#i played a lot of pokemon stadium 1 & 2 and the first few pokemon games | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

baconpal · 3 years

Text

pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me. Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

#juvenile rant #pokemon #if you read all that then good job cus jesus that got long #please just respect yourself #you deserve better games #you arent weird for wanting things to be good #anyway have a good night

58 notes · View notes

radramblog · 3 years

Text

Game of the Year 2020...?

Ive scrolled the list of games that came out this year to see what my GOTY ended up being, but turns out the only game I played in 2020 that released that year was, uh…….

Fucking good game but like I’m not gonna hand it GOTY by default (That goes to Hades, based solely impressions from other people). Actually, I’m not handing out any awards, really. So I guess I’m just gonna go over a bunch of the other games I did play last year, regardless of whether or not they came out then.

Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition

A mate got me this for my birthday in December 2019, and unlike the other games I got then (Kirby Star Allies which I burned through that month and Octopath which I still haven’t played) I spent a fair few hours playing it last year. This was before the sequel was announced, and also a little bit after the fact- figured I should try and finish one before playing the other. Unfortunately, I have yet to purchase Age of Calamity nor finish Definitive Edition, because the former is expensive and the latter is expansive. Holy shit there’s so much fucking content in this game. I don’t think I ever will finish it to be honest, though despite the repetitiveness it never really felt boring to me. It’s the only Warriors/Musou game I’ve played, and I’d be interested in trying others based on the experience.

(I’m not playing Fire Emblem Warriors though fuck that)

Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC: The Isle of Armor and the Crown Tundra

Sword and Shield felt somewhat lacking on release, and while the DLCs released this year did much to try and fix this its still a bit shit that it required an extra paycheck out of you to get the full game- outside of outsourced mobile games like Go and Shuffle, or services such as Bank or Home, Pokemon has never actually had DLC/microtransactions, so this was a little disappointing. I’d argue that it absolutely wasn’t worth it when Isle was released, as fun as the content was it was again, lacking. Crown Tundra I would argue exceeded my (admittedly low) expectations, however- the new and returning mons are cool and welcome (I despised Calyrex’s design on first reveal but their behaviour in story redeemed it more than enough), and the Max Lair Adventure offered a surprisingly replayable romp that has been great to just try and grind out with friends. I can’t say I’d recommend the DLC pack though- only if because you’ve probably made up your mind already as to whether or not you’re getting it, or this doesn’t apply to you at all. I could also put basically every main series Pokemon game on here, seeing as I’m pretty sure I nuzlocked every region at some point during the year, but I don’t want to make this *that* long.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate Expansion Pass

Smash is still Smash. I don’t find myself playing it much on my own, and even in Perth get-togethers weren’t super common last year. As neat as the DLC characters released this year are for the franchise as a whole, none of them convinced me to play significantly more than usual, and I can’t wrap my head around half of them, so.

Also, I’m still salty about Byleth, and I actually really liked Three Houses, it was my first FE game. Why the fuck wasn’t it Claude????

Rivals of Aether

On the other hand, in the last few months I’ve found myself grinding match after match of Rivals with one of my best mates and the game is a fucking blast, holy shit. I still haven’t bought it for myself, but its basically 100% of the reason I have played 0 smash for the last few months since we’re too busy mashing Orcane vs Ranno over and over and not really getting tired of it. It requires a specific type of person to get into it, but if you’re in that group then its just an excellent game.

VA-11 Hall-A

I first played VA-11 Hall-A (Vallhalla, since typing that is a pain) by pirating it and playing it on my laptop in the dead of night.

It quickly became one of my favourite games of all time.

When the Switch port dropped, I felt obliged to actually pay for it this time around, since the developers had more than earned my money. And then I replayed it again, playing it on my switch in the dead of night (At least this time I had the excuse of being a nightshift worker). With the sequel unfortunately delayed into 2021, it might be time to run it back once more or drag more of my mates into Glitch City since I already forcibly exposed a few of em to it.

The post-credits title screen is still my phone background.

Fallout: New Vegas

I don’t really have much to say about FNV that hasn’t been said already, especially considering HBomberguy’s recently released video, but it is also on my top 5 list and I only got around to playing Lonesome Road and Dead Money this year. Also went out of my way to 100% achievement complete the game on Steam, which I believe is the first time I’ve done that for a game.

Zero Escape Series (Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors, Virtue’s Last Reward, Zero Time Dilemma)

The Danganronpa series’ less colourful sibling, Zero Escape was a series I finally got around to finishing after having borrowed a friend’s copy of VLR back in high school and playing it wrong due to not deleting his save file (oops,). I think VLR remains my favourite, and I really hope the series continues at some point (unlikely as it seems now) considering how ZTD missed the mark pretty hard. The first 2 games are still excellent mystery games and a lot of fun, though you do need somewhat of a tolerance for words.

A Hat in Time

Oh god this game is so fucking cute. Also, just an excellent platformer. Is the DLC still on sale? I should buy that.

Fallout 4

Its just not New Vegas. It just isn’t. I really tried with this game, I really did. The gunplay is great, modding and building shit is fun, but its just not the same.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

A couple years ago I bought a SNES Mini, but until 2020 I didn’t really have a convenient way of playing it seeing as my monitor didn’t have an HDMI port. But now I do have one with one, so I got to start playing this classic! And then stopped because of uni. Should finish that, probably.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon

Shit Keara I still have your copy sorry I’ll get back to it :<

Pokemon Stadium

I also managed to get my N64 up and running, and despite being the wrong region for most of the games available in local shops, I somehow managed to get Stadium for a great price. Got to dig out my old Red cartridge and anything. Fuck me though, this game is brutal. Seriously, Gen 1 battle mechanics are tough to deal with at the best of times, having to do battle after battle with said mechanics without losing is just nuts. I still haven’t managed to get Round 2 unlocked.

God, fuck you Blaine. Goddamn fire spin Rapidash motherfucker.

Super Mario 64 Speaking of, I managed to pick up a Japanese cartridge of SM64, complete with BLJ glitches and 3 entire save files. After much effort, I managed to actually get it working, and spent most of the night of Christmas getting smashed and trying to beat Bowser in the Fire Sea. I played a lot of the DS remake as a kid, and I feel like an idiot for struggling as much I did with the original.

This is all of course a buildup to the fact that I was lying about not assigning a GOTY. Because there is only one N64 game in my small collection deserving of Game of the Year, because its deserving of Game of the Year every year since its 1999 release.

BEETLE ADVENTURE RACING MOTHERFUCKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER

#ramble #video games #retro games #pokemon #for real tho beetle adventure racing is actually good #mario kart who?

2 notes · View notes

aurantia-ignis · 4 years

Text

First impression

That fuchsia is terrifyingly saturated, why is it so saturated. Actually every character in this game is terrifyingly saturated. ^^; This designer just wants everything to be saturated and bright lol

Impression now

He’s potentially a good boy with all of the set up and his supposed character development IF ONLY THEY MANAGED TO DO IT PROPERLY. I very much enjoy him as a character though =D

Favorite moment

When Rose was all “You screwed up kid, get out of my house” and he was all “DDDDDD:!!!!” and I’m just excitedly going YES because there’s the character development arc I’ve been anticipating for him! <3

Idea for a story

I don’t have any ideas for continuations, but I DO have a lot of ideas for… fix-it fics =w=;;

Because Bede, like Hop (and basically half the Galar crew), had so much potential already written in the game, but he was never allowed to fully reach it. Instead, he was given funny, barely logical scenes to end his supposed character development.

To sum up the points of Bede’s character arc in game: (under a read more)

- Bede was an orphan whom Rose took a minor shine to. He gave him a pokemon and endorsed him. Bede threw himself into the life of a trainer, working hard to gain the approval of Rose

- Oleana orders him to collect Wishing Stars for Rose, and he does so, to the point of doing bad things like destroying an important mural. Rose disowns him, kicks him out of the gym challenge. Bede is devastated and has an existential crisis.

- Opal picks him up because she sees that he is Pink

- Opal starts training Bede ‘harshly’ to succeed her as the Fairy gym leader. Bede put aside Gothorita and Duosion in favour of Fairy type pokemon.

- When he sees the player character, he pleads for a chance to fight them because he thinks that ‘ever since he met said character things have gone wrong’. Even though the player character has done absolutely nothing except defeat Bede in various battles. Bede wants to risk his entire career as a trainer on the battle, promising to retire if he loses.

- Bede loses, and the audience cheers him on asking him to continue. Bede does so as the Fairy Gym Leader.

The problems I have are:

(1) Him just abandoning his psychic pokemon in favour of the fairy aesthetic. One of Gen VIII’s biggest failing, I feel, is how the pokemon, in general, seem more an accessory to the plot than a part of the plot itself. Everyone says they love pokemon, but how many times is that actually shown in what they do?

Both Hop and Bede are shown to abandon their original team mates, and while Hop goes back to use Dubwool and Corviknight, Bede never does. And if he continues his life as the fairy gym leader, he never will (unless he does like Raihan, which. Hey GF, if Raihan is allowed to have a non-dragon Torkoal why can’t Bede use his psychic mons??). And while you might argue ‘Oh they’re just living in Ballonlea with him, he still loves them’, imagine how it feels for the two of them. Having fought with Bede for so long, aiming to become the best trainer with him, protecting him and supporting his goals, suddenly they’re relegated to ‘pet’ status instead of being his battle partners, while he goes off fighting with his fairies. Of course, maybe his mons are happier enjoying the pampered life, but still… The possibility exists. :’(

(2) Bede never gets a chance to play any part in the battle against Eternatus, despite having been a part of bringing that about. His role is supposed to be a pawn used by the villain, who gets a redemption arc, but honestly, it would be a much stronger narrative if Bede is given the chance to make decisions towards his own redemption, instead of being dragged into it by someone else (especially when the way Opal does it looks very much like she isn’t giving him a choice).

(3) Staking his entire career as a trainer sounds like Great Determination, but the fact is, him stepping down a trainer has absolutely no impact on anyone (except his pokemon, poor souls) and is therefore pointless as a threat.

Now, if you’ve gotten to this part, it might sound like I dislike Bede, but I don’t! I actually really like the potential he carries, and I think he’s got a fascinating story and personality! With that said, here’s how I would have wanted to see his character arc executed:

- Bede was an orphan whom Rose took a minor shine to. He gave him a pokemon and endorsed him. Bede threw himself into the life of a trainer, working hard to gain the approval of Rose. His team included Hatenna and Ralts.

- Opal picks him up because she sees that he is Pink (but also she briefly saw him in gym battles and knows that he uses two Fairy/Psychic pokemon). Bede puts up more of an argument along the lines of ‘I don’t know you, you’re weird, just leave me be, I am a failure’, and Opal tells him ‘you can sit here and sulk, or you can come with me and I will MAKE you a success’. Bede is hesitant and uncertain, but chooses to go with her in the end.

- Opal starts training Bede ‘harshly’ to succeed her as the Fairy gym leader. Bede is pushed, but also shown true kindness for the first time in his life. (As the player character, you see him and Opal in Ballonlea in a small cutscene)

- Rose and Eternatus happens. Feeling guilty that he had collected half of the wishing stars that contributed to its awakening, Bede runs away from Ballonlea and goes to the tower. Despite his efforts, he loses to Oleana/Rose, which is where Hop and the player character come in. When player character talks to him, he apologises and asks them to stop Rose and Eternatus.

- After Eternatus events clear up, before the battle with Leon, Bede asks player character for a battle (in the stadium?), because he thinks that having run away from Ballonlea, Opal won’t want to be bothered with him, so he needs a chance to prove that he’s of some use to somebody.

- Bede loses, but Opal has been watching their battle. She pokes him with her umbrella for running away, but praises him for his use of his fairies, and a few other unexpected spectators also cheer for him and how he showed off the fairies. Bede agrees to go back to Ballonlea and continue as the Fairy Gym Leader.

Bede’s character arc was always based on the fact that he wanted to be acknowledged, to gain approval, to be loved like he had never been before, and I’d really have loved to see it come to a satisfying close.

Unpopular opinion

Everything I said above I guess? HAHA. Maybe the fact that he often seems to be seen as the Mean Rival stereotype, but he actually has elements that could have made him shine. He’s unrepentantly mean, he thinks he’s better than everyone which reflects in his attitude and design. Even as a fairy trainer he has a mean streak (which is cool because fae are known to be mean too =D).

I love the fact that he realises he doesn’t need to be the most powerful to be loved; that he finds that measure of peace, which later reflects in the fact that he evolved Sylveon (a mon that evolves from affection). He still wants to beat the player character, but not because he thinks that it’s the only way he can be loved. Rather, it stems from his own desire to be strong, and to show off fairy type pokemon, because after spending time with Opal, he had realised that he does love what he’s doing as gym leader.

Unfortunately the story screwed him over by not committing and giving him the closure he needed in his arc. ;w; Poor Bede.

Favorite relationship

With no one, because none of it was allowed to properly flourish ;w; But I’d have liked Opal and Bede’s relationship if it had been written well! I really, really do like the concept of it ;w;

Favorite headcanon

Everything I said above again LOL. Uhhh I guess on the subject of Pokemon, I’d either have liked him to not have Gothorita and Duosion at all, or he gets to use them in his gym battles like Raihan and Torkoal, or just take out the Psychic pokemon part entirely and he always had a liking for Fairy types, which is another reason why Opal took an interest in him.

(*Special thanks to artpharos for helping to get some of my thoughts out more clearly!)

#thank you for asking #this got EXCEEDINGLY LONG #I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS ABOUT WHAT BEDE COULD HAVE BEEN OK #IT'S ALL THERE IN CANON #EXCEPT NOT #pokemon swosh

11 notes · View notes

thekingofwinterblog · 5 years

Text

Game Freak, Stagnation, Luck and the Refusal to Change

Its Amazing how much fucking grief Game Freak could easily have avoided if they simply said it would take a few months post launch to impliment all pokemon.

No one would have given a shit, they would have gotten away with halfassing everything else, having the A Team working on a game no one asked for, they could take their time, and all the hype would have remained at the top of the world.

Then again if they did that, it would have required actual work, and maybe expanding the company. And God forbid they actually invest any of those billions of Dollars they have earned over the Years.

Amongst all of Nintendo’s teams and Secondary companies, Game Freak is the most stagnant, and that can in Large part be contributed to their immense success. they started with around 150 people, and they currently have around 150 people. They have Stubbornly refused to expand the rooster over the year, despite the fact that they Struck gold better than literarly any other Company in the Game industry.

This in turn Lead to the Company growing stagnant, not innovating, and in general not really going foreward nearly as much as other companies.

There is a question to be made though. Was it always this way? Before this whole debacle i used to think that Game Freak used to be this amazing innovative company, that managed to score an amazing hit and pushed that for all its worth.

However after digging deeper ive kinda begun to question that at all. or Rather ive come to realise that Game Freak is a good example of how a company needs input from other sources for it to not fall into decadence, and that sometimes you need someone to come along and give you a few suggestions. Or a kick in the ass, as they need in Newer times

----GENERATION 1----

Going back all the Way to Red and Green, Nintendo gave what was quite possibly the first Mandate it Ever gave for the Pokemon franchise. This demand? Add PVP to the Game. Thats right, originally Game Freak didnt want to add PVP whatsoever. Given how Game Freak now wishes to fuck over the competitive scene permanently, the fact that they never originally didnt want to have players battle at all should not come as a great suprise.

