It's amazing how you only have to play for like 10 minutes before you get sucked into Serebii.net all over again.
Choosing Turtwig will definitely make things go different for me though.
It's amazing how you only have to play for like 10 minutes before you get sucked into Serebii.net all over again.
Choosing Turtwig will definitely make things go different for me though.
It's amazing how you only have to play for like 10 minutes before you get sucked into Serebii.net all over again.
Choosing Turtwig will definitely make things go different for me though.
Welcome to the grass turtle alliance.
I beat the Pokemon League in Brilliant Diamond and playing the post-game now.
You know, I'm generally pretty tolerant of GameFreak doing the bare minimum with Pokemon games, but…man they just did not care with this one. The full range of movement with the joystick frequently doesn't work in a game that still has a layout with four-directional movement in mind. The Poketch was awkwardly crammed into the corner of the screen and is very inconvenient to use. Hell, they haven't even implement the GWS yet. And then we get crap like this...
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The problem is Pokemon is a money making machine with a formula that works regardless of how much love and ingenuity they put into it, so they really don’t need to do much to make a profit, meaning they don’t step out on the wild side to often and try new stuff
I know most people here don’t seem to care about Dokev, which I understand, but at least it seems there trying something new with the monster collecting formula, which is part of the reason it seems to have blown up when it’s trailer came out
If a little to no name company can do that with a trailer imagine what Nintendo could do with the highest grossing media franchises of all time if they actually tried
I don't really care if the re-releases are that different; it's more a time-waster than anything. What really matters is that they put the effort into their new releases.
I beat the Pokemon League in Brilliant Diamond and playing the post-game now.
You know, I'm generally pretty tolerant of GameFreak doing the bare minimum with Pokemon games, but…man they just did not care with this one. The full range of movement with the joystick frequently doesn't work in a game that still has a layout with four-directional movement in mind. The Poketch was awkwardly crammed into the corner of the screen and is very inconvenient to use. Hell, they haven't even implement the GWS yet. And then we get crap like this...
BDSP were developed by ILCA and not GameFreak
If a little to no name company can do that with a trailer imagine what Nintendo could do with the highest grossing media franchises of all time if they actually tried
Companies can do a lot with trailers the thing that truly matters is the final product and we’ve see far too often where trailers will present something interesting but the actual product isn’t as good as advertised.
I beat the Pokemon League in Brilliant Diamond and playing the post-game now.
You know, I'm generally pretty tolerant of GameFreak doing the bare minimum with Pokemon games, but…man they just did not care with this one. The full range of movement with the joystick frequently doesn't work in a game that still has a layout with four-directional movement in mind. The Poketch was awkwardly crammed into the corner of the screen and is very inconvenient to use. Hell, they haven't even implement the GWS yet. And then we get crap like this...
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Lol I love that ekans thing, and it happens similarly with the likes of Milotic. I saw someone online saying they should have just done chibi pokemon to match the style, and that sounds like it would have been soooo much better. As it is, we know there are walking and running animations for every pokemon up to gen 7, it's weird this is a problem still.
As for other stuff, what got to me about the poketch more than the inconvenience was it being useless nearly every time. Tried to use the counter app at one point for classic EV training needs, and the count resets whenever you press X. So then I tried to use the memo pad to keep a tally, and that one reset as well when I closed the game and went back into it.
I actually don't recall if these were problems in the original, but it really defeats the point of having this stuff if it doesn't work, and if it didn't work originally it's probably not rocket science to have such simple apps just work. If the step counter can remember every step I've taken since before I even had the app, why does the counter not remember me keeping count?
Other fun moments of the game being borked included:
I know most people here don’t seem to care about Dokev, which I understand, but at least it seems there trying something new with the monster collecting formula, which is part of the reason it seems to have blown up when it’s trailer came out
If a little to no name company can do that with a trailer imagine what Nintendo could do with the highest grossing media franchises of all time if they actually tried
The Dokev trailer "blowing up" doesn't really say anything about the state of Pokemon or Pokemon fans. It's simply a successful trailer to promote a game. Nintendo and Pokemon Company have no reason to try and compete with that.
