#some dexit griping

[flyingpochama948]

One of the gripes I had with the DLC.

okay you know that Lion King reference in the game? Well the shape of the rock reminded me of that one in the wild area you use to evolve Galarian Yamask. So I was certain Yamask was going to be available. Also cause Unova.

But no...the only Galarians we get are Slowpoke in the Biome and the one Meowth you get from Salvatore after you do all of his classes and some extras.

We do have all the Alolan forms though... Even ones not available in Blueberry Academy.

Though, since we have Weezing in the game I'm thinking it's possible to move in a Galarian Weezing from Home. But I haven't tried it. It all boils down to most Pokémon with Galarian forms were not available I the game because Dexit.

[pokesception]

Whelp, started playing pokemon sword.  Have complained quite a bit here about dexit & related issues, and honestly I would have skipped at least the initial versions of these games entirely, or at least held off on purchasing them until we could see just how egregious pokemon home will be.  But my brother got shield, and my problems with sword and shield are not so severe that I’m going to refuse to play a game with family.

Thoughts so far?  Setting dexit entirely aside it’s... another pokemon game, for better and worse.  Largely for the better.  The new monsters, at least those I’ve encountered so far, are fun and good.  Music is nice.  Tone is bright and cheerful.  I love my team, and my protagonist.  It’s been nice.

As expected going to a more powerful console, it looks better, but it’s not a huge jump from the 3ds games, not least because lot of the visuals of this game are ported over directly from those games, and the stuff that is new has been made so as to not clash aesthetically with the older stuff.  If you’ve seen mods of usum that display the games at higher res and without the black outlines, it’s very much like that.  Closer to that even than to the let’s go games in ways that I find difficult to articulate.  In and of itself that’s not a complaint, really, the game looks plenty good enough for a pokemon tame.  It’s just not a major leap forward in presentation like the leap from gen 5 to gen 6 was.

Gameplay is mostly what you might expect.  Tall grass battles are an interesting mix of pokemon you can see on the field and engage or avoid as you wish and random battles that appear in the grass.  The random fights appear as a rustling in the grass that again can be pursued or avoided, you just can’t tell what they’ll be before you bump into them.  Finding rarer pokemon in a route is often a matter of sneaking or dashing between the new pokemon to get to the random fight, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the pokemon you want.  I’m not sure if there’s deeper levels to it, like chaining or whatever.  At the surface level it’s engaging enough.

The new pokemon are great so far.  There’s a bunch early on that you won’t have seen if you avoided leaks, and that was really excited.  I went into gen 7 knowing every new pokemon and with a particular desired team all worked out in advance.  This time around I’ve avoided spoilers, and gamefreaks official previews have kept a lot more hidden, so it’s been really fun to meet a lot of cool new faces early on.

The game does let you skip some early tutorials, but still frustrates to no end by stopping you every three seconds for another unnecessary explanation or detour, so it’s still pokemon in that unfortunate regard.  Routes are, if anything, more linear than ever before, at least early on, with the exception of an early expedition through the wild area which... I’ll talk about later.

Experience share is always on and cannot be turned off.  It scales shared xp based on the level of the pokemon, with lower level pokemon getting a higher portion, but not by enough so it’s still a pain to keep everything in the same level range, and you’ll still probably be wildly over leveled from very early on with nary a challenge to be seen even if you try to avoid grinding.

You can access the box from anywhere, which can be used to help overcome both the maintaining-a-level-range and over leveling problems of the experience share, but it’s a hassle to do, and wouldn’t be necessary if you could just toggle off shared exp in the options menu.  And on another level it makes the game even easier, since attrition is much less of a problem when you can swap in fresh pokemon whenever you feel like.

The online functionality is... kind of bad.  Maybe it’s just my internet, but being online in the wild area causes all sorts of slowdown.  Worse, there’s no equivalent to the pss functionality from gen 6.  No way to just see which of your switch friends are online and directly offer to trade or battle with them.  No instead you have to contact them *outside of the game* to share a 4 digit password, and then hope that nobody else happens to be using the same password as you when you try to connect with each other.  Raid battles are neat, but infuriatingly use the same password hassle.  You can’t just have easy friend-only raids from within the game itself.

It’s marginally better then gen 7′s festival plaza, but it remains miles and miles behind gen 6′s pss system that was simple and intuitive, and just centuries ahead of anything that came before or after.

Apart from raid battles, the wild area is... interesting?  Not all that different from having just a really big route with subareas of various level ranges.  Not bad, but not as big a departure as I had made it out to be in my head.  An idea with some potential that future games might expand into something great but that, knowing this series, will just be dropped after a single generation instead.  I’m still pretty early in the game, so my opinion on it might change after returning to it later.

