Pokemon Gotta Catch-Em-All

Sundown wrote:

Does anyone have a Scorbunny or it's evolutions that they're willing to lend me for about 5 minutes so I can breed one for myself? It's the only starter I don't have. I can trade you lv.1 starter you don't have for it, and you can trade me back whatever to get it back.

I've received at least 4 of them from Wonder Trades. I think I still have at least one of them left. You can have it if so. I'll update tonight if no one else has covered you before then.

Dyni wrote:
Sundown wrote:

Does anyone have a Scorbunny or it's evolutions that they're willing to lend me for about 5 minutes so I can breed one for myself? It's the only starter I don't have. I can trade you lv.1 starter you don't have for it, and you can trade me back whatever to get it back.

I've received at least 4 of them from Wonder Trades. I think I still have at least one of them left. You can have it if so. I'll update tonight if no one else has covered you before then.

You got 4 starters from the surprise trades? Some people have all the luck.

Bill_Lewis wrote:

You got 4 starters from the surprise trades? Some people have all the luck.

Yes, but all 4 were Scorbunnies, and that's what I chose at the start. So not quite as lucky as I hoped

I still have 2 Scorbunnies left. Just post here or PM to set up a trade.

So I beat Pokemon Sword around the 30 hour mark, which is in line with other games.

As my general thoughts, I really like how the game threw a ton of new pokemon at you all the time, which lets you build your team out however you want, so regardless which starter you get you can plug in the other holes relatively easily. Except fire types, since those seem fairly uncommon. I get that the experience share helps make it easier to plug in anyone and get them caught up easily, so even if I think it unbalances the game (I was still 5 levels higher than the gym leader until the end of the game; only the final battle was closer to what I was rolling with), I think it’s worth it as a reduced barrier to adding new Pokemon to your team. In the past if something new came by, you would have to grind it up for several hours; now you can plug it in, let it catch up, and use it when it’s available. I know this has been the case for a few games now, but before they let you turn it off as well. The world also felt big early on, but once you’ve seen it once get the bike and can speed around, it feels a lot smaller. I can’t wait until MonoliftSoft partners with Game Freak to see what they come up with.

So my final team was Inteleon, Corviknight, Sirfetch’d, Toxtricity, Grimmsnarl, and Runerigus. If everyone will indulge me for a moment, I want to rate my team.

Spoiler:

Inteleon is fine, but I’m generally not a fan of the fast but fragile Pokemon, especially starters who are generally some of your most reliable team members. He’s not as fragile as Infernape was back in Diamond/Pearl, but he couldn’t take too many hits. Fortunately, he was almost assured to go first, and could hit hard enough to not be a problem.

Corviknight was a solid workhorse Pokemon, in the long tradition of early game birds (Pidgeot, Swellow, Staraptor, Talonflame, Toucannon) being solid, workhorse Pokemon. The steel type game her something useful to do against Fairies, and made her one of my go to tanks when I needed someone to shrug off damage that I didn’t have a better way to handle. Her solid defenses helped a lot.

Sirfetch’d was on my team from the time he was announced, since Farfetch’d has always been a joke and I wanted to see him good for once. He didn’t learn a good fighting attack until about the middle of the game, but still might be my low-key MVP for his ability to smash through everything with his sky high attack and solid defenses.

Toxtricity is a weird one. He had a fun typing, but seemed to be emblematic of a number of Pokemon in this game, where he had good attacking stats and a movepool to take advantage of it, but he was slowish and frailish. I usually like a bit more bulk and will trade it off for offense (think Nidoqueen), so this one caused more problems that I was expecting him to since he wasn’t going first enough or shrugging off hits enough. I would have gone with Yamper instead, but they are even more frail.

Grimmsnarl is also a mixed attacker with mediocre defenses and speed, but at least he had a lot of health to keep him alive. I wasn’t a huge fan of this line’s designs, but the typing was unique and I wanted to see how it worked out. He was fine, and was useful in a number of big battles with his typing and his ability to have a priority Thunder Wave.

