Category: Reader Questions

Anonymous asks:

Bulbasaur is slightly curious, no? Why do you think the devs decided to give a starting Pokemon a dual type? It risked confusing new players, and there’s nothing about the design that particularly screams “Poison-type” anyway.

Ehhhh I don’t know about that.  Poison has no interactions with Fire and Water, so it doesn’t mess with the basic starter trio at all, which is how they teach type interactions, and new players will meet dual-type Pokémon on literally the first route anyway (Pidgey is Normal/Flying).  It’s true that Bulbasaur doesn’t really need to be Poison-type, and I’m tempted to put that down to Game Freak not having finished figuring out what Grass-types actually were yet. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

If the Pokemon universe had an all out war between regions, which region(s) do you think will survive and which would fall? I’m not really talking about nuclear bombs and guns and stuff like that but the species of Pokemon in that region and how well they do against other Pokemon from other regions, the competency of the gym leaders, elite four, and champion, etc.

The thing about Pokémon trainers is they make terrible soldiers.  They all have wildly different capabilities, so it’s difficult to assign them tactical and operational roles.  They’re competitive and a lot of them have huge egos, so they tend to have poor discipline and unit cohesion.  Their individual battle styles and the different powers of their Pokémon will often work at cross-purposes if they haven’t been training together extensively. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous asks:

I’ve got a challenge for you, if you have the time! Your hatred for Nosepass and Probopass is legendary around these parts of Tumblr (by which I mean your blog). How then would you ‘fix’ them to make them more interesting to you? So a challenge along the lines of your suggested improvements for the Top Ten Worst Pokémon! (don’t worry, we’ll do good ol’ Garbodor another day)

ohhhhhhhhhh goddddddddd

whyyyyyyyy

Okay, well… part of the problem is, the most interesting thing about Nosepass and Probopass is probably their link to the cardinal directions, but that link goes through the dumbest thing about Nosepass and Probopass – their giant red magnetic noses.  Also, it’s just bizarre to have a Pokémon that can only ever face directly north (how do they even fight like that?), and I kind of want some excuse to give them multiple faces, so that they “face” both north and south, or in all four cardinal directions, but then doing that would force us to abandon the cool moai inspiration. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Anonymous

Now that you’re done with your play through, mind sharing your thoughts and theories on Anabel? I’m not asking for a formal review on her or anything as I know you have a lot of other things planned, but outside of the Epilogue bit you wrote, do you have anything to say on her appearance? Why they chose her, what it all means? It was a really unexpected appearance!

Anabel… I think she’s there at least partly because she isn’t in Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby, and they wanted to do something with her.  She’s sort of the unofficial leader of the Frontier Brains in Emerald, and does seem to have an affinity for legendary Pokémon, using more of them in the Battle Frontier than any of her colleagues except for Brandon.  They might also have felt it was important to include characters from Hoenn who could act as assurance that Mega Evolution isn’t gone for good (Anabel can use Mega Alakazam, Mega Lucario or Mega Latios in the Battle Tree).  She seems like she may be a Psychic-type specialist, so she sort of makes sense for the vaguely X-Files/Men In Black-ish Ultra Beast incursion plotline.  Could also be that the game designers have big plans for her in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon.

Anonymous asks:

how broken would a grass/dragon mega serperior w contrary and draco meteor be?

Hmm.  Well, Serperior is pretty good now with just Contrary, Leaf Storm, and basically no other special movepool to speak of, and Grass has terrible type coverage.  The only other point of comparison is Malamar’s Superpower, which is a lot weaker for several reasons.  I don’t know if it’d quite be broken broken because un-STABed Draco Meteor isn’t going to be that much better than Leaf Storm a lot of the time, but it’d definitely be top tier.

EDIT: Derp, misread the question.  Eh, a Grass/Dragon mega evolution would be strong, but I don’t think *that* much more ridiculous than a bunch of other mega evolutions, and you get eaten alive by Ice Shard.  Also, would Serperior actually be able to learn Draco Meteor anyway?  Only Dragon-types can use the move tutor, and Ampharos can’t, despite having a Dragon-type mega evolution.

Anonymous asks:

The Gen I Fighting-types are all martial artists or athletes, but.. what the heck makes Primeape a Fighting-type? Can’t be its temper because hey, Gyarados ain’t a Fighting-type. If anything its temper should make it a Dark-type, along the lines of Tyranitar, Sharpedo, or Hydreigon.

Well, there was no Dark-type in generation I, and to be honest I think that’s probably the main reason Primeape isn’t Dark/Fighting or something (that’s probably what I would do with him).  Given that Primeape is humanoid in shape and has no particularly spectacular magical abilities, it makes sense that his fighting style would wind up having some resemblance to martial arts techniques, even though Primeape doesn’t appear to be influenced by an specific martial art like many other Fighting Pokémon are.

Anonymous asks:

Can you offer a reasoned guess behind the Dark secondary typing to Crawdaunt & the star-shaped crest included in its design? Bulbapedia suggests “Crawdaunt’s shell may be based on batesian mimicry in association with Sharpedo, as it resembles an open shark mouth with a star on the nose.”

Well, the Dark type has to do with Crawdaunt’s violent, aggressive nature and its habit of driving other Pokémon away from its territory.  Dark Pokémon are linked with malice, so fighting purely for the sake of violence (contrast Fighting-types, who fight to improve their skills) seems like a reasonable Dark-type trait.  You can compare here Tyranitar, Hydreigon, and Incineroar.  As for the star thing, I don’t think I’d read too much into it.  It looks like a starfish, and Crawdaunt is an aquatic Pokémon, so the motif is on-theme.  It looks a little like a crown, which expresses Crawdaunt’s higher status compared to Corphish.  It adds a little more variety to the colours of the design, and some interest to the contours of Crawdaunt’s head.  I don’t think it needs to be more than that.