The biggest frustration of the wild area, and something that brings it down tremendously, is that while you can encounter, and with some effort defeat, pokemon there, you cannot catch them at all if they’re above an arbitrary level range set by your number of gym badges.  This runs so completely counter to everything almost good about the wild area that I basically swore the whole thing off until I get to the end of the game, and frankly they might as well have just made it a post game area at that rate.

It’s extra frustrating because the problem of a player getting access to a pokemon too strong for the game too early on is one that the pokemon games already solved infinitely more elegantly all the way back in gen 1!  Just make pokemon that you acquire at too high a level uncontrollable, exactly like traded pokemon, so you can catch that over leveled onyx or whatever, but can’t use it until you’ve progressed far enough in the game for it not to be over leveled anymore.  How hard is that?  And who cares if a player gets an over powered pokemon early and steam rolls the game?  If that’s how the player wants to play, why is it a problem?  It’s not like the main game is challenging to begin with, thanks to always on exp share its almost impossible not to have over leveled pokemon anyway, what does it matter if it’s because you caught them that way or because they just outleveled the game curve?  A better exp scaling system would fix all those problems anyway.

Pokemon games not only failing to progress and solve problems that return game after game, but also repeatedly forgetting solutions that the series has already implemented is the longest running and most frustrating and most justified complaint to level at the entire series.  Of course, in the past pokemon as a series always had one core feature that none of the other - often more innovative - monster hunting games that sprang up in its shadow could replicate.  Backwards compatibility, the ability to maintain your collection in full going forward from generation to generation in a chain unbroken since gen 3 on game boy advance.  And that’s where dexit puts a sour note on the whole business.

The last several pokemon generations have failed to significantly improve on the core gameplay of a nearly two decade old franchise, but for many that has been largely forgiven because each new generation could easily be viewed not as stand alone games but rather as major expansions to the same existing game.  Dexit breaks from that, and forces the new games to be viewed as stand alone games and... well they aren’t pad at all.  They’re still cute.  I’m having fun so far.  Sword and Shield is no Anthem, no Fallout 76, no singular disaster to turn an otherwise largely positive track record on its head, and the extreme negativity directed against the game has been way overstated, even probably by myself.  In particular any vitriol directed at the devs is almost certainly unwarranted, the problems that have been growing in the pokemon series generation after generation almost certainly come down to corporate decisionmaking way above the heads of anyone who actually *worked* on the game.

Still, now that gamefreak’s pattern of cutting progressively more and more corners has reached the point of cutting actual pokemon, it’s shouldn’t be surprising that a lot of people who had been giving all those issues a pass suddenly aren’t anymore.

And while pokemon sword and shield isn’t a bad game, it’s hard to compare it to something like oras or usum and say it’s worth 50% more up front cost AND an added monthly subscription to access features like GTS that used to be just part of the game to begin with.

The dex cuts would have been more forgivable if the games had been a major leap forward, whether in graphics or gameplay.  Monster Hunter World, for instance, had /dramatically/ less content in terms of sheer quantity than the games that came right before it, but it also completely overhauled the visuals, heavily revised and updated the core gameplay, and completely changed how the area maps worked.

Alternatively, I think all the people currently complaining about models and trees and balance would have been fine with ‘just another pokemon game’ if it had maintained the backwards compatibility, just as they’ve been alright with ‘just another pokemon game’ for game after game after game until now.  Imagine if gamefreak had announced sword and shield as the last main line games to maintain all previous pokemon instead of the first games not to.  Then at least everybody’s personal faves would have had the chance to see play on a home system, and sword and shield could advertise themselves as the biggest pokemon games ever and actually mean it, and players would have time to adjust to what was coming.

I’m reminded of a scene from the Gravity Falls Halloween episode in season one.  Mabel & Dipper had always trick or treated together, but this year dipper decided to ditch mabel to try and go to a teen party, arguing that they were getting too old for trick or treating.  To which Mabel says something along the lines of “I knew some Halloween would be our last, but I didn’t realize it had already happened.”

And that’s the feeling I have with pokemon right now, the wet blanket draped over all the bright colors and fun new characters and monsters in sword and shield.  I knew eventually pokemon games wouldn’t be able to keep supporting all the pokemon, I knew eventually my collection would be left behind.  But I didn’t think it had already happened.  And to find out that gen 7 of all games was the last ‘complete’ pokemon?  That’s just kind of sad to realize.  And while I am on balance enjoying sword and shield, it’s a realization that keeps coming back uninvited to sour the experience.

[ilikekidsshows]

Another thing about Youtube hate videos

The sad truth of Youtube is that videos that complain about stuff get a lot of traffic, and videos that cater to the people with the laziest approach to media analysis (aka, they just adopt what others say online) are even more popular. Basically, if you say the same things as the other popular creators, the algorithm will recommend your content to people who watch those channels. And, if you hate the thing that’s popular to hate on, you will hit the jackpot on the popularity of your content.

