Pokemon Gotta Catch-Em-All

Yeah, not what I was expecting their next big announcement to be.

Pokemon is the perfect property for a MOBA with all the built in characters and strategy.

Or gacha, so let's all be thankful it's not that.

Or is it a MOBA gacha? I missed part of the presentation...

I could get down with a PokeMon MOBA. I can't remember the name of Tencent's other mobile MOBA that came to the Switch, but I'm assuming it's similar mechanics, which that was pretty fun to play.

Wow, fired up Shield on my TV for the first time and I'm shocked with how bad it looks. I expected it to look better than in handheld, but I think it looks worse due to the shadows being so awful.

I know I'm not making some truly original comment here.

So, got a Switch about a month or two ago and am now fully on the Pokemon SS boat. Got Shield and have been plugging away, am currently going for the 5th badge (Opal). Got the season pass, started the new content, did the bit in the beginning, got the cool dojo clothes, and got back to leveling up my critters to continue with the main story.

How's the raid/battle/trading scene in the Goojer community?

Some background, the last Pokemon game I played was Black, on ye olde DS, and my link to the series has been mostly through my kid ever since. So, to say I am rusty is, well, an understatement.

Not much of a raid/battle/trade scene here at the moment, afaik. I think we have a couple of people who picked up the DLC and played through it, but other than that it seems fairly quiet. I'm waiting to see how the second part of the DLC turns out before I spring for it, personally. But there really hasn't been much conversation about SwSh for a while now. That said, if you needed to trade for something or needed to evolve someone, it could still be lined up.

In unrelated news, anyone spent much time with TemTem yet? I saw that it had a new patch hit recently, but I may wait for 1.0 next year before jumping in.

Sundown wrote:

Not much of a raid/battle/trade scene here at the moment, afaik. I think we have a couple of people who picked up the DLC and played through it, but other than that it seems fairly quiet. I'm waiting to see how the second part of the DLC turns out before I spring for it, personally. But there really hasn't been much conversation about SwSh for a while now. That said, if you needed to trade for something or needed to evolve someone, it could still be lined up.

In unrelated news, anyone spent much time with TemTem yet? I saw that it had a new patch hit recently, but I may wait for 1.0 next year before jumping in.

Good to know! I may have needs for trades and pokes up for trade sometime in the future. If I recall correctly, I once had a g'jer help me out with a Riolu for my kid about 4 or 5 years ago hahaha good memories!

Temtem seems interesting and I would like to give it a go at some point, but yeah, I'm holding out on it for now.

Just a music video. But a good one with references to much of the franchise.

Heads up to everyone, apparently the Legendary Pokemon Zarude is finally going to be released. If you're in the US, you'll need to sign up for the Pokemon newsletter by Nov 20. Other countries have there own release events. The serebii link has more.

https://www.serebii.net/news/2020/13...
https://support.pokemon.com/hc/en-us...

Beyond that, I caved and sprung for the Pokemon Sword DLC after hearing good things about Crown Tundra. I've been playing through the Isle of Armor, and picking up my Kubfu/Urshifu, and am close to finishing the story in this piece of DLC before moving onto Crown Tundra. And at this point, my main focus is on getting my living Pokedex together; I have everyone up through Ultra Sun, and have everything in Sword except the Shield box legend, plus whatever is in the DLC, which I'll be working on.

I saw a few people mentioning playing Crown Tundra and maybe getting into the competitive scene in a Weekend thread. How are those who are playing it enjoying it so far?

Enjoying it, but the time between sword / shield and Isle of Armor (and then Armor being somewhat underwhelming for me in terms of content) and then the time between Armor and Crown Tundra has really dropped my enthusiasm for jumping back in.

Comparing it to Armor, I'm enjoying all the pieces quite a bit more and we're really enjoying the Dynamax adventures (with slightly less useless AI! yay!), but despite all that it just can't get the hooks in me as deep as the base game did. What's nice is that with the focus being on capturing pokemon in Tundra it doesn't seem quite as trivial as it did with the Trainer Battles of Armor from being overlevelled. It's actually pretty hard to catch some of the legendaries without fainting them or losing your whole team.