Withouth this one feature, it seems unlikely pokemon would have been as big a hit as it became. Maybe it would have been added in the Blue and yellow versions and have been in all international releases, but this is by no means certain. Player against players would have come eventually no doubt, but its fully possible that left entierly to their own devices, Game Freak would not have implemented this feature before Gold and Silver.

How big this would have impacted the franchise in both short and long term is impossible to say, but it certainly would have drastically reduced the long term gameplay of the first Game by quite a lot.

however, i should note that im not arguing that Game Freak did not work hard for Red and Green. they did, and they worked on it to the point that right before it was released, Mew was secretly added to the game under Nintendo’s noses. but it sets the Stage for Game Freak often not implimenting the obvious, or not going out of their way to add stuff beyond their original vision of the game.

Setting the stage, we get to the first truely innovative pokemon Game. Pokemon Stadium. And as we’ll see over the course of this retrospective, the Innovative games, is not the ones made by Game Freak themselves, but instead Other companies. In this case Nintendo themselves, Hal Labratory, and its Brilliant leader Satoru Iwata, a man who as we’ll see created half of Pokemon Gold and Silver singlehandedly.

Iwata began his involvement in Pokemon History in Great Style. By taking a look at the pokemon Battle system, and memorising it withouth Code or notes. that might not seem that impressive, but he then went on to create the entire Battle System of Pokemon Stadium exclusively from his own memories, and amazingly enough he would fix things which Game Freak had fucked up in its first outing, like Focus Energy actually working and a number of other smaller mistakes Game Freak had Made being fixed for Stadium.

Stadium Would Then go on to create Pokemon Models that would be used all the way to the third Generation, where the Orre Games would simply ugrade them.

Another innovative feature was to unlock a Game Mode which let you speed up your Game Boy Game while playing it on the stadium. An Amazing tool for anyone who wants to Grind, and a really good reward for anyone who put the effort into unlocking it.

Stadium is by no means a Perfect Game. but it Set the tone for it being the Other companies Nintendo Employes being the truely innovative game makers in regards to pokemon. Iwata in particular being a truly important figure for the second Generation of Pokemon Games.

So after the golden Ticket that Game Freak had in the Original Red and Green, you would expect them to heavily invest them into making sure that when the sequels rolled around, they would have everything in place, a bigger more experienced team, and all the resources they would need to get the Second Games rolling. If you had this expectation, the actual development is actually quite a sad affair.

----GENERATION 2----

Now there was an obstacle which wasnt their fault at all, which was the game boy colour. Given its sudden and unexpected release, Game Freak now had to Port the second generation Games so they would work on both the original Game Boy and the New Version. that would have been a daunting task, but if the development was going well to begin with, they would propbably have pulled it off.

that however was not the case. Long story short, the Games were a complete Mess, they had a hundred ideas, but There seems to have been no hard leader who would wrangle them in line and decide what to cut and not cut. and as the first Release Date which they would delay another year began to creep closer, they had come to a point where they neared the end of the Capacity of the Game Boys Cartridge power to handle. yet they were only halfway through the development. It reads like an eerily similar Development which Anthem would go through around 2 decades later.

So, what happened? why did the Second Pokemon Generation not end up as a dysmal failure? the Answer is Satoru Iwata. at this Point the Brilliant Future president of Nintendo Stepped in to save the day, and he Decompressed the entire work the team had done, to such a degree that they unexpectedly had so much extra space that they decided to just port Kanto over to the newer Games.

To put it bluntly, Game Freak was about to Completely Blow it, and was only saved thanks to the genius of a single man they only had access to thanks to their bosses at nintendo.

in other words, Pure Luck and chance.

Between gold and silver, and the third generation there was Crystal and pokemon Stadium 2. Crystal very much reads like a game where game freak had more breathing room to just impliment the ideas they originally had for Gold and Silver, and while not the most expansive third Game, it certainly was a step in the Right Direction. Stadium 2, was not created by iwara, and feels more like a game where the team from the previous Game just polished up the old stuff and added more pokemon. and there is nothing wrong with that. at least they gave and delivered on the expansion of new pokemon which this update promised. i mean, its not like Game Freak would be forced to cut features from gold and Silver for their next games right?

----GENERATION 3----

Generation 3 was, and probably is the most divisive released generation of Pokemon at the time of this writing. there are a lot of Reasons for this. the first and most obvious reason, was that there was no way to port over all the pokemon from generation 1 and 2, but unlike the newest development in sword and shield, there was actual Mechanical reasons for it, as well as a generally overhaul of the way stats and mechanics worked. More Glaring is the the fact that this was the most difficult set of pokemon games Game Freak ever worked on. which shouldnt be a suprise. it was entierly now hardware after all.

Junichi Masuda famously worked himself to the abslute brink while doing work on the game, and up to the very release date he had nightmares about them completely failing and bombing. this did not happen of course. Ruby and Sapphire were great Games, even if they did miss a lot of pokemon, didnt have the day and night cycles(or at least not as obvious ones) and had completely scrapped the idea of Online capability which Crystal had dipped its toes in.

However commendable how much crunch and work the workstaff over at Game Freak were willing to put themselves through for Generation 3, one cannot help but wonder, if the entire Development hell couldnt simply have been avoided if they had hired maybe a hundred new people to work on the third generation. after all, the limited manpower undoubtedly contributed to the hell that was the development of Gold and Silver. surely they would have learned from those mistakes and prepared for the next round right? what with the billions they had made from all the pokemon sales, they surely could have afforded it. but they did not. in fact, not only did they not learn anything in regards to the limited manpower they had for Gold and Silver, but they would in fact not learn it from this debacle either. nor would they ever.

After the whole not all pokemon being a thing in Ruby and sapphire, the next few games entire role for existing would be to rectify this, and to game freaks credit, they laid the ground work for this from the beginning, by making sure that a national dex existed in the game which would be unlocked if you transferred over older pokemon that didnt exist in hoenn.

Game Freak themselves then did the remakes of Firered and Leafgreen, which are great games in their own right, but as far as innovation goes, i dont think anyone would argue that they were revolutionary in any way.

instead we turn our eye to another Game, Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube, the little Lunchbox that almost could. Pokemon Colosseum was made by Genius Sonority, a VERY small company owned by nintendo and The Pokemon Company. as of this writing, they have around 20 employees, dwarfed by even the modest 140-150 employees Game Freak has. they would be the first to actually challenge Game Freak as Makers of pokemon games.

Colosseum is a truly experimental pokemon game, from the way you catch pokemon, to its protagonist, to its actual difficulty. but in my opinion the thing that makes the game so much different than any other game in the franchise is its sense of idendity. its very different than any other game in the series, being in general rather dark in many ways, with a protagonist that used to be a thief which dealt with stolen pokemon, the mechanics of actually having to steal pokemon to save them from what was done to them, and an unfliching difficulty where the game was not afraid of not pulling its punches. all goes to make it a rather unique pokemon experience.

Sadly, Colosseum was not to reach true mainstream success. while it did the job of filling in the pokemon not covered by Either sapphire and ruby, nor Firered and Leafgreen, this limited array of pokemon had its price. while it was certainly not a failure by any means, and sold well, there is no denying that it simply didnt sell better, nor nearly as well as the regular pokemon games. thus Game Freak did not need to take notice of it. never the less, it was the first challenge to Game Freaks status as the main Creators of pokemon Games. it would take a while before a new contender would arise to credibly challenge them for the throne.

after colosseum, there was pokemon emerald and XD:Gale of Darkness, the sequel to collosseum. Emerald very much feels like crystal. A game where Game Freak got to take it a bit easier and add some stuff they had planned for Sapphire and Ruby, but had to scratch. the fact that they did not add day and night cycles, boggles the mind, but it would probably have been to much work. XD was a good game in its own right, but it simply lacked a lot of what made Colusseum work so well. it very much feels more like a mainstream pokemon game on the big screen, instead of a sequel to probably the game with the most unique idendity in the franchise. it also adds very little new gameplay vise.

after xd and emerald there were no other pokemon Games which werent spin offs in their own sub franchise, like Pokemon Mystery dungeon, before generation 4. which for once didnt have any major problems.

----GENERATION 4----

Generation 4 was a turning point in many ways, but not for the better. it was the first Generation which was developed withouth major problems, except a small delay to put the finishing touches on the game. some might say that is a big development mistep, but i would have said that in a vacum, this would be fine. if this had simply been the only time Game Freak had a bit of time problems, there would be nothing to complain about here. however, taken in context of the history of Game Freak as a whole, the major problem that Game Freak refuses to Expand, despite the fact that their situation very much demands they do so, rings very true here.

other than this small delay though, Generation 4 came along with no hickups. it was critically loved, it was a sales success, and in general was just a great sucess. the problem is that by now, Game Freak had discovered a way of doing things, and as far as they were concerned it worked. Diamond and Pearl being the first time they didnt have an existensial crisis developing a new generation. now the good about this is that they generally did a good job. Gen 4 is just good all around.

innovation vise though, its probably the least impressive of all the generations. unlike gen 2 and 3 it didnt introduce any new types, unlike gen 3 it didnt introduce entierly new ways of battling, and unlike generation 5 it didnt make a ridiculous leap in animation, very much sticking to the old way of doing sprites with just a bit more power.

this was in hindsight a very bad thing, because the great success of Gen 4 established a pattern that would repeat itself over time. namely the lack of innovation to things such as story, character, the way you progressed through the game. everything that was in gen 4 in this regard it had all been established in generation 1-3. The gym system was from gen 1. the evil team also dates back to gen 1, with their grandiose plans being a thing established in gen 3. the post game was established in gen 3 mostly and a bit in gen 2. safari zone from gen 1. casino from gen 1. the event pokemon system(probably the worst mechanic in the franchise) had also not changed much at all, with gen 1 being where it became a mix of pokemon you simply could not capture, and those you needed special items to capture.

in this Light gen 4 is where the pattern really established itself. it might not have been the ones who invented anything going foreward, but it was the ones that hammered out how things would work in almost all games going foreward.

after Diamond and pearl, the next non game freak game to try and contend with the mainstream ones was Battle Revolution, which was a failure of such proportions that it killed the very idea of ever there being more colosseum or stadium type games. the Game Freak Dominance stayed supreme.

following Diamond and Pearl, there was the third game, and remakes. pretty much the same story as the previous time, third game being the first two but better, while the remakes are great games in their own right, but not immensly innovative.

----GENERATION 5----

generation 5 was in many ways a geniune innovative attempt at remaking the franchise. it was also a game that unknowlingly or not, tried to establish itself as a type of successor to Colloseum, but which did not quite pull it off. while the game has an actually good story, it still didnt quite manage to divest itself from the regular pokemon formula the way Colosseum did. while the story was better well told, it was still when it came down to it, just the same beats as the two previous generations.

the big difference of course was N, the most compelling villain in the games so far. he managed to give the game a lot of grandiose which the two previous sets of leaders lacked. unfortunatly, him alone was not quite enough to make the story stand out from all the rest. it was however a great sign of innovation on Game Freaks Part, and it goes to show that at this point there was still a spark in actually wanting to improve the games fundamentals.

going along with a better story, there was also the jump to actually moving sprites, which in my opinion was the best the combat of Pokemon has ever looked. just having the sprites move and the camera being a bit more dynamic made the battles far more alive than any previous mainstream game.

not everything can be a sucess though, and as we see in the triple and rotation based battle, there were also some new concepts which simply didnt work nearly as well as intended. There was also the removal of Contests, which had always been a bit problematic, but rather than trying to fix it, Game Freak instead opted to remove it entierly. this fate would later befall the much better implemented mega Evolutions, but the pattern was already there.

after the Failure of battle revolution, no alternative to Game Freak created Games would arise this generation, which mean that the next games in the series would be the only other core RPG games for the generation. Black and White 2.

Much and more can be said of black and White 2. for one thing, it was a very good sequel to a very good game. it built upon the plot of the previous games, sold well, and while not that innovative in gameplay, none of the third games before it was such, so why should this one be critiqued for that when none of they were?

unfortunatly, this streak would not continue with the next games in the franchise. X and Y.

----GENERATION 6----

now i want to make some things clear. i like X and Y. but other than one single element, and a graphical update, it was probably the generation with the least innovation in story, character, plot and general idendity.

the biggest change was of course Mega Evolution, probably the biggest and best change since double battles. it was a game play mechanic which completely altered the way the game played, both in singles and doubles, as well as breathing new life into many old pokemon.

other than that, there was the jump to full 3d, which was okay, and the game looked nice, as well as being the first game to let you customize your trainer(though not to insane degrees, generally only clothes, hairstyles and color) made the game look far better overall(though i still prefere gen 5′s more dynamic combat.

unfortunatly, that is where the innovation ends. because pretty much everything else is pretty much rehash of older games.

the evil team is as generic as possible. the main villain is the same as gen 3′s villains, just with a different solution. the plot is pretty much the same as gen 3 and 4. the league mechanics arent different at all from what had come before. the Game traded the 2 interesting rivals from gen 5 for a whole entourage of generic characters who all supposedly served as your rival. the only truly interesting part of the plot was AZ, a character that was criminally underused, despite a really interesting backstory.

all in all, despite a huge change in gameplay generation 6 is probably as “standard” a pokemon game as there has ever been. following afte X and Y, there would be no third version, a first in pokemon(if one counts white and black 2) but there would be remakes, which as ive said about its predessesors, were good games in their own right, but not terribly innovative(other than having better flying than any game that came before it.). after that however, there were no other major games until the seventh generation.

----GENERATION 7 and Onwards----

there is so much good to say about generation 7 that im generally not gonna delve into it here. what i will focus on, is that what made generation 7 so innovative, was that it pretty much just took the standard pokemon guidebook, and threw it out the window, for better or worse. this has lead to a game that is truely different than the previous games, but also not quite a true successor to them. this is probably best shown in that generation 8 didnt want to follow up on the direction 7 put foreward, and instead went back to the older style.

this is not to say that generation 8 was bad by any means, but that it was never going to be the next step. it was an experiment to see how far you could stretch the boundary of the mainstream pokemon games away fromt he standard, and while it had elements that should have carried on over, it was never gonna be the definite way pokemon games would go foreward.

so after such a drastic change of pace, we only have to ask one simple question. WHAT. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?

after Sun and moon was released, the follow up was Ultra sun and moon, which was just the previous game with slight changes. it was for all intents and purposes a reskin. no third version even comes close to how much a cash grab it was.

so what the hell happened after the release of sun and moon? two words. Pokemon GO.

Pokemon Go was the first real challenge to Game Freaks exclusivity over the mainstream Pokemon RPG experience since colosseum way over a decade ago, and to say it was a bit more successful, would be like saying the mongol empire killed a few people.

