#same thing with sv's dlc. i'm not playing that lol

[tigergendermoved2tigergender]

I was thinking about it and I really do think so much of my issue with scarlet and violet is that you can't go inside of buildings anymore. There's the school (which has no hallways or transitional areas) and the gyms (that you don't fight inside of and which look the same) and one specific sandwich shop (lol) but other than that there's really nowhere to actually go once you've made it to a town.

Mesagoza is possibly the largest city we've gotten in Pokemon (or at least in top 3) but it feels way smaller than both Castelia and Lumiose because there's nothing to DO. You wander around in a circle not talking to NPCs, because 70% of them don't actually have unique dialogue so why bother checking every one, and you look at what are essentially the same 5 shops over and over until you make it back around to the school's giant staircase.

Towns are just pit stops (that aren't even necessary anymore, with free healing items being so plentiful, and boxes being a menu option now) where you go fight the gym or heal up before fighting the Titan pokemon and never have a reason to visit again. The world is vastly open but it feels unpopulated and sparse because there's pretty much no hidden content tucked away in towns or NPCs that will tell you about the region's culture or optional side ventures aside from looking for pokeballs on the ground in new places. It's a shame because I think Paldea's towns are all pretty and cool but they're just cardboard cutouts

[honnojis]

go forth friend. ramble about your favorites of the SV cast (w warnings where absolutely necessary ofc!!)

i wanna hear ur opinions of em !!!!

OUGH okay i will. put all of that under the cut bc i'm definitely going to talk about big spoilers AND IT'S GONNA BE LENGTHY BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS. SV may be a mess in some aspects but the story is the best it's been in many gens, if not the best story in any Pokémon game

i gotta talk about the two elephants in the room first; RIKA AND ARVEN.

For Rika; She's giving me gender envy bc like. god i wish that were me. But also I want to marry her because oh my god I love her and her design so much GAMEFREAK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME. Why do they always keep getting away with this shit EVERY GOD DAMN GEN that there's a character I end up being down bad for LOL... She's so chill!! But she's also so nice!!! And I'm ough. I really hope any future DLC will give her more screentime or at LEAST let me rematch her because why the fuck can i not fight the E4 again!!! sir!!! lemme see her!!!!!!!!!

Arven.............. he is my son now. That whole last stretch of the story in area zero really REALLY solidified him as my favourite of the main cast because man he's been through a lot and this guy can't catch a fucking break!!! Had to go years without seeing his parents only to find out that the one parent he remembers and saw only very occasionally as a kid died years prior to the game's events protecting the mirai/koraidon you've been traveling with all this time. And the whole thing about Mabosstiff!!! The titan questline had me tearing up on several occasions. im AUGh.... I'm so SO weak for characters like this who appear a bit standoffish at first but then open up to the player and they're just beans that have gone through a lot and are trying to help. And his own resolution to become a chef with the knowledge he now holds over the herba mystica to help others felt like the most logical course of action for him to take so i'm glad he found what he wants to strive for next!! anyways sorry not sorry if i end up drawing him a lot LMAO he lives in my brain rent free. son boy allowed

Then there's Nemona!!! She's so fucking head empty no thoughts and I love her. And if there's something in that head of hers it's just a brick with the only thought being violence and battle. And you know what? good for her! good for her. She's really funny and probably one of the most fun rivals we've had in recent history for pokemon. I like that she's not just super talented either, she literally explains to the trainer when you talk to her in postgame that she had to work hard to even get to this point. She really feels like a mirror to the player but she just took her journey of becoming a champion a year or two earlier than the player did. But also wow same lady ur just like me fr fr

Penny!! she's just a bean that cares for her friends!!! And the team Star story stuff really felt nicely done. Trying to help her friends that were painted as bullies because of a misunderstanding and mismanagement at the school while the team Star members aren't bad people at all. I also absolutely love her sass when traveling with her in Area Zero (and subsequently the dynamic between Penny, Nemona and Arven as a whole, they're best friends now your honor)

AND ALSO CAN I TALK ABOUT HER BATTLE THEME FOR A SECOND BECAUSE ?????????????????????