Usually, one Pokemon per game sneaks up on you and turns out to be better than you expected, and Runerigus is that for Sword and Shield. I added Yanmask to my team on a whim, and since his evolution gave me a ground type that I needed. Upon evolution (which is one of the most absurd things introduced in a Pokemon game), I found I really liked his design and the way he moves, and the fact that he had three immunities didn’t hurt. He was also very useful, since his defenses were ridiculous (especially after I gave him an assault vest later), and he could take multiple super effective hits from Dynamaxed Pokemon. He also had a decent movepool and a good attack stat, so even if he never went first he could still take and dish out damage. I put Rock Blast on him to give him something to do against birds, and it turned out to be maybe one of the best Dynamaxed moves he had, and got me through several huge battles, including getting the final hit against the Champion.

So of them, I think Runerigus, Corviknight, and Sirfetch'd were my favorites, in that order.

I’m been running around the postgame, evolving a bunch of the Pokemon I have against the high level Pokemon out there in the Wild Area, and collecting all the watts. They just blew up how many watts you get from each den, so ‘grinding’ watts to buy TR’s is trivial. Haven’t touched the official post game content yet, but I plan to.

Something I haven't heard much mention of but sounds like a possible connection, could the experience share in this be a result of the Pokemon now appearing on the world map and random encounters being handled differently? It seems to me like you might end up fighting less overall in this game.

Regardless, going to have to really hammer some time into Fire Emblem so I can open up room for Pokemon.

Except fire types, since those seem fairly uncommon.

Every game is like this and I'm always left wondering why. I think X/Y had a few early fire pokemon, but that was about it.

This game does have a couple early on too, depending on weather conditions.

The mine you visit early in the came has the coal Pokémon, those are actually Rock/Fire their whole chain, so they are an early fire though I don't know about their early movesets… and there are Vulpix in the Wild Area when you start off, if the weather conditions are right (I think sunny days?).

But that and the starter seem to be about it until you get to the Fire Gym where you have a few more around.

Every other type is pretty well represented early with your "starter types" of like the others of the 3 starters and your normal like bug/flying/normal/and AN electric Pokémon... but fire is always one of those ones that's just harder to get and I'll never understand how they haven't fixed that yet.

ccesarano wrote:

Something I haven't heard much mention of but sounds like a possible connection, could the experience share in this be a result of the Pokemon now appearing on the world map and random encounters being handled differently? It seems to me like you might end up fighting less overall in this game.

Regardless, going to have to really hammer some time into Fire Emblem so I can open up room for Pokemon.

You do end up fighting less Pokémon if you want, most of the time, with MOST encounters appearing on the world map. The interesting thing for the Wild Area though is that, at least to some degree, it does scale up with you. I'm leveling some new Pokémon to 60 for the Champion battle as apparently like half his team has access to fire moves and my team is somewhat weak to that right now, so I had to change out some Pokémon that were effectively useless for the fight after one attempt... but yeah, if you don't want to, you don't have to, and you don't really NEED to for most of the game. Meanwhile, back in even the starting area of the Wild Area and all the Pokémon are level 60 right now and helping me potentially skip some of this leveling at least (the routes, however, seem to be level locked at least pre-Champion fight).

Dyni wrote:

I still have 2 Scorbunnies left. Just post here or PM to set up a trade.

If you have any left i'd take one. we're already friends on Nintendo

Bill_Lewis wrote:
Dyni wrote:

I still have 2 Scorbunnies left. Just post here or PM to set up a trade.

If you have any left i'd take one. we're already friends on Nintendo

Yup. I have one more to give. I should be around this evening or coming weekend to trade. Just shoot me a PM with available times. Given my experience so far, it may take a few code attempts to get the trade to work.

And thanks to Dyni, I have the other. If anyone needs a starter, I can breed one for them. Just shoot me a PM.

Picked up Shield. That there 20% extra tradein to Gamestop drew me in.

Man, they need voice acting for at least the intro scenes in future games. I didn't think it was a big deal when I saw others complain, but it does seem awfully odd for a full blown console game.

Anyway, this'll hold me over collecting-wise until Yokai Watch gets localized.

garion333 wrote:

Man, they need voice acting for at least the intro scenes in future games. I didn't think it was a big deal when I saw others complain, but it does seem awfully odd for a full blown console game.

This really struck me too. I'm 20 hours in and this is probably still my biggest gripe with the game.

Anyone want to trade their Zacian for my Zamazenta?

