#petrixel plays pokemon legends arceus

[pokemongoexcitement]

I normally forget that Gyarados is a flying type as well as a water type. 

Nothing reminded me faster than literally seeing one flying around in the air like a bird.

[pokemongoexcitement]

Me: Wow, am I having fun exploring this area full of Level 3 Pokemon instead of progressing on this mission! I could spend a few more hours doing this!

Giant Rapidash with Glowing Red Eyes: *Appears*

Me: Wow, am I having fun running over to find the next main story event which is quite coincidentally in the opposite direction of that scary Pokemon!

[pokemongoexcitement]

Note to self: if other Pokemon are chasing you, and you challenge another to battle, all wild Pokemon involved get invited to fight you at the same time.

This also includes Pokemon you didn’t even realize you’d gotten the attention of, including that Alpha Hippowdon twenty levels higher than that of your team’s that you ran past not that long ago, not seeing it was even there, before challenging that Hippopotas to a fight. And that Alpha will not stop chasing you even after you flee from the battle, and talking to NPCs handing out requests will only give you a brief respite.

[pokemongoexcitement]

I swear, if there hadn’t been so many parallels with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, I wouldn’t be so suspicious about how Pokemon Legends: Arceus makes a point of having us, our rival, and Professor Laventon eat dinner together after every main mission, even when no one has a lot to say. Is the story team just making me care for them just to use them as a sledgehammer to break my heart to pieces later on? 

[pokemongoexcitement]

I think I’m getting near the end of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and am currently being torn in two.

On one hand, I want to beat the game, to know what happens, see what happens after the credits roll, continue working on the Pokedex, explore all of Hisui’s corners, take on more requests. I want to run across the regions catching Pokemon, or fly above them with Braviary, catching the sights. I want to put off the inevitable, even for just a little while longer.

But on the other, I don’t want this all to end. I’m having lots of fun, and care about the characters and seeing where the story goes next. I know that after the story’s over, that’s pretty much it. There’ll be no more cutscenes where the Survey Corps is hanging out eating potato mochi together to celebrate another mission completed. I won’t be tagging along with Adaman or Irida or any of the wardens on another adventure. I still have five stars to get, so I’ll still be talking with Cyllene, but after that? Plus, I get the feeling that at least part of the ending will leave me crying for more reason than I beat the game. 

But even if I procrastinate, I still won’t get any more story events. There won’t be any more dinners with the Survey Corps, no further interactions with any of the friends and allies my character made along the way. 

I think that this is the most attached to multiple human characters I’ve been in a main Pokemon game.

[pokemongoexcitement]

Discussion of something that happens at the end of Pokemon Legends: Arceus underneath the Read More, so you probably want to skip this post if you’re avoiding spoilers.

With all the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon references in this game, I began to expect that the end of the game would also involve the protagonist disappearing.

So when the cutscene rolled where everyone is going to celebrate you saving Hisui and closing the time-space rift with a festival, and my character turned to face where it used to be, my first train of thought was, “Do not turn into light, do not turn into light, at least wait until the festival.” 

Because at the end of the Mystery Dungeon games, where your character turns into light? There’s always a farewell involved. Even in Gates to Infinity, where your character tries to leave without saying farewell, your partner and the townspeople still leave you the frism with their farewells recorded on it. As painful as it was, there would’ve been some closure. 

But had Legends’ protagonist vanished right then and there? Everyone else was a good distance ahead of them. It would’ve been likely no one would have even noticed in time to ask what was happening or even just say their farewells. All your friends might’ve just turned around and realized you weren’t following. They might have come to the conclusion you’d returned to your original time, after the panic of losing you ebbed enough to think about it, but even that would still hurt, especially for the survey corps, who’d eaten dinner with you after every important mission, and had only just reunited with you after your banishment. They’d been stressed about your wellbeing, feared that they’d never see you again, and right when things start looking up you would’ve been gone and they would’ve thought that they really wouldn’t see you again this time, and the only comfort would’ve been that you would’ve been safe and not on the run this time.

I’m glad that this time-traveling hero, at least, got to properly enjoy the world-saving party without any tears. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

Yesterday I was out picking up NPCs lost satchels in the Alabaster Icelands when I heard the shiny noise, but I didn’t see the animation itself, and with the poor visibility and the Pokemon surrounding me having shinies close to their original coloration, I had no idea which of them was the shiny. So I just caught all of them.

