empty aside from a painting. "Huh...Maybe there's really no one here?" He asked looking behind the desks.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that. I'm here." The painting spoke up causing Grim to freak out, "bwaaah! That painting just talked!" He said looking to Yuu to make sure he wasn't crazy. Yuu nods "yes, and? Is a talking painting really such an oddity at this school? The lady in the portrait on the that wall talks too. As does the gentleman in the portrait on this one. As long as a painting has a mouth, why shouldn't it be able it talk! Is that really so strange?" The painting asked, Yuu shook their head, "compared to other things I've seen in my world, it's not odd." They mumbled "do you know where a student named Ace Trappola is?"

"Ah, I know the one. A new student I believe? Today was his first day at school. I think he went back to his dorm a while ago." The painting explained making Yuu scowl, "that son of a Boltund." They said beffore thanking the painting and leaving to the dorms with Grim and their pokemon. "Agent, Cinder, go make sure he doesn't get out of this." Yuu commanded their pokemon, the two nodded and ran ahead to the Hall of Mirrors.

When the two pokemon arrived Ace was complaining, "yeah right, like I'm gonna wash a hundred windows. I'm just gonna go back and—" he was hit on the back of  his head with a rock kicked by Cinder. "Cinderace!" She yelled pointing at him angrily. "Great job girl," Yuu said after catching up with Grim in toe. "Crap they saw me!" Ace said before Growled, "stop right there pal! No fair gettin' a head start! Wait!" He yelled, "who in their right mind would ever wait?! See ya!" Ace yelled as he ran towards Heartslabyul's mirror.

"No way are you gettin' out of this! You think I wanna wash windows?! Yuu get your pokemon to do something!" Grim yelled at the trainer, all this alerted a blue haired boy standing by the Heartslabyul mirror "hm?" He asked turning to see Ace running at him, "outta my way!" He yelled, "hey what gives?!" The boy yelled in response. "Please stop him, he's shirking his cleaning responsibilities!" Yuu yelled for help, the boy looked shocked.

"What? That's not right! But how do I stop him? Like, freeze his legs? Or bind them with a rope? Or maybe I could. . .hmm. . .no. . ." He mumbled before Grim yelled, "I don't care how! Just do something! Anything!" "Anything?! Anything, huh. . . All right! Here goes anything! I summon thee. . . Something heavy!" He yelled pointing his magic pen at Ace. A cauldron appeared out of thin air and fell right on top of Ace.

Ace and the boy, who Yuu now knew as Deuce began to argue with one another causing them to become distracted before Agent noticed something, "Inteleon." He said to his trainer making their eyes widen, "he ran away?!" They yelled and left the mirror hall to see Grim running down Main Street "haha I'll let you two handle the rest! Bye bye!" He yelled as he ran.

"You caught me so you could run away yourself?!" Ace yelled at the cat, "hey you there! Uh...Juice?" "My name isn't "Juice." It's Deuce! With a D!" Deuce replylied with a glare, "this is partially your responsibility you know! So help me catch that little furball!" "How is this my responsibility?!" "Grim's useless janitor friend can't use magic, that means this is up to you and me!" And with that the two boys began to chase after the fire cat.

TO BE CONTINUED

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Woo boy we're almost caught up with my Demon Slayer fic!

Word Count: 1121

Published: April 29th, 2024

Edited: n/a

[c7thetumbler]

Quick Game Reviews: Games I played 2022

Whoa, what is this? Will I get this done on time, or is this doomed to be released unfinished when it's automatically posted on the 31st? Only you will know!

Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker [PC]

Endwalker is probably the best possible expansion a game could hope for. Shadowbringers had just managed the herculean task of unifying like 7 years of content and plot that seemed mostly disparate and succeeded fantastically, so it was really cool to Endwalker take the core concepts that were introduced in ShB and run with them in a way that made the game "End" in such a satisfying way. Story had me on my toes the whole time rewarded players who had tried all sorts of side content, and even made me like characters I strongly disliked through the whole game prior.

Sage and Reaper are pretty cool too. I'd highly recommend giving FFXIV a try if you haven't, and of course if you've been away from the game and haven't played Endwalker it's definitely a masterpiece in its own right.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus [Switch]

This one was really surprising. After having come from BDSP, probably the worst games in the entire main Pokemon series, I didn't have high hopes they'd pull this one through. What ended up happening though is that, while still having its bugs and graphics problems, Gamefreak is definitely capable of making a cohesive game with fun mechanics and feels good to play. Battle isn't that complex, but given how slow and obnoxious normal Pokemon battle is the lack of abilities and new styles are a fresh change of pace.

Movement outside of battles feels good, if a little janky. What really sets it apart is how fun it is to actually sneak up on Pokemon and use pokeballs and food outside of combat to catch them, and adds an extra level of play that supplements the simplified but interesting battle style well.

One thing I can say about this game: it feels like a complete experience. I'm not missing out on the ability to get certain pokemon becase there's another version. I'm incentivized to play with all sorts of pokemon with all sorts of playstyles to fill out the pokedex. Exploring could leads to new items and rarer Alpha pokemon. Quests allow you to keep goals, and the battle challenges are at least interesting. That's something that no other Pokemon game has been able to offer since they stopped doing the 3rd, "best version" of the games like Emerald and Platinum. I highly recommend this game, and believe it's the best Pokemon offering Switch has (including SV)

Super Mario Run [Android]

This one was interesting to go back to. So I picked this up because MyNintendo finally started doing okay physical rewards, and this game is a very good weekly source of Platinum coins. In the process, I went ahead and 100%'d this game. It's pretty fun! It's got a lot of challenges, the toad rush and remix run are fun stwists on the existing levels. It's a shame Nintendo saw the millions they made from this as a failure and went with Gacha models instead.