THEY PUT HARDCORE/HARDSTYLE IN MY POKEMON GAME

I genuinely was not expecting that but hearing the hardbass i was like wtf holy shit they went OFF with this track!!! The track is an absolute banger too but definitely felt unexpected for a character like Penny. Good for her though!! She's got one of the best themes in the game and im jamming

And then Turo! I played Violet but I'm aware that the same thing happens with Sada in Scarlet so it's easy to just replace names. Man... I could talk about this part of the story all fucking day. The professor is probably one of the most interesting "villains" in Pokémon as a whole and I'm SO GLAD that the series finally went down this route, because they absolutely nailed the story telling with this. Area Zero blew me out of the fucking water and was so unexpected!!! This whole segment has "REJUVENATION" written all over it!!! I was literally WAITING for Jan to get to this segment after completing the game, only for him to say the same exact shit LOL. I was not expecting this from a main series Pokémon game at ALL and frankly I'm so glad it did because this whole story segment with made Violet easily one of my favourite pokemon games in the series.

AI Turo stimulating the player from the background to find the herba mystica with arven and them becoming stronger but not really wanting to talk to Arven because-- just like his original counterpart-- he's too focused on the goal of the mission to care for the son of his original counterpart (though him being an AI also might hinder processing emotional attachment even MORE than the original Turo already had problems with). The reason why Turo hasn't visited Arven in years being that the original is dead and AI Turo literally cannot leave the crater due to him needing the power of the Tera crystals to stay functional. AI Turo, despite being the same in almost every possible way, realizing and coming to agree that there's no logic in the original Turo's decision to want to introduce future Pokémon into the ecosystem KNOWING that it'd destroy the old one, making him a better person than the original was-- and painting the original Turo as the villain in this situation due to that his obsession with the future as written in the Violet book drove him to ignore how wrong he was for what he was trying to do, even after death. AI Turo knowing that he himself is part of the security system and needs to be fought in order to put a stop to the time machine, hence why he stimulated the player to keep training and taking care of Miraidon. AI Turo realizing that he needed to go in order to put a total stop to the time machine because his very existence is keeping it active. He says "I want to see the future" and leaves the present day in order to stop the time machine, but there's some deeper implications here; in practice this is AI Turo taking a massive risk by sacrificing himself to save Paldea because on the chance he ends up outside of the crater, he'll cease functioning and will practically die. And you know? The revelation that he's an AI powered robot actually makes total sense if you paid attention to his animations and speech mannerisms; he's the only character that doesn't have a breathing animation (it's not even there in the first video transmission you see of him! and it's the same for Sada in Scarlet) and is constantly identifying the player & friends through student ID's and biometrics rather than acknowledging them as actual people. BUT ALSO THAT BATTLE WAS SO FUCKING COOL!! Genuinely challenging too since you had to figure out his mons' typings on the fly, AND HE'S GOT A BANGER BATTLE THEME. Toby Fox you've done it again you madman

honorable mention goes to Clavell and Grusha, the former because Clavell is fucking funny as hell and I'm so glad he ended up being more involved in the story than I expected. Sir you're a little behind with the times AND YOU ASKED ME WHAT CHEUGY MEANS WHICH KILLED ME but you're all the funnier for it. thank you. Grusha gets the mention because he caught me off guard by having the highest leveled gym team out of any of the gym leaders with having mons at level 47 while I strolled up with my mid-30's team and got my ass blasted. thank you sir. i will now never make the mistake of thinking you're a lower tier gym leader just because TPC advertised you early. good god

All that being said, I could go on about every other character but these really were the ones that stuck out the most in my mind. i have so many thoughts about this game and i swear the brainrot's going to be around for a LONG ASS TIME

[doubleddenden]

I know the comparison is tired, bit after playing ToTK and after experiencing how glitchy and... well let's face it, kinda ugly Scarlet and Violet can be, I really hope I don't hear about the dlc for a while. Like I do want it, but I also don't, you dig?