Pokemon GO, or rather the way Game Freak has reacted to it, completely changed the way the pokemon franchsie would go foreward. At the time of this Writing, Pokemon GO is responsible for around 5% of the entire pokemon franchise earnings. it is to put it simply, a massive and insane success.

which is what has lead to a massive problem for Game Freak, as they have come to the rather disturbing conclusion that they can be replaced. the success of Pokemon GO has killed the myth that Pokemon Needs game freak to succed going foreward, and the stark realisation that there is literarly nothign stopping nintendo and the Pokemon Company from handing the franchise over to the hands of some other team.

the ownership of pokemon is a complicated mess between nintendo, Creatures INC, the pokemon Company and Game Freak, but the base line, is that nintendo owns it. they can hand over the franchise to any company they want if they so desire.

this is why when the time came for a sequel to sun and moon, the absolute cheapest alternative was taken. because Game Freak needed to move on to other projects.

One would think that this would mean that they would pump all their effort into making the newest Pokemon Games. alas, that is not the case, instead they sent the A Team of Game Freak over to work at an entierly new Game called The Town. this is an insane move, as they are at a critical point in regards to pokemon games going foreward. but when taken from Game Freaks point of view it makes sense. as they are desperate to prove to nintendo that they can in fact make other games than pokemon, and that even if they dont get to make more of them, they are still a valuable company under their umbrella.

again, from a purely business perspective this makes sense. from every other perspective its insane. having an already miniscule manpower pool to draw from, Game Freak cannot afford to majorly split their resources for any single major release. yet that is exactly what they are doing.

Every bad decision taken by game freak in regards to Sword and Shield, every corner cut, every single decision, is to make this game as playable as it can be, with the miniscule amount of probably 70 or so people working on it. hence the lackluster animation, primitive looking trees, load times, the cutting of around 60% of the total amount of pokemon from previous games, the removal of mega evolutions in favor of the much simplier Dynamax.

all to get this game out knowing from experience that as long as its a standard Pokemon Game it will probably be a great success.

this hole however, is entierly their own fault. the one big release a year, could easily have been made drastically easier, if they hired a hundred people and made them exclusively devoted to the extra releases while Game Freak as a whole could focus exclusively on their big games. instead, they dug in their heels, and refused to expand on their business, even though it was clear all the way back in generation 2, that change needed to happen. that their current way of doing things simply didnt work.

the rest of the industry changed to cope with the changing market. some embraced DLC, some decided that mmo style was the only way to go, Even Nintendo themselves is finally embracing the concept of DLC, Patches, online multiplayer in large scale and so on.

Game Freak however is still operating like its the early 1990′s and they are still a small studio with no big demands on them, which they can handle on their own. they purposefully ignored the lessons that they should have learned in generation 2 and 3, namely that they needed to expand and build better infrastructure. instead they have stubbornly refused to change, until now when they fully willing to cleave their own franchise into pieces, when simply embracing the concept of a Patch or Two would have solved all their problems.

#pokemon #game freak #stagnation #gen 1 #gen 2 #gen 3 #gen 4 #gen 5 #gen 6 #gen 7 #gen 8 #pokemon sword and shield #sword and shield #dexcut #dex cut

50 notes · View notes

mannatea · 4 years

Text

Pokémon Shield: A Review

DISCLAIMER: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE!

First, my credentials/gaming history, so you can see if my opinion is valuable to you or not. I would like to make it clear from the start that I do not consider myself a ‘gamer’ by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a filthy casual at best.

I’ve been playing video games since I was maybe eight or nine years old. I’ve always enjoyed dabbling in a variety of genres, and have a great appreciation for the work that goes into creating each and every game, no matter the intended audience. Some of my all-time favorite titles include Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem (7), Final Fantasy IX, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross, Tetris, Bust-a-Move, Project Gotham Racing, Ecco the Dolphin (PC,DC), Roller Coaster Tycoon, Harvest Moon (N64/PS1), World of Warcraft, and of course our beloved Pokemon!

I started with Pokemon Red, and enjoyed it immensely, but Silver stole my heart and my imagination. My brother and I used to sit at the kitchen table with guide books open and notebooks at the ready to craft and create new, extremely cool teams. I sank an unbelievable amount of hours into that game, and into Pokemon Stadium (1 & 2), Hey You! Pikachu, Pokemon Puzzle League, and even Pokemon Pinball. Unfortunately after Silver, my interest waned. I was an adult by the time Emerald debuted, and while I was initially charmed by it, found my interest waning quickly. I bought and played Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, SoulSilver, and Black & White, but didn’t beat any of them. I felt like the magic had…disappeared somehow.

But when X and Y released in 2013, I binged on Pokemon X, beat it, and for the first time since childhood started breeding a competitive team just for the heck of it. I also found myself really enjoying Pokemon Sun a couple of years later (though the post-game of breeding didn’t really do it for me this time).

They lost me with Ultra Sun/Moon. I wanted to like them, really, but it was too much of a rehash, and too much handholding (like the originals were, and I could only stand going through that once).

Now here we are with Pokemon Sword and Shield. They released just a few days ago (15 November, 2019) and the controversy has been wild. It seems to me that everyone has some kind of very strong opinion, and a lot of people are very angry.

Pokemon has always been one of my favorite franchises, but my history with the games is far from spotless so I like to think I can manage a mostly unbiased review, though of course everything in this post is my personal opinion.

Here’s what I’ve done in the game:

40 hours played.

200 pokemon in the pokedex.

Main story and post-game story completed.

I played with no specific self-imposed rules and was not spoiled for hardly anything before I started playing.

The Game’s Introductory Sequence [8/10]

As is standard for the franchise these days, the game flings you into the world with little fanfare regarding customization. Rather than the intro being a dialogue of sorts between your character and a professor, you are now instructed to choose what you look like (from a sparse few options) after typing in your name.

The first ‘cinematic’ is pretty boring, but I think the attempt at immersion is genuine enough (the idea being that your character is watching Leon’s broadcasted fight on your new smart phone). My character has a better house in-game than I do in real life. I’d kill for all that storage in the kitchen!

My biggest gripe with the introduction is that it reminded me too much of Sun & Moon’s introduction—in the worst of ways. I wouldn’t say it’s slow-paced, but the constant interruption by other characters is about enough to make a person rage-quit. Luckily I’ve been blessed with a lot of patience; it makes tedious content easy to bear (so long as it’s not difficult), but even I was feeling antsy before the first hour of the game was up, just because Hop and Leon never shut up and I was chomping at the bit to Explore.

Considering this is the first thing a player experiences…I really feel it could have been improved, especially the dialogue, but there were a few really positive things about it, too. The outdoor BBQ was a nice touch (considering everyone knew we’d be going off on Adventures in the morning and all), the game does let you avoid having to learn how to catch a pokemon (your mom slips a few pokeballs into your bag at one point without telling you and if you use them to catch pokemon, Leon will not teach you how to do it later), and I feel like as far as introductions go, this one was fairly short when compared to Sun and Moon’s introductory period.

While I’m being positive, the game plops you down into an idyllic little English countryside and not only do you get to enjoy that aesthetic, but the Slumbering Weald is probably one of the prettiest/most charming places in the game, and you get a peek at it early on!

The Starter Pokemon [5/10]

I’ve experienced worse? I wasn’t spoiled for any of the starter pokemon’s evolutions starting out, and while I didn’t exactly hate any of them, I sure didn’t love ‘em, either. I named my Scorbunny “Chad” on the assumption that he was likely to turn into a chad, though I’m not sure that accurately describes the pokemon I ended up with. Clearly modeled after soccer players, my Chad is a cocky all-star jock. They went all out on his Pyroball animation but Double Kick can see itself out of my house. No love in this club.

I just really wish I found any of these starters or their evolved forms to be charming, but they’re not. Rillaboom is basically George of the Jungle but 3% less of a himbo, and Inteleon is Greninja’s younger brother in accounting.

Gyms, Gym Challenges, & Game Balance [6/10]

This is probably one of, if not the, most debated topic over at Reddit. Is the game balanced? Are the gyms too easy? Are they making this game for 5-year-olds suddenly?

Eh. I do think the game is, perhaps, Too Easy, but a game being easy isn’t a shortcoming in and of itself. Check out my section on the story and characters for more on this topic, but I’ll post the short of it here, because it’s relevant: if the gameplay is going to be easy, we either need an option to make it more difficult, or the characters, story, and world have to carry the game in such a way that the easy gameplay still feels fun.

Shield had, uh, none of that going for it, unfortunately. The plot is lackluster (more about this later), and the gameplay wasn’t able to pick up the slack. In other words, the gameplay didn’t make the game feel Substantial in any way.

Which is kind of bad, considering Dynamaxing is a new feature!

The biggest issue for most people was the Experience Share. It’s turned on by default and there seems to be no way to turn it off. You get insane amounts of XP for defeating and catching pokemon, and your whole team seems to level pretty evenly even if you only occasionally use some pokemon in the party.

I personally played the game with the default battle option (where it asks if you want to switch out to a new pokemon when the enemy is going to send out a new one) because I barely remember half the pokemon in the game’s typing. Knowing the name of what’s coming next doesn’t always help me. (How’s that for an embarrassing truth?)

I personally liked the experience share, though I feel having the ability to toggle it on/off (or even on for certain pokemon and off for others) would have been ideal. The idea with having it on all the time is that your team will level fairly evenly so you’ll be able to switch in any of your six pokemon to battle without having to struggle through leveling some of the weaker ‘mons up individually. Additionally, it enables you to easily replace a pokemon on your team mid-game if you so desire. And I did (I replaced my shiny Orbeetle with regular cotton candy Rapidash).

My team at end-game was as follows:

Cinderace (Chad)

Greedent (Moriah)

Thievul (Penelope)

Liepard (My)

Corviknight (Octavia)

Rapidash (Calliope)

As you can see, I have no grass pokemon, no water pokemon, and no electric pokemon. I have two dark types. My move coverage mostly sucked throughout the game, because Thievul had 3 dark moves, and My had 3 normal moves. I’m an official idiot, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Usually I can struggle through no matter how garbage-tier my team is, and this game was…no exception.

I steamrolled the first few gyms and their challenges even though I wasn’t vastly overleveled for any of the content. After the ghost gym (which was easy for me with my dark types) I’d say the difficulty level went up slightly, mostly because my brain has refused to hold type advantages/weaknesses that came after Gen1. I feel like most original type weaknesses made some kind of sense to me and I was never able to incorporate dark and steel into that mix, let alone fairy.

At any rate, once you fight a pokemon once, the game will tell you if your moves are super effective against them or not. I remember people complaining about this feature when it was added (in Sun/Moon I think), but I like it. It doesn’t actually help a lot if you don’t know what the moves do/aren’t looking at move power/effects, but it’s useful for my sieve of a brain in a pinch.

Hop as a rival was almost never challenging. He always starts with the same pokemon, and his team is fairly easy to sweep. That might be kind of the point, but I wish you could have encouraged him to take the starter that’s strong against yours for a bit more of a challenge. Yeah, it’s not much, but it would have been something. Marnie is a better rival than Hop in the sense that she’s actually a better battler, but I swept her team pretty easily too, every single time we fought.

The only real challenges in the game were fighting Raihan (I only had one very weak fairy move and no ice to counter his dragons) and Leon (he definitely outleveled me). On Leon I had to use revives and potions!

The gym challenges started off as pretty cute (herding Wooloo, pipe puzzle maze) but quickly grew into lazy boring doldrums (basically gauntlet fighting of one kind or another). I guess I’d say ‘nice try’ for these and say I don’t really care if I see them again or not unless they’re going to actually give it a real go.

Overall, the story part of the game felt balanced enough for me personally but if I’m being completely unbiased: it was too easy to get levels. I could have wandered around less/caught fewer pokemon as I journeyed and enjoyed more of a challenge, but I just…gotta catch ‘em all, y’know? Most people do! GameFreak should have known this and designed accordingly.

The big issue with game balance feels like it comes…after the game, and I don’t mean the post-game so much as the Max Raid Battles that require other people, but the NPC trainers you can battle with are legit trash at what they do, which kind of forces you to find other trainers, but…

Online Compatibility & Features [3/10]

So I think the rating speaks for itself, here. The interface is confusing, the stamps are annoying, and the ability to see other players but not interact with them in any meaningful way is rage-inducing (and not just because of the FPS drops).

X/Y had a better online system!

Sun and Moon was better!

I don’t know why we regressed. I’m glad they kept the “wonder trade” (renamed to random trade, I think), because I always did enjoy doing that, but the GTS was the best idea they ever had and they abandoned it for random trading? I don’t want to trade with randoms? If I wanted to do that, I’d just do a random trade in the first place!!! The inability to put what you’re looking for into the stamp that people see? Oversight. Or just bad design. Probably both!

I’ve never hated a pokemon online experience more than this. I’m just astounded by how bad it is. I tried to join max raid battles last night and kept being told the event was over, but the stamps just…didn’t refresh? For HOW LONG? I can’t even tell you because I don’t know, and I couldn’t find a way to manually force them to refresh. It’s like they update every 15 minutes instead of every 15-30 seconds (which they should if I’m browsing for trades to make or battles to join). There are ways around this (according to Reddit) but the interface should be intuitive and easy to use by default.

C’mon, guys, you can do better. This is legitimately embarrassing in the year 2019.

Music [5/10]

There are some really magical tracks in this game, and there are some really terrible tracks. It doesn’t feel at all cohesive or thematic. I absolutely hated the gym battle remix; it was worse than the regular gym battle music. I feel like the gym battle theme would have really caught on if they didn’t have any other synth sounding tracks in the game, but they kind of do, so it blends in instead of sticking out as a bop.

Notable nice tracks were Hulbury, Glimwood Tangle, Slumbering Weald, and the desert route (which I can’t remember offhand). Some of the better music reminded me of the soundtrack for Tales of Symphonia, which is high praise coming from me. Unfortunately for every good track there were probably 3 forgettable ones.

There wasn’t anything particularly engaging when it comes to the music here, but it’s at least passable.

Graphics, Design, and Animation [6/10]

I should clarify that this is 6/10 for a pokemon game, not in general. I don’t expect flashy realism in a pokemon game and neither should you. The graphics are adequate most of the time, but the animation leaves a lot to desire when you look away from the pokemon that feel like they were Chosen Ones (and received a lot more attention).

Rapidash, for example, is using the same base model and animations it’s been using since it’s been in 3D. I’m not going to claim since Stadium, but holy cow the animations are for sure the same as they’ve been since at least X/Y for all the older moves. I’m not impressed.

The characters all have dopey expressions on their faces always. The models just use one talking animation loop and it almost never changes. The main character still looks on like a smiley face emoji when turmoil occurs, and though this isn’t as bad as it was in Sun/Moon, it’s still…kind of jarring?

The Wild Area looks kind of bad sometimes, and some areas in the actual game were lackluster compared to what they should have been. Ballonlea is the town you step into after walking through the (honestly) magical Glimwood Tangle, and it’s this charming fairy wonderland…with two houses and a stadium the size of two billion football fields. Uh. Okay? You’re telling me they destroyed how much natural habitat to make this gym? It just doesn’t jive with the scenery/theme out there, especially considering Opal’s theatre is tiny. And it’s not just that I think the game is lacking thematically (though it clearly is), but there’s this…laziness to the design when it comes to places like Ballonlea. It could have been SUCH an enchanting town to explore, but it was two houses with nothing important in them and a sports arena that feels completely at odds with its surroundings. (In this town you do learn that an NPC you spoke to earlier was a ghost, but it’s not as if this is very important information/goes anywhere, really.)