While it's not as satisfying as your normal Mario platformer, it's definitely a fun mobile game and worth the $10, especially with weekly platinum coin challenges

TIS-100 [Steam]

I will be 100%, I have not played this game very long. I really like these kinds of games, however for the past few years I've fallen into a place where every time I think of playing these, I get caught up in "Well, what I really should be doing is coding for real." Then I go on Reddit or Twitter and do neither.

The short time I did have with it was fun though! I'm not sure I would call it a good intro to programming since it's mimicking assembly instructions, but if you're curious it's definitely an interesting experience and pretty similar to how how that sort of language works.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land [Switch]

This is probably the most faithful recreation of a 2D Kirby game into a 3D platformer that you can get, and boy it was a long time coming. The games fun, albeit pretty easy, and has a lot of post-game more challenging content (that is also not too challenging). That's not to take away from it of course; Kirby's a fun, relaxing game usually and this is no exception. Even though this is more a Super Mario 3D World than a Super Mario Odyssey, the transition to 3D is handled very well, and I'm eager to try more Kirby games in this style. It could do with a little more content, but then it runs the risk of overstaying its welcome. I highly recommend this to anybody who's ever enjoyed a Kirby game; It's not groundbreaking, but it does the Kirby formula well

Lost Nova [Steam]

This is one of a few games I've played where I don't really have a solid enough opinion of it to really recommend it or not. I got like an hour in and really liked the vibes it was giving off (cute top down exploration game, very wholesome) but got distracted and never picked it up again. I'm a big fan of the artist, Jon Nielson, and his other game projects that I've played, but this is one I'll have to restart and get a good grip on.

Dusk [Steam]

I grew up on a multitude of games, and Doom/Quake were right there. It was nice to be able to revisit that style of gameplay, and Dusk certainly nails the aesthetic and feel of it, but I think the levels themselves leave something to be desired. A lot of the time I was running around in open spaces between buildings that were packed with enemies and items, and that felt a lot less Quakey to me. Still, that much is a personal preference and I didn't end up taking this one too far, but for retro fast FPS fans this seems like a very solid choice!

Going Under [Steam]

This was another in the string of Rogue-lite's I played. I was pretty surprised because I wasn't expecting this kind of gameplay when I first got it, but this is another that I didn't spend too much time with. From a strictly personal level, I've become really tired of corporate culture and HR speak. While this is parodying that, it still struck a nerve that was difficult to get into because the kinds of things I've dealt with were just too similar to the joking happening here.

Visually it's very fun and I do love the style. Gameplay wise, it seems like it would take a bit to get used to the controls and how the mechanics with weapons interplay with combat and different enemies. It definitely has its charm and is a labor of love, but I myself couldn't revisit it.

Bugsnax [Steam]

This one was one I'd been wanting to play for quite some time. A friend described it to me as Pokemon Snap but with puzzle elements and a mystery story, and I was down for it. That's pretty accurate, and the whole game is very charming. Without giving spoilers, I was very invested despite a lot of the characters at least seeming very 1-dimensional at first, but each one actually gets fleshed out into something more real and interesting the more you look into them. My only gripe is the physics on some of these things made it very annoying to catch certain bugsnax that required precise timing. For example, there's be a flying bug above an aggressive bug, and you had to knock down the flying bug into the trap, trigger the trap, and collect it before the angry bug noticed any of it and knocked you and it over. That being said, there aren't many instances like that and it seems like the kind of game where there's an easy solution to catching them all.

Another pretty high recommendation for those interested in a fun story experience and some collectathon elements

Rogue Legacy 2 [Steam]

So I was a big fan of Rogue Legacy when it first came out and 100% it. When I picked up this one however, nearly a decade after the original released, I had a lot more experience with rogue-likes and what I wanted out of them. This game is definitely the Rogue Legacy experience, however for some reason I found myself way more easily frustrated with it than I did with other Rogue-Lite's I've played recently. Something about how immensely the stat boosts and things outside the castle affect how you play within it just doesn't feel as good as learning the game better and just playing better, or unlocking alternatives instead of just straight upgrades. That and there's like 4 gear-like systems outside of the main game, which just seemed overly complex.

All-in-all, if you liked the original Rogue Legacy you'll probably like this one since it's a lot more of the same with additional things to grind, but for me personally there are better Rogue Lite experiences out there

Dead Estate [Steam]

Look, no- Look see I- Wait, listen. Hold up, no. Stop. I know what you're thinking, and yes I absolutely clicked on this game initially because of the thumbnail. We're moving on.

Barring that, the game is crazy fun! 2 Characters to start with going into 8, 4 of whom have entirely unique playstyles and 8 different floors to go through. Loads of secrets, challenging but not repressively so, and a very charming and funny but with an interesting story with plot twists galore, Dead Estate is probably one of the best Rogue-lite's I've played in a while. My only gripe is that they could do with a bit more content (which they are launching out as well so I will revisit it!) and that the 2.5 D Isometric angle sometimes messes with enemy placement relative to the character, but all in all I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a fun rogue-lite to scratch that itch! Especially now that they're updating it, though expect to take a little bit to get used to the 2D isometric jank.