(Of note, the "Mysterious Footage" trailer for Hisuan Zorua has more views than the Dokev trailer, and that wasn't even released any time significant. Getting that type of attention is just Tuesday for Pokemon.)
The ensuing media circus of "IS [game] POKEMON BUT BETTER?", "10 Reasons Why Dokev is the Pokemon Game We Have All Been Waiting For", etc., is just that. How do you get people to care about your article on random game no one has ever heard of? Compare it to the largest media franchise in the world. And since all game journalism does these days is feed off of anger and hype, you get the awesome boost of catering to angry pokemon fans and hype up something that likely won't come out in several years and, most likely, never reach the levels of hype several "journalists" are pumping out. (See: TemTem, nearly every Smash clone ever created, etc.)
Oh I don’t expect Dokev to be on the same level of Pokemon games, hell I’m not even sure it will be a good game
All I was saying is they seem to be doing something different with the Monster Catcher formula based on the trailer and all I was saying was that it would be cool if Pokemon did that, instead of rehashing the same game again and again
To be fair they do sometimes try new thing, Pokemon Arceus is what I want, a step in the right direction, and I’ve never played the mystery dungeon or Pokemon Rangers games
Pokemon Sun/Moon wasn't quite what I had been hoping for, but I will give them major credit for trying something different.
I’m over here wanting a new Pokémon Stadium.
Arceus looks great but I'm still paranoid of calling it the right direction. Don't want to get my hopes up and then be underwhelmed, which is exactly what happened to me with BotW
IGN japan actually gave this release a 5.0. That's harsh especially considering its from the Japanese themselves.
I don't really care if the re-releases are that different; it's more a time-waster than anything. What really matters is that they put the effort into their new releases.
Ouch, you can't really say that to people like me who is really hurt by that. I'm not trying to make this personal but there's always going to people who see it as a time-waster but significantly more people who sees it as a trip back to nostalgia and a coat of paint that they have always dreamed of since they were young. When ORAS came out, I really enjoyed it and it brought me back. Similarly, when I saw how SwSh graphics were like, I was dreaming crazy for how a Sinnoh remake would look. Especially since some areas are gorgeous. Not trying to be personal, but the re-releases do matter a whole lot when you consider a large amount of the fanbase are people who actually grew up with it. I'm still heartbroken man.
I'm loving Brilliant Diamond. It's pretty much like playing Diamond but with updated graphics, which I'm fine with. The elite four is more difficult than I remember, which is nice.
Ouch, you can't really say that to people like me who is really hurt by that. I'm not trying to make this personal but there's always going to people who see it as a time-waster but significantly more people who sees it as a trip back to nostalgia and a coat of paint that they have always dreamed of since they were young. When ORAS came out, I really enjoyed it and it brought me back. Similarly, when I saw how SwSh graphics were like, I was dreaming crazy for how a Sinnoh remake would look. Especially since some areas are gorgeous. Not trying to be personal, but the re-releases do matter a whole lot when you consider a large amount of the fanbase are people who actually grew up with it. I'm still heartbroken man.
I didn't mean to insult. Diamond/Pearl were one of my lesser liked Pokemon games, I cared a lot more when they re-released Gold/Silver. I figure as long as they don't fuck up a re-release it's fine. And so far, it's fine. I'm just more excited for Arceus.
Never thought the day I would like Voltorb would come, but here we are.
how…how is it still electric?
Haven't liked a Pokemon game in over a decade but Legends I'm actually enjoying a lot. Not that it doesn't have problems for one I think it's rather ugly for a Pokemon game and I don't refer to the fidelity but the art direction has to be some of the weakest in the entire mainline series.
But there is a lot of quality of life in this that I've wished for since X&Y/or even before although some might have made it into the other switch games that I haven't really played.
