Pokemon Gotta Catch-Em-All

Stevintendo wrote:

FYI, you know that shot of something etched into the side of a hill? That's a real thing in England (not that exact design), there are giant etchings of like Crowns and Horses in different places. It's a nice detail to include.

There's also this (kinda nsfw). Chances that they put this in the game are 100%!

garion333 wrote:
Stevintendo wrote:

FYI, you know that shot of something etched into the side of a hill? That's a real thing in England (not that exact design), there are giant etchings of like Crowns and Horses in different places. It's a nice detail to include.

There's also this (sfw). Chances that they put this in the game are 100%!

I love that you went out of your way to say that the link is "suitable for work".

Uhh. Dick pics probably not safe for work. Not even ancient British ones.

Pokémon thread has taken a strange turn...

Safe for Garion's work?

Pokémon Leave/Remain is the best.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Pokémon Leave/Remain is the best. :lol:

I know, right?

*mod*

Updated Garion’s post to reflect the link warning a bit more accurately.

I haven't played a Pokemon since Red/Blue but have always had a lot of nostalgia and love for the series. My toddler has been asking to watch Pokemon with me. I think I'm going to save up and get a Switch and get one of Sword/Shield and play while she watches. I showed her the three starters and she said she likes the bunny best. I'm partial to the monkey but I'll go with what she wants when it comes out.

Well looks like I'll finally have to get a switch. Sad that the 3ds is going since my oldest two each have one and usually get the opposite version of Pokemon. Can't see myself forking out for two Switches....

I'm probably in for this one like I am most of the other Pokemon games. I'll second everyone who says the starters aren't too inspiring, but hopefully they evolutions make up for it. I'm not really surprised they are going back to gyms; they tend to introduce new ideas in some games and drop it from later games, presumably because they want each game to have some unique traits to them.

Any idea what Pokemon they might introduce that would be iconic to the area? Maybe some red squirrels, foxes, or sentient pint glasses? (Vanilluxe exists, so it's not that crazy)

I am also disappointed by the starters, but to be fair I have been disappointed in the starters for a few generations now. Even if I like the designs I really, really wish that they would depart from the Fire/Water/Grass tradition at this point. Another trinity like Fighting/Psychic/Dark would be something, but I'd rather they do an even greater departure like them all starting with the same type, but evolving to three different secondary types. I suppose each of the three starters could still evolve in two different directions, but I don't have high hopes.

Sundown wrote:

Any idea what Pokemon they might introduce that would be iconic to the area? Maybe some red squirrels, foxes, or sentient pint glasses? (Vanilluxe exists, so it's not that crazy)

Fish and Chips. They start as two Pokémon but evolve by merging into one.

A crown. Starts as a tiara but eventually becomes a big fancy crown.

Just a palace. We've had a sand castle so I think we can have a palace.

A bag of crisps that eventually evolves into Gary Lineker.

The Beatles. One Pokémon with four forms. For some reason it's not a bug-type. Seems like a missed opportunity.

The Jeremy Clarkson. A fighting type that likes to punch people in the face when it's hungry. It doesn't evolve, learn or grow in any way. It's really tall though.

If we don't get beefeaters what is Nintendo even doing.

If we're going into inanimate objects I think that some variation of Big Ben may work.

It's interesting to see a combination of love for all the starters and feelings of blandness. Right now it seems that initial positive response went to Scorbunny, but all the correct people have risen in support of Sobble. Only wrong people select Grass Monkey, who is probably going to end up Grass/Fighting.

Yonder wrote:

Another trinity like Fighting/Psychic/Dark would be something,

Evidently that's the secondary trinity they've been going with, and everyone looking at Scorbunny is desperately hoping that he doesn't end up as another Fire/Fighting. I don't see it being Fire/Dark, so my guess is Fire/Psychic and Sobble is going to be Water/Dark. If I had to guess. Otherwise it's Grass/Dark and Fire/Fighting again.

