One lunatic's love-hate relationship with the Pokémon franchise, and his addled musings on its rights, wrongs, ins and outs. Come one, come all, and indulge my delusions of grandeur as I inflict my opinions on anyone within shouting distance.
Because you love Grass types, I want to share a spoiler-free tip when you start exploring the new Pokemon. There is a mono Grass type with access to Leaf Guard and Oblivious. Catch one with Oblivious if you can. It’s name ends with the letter -t.
Ooh, how cryptic. And what an odd ability to prefer. I suppose Oblivious must be replaced by something else as the Pokémon evolves…? I look forward to finding out.
I got an idea to rebalance natures. Let’s take, say, a bold pokémon. The attack stat is reduced by 10%, minus 10% of the neutral defense stat. The defense stat is boosted by 10%, plus 10% of the neutral attack stat. What you get is a compound boost/debuff so the give and take is actually even (Like, if both attack and defense were 100 neutral, it would result in 80 attack and 120 defense). Of course, a stat can never be lower than 1.
Ehhhh… I think if you’re going to do this you should really commit to it and get rid of the flat 10% entirely (and maybe change the proportional part to 15% or even more). It’s not a terrible idea, and it solves the problem of natures that sacrifice your unused attack stat being obviously the best choice (Alakazam, for instance, no longer gets very much out of sacrificing attack, and needs to sacrifice special defence to get a meaningful boost to speed or special attack). On the other hand, I think it’s significantly harder for new players to understand than the current system. It also discourages using Pokémon as mixed attackers, which is unfortunate – a Pokémon that actually does have two high attack stats, like Infernape, can get a lot more out of its nature than most Pokémon do by focusing on just one attack stat, which seems contrary to what Game Freak actually want us to do with Pokémon like that.
I’ve been listening to all the NPCs in Kalos out of boredom and noticed some weird things. One of them says the Beauty and the Beast story is about a prince that turned into a pokémon, and there’s a portrait of AZ that supposedly had to have been made 3000 years ago; which is a renaissance-style painting. Did GF realize how anachronistic that is for a time when portraits were done on Greek pottery and Egyptian bedrock murals?
Okay so there’s sort of two parts to this question – do we expect developments in the history of art and technology in the Pokémon world to mirror those of the real world, and exactly how much do you know about ancient portraiture?
Continue reading “VikingBoyBilly asks:”Game Freak often do event giveaways of Pokemon with special moves. What if they did the same thing, but with abilities? I.E. a Pikachu with an ability it couldn’t normally get (say Adaptability, for example) that it couldn’t pass on by breeding? I think this would make the games even more interesting, and be another way of giving older Pokemon access to newer abilities.
Eh… to be honest I’ve never really been fond of event-exclusive Pokémon; it annoys me when companies put things in their games that you can’t get by playing the game. I don’t quite see what those things add.
Do you think it’s time that Pokemon games got rid of the whole “Team Evil” tradition? It seems that they’re just constraining their storylines a lot more by requiring that every villain be the boss of an evil organization. And I feel like Lysandre, for example, would have worked a lot better as a stand-alone villain.
It sort of depends on how much you value the idea of “Team Evil” as a traditional element of the games’ story, like having a choice of three Grass/Fire/Water starters or completing the Pokédex. Personally I tend to like the idea of ditching as many of the formulaic elements of the games as they can get away with, and I think I more or less agree with your assessment of Lysandre (it’s important to note here that his plan does actually imply the presence of an inner circle that he wants to survive the Ultimate Weapon, but that inner circle doesn’t have to be a “team” in the standard Pokémon sense). I think that as long as they insist on keeping a standard set of elements like this, they’re probably never going to come up with a really excellent story that rivals the best games produced by other companies (either Japanese or western). They can keep improving on their own past efforts, though, and I’m still happy to see them do that.
What if abilities were split into “traits” and “skills,” where “traits” are permanently stapled onto the species due to it being inherent to their physiology (stuff like levitate, iron barbs, liquid ooze, etc.) and “skills” being ones they have to learn and are limited so if they want another skill, they have to replace the old one? (stuff like technician, super luck, moxie, inner focus, etc.)
Seems legit. It’s sightly awkward in that you wind up creating this major gameplay distinction between learned and inherent abilities that is based entirely on aesthetics (like, as far as I can tell there is no mechanical criterion that separates the two groups you’ve outlined). Maybe at some point the developers actually want to have a Pokémon that can get Levitate but doesn’t have it automatically (the way Bronzong is now)? Of course, you could just rule that things which are inherent “traits” for some Pokémon can be learned “skills” for others. You also need a mechanism for learning skills (but that could be as simple as having them be learned on level-up like moves).
I think you should at least download the demo because, while I’m not going to spoil it, you get something good on it that you can transfer to Sun and Moon when you complete it.
Hmm. All right; good to know.
Will you be playing and reviewing the Sun and Moon demo that’s coming out in a few days?
I will not. Spoilers! 😉
Two episodes, okay; let’s do this thing. Today we’re looking at two of the supporting characters from the Johto games: the rival character, Silver, and the “mystery man” pursuing Suicune, Eusine. Jim the Editor and I have discussed Silver at some length in the past, as part of a series on all the rival characters of the core games. Eusine I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about in detail before; he’s not a terribly deep character in his own right, but he’s sort of interesting as a prelude to the rapidly expanding role that legendary Pokémon have in the games’ storylines from the Hoenn games onward. So here we go: Silver.
Continue reading “Pokémon Generations: Episodes 5 and 6”Do you feel like the GSC games get the short shrift from Nintendo/Game Freak in comparison to the others?
No? I’m honestly not sure what you might be referring to.
Pokémaniacal 