A big one to me for example is how learning moves works and it not being a replace one of 4 but being a you get a pool of abilities you can swap outside of battle into an active set of 4. Nothing the game does exploration wise/quest wise is like super high quality but it's all done well enough and comes together in a very enjoyable and relaxing gameplay loop of casually gathering materials inbetween catches, inbetween quests, inbetween story, etc.
Personally hope Legends is going to be the base for the future.
The game makes a lot of the forward movement and improvement that we were hoping for with S&S, so props to all the multitude of things that are finally catching up with the times. Hopefully some of the changes carry over to the mainline games.
But man the open world is just kind of… empty for really big swatches. THere's stuff to find and do but its the usual open world game problem where they make a really large map but don't take the time to properly populate it with unique things so its barren or cut and paste, and that's a shame.
It's also really ugly. Nino Kuni came out 10 years ago and two console generations back and looked way better. Dragon Quest 8 was 18 years ago on the PS2 and Okai was 16 years ago! I don't understand why the textures and graphics look so so bad, other than the art direction just not... amking use of the tiem and assetts they have. How you color the things or do the lighting can make all the difference but this game just looks old on release.
Well, they're... getting there. At least they're trying new stuff finally and updating things.
The gamem makes a lot of the forward movement and improvement that we were hoping for with S&S, so props to all the multitude of things that are finally catching up with the times. Hopefully some of the changes carry over to the mainline games.
But man the open world is just kind of… empty for really big swatches. THere's stuff to find and do but its the usual open world game problem where they make a really large map but don't take the time to properly populate it with unique things so its barren or cut and paste, and that's a shame.
It's also really ugly. Nino Kuni came out 10 years ago and two console generations back and looked way better. Dragon Quest 8 was 18 years ago on the PS2 and Okai was 16 years ago! I don't understand why the textures and graphics look so so bad, other than the art direction just not... amking use of the tiem and assetts they have. How you color the things or do the lighting can make all the difference but this game just looks old on release.
Well, they're... getting there. At least they're trying new stuff finally and updating things.
Not sure how true this is but I've seen this
saying it counts as mainline. But yeah even if it is mainline Gamefreak has a serious problem about retaining the good things they've done in some games and regressing.
The “regression” is usually because either they want to keep something for the flavor of an specific gen, or that when 2 games come out around the same time, they were made internally from 2 different teams and just taking one system and merging it into an urelated almost complete game is a recipe for disaster.
The first game of gen 9 won’t satisfy anyone, because it was being worked in parallel with legends.
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Also, no comment on textures, lighting or water, or line of sight optimization or grass… just needed another iteration for everything.
Actually filling the pokedex and giving some action elements is fun.
Not feeling the combat system, another game to figure out what exactly thunder does, and them just adding completely new effects to double hit or stealth rock instead of making a new move, we have leafage, vine whip and branch poke, or scratch, pound, tackle and quick attack being better than the others, I believe it would have been better to add the new moves when it just didn’t had any relation to the previous effect.
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Quality of life wise:
Evolution and learning moves happening off battle, non negotiable going forward, it is just so streamlined getting in and out of battle with this.
The centralized move tutor : it needs something to make you go to her sometimes, the list of moves keep improving over the game, but maybe you can only learn hyper beam, until you complete some research tasks that involve seeing mons using hyper beam, and the like, with rarer or exclusive moves being either rare specific mons on the world, or the old cds.
Make you improve the list actively instead of giving it to you, without telling you.
The pokedex: most mons are just enough to get one and use them a few times to complete the page, the rarer mons should be like that, but more common mons the “catch a bunch” approach. Let me tell you, you need 2 of one of the distortion mons to get its full page.
I wish you could feed your mons when you are interacting with them.
The characters rely too much on their descendants to make an impression, I bet we’ll see some of the completely new characters descendants in future games.
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Some models were finally updated, like flareons tail and gastlys smoke, I guess there are some other like that.
From everything I heard about the game it's the first step in the right direction, but very obviously the first step, lots of improvement to work on
From everything I heard about the game it's the first step in the right direction, but very obviously the first step, lots of improvement to work on
I mean, yes, but also it’s the most addictive thing in recent memory and I can’t put it down.
