#ribbon master | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

reides · 3 months

Text

as you probably know, the most recent pokemon games feature pretty significant pokedex cuts due to the sheer magnitude of pokemon that are now available to us. this means that some pokemon are simply not featured in certain mainline games, which adds a unique element to a lot of pokemon's ribbon master journeys. re: my experience with reides, working around unobtainable ribbons wasn't exactly a new experience - after all, there were no available shadow horseas/seadras/kingdras in pokemon colosseum or pokemon xd, so i knew that my kingdra wouldn't be able to get the national ribbon (granted to purified shadow pokemon) - but it still was something i had to consider and plot out carefully as i brought him up towards the more recent generations. for example, reides was unable to get the hisui ribbon (granted for taking a photo with your pokemon in the region's photo studio), as the horsea line was not featured in legends arceus... and, for a long time, i figured that he wouldn't be able to get any of the ribbons (and marks!) featured in scarlet and violet.

but then... the dlc happened. the glorious, glorious dlc.

the horsea line was re-introduced into the pokedex when indigo disk - the second batch of dlc for scarlet and violet - dropped. needless to say, i was EXTREMELY hype about this. in my previous post, i mentioned not being sure if reides would be able to join me in this current generation of pokemon. i wondered if i'd have to brave the long, long queues of pokemon shield in order to get the master rank ribbon on him and make him a true ribbon master... but fortune smiled down on me, and reides was miraculously granted access to generation 9 of the pokemon games.

before i get into reides' journey through paldea, kitakami and unova, here's a quick reminder you can find each part of reides' ribbon master journey here on my personal website, or here in my ribbon master tag on this tumblr! it spans from my childhood copy of emerald version to my... uh... adulthood (lmao) copy of scarlet version... so it's quite the sizeable read! to everyone who's stuck by me for this whole challenge and expressed support for my lovely kingdra: thank you so much! and for anyone new to the reides saga: welcome, and i hope you enjoy my posts about him!

with that handled... it's time to cover a brand new generation of ribbons and marks!

as a big pokemon fan, i tend to play new games and dlc the very moment that i can. in the current era of #gaming, that means obsessively checking for game updates on the night of dlc releases. as i mashed that + button on my pro controller to check for updates to my copy of scarlet, i felt especially nervous. thanks to people being mischievous and sneaking alleged leaks around on twitter, i knew that the horsea line was supposedly being introduced into the game... but i'm extremely skeptical by nature. (can you believe that some people go on the internet and lie?!?!) i didn't want to believe that reides' ribbon master journey would continue until i saw a little horsea (or seadra... or kingdra...) swimming around in a digital body of water myself. once my game finally updated, i sprinted over to blueberry academy as SOON as i could and began running around the terarium in search of a horsea. i found one swimming around in a lake almost immediately.

when i tell y'all... the scream i scrumpt... LMFAO. joking aside, it felt like i could finally breathe again. i was SO READY to plop reides into my file and get right to grabbing the ribbons and marks that were added for gen9. unfortunately, gamefreak had other plans for me, and pokemon home was under maintenance. after falling dramatically to my knees, i busied myself with getting the rest of my team for the dlc ready. this included grinding out the necessary bp to unlock wild starters in the terarium, then embarking on a shiny hunt for my fav starter pokemon of all time - totodile! after hours and hours of looking around, i managed to catch one successfully in a love ball and named him barge. along with the rest of my indigo disk team, barge would go on to be close friends with reides. anyway, after a lengthy maintenance, pokemon home was eventually ready to go. i leapt right in, retrieving reides and plopping him into my party. i'm a huge fan of the updated pokemon models in scarlet, so i was hype to see the one that they gave shiny kingdra. i was NOT disappointed in the slightest!

LOOK AT HOW GORGEOUS HE IS. the tiny scale details... the glossy shine... my god. as much as i liked the sleekness of the models in gen8, i like the more realistic ones that gen9 introduced a whole lot more. the devs did a phenomenal job; kingdra looks absolutely majestic. with my full indigo disk team now present in my copy of scarlet, i had to take a group shot and treat everyone to a sandwich!

reides met five new pals: bane the weezing, grunge the krookodile, bento the snorlax, axe the haxorus, and, of course, barge the feraligatr! i shiny hunted for all of them myself, as i really enjoyed doing the same for my kitakami team during my teal mask playthrough.

i wasn't quite ready to take on the indigo disk plotline, though. my first order of business was grabbing a ribbon for reides - namely, the paldea champion ribbon! i hopped on a plane and flew back to paldea, signing up for a spot in the academy ace tournament.

i really love the vibes of the academy ace tournament; everyone is so passionate about the battles, and the music is an absolute JAM. i was especially happy about reides' first experience as a competitor in it, too, because my fav character in the game just-so-happened to show up for it!

that's right: arven - the man, the myth, the legend - challenged me and reides to a battle.

shoutout to him holding his pokeball upside down. just one more reason as to why he's truly one of the best pokemon characters. (btw, as happy was i was to see arven, i always feel so bad to fight his mabosstiff. that's my FRIEND!!!!!!)

anyway, after sweeping his way through everyone in the academy ace tournament, reides was granted the paldea champion ribbon for his efforts.

after nabbing that ribbon, i decided that i should really get a move on with the indigo disk's actual plot, as i wanted to avoid spoilers and also REALLY wanted to know what happened next in the plot. i was pretty invested in the hooks that teal mask introduced and was especially worried about kieran. (just why did teal mask's plot force us to lie to that poor kid, btw?! just thinking about it gets me so annoyed. i'd go through an 'evil' arc too if i was in his shoes, i'll tell you that.) even though it's not really relevant to reides' ribbon master quest, i figured i'd share some photos of his storyline adventure, too.