I've enjoyed the DLC a good bit, though it could definitely do with a bit more meat on its bones story-wise. Then again, who plays Pokemon for the narrative? Dynamax Adventures is cool, but I hate that the list only allows 3 legendary routes to be saved at a time... seems terribly arbitrary, that. There's a little bit of randomness to the availability of rented pokemon, what you encounter on the way, and how effective they might be against the legendary at the end, which keeps it interesting, but would be terribly frustrating if you're shiny hunting hehehe.

Having said that, I lucked out on getting a shiny Rayquaza out of the equation without any real grinding, so there's that.

Jolly Bill wrote:

Enjoying it, but the time between sword / shield and Isle of Armor (and then Armor being somewhat underwhelming for me in terms of content) and then the time between Armor and Crown Tundra has really dropped my enthusiasm for jumping back in.

Comparing it to Armor, I'm enjoying all the pieces quite a bit more and we're really enjoying the Dynamax adventures (with slightly less useless AI! yay!), but despite all that it just can't get the hooks in me as deep as the base game did. What's nice is that with the focus being on capturing pokemon in Tundra it doesn't seem quite as trivial as it did with the Trainer Battles of Armor from being overlevelled. It's actually pretty hard to catch some of the legendaries without fainting them or losing your whole team.

Especially for someone like me who insists in catching all the legendaries in Luxury Balls

BlackSabre wrote:
Jolly Bill wrote:

Enjoying it, but the time between sword / shield and Isle of Armor (and then Armor being somewhat underwhelming for me in terms of content) and then the time between Armor and Crown Tundra has really dropped my enthusiasm for jumping back in.

Comparing it to Armor, I'm enjoying all the pieces quite a bit more and we're really enjoying the Dynamax adventures (with slightly less useless AI! yay!), but despite all that it just can't get the hooks in me as deep as the base game did. What's nice is that with the focus being on capturing pokemon in Tundra it doesn't seem quite as trivial as it did with the Trainer Battles of Armor from being overlevelled. It's actually pretty hard to catch some of the legendaries without fainting them or losing your whole team.

Especially for someone like me who insists in catching all the legendaries in Luxury Balls :)

Well, the Dynamax Adventures have a guaranteed catch rate, so you could throw garbage at whatever pokemon you encounter therein and it will get caught... So Luxury ball away? Unless you shiny hunt, in which case, that's a lot of purchasing you need to do!

I got the code for Zarude in an email today, so it seemed signing up for the newsletter actually worked.

And with that, I now have a full living Pokedex of all Pokemon released up through Gen 8 in Pokemon Home, some of which have been with me since Gen 3. It was a pain to get together the first time (back in Sun), but at this point, maintaining it in the next generation really isn't that hard. It just takes some trading.

Fortunately, Sword and Shield made it a bit simpler than in previous generations; it just took some time. You can create a second profile on your Switch, and play a new game on that instead of deleting your original save. I did that, then rushed to Crown Tundra (since the DLC is tied to the console and not the profile), lost to Peony, went to the Max den and caught a lv.70 Suicune, and then basically speedran the main game with Suicune to catch the Sword legendary to trade away for it's Shield counterpart. After that I quickly ran through the DLC to get everyone I didn't choose in my main file. Like I said, a bit time consuming, but entirely possible to do with just one cart.

I think they may have dropped the tag line of Gotta Catch 'em All along the line, but I feel like it's still imprinted in my psyche somewhere.

New Pokémon Snap now has a release date: April 30.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ni...

Shame that Bandai Namco can't manage to make significantly better looking ground textures than Game Freak.

Other than that, I love it! Are you given free movement or is this an on rails experience again?

They haven't specifically said by the promo material, but considering it's in the vehicle again, plus the trailer has like 3 seconds of photography game play where you're just slowly panning by a scene, my strong suspicion is on rails.

It had better be on rails. Making it freeform would ruin the game.

If the reviews are good, this is so going to be a day one purchase.

I'm only picking it up if they bring back the best feature of the 64 version: a kiosk at my local Blockbuster to print my favorite pictures.