I mean, yes, but also it’s the most addictive thing in recent memory and I can’t put it down.
That’s good to know, I plan on buying it at some point
I really enjoy the theme of being a Pokemon researcher, with battles acting more like a supplementary research technique. Been having tons of fun going around catching whatever Pokemon I can find.
If they improve on this formula moving forward, I'm going to be a very happy camper.
From everything I heard about the game it's the first step in the right direction, but very obviously the first step, lots of improvement to work on
I would also describe it as it comes together to be greater than its parts. I've always considered myself that pokemon hast just stopped being for me but this is the game that has gotten me back.
I'm tempted to give it a go but the art is seriously throwing me off. I'm very curious what the development behind this looked like. Was it a lack of time? Was it an experimental title where they want to see if the gameplay works before they put any funds into the looks? Was their engine too weak and they didn't know how to make a big world without tanking the game? Or were they really just so cheap to not hire any environmental artists and other people who work on the style of a game?
@Zar:
I'm tempted to give it a go but the art is seriously throwing me off. I'm very curious what the development behind this looked like. Was it a lack of time? Was it an experimental title where they want to see if the gameplay works before they put any funds into the looks? Was their engine too weak and they didn't know how to make a big world without tanking the game? Or were they really just so cheap to not hire any environmental artists and other people who work on the style of a game?
Bad art direction + lack of time is my guess. As far as I understand Pokemon games are on a very strict schedule.
As for the bad art direction to me it just seems like they wanted to replicate this japanese water painting feel but boy does it not work at all for me. The technology doesn't really support/reinforce that feeling and what's left is a drab color palette.
I wonder how people way more into pokemon feel about the battle mechanics and supporting systems in arceus. I haven't ever really dived deep into team building cause it frankly looked like too much work so I'm like curious if there is like a big feeling of they went to far in simplifying the systems?
Personally I'm just glad that it's a lot more approachable making a pokemon as good as it can be but that's a more casual perspective for sure.
The battle system is fun casually in a PVE scenario. It's dismal for trainer battles. It's not really about oversimplification, at least not directly. It's the fact that both sides don't simultaneously lock in a move; you don't have to select a move until it's your turn which completely destroys all strategy and balance. You can't switch something in to catch your opponent off-guard, and you can't really plan ahead. The second you KO something you will just get immediately revenge killed because of turn order. It's… really quite terrible.
But again, if you ignore the forced trainer battles, it's great. There's definitely a reason PvP battles don't exist in this game lol.
I don't mind the battles against pokemon, but when a trainer throws out there of their pokemon and I can only use 1, I just don't understand that gameplay decision.
I wonder how people way more into pokemon feel about the battle mechanics and supporting systems in arceus.
I hate them lol
To be clear, I love this game and I think as far as catching, this should be the gold standard going forward. Heck, keep this battle system for wild encounters. But the old battle system should remain for trainer battles for sure.
The core issue is the turn order logic. If it's a simultaneous turn where both trainers input commands and have to respect order based on speed, you at least allow for prediction and counterplay from switching pokemon, using items, using priority moves, etc.
With this format, you have to just watch and take whatever your opponent wants to do. So if I send out a water type first and they start with grass, if they're faster I have to just watch my pokemon die without having any say or choice in the matter. It leads to too much revenge killing. It's also extremely inconsistent to have turn order that doesn't matter because what your opponent does can also affect turn order, so I can't predict having two turns next turn (for example) because that could change. At it's most absurd this has led to instances where I have to watch while two opponents move twice each before I can do anything, which means my "tanky" pokemon gets whittled down anyway.
I will say though, that the change from freeze to frostbite is an excellent change that I hope they keep. Makes that status more distinct from sleep and it's a reasonable inclusion as a counterpart to burn.
Seems the biggest gripes are with the combat itself as it pertains to trainer battles I've heard some of that in other places as well. Are people generally fine with the teambuilding being less tedious or did they overshoot in simplifying it and some of the aspects of breeding should make its way back? Or maybe Sword and Shield already was a happy medium? I didn't play that but I do think I heard it eased up on some of the work needed.