Anyone interested in buying my oldest's Pokemon pins:

2014 Mega Charizard M
2014 Mega Charizard X
2015 Mega Mawile
2016 Pokemon XY Zygarde
2016 Tapu Koko
2017 Tapu Lele, Tapu Bulu & Tapu Fini

I'll take pics later after doing some research on pricing since eBay isn't exactly reliable for that sort of thing unless I want them to never sell.

Anyone have a couple extra drake fossils that they'd be willing to trade with a pokemon? I have 6 extra bird fossils and an extra dino fossil.

milkolate wrote:

Anyone want to trade their Zacian for my Zamazenta?

I might be able to trade with you, as long as it's a trade/trade-back situation. I'm rather fond of my sword puppy and don't want to give it up permanently.

And similarly to Forlorn Hope, I think I have 6 extra bird fossils and 6 extra dino fossils, so if someone with Shield has a lot of their fossils lying around, I think we can trade the fossils around to where each of us can get one of each of the four fossil Pokemon for ourselves. Although apparently you can get any of the fossils from the Digging Brothers in the Wild Area, it's just a low percent.

Sundown wrote:
milkolate wrote:

Anyone want to trade their Zacian for my Zamazenta?

I might be able to trade with you, as long as it's a trade/trade-back situation. I'm rather fond of my sword puppy and don't want to give it up permanently.

Sure! What's your name on the discord?

milkolate wrote:
Sundown wrote:
milkolate wrote:

Anyone want to trade their Zacian for my Zamazenta?

I might be able to trade with you, as long as it's a trade/trade-back situation. I'm rather fond of my sword puppy and don't want to give it up permanently.

Sure! What's your name on the discord?

Sundown #6556

My son has caught the Poke CCG bug bad and so we entered our first card tournament yesterday with premade decks and some boosters. He did decently well in the juniors but I had my butt absolutely handed to me. Can anyone who plays tabletop give me some pointers and maybe an idea of how much money I'm going to have to spend? Looking at decks online I'm seeing ones that cost $1-300, which is way more than I want to plunk down to even have a chance of winning.

So normally I'm not with everyone complaining about games with silent protagonists or still requiring you to read text these days. The more we push for everything to be the highest of production values the more expensive the game is and the more smaller, more niche types of games can be freely made.

Yet the way in which Pokemon Sword/Shield opens really is jarring. It looks like there's supposed to be voice acting, and there's not. Eventually the game is filled with more simplified cut-scenes and text-boxes where it feels appropriate, but in that opening it just felt rather... quiet. Like something was clearly missing.

I just played Fire Emblem, which didn't always have fully voiced dialogue but still plenty of it with presentation shortcuts taken. Breath of the Wild maintained the "tradition" of Link as a silent protagonist while implementing voicework into its narrative and leaving text for the majority of more "gamey" moments, I guess you could say. Yet Pokemon has no voice work at all.

This is a game that's tried to polish up the quality of Pokemon cries from the original GameBoy so they'll better fit in with the game's presentation, and yet still no voicework.

But then that has me wondering if it's all about file sizes and Nintendo trying to maintain a minimum size on their games. These still have to fit on carts, and even then they need to be small enough to not eat up a whole 64 or 128GB SD card. The current game is 9-ish gigs on my Switch. Is the lack of any voice work at all a result of trying to keep the file size down given how big these games tend to be due to the sheer number of Pokemon available?

Just some thoughts crossing my mind. Not going to really say it hurts the game as a whole as I quickly forgot about it as I entered the game proper. It does, however, feel like a slow beginning.

Yup, absolutely jarring in the beginning. Doesn't need full voice acting by any stretch but it almost seems like the voice track is missing in the beginning.

jdzappa wrote:

My son has caught the Poke CCG bug bad and so we entered our first card tournament yesterday with premade decks and some boosters. He did decently well in the juniors but I had my butt absolutely handed to me. Can anyone who plays tabletop give me some pointers and maybe an idea of how much money I'm going to have to spend? Looking at decks online I'm seeing ones that cost $1-300, which is way more than I want to plunk down to even have a chance of winning.

And quoting this in case anyone has any ideas. I certainly don't. You can always buy a Championship deck but I imagine most folks at tourneys will know a lot about it and how to play against it.