I have sort of a rant below lol

Totk had six years of development plus 300 something staff members. SV had maybe 2 and a half years and around 180 or so. Game Freak is aiming way too close to the sun on wings made of Elmer's glue and brittle leaves. They need to stop splitting their staff so much between all of these projects (btw reminder that they started working on Project Bloom, another IP due out in 3 years on pokemon's 30th anniversary lol) and up dev time to 5 years minimum for each project.

I'm just saying, the worst glitches in ToTK are usually player triggered and do not end up messing with their game. The worst glitches in SV can corrupt save data with barely a way to fix it. If it only happens to 100 people out of millions world wide, that's still 100 too many.

So what I want is this:

Do not release Teal Mask until a MASSIVE update rolls out to fix things. In theory, November will be a year since release, and maybe then most of the issues will be fixed, but I'm seriously doubting it since we're 6 months out and the slow downs keep happening. Ideally, fix things by November, release Teal Mask- delay Indigo Disk until March or so instead of winter this year, give both plenty of time to bake.

After that?

Just let Pokémon nap for a bit. Seriously. I don't want to hear about a Let's Go Johto at all. I don't want to hear about BW Remakes (least of all from ILCA). I don't wanna hear about gen 10. Not until it's good and God damn ready.

Here's the thing, folks: the gaming industry copies everything from Zelda now. Open world with climbing and gliding ESPECIALLY jumped up since BoTW, and SV is no exception. ToTK added new layers to its world and added physics, engineering- what pokemon really, REALLY needs to take away from Zelda is this: time, focus, and effort to refine a product. ToTK was actually finished a year before release, but Aonuma delayed it and kept playing the game to completion 10 times over so they could polish it to hell and back. That kind of dedication is what I'd kill for in Pokemon game development.

I already hear some of you.

1. They're entirely different games! It's not fair to compare!

It actually is. Here's the thing: both are Nintendo products- yes pokemon isn't quite first party, but you're not seeing it on the ps4, and Nintendo does have partial ownership, so it is a Nintendo product. Both are running on the Switch, so it isn't so much a hardware issue so much that it's Game Freak and the lack of optimization or shooting themselves in the foot with cut corners, less staff, and less dev time. ToTK has WAY MORE going on compared to Pokémon in terms of mechanics, animation, and programming. Pokemon has been recycling and reglossing the same mechanics, models, animations, and gameplay since XY. Yes, there's new textures, there's a few new models, there's some new animations- but the majority is so recycled that you can find items and data in the code that's leftover carry over from bw2 of all things. And yes, ToTK does have an advantage of being built on top of BoTW, but let's be real, there's way more going on by having to program bullet time, fuse an arrow, and then programming the effects of said fused arrow as it attacks a fully autonomous enemy that has its own set of programming to kill you. This, vs updating the same turn based battle Mechanics that is literally pick a move, X Pokémon does animation, damage calculation, enemy randomly selects pre programmed set of moves, animation, damage calculation.

2. But there's 1000 pokemon they have to model now!

Incorrect and you're purposely spouting misinformation by balooning the numbers. They only put in around >500 pokemon at launch, only 400 of which were available until recently when the Home Update finally let us access the others from LA that were in the code. At most there's 230 more coming. While that's still a lot, consider that ToTK has hundreds of models of NPCs, entities, weapons and weapon combos with their own mechanics and interactions, and enemies on the map, each with vastly more complex dynamics, modeling details, animations, etc than your standard pokemon npc that just stands there, or your standard pokemon that just walks around with walking programming from SM's data. I'm not asking for all pokemon back (although I do find it real fucking suspicious that a fucking 3ds can have 800+ pokemon in it, plus megas, plus forms, plus z moves, plus all sorts of other transformations PLUS shinies PLUS more shirts and pants and apparently gf thinks the Switch can't handle it, and said 3ds only really chugged with more than 1 pokemon on the field lol). What I am asking for is that since they themselves have stated that the reason for dex cuts was to improve things, they actually put their multi billionaire money where their mouth is and actually show it.

