Pokémon Generations: Episodes 12 and 13

The last two weeks’ Generations shorts were… less inspiring to me than the previous couple, although I will admit that this may be partly because I have irrational hatred for Looker, who once again appears in a central role in episode 12.  Then again, 12 at least does something different, even though I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to mean; 13 seems like it’s going back to Generations’ now-accustomed role as a cheerleader for the games.  Let’s take a look.

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Anonymous asks:

How do you envisage the ability Speed Boost working? Most other boosting moves and abilities have a description of how they work; Agility’s move description states that the user relaxes to lighten itself; Calm Mind is a meditation; Autotomize has the user shed body parts to reduce its weight. But Speed Boost just… happens, without the user doing anything? Any theories?

I suppose it just takes them a while to get “warmed up,” as it were.  It could also vary between species – Blaziken perhaps entering a sort of martial trance that rapidly improves her reflexes, Sharpedo going into a battle frenzy, Scolipede gathering momentum as he rolls around the battlefield (not unlike the logic behind Rollout).

Pokémon Generations: Episode 11

Oh, now this one is interesting.

Episode 11 of Pokémon: Generations is a new take on the fate of Cyrus, the boss of Team Galactic and major antagonist of Diamond, Pearl and Platinum.  Cyrus’ ambition, to quickly recap for people who either never played those games or don’t remember them very well, was to outshine every other Pokémon villain who ever had been or ever will be, by unmaking reality itself and becoming a god in order to create a new universe that would be free from the weakness and imperfection of the soul.  Let’s see how that turns out for him.

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Pokémon Generations: Episodes 9 and 10

Right, for a brief period there I was literally dead, for tax reasons, but I’ve now clawed my way out of hell and back into the world of the living to keep doing… um…

…what… exactly is it that I do here, again?

Oh, Christ, this nonsense.  Well, let’s see if I can catch up by the end of the week, shall we?

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VikingBoyBilly asks:

How much do you think the game would change if, say, pokémon had six moves? Or two tabs of “attack” moves and “no damage” moves?

I suppose “quite a bit.”  I’m actually on the record as being against increasing the number of moves Pokémon can learn, largely because – contrary to what you might intuitively expect – I think it would reduce strategy and diversity in the game, not increase it.  I expect it would slant the game towards the Pokémon with the largest and most diverse movepools, and reduce the trade-offs and calculations that go into building a team that covers its most important weaknesses with its limited resources.  I also suspect you might see a fairly dramatic increase in the importance of self-buffing movesets (which could, say, include a set-up move and some way to heal while still having room for four attacks) and consequently also things that counter those strategies (Haze, Whirlwind, Unaware, hell, maybe people would even start using Punishment).  Choice Band/Specs/Scarf, by contrast, probably gets slightly worse.  I could be completely wrong about all of this though; it’s the sort of thing might be interesting to see playtested.