Kirby's Dream Buffet [Switch Download-Only]

I got this one near launch thinking "Hey, this will be a fun time! Kirby spin-offs are typically loaded with content and fun things to unlock, so this should be at least a few days worth to keep me entertained!"

Not so.

Not sure if it's been updated since release, however when I played your only real option was to go online and play the normal game, which is just kind of okay. The racing is a bit of a crapshoot; it's really easy for one player to pull ahead of the pack and have the Mario-Kart issue where everyone behind them is fighting to get close to them, and the ending area is really the one that matters. The final battle minigame is also a bit hectic but not really deep as well. None of it is particularly satisfying, and it's something I would've expected to be a side multiplayer mini-game in a mainline Kirby game instead of its own release. Unless this gets an update that lets you play for free, this one's a pass and not worth the money.

Dr. Mario Rx [Switch Online: N64]

I revisited this one since I never 100% it as a kid and unlocked the final 2 characters, and figured with the save state system I could at least make it so I didn't game over. Boy, do I get why I never beat it!

This game's charm, which future Dr. Mario games will routinely miss out on, is that there's a very simple plot and weird Wario Land 3 characters scattered throughout. Sure, it's not exciting, but having another player character to go against is fun, and seeing Wario and all his wacky enemies react to a puzzle game is just delightful. Of course, the game is RIDICULOUSLY HARD and you can only unlock the final 2 characters by completing both story paths on hard WITHOUT DYING. I'm convinced this is impossible, making the NSO version of this the best possible version for allowing people like me to finally get their closure of a complete character select screen. Dr. Mario Rx is probably the best Dr. Mario experience you can get, and while I wouldn't say get NSO for it or any of the N64 library, it's definitely a highlight of the library if you have access. It's difficulty can be incredibly frustrating though, and this is a game I would encourage using the save state function if only to restart levels after a loss.

Disney Dreamlight Valley [Switch]

This one's funny because my sister actually played this for a month while I watched and was nearby, so while I don't have direct experience I do have enough to give a recommendation on it.

It's pretty clear this was an attempt by Disney to appeal to the exact market of Gen Z/ Millennials that have nostalgia for their childhood and were struck hard by the pandemic. Basically, it obviously saw Animal Crossing's runaway success and thought "Oh shit, that's a market!" It shows, pretty hard.

As far as gameplay goes, it doesn't seem bad. You run a Valley with a bunch of Disney characters around. You farm, fish, and do favors for these characters while trying top build up friendships and solve mysteries of what happened to the island. On paper it's a good idea at least In practice? Well.

The game is incredibly buggy. Like I can't believe Nintendo let them put this up for sale levels of buggy. I understand that it's in "Early Access", but looking at this through my Sister's eyes, who has no concept of a game which was sold for money being a buggy alpha version, this is an incredibly poor show. The music stutters, quests would easily be stuck in an un-completable state because of bad logic, characters interact poorly, timed music did not lined up with the mechanics, and the game would frequently come to a standstill and crash. When she wasn't actively fighting it, she was engaging in what was your basic skinner box with villagers asking her to find, fish, or craft (crafting animation matches AC's almost 1-to-1) , and while there's definitely something there, the whole time I was watching I just felt like this was a really cynical cash grab. I would avoid this, especially the Switch Version, like the plague until they've removed it from "Early Access" and their monetization scheme gets finalized

Splatoon 3 [Switch]

I am still coming to terms with the fact that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I research, and no matter how many times I delve into it, I will never be good enough at most competitive games that I like to be able to play online in a way where I'm not bogged down by my own disappointment with my abilities and frustration at the game.

It is a good thing then that the Single player and Salmon Run in this game are so much fun! While I can't say those themselves are worth your $60, I can say that I had a great time with it while I did play, and really enjoy the setting and world they've built with the series. While it doesn't break much ground in comparison to the previous game, it's definitely worth a go if you've enjoyed the first 2 entries.

Kirby and the Crystal Shards [Switch Online: N64]

This is probably my 7th time revisiting this game. As a kid, this game felt very challenging and I never 100% it. As an Adult, I realize it's more arguing with the floaty controls and knowing the really hard to find 3 crystal locations, and then just paying attention to where you can get the power ups you need. It's definitely not the best or most content heavy Kirby outing, but it's definitely worth a play for the cute character interactions and fun of mixing and matching power-ups. The experience is worth like $5 at most these days, but for sure give it a go if you've got access to it for free.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope GOLD EDITION [Switch]

This now being a spinoff franchise is really cool because it's wacky and out there, but still very fun to play. Gameplay wise it's not too much different from the original. The grid is gone and replaced with normal movement, which has some downsides but is overwhelming a positive change. The more open level nature is also welcome, and the humor is still pretty good.

The biggest issue with the game for me is something that not everyone will take issue with, but it very much kind of misses the tone. It feels like a rabbids game with 5 Mario characters in it instead of a Mario spinoff. The environments, plots, and characters are all Rabbids and loopy fantasy mix, and none of it at all to do with the title characters until the very end. The first game combined Mario, Rabbids, and toysets into the environment which all gelled really well together, but without the Mario aspects it really just feels like they made a game without the Mario characters and then threw them in as an afterthought.