The last time I looked at team building was around x/y and I think the method was prepping suitable dittos before even being able to start on your team proper.
I love the rock systems (new ev actually gv), the “all your moves are there” system, and believe that with a little gaming elements the move tutor could be even better. Ivs was a nice idea when no one knew about it, the eugenic simulator aspect is… I do it because it is the game, but other than getting a bunch of egg moves it is just not that interesting after 20+ years.
It feels like I’m abandoning the system after thousands of eggs, but I’d rather fly around and hunt alphas or do raids for resources than going up and down in a bike for hours.
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For building a team what do you need? The species of the Mon, gender in certain instances, and non mutable forms, you might want a size or a shiny or a cosmetic form on top of it, but after this point, the rest should be configurable.
We have the ability patch and capsule, that should also go backwards.
We have the bottle caps, that can only perfect the Mon, so you can’t do them for trick room or similar stuff
We have the ev clearing methods, berries and the npc that does it for you
We have the bunch of way to learn moves, now centralized in arceus
And we have the mints for natures, that are a little slow to farm but the option is there.
The gv seems to combine the iv and ev in only one number, for it to have the same impact as competitive it just needs to have a maximum number of points per Mon instead of being able to get 6 10s in everything, and for it to be practical, you need a way to clear it, and seems like a more understandable, readable and practical system than the original.
Out of the top of my head, the ivs can boost your stat 31 points, half of that at level 50, while each 4 evs is an stat at level 100, 8 for one at lvl 50, so the system gives a +/- 94 points possible? Maybe 10 is too little but 94 is also too much.
Honestly, it should all just become as simple as showdown, where if you have a pokemon in your pokedex or boxes you can pull it up and adjust stats and stuff based on how you want to use it. Probably broken in-game, but there's no reason to not have this in battle facilities post-game or for online battles. And also a great incentive for completing the pokedex, since it would mean being able to use anything competitively.
The effort system in Legends is ok, but not truly explained enough. It's hard to know when deciding what pokemon to use early on what those numbers mean, and I feel stupid having reset for a starter with better effort numbers without realizing that could be increased. I thought for sure those were IVs.
But I guess that's also a thing with the old system where gamefreak doesn't trust players enough to communicate that info. They probably are afraid that that will turn off players since they'll perceive they have to do math. For me I get more frustrated when I take a million damage and cannot understand why because the game isn't clear enough about how damage is calculated or how order stacking works.
And yes, the move selection improvement is huge and I really like it. It makes a ton more sense, and it will be hard looking back to the eras of move reminders and the like.
Just finished my first session with Arceus. Well, I certainly have to commend them for trying a bunch of new things. Loving the new Pokeball throwing system. The battle system is good, but why is my level 8 Cyndaquil taking so much damage from a level 3 Bidoof? Also, this game very clearly wants to be Breath of Wild, down to the unseen stamina gauge when you run, which is…totally unnecessary.
Actually, my biggest issue so far is with the controls. It could just be me, but some of them feel really unintuitive. For real, why can't you just bring up the main menu with the start button like a normal fucking game. And I've accidentally tossed a way a few pokeballs and items since using the shoulder but to throw and the X button to cycle does not feel natural to me.
I'm having a blast with Legends, and I think a large part of that is because it's scratched a Pokemon itch I haven't fulfilled in quite some time. My last game was Sun - skipped Ultra Sun because it looked too similar to the former but apparently it's more challenging?, and the PR decisions regarding SwSh really soured my opinion and I didn't bother with that. BDSP looked kinda cool, but it seemed to lean too heavily into just making a DP remake without most of the Platinum bells and whistles.
So I took the plunge on this one.
Catching mons was always why I played, the fun of collecting itself. And there's a nice gameplay loop that makes you wanna explore more, find more mons, get more research points, etc. It helps I skipped New Snap so the game stands as a happy medium between that and mainline.
It's certainly lacking polish in areas but I think this is a great foundation to expand on, hell take half of it and make that how Gen 9 operates.