Spikemuth, for all its flaws, was at least memorable. I can’t say the same for most of the towns in this game. I really enjoyed the music in Hulbury but you best bet I had to look it up to remember the name of the town! Time is partly to blame. We don’t spend a lot of time in each town, and we have no real reason to go back to them aside from visiting the nearest Pokemon Center to heal and rest up. But I would argue that, beyond that, the individual designs just…don’t feel memorable because they’re not memorable. The names are mostly meh (every time I see Ballonlea I think of Bologna for some reason), but without anything else to connect to the place as more than just a place…there’s no reason to remember any of it.

Like the music, these are all passable, graphics more than animation, animation more than design, but that’s all there is to it.

Camping and Cooking, Feathers and Fetch! [4/10]

I don’t actually have a lot to say about this. It’s a cute idea, and it’s fun maybe the first ten times that you do it, but then it’s just really boring. The game is terrible at explaining how to create different curry dishes, but it’s almost idiot-proof. I’ve yet to fail at it.

But I’m not sure I care about it, either?

You get like 1/100th of the amount of berries you need to cook while you journey along, so it feels disproportionate. I dunno. Just not a fan.

Playing with your pokemon is the only real joy that comes from camping, but its fun is limited. When you’ve tossed the ball a few times, or watched Liepard smack the feather toy a while, it has that, “Okay, I’ve seen it!” kind of feeling to it. That doing well at cooking can heal your party/cure status conditions is incentive to do it, but it’s faster to just fly to a pokemon center and run back on your bike most of the time than to pitch a tent with your ‘mons.

I feel like there should just be…more you can do when you’re camping together. I’m glad Pokemon Amie is dead (it was cringey), but it felt more personal than this.

I wish I had more to say about this feature, but it felt tacked on and lackluster after I camped a few times.

Dynamaxing, Gigantamaxing, and Max Raid Battles [4/10]

The urge to give this a zero was high, but I am making an effort to be balanced.

That said, I hate dynamaxing. Gigantamaxing is almost the same thing, it’s just Worse Somehow. Until yesterday I thought they were basically the same thing (and that some pokemon just got extra cool dynamax forms). As it turns out, they’re not the same thing at all! Or rather, they are, but they’re also not?

Dynamaxing makes your pokemon grow large and gives it these generic MAX moves that it can use in combat (Max Knuckle, Max Flare, Max Strike). It lasts for three turns and then your pokemon reverts back to its regular ‘ol self.

Gigantamaxing is when your pokemon grows a little larger than large, gets a special Look, and gets the same generic MAX moves (but with special effects added to them). Oh, and better stats.

At least, that’s how I understand it.

Both are great for Max Raid Battles, where you team up with NPCs or other players and take down huge dynamaxed pokemon that are out in the wild.

Neither is a fun feature as part of the actual gameplay. I guess as a gimmick it works all right, but just like Z-moves it has a long annoying animation sequence, and like Mega Evolutions only some pokemon get to gigantamax (everyone else is just a pleb, I guess). I dunno. I just didn’t find the concept very engaging…maybe because it seems evil and wasteful in-universe, and this is more or less stated in the game itself, but what-the-hell-ever, we’re just going to keep doing it ‘cause it looks cool!

It’s just too goofy a concept for me. Maybe if Dynamaxing doubled or tripled their size, I’d find it more understandable and more aesthetically pleasing? I hate seeing my pokemon, or the opposing pokemon, grow 50+ feet tall and scream at three billion decibels.

(For the record I never liked Mega Evolutions or Z-moves as a concept, so it’s not like I’m nostalgic for a different gimmick. That said, at least I’d accepted Megas as a thing, and Z-moves were overall not too groundbreaking or gamebreaking.)

The design of dyna/gigamaxing is to connect it with specific places so that you can’t just max your pokemon in every battle and sweep every team you fight against, but it still feels like it gets used too much. I’m currently at a point where I find having to dynamax feels like a chore.

Considering this is what the game tried to sell itself on in the initial trailer…? Yikes? I don’t know. I think some people are more ‘okay’ with the concept of dyna/gigantimaxing than others, and I think I’d be fine with it if we only had dynamaxing. Introducing both just feels like overcomplicating things for no real reason, and maybe also poking a little hard at the hornets’ nest that is the competitive community.

Because now you have to go out and grind gigantamax pokemon to catch one, so it forces you to do the thing you might not like to get a pokemon that can do the thing you don’t like, because it’s objectively better in combat? But really, who knows? Maybe these overpowered phenomena will end up banned, anyway.

Despite my disdain for this release’s gimmick, I do think Max Raid Battles are pretty fun, at least…when I’m not getting my ass completely kicked while some NPC trainer’s Eevee is using Helping Hand… It’s actually pretty enjoyable when you can somehow find other people using the y-comm and take on a gigantamaxed pokemon with the help of actual human players. But y’know…good luck using that…lol.

Overall I think the biggest downfall of Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing is that it doesn’t really add anything of substance to the game. I don’t think it makes it more fun. It’s also not necessary for max raid battles (this could be a phenomena we don’t understand yet that randomly seems to affect wild pokemon, just like with the UBs—hell, Anabel and Looker could return and claim this is all related to that stuff and I’d probably find that believable enough). So what does it add? Flavor? Culture? Nah. It’s just kind of there.

Post-Game: Is That All? [3/10]

Post-game in Sun and Moon was the Alola version of the Battle Maison, breeding, and a somewhat lengthy (for a post-game) story where you assist Interpol agents Anabel and Looker in hunting down and capturing Ultra Beasts. The plot was somewhat woven into not only Sun and Moon’s storyline (Lusamine’s shenanigans), but also borrowed from the Sapphire/Ruby reboots and X/Y. If you didn’t already know Looker from Ruby/Sapphire/X/Y, or Anabel from Pokemon Emerald, you’ll still probably find them somewhat compelling/interesting as characters. Also, they did a really good job in Sun of making circumstances seem dire—of showing instead of telling you how dangerous the UBs were and how important it was to protect the people of the towns and villages you’d visited throughout your adventure.

Shield has… Max raid battles, a battle tower, and…breeding. Oh, and a storyline about the legendary dogs that barely makes any sense and is plagued by really irritating new characters.

The terrible truth is that the post-game of Sword/Shield is embarrassingly bad. You’d think they’d want to outdo themselves with every release. Sun and Moon hit it out of the park with their post-game content. Most people enjoyed the hunt for UBs, or at least the characters of Anabel and Looker. Sword and Shield have…. Sordward and Shielbert. DID I STUTTER?

They’re terribly designed characters, and so insulting as to not really be any fun at all. The Pokeball Guy mascot is Actually Fun; these dudes aren’t. They’re barely even villains? It was an excuse to try and pull what Sun and Moon pulled, but it didn’t work. I never felt like anyone was in danger at any point, probably because magically everyone was evacuated before I even arrived on the scene to stop Sordward and Shielbert’s vile schemes. :U Oh, and because I felt little or no connection to any of the towns I visited along the way, let alone the gym leaders. Maybe if these guys had showed up partway through the game and we sort of knew who they were already, this wouldn’t seem so out-of-nowhere, but it was, and that made it even worse than it had to be.

When it’s all over, you get your legendary dog (I named mine Goodest Boy), but it wasn’t a fun storyline at all. Who are these guys? Why should I care about them? I cared about Looker and Anabel because they came onto the scene and showed that they cared about each other as people (and showed it, multiple times). These guys? They wreaked havoc and didn’t even go to jail. At least Rose went to jail!

I don’t think the post-game is terrible so much as I think it’s underwhelming, especially considering what it came on the heels of. I don’t expect More More More from every game, but I do expect improvements to be made. A decent post-game storyline is all I was asking for, and I didn’t even get that.

But there’s the tower and you can breed pokemon and train EVs and all that stuff more easily now, so…

Characters, Story, and Worldbuilding [4/10]

Let me put this as delicately as I can: I’m not a fan.

I could easily rant about bad character writing, bad stories, and weak worldbuilding for hours, but I’ll limit myself because 1) this is a pokemon game, and 2) nobody really looks for exceptional characters here.

As I said earlier, I feel like Sun and Moon did it Better. Most of the main characters in Su/Mo were likable, interesting, had a fun design, or were amusing. Not so in Shield.

Hop has a terrible name (literally a million names to choose from and they picked this?), but the biggest crime he commits is that he doesn’t get a satisfying story arc at all. When he got down about himself I had hope there would be some cool development, but there wasn’t. He ended up getting his crap together and making a Team and Picked a Strategy (which still involves sending the sheep out first I guess). And then randomly in the post-game decided he was going to be a professor…lol.

I felt like 20 different people wrote that plot, because it was terribly cobbled together and didn’t flow at all. Natural progression would have been nice.

Marnie barely has a story and barely develops. Piers seems to kind of have more ‘meat’ to his character but not a lot is done with it.

The gym leaders are otherwise really meh. Okay, so Nessa and Sonia are pals. Gal pals. Pals that are gals. Gals that are pals. Great. I don’t think we ever see them talk so it doesn’t matter. Melony has a son…and it’s just a nod to the other game where her son is the gym leader instead? Boring.

Bede is an asshole with a sob story who doesn’t really get redeemed but gets the redemption option anyway. They could have REALLY done something amazing with this guy but chose not to. His backstory is actually pretty interesting! But they didn’t utilize it worth a damn. And also he was right about the mural soooo…

Sonia was maybe the best character in the game, and that’s just from a technical standpoint. She had development, she developed, she grew as a character. Emotionally, though, I felt detached from her. Maybe it was being called a child all the time that did that? I’m not sure. I get that the protag is a child but I’m living independently and doing well for myself so maybe have a little respect idk… Especially when the first 2/3 of the game you’re told the adults will handle things, and then randomly you’re interrupted every fifty seconds to take care of other people’s nonsense. :|

In fact, I felt emotionally disconnected from pretty much every character. I didn’t really like or feel for anyone. Hop came the closest (feeling guilty about losing a battle cause it might make his brother look bad), but the bad dialogue options and inability to actually cheer him up was frustrating more than anything.

There are zones that are breathtakingly lovely (Slumbering Weald! Ballonlea! Glimwood Tangle!) but all the rest are more or less forgettable. The characters are connected to the world…sorta, but there are times it feels like they force-connected them through dynamaxing and dialogue accents instead of trying to make characters who naturally fit into the world. Like I talked about before, Opal’s gym felt completely disconnected from the reality of her environment. She lives there for a reason. Doesn’t the stadium’s presence jar her? How many fairy pokemon lost their homes when that thing took away tens of acres of forest? What’s the story here? Or anywhere for that matter?

Spikemuth was a waste of space but at least it felt like an attempt to show us a poverty-stricken area… Unfortunately it all fell flat the second they used two models for Team Yell! Team Yell could have been really cool, especially if they’d had different models with their names (challenged by Team Yell Grunt Sierra/Troy/Nellie/whatever), and the same team yell outfit/clothes/paint on. Then we could see these are just regular guys and gals from this poor area who want to cheer on their hometown girl!!!

But that was a weakness throughout the game, because Team Yell were all gym trainers, and all shared models…just like all the other gyms. It felt lazy to me. The outfits can be the same, but way to go making all the models literal clones. That’s just laziness.

The villains are all meh. Rose? Of course he was a villain. The problem is that he’s not a villain for being a capitalist pig or anything. He’s a villain for wanting to fix a power issue that’s 1,000 years from happening. Meh motivation. If it was 50 years away then we have a compelling villain! But no, not 50. A thousand years from happening. And he can’t wait five fucking minutes.

Oleana was boring.

Leon was exactly the person he was the entire game…

The taxi service is a cute idea, and a nice gameplay addition, but it doesn’t really add anything to the world because they didn’t make the effort to integrate it.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough.

The short of it is this: I walked away from this game not really caring about the world or any of the characters. I don’t even have a favorite character. I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. YIKES.

The Wild Area [8/10]

I don’t want to cover this for too long, because I feel it’s been done to death, but the Wild Area is what the whole game should have been. Or at least, more of the game. I don’t expect we’ll ever get a fully open-world pokemon game EVER, but this foray into the true 3D tells me that it could be a lot of fun, actually, even in somewhat constrained environments. (Oh, and with a good map.)

I enjoy the idea of the Wild Area, but I think its usefulness is limited without the appeal of having more pokemon patched into the game later. Until I get sick of it, though, it’s a pretty neat concept, and it makes hunting for new pokemon to catch a little more fun than it usually is. I like that they kept the overworld pokemon in this area as well as on the routes you have to travel; it feels like more of an adventure to dodge a huge Steelix and scoot closer to see what that yellow thing is in the grass you can’t quite make out. :)

Basically: fun concept that is enjoyable for now but has limited enjoyment. As far as negativity goes, I don’t have much to complain about here that I didn’t complain about in the Online Compatibility section above.

The Pokemon Themselves [6/10]

I was challenged by @hijauindah to list my top five favorite new pokemon from the game, so here we go!

Nickit (cute design!)

Boltund (smooth, well designed—not too cluttered)

Ponyta/Rapidash (MY LITTLE PONY… I think Rapidash could look better, but I’m just glad they cared enough to try something new with them…)

Frosmoth (Super pretty pokemon design.)

Dragapult (Nifty design.)

Most of the new designs are just…okay. There are a lot I don’t actually care for. But I’m biased; I just want more creature-based pokemon that look like they could exist and function in the world they live in. Some of these designs they come up with look like they’d have died out ten thousand years ago due to being Poorly Evolved lol.

Final Thoughts [6/10]

The worst part of the game for me personally was probably feeling like I was getting interrupted constantly by other characters. JUST LET ME PLAY. But the best part was definitely exploring the new areas, catching a shiny 2 hours into the game, and getting to the end more or less with the team I started with.

The individual scores don’t add up to a 6/10 (they actually add up to a 5.16/10) but I think it’s worth noting that I did have a fun time playing through the game, I intend to hop into the breeding stuff, and even though I don’t have to keep max raid battling and stuff, I probably will.

It’s far from the 9s that it was getting by certain people from certain places that won’t be named here, but it’s not as if it’s a dumpster fire game. I don’t regret the money I spent on it, and I hope to keep enjoying the game for a few more months (albeit more casually than I did over the weekend), but I hope GameFreak has learned from its follies and puts its best foot forward with the next game, because I will not manage to be this forgiving again.

#pokemon sword and shield #pokemon #pokemon spoilers #pokemon review #long post #really long post #pokemon swsh #i didn't really edit this so sorry if there are any typos

5 notes · View notes

achronologyofbits · 4 years

Text

GOTY 2019

I wanted to write a personal Game of the Year list, but I realized I really didn’t play that many games that were new in 2019. So I’m ranking them, but it’s less a “top 10” and more a “10 games I played and how I felt about them.”

10. Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III plays like a game from 2005.