It's still a wonderful game and I highly recommend it! Just don't go into it expecting a pre-sticker-star Mario RPG level of world building and storycrafting

Banjo-Kazooie [Switch Online: N64]

Another 3D collectathon classic I revisited and 100% this year. I still strongly hold that Tooie is the better game. Unfortunately it's not currently available on Switch for reasons that are unclear, and the Xbox releases of these games are definitely still the superior way to play with their widescreen, controls, and frame rate improvements. With all that said, this is pretty much the best 3D platformer experience you can get from that time that's aged well enough to recommend, so whether you're like me or are just able to try this for the first time, it's definitely worth the go.

Sonic Frontiers [Steam]

A Sonic lore fan's paradise, and a Sonic gameplay fan's reason to keep holding on. It's hard not to compare this with Pokemon in a lot of ways, if only because Pokemon has similar opportunity to deliver on what fans of the series actually want and has failed bother technically and from a gameplay perspective for several games in a row now (except Arceus, which still could use some work). Frontiers however managed to hit that sweet spot where the gameplay was fun and not in the way of the game, and the story scratched that itch that I've had for Sonic games since SA2.

Gameplay has some series staple Sonic jank, but the action stages are really fun, the boss fights are hype af, and it's just fun to run around in the overworld again. That last point is something that the series hasn't really nailed since dashing around station square in Sonic adventure, and maybe a bit in the 360 versions of Unleashed.

Is it perfect? No, but it's right where I wanted it to be with my expectations on what an experienced developer should be able to do, with some great high points to counteract the low. I do recommend this game for any fans of any of the 3D Sonic games. A word of warning though: the PC version is best. Even though it still has pop-in issues, the framerate and visuals are most consistent on that version and the rest of the ports are just taking bits away.

Nier:Automata [Steam]

This one I'm still playing; apparently getting the first real ending isn't actually enough to experience the full game. I'm halfway to the second now, and I think I understand that.

Game's fun! I feel like I'm missing out on a lot as I go though, which always makes me anxious. I do really like the themes of the game so far and the character interactions, even if some of them are incredibly anime. I don't have a really solid opinion yet, but dumping this many hours into it and then wanting to continue is definitely a good sign.

Pokemon Violet [Switch]

So this kinda bites. For the first time in a long time Pokemon actually managed to nail movement and interesting play mechanics in Arceus, and just threw most of that right out. This game is a buggy mess that a developer with Pokemon's resources and Nintendo's reputation has absolutely no right to release in this state.

Additionally, the story is great! Sure some of the characters are a bit one note, but the ones they did flesh out are really cool, and their character designs are memorable and fun. Mechanically though this game smells; terrastrallizing is very basic and the once a battle mechanic is overdone at this point. Battle animations are somehow worse and the game's pacing is hot garbage. Due to the lack of level scaling, a feature that is canon and has been done by hobbyists for over a decade now, the "challenge in any order" brag is functionally meaningless. Battle is still painfully slow, the game looks ugly which is only exacerbated by the anti-aliasing and texture tiling issues. For the first time in a very long time, there is no post-game battle challenge, which means once you beat it and finish the dex, something Arceus made fun and fulfilling, you're left with nothing.

Give this a pass over for Arceus, at least until they finish updating and releasing patches for it.

BEST GAME I PLAYED THIS YEAR

I am disqualifying Endwalker because A) I've been playing FFXIV for years now so it's not really new, and B) it would win

So, that leaves an actually very tough decision. I'm actually struggling to pick one, because on the one hand I had a great time with a lot of these but on the other some of those are absolutely carried by their IP. While Arceus is a huge leap forward in terms of actually making a great Pokemon experience, it still has some major issues in terms of visuals, general buginess, weird design decisions, and plot/character interactions still feeling very stiff and uninteresting a lot of the time.

Sonic Frontiers is also up there, but again it's because I've waited so long for a Sonic Plot that took itself way too seriously combined with 3D Sonic Gameplay that was actually fun. Gameplay wise there were a lot of great action stages, but also some rough ones, and exploring the islands was fun but could get tedious, felt a bit futile in terms of how broken fishing is, and janky due to pop-in.

Nier Automata was also really fun, but I haven't really hit a point far enough where it feels like I've truly experienced the world and story despite finishing the first ending. Mario + Rabbids was really good too, but it felt a bit more hollow than I would've liked. I also had a rough year mentally, so it's a bit hard to contextualize each of these in ways that would be expressible in text.

I'm of course overthinking it, because I do have a pick, but it was surprisingly difficult. However, this game single handedly took the most time, consistently surprised and impressed me, and offered a fun challenge while still allowing me to vibe at my own pace.

I am, of course, talking about:

Mario's Super Picross [Switch Online: Super Famicom]

What a fucking SUPRISE this one was. I have a very short tolerance for playing games in other languages, but this one was very easy to figure out after just the first couple puzzles. I love picross, I'm a sucker for Mario, and this one is jam fuckin packed with so many levels. It just keeps on giving for days and days which turned into months and months of chilling on the couch, petting the cat, listening to podcasts, and chiseling out a picture of a tiger that could only possibly be considered one after you finished the whole puzzle and they added color and animated it. Have you played the best puzzle game on this Switch yet?

