#spending at least 5 hours on something that's gonna get like a 100 notes max no thank you

[zoya-nazyalenskys]

sometimes i feel like giffing again but then i remember there's better ways to spend my free time lol

[semi-imaginary-place]

 thI’m gonna beat Platinum with only pachirisu (bibarel’s along for the ride, and HMs)

I named myself Pachi and my rival (Barry) was Risu because Gen 4 has a character limit to names and wouldn’t let me name them Pachirisu1 and Pachirisu2 or Electric Squirrel 1 and 2.

So i more or less blitz through oreburgs gym as fast as i could avoiding trainers and not catching any pokemon, and then spent the next half an hour trying to catch a pachirisu because despite a 10% chance, rng screwed me over and they refused to come out. After i caught the first one, I didn’t see another one for another half hour. Literally went from level 11 to level 17 before i saw another pachirisu. so my the rules i gave myself, once i caught the first pachirisu, I could only use that pachirisu. Now a level 11 pachirisu’s only damaging move is quick attack. this thing has base 45 attack. it was suffering. 

at level 13 pachirisu learn spark and things got better from there. Levels 13-27 were actually ok all things considered. Like it was only 30% harder than normal. I’m now at hearthome and I expect things to get much harder from here on out as other pokemon start evolving and getting better stats and moves. base 45 attack and special attack...

look at this thing’s pathetic moveset. Please remember this is gen 4 so TMs are single use. 

Geodudes are the bane of my existence, caves and hikers my arch enemies. by level 18 or something they learn magnitude and the only things i have to damage them are quick attack and swift. Battles are slow. Now pachirisu does actually have some bulk (well comparatively speaking for a ~lv15 rat) so these fights ended up with a lot of stalling and healing as I slowly chip away with with swift and bide (if they don’t magnitude me to death), I’ve ended up in a lot of battles the ended up in struggle. please note the pp of the above moves. Geodudes usually spend the first 1-3 turns rock polishing so that’s when i use charm to drop their attack into the void and then comes the guessing game of when they’ll attack (rock throw etc.) where i should bide and when they’ll do defense curl (and i should just attack).

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well the hearthome, veilstone, and pastoria gyms didn’t cause me any problems. It takes 3 hits to take anything down but it also take 4 hits to down pachirisu. I’m also over leveled so i skipped some optional areas. all in all its not hard. yet.. probably because I’m overleved. pachirisu’s got discharge and superfang so im doing ok for now

the barry canalave fight went well until i got to the roserade.... its special attack is high enough i needed to heal every other turn. then it leech seeded me and kept sleeping me.... Canalave gym er well the steelix really caused me problems. I more or less heal stalled it to death. Pachirisu just doesn’t have enough power. That was painful just slowly chipping away at it.... healing every 3 turns, trying to keep it confused as much as possible.

By level 43, pachirisus’ stats are starting to fall behind, I can’t one shot wild pokemon 15 levels below me, and am increasingly relying on super fang to get through battles. The ice gym was pretty bad, stalled out a few time.... ended up struggling the froslass to death... bled a lot of money...

brb purging this from my memory

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so catching 5 pachirisu was so mind numbingly boring that i got a mental block trying to catch no. 6 so i gave up. anyways went and caught my last pachirisu so now i finally have a full team. that said, I’m only really using 3.

I forgot how much i hated mt. cornet. i give up. Max Repels all the way. Team galactic was actually ok but mostly because they used a lot of murkrow and golbat. The final Cyrus fight was actually pretty good considering I’m level 48. Giratina though was a problem. So part of the initial rules was no catching pokemon so i had to knock it out. (I did catch a chansey because i wanted a lucky egg but the chansey and luck egg rates are so low i gave up and released the chansey i caught. also cynthia forced a togepi egg on me so i got that). Anyways the only move i had that wasn’t normal type was spark/discharge and giratina resists electric. so that fight took a while... i lowered giratina’s attack by 6 stages, paralyzed it and then kept it confused and slowly whittled down its health. didn’t lose too many, 1 KO from a crit.