I really don't see Sobble being Water/Fighting, but who knows. Greninja looks way different than I expected when I first saw Froakie, and is also the only design, I've realized, that I've loved as much as any of the Red/Blue designs.

I don't know about other Gen 1 nostalgia monsters (did you know there's a whole bunch of Pokemon fans a generation younger that really hate the Gen 1 pandering we get? It's kind of funny), but I realized that my love of Gen 1 likely comes to my preference for more reptilian or insectoid designs. I feel like every subsequent generation has put greater emphasis on mammalian types of Pokemon to capture the cute angle, at least in the starters. Gen 1 is the only one with three reptilian starter Pokemon. Every one after has had one reptilian/amphibian Starter with the rest being mammalian or bird species.

Which has me wanting an Insectoid starter Pokemon, or a legit fish starter, or something else that's actually different.

Damn right they're going for cute! It worked, too:

IMAGE(https://media.comicbook.com/2016/05/rowlett-182555.png)

This gen, eh. Whatever, it's just the starters.

I had originally snubbed the Let's Go games when they came out as looking too casual, and was content to wait for what would eventually be Sword and Shield. But after glowing reviews from Stevintendo and A_Unicycle, I caved and grabbed LG Pikachu on sale. I usually get the first game in the set, plus I wanted Growlithe.

I'm playing through it slowly and only just beat Brock last night, and while I still think the game is easy so far, it's won me over with it's charm. Having Pokemon run around on the field gives the world a whole new life, the models are cartoony but they grow on you quickly, and I love the symphonic updates to the same tracks I first listened to 20 years ago on the Game Boy. Plus it has some of the modern quality of life features (unlimited TMs!) that even FRLG lacked. In a lot of ways, it's feels fresh and alive in the same way that Red and Blue were in my imagination back when I was younger.

I honestly can't wait to recommend it to my nephew, who only knows the Pokemon world through Pokemon Go and some of the cards. They may get a Switch sometime this year, and this would be a fantastic first full Pokemon game for him.

I have a lot of thoughts on Detective Pikachu (that people are probably discussing in the Movies thread but this is my United States of Whatever so in here my thoughts go). I'm trying to sort them and will be podcastin' 'em later so I don't wanna speak my whole mind but I'll try and get something somewhat reasonable together here.

It's a good movie. How much you enjoy it is going to depend, but if you're a big fan of Pokemon I think it's safe to say you'll really enjoy much of what this film has to offer. It's got a lackluster villain and if you're a full grown adult it's probably going to be quite predictable. But to that end, I don't think it's simply right to say "it's a family film". I feel like this film is of a quality that makes it comparable to being a new generation's live-action Ninja Turtles film.

Which might get different responses depending on the person, but I still stick by the original Ninja Turtles film actually being pretty solid. It's got thematic elements and character development and characters with flaws and etc., as well as flaws itself due to the era it was made in and, given some of the humor, assuming that humor had to aim low on the cerebral scale. I feel like it's a film that still works, and I feel like Detective Pikachu can be the same. However, just as TMNT bears scars of the era in which it was made, Detective Pikachu does as well (there's at least one set piece that goes on unnecessarily long, as well as a closing act that was large in scale because everything's large in scale these days (and is part of the reason the villain didn't really work for me)).

So if you got kids, I think this movie is a no-brainer. It could easily be a film that, years down the line, will drive that kid to be interested in how films are made. Sure, it's not one of the greatest of the greats, but it has that possibility.

There's also the "do we finally have a good video game movie?!" element, and I say yes. I want to go into this film's development background and see how much control the Pokemon Company had over it, because just about every Producer name was Japanese. I feel like that's going to suggest an awful lot right there, because it's come out that, while the lead members of Sonic Team act as consultants on the Sonic the Hedgehog film, they don't really have control over how the product is shaped. Just looking at the trailers side-by-side said a lot, and I have a feeling the end products will as well. The funny thing is, if Pokemon Company had more control over Detective Pikachu than usually happens with these adaptations, then we have our first parallel to Marvel taking matters into their own hands with Iron Man back in 2008.