I got Sword for Christmas and have to agree with ccesarano, there are segments of the game (especially the opening) that the lack of vocals leaves feeling empty. I definitely do not need or really want a fully voiced pokemon game, but in certain sections I feel could be a huge win.

Just spent several hours in the wild area and not sure his much I like it yet. A neat idea, but especially that early just seems to inflate the number of pokemon available to you. Having not played since gen 2 I am much more used to having a very limited roster early on. Hopefully it will grow in me as I play more.

It has been fun jumping back into the series so far, but the silent protagonist and anemic rival are a letdown for me. This kid is supposed to be my greatest rival, driving me to better myself, but he immediately picks a type disadvantage pokemon then only catches one other pokemon on the way to the professor.

I believe Pokemon is in desperate need of a "Hard" mode, where opponents have more Pokemon at higher levels so that there's a greater challenge, and the A.I. is more sophisticated in its use of status ailments that tie to specific moves.

For now, I'm fine with it being a relaxing game, but even the good things Sword/Shield are doing are likely to feel more like detriments to the overall. I'm watching my friend's 7 year-old son play, he has barely caught any Pokemon, and he doesn't know what, to me, come off as "basic strategies" for dropping enemy health and catching them. That the game is balanced for him is fine to me, but Nintendo knows they have an audience of adults that grew up playing this game, and seem to only insist on catering to them in the post-game (which means you're catering to a niche among your adult fans). Perhaps there's concern that a Hard mode would screw with balancing issues somehow, but I think it would do the franchise a world of good.

So I've been very, very slow in my progress on this so far (only about 6ish hours in, haven't hit the first gym yet though almost there). I'm wondering if my play style could make this a more challenging game than it has been for others. I've been cycling Pokemon in and out of my team to try and level some up, hoping to figure out which will be best for a solid six. I even removed Thwackey for a time since he was the highest leveled.

This has made some of the fights with even wild Pokemon a tad challenging, and I've been surprised at how quickly I'll go through some of my potions. It's possible this won't last much longer since I'm still early, but it has me wondering if difficulty in this game is, in part, what you make of it. No one on my team is over-powered yet.

I don't think I have a solid six I'd like to go with yet, but at the same time, I've certainly had a large variety to choose from.

ccesarano wrote:

So I've been very, very slow in my progress on this so far (only about 6ish hours in, haven't hit the first gym yet though almost there). I'm wondering if my play style could make this a more challenging game than it has been for others. I've been cycling Pokemon in and out of my team to try and level some up, hoping to figure out which will be best for a solid six. I even removed Thwackey for a time since he was the highest leveled.

This has made some of the fights with even wild Pokemon a tad challenging, and I've been surprised at how quickly I'll go through some of my potions. It's possible this won't last much longer since I'm still early, but it has me wondering if difficulty in this game is, in part, what you make of it. No one on my team is over-powered yet.

I don't think I have a solid six I'd like to go with yet, but at the same time, I've certainly had a large variety to choose from.

Yeah, in general it’s what you make of it. I had a solid 4 team members for the first half of the game, and by mid game had 5 and 6 in place. That was when it got out of hand. Just by fighting all the trainers and catching every new Pokémon in sight, I wound up 5 levels higher than even every gym leader I ran into in the by the end of the game. If you constantly rotate I don’t think that would happen, but when you have the same ones getting a steady flow of experience? Definitely.

Also, it looks like a Pokémon focused direct is dropping tomorrow. My prediction is they explain what Pokémon Home is.

I'm not expecting much from today's Pokemon Direct, a large chunk I expect will be about the first update to Sword and Shield, but I also expect something about Pokemon Sleep or whatever that mobile title is.

Then I came across this from ZhugeEX:

Spoiler:

Mystery Dungeon game

Now I'm excited!

E-e-expansion pass? Meh.

Edit: So, no Mystery Dungeon, so I'm a bit sad at that, but the expansion pass stuff looks decent. I guess this is their new way of having yearly releases. Now you get the game and the next year you buy the expansion.

Apparently I missed something at the beginning of the stream.

Oh crap I forgot all about this. I'll have to catch up after my phone meeting.

Might as well post it. I'm only a few hours into the game so an expansion doesn't interest me, yet.