3. But people freaked out over Home not being available at launch!

As they should be. ILCA develops Home, not GF. They should have had it ready to go day fucking 1, lets be real. Yes its never been day 1 (it was for ORAS but i digress) but there's really no reason for it not to be- and no, they don't care about team metas or whatever because players will get the pokemon they want regardless. If they cared, they'd leave out Landorus and Kyogre.

SV were rushed out the door covered in glue and tape holding it together, but the far simpler side products get to take their sweet time? GF should have waited for ILCA to be done and taken time to polish, or they should have had the home update out the door by February at the latest by working alongside developers to get it working asap.

Even then, that's just Home. Home is not the entire game. Even if fans snarl and foam at the mouth for GF to release an unfinished product, ESPECIALLY if FINANCIAL PARTNERS scream and throw tantrums about wanting their money now; pokemon, Nintendo, and GF need to tell those people to fuck off until it's done and not falling apart.

There's a difference between what's essentially a save editor app and a full functioning game.

4. But the anime! The merch! Everything else! They have to keep schedule! Pokémon isn't just a gaming franchise anymore!

I really, really am tired of this argument and quite frankly I do not give a flying fuck anymore, even if i have made the same argument myself in the past. Pokémon IS a game first and foremost, even if everyone wants you to think otherwise. There is NOTHING without the games, and it's time we give the games the proper respect.

For plushies, merch, trading cards, etc: why don't we try changing how things are marketed?

Game Freak can still develop the games- they take their time doing it this time though. What should change is the order in which the public sees things.

GF basically spear heads the operations of all commercial grade goods because they're the ones that decide regional location basis, and most importantly, design the new Pokémon.

Why do we need the games to come first in that regard?

Here's a consideration: back in the early days of Pokémon, they would tease new Pokémon before the games they originate from ever come out. Ho Oh, Togepi, Donphan, Marill, Snubbull, Elekid, Bellossom, Hoothoot- all teased in the anime and movies before gen 2. Keckleon, Wailmer, Duskull, Wynaut, Blaziken- all before gen 3. Gen 4 was REALLY hype af because we'd get Munchlax super early in the gen 3 anime, Bonsly as playable in XD, Lucario got his own movie- you get the idea.

What if instead of forcing a team that clearly needs more time to not fuck things up to work faster, they just make merch for new Pokémon ahead of time to hype people up?

Imagine if Wooloo was a plushie before gen 8 released. If Corviknight, Centiskorch, Drednaw, Dragapult, and Toxtricity were in the tcg before launch? What if we had Horizons tease Ceruledge, the Paldean starters, and more a whole year before launch? Shit, that's what they're doing for Terapagos right now, and it's working!

Now imagine all of this teasing. You want these guys on a team. You want to see their stats so bad, don't you? Imagine the payoff when you finally get it. That's how it was when I was a kid, believe it or not. Hell, that's how it was when I was 18 and saw Noivern and Mewtwo Y in the BW anime and movie before XY dropped. That's how it was seeing Charizard X in Origins, too.

Instead of relying on the games to lead the way, let the Pokémon designs do it. Let the games be completed and polished in the background while they tease the dex in the gap time. And then they can have more surprises hidden in the game at launch!

Idk, have Liko and Roy catch a gen 10 pokemon and evolve it. Have some movies based off of some gen 10 mythicals or mascot pokemon before gen 10 comes out. Have a couple of new characters drop to Masters with new Pokémon. In a SIDE game like the theoretical Colosseum 3 I keep BEGGING for made by a different company- have a few gen 10 pokemon be teased and have them be able to be rented to battle with, like Bonsly.

All of this edging for a few years- when gen 10 is finally announced, you sit there clutching your ultra cute mon pkushies that you want to befriend. You sit there hyped as fuck clenching your cards and holding your figurine of your cool new bird or dragon mon bro. Fuck it, you got your waifu pillow of your furry bait at the ready. Gen 10 finally is teased, you see your babies and bros in the game for real now- AND NOW THERE'S MORE! And then you finally get the games and you're so fucking hyped to have your new favorite pokemon that you've been teased at for so long. ALL from a game that took its time to release, so you get the added satisfaction of playing a game you can be proud to own.