I’m not sure I can fully articulate what I mean by that. Maybe I mean its combat is largely simplistic and button-mashy. Maybe I mean its rhythms of level traversal and cutscene exposition dumps are archaic and outdated. Maybe feeling like this game is a relic from another time is unavoidable, given how many years have passed since its first series entry.

But there’s also something joyful and celebratory about it all — something kind of refreshing about a work that knows only a tiny portion of its players will understand all its references and lore and world-building, and just doesn’t care.

Despite all the mockery and memery surrounding its fiction, Kingdom Hearts’ strongest storytelling moments are actually pretty simple. They’re about the struggle to exist, to belong, and to define what those things mean for yourself. I think that’s why the series reaches the people it does.

Those moments make Kingdom Hearts III worth defending, if not worth recommending.

9. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Admittedly, I only played about 10-15 hours of this in 2019. Perhaps fittingly, that’s about the amount of time I originally spent on Dark Souls when it released in 2011. I bounced off, hard, because I didn’t understand what it was asking of me. Once I did — though, it has to be said, I needed other people to explain those expectations to me, because the game sure as hell didn’t — Dark Souls became an all-time favorite. And I’ve played every FromSoft game since then, and enjoyed them all. Until Sekiro.

Part of it is, again, down to expectation. Dark Souls trained its players on a certain style of combat: cautious movements, careful attention to spacing, committing to weighty attacks, waiting for counterattacks. In every game since then, FromSoft have iterated on those expectations in the same direction in an attempt to encourage players to be less cautious and more aggressive. The series moved from tank-heavy play in Dark Souls, to dual-wielding in DS2, to weapon arts and reworking poise in DS3, to the system of regaining health by attacking in Bloodborne.

In some ways, Sekiro is a natural continuation of this trend toward aggression, but in others, it’s a complete U-turn. Bloodborne eschewed blocking and prioritized dodging as the quickest, most effective defensive option. Sekiro does exactly the opposite. Blocking is always your first choice, parrying is essential instead of largely optional, and dodging is near useless except in special cases. FromSoft spent five games teaching me my habits, and it was just too hard for me to break them for Sekiro.

I have other issues, too — health/damage upgrades are gated behind boss fights, so grinding is pointless; the setting and story lack some of the creativity of the game’s predecessors; there’s no variety of builds or playstyles — but the FromSoft magic is still there, too. Nothing can match the feeling of beating a Souls-series boss. And the addition of a grappling hook makes the verticality of Sekiro’s level design fascinating.

I dunno. I feel like there’s more here I’d enjoy, if I ever manage to push through the barriers. Maybe — as I finally did with the first Dark Souls, over a year after its release — someday I will.

8. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

In December, my wife and I traveled to Newport Beach for a family wedding, and we stayed an extra day to visit Disneyland. As an early birthday present, Aubrey bought me the experience of building a lightsaber in Galaxy’s Edge. And the experience is definitely what you’re paying for; the lightsaber itself is cool, but it’s cool because it’s made from parts I selected, with a blade color I chose, and I got to riff and banter with in-character park employees while doing it. (“Can you actually read those?” one asked me in an awed voice, when I selected a lightsaber hilt portion adorned with ancient Jedi runes. “Not yet,” I told her. “We’ll see if the Force can teach me.”)

Maybe it’s because I just had that experience, but by far my favorite moment in Jedi: Fallen Order is when main character Cal Kestis overcomes his own fears and memories to forge his own lightsaber, using a kyber crystal that calls to him personally. It’s maybe the only part of the game that made me feel like a Jedi, in a way the hours of Souls-inspired lightsaber slashing didn’t.

I think that’s telling. And I think it’s because so much of Fallen Order is derivative of other works, both in the current canon of gaming and of Star Wars. That’s not to say it’s bad — the mélange of Uncharted/Tomb Raider traversal, combat that evokes Souls and God of War, and vaguely Metroid-y power acquisition and exploration mostly works — but it’s just a titch less than the sum of those parts.

Similarly, as a Star Wars story, it feels under-baked. There’s potential in exploring the period immediately after Order 66 and the Jedi purge, but you only see glimpses of that. And I understand the difficulty of telling a story where the characters succeed but in a way that doesn’t affect established canon, but it still seemed like there were a couple of missed opportunities at touching base with the larger Star Wars universe. (And the one big reference that does pop up at the end feels forced and unrealistic.)

When I got home from California, I took my lightsaber apart just to see how it all worked. Outside of the hushed tones and glowing lights of Savi’s Workshop, it seems a little less special. It’s still really cool…but I sort of wish I had had a wider variety of parts to choose from. And that I had bought some of the other crystal colors. Just in case.

That’s how I feel about Jedi: Fallen Order. I had fun with it. But it’s easier now to see the parts for what they are.

7. Untitled Goose Game

Aubrey and I first saw this game at PAX, at a booth which charmingly recreated the garden of the game’s first level. We were instantly smitten, and as I’ve introduced it to family and friends, they’ve all had the same reaction. When we visited my brother’s family in Florida over the holidays, my eight-year-old niece and nephew peppered me with questions about some of the more complex puzzles. Even my father, whose gaming experience basically topped out at NES Open Tournament Golf in 1991, gave it a shot.

I’m not sure I have a lot more to say here, other than a few bullet points:

1) I love that Untitled Goose Game is completely nonviolent. It would’ve been easy to add a “peck” option as another gameplay verb, another means of mischief. (And, from what I understand, it would be entirely appropriate, given the aggression of actual geese.) That the developers resisted this is refreshing.

2) I’m glad a game this size can have such a wide reach, and that it doesn’t have to be a platform exclusive.

3) Honk.

6. Tetris 99

Despite the number of hours I’ve spent playing games, and the variety of genres that time has spanned, I’m not much for competitive gaming. This is partially because the competitive aspect of my personality has waned with age, and partially because I am extremely bad at most multiplayer games.

The one exception to this is Tetris.

I am a Tetris GOD.

Of course, that’s an incredible overstatement. Now that I’ve seen real Ecstasy of Order, Grandmaster-level Tetris players, I realize how mediocre I am. But in my real, actual life, I have never found anyone near my skill level. In high school, I would bring two Game Boys, two copies of Tetris, and a link cable on long bus rides to marching band competitions, hoping to find willing challengers. The Game Boys themselves became very popular. Playing me did not.

Prior to Tetris 99, the only version of the game that gave me any shred of humility in a competitive sense was Tetris DS, where Japanese players I found online routinely handed me my ass. I held my own, too, but that was the first time in my life when I wasn’t light-years beyond any opponent.

As time passed and internet gaming and culture became more accessible, I soon realized I was nowhere near the true best Tetris players in the world. Which was okay by me. I’m happy to be a big fish in a small pond, in pretty much all aspects of my life.

Tetris 99 has given me a perfectly sized pond. I feel like I’m a favorite to win every round I play, and I usually finish in the top 10 or higher. But it’s also always a challenge, because there’s just enough metagame to navigate. Have I targeted the right enemies? Do I have enough badges to make my Tetrises hit harder? Can I stay below the radar for long enough? These aspects go beyond and combine with the fundamental piece-dropping in a way I absolutely love.

The one thing I haven’t done yet is win an Invictus match (a mode reserved only for those who have won a standard 99-player match). But it’s only a matter of time.

5. Pokemon Sword/Shield

I don’t think I’ve played a Pokemon game through to completion since the originals. I always buy them, but I always seem to lose steam halfway through. But I finished Shield over the holidays, and I had a blast doing it.

Because I’m a mostly casual Pokeplayer, the decision to not include every ‘mon in series history didn’t bother me at all. I really enjoyed learning about new Pokemon and forcing myself to try moving away from my usual standards. (Although I did still use a Gyarados in my final team.)

As a fan of English soccer, the stadium-centric, British-flavored setting also contributed to my desire to see the game through. Changing into my uniform and walking onto a huge, grassy pitch, with tens of thousands of cheering fans looking on, really did give me a different feeling than battles in past games, which always seemed to be in weird, isolated settings.

I’m not sure I’ll push too far into the postgame; I’ve never felt the need to catch ‘em all. But I had a great time with the ones I caught.

4. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

I have a strange relationship with the Zelda series, especially now. They are my wife’s favorite games of all time. But I don’t know if I’ve ever actually sat down and beaten one since the original Link’s Awakening. Even with Breath of the Wild, which I adore, I was content to watch Aubrey do the heavy lifting. I know the series well, I’ve played bits of all of them, but most haven’t stuck with me.

Link’s Awakening has. I wrote a piece once about its existential storytelling and how it affected me as a child. I love the way the graphics in this remake preserve that dreamlike quality. It’s pretty much a re-skin of the original game, but the cutesy, toy-set aesthetic pairs well with the heavy material. If this is all a dream, whose dream is it? And when we wake up, what happens to it?

Truthfully, some of the puzzles and design decisions haven’t held up super well. Despite the fresh coat of paint, it definitely feels like a 25-year-old game. But I’m so glad this version exists.

Oh, and that solo clarinet in the Mabe Village theme? *Chef’s kiss*

3. Control

I actually haven’t seen a lot of the influences Control wears on its sleeve. I’ve never gone completely through all the episodes of the X-Files, Fringe, and Twin Peaks; I’m only vaguely familiar with the series of “creepypasta” fiction called SCP Foundation; and I have never endeavored to sit through a broadcast of Coast to Coast AM. I’m also unfamiliar with Remedy’s best-known work in the genre, Alan Wake. But I know enough about all those works to be able to identify their inspiration on the Federal Bureau of Control, Jesse Faden, and the Oldest House.

Control is an interesting game to recommend (which I do), because I’m not sure how much I really enjoyed its combat. For most of the game, it’s a pretty standard third-person shooter. You can’t snap to cover, which indicates you’re intended to stay on the move. This becomes even more obvious when you gain the ability to air dash and fly. But you do need to use cover, because Jesse doesn’t have much health even at the end of the game. So combat encounters can get out of hand quickly, and there’s little incentive to keep fighting enemies in the late game. Yet they respawn at a frustratingly frequent rate. The game’s checkpointing system compounds this — you only respawn at “control points,” which act like Souls-style bonfires. This leads to some unfortunately tedious runbacks after boss fights.

On the other hand, Jesse’s telekinesis power always feels fantastic, and varying your attacks between gunshots, thrown objects, melee, and mind controlling enemies can be frenetic fun. That all comes to a head in the game’s combat (and perhaps aesthetic?) high point, the Ashtray Maze. To say more would be doing a disservice. It’s awesome.

The rest of the gameplay is awesome, too — and I do call it “gameplay,” though unfortunately you don’t have many options for affecting the world beyond violence. The act of exploring the Oldest House and scouring it for bureaucratic case files, audio recordings, and those unbelievably creepy “Threshold Kids” videos is pure joy. The way the case files are redacted leaves just enough to the imagination, and the idea of a federal facility being built on top of and absorbed into a sort of nexus of interdimensional weirdness is perfectly executed. And what’s up with that motel? And the alien, all-seeing, vaguely sinister Board? So cool.

With such great worldbuilding, I did wish for a little more player agency. There are no real dialogue choices — no way to imbue Jesse with any character traits beyond what’s pre-written for her — and only one ending. This kind of unchecked weird science is the perfect environment for forcing the player into difficult decisions (what do we study? How far is too far? How do we keep it all secret?), and that just isn’t part of the game at all. Which is fine — Control isn’t quite an immersive sim like Prey, and it’s not trying to be. I just see some similarities and potential, and I wish they had been explored a little.

But Control’s still a fantastic experience, and in any other year, it probably would’ve been my number one pick. That’s how good these next two games are.

2. Outer Wilds

Honestly, this is the best game of 2019. But I’m not listing it as number one because I didn’t play most of it — Aubrey did. Usually we play everything together; even if we’re not passing a controller back and forth, one of us will watch while the other one plays. And that definitely happened for a large chunk of Outer Wilds. But Aubrey did make some key discoveries while I was otherwise occupied, so while I think it’s probably the best game, it’s not the one I personally spent the most time with.

The time I did spend, though? Wow. From the moment you wake up at the campfire and set off in search of your spaceship launch codes, it’s clear that this is a game that revels in discovery. Discovery for its own sake, for the furthering of knowledge, for the protection of others, for the sheer fun of it. Some games actively discourage players from asking the question, “Hey, what’s that over there?” Outer Wilds begs you to ask it, and then rewards you not with treasure or statistical growth, but with the opportunity to ask again, about something even more wondrous and significant.

There are so many memorable moments of discovery in this game. The discovery that, hey, does that sun look redder to you than it used to? The discovery that, whoa, why did I wake up where I started after seemingly dying in space? Your first trip through a black hole. Your first trip to the quantum moon. Your first trip to the weird, bigger-on-the-inside fog-filled heart of a certain dark, brambly place. (Aubrey won’t forget that any time soon.)

They take effort, those moments. They do have to be earned, and it isn’t easy. Your spaceship flies like it looks: sketchy, taped together, powered by ingenuity and, like, marshmallows, probably. Some of the leaps you have to make — both of intuition and of jetpack — are a little too far. (We weren’t too proud to look up a couple hints when we were truly stuck.) But in the tradition of the best adventure games (which is what this is, at heart), you have everything you need right from the beginning. All you have to do is gather the knowledge to understand it and put it into action.

And beyond those moments of logical and graphical discovery, there’s real emotion and pathos, too. As you explore the remnants of the lost civilization that preceded yours, your only method of communication is reading their writing. And as you do, you start to get a picture of them not just as individuals (who fight, flirt, and work together to help each other), but as a species whose boundless thirst for discovery was their greatest asset, highest priority, undoing, and salvation, all at once.

I don’t think I can say much more without delving into spoilers, or retreading ground others have covered. (Go read Austin Walker’s beautiful and insightful review for more.) It’s an incredible game, and one everyone with even a passing interest in the medium should try.

(Last thing: Yes, I manually flew to the Sun Station and got inside. No, I don’t recommend it.)

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

If I hadn’t just started a replay of this game, I don’t think I’d be listing it in the number one slot. I started a replay because I showed it to my brother when we visited him in Florida last month, and immediately, all the old feelings came flooding back. I needed another hit.

No game this year has been as compelling for me. That’s an overused word in entertainment criticism, but I mean it literally: There have been nights where I absolutely HAVE to keep playing (much to Aubrey’s dismay). One more week of in-game time. One more study session to raise a skill rank. One more meal together so I can recruit another student. One more battle. Just a little longer.

I’m not sure I can put my finger on the source of that compulsion. Part of it is the excellence of craftsmanship on display; if any technical or creative aspect of Three Houses was less polished than it is, I probably wouldn’t feel so drawn to it. But the two big answers, I think, are the characters and their growth, both mechanically and narratively.

At the start of the game, you pick one of the titular three houses to oversee as professor. While this choice defines who you’ll have in your starting party, that can be mitigated later, as almost every other student from the other two houses can be recruited to join yours. What you’re really choosing is which perspective you’ll see the events of the story from, and through whose eyes: Edelgard of the Black Eagles, Dimitri of the Blue Lions, or Claude of the Golden Deer. (This is also why the game almost demands at least three playthroughs.)