The reason I discuss all this is because Detective Pikachu gets the source material. It understands the world this film is supposed to inhabit. The idea of partnership with a Pokemon is built into the narrative and its core character's development, but executed in the way an American film would portray it rather than the same flavor of melodrama the Japanese would apply it (and endlessly have in video games, anime, and comics). It ties it into thematic concepts as well, but I don't think it really executes on any of those well. They're present, but the film doesn't really have time to do anything with them.

Regardless, this film doesn't just drop Pokemon into the environment and have them look a certain way. It's about that kinship with the Pokemon, and it is also about personal growth, or "evolution", if you will.

I'd say the greatest reason this film works is because it isn't just nostalgia. It appropriately feels like a story in this universe of Pokemon. Sure, it's live-action rather than anime, but it feels like a Pokemon story. And perhaps part of the reason this film was able to work that well is because Pokemon has been a multimedia project in Japan for so long that there was already some sense of how a Pokemon film should work.

I'm not too certain if you could make a Detective Pikachu film in the future given the way it ends, and I've already seen people joke about creating a "Smash Bros. Cinematic Universe" that I really don't care for. But I would certainly love for this to be the first of other live-action Pokemon films, as I'd like to see what else they can do with this setting in the future.

It's not the best movie, but it's a fun movie and I honestly would love to go see it again. Highly recommended.

It's funny to me you mention TMNT because I mentioned to my wife that some of the sets in the trailer reminded me of TMNT and something from the feel did too.

Detective Pikachu was on my radar before, but I might try to make a point to see it sometime.

So I'm still playing LG Pikachu, and I finally found the difficulty in Celadon City. I was rolling over everything through about Vermillion and the 3rd badge. Ran into some enemies in the Rock Tunnel that I couldn't whip at will (including an Onix that withstood a vine whip with plenty of health from my Ivysaur), but nothing that couldn't be handled. Erika, however, gave me a good fight. Growlithe is my main fire type, but is unevolved until he learns crunch, and was around level 26. Erika's entire team was level 32 plus, which was the same level that my strongest were at. Half my team was 3 levels below that, and I'm not skimping on trainer battles, so Erika is definitely buffed from the original games. Her team was able to withstand way more attacks than I thought they could, and only beat Vileplume through paralyzing it with my Pikachu, and then dropping some para-flinch hax wiith a headbutting Venusaur. Everyone else in my team of 6 was down. Now, maybe once I evolve Growlithe and the team is shored up things will resume being easy, but I was impressed by that battle. And I'm glad I'm not doing a nuzlocke run.

My team is mostly old faves:
Pikachu - reliving playing Yellow, and Pikachu is surprisingly overpowered
Venusaur - Bulbasaur wasn't my first starter back in Red (gave up on a Charmander run around the Misty fight, and restarted), but he was the first one I beat the game with. Had a soft spot for the -saur line ever since. And watching Venusaur run/jump like a frog is amazing and delightful.
Nidoking - The glue that holds most of my teams together, since the Nidos ca be plugged in anywhere and do almost everything.
Gyrados - Always liked buying the Magikarp and grinding it up to usefulness. Wasn't actually useful until I could buy the Waterfall TM, though.
Growlithe - I like the fire dogs, but poor movepools always held them back, plus since in other games I always had to have a bird for Fly, fire types felt redundant. Now's her chance to shine.
Wigglytuff - Part Fairy type now so I want to try it out again, and once I got to Celadon and could stock up on TM's Wigglytuff now has a laughably good movepool (Tri-Attack and Play Rough and Shadowball and Thunderbolt, since the Special Attack is slightly higher). Could be the weak link here, but rolling with it because it amuses me.