[crazedcollie]

A Pokemon Pseudolocke Challenge

So I've sorta been doing a different kind of pokemon challenge run. Enjoying occasionally hard pokemon playthroughs but not really a fan of Nuzlocking, I came up with a variant of my own. Documenting it here cause it's fun.

My intent is playing through every main series pokemon game in release order, with the exception of Sword/Shield/Shining Diamond/Brilliant Pearl cause I don't have them and don't really want to buy them just for this. (And really, they're apparently not all that great games anyway...)

Catch my team on Nuzlocke rules (first encounter in each route, if I can't catch it, too bad), except I can't use repeats. That is, if I use a pokemon in a team, it's off-limits for the rest of this entire run! I can try to catch the second encounter of the route if the first one was a 'mon I already had somewhere, and so on. It's up to me if I stay on a route until I get a catch (or fail one), or move on. I have to use the first six pokemon gotten this way. Can't use Repels until I have a full team. (HM whores don't count. *glares vaguely towards Sinnoh*)

Can't use legendaries, can't trade to evolve, and if an evolution method is not available until postgame, too bad. Gift pokemon are to be used if I still have a team spot.

As a corollary to this, I am not allowed to do any kind of checking of what pokemon appears where, only base things on what I already know of the games (which, admittedly, is a fair bit). Once a pokemon is in a team, all branches of its' evolutionary line are also "used". Regional forms are separate, though, since almost all of them are in fact their own evolution lines.

End of the run in a given game is whatever is the highest leveled trainer fight in the game that's of a preset level and is not, say, a frontier/battle tower fight. Champion in a lot of games, Red in GSC, upgraded E4 in Fire Red/Leaf Green etc.

Difficulty:

No consumable items in fights, or between E4 members. I have to beat E4 + Champion in one go, without healing. Yes this is as insane as it sounds in some games. Battle style set, meaning I don't get free switches.

No grinding unless absolutely necessary to the point where I can gain xp from a losing fight (Johto level curve, looking at you). I allow myself to check on NPC and item locations for the sake of my sanity mostly.

Tally my amount of blackouts(complete team losses where I end up back in pokemon center), and the levels and names of my teams. And then make a post of each journey here largely for my own amusement.

Stay tuned if this sort of thing interests you besides my art~

[doberbutts]

Since I've been playing literally since I was 4 I feel likeI go through this every release where the target audience (actual children) are really happy for a new pokemon game and everyone else (the adults addicted to nostalgia- I'm in this group don't get it twisted) throws a massive fit because it wasn't as good as the last gen. Except the last gen had problems, and the gen before that had problems, and the gen before that had problems-

Gen 1 is a glitchy buggy mess and it's a miracle that it ran in the shape it was in when it shipped. So it tracks that gen 2 thru 9 are also glitchy buggy messes and it's a miracle they run at all.

I'm seeing people saying that PLA was better on graphics and on how it ran the open world aspect, while I remember when PLA was released people were saying the graphics weren't as good as Sword/Shield and they wished the open world was more like BOTW where there were no hard separations between zones (which is what we have now with Scarlet/Violet). I remember when Sword/Shield was released people complained about, you guessed it, the quality of graphics and how small the open world aspect of the "wild zone" was. When Sun/Moon released people complained that that it was too easy and, you guessed it, the quality of the graphics was bad. When X/Y came out it was also too easy with bad graphics. When Black/White came out it was too easy to get lost and all the new mons were ugly. When Diamond/Pearl came out it was too easy to get lost and all the new mons were ugly. When Ruby/Saphire came out the contests were a stupid useless gimmick and no one liked the hard switch in the art style and there were a hideous amount of required HMs to get around and it broke too many established Pokemon conventions. When Gold/Silver came out it was too similar to Kanto and too stuck in the past. When Red/Blue came out it was too hard and filled with too many severely game-breaking bugs, moves and typing that straight up didn't work, and lacked a lot of what we consider the "true spirit" of Pokemon today.

You know who didn't have any of these complaints? The kids who the games were designed for in the first place 🤷‍♂️

Big sigh. Anyway. There's some serious optimization problems and I don't know if it's hardware or crunch that caused it. I'm honestly guessing both. Every once in a while I feel my switch really chug-a-lugging along trying to load something in. I'll be mid-cutscene and stuff in the background is moving at approximately 3 frames per second even though what's close up is fine. Is that intentional as a near/far focus trick? Is the game just really struggling to load everything at once? It feels almost like what they wanted to do was have the entire world going 24/7 but load interactables in proximity to the player character, but the map is REALLY BIG to be doing that and the switch genuinely cannot handle it, as compared to BOTW which also has a huge open world map with very few hard distinctions between "world" and "city" but does NOT try to have the entire world living and breathing around you, instead it exists solely in proximity to the player character and stops existing once you walk far enough away. This theory is furthered by the claim I've been seeing that these problems are significantly worse in multiplayer, because two players can be all the way across the map from each other and yet share a collective pool of catchable pokemon in the overworld- meaning if I play with a friend and they're right next to me, we cannot both catch the same pokemon nor can we fight the same NPC battle, which ALSO means my switch has to be strong enough to run two-to-four identical copies of the same world with two-to-four people interacting with proximity-based interactables at the same time. This is a weird way to code this and I think a little too ambitious for aging hardware and I think this is where a lot of the really bad lag and framerates and memory leaks are coming from.