People who take their analysis of a media from other people’s Youtube videos just love watching videos that reiterate the same tired discourse at them over and over again because it makes them feel validated in their opinions, even when said opinions are based on literally nothing but a bunch of videos about people talking angrily about the show. This further feeds into the spiral of negativity. Other creators will copy it, and the audience will consume anything with the same talking points.

Just check out the avalanche of High Guardian Spice complaint videos that seem to just repeat each other, like the video makers are watching each other’s videos for reference, drowning out the actual analysis of the show. Similarly, when Pokémon Sword and Shield first came out, the Pokétube side was nothing but complaints about how this or that Pokémon wasn’t in it (aka the “Dexit” controversy) for months leading to the release and the first few months after the release. It’s only after the height of popularity for the topic had vaned that actual videos about the actual game started coming out. The same happens with every single new Pokémon game, actually, just with a different gripe of choice.

Miraculous Ladybug is a popular show, but it has a lot of episodes. So how are click-hungry Youtube content creators going to milk that popularity for channel engagement without having to put too much work into watching and analysing the show? They watch the popular videos made on the show and make their own video repeating the exact same talking points and then they can sit back and watch the clicks and viewers roll in.

Even when not looking at it that cynically, a career Youtuber making a video to pay their bills and a fan of the show analysing a series they like are going to have very different approaches to the idea of “analysis” to begin with. In addition to that, their motives for tackling a specific topic are very different with one trying to game a system to get engagement and the other wanting to share how they think a thing they like works.

But people who are just fans of a show don’t really have a reason to have a Youtube channel, since interacting with the fandom happens more easily on platforms like tumblr, while on Youtube, people who’ve never seen an episode of the series you’re talking about will watch your video and think that they know everything about the topic based on that or some other video(s). The same is true for any topic being discussed in Youtube, though, a lot of people think their personal opinion is the most important piece of valuable information on any topic. In the middle of that there are people who know how media analysis works and they do that analysis as their work on Youtube, but they are less likely to trap themselves into discussing a single show, no matter how popular, and will most likely tackle different shows to create a wide repertoire of content.

[nautilusopus]

I wrote a whole fucking review for Pokemon Shield but google ate it so I'm putting it up here and making it longer.

Pokemon SwSh is bright and shiny, but has many small systemic problems that ultimately pile up into a larger Not Fun whole. I know the easy criticism is to bring up Dexit, which I'm not happy about for a variety of reasons, but I still think they could've made a fun game in spite of that. Instead I'm going to bring up other problems the game has in the hope of having some of the game's other issues actually recognised before fans and critics alike fall into the same trap that I did. Dexit is honestly just the tip of the iceberg.

First, the good:

Trainer customisation has improved, and I'm always a sucker for the little things. Clothes are affordable once more AND come in a variety of designs, something I felt was a problem with Gen 7, and the player character model actually has facial expressions. This makes the world just a bit more fun to interact with when you're no longer a blankly-staring robot child. I often find myself spinning/doing the Leon pose just for fun because it’s nice to watch your character do something quirky and expressive like that, in the same way people are endeared to Wind Waker or BOTW Link more than Twilight Princess or Majora’s Mask Link despite both of them ostensibly being blank slates.

The curry minigame is fun even if I don’t quite understand how fanning works yet (and also another opportunity to see said facial expressions). Just a tad heartbroken I can’t import my team from previous games to play with them in camp. 

Marnie's a neat concept for a rival, and one that I've personally wanted to see in the Pokemon series for a while. I'll avoid speaking about it too much for spoiler reasons, but I think most people will wind up liking her as well.

The game looks nice. Not like, astounding or anything, but the cities and towns have a lot of atmosphere baked into their design.

Lotta bangers in the soundtrack, and the presentation of gym battles as a World Cup-esque deal, complete with hyped up audience, brings a fresh, exciting take to the Pokemon League. I like the way the music changes as the battle progresses, and enjoy the little in-universe details, like the champion walking around with all his sponsors on his uniform. 

WOOLOO

MY BOY TOBY FOX OUT HERE DOING GOD’S WORK, THIS SHIT SLAPS BEST TRACK 10000/10

Now for the bad:

The game feels very small and unfinished. It constantly implies cool things are happening in the background, but you never get to participate yourself, or even see them. The closest you get is your rival showing up with a news article explaining that a fun thing happened and was resolved in the time it took you to walk 100 feet. It makes the main questline feel flat and tedious, and something tells me maybe we were supposed to get to participate in literally anything, but there just wasn't time and they had to get the game out for the holiday season.