(btw, i'm writing this post in feb 2024, which means that indigo disk has been Around for around 2 months and thus the spoiler embargo is pretty much lifted - but, still: be warned that there are some spoilers for indigo disk beyond this point!)

the battles in indigo disk ended up being pretty tough; i was glad that i put time aside to train up my team properly. we managed to take on the blueberry elite four and kieran and ultimately Prevailed - even if the battles were quite close, at times! i was kinda sad that there was no ribbon associated with beating all of them - it would've been nice to finally get some form of an unovan ribbon on my ribbon master - and i was also pretty shocked that the dlc didn't introduce a battle tower. regardless, even if reides didn't get a ribbon for his performance in the battles, it was still awesome to include him in them, and i had a whole lot of fun.

i also brought reides along for the Shenanigans following the blueberry academy plotline.

luckily for me, briar, carmine and kieran were chill with waiting in the underdepths of area zero while i took reides on a bit of a photoshoot. it was just so pretty down there!! how could i resist!!

anyway, silly little wanderings aside, it was really cool to have reides involved in the big showdown against terapagos. i was especially happy when kieran snapped out of his funk and i got to battle alongside him. his hydrapple even used dragon cheer, powering reides up during the battle. it made the whole experience feel all the more significant.

with everything all sorted out, i ended up being really happy with the indigo disk's overall plot. i definitely liked it a lot more than teal mask's narrative and was really pleased that we could become proper friends with kieran once more. (i still wish that we could've apologized for lying to him, though.)

now that i was safe from indigo disk spoilers and emboldened with love for pokemon as a whole, i decided to pick up my ribbon-collecting in earnest once more... though the next ribbon on my list was not actually a ribbon. it was a mark! introduced in gen8, marks are basically the same as ribbons. i think of them as little stickers on pokemon, haha. the first one that i set my sights on was the gourmand mark, which has a chance of being randomly given to your pokemon after eating a meal with them! these meals can be the store-bought ones or the ones that you make yourself via the picnic system.

frankly, i have no idea WHEN reides got this mark, as i went sort of crazy with buying lots of different meals. (i really like the food art in this game, okay!!) it definitely didn't take long for one of these meals to really strike his fancy, though. he got the gourmand mark very quickly and also got the title 'reides the gourmet' along with it!

i then decided that i'd try to get the other two marks on reides in one fell swoop. the first of these marks was the itemfinder mark, which your pokemon has a chance of getting when they pick up an item in the overworld. to get this mark, you have to make use of the let's go feature, which allows your pokemon to walk alongside you. the second of these marks was the partner mark, which... can be quite the ordeal. your pokemon basically has a 1/100 chance to get this mark with every 10k steps that you take. additionally, your pokemon also has to be friendly towards you in order for them to have a chance at getting this mark. since both of these marks rely on random chance, i knew that i could get really unlucky and end up going off on one hell of a grind for them... but i decided to just take it one step at a time. instead of focusing on getting the marks to trigger, i wanted to wander around and enjoy the sights around the various regions of the game. after all, i was lucky to even HAVE reides in this generation - and these marks gave me the perfect excuse to take lots of photos with him, too!

i was especially happy to take some photos of him with aske, my shiny gallade who joined me for my teal mask journey. as you guys know, reides the kingdra is named after a character that i play in a dnd campaign. similarly, aske is named after another character in that campaign; he's reides' boyfriend!

i also enjoyed roaming around *as* reides while using the new synchro machine, too! i'm not sure if items that you pick up count towards the itemfinder mark in this mode, but i'd like to think that they do.

thanks to my casual approach to getting these marks, i actually have no idea how long they took for me to get on reides. one day, i just happened to check and they were BOTH there, so i guess the 'grind' truly ended up being completely painless. in the following screenshot, i'm hovering over the partner mark, but you can see the itemfinder one at the end of the row above it, too.

with the marks now handled, i had one more ribbon to get on reides before he could become a true ribbon master. this ribbon was the one that i was the most nervous about by FAR. the master rank ribbon is granted to your pokemon once you emerge victorious in one (1) online battle against another player... but the catch here is that the battle has to be in the master rank. for me, it meant climbing from the beginner rank all the way up there.

naturally, i procrastinated with this ribbon a whole lot. i took reides along for the (amazing) epilogue when it dropped in january, taking more pictures with him and making more memories... all the while wondering just when i'd get around to tackling the Final Ribbon.

as it turns out, i didn't actually end up procrastinating on it all that long. my friend cody visited me a few days after the epilogue dropped, and my other friend blee stayed over at my house for his visit, too. both of them knew about reides the kingdra and we decided that we'd tackle operation: final ribbon acquisition together, with blee spearheading it as someone very well-versed in vgc. over the course of a few days, we managed to get up to master rank - running into a bunch of really interesting teams and occurences during the climb of legend. (special shoutout to a dedenne who kept trying to spam nuzzle on pokemon who were completely immune to it, but who successfully spread the glory of Cheek Pouch via entrainment onto us all.) i learnt a truly crazy amount of stuff about the competitive world of pokemon and really enjoyed all of the different rental teams that we tried out.

upon arriving in the master ball tier, we had to switch gears, though, as we couldn't use rental teams anymore and, instead, had to build one from scratch so that reides could be included in it. i ended up building this portland regional finals team as per blee's recommendation, though we swapped out raging bolt for reides, himself. since it was my own team and not a rental one, we gave nicknames to each team member.

my entei is one that i got in an event years and years ago (they're shiny and in a cherish ball), so i couldn't nickname them... but just know that they are 'flamberge' in spirit. o7 reides also got an electric tera type (and tera blast as part of his moveset) for fun, as his namesake is associated with storms.