You get your new Pokémon. TPC gets billions in merch, and then tpc, gf, and Nintendo rake in the billions they're gonna make anyway from the games, and most importantly WE get a game that has had more dev time.

Make sense? There's options that they can and *should* explore rather than whipping the poor hamster to keep running on the broken hamster wheel until one or both break.

"B-but the leaks! But but! I don't want to be spoiled!"

Okay, that's on you. I'm basing this off of how things USED to work and what worked very well in the past. That's on you to avoid all of this.

Besides that, for leaks, I really don't care anymore. SM leaked all the final starter evolutions before Mallow was revealed- its going to happen. We know this. It literally always does via 4chan, Discord, or Twitter. Who even cares anymore? What matters is the finished product! Use it as part of marketing!

Or, all of this to say, there's another way to go about this:

Radio

Silence

TOTK went radio silent for years. Then it just fucking drops trailers months before release. Now look at it! It's selling POKÉMON levels at launch!

Just go silent for a few years on the new gen. Idk, hire other companies to port older games to the Switch. Focus on side games. They would make BILLIONS with a an Explorers remake. With Colosseum and XD remakes. With a Colo 3 that does nothing but make a new game with existing pokemon. A Battle Revolution type game that exclusively uses pokemon in your Home Account. We don't need any of that, but it's perfect keys to dangle in front of your frothing man baby businessmen or poketubers that demand their content to milk.

I just want a game that is COMPLETE AT LAUNCH. I want pokemon to finally make a game every other game in the industry copies. I want Pokémon to finally make a GoTY contender. I'm tired of always playing and saying "oh this is a good start- oh this is kinda bad now BUT THERE'S POTENTIAL-" I want to see them FUCKING NAIL IT for once. I want to see 9 and 10 out of 10s from critics and fans alike.

Pokemon used to be a gaming Titan and now it's a laughing stock. I want to be proud to be a fan again. We all agree there's a TON OF GOOD going on in LA and SV, literally some of the best ideas the entire franchise over- but don't you want a glimpse of the timeline where they took their time? Where they were polished? I know I do. I know we can have it.

And before you say "guh you just outgrew the franchise" kindly stop licking TPC's boots and sweaty ballsacks and listen. Gen 8 sucked until DLC. BDSP sucked, but LA was fun. Even with the flaws SV has, it's still vastly more fun than SwSh and LGPE were. I didn't complete Colosseum or XD until AFTER I beat SwSh. This argument is done- I am a fan and have been for a long time. There's a difference between me wanting a COMPLETE AND POLISHED $60 AAA TITLE AT LAUNCH and some man baby that thinks all of gen 5 sucks because of ice cream pokemon.

This is the last point: pokemon games are going to get more expensive. ToTK gave Nintendo the greenlight to charge $70 for their games now- granted, its one of the few games i have ever played that feels close to that price. They're going to start doing it for everything else soon, and Pokémon is going to be SHOVING for the chance to charge you $70 a game.

Do you want to pay $70 for another Scarlet and Violet? PLUS tax? Plus $35 for dlc? Plus $15 a year for Home? Plus $20 to $30 a year for Nintendo Online?- which will probably become more expensive on the Switch's successor, which IS coming, and Pokémon WILL be on it. Don't forget to add in shipping fees or any other regional expenses- it'll probably be $80 in some countries.

$150 for the full experience. Do you want to drop that on bugs and glitches again? I certainly don't. And Nintendo games do not drop more than a few pennies in price either, especially pokemon games, so that $70 Pokémon game, 10 years from now, will be $68.99. Are you going to drop that hard earned money on another incomplete game?

It is time to start demanding better of the richest franchise in history. No, actually the time was 2018 when LGPE thought they could get away with its awful catching mechanics and its Kanto elitism, and it was definitely 2019 when SwSh dropped its awful story and characters in an awful wild area. Stop ass kissing and defending and DEMAND more.

Start demanding Pokemon: Tears of the Kingdom NOW while things are still in the early stages of development.