This pairs very badly with the second thing, which is that there really isn't very much to do in Pokemon SwSh. Most of what you wind up doing is backtracking. The Wilds are a neat idea in theory, but in execution they're kind of the worst part of the game. They're also, unfortunately, the biggest. It feels like there's really only two areas in the entire game -- the empty cities/towns with nothing really in them, and the giant, open-world-esque Wilds. 

The Wilds themselves are nothing to write home about. Pokemon catching is gated off by level, but all areas of the wilds are available simultaneously. This means if you care about filling out the dex, you'll find yourself constantly walking back and forth between town and the same areas of the Wilds you've already been to, checking things off a list. There's less a sense of exploration, and more just a sense of wandering in circles occasionally checking the weather. And if you DON'T care about the dex, then there's literally no reason for you to constantly return to this gigantic, lovingly-modeled wasteland ever again, making the game feel even smaller as you hop from empty town to empty town, and there’s even less for you to do as a result.

The game is piss-easy, even for a Pokemon title. EXP share is always on because this game shares the same engine as Pokemon Let's Go, meaning you will be disgustingly overlevelled if you make the mistake of exploring the Wilds in between gyms the way I did, and remain that way for the entire game. I found myself throwing the fight against Opal a little bit just to hear all her dialogue. Otherwise you just oneshot everyone and everything, and all the fights start to feel samey very quickly. 

Also, barren postgame. Like 30 minutes tops.

Maybe I’m a fool for expecting writing from a Pokemon game, but after Lillie from Sumo/USUM I went and got my hopes up, and Hop absolutely does not deliver. I don’t hate him like some do (Hugh is still absolutely the most annoying rival and no one will ever unseat him), but he just feels like many many missed opportunities. He feels extra redundant given Marnie’s presence on top of that. 

Bad Pokemon designs. This one’s a personal gripe so it’s at the bottom of the list, but I feel like it’s still worth mentioning that I abandoned the shit out of my starter and am left with nothing to replace it with. Greedent is now my new least favourite Pokemon ever. Fuckin FNAF-ass lookin motherfucker.

As sort of a smoking gun exemplifying my point, I have 53 Revives just from wandering around in the Wilds forever. And I have 3 Hyper Potions in my entire bag and no other healing items, because the game has given me no reason to go back into town and buy anything because there’s nothing in the towns, and it’s never required me to heal because there’s really no significant battles to have either, in the story, or ones you would seek out for your own reasons. 

On a personal note, I’m 7 badges into this mess and I still haven’t finalised my team because I can’t even find 6 designs I like that also result in at least a somewhat decent type coverage (or at least flashy variety of colour). To those of you that know me and my True 100% Run, that’s fucking unheard of for me. 

Overall, disappointed. It's not terrible, but given how robust every other mainline title was, this is a big downgrade. Not worth $60. I've played more fleshed-out romhacks. This game reminds me more of Coliseum/XD than Gen 8's big debut. Mostly I just feel bad for the friend that bought me it. 

This would just be kind of a bummer on its own, but coupled with the fact that 1. half the damn Pokemon aren’t in it and Game Freak has openly stated they plan to keep doing this and 2. in spite of that the game still felt unfinished, making you wonder what the hell they spent all their time making (Gigantamax maybe? Why? You can’t even do it in-game for the most part. At least Mega Evolution was readily available. Not to mention it won’t even be available next game. Stop making up gimmicks just to discard them), it makes me seriously concerned for the future of the franchise. 

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

baratrongirl replied to your post “Really do not understand why GameFreak took out the Hall of Fame...”

I'd be interested to hear what you don't like about Sword/Shield. For me, it's quite the opposite. I played the hell out of the 3rd and 4th Gens, then struggled to finish White and didn't buy White 2. Didn't finish SoulSilver, or whichever of X or Y I got, and became completely bored about 10 hours into Alpha Sapphire despite being all motivated to play the game with my original Sapphire team only now I know what I'm doing. Didn't even BUY Sun/Moon.

Then I hung out with my Pokemon friends over Sword/Shield launch weekend, watched them playing on the TV, and had to immediately borrow a spare Switch so I could play too. By the end of the weekend I'd bought the Switch and paid to download my own copy of Shield. I have a few issues with it, mostly relating to the lack of clothing options for male characters, but otherwise I'm finding it the blast of fresh air that I needed to get back into the Pokemon games.

I’ve heard a lot of people say something similar, that SwSh was a nice upgrade from the past couple gens. I started slipping around XY - didn’t wanna buy a 3DS and didn’t until Omega Ruby came out, since Ruby was the first one I’d played - and after I finished the Team Flare plot of X I just gave up for three years and only last year finished the 8th gym and the league. I honestly don’t remember much of playing OR. I think it was a weird kind of frantic nostalgia-fueled haze but I genuinely cannot comment on what I liked about that game. It’s a blank in my memory. Really enjoyed Sun and Moon, like Sword but get bummed the longer I think about it. But I did buy it because I did see a ton of people saying it was a change they were enjoying, quality-of-life upgrades, fun new features, etc. Different strokes and all.