it was a lot of fun making this team!!! the very specific ev-spreads that some of the pokemon required gave me a newfound appreciation for all of the feathers that i happened to pick up while wandering the terarium... not to mention all of the mochi that i collected while oustin' ogres in kitakami.

once the team was all built, it was time to get the final W in order to secure the ribbon at long last. we could all breathe a whole lot easier, as when you rank up to another ball tier, you can't "demote" to a lower one - so falling back into the ultra ball tier wasn't a concern. victory didn't evade us for long, either!

after a REALLY fun battle against someone named alex, operation: final ribbon was finally complete.

reides - along with the rest of the team who helped clutch out the victory - got the much-coveted master rank ribbon.

upon getting this ribbon, it finally happened.

reides the kingdra officially became a ribbon master.

a journey that began back in october 2023 finally came to a close. with his 91 total ribbons (since his two golden memory ribbons have 48 ribbons in total within them), reides now has each and every single ribbon that he can possibly attain from his origin game of emerald version to the current pokemon generation.

i'm sure that all of my posts speak for themselves in terms of the sheer amount of effort that i put into this challenge. there were many times that i thought i hit a "roadblock," be it in the form of a gruelling grind or worries over not being able to access something due to hardware restrictions. in the end, however, reides was able to rise above all of the challenges. i got sooo much help and support from friends over the course of this whole challenge, so i have to give a BIG shoutout to every single one of y'all! and, of course, i have to extend thanks to all of the people who posted about their ribbon mastery experiences online, as i definitely couldn't have guided reides to this point without them. i'm hoping that the posts that i made about reides' journey can serve as a guide of sorts to anyone who wants to pick up the challenge for their pokemon, too!

at any rate, reides is my very first ribbon master and i definitely plan on keeping his ribbon collection up-to-date in future generations of pokemon. i say it time and time again, but the ribbon master challenge is amazing because it gets you interacting with aspects of the pokemon games that you may have never even thought of trying out. you form a true emotional bond with your pokemon, and it's just... so very fantastic. you make so many memories!!! so while there might not be an update to the reides saga until those generations are out and about, i'm already excited to keep on hunting for ribbons and am hoping that the horsea line is included in every single game going forward! because, quite frankly... it's what reides deserves. >:)

before i Sign Off on this post, however, i wanted to share something i bought to celebrate reides; namely, a custom shiny kingdra diorama from nerdidecor on etsy.

ISN'T IT SO CUTE!!!!! i put it right on my desk next to my pc so that i can always have a little reminder of my amazing ribbon master with me. i'm hoping to get more shiny kingdra stuff in the future, too!

either way, thank you all so much again for keeping up with me and my beloved kingdra! i'm already looking forward to being able to write up another one of these posts in the future! until then, reides is definitely going to enjoy a nice vacation from ribbon hunting. rest assured that i will be taking the very best care of him!!! :D

#ribbon master #jamietxt #pokemon #reides the kingdra

30 notes · View notes

nerdartandgames · 4 months

Text

And so begins quite possibly the longest and most arduous challenge I've ever given myself in Pokemon:

Ribbon Master with my all-time favorite, Raichu!

Granted, I don't have all the tools I need quite yet so I can't get started immediately, but I'm determined!

#my art #art #digital art #artists on tumblr #creative #fanart #nintendo #pokemon #raichu #ribbon master

23 notes · View notes

shinysamurott9 · 4 months

Text

How I nuked my 400 Hour Save of Pokemon Heartgold

So, recently I've been playing through the Pokemon Generations doing a Ribbon Master Quest, obtaining every Ribbon a single or set of Pokemon can possibly obtain by sending them up through the series. Just yesterday I was on the tail end of finishing the Gen 4 segment of the challenge.

I have a team of 5 Ribbon Masters currently; Mushi, my Shiny Heracross from Pokemon Colosseum which I hunted specifically for this Ribbon Master Quest, Velos and Seibzehn, a Latios and Metagross I raised to use in Emerald's Battle Frontier, Sparda, my Shiny Arceus I hunted using the void glitch in Pearl and Nero, my Shiny Giratina from Sinjoh Ruins. The only ribbons left for them to get was the Legend Ribbon for beating Red and most pertinent to this story, the World Ability Ribbon.

For those unaware, the World Ability Ribbon is obtained by reaching Rank 5 or higher in the Wifi Room in Gen 4's Battle Tower. Despite what you may think, this is still obtainable thanks to fan made servers which restore old wifi functionalities in Generations 4 & 5. The thing is though the Wifi room is bullshit. The opponents you fight are recorded teams from other players and unfortunately, on top of the highly optimised teams you’ll encounter, you'll also encounter many teams of blatantly hacked stuff like Machamps with OHKO Moves or Sturdy Shedinjas.

This is where I mention the fact that I just so happen to have a modded 3ds, which, among other things, let's me backup save data. So since the game was blatantly cheating anyway, I decided "Fuck it, I'm cheating too". How I did this was to fight one battle in the Wifi Room, and after winning, I'd use the rest option to save and exit the game. Then I'd backup that save file, so if I lost the next battle, I could restore that backup and try again, letting me continue my streak. A slow process but it would mean eventually, I would be able to climb the ranks high enough to get the World Ability Ribbon.

As you can imagine though, I was doing this process of reloading and backing up a lot, and at one point I restored a file incorrectly, taking out the game too early, causing the file to go blank. No problem I'll just restore the file again and if I was competent, that's wherethis would have ended. But, because of how much I was using Checkpoint, my muscle memory got a lite crosswired, so instead of restoring my file, I made a new backup over it, effectively erasing the entire thing.