As for the battling, there's less features mainly to keep the pacing smooth and brisk. It's weird having no abilities and held items after so long but I got used to it. But a couple of eh things:
-I find myself not using strong or agile as much as I thought I would. I think on paper they're interesting, but….not every move can be style'd (which is fine!), and I think Strong has merit if you're backed into a corner and really need to beat this strong mon. Agile less so, because if you're not going again with the increased priority, what's the point? Maybe to soften up a mon for a catch (which again, is fine) but I guess my brain just goes for X weaker move instead.
-Statuses....are hardly there. Like frostbite and drowsy are cool alternatives, but I dislike that they all clear up as soon as you win a fight. Why not have burn and poison and stuff linger to add to danger, so I have a reason to use berries in the field INSTEAD of going "oh i'm poisoned, lemme just end this fight so I'll autoheal". Is it a pacing thing? Who knows.
And this is something really pedantic but whatever
! I always assumed we were a decent way back in time? Yet we have regular cameras, and we can buy suits and bowler hats? I know it's not the real world, and early on I decided to just go with it.
also not the biggest fan of "hey mons can shrink down for balls", as pokeballs seemed to be a really modern tech, not taking just following a nature exploit. Again, we have to catch pokemon somehow, and I can understand they needed the conceit of the game to still work. It's just dumb nitpicky stuff, but there ya go.
I also appreciate the pokedex is not 1:1 to how Sinnoh's actually is. "no duh, we have those starters". yeah but I mean it's cool to see what mon will show up. Some pokemon I never got to have as a kid (mainly due to tedious methods) i can finally see and use here, it's cathartic.
Oh, and at first I was meh on Hisuian Decidueye, but now I'm really digging it.
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Actually, my biggest issue so far is with the controls. It could just be me, but some of them feel really unintuitive. For real, why can't you just bring up the main menu with the start button like a normal fucking game. And I've accidentally tossed a way a few pokeballs and items since using the shoulder but to throw and the X button to cycle does not feel natural to me.
yeah I REALLY would've loved some kind of button remapping. Who on earth thought clicking the stick to run was okay???? It doesn't matter once you get Wydeer (and summoning field mons to travel is super smooth) but a stamina wheel like BOTW would've also been nice. Also a health meter, for well, you.
Actually, I was quite terrified when I saw all the research tasks that supposedly needed to be completed to finish a Pokedex entry. But then it turned out you only need to do a portion of them to get the entry, which came as a great relief.
And this is something really pedantic but whatever
! I always assumed we were a decent way back in time? Yet we have regular cameras, and we can buy suits and bowler hats? I know it's not the real world, and early on I decided to just go with it.
also not the biggest fan of "hey mons can shrink down for balls", as pokeballs seemed to be a really modern tech, not taking just following a nature exploit. Again, we have to catch pokemon somehow, and I can understand they needed the conceit of the game to still work. It's just dumb nitpicky stuff, but there ya go.They are called Pokémon, as in Pocket Monsters, so the shrinking doesn't bother me at all.
Finally started playing Arceus (first 20 minutes all I was waiting for was a new outfit). I think I'm finally getting into the flow, it was taking a while to get used to the new system of things. I want to get out and explore more, but I guess to do that you have to gain rank (which takes the place of gym badges apparently?). How annoying.
Also got my ass kicked by a Drifloon b/c I was trying too hard to catch it instead of dodging. Wouldn't care except the fucker took my stardust.
why does the background colors still look unnecessarily saturated and soulless? It just feels like a SwSh game with an new superficial paint and new mechanics
I take this back. It's a good game and the most fun I've had with a pokemon game for years. Still looks saturated and terrible tho. But Arceus was a really good direction. I love it. Please don't drop the QoL here when making the next gen gamefreak i swear to god.
The colors are a little dull, but I wouldn't call them soulless.