My biggest gripe on Sword is that the world feels pretty empty. Besides the Wild Area, and its few secluded corners, though it’s really a straightforward place, there’s nothing to explore. The plot grabs you by the hand and pulls you to every location. There’s nothing off-the-way that you don’t go to for the main plot. There’s nothing like Kanto’s Power Plant, or Alola’s Power Plant - which I didn’t even realize was there on my first pass through, and then I was like “hey what’s this little place, OH MY GOD WHAT THERE’S MORE STUFF HERE.” The region is a linear loop. There’s no weird little caves that aren’t plot relevant that you get scrambled up in. There’s nowhere that’s locked until you beat the League, like the other half of Poni Island or those last upper bits in Unova or the Battle Frontier in Sinnoh. I had canvassed the Wild Area for everything by the time I went to the final tournament. There’s nowhere else to go. Sure I went back through the Wild Area to catch more stuff to fill out my Pokedex, but new places? Nothing. There’s nowhere to go back to once you can cross water except the little lake by the professor’s house. Not like in Sun/Moon where there’s bits on prior islands to go back to with Lapras. That cave underneath the starting island to go check out I’m thinking of. Galar is a pretty bare-bones region and the Wild Area doesn’t fully compensate.

Which ties to my other biggest gripe, which is, there are three legendary Pokemon in the game and one of them is the opposite version’s exclusive that you can’t get. Two legendary Pokemon! Two legendary Pokemon you can catch! And you catch them both in the course of the plot! There’s nothing like the Regi trio hidden by batshit puzzles, or Cobalion/Terrakion/Virizion tucked in out-of-the-way corners. No wandering Lati@s or beast trio. No Tapus or anything. You can catch two legendary Pokemon.

I think we really peaked back in Gen 3 with its visual Braille puzzles and Gen 4 with whatever the everloving fuck the Turnback Cave was on about. The weird locations that hurt your brain. I miss those. I miss the tricky caves you get lost in and spend time figuring it out. Galar didn’t have caves. The mines were basically a straight shot, yknow? When I’d like to go deeper and have more to explore instead of feeling like I’m taking a walking tour of the whole region.

And the DLC looks like it’ll deal at least with that point with more legendaries, which really grinds my gears. In all the discourse about whether or not the DLC is good or bad or neutral, whether the price of video games has needed to go up or the DLC is cheaper than a third version but some people wait for the third version, which I didn’t seek out said discourse but saw pass me by on Twitter, I saw no one mention that we’re paying to get more than two legendary Pokémon and I felt like I was losing my mind for a little while there. I feel like I’m paying extra for something that’s been in every game since the beginning of time, that being more than two legendary Pokémon that I can catch.

And my lesser little gripes: level balance of the game felt a little wonky with the wild Pokemon toward the end higher leveled than all the trainers except Leon, and the always-on exp share made it worse because when I dragged out the plot by catching everything in the Wild Area, my team got way overleveled for the back half of the game and I could curbstomp everyone that passed me. Team Yell were an egregious roadblock and while Pokemon has always had those, the prominence of Team Yell was exasperating. I prefer environmental roadblocks, like water and back when we used to have other HMs, those feel a little better than two dudes standing in the middle of a wide road.

And why, oh WHY, did GameFreak downgrade after XY and only have fitting rooms in boutiques instead of also in Pokemon Centers? I don’t want to fly to another town to change my clothes! Not every town has a clothes shop but everywhere has a Pokemon Center! I was crusading on this point through Sun/Moon and I will not be stopped until GameFreak puts changing rooms back in Pokemon Centers! (They will probably never do that but I refuse to stop. Forget Dexit; this is the real issue of our time.)

I didn’t mind the limited Pokémon at release because I never transfer my teams thru the games anyway - I’m a sentimental anxious idiot afraid of decisions and commitment and I can’t commit to the one-way transfers to move my teams up to new games. And that plus the Wild Area having trade-evolution Pokemon walking around made me feel like completing my pokedex was actually attainable. So I did!

I don’t hate the game, but I am disappointed by it. I’ve never been a Battle Tower or shiny-hunting person, but I’ve ended up doing those because I don’t know what else to do.

So that’s my opinion on why SwSh has bummed me out more as time goes on, since you were curious.

(Joker from Mass Effect 2 when you ask him for gossip about your teammates voice: “But that’s just my opinion, no need to go spreading it around.” ;) I’ll gladly chat with friends but the poke-discourse got too intense on twitter and I am not inviting that kind of bad energy into our lives. None of us deserve that.)