Sunnyshore was a mixed bag, like it’d go ok and then I’d hit a wall and get stuck and bleed moomoo milks and then it’d be ok again for the next 4 pokemon. Pokemon like jolteon caused me a lot of problems since I only have normal and electric moves. I refuse to grind to for this so maybe I’m just making my life harder than it has to be but yeah not great but it could have been much worse. Overall I am definitely feeling pachirisu slowing down. The water route was fine, nice to be able to one shot things again (sometimes) but victory road is a huge road block with all the ground pokemon. it was terrible. I mainly used repels  to get through the first floor (got lost -_-) but I might go to iron island which i skipped earlier to grab iron tail. I haven’t used any tms yet because single use is terrifying and I’m scared of commitment but I’m considering toxic, double team, light screen, dig, charge beam, thunderwave. Charge beam looks good, but pachirisu is a little weak to be setting up and sweeping so i don’t know yet what I’m going to do. I don’t remember who is in the elite four either so i should look that up. The main problem with the elite four is going to be pp management. Maybe I will toxic and confusion everything to death...

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yeah getting though victory road was a war of attrition. it was hard.

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well that last barry fight was excruciatingly painful. I forgot it was there. Staraptor went down in 3 hits as did empoleon and heracross. Heracross kept one shoting me which was annoying and roserade resists electric so that took a while but snorlax was what really caused me trouble. I had to do that fight 4 times because of snorlax. So the problem with snorlax is rest, on a normal run you usually have something powerful enough to take down snorlax in 3 hits, but i don’t. snorlax is just so tanky that I can’t deal enough damage before it ses rest again. earthquake wasn’t so much a problem after 3 charms, but rest kept resetting any paralysis or confusion i got on snorlax. I had to exhaust all 10 pp for rest and all pp for earthquake plus switch out whenever crunch lowered my defense. it took a loooonnng time.

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So I beat the elite four and champion with the power on money. Man that took forever. I went and looked up the sinnoh elite four instead on going in blind like i had been. Zap is my physical attacker and Glitz is my special attacker. Funny thing is that For most of the game Zap has been highest level but Glitz pulled aheah after i sp. a. ev trained on route 212 for a couple levels. sparkle is just along for the ride. So the main danger in relying so heavily on x items is that there’s just a massive set up at the beginning of each fight as i throw like 3 x defense 3 x sp defense 4 sp attack/attck and 2 speed onto my pachirisu. 

So with Aron ?? bug dude? the yanmega would u turn and i died to the heracross a couple times via crits. that damn heracross. I’d send out sparkle to put 3 charms on the heracross and confuse it then switch to Zap and start setting up. It was either the drapion or the scizor that survived a hit but my def was boosted enough to survive. Side note: WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE EARTHQUAKE. the drapion, the inpernape, the bronzong, all of bertha’s team....

To deal with Bertha I did teach grass knot to Glitz and set up on him with sparkle leading to charm the hippowdon. This (predictably) was the worse fight and i died the most here which was painful as i had to start over. uuggg. Also setting up took longer since hippowdon kept the sandstorm up. I thought its was only going to last 5 turns and hippowdon already had 3 charms on it so i didn’t was to kill it yet, well i learned. Rhyperior miraculously survived and then earthquake took half my health even with 4 x defends.

Ok so I’m convinced houndoom has an elevated crit rate or something because that thing crited me like once every 4 hits. I was originally pretty worried about magmortar and infernape but flint was ok, or well at least better than bertha. it was gallade in the next fight that gave me more trouble. Not to much but at one point i was praying to rng to not get crited on. But i made it through eventually.

At this point exhaustion is kicking is and I honestly don’t really remember what happened. I led with Glitz for this fight and the last 2 fights since their leading pokemon were all special attackers. Spiritomb was annoying because it kept lowering my sp defense. Set up too so long that by the time i was done, the only move it had pp left in was silverwind, so like 43 turns? I got through most of her team alright, except for the garchomp that survived and proceeded to earthquake me. My second attack left garchomp  with a sliver of health and after it attacked me, glitz was in the red too. After like 2 more turns of jockying with it i took it town with swift.

I can’t remember what fights these were but I got burned a few times and poisoned once and that was annoying. I think it was cynthia’s roserade which was her last pokemon, it's sludgebomb poisoned me i think but its was in the yellow health so i didn’t bother healing and took it down.

And that’s how i beat Pokemon Platinum TM with only pachirisu. In the end i really only used 3 pachirisu and you probably could do this with 1 pachirisu, i wouldn’t quite call this a callenge run since its not too hard. Its at the difficulty where anyone could do this. I mean the easiest way to beat the game with 1 pachirisu is to grind it to level 100 and stuff it with x items, but i hate grinding and since i skipped a lot of battles i was quite poor too. 