[aemoglobin]

spending money diary again sorry

so this week is payday and i already have things i need to get lol

by need i mean Need. i Need to buy 4 packs of hangers bc i am OUT and i have a bundle of clothes that's been sitting on my chair for weeks now lol. i Need to maybe get another hamper for clothes i can wear again after a quick outing. i Need to get aoife an elevated food stand thing? thing that holds her food Up on a tray so she doesn't have to lean over all the way bc i think that might be another reason why she isn't enjoying her food lately.

things i'm getting because i Want them

i have to preorder chuu's sgb it's SO CUTE i need to get it again. the cake theme was made for me. i have to preorder yves' new album too but if i preorder it from the same place as chuu's sgb it won't ship out until early december OTL so i'm gonna have to get it from ktown. obvs i'm getting the set! for the pobs! she's so cute i need her,, i'll order irene's album at the same time, too, i can wait for them even though it might be another 'sent out in december' set :thinking: i have to double-check the dates on them. if they're close enough i might just get all 3 from ktown (unless the sgb is only from everline).

i've kinda gotten into the pocalbums/smaller album types that focus on less packaging. idk every company calls them something different but you know, the little ones! so i might get a few more for older albums i liked but don't have enough actual space for + i already own the CD. i don't trust apps enough to ONLY buy a 'digital' copy of the music. so i do need to buy tzuyu's digipack at some point before it leaves my work lol but yeah!

hm, i preordered twice's next album from my work but that's not gonna be for another month so it's whatever. i like all the versions that got announced! so whichever ones my work stocks i'll pick up a couple but i'm not gonna exceed my maximum of 5 types per comeback lol i do NOT actually need that many CDs.

i also need to find itzy's latest album, preorders sold out before i could get one from my work so hopefully we have some in stock...didn't get the chance to preorder imaginary friend either bc i had to pay aoife's vet bill that was infinitely more important!

let's see...cix announced their sgb theme and it sucks again so i probably won't get it. my 2nd fave member also left the group this year and while i wish him the best i don't really want to get the sgb if he's not in it </3 haven't seen signs of sgb from any of the other groups i follow so hopefully those get announced soon. i know for sure i want to get looble's sgb. i feel bad about missing artms stuff all the damn time but i'll get them eventually...it's not a race!! >.<;

other things i'm waiting for are the llsif kuji pulls i did in the summer and then some pokemon toys i got from a box split group :thinking: i kind of want to sell some of the gacha toys i got from my work because i'm not a fan of the characters i pulled. might take some setting up on mercari but i could do it...probably...maybe next year.

and i STILL want to get the SV dlc. i might buy the card for it and hang on until i finish the academy questlines :more_thinking:. i'm really grateful to Neo for selling me the Violet base game for so cheap lol i don't mind spending the $35 on the dlc as much...i should also buy the dlc for acnh as well even though i don't play anymore...because i'll go back to it eventually!

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

Day 1 of Sword went well - I picked Scorbunny as my starter but also went into Scarlet and bred the other two and then sent them back into Sword so I could have all three lmao. I'm probably gonna go for Pokédex completionnnnn there's nothing wrong with giving myself the other starters rq just to meet that endddddddddddddddd.

Multiple years ago I caught a shiny Zubat in Pokémon Sun, evolved it into Golbat, and then dropped the game, and then before all the 3DS online and eshop related stuff was shut down got Pokémon Transporter or whatever the fuck so I could send that Golbat into Home. The only Switch Pokémon game I had though is Violet so this Golbat was just stuck in Home. Now that I have Sword though I've sent it in there and even though it's slightly overlevelled so doesn't listen to me I'm working on its friendship and will eventually have a shiny Crobat, which is my 2nd favourite Pokémon, so yk, very cool.

I'm still firmly in a rather handholdy tutorial section so game doesn't feel great yet but I'm enjoying myself enough. Actual graphical fidelity isn't great although I appreciate the art design a decent amount. I did buy the DLC although I haven't started it yet because I mean, I wanna beat the main game first lol.