Luckily for me, I caught it, a nice shiny Bidoof. Unluckily for me, I shall now be living in constant fear of hearing a shiny, but never seeing it. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

There’s a lot about Pokemon Legends: Arceus that I enjoy, but I can’t really say that the majority of the battle system is one of them. I kind of like the strong and agile versions of the moves - very good to make sure you can weaken Pokemon without knocking them out, or end a battle quickly - but off the top of my head I don’t really care for the rest of the new changes. I don’t find it’s fun at all when I’m forced into the Set battle option, and a trainer switches into a Pokemon strong against the one I already had and then it hits twice in a row before I even get a chance to swap out. To me, at least, it feels kind of cheap instead of challenging, because there’s no chance to respond or plan. I wouldn’t mind so much if this rule stayed in a smaller subseries of Pokemon Legends games, if the series goes that way, but I can’t see myself enjoying it if it is incorporated into other main series games. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

I didn’t realize how much I missed new interactions with the characters in Pokemon Legends Arceus until playing through Daybreak, where I found myself smiling every time a character I recognized walked up. Even though it’s only been a month and those characters don’t really completely vanish from the game, it still felt like I hadn’t seen them in forever. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

So I was on my way to work on a post game mission when I saw that a mass outbreak of Chimecho happened to be right next to where I had to go. I decided to go check it out, not expecting to get anything unusual because that’d been the story so far with the outbreaks I’d checked out before. Well, long story short, I caught a shiny Chimecho!

[pokemongoexcitement]

While waiting for night to fall in an area so that I could hopefully find some Cleffa to feed for a research task (or for a space-time distortion to form so I could catch some Pokemon I needed there; whatever happened first), I happened to throw a few Oran berries at some nearby Roselia to entertain myself while I sat in the tall grass. One of the Roselia was so happy about this it kept jumping back and forth, running in circles around me, and then seemingly getting even more impatient for me to feed it more. I swear it even placed its rose hands on its hips at one point, and slowly tapped its foot in irritation at another. Since I rarely feed Pokemon when not needed to complete its Pokedex page, I’d never known that this happened, and it made me love the game even more than I did already. It also turned Roselia from a Pokemon I felt neutral toward to one I associate with a really cute memory. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

Back when I started playing Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee, I managed to complete the Pokedex for the first time. For the first time, I wasn’t daunted by mountains upon mountains of Pokemon to find, catch, and evolve, and trade evolutions were much less of a concern when I had Pokemon Go to grab them from. 

Despite having even more Pokemon than Let’s Go, Pokemon Legends: Arceus has motivated me a lot more to do this. A good chunk of this is that evolutions can be found in the wild and therefore I don’t have to swap out my team, level up with random wild Pokemon and trainers, evolve, swap out for more Pokemon and repeat over and over and over and over. But a good chunk of it is the fact that it seems like completing the Pokedex is tied more into the story. Yeah, at the beginning of every main series Pokemon game a professor tells you to complete the Pokedex, but the story wraps up just fine without that. The most you get is words of praise, a certificate, and a way to boost the chances of finding a shiny Pokemon of a species you already have. While I have aimed to catch them all before, at the end I always found myself losing steam, intimidated at the task and finding too little reward for such a lot of time training, battling, researching, and the like.

But Pokemon Legends: Arceus it feels more tied into the story than just a checkmark for 100% completion. Perhaps it’s the focus on catching instead of battling, with the lack of an Elite Four to challenge. I’m toward what’s probably the end of the post-game story, but unless I’m either mistaken about it being the end or a lot happens all at once, I can’t see it wrapping up the story parts of the game. And I do know a bit of what happens when you’ve caught them all, just enough to hint that it’s more than just a “Good job” and a shiny stone. And while having better chances at finding a shiny Pokemon is tempting on its own, hide the possibility of more story behind Pokedex completion and I’ll apparently catch them all no matter what it takes. 

[pokemongoexcitement]

I just got my first random shiny Pokemon that isn’t on Pokemon Go!

And it’s one I already caught on this game just yesterday! What are the chances?

[pokemongoexcitement]

Spoilers for the postgame of Pokemon Legends: Arceus under the Read More, so if you haven’t finished yet, you may want to avoid reading further. 

And I thought the gauntlet of pain at the end of Pokemon Black and White’s main story was bad. At least if you fainted in the middle of that one, they kept your progress. The one in Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a nightmare. 

The only thing this one has going for it is that I don’t seem to be losing anything I didn’t use in the battle, my Pokemon keep any experience and levels they gain from completing the first battle, and that I just get sent back to a few steps away from the boss. So I’m just battling them over and over, getting better each time, leveling up my Pokemon as I do so. I know there’s probably better strategies, but it’s the one I’m going with.

At least I can enjoy the music. They really weren’t even trying to hide who this one character is related to, were they?

[pokemongoexcitement]

So I beat Pokemon Legends: Arceus!

Spoilery talk under the Read More.

I had a good idea when I first saw the teaser for the game that I’d probably enjoy it, and I’m glad to say that I did, indeed, have a great time! While there weren’t as many new Pokemon as a new region, seeing each new one was always a treat, especially for regional variants I hadn’t even thought about existing, let alone expecting to appear. And I had the fortune of seeing some for the first time as Alpha Pokemon, which added to the amazement as I hid in the nearest patch of grass or fled as fast as Wyrdeer could carry me. The Ride Pokemon that weren’t shown in the lead up to the game were pretty cool, especially that Sneasel variant that I’m not able to remember the name of right now; I honestly had to laugh to see that the way to scale cliffs was to hang out in a basket on a Pokemon’s back as it climbs the mountain (or tree, as I accidentally found out) for you. Your eyes even are visible in a hole in the basket, which adds to the humor a lot. 

