After seeing you play and compare Pokemon to Final Fantasy, I recommend taking a look at either of a pair of games, whenever you have time. Person 3 FES for PS2 or Persona 4 the golden for Vita. They’re also RPGs and their mechanics have similarities with Pokemon and I feel like Pokemon would work nicely with the combat engine… elemental advantages, fluid combat, 8-slot moveset, and enemies, minus bosses, have HP and damage numbers similar to your characters.

I don’t actually own either of those consoles.  I played Final Fantasy VII on my computer when it was released on Steam recently.  Maybe if someone can recommend a good emulator and I have time I’ll take a look, but I certainly couldn’t promise a review; I have quite enough to do this year what with all the sixth-generation Pokémon to look at.

I came up with a theory about the development of why XY was so small. I think that Nintendo was originally going to release Gen V on the 3DS using the XY graphics engine, but something happened that pushed back the release date. To pad time, they decided to implement the new Poke designs. For instance, you can see statues of the Tao dragons in the garden (scrapped from the original draft of the game?) Plus Team Plasma’s knight-getup would make more sense if they lived in a European-type region.

I’m not sure I understand.  Your proposition is that the generation with the largest number of Pokémon designs to date was the ‘filler’ generation meant to tread water until the 3DS was ready?

Do you have a favorite legendary trio?

Hmm.  Not really, no, but if you asked me to pick one I think I’d go with the Legendary… er… DogCatBeastThings.  You know, Suicine, Entei and Raikou.  I enjoy the contrasting aesthetic goals at work in the three designs (beauty and grace vs. strength and stability vs. energy and dynamism), and their origin story hits my personal ‘sweet spot’ between “not enough legends to be legendary” and “wait, this actually breaks the universe,” while also having some very neat symbolism that purports to explain their powers (Raikou is the lightning that struck the Brass Tower, Entei is the fire that destroyed it, and Suicune is the rain that put it out).

Pokémon Origins: Episode 1

Professor Oak introduces us to the mysterious creatures of his world.

For those not familiar with it, Pokémon Origins is what might be called a ‘reboot’ of the Pokémon anime.  Released late last year, it is a four-episode miniseries which follows the adventures of Red – the protagonist of the original Pokémon games – and is closely based on the events of Red Version, Blue Version, and their third-generation remakes, Fire Red and Leaf Green (the visuals mainly taking their cues from the latter pair of games).  This stuff is pure nostalgia fuel, for people who were introduced to Pokémon by Fire Red and Leaf Green, for those of us who are old enough to have clear memories of when Red and Blue were first released, and, hell, probably for Game Freak and the animators too.  Each episode opens with the CONTINUE/NEW GAME/OPTIONS screen and ends with the SAVE screen from the original games, the first episode begins with Professor Oak’s “introduction to the world of Pokémon,” followed by the battle between Nidorino and Gengar familiar from the opening cinematic (on Red’s TV), and even the dialogue often quotes directly from the games.  This last point, if you ask me, may have been pushing it a bit far, since the English translations of Red and Blue didn’t exactly have the best-written dialogue in video game history – the quotes stand out for being, frankly, a little wooden.  Enough of the general style, though; let’s talk about the plot.

Continue reading “Pokémon Origins: Episode 1” →

Any thoughts on the Pokemon Plus and Minus rumors that made the rounds recently? I personally feel a bit ambivalent, especially since it comes so soon after X and Y, but at least the design ideas seem fairly interesting…

Are you asking whether I believe them?  Because at present I see absolutely no reason to, and given that, I see little point in analysing any of it either.  "This one site says this one guy told them,” whoever they claim this one guy is, holds little interest for me.  Obviously it could all be true; I don’t know.  I’ll be waiting for something a touch more official before I pay any attention whatsoever, though.

With the reveal of the first X and Y event pokemon, Diancie, in a recent Coro Coro issue, I thought I’d touch upon a theory of mine. Diancie is a rock/fairy type, a type that is only shared by carbink. Interestingly, they both seem to have a gem motiff. I heard Diancie’s leaked pokedex entry state that it compresses carbon in the air into crystal structures seemingly creating gems out of thin air. Now, wouldn’t it be interesting if Diancie was the mother of all Carbink?

Well, I’m normally lukewarm at best about this kind of speculation, but I do remember thinking when I first saw Carbink that it must  evolve, because it didn’t ‘look’ finished, and being rather surprised when it didn’t… so I don’t know.  I don’t think there’d be any precedent for a relationship like that between a common and a legendary Pokémon, but that doesn’t mean Diancie couldn’t be the first.  Maybe?

How broken would you think Shedinja would be if it had Sturdy instead of Wonder Guard?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say “not.”

Shedinja is weird, and there are a lot of Pokémon (or, at the very least, a lot of movesets) that will auto-lose to it, one-on-one.  On the other hand, anything that can harm Shedinja, at all, is game over.  It’s very all-or-nothing, and since it doesn’t look like Stealth Rock is going to stop being a thing any time soon, the burden is normally going to be on Shedinja’s trainer to keep things from tipping over to “nothing.”  The fact that Shedinja can be insta-killed by five different attack types certainly hurts it, but the fact that it can also be insta-killed by burns, poison, entry hazards, weather damage, Leech Seed, Rough Skin recoil, a variety of Tricked items, and anything with Mold Breaker is at least as big a problem (and none of those things are really unusual).  Ultimately, almost any Pokémon in the game can learn Toxic – and let’s not forget that Shedinja isn’t actually a top-tier offensive threat in its own right, either (it’s all but certain that, even with direct damage immunity, the vast majority of teams would have something to kill a Shedinja, so it can’t just rely on its invulnerability to wear everything down – it has limited time in play with which to contribute to the team, and Shedinja’s movepool isn’t great).  Don’t get me wrong, Shedinja would be a lot more powerful if it just had flat-out immunity to direct damage, but without having a playtest for it, I still think we’d be looking at “interesting” rather than “broken.”

I absolutely loved your epilogue, it’s actually too bad this cannot continue but if Z is a sequel, could u perhaps…if it’s not too much…tie in this into the next write up? It feels like a story haha.

Well, bear in mind that I have no idea what’s going to happen in Z (or whatever other fake-out they might throw at us)… bear in mind also that even the way I’ve been reading the events of X for the purposes of my epilogue is a little bit contentious – Lysandre’s dialogue on Y doesn’t bring up the possibility of using the Ultimate Weapon to become immortal, so I strongly doubt that’s ‘canon.’  He could easily be dead, and it may well be logically impossible (even if I do a write-up of Z in the same way, which I may not).  That’s also not really the point of what I was doing there.  It’s an epilogue; it comes at the end.  What happens after that is up to the reader now.