I’ve still got a lot of endgame stuff for Sun and Moon, UB hunting and I haven’t made it to the Battle Tree yet because my Moon team is getting its ass kicked by everything because I turned the exp share off and overcompensated in the wrong direction and am chronically underleveled. There’s a certain charm for me in being underleveled because I used to have endless patience to overlevel my team to extremes because my childhood anxiety was something like “if I die in the game I die in real life???” and I was terrified of losing and now I’m like “blacks out twice in a row in Moon as I go toward the postgame stuff yolo”. So when I feel like playing Pokemon I’ll probably spend more time in Alola, when I’m not trying to hatch that damn shiny Rookidee because I accidentally committed to that.

[elyvorg]

I just beat Leon in Pokémon Shield despite my team being more than ten levels lower than his. I didn't use any (non-hold) items, either - the only advantage I allowed myself was playing with Shift on (although looking back on how the battle went, I might have been able to barely manage without it). I'm saying this not to boast about my epic Pokémon skillz, but to talk about how it felt awesome to manage to do that by using strategy. The reason I was so underlevelled is that my style of playing Pokémon games for the past few gens has been to train literally every Pokémon I'm interested in using, regardless of the fact that this gives me a team of way more than six. Because of this, I had so many different options for my strategy for the battle.

I did one test run first in which I knew I wasn't going to win the moment I saw his Pokémon's levels but then decided to flail around while spamming Max Revives just to see as much of his team as possible and scout out their moves, which managed to show me all his Pokémon except the Charizard I already knew about. Then I was planning to go and grind maybe five more levels on everyone to not be quite as ridiculously outmatched... except I couldn't stop thinking, what if it was already possible at this level? My Pokémon had pulled off some impressive KOs or near-KOs or tanking of big hits during the test battle, just enough to make me think I could just maybe do it if I put together the right strategy. I looked through my almost-a-box-full of options for Pokémon I'd been training to this level and carefully picked those that would be able to counter each of Leon's despite the level gap, maybe teaching them a couple of new moves and using some held items chosen specifically for the situation. This involved some nerding out checking each of his Pokémon's base stats to get a sense of roughly how strong they'd be and therefore how strong my Pokémon's relevant stats would need to be to tank a hit/outspeed/OHKO them.

Even then, it still took two attempts. The first time, things went mostly as I'd calculated, though I overestimated my Pokémon's capabilities just a little bit in some regards but managed to get through with some luck and some improvising, enough to get to his Charizard. And then... yeah, okay, I definitely underestimated his Charizard, and it destroyed the remainder of my team. (Tip: don't use a Drednaw; it has a Grass move. I thought it probably would, but it was worth a try on the off-chance it didn't, since Charizard was the one Pokémon whose moves I hadn’t managed to scout at all.) A bit more re-strategising was necessary for the next attempt with this in mind, the bottom line of which is that I still kind of hate the way Stealth Rock single-handedly makes a Pokémon's competitive worth hinge on its weakness to Rock and yet I sure took advantage of it here, but the more important bottom line is that Boltund is a very, very good dog. Even then, I still underestimated Charizard and spent the last few turns of the battle desperately improvising while not knowing if I would win. Putting together a strategy that I was pretty sure would work and watching it pay off felt awesome, but it also felt awesome to be frantically unsure whether my Pokémon could pull through in the end or not and then having them manage to do so!

(...I also partly won because Leon made some poor decisions while using Charizard. I guess I can headcanon that as being down to him also panicking because a challenger had never come this close to defeating him before. Throughout the whole game I was worried he wasn't going to live up to the constant hype of being supposedly unbeatable and would be anticlimactically easy to defeat, but nope, he lived up to it and then some.)

If you've been finding Pokémon games too easy lately, I highly recommend my playstyle! Don't just restrict yourself to a team of six; use any and all of the Pokémon you find cool or interesting! This is less of a hassle than it's ever been now thanks to the ability to access your PC boxes from anywhere (THANK YOU for this, Game Freak). Your team will be underlevelled, but you'll have so many options to pick from to try and strategise your way through a tough battle without just level grinding through the problem! Pokémon is such a fun strategy game when strategy is actually properly necessary, which doesn't only have to be in competetive PvP situations.

Honestly I kind of wish I'd had more battles in this game in which I'd needed to pull out all the stops and use such careful strategising to win. For most of the game I wasn't that underlevelled thanks to the the Exp Share-like function that can't be turned off in this game even though I'd usually do that, and the unusually high-levelled wild Pokémon you can easily grind against (making me frequently overestimate what levels the Gym Leaders would be). So there were only a tiny handful of other battles that also gave the same rush as this one due to me winning through strategy rather than simply using decently-levelled Pokémon with type advantages.