My final pokemon count was monferno (starter who i couldn’t bear to release but was poxed after valley windworks), togepi (thatcynthia shoved into the arms and I never used), chansey (i caught and released in a plan to get lucky eggs that i gave up on), tropius (for hms), bibarel (for hms), and 6 pachirisu,my pc boxes were very empty. i never had other pokemon and only pachirisu were ever in battles.

I don’t know why i did this. 

Pachirisu is cute.

[wayfaringtrainers]

Zichi played Pokémon Sword

And he is still royally pissed off!

When the drama and controversy came out regarding Pokémon Sword/Shield, I was more and more put off by it until I decided that no, I was gonna wait until I could get a second-hand copy for it...

And then people began talking about how much they loved it and how much fun they were having with it... No second-hand copies were appearing yet, so I caved to peer pressure like the little bitch I am and bought a copy.

I regret that so much. I don’t like this game, I very much loathe it.

I was planning on doing this semi-review ever since I started the game, so obviously there will be “plot” spoilers ahead for you guys. But anyway, here goes.

Let’s start with the very few things I like about this game, start on a positive note, at the very least.

Technical Records

I actually liked this concept. In the UK, we’re currently going through the “Vinyl Nostalgia Phase” as my dad calls it. The callback of ancient TMs being turned into TRs was pretty cool, and I am very glad that they made TRs infinitely collectable through Raids. My biggest grievances with old-school TMs was the limited supply you got: usually the best TMs you only ever got once, so only one Pokémon could ever learn some of the most useful and game-defining moves available. This makes a lot more moves available...

However it would be nice if I didn’t have to open Serebii every time I was looking for a specific TR, and then pray that specific pokemon from that specific den appears. If they weren’t so dependant on luck, they’d be a lot better.

(Most) New Pokemon

Wooloo for life.

But seriously, I absolutely love a lot of the designs for new Pokémon, which is rare for me, I’m usually critical and uncertain about new Pokémon. But these new Pokémon I actually really like. Corviknight is as cool as I thought, Coalossal is awesome, and although I was ambivalent about him at first, Sirfetch’d has really grown on me.

Buuuuut we’re just gonna skip over the fossil Pokémon. Because I dislike them for a variety of reasons.

However, I reckon that that’s it for things I like about the new games, so now we’re just going to get into the meat of the problems and the things that just piss me off.

Cut Content.

I don’t really have to explain any further, let’s be honest. It’s not just Dexit, it’s the cut moves that piss me off, along with the axe to Mega Evolution and Z-Crystals. I don’t really need to say much else, do I?

Raids and Gigantamax

At first, I kinda enjoyed my time with raids, I spent a load of time raiding with @pinekaboo​ and enjoying the feeling of teaming up to take down a titanic Pokémon... But after the first few days it just felt like a chore. If I wanted a particular TR, a particular Pokémon, a particular this that or other, then I would be spending hours looking up information on Serebii, trying to narrow down where to find it and then either getting the wrong Pokémon or having to spend time grinding Watts for Wish Stones or fighting in other dens to reset all the active dens. So much effort just for the god damn body slam TR.

Gigantamax meanwhile, is just... The most frustratingly pointless thing possible. Not only is it locked to post-game with some limited-time exceptions, it’s apparently banned in competitive tournaments?

Why even fucking bother with it then? I spent hours trying to find a G-Max Kingler, only to learn it’s Post-Game only. And then I spent hours trying to find/catch a GMax Butterfree, only to learn a normal Butterfree is technically better. It’s pathetic.

Apparently I’m not allowed to be angry about Gigantamax bc I’m wrong, like always.

Team Yell

Sorry guys, but Team Yell is just a poor man’s Team Skull, but even less threatening.

“Oh you like this? It’s Post-Game”

This is the second biggest Pet Peeve of mine regarding the game. I spent hours looking for a Ralts before learning that all those “15% chance spawn rates” are in foggy weather, which comes in the post-game, leaving me stuck with a 2% chance. Those “Nature Candies” are locked until post-game and apparently need an obnoxious amount of BP to unlock.

What’s particularly gregarious is the fact there’s a BP trader in that town where the dragon gym leader is met pretty early on... And you can’t get any BP until end-game.

Shut the fuck up about Leon.