I'd say it would change the game, not necessarily ruin it. Granted, I never played the original, but I think the idea of a game designed around free movement around a world where you try to discover a Pokemon's environments to get excellent photographs has its own appeal. It's just a different kind of appeal.

That said, based on the original tease from last year, "on rails" seemed to be the name of the game, so it really is a twenty-some year-old revival of the original.

Pokemon Snap was an arcade-style rail shooter like Star Fox. It wasn't an exploration game or a photography game. That's just the theme. Removing the rails would be like making a Mario game without jumping or a Doom game without shooting. Sure, you can do that (e.g. Captain Toad or Doom RPG) and still be awesome, but you leave that stuff for a spinoff like Pokemon: Explorer or something.

I mean, Star Fox 64 already steered away from that arcade-style rail shooter excellence that the SNES original specialized in, and many claimed it to be even better.

In fact, I don't think the comparison works so well because Mario without jumping isn't expanding focus like removing the rails of Pokemon Snap would be. Pokemon Snap would be adding mechanics, should they remove the rails. What keeping the rails does is keep it focused and simple, and that focus and simplicity means what few things you do, you do excellently.

Regardless, no real point with this digression.

ccesarano wrote:

I mean, Star Fox 64 already steered away from that arcade-style rail shooter excellence that the SNES original specialized in, and many claimed it to be even better.

*GASP* Star Fox 64 is a masterpiece!

You're correct that Pokemon Snap could work without rails, but if they removed the rails I fear the focus of the game would change to be a relaxing, exploration-focused game rather than the arcade-style score chaser that was the original.

Djinn wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I mean, Star Fox 64 already steered away from that arcade-style rail shooter excellence that the SNES original specialized in, and many claimed it to be even better.

*GASP* Star Fox 64 is a masterpiece!

You're correct that Pokemon Snap could work without rails, but if they removed the rails I fear the focus of the game would change to be a relaxing, exploration-focused game rather than the arcade-style score chaser that was the original.

I think you might be in for a letdown though because everything seems to be aiming for the exploration side. Maybe it's not, but so far the PR aims that way.

Also, rails pretty much confirmed:

IMAGE(https://newpokemonsnap.pokemon.com/assets/img/investigate/investigate-art-2x.png)

Edit: Well, this sums it all up

Gameplay remains similar to its predecessor, in which players travel in an auto-driving vehicle while visiting various locations in the region taking pictures to build their “Photodex.” Points are awarded based on the quality of the photos you take, and just like the original game, players can use items such as apples to lure pokémon in closer for a better shot.

That's from the Verge.

I still think it being free roam wouldn't hurt the core snapping for points gameplay, but perhaps in a future game we'll get that.

There have been other cool similarly themed games, such as Endless Ocean and its sequel. I don’t see anything preventing them from making a good game that isn’t on rails.

IMHO, rails does two things:

1. Makes it easier for kids. This is probably the most important reason.
2. Cheaper to make.

Obviously a N64 game being open world is not something anyone would've expected, but it'd have been a nice evolution of the series. I honestly think TPC is too cheap to do that though, even if the devs pitched the idea at some point.

Seriously, where does all the money Pokemon makes go? Can I buy their stock?!?!?

garion333 wrote:

Seriously, where does all the money Pokemon makes go? Can I buy their stock?!?!?

1/3rd to Nintendo, 1/3rd to Game Freak, 1/3rd to Creatures. I don't know what Game Freak and Creatures do with it, but Nintendo uses it to subsidize Metroid games and Fire Emblem and other sh*t like that that doesn't have a big audience.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Seriously, where does all the money Pokemon makes go? Can I buy their stock?!?!?

1/3rd to Nintendo, 1/3rd to Game Freak, 1/3rd to Creatures. I don't know what Game Freak and Creatures do with it, but Nintendo uses it to subsidize Metroid games and Fire Emblem and other sh*t like that that doesn't have a big audience.

Right, I get that, assuming those numbers are correct (since I don't think anyone truly knows outside of the companies), but I'm talking about the entire franchise. Between the card game to video games to toys to the show, it's such a huge franchise.

I'd love to know exactly where it all goes and how I too can be a part of it!

New Pokemon Presents tomorrow morning (7am PT/10am ET).