But still! I love and am so proud of my team who won me the battle, and all of their friends in the box who didn't happen to be suited for this particular battle but still helped get me through other important battles, and I couldn't have done it without any of them. I just love Pokémon, guys. The even better thing about this playstyle is that it means you get to use every Pokémon you want to use, with no "oh that one'd be cool but I've already got six/already got one of that type so I can't", and each of them is bound to get at least one battle in which they can shine and show how awesome they are. MOAR POKÉMON FRIENDS.

Sword and Shield aren't perfect games, but I'm never going to mention my gripes with them (it's not Dexit, though; I literally do not care about Dexit), because ultimately they didn't stop me from just having so much fun playing through this game and exploring Galar and discovering new Pokémon and making them my partners. POKÉMON.

[light-wolf]

A few screenshots from my Pokémon Sword playthrough:

The day this guy isn’t in the first town of a Pokémon game will be a sad, sad day.

First new pal! I couldn’t think of a name so a friend suggested Taiko and I loved it.

I got this via Surprise Trade! A very pleasant surprise. I still haven’t found Ditto but I’ll breed a bunch of starters as soon as I can (the Sobble was male).

The nasty boy in all his splendor! Name was suggested by @chibi-encubierta​. Obstagoon is easily among my top 3 favorite new Pokémon from these games.

Just a pretty sunset.

Two more after the cut. These have very minor spoilers (a scene from the early game and an unrevealed Pokémon).

Trencitas de chorizo.

No!!!! You’re Fire-type!!!!

So far, I’ve really enjoyed the game. It’s true that there are some very questionable design choices and that some aspects should’ve been more polished, but the criticism has been way overblown. I think my biggest gripe with it so far (aside from Dexit since it’s not relevant yet anyway) is the lack of GTS or an equivalent method, which I find unjustifiable, but overall the game is very fun!

I’ll post more screenshots and more complete thoughts in the future.

[thatguysamaniac-blog]