The graphical bugs are mostly just really funny as, at least through my experience anyway, they are solely graphical. Sometimes my player character straight up isn't there when I throw a pokeball mid-battle. Sometimes the camera clips through the world on a successful catch. Sometimes the lighting pops in and out of existance as I walk a straight line. Sometimes NPCs in the background walk through each other or vanish from existence. But this doesn't seem to make a difference in how the game plays- I still throw a pokeball, I don't drop through the floor, the NPCs pop back in after a second or two. So I'm a little more forgiving on that because silly graphics errors are kind of a staple of videogames at this point. Last night I apparently was roughly 50ft tall for a split second while harassing @kangals during her attempts to breed more charmanders. It doesn't negatively impact gameplay and it's a funny thing to witness so w/e that's fine to me. A lot better than the fuzzy jpeg look of a thrown pokeball in PLA's cave and water zones.

That being said... I like it? It's fun, it's pokemon, it's open world. I think the better things to complain about are that it doesn't scale at all to your level, which I personally think it should because at the moment if you've played literally any other pokemon game then you know the correct thing to do is explore everywhere and catch everything and I just beat the third gym and by doing that with ZERO grinding I was about 15 levels ahead of the third gym and I'm *still* about 5 levels ahead of the "pokemon obey you up to this level" cutoff. This makes the game hilariously easy because I'm so dramatically overleveled for everything. Note: I had this problem with Sword/Shield as well.

However I'm also more intersted in the background story than I was for Sword/Shield which I found very boring. I was a little meh initially on the new terra gimmick and I do think it's a little broken but I also think it's a fun way to really challenge yourself for battles if you've been at it as long as I have. I LOVE the open world and I LOVE that I can just dick around ingame with friends and we can hang out and do stupid shit together. The music slaps and while I think some of these evolution requirements are annoying (fuck you 1000 steps fuck you 999 coins) I also like that some of the requirements are, well, really quite inventive. I wish there were more outfits and I wish there was a definitive answer for how old I'm supposed to be here- I'm attending what looks like a college and there's both 5yos and 50yos as students??? I'm younger than my rival who looks to be about 25 but clearly significantly older than any of the rest of the kids in our shared homeroom class who look like they're barely out of diapers??? I like the autobattle system but I'm kinda mad it locks you out of level-based evolution and simultaneously doesn't tell you that.

So, there you go. My long-winded review lol. Like a lot of games this year I think it's a 7/10- it's fun, it's playable, I enjoyed it, but I do think crunch really hurt it and I think if it had more development time a lot of the flaws could have been improved. Sadly crunch is so common in the industry at this point that it'll take a lot more than boycotting a singular game or series to make any real change... and crunch exists for capitalistic reasons, so anything that costs these companies more WILL make the price of these games go up. It sucks, but that's an industry problem, not just a Pokemon or Gamefreak or Nintendo problem.

Who did you pick for your starter? I'm starting my copy today (since there's co op I'm playing with my friend, pending he feels well enough) and I may have to break my streak of fire starters to go with the grass cat....

Fuecoco! I always go fire and I like the fire/ghost typing on the final evo. Close second is the very gay duck.

[professor-vanad]

Alright, I've made you a guide for having the old guy over. Its relatively lengthy though so I've posted it too my blog under the title "old man porygon care guide" with some pokemon and porygon tags if you need to search for it. So check that out and save it to your blog for later.

As for your question, I did get in contact with silphco when I was doing my whole tedious detective work adventure (and Gordon is asking I let you know that he's making fun of me for "asking silphco" ending up being like step 14 in my figure out porygons past and why he's acting like an old man research quest despite it being the most obvious first step to take)

But they were less than helpful, saying how a lot of the stuff surrounding porygon and how to make them are some sort of company secret not available to the public.

(And from the way you're talking, it sounds like they might not be being completely transparent with researchers either so oof.)

And when I talked about stuff like health concerns for old dude, I couldn't seem to get anyone to even consider them being a beta porygon at all, instead only working under the assumption that he's another failed modders attempt at a porygon evolution like the original context of the dubious disk.

Even after I went through all that effort of tracking down machines able to read information stored in pokeballs that typically isn't displayed publicly when viewing them in a pc, but is instead usually used by law enforcement for returning lost pokemon, which put his first date of capture a good time before porygon were released to the public.

So it would be a heck of a task to pull off a bootleg of something that wasn't publicly available yet.

And I was able to track down and talk too previous owners dating back too 19 years ago, and none of them were particularly tech savvy either.

So that still brought up some worrying stuff that if his weirdness is a mix of being really old AS WELL as from being modded, then he would have been living with the mods for a minimum of 19 years, and still wouldn't have made him NOT a pre-release beta porygon, which was a lingering issue with attempts to talk too silphco people and them not taking me seriously.

They also offered for me to send them the old guy to attempt to repair him, but pretty heavily implied I wouldn't be getting him back if I gave him up, presumably as a way of discouraging irresponsible modding of porygon.

So that's hella suspicious, and I'm not gonna be doing that.

As for proof of chansey eggs improving general porygon quality of life?