For reference this included:

400 hrs of Gameplay, A Pokedex roughly 2/3rds complete, A fully developed Safari Zone, Several Pokemon from my various Gen 4 Playthroughs over the years, Every Arceus Plate, (Which are actually pretty difficult to get in HGSS), All 5 of my Ribbon Masters

And perhaps worst of all, my entire collection of Gen 4 shinies. This included:

My near back to back Shiny Luxio and Luxray from Platinum,

A shiny Darkrai and Shaymin I hunted with the Void Glitch

Several Radar and Safari Week Shinies

And a shiny of each Sinjoh Dragon.

Needless to say I was both pissed and devestated. There was some consolation, since I had backups of Gen 3 and Platinum, my Ribbon Masters and Battle Tower mons were safe. Everything else though, initially I was resigned to either losing them forever or trying very likely in vain to recreate as much as I could in PKHex which has it's own issues both logistically and ensuring they were legal, not helped at all by how bad the legality checker in PKHex actually is.

BUT

There was, one, just one saving grace. Fucking POKEMON BATTLE REVOLUTION

The way that Battle Revolution works is that you connect a Gen 4 Save File and it will make an exact copy of your boxes so you can use them in BR's various Colosseums. And of course I just so happened to have copied my boxes from HG a few months ago just after Safari Week meaning every pokemon I had nuked still existed! I had to hack my Wii U to dump the save file but because of that I was able to completely restore almost every single pokemon by copy pasting them back onto Heartgold.

Obviously still lost a lot in other areas but I really can't complain considering what I managed to restore.

As a sidenote, there was a similar incident way back where I accidentally erased my friend's Ruby Master File no shinieswere lost just a lot of progress. I think his reaction speaks for itself.

#Fuck up of cosmic proportions #Pokemon #pokemon heartgold #pokemon battle revolution #Pokemon gen four #ribbon master #This will hopefully never happen again

14 notes · View notes

lycankeyy · 1 month

Text

We're so back

#idk if i have a somnia tag but i probably should if i dont #💛#pokemon #ribbon master #somnia the hypno

12 notes · View notes

mysteryfate · 3 months

Text

With 27 ribbons in her collection, Sileadh can say goodbye to Gen 3!

The next step of the journey lies in Pokémon Platinum, where a staggering 37 ribbons await her - by far the most of any single game!

Once her trials in Sinnoh are done, it's off to Heartgold & Soulsilver to climb Mt. Silver and claim for herself one last Legendary ribbon to finish off Gen 4.

#pokemon #shiny pokemon #ribbon master #pkmn

14 notes · View notes

iron-bundle · 14 days

Text

Finished my first ever ribbon master pokemon today! Frosty is my beloved Iron Bundle who I built my first competitive team around! Now they're immortalized in the ribbon master hall of fame :)

Here's to more ribbon mastering down the line!

#pike says stuff #pike plays #iron bundle #ribbon master

9 notes · View notes

tank-needleman · 30 days

Text

I have been wanting to start a pokémon ribbon master challenge for a while now, and this is where I'll do it. I used rng manipulation on my copy of Emerald and here we are: one shiny Mudkip and a long way to go.

#ribbon master #pokémon #pokemon #mudkip #pokémon emerald #honestly i was so thrilled when i saw the shiny sparkle #i havent thought of a good nickname yet either

4 notes · View notes

bootycallofcthulhu · 30 days

Text

All 80 possible ribbons from gens 3-7. He's going to Galar!!

#ribbon master stuff #ribbon master

2 notes · View notes

etoilua · 1 month

Text

Two weeks after catching her 💗

The funniest part of this has been discovering that Fantina, whose whole thing is contests, actually sucks at contests

#pokemon #eevee #not art #ribbon master

5 notes · View notes

professsorbeans · 2 months

Text

Gen 3 contests are kinda fun!

#pokemon #gen 3 #ribbons #ribbon master #the bean labs

1 note · View note

reides · 5 months

Text

leaving alola behind him, reides the kingdra headed for generation 8 of the pokemon games in his quest for more ribbons! gen8 of these games feature the galar region (via pokemon sword and shield) as well as the sinnoh region (via pokemon brilliant diamond and shining pearl)! this leap to gen8 was super alarming, as my beloved kingdra moved from the 3ds to the current nintendo console - namely, the nintendo switch! it's crazy to think about how this whole journey began on my copy of emerald version, slotted into my pleasantly clunky brick of a grey ds.

reides' journey through the generations has been filled with its highs and its lows, but once he arrived safely in pokemon home, it meant that i could be a bit flexible with my approach to the ribbons available in swsh and bdsp! (it also meant bidding farewell to my shoddy photos of my (3)ds screen for these posts... they will be missed...)

anyway, before i get into the story of reides' gen8 journey, i gotta do my customary shoutout to all the other parts of his ribbon master quest. it's really easy this time around, as i finally put together an index for these posts on my personal site! you can find it here! that page also has a lot of information about the challenge itself, along with some helpful resources if you'd like to take it on. as always, you can also peek in my ribbon master tag on this blog, too.

if you're all caught up with the story so far, it's time to get started on a brand new chapter.

transferring reides into my copy of pokemon shield was a really emotional experience. kingdra looks absolutely gorgeous on the switch, and i was blown away by how awesome the shiny form looks, too. this moment on the beach at sunset - with a galarian slowpoke and a kingler lurking close by - felt pretty cinematic. it was also really nice to see my trainer character again! i absolutely love all of the different fashion items available in swsh. immediately, i knew that i had to make my ribbon mastery team a big ol' pot of curry for all of their hard work thus far.