The community is up in arms, pitchforks have been raised, picket boards have been lovingly crafted with catchy slogans for social media. The mob is revolting. What's This Noise Then? There is no National Dex (terms in bold appear in the glossary at the end) in the upcoming Pokémon game, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield, it's not #brexit, its #dexit. There is a grumbling controversy fluttering in the forums and the social medias as people are furious that a thing has been 'taken' away from them because not all of the currently available Pokémon will be catchable or transferable in the upcoming games for the first time in the mainline series of the games since last year's Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu and Pokémon Let's Go Eevee 2002's Pokémon Sapphire and Pokémon Ruby. And as semi-professional contrarians, we straddle that high horse and RP a bit of devils advocate. Is taking the National Dex away a bad thing? As of the end of Generation 7 there are 809 pokémon, including the Meltan and Melmetal caught in a seventh and eighth generation limbo. Given past additions to the dex we have seen that number increase by roughly 100 each generation following this trend we could assume that this number would be 900+ for Generation 8. And yes it would be nice to have the option of all against all, but if Gamefreak say they are dropping that number down, ultimately it just means for a different meta. Yeah some of your buddies wont be allowed into the new region, and since Galar is based on the UK, and given the time we live in... we could call it an immigration policy? That being said, we don't know how or what or how many pokémon are not making the cut, maybe its 700, maybe its 200 maybe they are changing it up by cutting out a whole type (or two)! Technically it wasn’t in Pokémon Sun or Pokémon Moon either… Sun and moon did not have a national dex, Yes you could have all your pokémon, however your "living dex". in  fact your "numbering" of the national dex is only from Pokémon Bank and references outside of the games themselves. Has it actually been taken away? (Pokémon Home) My living dex does not live on my game, it lives on Pokémon Bank, occasionally a Pokemon will be checked out an brought to the real game as part of a breeding program whereby it is forced to fuck a Japanese ditto (Masuda method) or it's offspring, several hundred times until I have favourable set of stats and/or pretty alternative colours. Think of it as a grotesque library of genetics where by the mons are caged in limbo and some of the luckier ones are allowed out to a breeding centre whilst I ride about on my bike beside the breeding centre endlessly hatching and destroying its young, until the egg I want hatches. At which point the mon is returned to it's electronic limbo. What is "Home"? Pokémon Home is the new Pokémon Bank, we know very little beyond it being a new storage system, but how much interactivity will it offer, what functionality will it have? It could be like ranch offering you the ability to play with them all, it much offer even just EV training or Pelago style interactions. Until we get more info I reckon surfacing and getting on the dexit hypetrain is silly. Is this generation only going to have one game? Obviously it is impossible to say at this point in time but realistically, probably not and Game Freak have suggested that this is the plan. So far every generation of 'mainline' games has had multiple entries per generation in addition to a healthy stack of spin-offs. However, significantly for the first time we may have a scenario in which RPGs in the same generation aren't strictly compatible with each other. We'd love to have more data on the spread of players across different games within a generation i.e. how many people were trading, battling etc. across Pokémon X and Pokémon Y with players of Pokémon Alpha Sapphire and Pokémon Omega Ruby our suspicion is it's a lot of players who just had the older game. This new change implies that this won't be the case from here on out (because if players of Pokémon Kettle and Pokémon Pot can battle with players in Pokémon Sword and Pokémon  Shield, they can see the animations so why aren't the pokémon just in the game?). Next year, there will be an 'Ultra Sword' or a 'Gen 4' remake, which will either bolster or offer a different set of Pokemon for a different "season" of competitive play, making Home even more relevant. Other things that have been taken away? Oh man, and out of the woodwork it comes, gripes moans grumbles about aching old mechanics from past generations. Last/This gen we had it sweet with the pelagic islands, reducing EV training and berry growing to a minimal task, no longer needing a notepad and pen or excel sheets. In general I will not hear any moans about super training, or chaining, they are awful mechanics that deserve to have died and been replaced with the quality of life improvements we got this time. The only Contentious point I can see is the removal of Z Moves and Mega Evolution, however, seeing we are getting a new megasizing mechanic (dynamax) I am up for this, again in all actuality all this does is shake up the end game, and will change which pokemon may end up being the most powerful for this generation. What does it ultimately mean? There will be missing Pokémon there is a chance that your favourite niche Pokemon wont make it to the game and you cant add it to your team, and that is sad times. This means you will have to choose from the other X amount available to you and at end game there will be a tidy collection of pokemon that were only available at in Galar, while you wait for the next entry in this generation (SwordShield 2: Ireland). In the online competitions for a year we might not have any Ultra Beasts, or Incineroar, or rapid spinners etc etc. I still guarantee that the competition will be slow as shit and twice as boring. Enjoy the game with the new 'mon's that's actually the best part, getting to know the new guys, playing with their new abilities and moves, that is a big part of the heart of the game! these new strange different creatures add them too your party, even though their stats are awful, Battle through the gyms (or events). At the end of it all find the 'mons that you want to create some niche hook  doubles team with fight against the AI and get trounced by a fucking Bibarel/Zebstrika combo! Glossary of Terms Generation (Gen): /dʒɛnəˈreɪʃ(ə)n/ A generation is an arbitrary fan decided word that breaks up and describes the chronology of the video games when a new set of Pokemon are 'released'. It used to be an important shortcut word to talk about the games as Pokemon from across generations were always compatible in the latest games. Sword and Shield potentially end the usefulness of talking about generations, starring Patrick Stewart and William Shatner. Dex: /ˈdɛks/ Short for Pokedex which is a portmanteau of Pokemon Index. A catalogue of virtual monsters which offers flavour text, but most importantly a number, which upon relieving a specific monster of it's freedom is presented to you. Depending on the game the catalogue provides habitat data, sexual dimorphism and other appearance differences, average heights and weight as well as multilingual descriptions (see also National Dex). Digimon: /nɒk,nɒk, ɒf/ Fuck off Dynamax: /ɪˈrɛkʃ(ə)n/ The reason there will be an upsurge in the use of the Penis names for your pokémon : Richie used Dynamax. Penis became massive. Penis used Harden. Living Dex: /ˈlɪvɪŋ ˈdɛks/ A living dex is an achievement that some players choose to undertake and it is catching and owning one of every kind of pokémon, including having each evolution stage rather than just evolving a Pokémon and keeping the last stage. This is done partly as a fan constructed extra achievement but also comes in useful for breeding Pokémon. A standard living dex is just one of each species and stage of all 809 Pokemon, some players try to collect as many forms as possible, so all the different male, female and appearance variants taking the maximum total up to over three billion (the vast majority of these are Spinda forms which only the insane try to catch). There are then much rarer shiny versions of each Pokémon doubling this to more than six billion different individual animations. National Dex: /ˈnaʃ(ə)n(ə)l ˈdɛks/ This is the catalogue of virtual monsters that traditionally opens up after the main story is completed and allows the player to see information about pokémon not collectable within the game itself and only available by transferring from other games. In some games, finishing the main story then makes pokémon previously unavailable start appearing. Pokémon Sun and Moon did not have a National Dex although pokémon from other games could be caught (from Ultra Wormholes and other methods) and transferred over. Although this uproar is called 'Bring Back the National Dex' it's not actually about the national dex itself, more the availability of pokémon from other games. (see also Dex) Pokémon:  /ˈpoʊkɪˌmɒn, -ki-, -keɪ-/ Pocket monster, also a euphemism for a penis. Love and make Galar great again, TGAM X

http://www.thatguys.co.uk/2019/07/yeah-national-dex.html