I’m glad to say that I got to try training a lot more new Pokemon than I did in Brilliant Pearl, and finally got around to adding Dialga to my team! ... At least for now. I had an Alpha Goodra on my team before, at least for a little bit, and I might switch her back in, but on the other hand, seeing Dialga stomp on ores for me is oddly funny. While I had planned on some team members - Cyndaquil for sure, even when I worried about not liking whatever it’d evolve into for the regional evolution, Hisuian Braviary, and definitely a Luxray - others were spur of the moment, such as that Stunky that I got out of the paddock after hearing that the area I was heading for was rumored to have lots of ghost type Pokemon. It was a false alarm, as it turned out, but she turned out quite helpful. 

As delightful as my team this game was, I found myself growing just as attached to the characters. Having the main character have dinner at the end of every major mission with the rest of the Survey Corps team just made me more attached to them. I grew to enjoy going out with missions with Adaman and Irida, to the point where I had a hard time choosing who to team up with in the last third or so of the game. Only the fact that I liked Dialga more than Palkia led me to choose Adaman, and even then I still felt bad for having to choose between them. At first I honestly thought Cyllene didn’t care about my character at all, but when things take a turn for the worst and she shows that she cares about them, I couldn’t help but smile. I do wish we’d gotten to see more of the rival than the tutorials, the occasional battle, and dinner - perhaps they’d be involved with something involving crafting at the base camps - and seen more of their arc of learning to battle with their Pikachu. It was brought up, but kind of dropped halfway through the main story. Maybe it continues in the post-game or if you complete enough requests, though. 

I don’t know what I expected storywise when I started the game, but I wasn’t really expecting all the probably deliberate parallels with the Mystery Dungeon games. I thought it was only just the beginning and the whole natural disaster part that was similar, and that the main character joining Galaxy Team just like the main character of Explorers joining Wigglytuff’s Guild was a bit of a stretch, but then the last third of the game happened, and things felt a lot more deliberate then. I even swear that at Cogito’s house you could hear parts of one certain Mystery Dungeon track in the background of the music that played there. It was so strong that at the end of the game, where your character pauses at the top of the temple as everyone goes to leave and looks at where the time-space distortion used to be, I caught myself thinking, “Do not turn into light, do not turn into light, at least wait until the festival before disappearing” because it felt like such a natural moment for that to happen. They didn’t, but I do kind of wish that they’d delved more into the fact that the rift disappeared, leaving the character stranded. The possibility of that happening was mentioned exactly once and never lingered on again. Although I haven’t caught them all yet; that and other unresolved issues brought up and never mentioned again - Ingo being stranded there too, the reason why Arceus brought the player and maybe Ingo to get humans and Pokemon to coexist instead of recruiting someone else in that time period, the past hero with the ten Pokemon that Arceus blessed and their connection to the main character - might be tied up with a bow once you catch Arceus. Maybe that’s when the “fades to light, then reappears so you can continue playing” thing happens, which I’d be very heartbroken over because I grew attached to this little found family of a professor, a teenager from the village who wants to be a better trainer for their Pokemon, and a time traveler who fell out of the sky and their shared love of potato mochi. 

If in the future there’s a series of Pokemon Legends games that cover pasts of other regions, I honestly would be very happy. I’m still thinking about Zacian, Zamazenta, and all the questions their backstory never answers, like what faraway region they’re from and if the kings were more involved in their story than the tapestry showed. Even this game provides possible places to delve more into, such as about the legendary hero whose ten Pokemon were blessed by Arceus. Even games set in a region’s distant future would be fun, seeing how our character’s actions changed a region in a more long-term way than Black and White 2 showed. I only wish that if they do a) they tweak the battle system so at least you get the chance to change Pokemon in trainer battles after the other trainer’s last one faints, or at the very least give you a chance to select an action, and b) if they allow you to catch Pokemon while surfing again, to make the Pokemon more easily visible, and not punish the player for not being able to sneak up on them.

Overall, this was a very fun game! I’m going to try my best to complete the Pokedex and see the rest!

[pokemongoexcitement]

I’m enjoying Pokemon Legends Arceus so far from what little I’ve played of it, but can I just say that I’m not really fond of Pokemon’s current fondness of having parts of the game where they auto-advance text without waiting to see if you finished reading? The part where they give nearby NPCs bits of dialogue as the character you’re following gives you exposition was particularly difficult for me to follow along with everything and I missed great chunks of exposition because I was trying to pay attention to everything and the text advanced too quickly. And of course the frustration and the feeling of being rushed that caused just made it harder for me to keep up.