we also played together while we camped out. i was really glad that i was already in shield's post-game, as it saved a whole lot of time on this ribbon master journey AND meant that i'd have tons of toys for my pokemon at my disposal.

after goofing around for hours, i finally decided to take on the first ribbon available in galar. this ribbon was the galar champion ribbon, which your pokemon receive upon entering the galarian hall of fame. i ended up needing to play through the galarian star tournament first, though, as i had procrastinated on doing that for the longest time... so reides ended up taking part in a few more battles than one would think!

it was absolutely awesome to see dynamax in action with reides! it made me wish that kingdra got a gigantamax form, but i guess that would be a bit too amazing for anyone to handle, huh? while taking on this ribbon, i also realized just how much i missed the vibes of the gym challenge in the galar region. the wide stadiums, the cheering crowds, the MUSIC... all of it is so incredibly top-tier and it really got me pumped up! not to mention seeing the absolutely INCREDIBLE cast in action. shoutout to everyone but especially piers. all hail the reigning king of the pokemon punks.

anyway, reides was eventually able to sweep his way to victory in both the galarian star tournament as well as the league battles. he joined the hall of fame and got the galar champion ribbon!

with that handled, it was time to take on galar's battle tower. according to most, this battle tower is an absolute cake-walk, as you can dynamax while most of your opponents (barring leon) can't. it was just a matter of buckling down and spending the time required to amass your wins. as a result, i ended up abandoning the tried and true durant strat and instead took the og trio of albatross, origin and reides, himself, along for the ride.

hilariously enough, i ran into ONE road-block in this tower in the form of a shedinja which i could literally not attack. i had NO moves that could get past its guard... sobs. but another nice thing about the galarian battle tower is that it isn't streak-dependent, instead swapping over to a system relying on ranking up or ranking down. so i brushed off this shedinja encounter without letting it get to me all that much, haha! i also taught albatross shadow ball... just in case.

ribbons also got a bit of an upgrade in the switch games of pokemon. no longer limited to just being pretty graphics on the ribbon screen, you can now equip one ribbon on your pokemon and give it a little title every time you send it out in battle. i equipped the ribbon that reides got for mastering all of the contests in omega ruby, which granted him the title of 'shining star'!

it was so nice to see it every time i sent him out, but i can definitely see myself swapping between all the various titles at reides' disposal!

my climb to the master ball rank was fairy uneventful, though i really understood this child's plight. it's how i felt many times while in various battle towers during this ribbon master journey.

eventually, i made it through the rank itself and got to the final battle against leon. though i had faced him at the end of each rank prior to this moment, it still felt very intense to encounter him knowing that this was my very last battle tower match for the forseeable future. also, his battle tower outfit is SO DRIPPY. love him so much.

not gonna lie, it was pretty funny seeing him say something so inspiring while looking so sad (and the snowscape from one of dynamax-form reides' attacks really added to it). leon is an absolutely amazing character and one of my fav champions ever, though, so i was thrilled that he got to be the final match in my battle tower saga!

even though the swsh battle tower was WAY easier than the others that i faced, i was still so happy to be done with it. my goodness. i really went from ignoring the battle towers in the series to gaining streaks of ~50 in each and every one... it's kind of unreal. reides truly earned the title of 'tower master'!

upon getting the tower master ribbon, we were done with galar. i was sure to make my pokemon team some more curry before they set off for sinnoh! but i honestly wasn't too torn up about leaving galar, as pokemon home lets us shift pokemon between the switch games however we'd like. after so many one-way transfers out of prior generations, it felt kind of surreal - and was also a huge relief.

this cute curry wasn't the only treat that got eaten, either! i made some pokemon cookies in Real Life to celebrate, as well. i used cookie cutters from the official pokemon store to make these pikachu and munchlax cookies!

i then set my sights on the remake of diamond version... pokemon: brilliant diamond!

the last time reides visited sinnoh, he did so via my childhood copy of diamond version. as i wrote in my post about the gen4 part of reides' journey, this copy of the game was already in the post-game, so i didn't have to play through any of diamond's plot whatsoever when he arrived. however... for this sinnoh visit, i actually didn't have a post-game available! despite owning brilliant diamond since the day it released, i had barely played it. (fun fact: in my first run of the game, i ran into a shiny bidoof on my very first night playing it. i ended up transferring all of the pokemon in it - bidoof included - to pokemon home and restarting it, though, as i was toying with the idea of doing a shiny starter hunt... and then i simply never touched it. so i guess restarting it was actually a waste of time. weeps.) i knew that i'd need to play through its plot to get the ribbon that reides needed, so... you know what that meant.

it was time for a whole other adventure to begin.

i decided to keep reides in the pc for the storyline part of this playthrough. i wanted to raise a team of pokemon from the sinnoh region, and i knew that reides' status as a fully ev and iv trained pokemon at level 100 meant that he would absolutely STEAMROLL the plot. we still went on walks together very often though, and he had his pal hammer the garchomp in the pc for company! (i usually raise a garchomp for my sinnoh teams, as it's one of my fav pokemon in the sinnoh region, but i decided to try to resist this time around and limit myself to pokemon that i had never raised before!)

i absolutely loved my brilliant diamond playthrough. the art direction is a point of contention in the pokemon fandom, but i'm a big fan of it! it seems like people either love it or hate it, and, thankfully, i'm definitely in the 'love' camp! the chibi style is endlessly charming, and the environments were just gorgeous. something about the lighting in brilliant diamond is just SUPER pleasing to me, and re-visiting sinnoh like this allowed me to really appreciate it. since my diamond file was in the post-game, i guess needing to play through this one in its entirety actually kinda worked out in my favour, huh?