EDIT: And I evolved Growlithe and now I can ride Arcanine, and it's so much better than using a bike. They really went for it with this game.

[url=https://www.pokemon.com/us/press-con...'s gonna be a Pokemon Press Conference tomorrow, May 28th, 6pm PT/9pm ET[url]. It's not going to focus on Pokemon Sword and Shield, however, because on June 5th, there's a Pokemon Sword and Shield Direct at 6am PT/9am ET. A week before E3.

I imagine the Press Conference will discuss the (recently released?) mobile game, or other updates. This is the Pokemon Company, after all, and thus it doesn't have to be a video game.

Pokemon Sword And Shield - Open World Gameplay Trailer

Pokemom Sword And Shield - Zacian & Zamazenta Reveal Trailer

Uh, open world + can still see Pokemon in the world? That's awesome!

Game looks hella good to me. Nice and clean, like DQ11. Me likey that.

Gotta say, I really like Wooloo. They really know how to do good sheep design.

I'm not super impressed by the Dynamax feature, although I wasn't really interested in the mega evolutions or the Z powers either.

Regardless, I still see myself getting this. I usually get the first game in each group (which would be Sword here), and since I like the sword puppy better, I'll probably stick with that trend here. And I'm glad it comes out later in the year, which will give me time to get through more of the games I already own before it comes out.

Alrighty, Pokemon Masters, feel free to pick this game apart and let me know what cool new things you see that I don't.

Assorted thoughts:

They found an interesting way to split the difference between having Pokemon on the field like in LGPE and the old school random encounters. whynotboth.gif

I also wonder about how easy/hard it will be to find certain Pokemon now. Previously you could just go to Route xx and find what you were looking for, but maybe it will now be more like North Side of Industrial town, and only if it's snowing. Great for immersion, but could hurt the possibility of catching who you want. Although having Pokemon show on the field does alleviate some of those problems, since that's better than running around for that 5% chance.

The Wild Area could also mean that cities and gyms don't have to be done in a linear order, if all the cities can be accessed through it. Not sure how that will impact the level scaling. They really didn't discuss if the wild area is replacing the routes, so I'm just guessing.

The diversity of Pokemon in the Wild Area seems good, which makes it easier to get varied teams more quickly.

Encountering other trainers in the Wild Area may be the closest to a Pokemon MMO that we ever get.

But the announcement at minute 27 is the biggest one. It sounds like they are going to limit the Pokemon you can transfer into Sword and Shield to those that they are choosing to be in the region. So, any Pokemon that don't appear in the game (like tons of old legendaries) can't be transferred over. They will have to stay in Pokemon Bank/Home. If I heard that right, that has huge implications for anyone interested in the competitive scene going forward, since you'll no longer get to choose between 1000 creatures (or have to prepare for 1000 creatures). This may actually be the best way to remove a lot of the bloat and power creep and outright broken monsters from the metagame and make it a lot more accessible, if they do a good job at picking what is allowed in.

Cross posting something the Finished Games thread.

I finished Let's Go Pikachu recently, and really liked it. I thought it was a great reimagining of the original games, with a lot of quality of life changes, and a lot of small details that made the world feel more alive. I also thought about how it is probably the best introduction for new players to the Pokemon games. My thoughts on why LGPE is a good starting place are in spoilers, since it's sort of long.

Spoiler:

So my background with the Pokemon games is that I played Red and Blue as a child, and was the target audience for the perfect storm of the games, anime, movie, cards, etc. I got pulled in, and continued getting the new games as a teenager and eventually adult. Nowadays it’s kind of like a comfort food or something nostalgic that I can go and buy a new installment and know immediately what to do. Maybe like Dragon Quest is for some people. But since I’ve been in since the beginning, I “got” it and don’t need to try to figure it out as an adult. It feels like going on an adventure in a land with fantastical but mostly believable creatures that you can collect and train. But it’s harder to get that sense of adventure as you get older and play more games and have more responsibilities.