These three narratives are deftly written so you simultaneously feel like you made the only possible canonical choice, while also sowing questions into your decision-making. Edelgard’s furious desire for change is just but perhaps not justifiable; Dimitri hides an obsession with revenge behind a façade of noblesse oblige; Claude is more conniving and pragmatic than he lets on. No matter who you side with, you’ll eventually have to face the others. And everyone can make a case that they, not you, are on the right side.

This is especially effective because almost every character in Three Houses is dealing with a legacy of war and violence. A big theme of the game’s story is how those experiences inform and influence the actions of the victims. What steps are justified to counteract such suffering? How do you break the cycle if you can’t break the power structures that perpetuate it? How do good people end up fighting for bad causes?

While you and your child soldiers (yeah, you do kind of have to just skip over that part; they’re in their late teens, at least? Still not good enough, but could be worse?) are grappling with these questions, they’re also growing in combat strength, at your direction. This is the part that really grabbed me and my lizard brain — watching those numbers get bigger was unbelievably gratifying. Each character class has certain skill requirement prerequisites, and as professor, you get to define how your students meet those requirements, and which they focus on. Each student has certain innate skills, but they also have hidden interests that only come to the surface with guidance. A character who seems a shoo-in to serve as a white mage might secretly make an incredibly effective knight; someone who seems destined for a life as a swordsman suddenly shows a talent for black magic. You can lean into their predilections, or go against them, with almost equal efficacy.

For me, this was the best part of Three Houses, and the part that kept me up long after my wife had gone to bed. Planning a student’s final battle role takes far-seeing planning and preparation, and each step along the way felt thrilling. How can you not forge a connection with characters you’ve taken such pains to help along the way? How can you not explode with joy when they reach their goals?

That’s the real draw of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I think: the joy of seeing people you care about grow, while simultaneously confronting those you once cared about, but who followed another path. No wonder I wanted to start another playthrough. I think I’ll be starting them all over again for a long time.

1 note · View note

princeyadon · 5 years

Text

alright got home

thoughts on the trailer:

1.) new mons i actually love p much all of em, even if it’s just like, 4 new ones shown

2.) im wondering if that train seen goes all over the region?? but the region still looks full of life, at least in the cities

3.) i see they’re still removing HMs or the need for them as field moves, since that new bird mon serves as Fly. but it doesn’t look like it’ll be the same way gen 7 did it [which is good, it makes ride mons a gen 7 thing which helps w identity if u get what i mean]

4.) controllable cAMERA??? even if it’s just for a certain space, still, this is like, “holy shit we can move diagonally now” kind of shit. this might get this a lot tho but it feels very “open world” for pokemon, i guess id refer to this as the botw effect as its success wouldn’t make other games moving towards that open world experience a surprise. i do like this feature, even if it’s just for the “wild area”, that’s good! it means im actually hopeful for a full or mostly open world pokemon game.

this is a crazy step away from how linear gen 7′s map was [or was made to be w story progression]. im hoping it doesn’t get limited w hand holding!

5.) first impression for dynamax?? uhh, i feel like pokemon doesn’t need to keep adding all these weird “woah super powerful now!!” features.

Pros:

i think it’s funny, not in a bad way either, like it gives the game a lot of personality

It can really be shocking or surprising in a battle, like the opportunity to make someone go “what!?” or rethink their battle strategy is interesting to me!

3 turns and only once in a battle is really good, i think it balances out way more and i initially thought it’d be like the mega case where it stays big till end of battle, or swapped out.

Cons:

i just feel like each game is going to get some new over the top mechanic and eventually it’ll be a case of “how can we outdo the last one to keep interest!” and will spiral out of control.

it’s a lot to keep up with, really. im not an insanely hardcore fan or anything but even as someone who has managed to keep up w every gen [except i still havent played bw2 idk why] i find each new installment makes me struggle to keep keeping up... esp if you can use megas *and* z moves *and* dynamax in a battle...

i didn’t see any mention of needing an item held by the mon, but i did see the z-ring like device so im hoping it doesn’t actually make u hold an item for it;;;

6.) MAX RAID BATTLES???? IM ALWAYS DOWN FOR NEW MULTIPLAYER FEATURES AAAAAA

only problem is that uh... i don’t have many people on my switch, or esp not on at the same time as me //looks at splatoon

i also really like that the mons u encounter are [based on how much they mention it] really affected by weather/overworld. it means i have more replayability or motive to come back often to check the weather and mons i haven’t caught yet. esp as someone who tends to end up memorizing how many mons are on a route and which ones are rare

7.) leon looks like dad friend energy. im fucking crying tho his cape is full of stickers so he reminds me of those racing cars w ads all over em, and im betting that’s what his cape basically is

HIS NAME IS HOP???

finally another female professor

8.) it looks like u get dynamaxing early..?? based on the gym footage, but it could be that they’re limited to showing certain mons..? i really hope u don’t get it so soon;;;

9.) :///// the.. l.. egendaries....

ok im.. im not a big fan of the designs like.. at all. they feel.. generic?? in a sort of, novice furry artist makes an oc, kind of way. yall literally couldn’t do better than putting a sword in a wolf’s mouth?????? idk, i feel like it leaves a lot to be desired. they’re also a little too similar? a lot of mons that match as legendaries were created w themes/matching visuals but still had enough differing features you can recognize em right off the bat [like the lake trio or eon siblings]. if u took away the sword and the shield, i can’t recognize who is who without looking closely. hell, i had a hard time adjusting when they showed their profiles.

otherwise they’re big gay and im down w that. unless they’re related

10.) shit i forgot to mention really quick: gym battles--or, gyms specifically, seem to be gone more or less. the puzzle aspect of the gym itself hasn’t been shown so im under the impression it’ll work a lot more like the anime in that you go in and fight the leader in a stadium, OR you have to make yer way to the stadium through the puzzle. either way can’t say.

Also, im worried abt the new mons roster. i don’t mind that every few games doesn’t give us a full 100+ set of new mons, but judging by the amount of older gens i saw in the trailer, im going to be under the impression that the roster is looking a lot like gen 6 and we’re gonn get abt ~50 new mons. as a result;

i won’t be viewing anymore spoilers to make sure i have a better experience! bls don’t show me any new mons past this trailer thank you!

#text #swsh spoilers #spoilers #pokemon sword shield #pokemon direct #long post

3 notes · View notes

pokefan531 · 3 years

Text

Sword and Shield Overview Part 2

So this review took much longer than expected, as I typed some things, but forgotten about this review, and stuffs, so I finally got more things to add from my part 1 back in last November as well as looking back at the game a couple of times to give off my thoughts on the game itself. I will address the flaws and the great of the game. To give off of what the game is, it's a decent Pokemon game.

The Mechanics Once I take a try on the mechanics, a couple of them are pretty interesting. Well, the gyms got brought back, but as stadiums. It's a really nice way to have everyone look at gym battles. We never really see random people watching a gym battle in any Pokemon games, and it widens the world. However, The only problem is any type of battle, the field is really small. It seems like each Pokemon are too close together, even if they're not. I would like the player and the opponent would distant themselves more to widen the battle more, almost like Pokemon Battle Revolution. That way, we don't have to see trainers disappears when some moves are being used and reappear. Also, it would've show more of the attack moves. Now the next mechanic that I liked is the wild area. The wild area is really an interesting concept and it does give you a feel of a open world. The random weathers, items, and hidden items that shines adds the new generation of wild Pokemon world. Well, I wished a couple of places in main Galar have movable camera, but it's good enough to see the big part of the wild area. I would've picked longer draw distance on objects, as they're too close, but I'll explain later about it. Dynamax, well it's a mixed bag. It seemed like an interesting idea as I can see it be useful, but you would have to know when to use it at the end of the pokemon battle when one of us have a last Pokemon. It can be a bit unfair when batling online as it's a bit OP if timing hasn't been used correctly, like using it in first turn instead of later. I do find Dynamax more fitting for raid battles as it's battling against a dynamax pokemon in the wild or just a straight up dynamax battle. I know a lot of people don't like dynamax as it can be over powered, so I can see why some battles don't make use of it on online battles to make it a more fair battle. I do appreciate Dynamax concept, but I think it needed its time to plan out even better in the game to get more appreciation. Still, I don't mind using them in some battles like the post game or straight dynamax battles or even battling gym leaders or Champion Leon, although the difficulty can be a bit all over the place especially playing it online and the reason why I wished it was better thoughout. I don't hate dynamaxing though. The Bike is useful, and you can surf with it instead of having Pokemon use Surf. For me, I think Sun and Moon removing HMs and to have all the moves being used without any Pokemon learning them, is an interesting idea. Flying to cities by using a map sounds like a fine idea. Sword and Shield seems to take half of the changes from Sun and Moon. Autosaving is a handy feature, but I prefer to save it manually incase if I haven't left the building or area without saving, or if I ever have disabled it and forgot about it. I still prefer old fashioned saving.

Difficulty Well, as much some of the ideas makes the game enjoyable, there are some parts of the game where it's too easy, and it's mostly not related to the aforementioned ideas in the game. It seems like I don't really feel much of the difficulty on some battles, especially the later main story. I didn't grind as much. Most of the Whydon City story were too easy, and I thought it would be more challenging. The difficulty was too easy in almost all parts of Whydon, from entering the Whydon Stadium, to battle Oleana and meet Rose. I feel like they should've been more challenging. The Whydon City should've been a bit more challenging to all Gym Leaders than when you battle them the first time. I just defeated them with barely any Pokemon change. Even the Rose story part, they all seem too easy, even Oleana. I thought Oleana would be challenging, but that battle didn't feel as challenging as I thought it would be. Prior to battling Leon in the finals, the most challenging Gym Leader was Raihan. I lost to him a couple of times, so he is pretty challenging than anything in Whydon City except for Leon. As for Leon, He seems challenging enough for the finals, but I wished all gym leaders were a bit better, even re-battling Raihan. I mean even with all EXP shares permanently active, it's still feels like they could've made more balanced battle, like what I saw with first battle of Raihan and final Leon battle. A couple of Gym Leaders difficulty are appropriate as I lost a few times on a few of them. The first Gym Leader I didn't lose the first time was Bea, and it seems like a fair battle like most of the gym leaders in their first battle. As for random trainers, I would've have them in slightly higher level outside the gym, but more so Team Yell. Team Yell grunts are a bit easy, even on the task to get to Piers on Gym Battle. Now as I was thinking about the Dynamax battle, it did make some battles a bit more challenging, and I lost to some gym leaders by their last Pokemon, and mostly Final Battle with Leon. However, dynamax can have its difficulty a bit all over the place, not as often on gym battles or stadiums, but more so online battles, mostly depending how the rules of the battles are set up. As for Raid Battles, yes, they're pretty difficult and everyone told me that Zygrande Raid is the hardest one in the game, so maybe more challenge in the game. Overall, the difficulty is at the least better than LGPE, even with some mishaps that makes some parts of the game a bit too easy. I'll get over another thing later where I explain my thoughts on gamefreak's words as to why later Pokemon games became more easy, and how they could've improve it.

Graphics and Animation: Okay, this would have lots of explaining to do about this game with graphics and animation. Well, as it was released in late 2019, being a rushed game, it was not impressive. As I mentioned about Gamefreak's words on their focus on high quality animation as to not having all pokemon available to the game's release, we had to focus on the graphics and animation to see if not having all Pokemon was worth it, and it turns out it remained underwhelming. Sure, you guys can point out the trees with bad textures all you want, and was relevant at the time, but I don't think one bad example could prove the game's underwhelming expectations, but a couple more problems to prove it. I could also say gameplay will often be the most priority over the graphics, which is commonly true. To put this in my view of this high quality animation thing in to view the game's graphics and animation itself, and I know the game has more than graphics, but I just want to review this part on its own. As I said, it's underwhelming, at least lots of parts of the game. As it was rushed for Christmas money, some parts of the game were not as impressive. Sure a simple fix with the tree texture would be ideal, and simple animations on the moves like double kick could've had more work. Not to mention the Mouse Cursor were printed on the beginning of the cutscene and end credits, which those weren't recorded from OBS program, but rather the development version of the games, that also contains a mouse cursor. With those aside, I could mention how the game's performance and resolution goes. Seeing the game being sub-720p 30fps (portable) and sub-1080p 30fps (docked) on outdoors and special moves on dynamax battles, it isn't optimized well, compared with other games that would look superior. When I take a look at the beta on CFW switch, it couldn't stay at 30fps on Hulbury City, and under 20fps down from the daycare center, when staying at constant 720p (portable) and 1080p (docked). As a rushed game, they also don't have time for further optimization. As Gamefreak do 3D Pokemon games from X and Y, they aren't best at optimizing rendering for performance. Gen 6 lags with 3D-stereo on (no reason to use 3D-stereo) and without 3D, some Pokemon lags the game, especially with double and horde battles. Other 3DS games can get away with higher polygon counts due to further optimization. With Sword and Shield, this trend continues in a smaller extent. While reducing resolution to stay at 30fps, there's no lag. I was kinda unimpressed when coming out from home and seeing the outdoors in lower resolution, but later on, I didn't really mind. I did use a texture pack from BSOD gaming, and there was a couple of improvements. As for the animations, like I said, I wished TPC didn't force the game to be out too early (to sync with the merch) so they would iron out animation errors or redo simple animation. The mom in the beginning of the game doesn't turn to the other direction when talking to her. Lots of pop-ins and NPCs and items having short draw distance instead of reducing polygons, and with Onix popping in at front of you in Monostoke City. I saw all the list from DistantKingdom's videos, and well, that was disappointing at the time. Some animation flaws, might be laughable, but still looking like it was not ready. BUT, does those problems make the entire game look bad? My answer, if the gameplay is actually better than the graphics, then no. You may still have fun playing the game if you can get past the graphic and animation problems. However, I can understand being disappointed with it if you mainly focus on the whole dexit situation of its statement, but at the least, none of the game was ever gamebreaking or any lower quality graphics or animation should take the game's quality by a huge amount. Couple of other parts of the main game can look better, such as the Stadiums and Route 3 and 5 looking pretty fine for me, and also Raid battles too. As for the main game, the graphics is overall... okay. It doesn't look really bad overall, even one small tree texture doesn't really justify all its graphics. However, like I said, more development time would've make many places of the game look better, but also stated that graphics are usually overshadowed by gameplay, to which it's at the least tolerable if you play it.

Now let's get into DLC's animation and graphics. Short answer, it improved better, more so Crown Tundra. While the outdoors are still at sub-native resolution, it still managed to look even better. Gamefreak at the least had more time to develop with two DLC maps. Isle of Armor improves itself with not only the visuals, but also animation expressions from the characters and fast slowpokes. Only problem was the Pokemon couldn't keep up with you while running, but the graphics seems to be more stable and refined, even better than some parts of mainland Galar. My favorite design of the map was the island with the big tree with six sub-islands around it. As for Crown Tundra, wow...as Gamefreak proved that they can make Sword and Shield graphically impressive, this is it. I know not in a level of Pokken, but still big enough to say. Like Armor, Tundra has many variants of areas with different weathers, and they managed to make the second map look more pleasing. Two places of the Tundra map I can say that looks really great in my memory is Dyna Tree Hill and Slippery Slope. Freezington looks great too, and with many trees around and not lagging, it's really amazing. The Legendary Birds from Kanto in Tundra Form looks amazing. All the animations you see are pretty acceptable. I could point out the problem with the fade-ins and black screens and not do animation, like Hop getting hit by the apple Pokemon missing, but still, there's plenty of animation done and done better in the DLCs.