i was super delighted to see that the ribbons screen is absolutely gorgeous in this game, too! i really like the status screen featured in bdsp. it's so nice and colourful.

this simple little screenshot is also really important to me. you see, when i was a kid, i got diamond version as a gift from a family friend. he'd gone abroad and generously brought back it back as a present for me. back then, the country that i live in didn't get pokemon games in a timely manner at all (we'd get them in video game stores months after they released in the u.s.), and i actually had no idea that diamond version even existed. (not knowing that a new pkmn generation dropped was a recurring experience in my childhood, LOL.) so playing this game for the first time made for a really magical experience. i have a very, very clear memory of playing it for hours and hours on the night that i started it up... until i could barely keep my eyes open. i trained my team a whole lot and was exploring this route right outside of jubilife, and i thought that the small island on the water was very pretty. i saved there for the night, imagining my trainer setting up a little camp for herself and her pokemon... and now, every time i'm on that route, i can't help but smile at the memory. so you can imagine just how happy i was to take a photo with reides there, with the updated graphics and everything!

furthermore, on the course of my sinnoh journey, i ran into lots of old friends... including none other than riley!

thanks to the way he helped me out in the gen4 battle tower, riley is a really special character to me now. so i was really happy to see him and play through iron island with him! after thwarting team galactic, he surprised me with a little gift.

i actually wasn't planning on raising a riolu - much less a lucario - on my main team AT ALL... but, upon receiving this egg from riley, i knew i had to. as silly as it may sound, i thought it would be a great nod to our time in the battle tower all those generations ago! and so, on that note, here is the storyline team that i journeyed through sinnoh with, and who helped reides get to where he needed to be:

as you can see, there's a bit of a theme going on with their nicknames! i decided to name each member of my brilliant diamond team after in-universe berries. i thought it'd be cute!

anyway, the berry bunch and i had a fantastic time exploring sinnoh. days passed, and, eventually, we faced what i believe to be the most difficult league in any of the pokemon games... including the most daunting champion battle ever.

cynthia lived up to her status as the most skilled champion in the pkmn franchise thus far. we had a battle for the ages, knocking 5 of each other's pokemon out. i actually almost lost to her - she had me completely backed into a corner. but my team pulled through, as kelpsy the glaceon MIRACULOUSLY toughed out an attack that should have knocked him out (via the affection system - namely, if your pokemon really loves you, they can occasionally 'survive' attacks that'd knock them out with 1hp instead) and managed to land a single ice beam on her garchomp. this clutched out the win, and my team was added to the sinnoh hall of fame.

now that i had access to the post-game, i could focus on reides once more. to get his ribbon in brilliant diamond, we'd have to foray into the brilliant contest scene.

brilliant contests are a calibre above the typical condition contests and are linked to all of your contest stats rather than just one. you actually don't gain access to this category unless you've achieved a master rank win in all of the solo-stat categories. luckily, ribbons from oras are recognized in bdsp, so reides didn't have to prove his worth to the judges and could instead get right to competing in the brilliant contests.

in addition to this category, bdsp also introduced some new contest mechanics, too. your final contest score can be split into three parts: 'visual', 'dance', and 'move'. these all seem pretty self-explanatory; the visual part is linked to your pokemon's contest condition/sheen, the dance part is linked to how well you perform in the rhythm game, and the move is linked to your timing in executing the one contest move that you're allowed to take in with you during the contests. but the visual part actually has an element of added complexity in bdsp, as it also involves a new mechanic of placing stickers on your pokemon's pokeball so that cool effects play when you send them out. (this feature was also in the gen4 sinnoh games, albeit not incorporated into those games' contests.)

the effects which these stickers play have a direct impact on your pokemon's visual score. however, for brilliant contests, normal stickers don't really cut it. instead, people recommend grinding out champion stickers (from taking on cynthia's rematch team post-heatran plotline) and showstopper stickers (from beating the other master rank contests) in order to get a decent appeal score. since reides didn't need to take on the master rank contests, i didn't have any of those - and i wasn't all too interested in grinding for more. i figured that grinding out champion stickers would work out better, since they give more points in the visual portion of the contest, anyway.

before starting that grind, i decided to give the brilliant master contest a try with nothing but the base-game stickers. given reides' perfect contest stats from omega ruby, i wondered if his contest skills would be enough to scrape through and secure a win.

as it turned out...

...they were not. people are NOT exaggerating when they talk about the difficulty of the brilliant master rank contest!! i was pretty shocked that my lovely kingdra was getting absolutely terrible visual ratings. (LIKE, LOOK AT HIM!! LOOK AT HIM!!!!!!! HE'S SO CUTE!!!!!!! AND PERFECT!!! AND SWEET, TOO!!!!!!!!) anyway, my outrage aside, it turns out that using those two types of stickers to boost your pokemon's visual rating is pretty much a necessity. the rhythm game portion of it is also not to be underestimated and typically requires a bit of practice. luckily, i'm fairly decent at rhythm games, but i knew that i would have to get those stickers from cynthia after all. i played through the pre-requisite bit of the post-game - catching heatran in a premier ball! - and made my way back to the league. with my storyline team vibing in the pc and my ribbon mastery team ready to FIGHT, i got settled and began grinding out the battles.

initially, i intended to get 20 champion stickers on the ball so as to fill it up entirely with them. after getting 8 stickers in one night, though, i was kind of worn down and decided to give the contest another try. i also taught giga impact to reides, as it's SUPER good in the bdsp contests (your pokemon gains a big boost to its score when you use it while you have a positive 'jam' score in the dance game) and can be easily bought in the veilstone department store. i was delighted to see that my protag's mother - johanna - was there for this contest, as well as gym leader fantina. both johanna and fantina are great at contests in-universe, so i was excited at the prospect of at least succeeding on this contest round, even if reides didn't manage to clutch out the win.

