#also: the stealth backstrike ones.

[goldensunset]

i still stand by bp being a really useful and cool currency for all the stuff you can get with it but mannnnnnnnn it really is like oh so you want to do literally anything in the dlc beyond the main story? enjoy running all over creation in the terarium doing the most random stuff for hours on end lol

[ipcearn]

Okay, okay

I’m gonna give my little opinion nugget on Pokemon Legends Arceus

I am now in the post-game, I battled Volo and Giratina - and what an amazing fight that was - I caught God Arceus and I have the shiny charm (and got my third full odds shiny, one of which is an alpha Shinx)

I have not yet finished the content added by the Daybreak update but I am slowly making my way through it

But honestly, I love this game

It might be one of my fave Pokemon games so far - and the only gen I didn’t play is 5 (I think I have Black somewhere but I never finished it, it was right at the time when I graduated high school and I had other things to worry about)

Nothing will ever beat my nostalgia tinged love of Emerald as the game that really kindled my adoration for the series and that was the first game where I ever finished a full living national Dex, and I tended to enjoy most of the other games despite also seeing a lot of their flaws

PLA too has a number of flaws that shouldn’t be disregarded

While the loading is pretty fast, I really don’t like that forced returning to the village - and don’t come at me with hardware limitations; if Breath of the Wild can run that smoothly on the Switch, with a fantastic open world, then so should Pokemon be able to; and I want to state I own a regular v1 Switch

I wish the Pokemon models themselves were just a little bit smoother and from time to time I had some minor visual glitches particularly in caves - granted I am a rather forgiving person when it comes to this and it didn’t hinder any of my gameplay, so I had no problem ignoring those things - hells, my game did not even crash once so far

Do I wish some of the terrain textures looked different or more varied? Fuck yeah! Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise, they have the money to put behind their projects to make them absolutely amazing and look absolutely amazing

(I am gonna have some words about Scarlet and Violet at the end of this, just you wait)

But granted, most of my issues are with the visual parts only

The gameplay is actually what I care about, and that I absolutely adore

I love the new capture mechanics where you can throw your balls in the overworld, backstrikes and stun-items and I sincerely hope they will keep some of those mechanics for the future

Dishonored and Assassin’s Creed are some of my fave games - and with the second one, a big guilty pleasure of mine - because I love stealth mechanics so being able to sneak up on Pokemon and catch them that way is right up my alley

Now we can definitely argue about the boss fight-mechanics - I beat Kleavor without ever pulling out my team because I didn’t really get when I could use my team against it and instead just pelted the poor thing with the balms until it had enough of my shit - and I will fully admit that I just pressed ‘continue’ on the Arceus fight since when a Pokemon game feels harder than all my playthroughs of FromSoft games - it’s mainly the lack of healing, I think - I feel no remorse to skip as much of the fight as I can on my attempts

I definitely liked parts of those mechanics, but I also get that since Pokemon so far had been a fairly casual gameplay experience before, adding what I mentally called Dark Souls mechanics isn’t going to be as much fun for less abled people and will essentially stop them from progressing

So I hope they will keep that feature either optional or out of other main line releases

Now - as someone who has no friends to trade with on the switch - I was very thankful that PLA is a singular edition game and I can get every Pokemon for the Dex, including the legendaries... even if it seems like you have to make a choice at some point Adaman all the way

I love the Dex mechanics since it really makes you feel like you are actively building a Dex for the first time, and I do like that a perfected page’s reward is a higher odds shiny chance so I can essentially ignore it for the ones I don’t want to shiny hunt

I have never been much of a shiny hunter - my first ever was a full odds Zubat in Emerald when I didn’t even know what shinies were, I just saw the green bat and wanted it for the hell of it - but it is so easy in this game even right from the start - my first full odds shiny was during my very first mass outbreak, when I was still a bit unsure what exactly mass outbreaks were, but it did result in me being startled by a shiny Ponyta (granted not as special since you later get a request that lets you get another shiny Ponyta but now I also have a shiny Rapidash without giving up my shiny Ponyta)

There are probably a couple more minor things I meant to mention, but can’t think of right now

PLA is probably the first Pokemon game I was happy to pay full triple A price for since for once it definitely felt worth it

Which does lead me to Scarlet and Violet

Oh boy

It’s way too early to announce them, in my opinion, particularly with how the trailer looks

Or rather, I don’t mind them showing off the game like this, if it had a release for  late next year

One thing the Switch titles really and very obviously suffered from is how close to each other they released

During the 2D games this might have been easier to manage, but with the Switch ones, the way these titles have been rushed and underdeveloped is very, very hard to miss

I enjoyed Sword and Shield a lot, since they did try a lot of new stuff, but they were also very terrible when you look at what a Pokemon could potentially do - looking at a number of the other Switch Nintendo titles

Now, I will hold final judgement until Scarlet and Violet release, and there are definitely things I very much think look promising during the trailer

But I wish Nintendo would take the time to take in the response to PLA and then build on a main series game based on that, as well as Sword and Shield

we fully ignore the clusterfuck garbage that BDSP is here