Author: pokemaniacchris

Pokémon Moon, Episode 5: In Which I Agree To Help Resurrect An Ancient God

There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to see in Heahea City.  Part of the town is blocked off by some douchebag with a perfectionist Stoutland that won’t move until it’s sniffed literally every square centimetre of the main road, and most of the buildings I can access are standard services: there’s a Pokémon Centre, and a clothing shop, and a tourist bureau like the one in Hau’oli City.  Hau just wants to find somewhere that sells malasadas, but Lillie, for her part, has more interesting ambitions: she wants to take Nebby to Akala Island’s guardian ruins, the home of the island’s patron god-Pokémon, Tapu Lele, and she’s hoping that I’ll accompany them when the time comes.  For Nebby’s sake, I make a noncommittal “mrrmmhmm” noise and wiggle my head in a way that could plausibly be interpreted as either a nod “yes” or a shake “no.”

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Pokémon Moon, Episode 4: In Which I Learn, Rapidly And Under Duress, To Ride A Bull

Once he and Captain Ilima have finished explaining Z-moves to me, Professor Kukui suddenly remembers that he has an urgent task that cannot possibly wait: he’s lost Lillie.  Somehow.  I’m still not 100% certain that Lillie isn’t a terrorist, so in the interests of making sure someone is watching her, I agree to help look for her in the northern part of Melemele Island.  This area, route 3, is cordoned off by barricades.   Not for any particular reason, mind you.  Someone appears to have decided that the Pokémon beyond are too strong for civilians to tangle with unless they have an escort – a certified trainer who has completed the island’s trials.  Which… sort of raises the question of how Lillie got through, since she not only hasn’t completed any trials but insists that she’s not actually a trainer at all (which I’m pretty sure is not true; I’m not sure of the legal status of their relationship but for all practical purposes she certainly seems to be Nebby’s trainer).  Evidence that she has secret and subversive abilities continues to mount.  In any case, at Ilima’s command, the barricades open for me, and I am given access to the northern coastal road.

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RandomAccess asks:

I thought about Pokémon ethics and something occurred to me, Pokémon are dangerous. Of course humans use devices to contain them, it’s the one way we can survive in that hostile world, where there are creatures that can destroy you mind, body, and even soul. The fact that they become tame after capture despite obviously still having free will is incredibly lucky on our part, and shows it’s mutually beneficial, because if they wanted to, they’d destroy us and be rid of us, and we couldn’t stop it

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Anonymous asks:

What do you think is the logic behind Zubat’s Poison typing?

Well, for one thing, Game Freak seem to have disliked the idea of pure Flying-types up until generation V, when we got Tornadus, and it’s not really clear what else Zubat could possibly have been (no Dark type when he was introduced).  For another, vampire bats are technically venomous by some definitions, since their saliva has special properties that inhibit clotting and increase blood flow to the area of a bite.

RandomAccess asks:

Huh, for some reason I thought you were playing Sun, but since the normal trial featured rattatah instead of yungoos, I imagine you’re actually playing Moon. How do you feel about the inverted clock feature?

Well, those entries are titled “Pokémon Moon: Episode 1, 2, 3, etc”…

Anyway.  It actually took me a little while to figure out what was going on, because at the moment I’m in New Zealand for Christmas with my family, but my DS was still set to US eastern time, so in practice the game was… I think six hours behind the actual time of day?  Which is sort of how the game justifies it, of course – Alola is so far away from everything that it’s in a different time zone, and Professor Kukui actually asks you if you’re feeling any jet lag following your arrival from Kanto.  Anyway.  It seems perfectly harmless, and a nice way of emphasising what I assume will be a prominent day/night theme in the games (Yungoos’ Pokédex entry specifically talks about how it’s very active during the day and promptly collapses from exhaustion at dusk, so it makes a sensible opposite to the nocturnal Alolan Dark Rattata).  Depending on your typical play schedule it might become inconvenient, but that’s true of the basic day/night system as well, and you can circumvent it easily enough by just lying to your DS about what time it is, if you really need to.

Anonymous asks:

Why do you think gen-specific Pokemon pairs get unequal treatment by Game Freak? (Eg, Vileplume got a new evolution in Gen 2, while Victreebel got nothing, and Whimsicott was already better than Lilligant even before becoming Fairy-type in Gen 6.)

I suppose because those pairings don’t serve any gameplay purpose beyond the games in which they were originally introduced.  Oddish and Bellsprout were no longer version-exclusive in generation II, so why continue to act as if they were?  If anything, I think it would be pointlessly restrictive for future games to demand that those pairs of Pokémon continue to mirror each other.  If you have an idea for an alternate evolution for Gloom that you think is a good one, why declare it invalid because you don’t have an idea for Weepinbell?  As for Whimsicott getting a buff that Lilligant missed out on by becoming a Fairy-type – well, you’ve hit the nail on the head.  Whimsicott was already better than Lilligant, so clearly they didn’t care in the first place.  Why would they care more in generation VI, when Whimsicott’s special relationship with Lilligant was no longer relevant, than they had in V?

Anonymous asks:

What do you think of Pearls, Nuggets, Mushrooms, and other material commodities in the game that exist only to be sold for ca$h?

Well, it’s not a Pokémon-specific phenomenon.  The general video game term is “vendor trash” – items that serve as a way of giving extra money to the player without having actual physical coins etc. lying around in places that make no sense.  In a lot of games these are things like the pelts of animals, or magical body parts of rare magical creatures.  Obviously that’s no good for Pokémon, so instead we get nuggets.  From an in-universe perspective, well, clearly these items are useless to us, but not necessarily to everyone.  Nuggets are made of gold; pearls can likewise be used for jewellery.  The mushrooms, we know from a chef who will buy them in Black and White, can be used in gourmet cooking.  Rare bones, and the assortment of artefacts from the undersea Undella Ruins, all have tremendous scientific value.  God only knows what comet shards can be used for.

Pokémon Moon, Episode 3: In Which A Magic Rock Promises Me Incredible Power

Captain Ilima’s invitation takes me north from Hau’oli City towards Verdant Cavern, the great fern- and moss-covered grotto where I am to complete the first step of the “mission” supposedly given to me by Tapu Koko.  There are some minor delays in leaving the city, owing to that damn Tauros blocking the road again, but Kahuna Hala was on the scene to sort it out.  Apparently the Tauros is something of a local celebrity, and I’m starting to think that the primary responsibility associated with the position of Melemele Kahuna is to keep it from obstructing traffic.  Not that it matters all that much – I’m not exactly in a hurry to get to Verdant Cavern.  I still kinda resent Tapu Koko (and I suppose by extension Hala, but he’s a difficult fellow to dislike) for unilaterally deciding to put me on the path of the Island Challenge, so I’m happy to keep it waiting for as long as possible.

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