...however, by some miracle, reides managed to do just that!! not only did i finally manage to succeed in the brilliant master rank contest, but reides also secured the win. at this point, it was, like, 4 in the morning for me. i was absolutely astounded; i actually wondered if i was somehow hallucinating. the twinkling star ribbon was the one and only ribbon that i needed in brilliant diamond, and after so much work to get to this point...

...it was finally granted to reides!!!

upon recieving this ribbon, reides acquired all of the ribbons that he needs in order to be a ribbon master... save for ONE. one (1) single ribbon stands in his way... and that ribbon is the one that's granted to a pokemon for emerging victorious in a master ball ranked online battle. now, i can technically get this ribbon by putting reides back in pokemon shield and trying to climb the ladder in gen8... but, as you likely know, the current gen (as of me writing this post) is gen9. that means that the gen8 battle servers are... well...

empty.

okay, no. they're not entirely empty. but people have stories of waiting for hours to get into one single match, and i'm not sure if i want to put myself through that unless i absolutely must. and i might just have to, as kingdra hasn't been officially announced as part of the generation 9 pokedex... however, with indigo disk on the horizon (3 more days!!!), i figured i'd wait to see if kingdra would be included in its national dex before subjecting myself to gen8's very delayed match-making times. if it isn't, i'll just devote another post to my competitive climb in lieu of a gen9 one. (tbh, i'm considering making a totally seperate blog post for my very first foray in the vgc realm regardless - but we'll see how it goes!)

either way, i really, really enjoyed my time with reides in gen8. it has been so awesome to see him in games that i can play with the most up-to-date nintendo console, and kingdra's models across the switch games have just been so incredibly snazzy. i said this at the start of the post, but it truly is crazy to see just how far my little shiny horsea from emerald version has journeyed. i love reides so very much and i couldn't possibly be more proud of him!!!

so let's keep our fingers crossed that reides will be allowed into gen9 so that he can explore the paldea, kitakami, and unova regions! thanks again for cheering him on, and i'm looking forward to writing another update soon!!! that update may very well include reides finally achieving full ribbon master status at long last, so i'm already excited for it! :D

#jamietxt #ribbon master #pokemon #reides the kingdra

23 notes · View notes

nerdartandgames · 3 months

Text

Okay, NOW it begins!

#pokemon #ribbon master #raichu

3 notes · View notes

shinysamurott9 · 1 month

Text

2024 Games: Pokemon Sword

So this was a bit of a weird time. This is a pretty long read as after playing this game after so many years that, along with the borderline nuclear fallout that was the fandom reaction to it, was a major contributor to me kind of falling out of active interest in pokemon, my ultimate takeaway was that the game was actually not that bad. It was pretty fun, a little underrated even.

My history with this game starts around 2018ish. USUM had come out and I really liked that game. Gen 7 was an all around good time overall which I still appreciate today. The release that year was Let's Go, which I'll be real, I wasn't a fan of it in premise, I'm still not tbh. I could go into that but, in short, it was a game I had little to no interest in and I ultimately decided to skip it to see whatever was next. I bring this up because I think this was the start of me falling out of interest in pokemon, at least for a while. But while Let's Go may have planted the seed, SwSh was what solidified it.

Enter the announcement of Sword and Shield, my friends and I were pretty excited for it, the game looked pretty interesting, a region based on England? That's pretty neat. The new pokemon looked really cool too, we were genuinely excited about it. But if you're familiar with this game's history, you know exactly what happened. In the middle of the game’s hype cycle, GameFreak announced the titanically controversial decision to not include roughly half the existing pokedex in the game meaning that many pokemon would simply not exist in Pokemon SwSh. This was probably one of the biggest Internet shitstorms I've ever been witness to, and the whole thing, both the actual decision and visceral reaction, only made worse by bad actors in the community fanning the flame, just really turned me off SwSh and Pokemon as a whole in a way. In some ways it was a good thing, in the time I wasn't playing Pokemon I was exploring other series I was less familiar with like Devil May Cry, Zelda or Xenoblade or further exploring series I hadn't fully played yet like Metroid or Mega Man, most of which are series I absolutely adore today.

I still kept up with Pokemon to some extent, mostly playing the games while keeping my distance from the wider community. I played BDSP when it released and was not as disappointed as everyone else while still feeling fairly apathetic to it. Played Legends Arceus when it came out and genuinely loved it for it's fresh take on pokemon while also offering a ton of history and lore on Sinnoh that I really appreciated and I played Scarlet and dropped it a couple days in after discovering Pokeball warps and absolutely breaking the game letting me do a lap around the whole region and getting a lvl 40 starter before ever entering the school. Yhe vast majority of my time with pokemon was playing older games in Gen 3 or shiny hunting. That was til about 6 months ago. I had been playing Emerald and I wanted to take on the Battle Frontier and get the Gold Symbols. While I was prepping to do this I was watching a couple videos on the Ribbon Master Challenge and since I was already doing the Frontier and with the looming closure of Pokemon Bank, I thought that I wanted to take that on. And it's been something I've been working on the past few months. Massive shoutouts to CannedWolfMeat and SirToastyToes for their excellent videos that inspired me to do this. And now I'm here basically at the end,prepping to play through Scarlet for the the last few Ribbons in that game.