Designs: For a 3D Pokemon game, I like all the character models. Even Sordward and Shielbert's model design. They finally have right portions, not being in LGPE, and they have movable pupils so they don't have to use texture-illusion to make limited eye and eyebrow expressions. All of character design looks generally great. As for the Pokemon, I could only mention Galar Pokemon, and older Pokemon with Galar form, being in a fine design. Like the graphics paragraph about the game being rushed, much of the older Pokemon were imported from 3DS games, which, like LGPE, which isn't really new. Besides those, the new models of Pokemon looks great. What about the maps? Some cities looks well designed, and others, not so great. Many routes and caves lookes more straightforward, especially routes. Open routes that are around Monostoke City and Hammerlock City are the best routes of the game due to being open and have more variety to show what an open world route should look like. Despite some parts looking inferior, graphics wise, the map design shows a lot of good work with it. Now many routes, a lot of them just became more of a hallway, and not really expanded enough. Route 3, Route 5, and Galar Mine No.1 are the ones I could think off that a lot of them are like. I like Route 4 and 6's designs the most since they tend to expand wide enough for items and trainers around instead of looking like lines of trainers waiting for you for a battle. LOL! Monostoke City and Circhester are the cities that are well designed at least for me. The least designed one was Spikemuth. Sorry Piers, your city is too simple and straight. Yeah, I wished the city wasn't a straight line and add more variety to make the whole Team Yell challenges more creative. Whydon City, I do wish it was a bit more like Castelia City or Lumiose City level of large city, since it's a capital city, being based on London. For what we got, it's fine. To go over the characters, I would have to review their design in the character section. Overall, model designs and new Pokemon are done pretty well and some of the maps looks great, but lots of routes and some caves are just hollow. They need to be more expanded and have a lot of work, including the mentioned cities.

Before I get into the characters, I want to make it clear about being a 3D Pokemon game. I hear some people think this game, or any past games, remain 2D, and I disagree. Sure 2D can show more expressions, but 3D can proven to be as good as 2D, as to how this game was compared with Battle Revolution and Pokken. These games proved that the main games can work with 3D. Especially as an MMD animator, I know a lot about 3D animation and can be almost as expressive as 2D. Sure Pokemon or characters turning slowly from animation subject isn't completely realistic for its aesthetics, but Pokken and Battle Revolution proved that, and so did the DLCs. Even Legend of Zelda, with their games given more dev time, showed their transition to 3D, even with Link's Awakening, has managed to look really great with 3D models and all. Also, even back in N64 days, with Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, and Snap, was also cool to see Pokemon in 3D, even seeing more polygons and low resolution textures. So I am completely fine with main Pokemon games going 3D. Just like how I'm fine with Miraculous Ladybug being a 3D animation, even with old 2D trailer, but that's another story.

Characters Well, here's the part I really want to get to, explaining each characters and what I think about themselves and their characteristics. Victor and Gloria are just players, and funny memes with Gloria as Scottish Trainer. Victor seems like a cool trainer, and Gloria is just cute. Hop, I know some of you will say he's a complete copy of Hau from Sun and Moon, same personality and animation, and I get it. However, he seems to have different goals at least, so I didn't feel like Hop was a rehash of Hop, almost, even with same personality. With that said, he seems like a good friend in the games. Hop seems really supportive with his brother Leon. He wasn't happy when Bede once defeated him. Champion Leon, he's a pretty great character. Him being friendly to the player since the beginning of Sword and Shield, and he's pretty funny. There's a gag of him being bad at directions, and lots of fans likes to play around with him getting lost for comedic purposes. Not only that, but he's well supportive with Hop too, and also had been friends with Sonia since childhood. I don't really see romantic connection with the two, but just friends, which is rare to see platonic friendship in media. We get to see his own room in Hop's house, and with many things we see in both Twilight Wings and the anime so far, he's an interesting Champion. One thing I really wished they could've done with Leon is he should've have a Dragapult as his main Pokemon instead of Charizard. It would make more sense to get to know more of Galarian Pokemon in Galar, instead of using Charizard for just fan favorites. It didn't really add anything special, but other than that, he's a fun person. I know some people hate him for being dumb? Or if he was a weak champion? He seems to show more character than some might say, so I'm glad he's got good enough attention to have getting lost jokes and great enough fanarts. Sonia, I like her design, and I think she's attractive. Sonia is pretty helpful during the game, by giving you items and helping the events during the main game. She seems really and is best friends with Nessa. All the gym leaders are likable. We have Milo. Wow, it takes really long to get to the first gym battle. Milo seems like a nice person and has many Wooloos with him. His gym puzzle was fine. It's funny when certain people comment him lacking a nose, but he has one. Next is Nessa! A really lovable Nessa. She seems like a really strong trainer, and also has interesting friendhip with Sonia. Nessa looks like a comedic swimmer if I think about her roles in my videos. But yeah, she seems like a great friend with other gym leaders. Kabu the fire type. I like how he came from Hoenn, and also seems pretty serious gym leader. As I remember, he was pretty nice to the trainer, even after battling when he congratulate the player and Hop for battling three gym leaders. He also seems like a comedian when thinking about fanon stories. lol And my most favorite gym leader of Sword and Shield is Bea! Bea is my favorite character of the generation too! She's adorable, and really strong and tomboyish, the type of female characters I love the most. Bea looks always brave and wow, she's got skills. I liked her backstory of how she's trained, and has her smiles too. I liked all the media she's in, even Journeys, and she's adorable. I liked the cute kid Bea. Bea is my favorite that I could go on and make a single post about her as to why she is my favorite. Bea is pretty nice, even with harsh training she has got for years. Oh and her cuteness on eating sweats are adorable ^w^ Alister is also pretty interesting character. I only got Sword so I couldn't battle him. Alister's design with the ghost mask looks like he could scare others on a party, being a ghost gym leader. Many people headcanon him as Bea's younger brother, and please let this be a thing, Journeys or in general, Game Freak and Pokemon Company. My headcanon while being related to Bea as siblings, Bea is supportive for Allister's emotions if he ever feels scared or cries, to show both siblings in care. After Bea or Allister, we get Opal. An interesting old lady who's a gym leader, being a fan of pink. Well, her stories going around Bede is funny. She goes to him and takes him to her care and have Bede be around Pink, which is funny. Also she asked two questions during the battle to not give you status affected to your Pokemon. One of them asked the player how old she is, and being 86 is correct, she also states to be polite. Well, honesty doesn't seem to be usually polite, isn't it? XD Next would be Gordie. Gordie looks like a fun guy who likes riding with rock Pokemon. He seems to be friendly with other trainers too. It's interesting that he's the son of Melony, who's a gym leader too, if playing Shield in place of Gordie. She's also the likable mother, and I could say moreso than any player's mothers due to the fact that we get to see at least parents of a gym leader or at least has a family, IN A GAME (not counting anime Brock or Misty) and I know Norman is your dad in Hoenn. However, Melony and Gordie has nice share of family in the stadium, and she seems like a nice person. She is really prepared for ice climates and hey, she's an interesting big and beautiful mother. The next one and most interesting one is Piers! Piers is one of the most interesting written gym leader in the game. Piers appears more and even post game too. He is the only one who never relies on Dynamax battles nor own any stadiums and just gym, even though the town he's in is too simple, but doesn't affect him at least. I know some don't like dynamax and it can hae some flaws of it depending on the player, but his dislikes of it seems interesting seeing him being different from other gym leaders and him being afraid of them. He has a sister named Marnie, which I'll get to in a bit. Oh, and he does appear singing in the game twice. The flaw of the game is he does not have a voice when singing, which they should've have to tell he's singing. However, that spawned a gag and meme for Piers always forgetting to turn on his mic whenever he performs, and fanarts and headcanons have him be told he forgot to turn on his mic. So funny! Also his expressions are priceless. On post game, he helps out to stop Sword and Shield duos from forcing dynamax to every stadiums, and he's always relieved that his place never got dynamaxed, as to how his area was never meant for dynamaxing of course. XD Before I cover Raihan, I'll cover Marnie. She first appears in Monostoke hotel with Team Yell distrubing the place, and Marnie stops them. As far as I try remembering Marnie, she's fine as a character. At first, she seems serious by her looks, and smiles more later on. As her development goes, it's decent. Not the best that I can consider greatly developed as a whole, but still a memorable character, partly her design looks the best, and being Pier's brother. Marnie's smile animation looks pretty cute! She is pretty supportive with Piers, as she takes over his gym, as Piers wanted to be a dark trainer. Those are the most memorable thing I see from Marnie. Now let's go to Raihan, the last Gym leader. Well, he's a cool dude. He's the strongest gym leader of the game, no doubt bring the 8th gym leader. The most memorable thing is his dynamaxing animation, where he turns and takes a quick selfie with Rotom Phone, and spawned lots of memes as him being the obsessed selfie man. Even his artwork shows his personality of him being good looking for his phone to post on Insta-mon app. Wow, his artwork and expressions are brilliant. He likes to defeat Leon one day and never succeed, but it doesn't stop him smiling for a selfie. LOL We have Rose next. Rose looks like an evil businessman or just irresponsible business man, either way it's funny. As a villain in the story, well, he's not really memorable. As the game was rushed, and never will address the issue on the story's pacing, him as the villain at near the end of the main game seems less memorable. I tried remembering the stuff he does, and I know I can just go and see them on youtube, but his story isn't really the best nor was helping him to be taken seriously. Him talking to Leon in that moment of the game, it didn't feel like it was meant to be a powerful scene for the audience. Also, his role was short in the entire game, from the restaurant meeting, to the stadium battle before the final battle with Leon, there isn't much to say about him as how he was served in the game other than looking like the evil businessman. However, I do remember two things about him. First, his outgoing outfit, his shorts looks decorated that it almost looked like he was wearing boxers in public. I know they could've have the shirt decorated rather than the shorts to have it a better design, but that's still seen as a joke. The second thing is...his stare from Twilight Wings. I find it strangely funny. His stare on Nessa was just random. LOL As of Oleana, well, she's insane. We all see Oleana as the freaky woman and sure is a group with Rose. With her insanity, it sure is what we just know about her. XD Now, the crazy twins, Sordward and Shielbert, first off, they have insane hairs, mostly Sordward! Wow! We couldn't imagine a haircut like that! A hair shaped like a sword! Second, their names are just funny. Sordward is really close to Squidward, and Shielbert is a similar funny name as Sordward, except I couldn't think of a character that's close to his name, but funny enough. Well, those two may seem too silly for you, but they serve their purpose to be meme-able. That's the best way to describe them, and also they're villains in the post game. As for their story, they were fine. Just a bit short and not as well paced. Them causing forced dynamax to all stadiums (except Piers's) and battling them was all right, but could wish a bit more challenge as far as I can remember. Now as for Isle of Armor, We meet Klara and Avery. Both welcome you to the island. Klara seems like a yandere and creepy while Avery wants to use psychic powers on people. I played Sword, so I see Klara's part only. Well, she seems like she just wants to compete with you and beat you to have Mustard proud of her. I assume Avery's situation is similar. Well, Klara looks pretty charming, I actually prefer Avery. He looks funny, and has a cool floating Pokeballs with him on his long hat. Mustard and Honey seem like a respectable members of the Dojo. Honey really does look like Princess Daisy. XD. Mustard looks like a cool guy and also a funny one too. MMD videos makes these characters really funny. Wow. As for Kyle, we barely know him. Penoy and Peonia first appear in Crown Tundra. Due to Peony's silliness, he looks like a comedic father from many dads from cartoons. Him getting used by the Pokemon for talking, and how he's hot blooded, is how I could tell he's the typical dad in children's media. As for Peonia, all I could remember is she wants to take an adventure on her own instead of being with her dad, while he wants to protect her. It was pretty little to get to know Peonia, but we do get more of Peony's screentime. Bede is another rival in Sword an Shield. He seems like a jerk, but as the story goes on, it's understandable. Bede had to be trained by Rose and all that, and well, his wrongdoings had got him kicked out from Rose himself when Bede tried smacking the ancient wall that shook Stew-on-Stow in worries. Oh, and him being stuck with Opal is really funny. He appears in the Whydon Stadium before the final battle, telling the player how much he suffered his life with Rose, and being with Opal surrounded with Pink, and he also shown to like it. Bede may be a dork in the game, but his story was satisfy able. He's more interesting to me than Hop. Speaking of Hop, Bede couldn't stand Hop's naive personality, and laughed how Hop couldn't defeat Bede. Hop's silly in a good way, but Bede is pretty right about him. XD SwSh has really interesting concept of creating characters, and I even saw memes of them, like Bede's song in animation as well as Marnie's theme. 2D vine animation was made, and all known characters were fit right as their characteristics were so interesting that their roles in each vine fits perfectly.The weakest character for me would be Rose as mentioned, but there is no character in SwSh that I truly dislike, unlike Anime Iris in Best Wishes or Lila Rossi and Chloe from Miraculous Ladybug. I even like making two Nessa and Sonia's Sketch Show on my channel.

Story The story in SwSh was...ok. It was pretty weak. In the main game, as the game was rushed, the pacing of the story is flawed, so it didn't have a lot of time to make room for some characters. In the whole Leon and Rose plot, as they were talking, there was no music playing and flat animation, as they were just pics. It was supposed to be emotional, but since no music was added, there isn't anything to feel much. Well Rose's story isn't really memorable as his parts are just short. As I made my point about Rose, the pacing and story didn't really make Rose memorable enough and that's why I had a harder time writing about Rose other than he's a weak villain of the series. I know Twilight wings showed more about Rose, but for the games, I wished it was expanded enough to be memorable than just him giving a stare XDD. As for Leon, his story is all right. Leon's story seems more interesting than Rose's story. He was shown to have more story than any other champions in Pokemon. The whole Galar Gym leaders are fine, and even Bede's story too. Sonia was shown to have good enough screentime. However, I do wish to see more friendship between her and Leon. As for the post-game, it seems a bit weaker. Introduction to Sordward and Shielbert is fine, but it can sometimes be fast paced. At one time, when Sonia's assistant betrayed Sonia in the lab, and it wasn't too long when we get to the end where she apologized to her and Sonia decided to her her join back. That's not how it works. I wouldn't let a traitor be the lab assistant again if they betrayed and shown to side with two villains. Not only that, but everyone seems to be okay with the twins after the post game story was about to end. Well it's a bit unreal for villains to be taken nicely once after their event just finished, so it didn't make a lot of sense to me. The very end with me battling Hop and the legendary Pokemon there is interesting as well as the beginning. The main games's story have some pacing issues, so let's see how the DLCs are like.