So I have long wondered how someone could get into the games if they wanted to, without the 20 years of history. I’m setting Pokemon GO aside here since I didn’t play it much and it’s not one of the mainline games, but I have seen it installed on enough random peoples phones to think it was a good gateway.

Beforehand, I thought of two primary games that could introduce someone to the series: FireRed/Leaf Green, and Black/White. The original Red and Blue would be broken messes to go back to today, but FRLG were capable remakes that fixed the problem and let people see a better version of the original games and I still think of the games in Kanto as the best place to start. However, there are some quality of life and balance features that aren’t in FRLG yet. Specifically, the physical/special split that was introduced in Gen 4 made a lot of Pokemon viable that weren’t before, and the unlimited TMs in Gen 5 made it possible to teach multiple Pokemon a good move, and not be punished because you gave it to one creature only to realize you should have given it to another. This is why I also thought Black/White was another good entry point; it had both of those features, plus it had an entirely new pokedex with no old creatures available until after you beat the game. This helps it feel a bit more self contained.

Later games have more quality of life features that make the games easier to get into mechanically, like not needing HM’s and telling about the type advantages/disadvantages after you see a Pokemon at least once from Gen 7, but also get more story heavy with a lot more direction, handholding, and plain old throwing good items at you nonstop, which to me goes against the spirit of the unknown and adventure that inhabits the earlier games.

That’s where LPGE gets it right: it’s a cleaned up, and heavily polished reimagining of the original games, it has both the physical/special split and the unlimited TM’s that makes a lot of Pokemon useful and mistakes easy to correct, and while there is more cutscenes and dialogue than the original games, it’s pretty limited to pointing you where you need to go when it may be ambiguous, like going back to Celadon to cut down the bush to continue on after the 3rd gym. The game has enough of a challenge in the mid to late game to keep you engaged, the catching mechanics help make the game feel fresh and fun. It gets so much right that I would have a hard time not recommending it to anyone interested in getting into the series, and it gets rid of enough fluff and keeps enough of the good stuff that I think it would be easier to see why people got attached to these games in the first place.

I was curious to see what other players who have been with the series a short time or a long time think about ways to introduce new people to the series. I toss this out there because whenever a new mainline game comes out, I will often hear podcasters either gush about the games because they have been in since near the beginning (like some of the people over at USGamer), or toss a bemused glance from a distance because they never got into it or it came out when they were too old to be grabbed by it. Pokemon Go is an obvious gateway, but I think of that as kind of a separate thing.

I played a little more Let's Go Eevee this weekend with my kiddo (3yo). I don't really play it otherwise, we're kind of just on a long, very slow play through (~2 hr/month). He really likes all the pokemon, and the ability for him to participate, or just kinda watch most the time works for us. I think it's pretty great and I'm basically happy for any kind of Pokemon game that folks can get into and enjoy. That said, I like the traditional, more battle centric entries in the series a little more.

So apparently there has been controversy about Pokemon Sword and Shield not allowing the entire pokedex into the game, and other corners of the internet have been discussing that "if every Pokemon is someone's favorite, then a bunch of people are going to have their favorite left out in the cold". A redditor did a poll that got more than 52,000 responses, and so now we have a pretty good idea which are the People's Pokemon.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...

A few takeaways:
1. Only 4 Pokemon (Silcoon, Gothita, Eelektrik, and Yungoos) our of the entire 809 got zero first place votes. The notion that every creature is liked by somebody seems to hold.
2. I'm not at all surprised that Gen 1 Pokemon get the most love. What I didn't expect was how popular Charizard is. Although considering it has two Mega-evolutions and is in Smash, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
3. Raichu is (slightly) more favorited than Pikachu
4. Glad to see my boy Umbreon getting a lot of support. If I had to pick a #1, it would be Umbreon or Latios.
5. The starter Pokemon in each generation get some love, but mainly just the first and third forms; the second forms have a big drop off in popularity.