I think they're trying to give it an "ukiyo-e" feeling to it since this is set in a ye olde Japan type setting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e
While I think the quest one for one are pretty dull in the context of quests in general in games. I do massively appreciate how they still manage to sell me as a whole in this world on this fresh idea of a world where people are just so not used to Pokemon and scared of them, etc. They by far didn't maximize the potential of this setting but again still appreciate how much it adds to making the experience different to other pokemon games.
Legends Arceus is probably the game I've been addicted to the most in quite some time. Maybe the first one since BOTW. So I'm enjoying it a lot.
It does have quite a few issues. Especially visually. I kinda wish there were more Pokemon species tbh. I know it was going off Diamond and Pearl but I really felt like some pokemon are just everywhere, some of which really offset the thrill of exploration. There were a number of times I went off the beaten path to explore only to come across Paras, Mothim, Shinx and Geodude lines yet again. Meanwhile Munchlax spawns in a specific spot with a very small chance of doing so and Cherrim appears in a very small select amount of trees that are littered with basically just Combee and Burmy. Actually I really disliked the whole shaking tree thing all together tbh. One mission had me trying to catch a Combee on a specific island and guess what. You can only find it on a tree. But no trees would shake no matter how many times I reset the area. Just feels needlessly grindy (see also Cherrim also spawning in select trees that rarely shake)
Although some areas were really nice out of the way treats. I was sure I explored the map fully but still missed that I could have had Lickitongue very early in second map, and Gamefreak sure knew what they were doing having that Hot Springs with Machoke and Lopbunny chilling in.
Some types felt very underrepresented too. I remembered about the lack of Fire pokemon from Diamond and Pearl but even water types feel very minimal.
Considering the game introduces a heap of new regionals and evolutions that presumably died out over time it's a shame we couldn't have just that little more. Only needed another 15-20 lines to balance some of the areas out to make them more enjoyable. I know Girafarig and Meditite and Wailmer were in Diamond off the top of my head so feels weird just not having them.
I really do hope we see more from this line of the games because it's been a lot of fun just with a small amount of issues.
I did love the slow build of the town and you eventually using pokemon to encourage the townsfolk, even if it's just little things like giving someone a geodude or having an old lady gain a Chimecho friend. It was all little things that made it feel quite nice (and gave us some Pokedex origins)
They are called Pokémon, as in Pocket Monsters, so the shrinking doesn't bother me at all.
fair enough lol.
I kinda criticized the quests and while I think it was a fair assessment having played more I will say there is probably a couple of gems out there. I just did a mr mime related quest which I thought was pretty good for how it worked in that pokemon and avoided being a catch, gather, defeat quest variant. Of course the writing around it doesn't really stand up if we're trying to compare it to like quests that are very memorable in all of games but for Pokemon it was very good.
While the quest were cute at best, the fact that when you start there is an abra and an eevee in the village and by the end almost everyone has or wants a Pokémon is a cool feeling.
And the whole pocket monster thing, I love it, it makes more sense that is their unifying characteristic as life forms, because if not why they were called Pokémon before there were pokeballs (granted, the original data book lore was that a scientist in 1925 accidentally caused a primeape to shrink by fainting it, until that point they could have been just “monsters”)
Apparently you don't have to trade to complete your Pokedex in Arceus. That's cool.
I mean, nothing against trading, but in terms of completing the Dex, for me, it's always kind of a hassle.
I've been playing really slow(just reached the 3rd area) but also learning a lot about the game talking with friends and the whole endgame around shiny hunting in arceus seems a lot more approachable than ever before.
I really like that the evolution items can be obtained through satchel merit points. AND we don't have to do that trade evo nonsense. Gonna suck when GF slides it back into the next mainline game :^)
funny story though. I had an Eevee back in my first few hours, and I was aiming for Espeon/Umbreon…settled on Umbreon since I never used one before. Slept until night, evolved Eevee and.....it became a Sylveon. I was confused but this was fine: never used a Sylveon either.
Apparently in gens where Amie is not a thing, all Eevee needs to have happiness + know a fairy move. Baby-Doll Eyes in this case.
(side note - also have flareon/jolteon/vaporeon now and am trying to get the other four)