I don’t care about Leon. He himself is not that annoying, but every time I hear “oh Leon’s so amazing” I wanna punch something. I’m pretty sure it’s intended to make the player feel awesome for taking him down, but it just feels like pointless pandering. Like we get it, Leon’s great. Shut the fuck up about how awesome he and his fucking Charizard is.

Charizard

Yup. Charizard gets its own spot here.

The Pokémon Company has sucked Charizard’s dick enough, I say. It got 2 Mega Evolutions and a Gigantamax, and it’s the champion’s star Pokémon, and it’s hyped up to be the best thing ever.

It was only vaguely challenging to me because I decided sweeping it with Steam Engine Coalossal would be boring. So I took it down with my Gallade.

Yes, Gallade has a type disadvantage. I didn’t really care.

Empty Team slots

The only person in this entire game to have a full team has been Leon. Every gym fight I found myself depositing Pokémon just to have a fair fight.

Plot and Pacing (or lack of it).

You’ve seen me rant about this before, but I’m going to rant about it some more.

So I really don’t like over-levelling in any level-based game, because then the game feels trivial and unchallenging. But Pokémon Sword’s level curve makes no fucking sense. Sometimes I’d be training 10 Pokémon and still be over-levelled, then I’d go back to a normal team of 6 and find myself nearly getting steamrolled by Pokémon 5 levels higher than me. Towards the end of the game I found myself wondering whether I was the “right level” or not. I’d have to choose my team, save, go up against a gym leader and then reset to use XP candies on my pokemon after deliberately under-levelling them.

And then suddenly Leon’s lowest level is 62 after the previous trainer’s highest was 57. There wasn’t that much inbetween, game devs.

And I’ve just ranted about the pacing guys. I haven’t even begun with the plot.

To be perfectly honest? The whole “plot” with Rose? The game would be 100 times better if they just cut out Rose and Marco Cosmos. If Team Yell is a poor man’s Skull, then Marco Cosmos is a poorer man’s Aether Foundation.

So many times we get hints and implication that there is something going on behind the scenes, but every time we get to do nothing. We just get to hear about how great-and-mighty Leon will handle everything, so why don’t you just worry about your gym challenge?

The game spends so long focusing on the gym challenge, that I think the game would be better if it focused exclusively on that. At least then perhaps we’d have one full story instead of two half-assed stories.

Or hell, maybe if the Marco Cosmos story was exclusively post-game, that would be preferable. But as it stands, it’s just two or three vague cutscenes that something’s going on and then suddenly chucking a load of plot at the last fucking minute.

I have no interest in Rose’s energy crisis woes. I have no investment in his discussions about the future and the energy crisis we may face. None of that is interesting to me because I have had no time to get invested. The closest to investment I can possibly get is learning what is happening.

Hell, for all my love for Gen 6 and how it re-invigorated my love for Pokémon, I consider Team Flare one of the weaker villains in terms of story... and yet I was 100% more interested in them then in whatever Rose is doing and his reasons for doing it.

In conclusion, Pokémon Sword has -at its best- felt like a rushed, hashed hobjob of a game. It feels like the devs were short in staff and pressed for time, and forced to cut a lot of content in a desperate bid to make it in time for the Pokémon Company’s grand franchise plan and/or the Christmas market. They’re trying to rely heavily on the market opened by the Pokémon Go community (anyone noticed how Dynamax Dens have a feel similar to raid battles in Pokémon Go?) rather than delivering a game they can be proud in.

Inevitably, Pokemon Sharp Sword and Sturdy Shield will arrive on the markets -because these days we don’t get an Crystal/Emerald/Platinum- and I am legitimately considering skipping them over. 

The “core games” are the backbone of the franchise. I doubt they will cause the franchise to die, but it would certainly be crippled if sales drop, but I don’t think I can continue with them anymore. My trust in the Pokémon Company is the lowest it’s ever been. I doubt the company’s choice in direction, I doubt the decisions they’ve made in business, industrial and commercial affairs. I do not believe they can provide me with the quality I’ve come to expect of them anymore and I don’t believe I can continue supporting them.

Honestly, this lack of faith in the franchise, it’s putting me in a strange place. I love this Pokémon RP blog I’ve built up, I love the muses I’ve created, the adventures I’ve written and the friends I’ve made through this blog and I’ve never really wanted them to end. But for the first time since nearly the start of the decade, when I first decided to try out this blog under the name pokemontrainerzefri, I’ve begun to wonder if it won’t be my depression and insecurities that kill it, but a loss of interest...