Of course though, In order to get the ribbons in Sword, I had to actually play through it for the first time. The playthrough, while really easy Leon and early Klara not withstanding, was extremely strong in terms of options for team members, especially with Isle of Armor options thrown in. I love pokemon games that offer a large variety of team members to use, it's a big reason I enjoy XY more than most. I found myself using 10 whole team members by the end of the playthrough. Would have had more but I literally never found Applin and Cursola is Shield exclusive. Many of these were new Galarian Pokemon which are for the most part fantastic. Galar imo has one of the strongest lineups of new pokemon in the series, though I feel Alola did regional forms better. Seriously though, I was using all these guys by the end.

Something thatvalso surprised me was the locations. While the Wild Area is a little boring, I found myself enjoying many of the locations. The two big cities, Hammerlocke and Motostoke are cool and feel very large, Ballonlea and the Glimwood Tangle are actually really great areas visually and Wyndon is imo, one of the best cities we've seen in a Pokemon Game in terms of both scale and looks. While I do like these areas, I will say progressing through them is extremely linear, it feels like there's very little opportunity to go off the beaten path. It's a pretty big shame when even more linear games like XY or Gen 7 had at least a couple of optional areas to explore.

I will say the main story isn’t great. I enjoyed some of the characters. Bede had a neat story with him basically trying to get validation from a father figure who doesn't seem to care much about him. Marnie was an all around good character with some fun interactions who genuinely is just doing her best for her home town and much of the dlc cast like Mustard, Klara and Peony were genuinely entertaining. I did enjoy some of the main game side characters too like Bea and Piers.

Where the plot falls is, well, the plot, not a lot really happens. The game does build up Rose's plan with Eternatus, but you're kept out of the action for most of the events leading up to it. The game basically doesn't have an antagonist until right at the end, where it just kinda feels forced. Everything with Macro Cosmos at Rose Tower only happens because Leon was meeting Rose and we didn't like that for some reason? And of course there's the climax with Eternatus, where as everyone and their mother has pointed out, Rose basically unleashes the apocalypse because he couldn't wait one day to solve a problem 1000 years away. I do like how nonchalant he is about it though, that's kind of funny and Eternatus is actually a pretty cool legendary, though there really isn't much on it storywise beyond the fact it crashed to Earth 3000 years ago and it is the source of Dynamax.

The DLCs though do have more interesting stories. With Isle of Armor focusing on Klara and her being humbled through the dojo and then bonding with Kubfu to raise him to his ultimate form. And Crown Tundra was actually really interesting as you have Calyrex be an actual character. The king of the land who lost his power over time, seemingly losing faith in himself and subsequently losing the people's worship and his steeds. Heck the fact that Calyrex properly talks to you really helps make him and his story stand out from other legendaries and is really neat I think.

I will say, there may be something to be said about how many of the best parts of this game are locked behind DLC. I don't think that's inherently a bad thing, the DLC itself definitely justifies its purchase, but I do agree that the main game is a little lacking in some areas that the DLC does help make up for but that of course has the price tag attached. I also have to say the way the DLC is designed is a liitle strange. While Isle of armor does a decent job being something you can do at any point. Having access to the Crown Tundra as early as the Wild Area is extremely weird. The levels don't scale like the Wild Area or Isle of Armor so no matter when you go there you'll be fighting stuff in the high 50s or low 60s. While this does mean you can't catch anything in the wild, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing the Dynamax adventures and catching not just a massive variety of overleveled fully evolved mons but basically any legendary from the previous generations. And with that stuff, it's not unreasonable to be able to do literally everything in the Tundra after that except for catching Calyrex. While I would agree this is a fair decision, when you're already handing me literally anything I could want to steamroll the game, blocking off Calyrex and only Calyrex just seems weird.

For some other Miscellaneous stuff. The Battle Tower: It's pathetically easy, especially by previous Tower standards. The NPCs are limited to the Pokedex available at launch and you have no restrictions on useable mons. I'm not really complaining about this as it felt good to have a Facility that was basically just a victory lap after doing every other Tower in the past 6 months or so, and it is very worthwhile to do for rewards like Bottle Caps, Candies and the Nature Mints. 50 BP for one mint sounds like a lot but it's really not as bad as it sounds. But it is slso incredibly funny that shit like this is allowed.

Speaking of, the Nature Mints, those are a genuinely fantastic addition to the series. I'm very happy to see how accessible optimising pokemon has become since Gen 7. Between Hyper Training, Very easy levelling with jow many candies you can get through Raids, Nature Mints, easily accessible EV Training through the dojo and items like the Ability Capsule and Patch (Even with how expensive the patch is in SwSh), you can make pretty much any pokemon perfectly optimised for competitive use with, for the most part, not much time investment, it's genuinely great.

One thing I have to say as someone who enjoys a bit of Shiny Hunting, SwSh are kind of a slap in tge face with how many mons are shiny locked. Stuff like Type Null which was huntable in Gen 7, the starters which are a cardinal sin to shiny lock imo, and Cosmog who has literally no practical reason to be shiny locked when you can get Solgaleo or Lunala from the Max Lair with massively boosted shiny odds. It only really reinforces how little reason there actually is to shiny lock stuff imo and SwSh has among the most in the series. It's extremely annoying. Doesn't help that the game’s shiny hunting method is kinda eh, and wasn't properly figured out til ages after it's release.

So overall, I do think SwSh is a pretty flawed game, but I feel like it has a lot of strong aspects that get overlooked due to how initial reactions colored people's opinion on the game. Is it the best pokemon game? Not by a long shot imo. Is it still good though? I would say so yeah. I'd put it around B Tier I think. It has made me pretty interested to get to SV, which I'll have to do soon for the last few ribbons.

#My stuff #2024 games talk #Pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #pokemon ribbons #ribbon master

7 notes · View notes