I literally only have the few years I've spent with old man porygon for reference, who's apparently super weird for a porygon anyway, so I'm probably the wrong person to figure out that sort of thing. I just know he became a lot less spacy and tired all the time when I switched him too eggs, and later too berrys/pokebeans that are still on the tree/vine once I was able to start growing those myself and the sanctuary pokemon were able to help themselves instead of me buying fruit from the market (though pretty sure that was more an improvement of getting them reasons to go outside on their own regularly instead of napping indoors. Since it wasn't as dramatic a change as the chansey eggs).

But when it comes to fixing him, I guess if it comes to it, and all that can really be done is essentially build a new porygon out of the corpse of the old one, well.... I'm usually all about pokemon being able to learn enough to make their own decisions, but I'm not quite sure that's a concept the old man would really be able to comprehend in his current state.

Regardless though, the obligation would still be to try and have him understand as much as he can and see what they want based on their options.

Although if they imply something like " I want to go home" don't be jumping to conclusions about them asking to die with dignity at home.

He is not very smart and is terrible at euphemisms, so chances are what he would actually mean is "I would rather do difficult thinking on my pillow in the living room at home".

Trust me, I've been burned by their thought process before.

Don't jump to conclusions that they have things figured out or that they understood you unless it's a very simple statement you can get immediate results from like saying "come here" or "do you want food option A or B".

And it wouldn't surprise me if what it took to actually get their consent to such a thing, would be to literally have you travel to the sanctuary and have you sit there with porygon in the houses living room, drawing on whiteboards and using videos and explaining it over and over in slightly different ways until it clicks with him and he gives a straight answer.

I mean I've gotten used to having to go out of my way to find ways to deal with his senility, but that would be a hell of a rigmarole to rope some stranger into.

Heck, I've already gone and frightened my employee Gordon about the possibility of a long and tedious porygon detective adventure part 2 just talking about this stuff.

That post was brilliant! Thank you. I may have a few follow-up questions down the line but this is a great start.

Woof. I... you know, I’ve had multiple run-ins with Silph that have left me uneasy. i can empathise with wanting to “crack-down” on modding for the Porygons’ sake, they’ve had people come to them to fix their lousy mods since the first generation. So, I mean it is a problem of sorts but not as widespread as that attitude would have you believe. Being that blatant is surprising. That’s not to say I don’t believe you, I absolutely do, but I’m surprised that they were that dismissive off the bat. I think you were right to trust your gut there.

There’s a lot about your case that isn’t adding up with what I know, which is only a problem because it’s likely we won’t have a previous case to work off of. 19 years and at least two trainers who, I’m guessing, didn’t really notice anything unusual about Old Dude apart from his size and catch record prior to Porygon’s official release is the most complete dead end I can think of. I reckon I’ll be able to find some information when I take a look at his programming. Though, that will depend on how willing he is to co-operate there.

Which brings me to the possible “fix”. Rest assured, I have no intention of doing anything that Old Dude is uncertain about or uncomfortable with. It’s still only a possibility rather than a certainty and if it came to it, I’d be able to give you both more detailed information. My warning was as much for you because I don’t doubt I’m going to need your help, especially when it comes to communication. Whatever it takes to help him understand, I’m happy to do it. The ‘rigmarole’ is part of the job. He’s no hassle. Even if he was, Arceus knows I have practice. Four of them.

[sunset-spring]

Hi again. I wanted to ask you another question that I'm a little afraid to ask, but I've noticed you're a big Pokemon fan so I was curious as to what your thoughts are on the National Dex controversy. I've felt that Nintendo's arguments for not including every Pokemon in the game have made sense, but everyone is tearing apart their game even though it hasn't come out yet and it's all felt very unfair to me. Especially since their reactions have been so extreme...

I feel like the National Dex thing is an understandable disappointment, but the reaction has gotten so extreme that it’s ballooned away from most of the reasonable complaints I’ve seen raised about it.

In terms of how it effects gameplay, I personally don’t see it having an extremely detrimental effect on how the game is played. Reasons I’ve seen from disappointed fans have been for three reasons, at least that I’ve seen:

Emotional attachment to a pokemon, most likely a favorite, that a player wants to bring with them to the new region.

Having a player’s entire roster of competitive pokemon for VGC.

A player a living dex they worked hard to complete for past games, made up of the entire pokedex with all 800 pokemon for completion sake. 

All of these points are understandable, and these certainly aren’t the only points (I’ll get to others later). But there are a few flaws to these arguments when used as the basis for the entire case of this being an incredibly game breaking decision. They might be deal breakers for a lot of people, which again makes sense, everybody is looking for something different in their pokemon experience. But it doesn’t destroy the playability of the game overall, and doesn’t guarantee that the game will be terrible.

First, wanting to bring your favorite pokemon to the new region. It’s understandable; as many have stated, “Every Pokemon is someone’s favorite.” But when it comes to actually using them during the game, there are a few problems. 

Pokemon has always had a system in place via badges and other progress markers that bars the player from using pokemon above a certain level. That way the player can’t just breeze through every battle in the game by grinding or using a pokemon transferred in at a higher level. As a result, if you have a pokemon that you’ve had for multiple generations, it’s likely going to be at a very high level from being used so much. Therefore the only time you’ll get to use that pokemon is in the post game. And that post game is only going to be something that keeps the player engaged for so long. Even if the post game is incredibly good, it is still a much shorter portion of the game that will only keep players’ playing for so long. And if you’ve already spent the entirety of the main story with a new team of pokemon, a player will likely have already grown attached to those pokemon as well and will likely keep using them in the post game as well. So at that point, it’s more likely that they’ll just be sitting in a box for the majority of the game.