I keep getting fucked over in the fashion department in Pokémon because when I was doing the soul links with my friend we never played the same gender and just by way of rotation I missed the girl in XY, and then I got to be the girl in USUM but the fashion options in that game are shit, and then SV has fashion options but everything is a kind of ugly school uniform so haven't been happy there. And so things are finally looking up for me, and I've so far got a girl that I can be reasonably happy with.

Went with the name Hope, which actually isn't a great idea because of my rival being called Hop, and us doing a lot of the journey together it seems. Very easy to confuse yourself a bit in dialogue when both those names turn up in a row. Hop is kind of annoying although he's far from the weakest rival in the series so.

Gaming gamer.

[protagonistheavy]

Very likely my last Pokemon SV post until any DLC comes out worthwhile to comment upon. I've now wrapped up all main storylines, and I have to announce that even including this final fourth storyline, I am deeply unimpressed.

The Area Zero plotline had a lot of potential, and leading up to its climax, I was admittedly getting into it, but that hype very quickly faded once I realized that this was it -- this is all it was. Story-wise, Area Zero is just a long descent into a big hole with only a handful of scripted non-trainer battles, culminating with one big battle that, yet again, failed to really challenge me beyond figuring out the weaknesses of then-unseen pokemon.

What I've concluded also is that Arven is just, the main character lol. If this was not a game with a customizable player character, if this was a more traditional narrative, then Arven would plainly be the main character. He's the only one out of every character to have any depth, or really anything going on that's compelling. A dying dog, missing parent, these are the bare bones of an interesting character plot. I feel bad that Arven has this whole emotional journey, but it's the player standing where Arven should be, doing the things Arven should be doing. I see now why everyone likes Arven so much, and it's because he's the only one with anything happening that matters.

I was really jazzed about having some NPC friends running along with me, but it's a shame that they only follow you for just that segment. It felt like a missing piece to the rest of the game was finally found -- friendship!! But unfortunately its a very underwhelming effect, too little too late. You barely get a couple double-battles with these guys, let alone a meaningful battle; Penny and Nemona provide almost nothing for being there since it's only Arven that has any personal stakes. I would have loved to enjoy their company, and given a chance to see them more fleshed out, when I was playing the main game and running around the world -- maybe they could have accompanied you on a few segments, traveled with you between two cities or landmarks. I guess it's good we get as little as we did.

And then the plot itself with Area Zero, intriguing but not thrilling. Perhaps it could have made me more curious if these mysteries were better elaborated on earlier, and not reserved for the final 30 minutes of the game. Overall I guess I don't even have much to say because the plot itself just isn't substantial. There's no compelling argument for the professor's mindset, to effectively destroy the ecosystem by taking pokemon out of other times... There's some concept of creating a "paradise" but that just seems like a generic motivation, this fantasy concept that somehow it would just, work out all right, when there's nothing to convince neither the player nor the professor that such could be accomplished. I'm left very confused about why any of this needed to happen.

So uh overall a nice effort but I really don't get how people are calling this the best plot in a Pokemon game. Where does that really come from? Because I found nothing story-wise in this game to be that fascinating. None of the characters spoke to me, none of the mysteries felt satisfying, none of the dramas were exciting. When I compare this story to previous Pokemon games, I see a lot of the same usual plotlines and tropes, spread out without good direction -- paced poorly as a result of open-world game design, three distinct storylines divided from one another because it cant predict when you might trigger certain event flags. So rather than one cohesive railroad of a story, you're given the flat pieces of that same story scattered across a big, empty map -- still written in a way that expects you to follow a logical trail, but theyve given you the option to fuck up it up if you really want to.

I'm left feeling like Sun and Moon were still the last "real" Pokemon games. On so many levels, it feels like that gen just simply did better, with more interesting characters and more memorable moments. I cant help but feel that people are hyping up SV's story mostly as a way to combat criticism of how lame the gameplay is or how glitchy the experience is. And it's true that the story has some charm, but when I think of Sun and Moon, I can think of so many more moments that had my attention grabbed, whereas I just finished SV and I struggle to remember almost anything from my journey that wasn't a complaint.