In Isle of Armor, while short for each DLC, they're still interesting. They seem to be handled better for me. In Armor, I like the introduction for Klara and Avery as well as the events in Dojo. The side quests and the final battle by the Dojo are pretty cool. I like how it explained about Klara or Avery trying to please Mustard and Honey as they wanted to be their support, and learns to respect the player at the end. They may leave out poison spikes and psychic terrains on the field, but they're pretty redeemable to both the player and anyone in the Dojo. Now to Crown Tundra, I like the story with Calyrex, who's always controlling Peony whenver it needs communication, explaining the story and its needs. Peony seems like a funny guy. Peonia, well only problem was she isn't as much in the story as Peony, so I wish I wanted to know more about her other than trying to get away from her dad. Still, I really find the story interesting as it's a story by a legendary Pokemon, and it was long enough to get to know Calyrex and its lore. Well if I can combine both DLCs stories and compare it with main story in Galar, it's a bit short but understandable as they're DLCs, but the writing and pacing of them seems better overall.

I wished the story in the main game was really improved and have better pacing, and also help out to flesh out character more often, like Hop and Rose. It's pacing issues is liked to the story being rushed, so not only the graphics and animation is the problem, but also the story too as it needs a fine pacing. It seems like a similar situation with Big Hero 6, where the characters and their concept are really interesting, but the story and pacing are the problem and could be why they got more focus as to the game/movie's problems and overshadowing the characters and their concepts as they had more potential. The story in the game isn't bad. I just say it's okay like stated in the beginning of this. I enjoyed it, but like I said, I wish it got enough development time to fix a couple of the flaws. As for DLCs, they seem better.

Also to keep note that I do prioritize gameplay>story>graphics in that way. Graphics as started in the animation isn't my huge priority over the gameplay. Only rare case if graphics and design are a problem over gameplay is if it's really ugly looking like Pokemon Playit games. If story is worse than gameplay such as TLOU 2 due to being intentionally very divisive, is also the same thing. Gameplay is more important for a game to be fun, as long as story is decent enough and graphics are not horrible looking such as Playit, those are worse looking Pokemon games LOL.

So I'm not done with the review yet, as I have part 3 to think about other stuffs regarding Sword and Shield's reputation, so I'll be making part 3 where I discuss other things and just to get the review of the game itself sooner, so I hope you understand me trying to be honest with the games and such, so see you in part 3.

#pokemon sword and shield

0 notes

lauraramargosian · 5 years

Text

Fortnite is modern day card collecting, and we love it!

Fortnite is “modern-day card collecting”, and we love it!

It’s true, Fortnite is modern-day card collecting and we absolutely love it.

Yep, Fortnite Chapter 2 has drawn new gamers in, all because of thousands of people staring a black hole for 2-days.

The hype is there and we don’t see that changing anytime soon.

While Pokemon cards and Yugioh cards are mostly a thing of the past for most people, Fortnite is dominating the gaming industry.

In fact, it’s almost like collecting your favorite past card games or even pogs.

Isn’t it true that we spent between 6.50-100 bucks for certain collections and decks?

Unfortunately, there are people out there who say the game is addicting in a negative way.

Although, it’s not much different from collecting basketball cards, baseball cards, Pokemon cards or dare I say POPS?

Fortnite Chapter 2

Fortnite Chapter 2 is absolutely amazing and it’s been a huge turn for Epic.

I mean… people watched a black hole for days and couldn’t wait to “drop into a new world,” as epic showed on their website, getting players pumped to check out the new island for Fortnite Chapter 2.

DROP INTO A NEW WORLD CHOOSE YOUR LANDING SPOT AND EXPLORE AN ALL-NEW ISLAND FEATURING 13 NEW LOCATIONS.

The Fortnite Chapter 2 map has some interesting locations and a lot of exploring, which you earn XP for simply by discovery. The XP earned through playing allows you to earn new Fortnite skins, emotes, and gear to show off in the game.

Since Fortnite’s birth, you have been able to buy what’s called a battle pass, allowing you to earn additional XP leading to even more rewards.

As mentioned above, it’s comparable to collecting cards before the millennials switched things up, and it’s crazy to see how much has changed, don’t you agree?

Fortnite creates new friendships

Whether you choose to play Fortnite or Save The World, you’re still going to be gaming with others (if you choose to fill your squads up with stranger friends). Further allowing you to talk with, laugh, dance and share emotes in a build while spray painting together before your final attack in order to be the last to survive.

Fortnite has always been a game that brings people together. The game has even brought families together, playing in the same room, rather than just staring at Snapchat they get to attempt survival on the island, laugh, scream and maybe cry a little when defeated (at least I do).

Fortnite World Cup 2019: Building better and faster!

Indeed, Positive Celebrity has made a few friends while visiting Twitch and playing Fortnite’s Save The World. We’ll just call him M-Dawg but he’s one of the good guys in the game and we’re thankful for his friendship!

What is the prize for winning the Cup?

Being that you can win a huge prize of up to 10 million-dollars, teens, and adults play in the contender league which now includes, solo or squads (a team of up to four).

In fact, the game is now considered an e-sport! According to TechCrunch, there have been some major wins in contender leagues, in Fortnite Season X.

“The big winner in today’s solo challenge was 16-year-old Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, who won $3 million for beating out the competition in the solo tournament. And, as sports writer Darren Rovell noted on Twitter, Giersdorf’s prize pool is only $850,000 smaller than the pot for the winner of the U.S. Open, which is set to begin in a few weeks at the same stadium.

Indeed, the esports prize pool is one of the biggest awards for a popular competitive event. Wimbledon winners took home less than $3 million and Tiger Woods won $2 million for besting the field of competitors at the Masters.”

Fortnite Save The World

Fortnite Save The World lets gamers go through different missions all while battling some intense zombies.

You get different rewards that help you progress in the game but it takes a lot of time and grind to achieve and complete the game as a whole. But it’s also a lot of fun because you can team up with a squad in Fortnite Save The World as well.

If you purchase Fornite Save The World before it’s release then you do get a couple of perks and couple skins with a pickaxe. I personally thought it was worth it.

Fortnite Save The World has been growing over the last few months with more and more players.

With that in mind, there’s an interesting phenomenon happening in that game, where players will attempt to scam new players into dropping their loot, mats, and guns, so never just join in and go into what’s called a “trade box,” you are likely about to get scammed.

Fornite Save The World scams are popular enough that I will say there are some YouTube heroes out there protecting the squad.

These YouTubers will go into Fortnite Save The World and essentially “scam the scammer,” my nephew was the first to show me the videos and they are hilarious, check some of them out below.

You will laugh, the scammers who get scammed for their crime end up watching their weapons get destroyed, leading to screaming and crying, and even attempts at saying their “cousin works at epic,” absolutely hilarious.

youtube

Fortnite Rare Skins and more

The Fortnite “rare skins,” are exactly like collecting holographic Charizard Pokemon cards. For example, the Fornite skins today have dropped and they include the one, the only Skull Trooper.

Skull Trooper is just one of the most popular skins to have and we have no doubt that almost everyone who can afford has bought it.

They even have the Skull Trooper dressed as a female, catching the eye of those looking for Fortnite girl skins.

Skull Trooper officially has a girlfriend and her name is Skull Ranger.

Positive Celebrity Exclusive: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s Peter Renaday talks TMNT, charity and more!

Fornite skins in Chapter 2 have included a bunch of fun Halloween editions as well, so be sure to log in and check them out every 24-hours a new set of skins, gliders, emotes and axes arrive into the Fortnite item shop.

Be the first of your squad to collect the skin, and be sure to let us know which ones you’ve loved the most in Fortnite Chapter 2.

What is Fortnite Chapter 2 and the new world?

Basically, there are many theories right now trending on Google about Fortnite Chapter 2 and it’s a new world.

As a matter of fact, the whole map seems to be some kind of base, which also includes a bunker and the very house of “the visitor,” which will likely make more sense as we progress through the season.

Not to mention, The Visitor in Fortnite X is the one who caused all the chaos and led us into Fortnite Chapter 2. As a matter of fact, we did not think we’d be able to visit his actual home on the new map.

Further, the house is filled with memorabilia from Fortnite Season X, as he’s brought many souvenirs with him, including the clock from titled towers, a statue from Sunny Steps, and according to Forbes there’s even a hidden basement.

“In terms of his general living space, he has his control center in a secret basement you have to break through either the floor or a cabinet to access.”

Besides, it’s a pretty interesting storyline and as it’s as though we are part of “the movie,” and being able to watch the LIVE events make the game feel even more interactive for Fortnite gamers.

Celebrities who are playing Fortnite Chapter 2!

Richard Tyler BelvinsBen Simmons Lil Yachty Deadmau5 Karl-Anthony Towns Travis Scott Finn Wolfhard David Price Gordon Hayward Chance The Rapper Richard Sherman Gordon Hayward Drake Joe Jonas Norm Macdonald Derek Carr

youtube

Be sure to add us! We love to give free skins away on Twitch!

To end, we’re pretty excited to see what else Epic has in store for us regarding Fortnite.

Finally, feel free to let us know what you think about the Fortnite Chapter 2 in the comments below.

Blessed be.

The post Fortnite is modern day card collecting, and we love it! appeared first on Positive Celebrity News and Gossip.

No related posts.

from WordPress https://positivecelebrity.news/2019/10/23/fortnite-is-modern-day-card-collecting-and-we-love-it/

#Positive celebrity gossip #celebrity gossip #news #love #positive vibes

0 notes

undauntedtcg · 5 years

Text

Cup Report: Blacephalon/Naganadel

I made top 4 with Blowns this weekend! After this and a few other tournaments with the deck, I think I’m prepared to present my thoughts on it. Luckily for me, my matchups today perfectly showcased what’s good about the deck and what needs work. With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at my list, matchups and what changes I want to make going forward.

The List!

Pokemon (17) 3 Blacephalon GX LOT 4 Naganadel LOT 2 Naganadel GX UMI 1 Poipole LOT 3 Poipole UMI 1 Heatran GX UMI 1 Turtonator DRM 1 Dedenne GX UNB 1 Mew UNB

Trainers (28) 4 Cynthia 4 Welder 1 Lillie

4 Mysterious Treasure 4 Beast Ring 4 Custom Catcher 2 Cherish Ball 1 Reset Stamp

2 Ultra Space 1 Giant Hearth 1 Heat Factory*

Energy (15) 1 Beast Energy* 14 Fire Energy

This list is fairly standard, so for the sake of brevity as this is already going to be quite long, I’m only going to go over a few noteworthy inclusions/counts.

I’m not actually sure why other people haven’t put Turtonator in this deck. It’s only a little more difficult to set up than Blacephelon GX and it gives this deck another out against Keldeo GX, which a few of our locals have been particularly fond of.

Blowns faces an odd challenge in this format. It really just wants to do only play Cynthia and Welder. But 8 supporters isn’t enough, and after today I’m not even convinced 9 is. Lillie was my choice as it’s amazing to see turn one, good enough later on, and my fear of opening Bill’s Analysis got the better of me. Bill’s is a perfectly fine alternative though, check out Martin Guilbert’s list from Sheffield.

Giant Hearth was great in testing, making Welder more accessible when your opponent takes you off of Beast Ring too quickly. However, I think 3rd Ultra Space or Lysandre Labs would’ve been better. Still worth considering, just probably not as a replacement of another stadium.

Enough about the list, let’s go through the rounds.

Round 1: Vs AbilityZard W

I had the nightmare opening hand. A couple of poipoles, a few beast ring, absolutely nothing to do turn one. My opponent managed to take take two prizes before I was able to find a clown, but once I did, I hit all of the beast rings and actually managed a set-up. There was honestly no reason for me to win this game after that opening, and it was the first time I noticed just how lukewarm this deck’s early game can be.

Round 2: Vs MalamarTags W

I was scared as soon as I saw the pairings. TrainerChip, also referred to as one of our local CP vacuums, playing Malamar, one of my worst match-ups. He started Jirachi, got multiple Inkays down, but didn’t play a supporter. Little did I know, even after three Stellar Wishes, he wouldn’t end up finding one the entire game. I set up Heatran GX and just ran over his board, Custom Catchering up and killing two Malamar on consecutive turns. This reaffirmed my belief that Mally was a fine matchup, if maybe slightly favored for them. I was very, very wrong.

Round 3: Vs MalamarTags (Again) L

Another fun pairing, I hit Grant Manley. By far one of the best players in this area, who coincidentally, started a cult of Malamar players storming my entire state and taking over the top cut of every cup they’ve attended. I’m pretty confident in the match-up! It’s even Best-of-1, in all likelihood, Malamar will just brick. In short, no. We both drew god the entire way through the game (”Did you put all seven of those energy in play this turn?! -Grant Manley 2019), played just about perfectly, and then we both started making bad decisions. Mine ended up being worse though, as activating spell tag on a turn that I didn’t have to allowed him to finish off my Blacephelon GX for game. I realized my mistake as I was announcing my attack, it truly was the darkest timeline. We talked a lot about the game and the matchup afterwards and I was slowly beginning to figure out that the match-up is a lot worse than I thought.

Round 4: Vs Green’s Reshizard W

I needed to win my next two to guarantee a spot in top 4 and this is by far the best match-up I could’ve asked for. I could hear Grant in the background saying “That hurt my soul” as I gusted up a Reshizard and killed it with Turtonator, a 3 for 1 prize trade that should forever define the term “Power-play.” My opponent tried to play the one-prize game with volcantion but I just ran over them with Heatran GX’s Steaming Stomp until he gave me a Reshizard to Hot-burn for game.

Round 5: Vs Green’s Reshizard (Again) W

It must be Christmas or something, because I got the very same matchup again. This time it played out even better though. My opponent killed my first blown and I was able to respond by playing 4 beast ring in the same turn. The matchup was pretty much auto-pilot from there.

Top 4: Vs MalamarTags (Again dear god why me) LL Three malamar players, along with myself, made top 4. Which means I needed to fight through my worst, most grindy match-up twice in a best of three. This is the match that really made me believe that the match-up is bad. I think bad might actually be an understatement. If they actually set up, it’s completely unwinnable. I drew far worse than I did in round 3 and it resulted in a swift 2-0 from my opponent. Did I play 100% optimally? Probably not, but I don’t think many things could’ve changed the outcome of that match.

Moving Forward!

I’m definitely going to be trying different changes to improve the Malamar match-up, but for now the changes I would make simply with consistency in mind are

-1 Reset Stamp -1 Giant Hearth +1 Heatran GX +1 Ultra Space

I didn’t play Reset Stamp for any meaningful effect all day and would’ve rather had almost any other card. Heatran GX is the best attacker against Malamar that isn’t too situational, and I found myself wanting to attack with it more in other match-ups. In my mind, totally worth it.

Giant Hearth is an awesome card, but if you hit it instead of Ultra Space early game, life is a lot harder. We just want Poipoles.

Blacephalon needs a way to deal with Malamar. Hoopa? Lysandre Labs? I don’t know yet. All I can say definitively is that if you’re expecting to see high amounts of the squids, bring any other deck. Blowns was created with a tag-team heavy meta in mind. Can it beat Malamar? Probably not without some big changes to the list. Would it be the best deck in format if it could find a good answer to Malamar? Absolutely.

That’s been my experience with the deck so far! Let me know if you have any questions or just make fun of me for slipping from forever 2nd place to 3rd.

Happy Lost Zoning!

#tournament #ptcg #Blacephalon #Naganadel #League Cup #pokemon tcg

0 notes