Competitive has some more weight in criticism, as there is a possibility that some pokemon could be cut that cause some competitive team build to be excluded. However, in terms of how many pokemon are competitively viable out of all Pokemon, I don’t think that many competitively viable ones will be cut. Mostly because when there are over 800 pokemon, I doubt that the competitive viable ones are the majority. There’s likely a lot more in the majority that aren’t usable that will be trimmed down. In interviews, one of the reasons given was to balance competitive more evenly. 

There’s certainly reason to question whether the results will be satisfactory, but when it comes to balancing it’s tricky business in general. Because competitive play isn’t the only aspect of the game. They’re also trying to create a setting for the game that is organic and immersive. It can’t just be competitively viable, because as stated in the first point “Every Pokemon is someone’s favorite.” So if they only catered pokemon in the game to competitive players, that’d exclude a lot of pokemon that other players enjoy. So there’s not necessarily a good compromise to please both of these sides.

And finally, what I think gets to the heart of the decision of limiting the dex for me, the National Dex itself and the living dex. It’s frustrating that those who’ve put in the effort to maintain a living dex, because that’s a heck of a lot of work. There’s over 800 pokemon, and as of recent interviews with Masuda, there are now 1000 unique forms and models as of Sword and Shield. 

But that’s why they chose to limit it to only the Galar Dex in Sword and Shield. That’s a huge amount of Pokemon to expect every player to catch. They discussed in these same interviews that they were considering limiting the dex in Sun and Moon as well, which I believe is why they chose not to include a National Dex in the Alola region. While players who are willing to go through the trouble of maintaining a living Pokedex is great, having that as an in game goal, even if not necessarily required, is a hugely daunting task to expect a lot of players to complete. And as they continue to expand the pokedex with new pokemon, that’s only going to become more challenging and more alienating to players who haven’t already been doing so for every generation. And even if it’s not an in game goal to complete the national dex, the number of pokemon has reached a number where it’s not very feasible for players to use all pokemon in one game, even via rotation of teams in the post game. There’s just too many for it, and it’s likely that by the time someone has a new game will be coming out and expanding the dex even more. So there’s no reasonable time frame for someone to use every Pokemon without a majority of them just sitting in the box most of the time.

Debate as to whether it’s possible at this point to include all pokemon in Sword and Shield with the power of the Switch has persisted through the community, including discussion of development time and whether a delay to the game or patches would alleviate pressure on Game Freak so they don’t overwork. And those are all valid and important discussions to have; the game industry has a problem with overworking employees and discussing how tight a schedule Pokemon is on with it’s timed releases of multiple products - merch, Trading Cards, the Anime - could be putting pressure on that should be addressed. 

But while those discussions are important, I feel it also misses a very large point about the decision. It isn’t necessarily about having the ability to put everything in the game right now. Even if they do, this is still going to be an issue for future games, especially any time they have to change systems going forward. This is and always has been a long term issue that Pokemon was eventually going to have to face by the very nature of how Pokemon is as a game. A delay or patch to Sword and Shield to include everything right now wouldn’t be anything more than a bandage on that problem. So they decided to rip that off now to get it over with. 

However, there are also some other genuine critiques that I will agree with and bring up. And the biggest one that I think contributed the most to why the controversy became so big in the first place, at least to me, is Pokemon HOME and it’s advertising.

Because of how they chose to market Pokemon HOME as a way to transfer your Pokemon up to new games with Sword and Shield as the primary examples (because they’re the only ones currently available), that made the news of the transfer being limited to the Galar dex very jarring. Especially when we have so little information about how Pokemon HOME will actually work. 

There are a few counter points to this, such as how the release of Pokemon HOME will be well after the game’s release anyway. Not only that, but it’s also been hinted that there may be some gameplay features to Pokemon HOME as well, so it isn’t just a payed storage system. That way if pokemon are transferred, they won’t just be stuck in limbo if they aren’t in Sword and Shield. But the timing and advertising of Pokemon HOME is still an issue, as well as still not having a lot of new information revealed about it after this reveal. This could be relieved once more information comes out, and I think the sooner they do, the better.

So overall, while disappointment is absolutely understandable, I don’t believe that this one aspect of the game being changed is going to have such a big impact to be what destroys what good the game had before this was revealed. And the extreme reaction that it’s gotten feels like a bit of an overreaction. Being frustrated or believing it’s a bad decision is one thing, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reaction this largely negative in reaction to something Pokemon related in… ever, in all honesty. 

And whether it’s a decision you agree or disagree with, it’s just a game. I don’t think it’s worth so much discourse in the grand scheme of things. This is one decision that Game Freak let players know about well in advance. They didn’t wait until after release or way later like other game releases from other companies. They let people know ahead of time. So if the lack of pokemon is a deal breaker, people can cancel pre-orders and whatnot. And based on everything we’ve seen - from the Wild Area to the new pokemon and so many other features - they’re trying to make a good game. Again, it’s ok to be upset by it, but I don’t think the amount of rage this subject is getting is worth it.