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.
Rules are here, and if you’re interested in hearing about the tribulations of other trainers suffering through this ridiculous challenge run I’ve created, check out the current season of the Exp. Share podcast!
Time to get moving again – we’re leaving Castelia City. Of course, first we have to pass through the suburbs, and that means…
Oof – this again.
Continue reading “Black 2 Kingslocke: Episode 4”Rules are here, and if you’re interested in hearing about the tribulations of other trainers suffering through this ridiculous challenge run I’ve created, check out the current season of the Exp. Share podcast!
The first segment of the Pokéstar Studios subplot is obligatory for progressing the story, because we need to get Roxie’s dad the ferry captain out of the film industry and back onto his boat so he can take us to Castelia City. I actually think making movies at Pokéstar Studios is a pretty cool little minigame, but it’s not relevant to the Kingslocke, so I won’t be discussing anything that happens here. Let’s just skip ahead to…
A confrontation at the docks between gym leader Roxie, dear innocent rival Hugh and a group of Mysterious Masked Thugs. We just learned about making movies, so obviously we all know that this is a moment we have to draw a card for dramatic effect if nothing else.
Continue reading “Black 2 Kingslocke: Episode 3”Rules are here, and if you’re interested in hearing about the tribulations of other trainers suffering through this ridiculous challenge run I’ve created, check out the current season of the Exp. Share podcast!
While not technically a new “route” in the game’s own terms, the part of route 20 at the bottom of these stairs is inaccessible until after you’ve defeated Cheren, and it has different and higher-level wild Pokémon. In the past, I’ve normally treated situations like that as new “areas” for Kingslocke purposes.
Ten – Rule Card: An observer to the game may revoke any or all (or none) of the rules currently affecting you, AND free any or all (or none) of your petrified Pokémon, AND either make up a new rule or change an existing one. If no observers are available, you may revoke one rule.
Now there’s a twist… let’s see what Jim the Editor has in store for me.
Continue reading “Black 2 Kingslocke: Episode 2”As you may have picked up if you, for some godawful reason, pay attention to my Twitter: the extremely good boys of the Exp. Share podcast, who play through Pokémon games in tandem and discuss their adventures each week, are currently running Black 2 and White 2 with my “Kingslocke” rules, after the idea was put into their head by my good friend Ben from I Chews You (the podcast about cooking and eating Pokémon, I LIKE WHAT I LIKE, OKAY!?). As well as being a nice treat for any fans of the Kingslocke who want to see someone else suffer through this ludicrously complicated tarot-based challenge run, this is a fantastic opportunity for me to get more data on how the rules actually function in practice and where they might be confusing or easily misunderstood (well… more confusing than they’re supposed to be). I still haven’t played under the revised version that I wrote after completing my Pearl run a few months back, so this is pretty valuable information if I want to keep updating the rules, or follow through on my threats to create an “advanced” version where the four suits all do different things.
Of course, seeing as Josh and Tanner of Exp. Share are doing something so helpful for me, I think it’s only polite if I join in. Again, after all, I haven’t yet played with the most recent version of the rules myself. Exp. Share has a segment called “Level Check,” where the hosts discuss the current state of their teams (including recent casualties if they’ve been playing a Nuzlocke… etc.). A lot of listeners keep pace with Tanner and Josh playing through the same game and post their own Level Checks on Reddit each week, so I’m going to start a run of Black 2, try to catch up to them reasonably promptly (I believe they normally tackle one gym per week, and they’ve just passed the third in Castelia City) and then keep pace for the rest of their run. This should be a lot less intense than my almost-daily updates on the Pearl Kingslocke, and the posts will probably be a lot less detailed (at least the first few while I’m catching up), which is good because I’m also still playing Legends: Arceus and have ideas I need to discuss about that game too. I’m not going to take time to talk much about Black 2 itself or the story (I’ll assume readers know the plot and characters), or give detailed accounts of most major battles; instead I’ll just focus on what’s happening with the Kingslocke cards and deck, with periodic updates on how my team is doing in the spirit of Level Check. Also, if I need an observer rule I’m just going to go to Jim the Editor rather than crowdsource it like I did for Pearl (not that that wasn’t also great, but I want to come up with a more refined system before doing it again; this is just more convenient given my format).
I Could no longer….
Anyways, how do you think gamefreak would approach restoring Kyurem to the original Dragon?
My idea would be (as true to the seemingly benevolent natures of the protagonist in the games). Reshiram and Zekrom giving a piece of their essence, which would then be transformed into a mega stone for Kyurem
Well I am not Game Freak, as I have learned over the course of the last seven years, slowly, painfully and at great material and mystical cost. What we actually know about any plans Game Freak may ever have had to release this Pokémon (let’s call it “Primal Kyurem” for the sake of argument – I think Primal Reversion is arguably a better analogy for what we’re doing than Mega Evolution) is that there is an unobtainable item lingering in the code of all the games from Black and White onwards, called the God Stone. Aside from its grey colour, it looks exactly like the Light Stone and Dark Stone, the dormant forms of Reshiram and Zekrom, which are plot-critical items in the final versions of Black and White. Not enough information is left in the finished games for us to deduce what the God Stone was intended to be for. It might have been meant as a dormant form of Kyurem, but the name “God Stone” seems altogether too grand for a being as diminished and broken as Kyurem. I suspect it is the item, created by somehow merging the Light and Dark Stones, that would be absorbed by Kyurem (as it absorbs the Light Stone or Dark Stone at the climax of Black or White 2) to restore it to its “primal” state. But even if this is true, the notion was probably abandoned at a relatively early stage of the games’ development cycle. Continue reading “Squidward Tentacles asks:”
Is it just me, or do Pokemon Black and White seem like they were intended to be a lot longer? Many Pokemon in the game reach their final stages well after they’d be useful (like Bisharp, Braviary, Hydreigon etc) and the ending sequence feels so rushed, with N’s castle popping up out of nowhere, and you catching your dragon in the very last scene. I know it’s a weird time to be talking about Black and White, but it’s always felt so odd…
Well, that is the only generation so far that included a direct sequel to its main title. Purely as a practical reality of development cycles, Game Freak must have decided that they were going to do Black and White 2 as sequels long before Black and White were actually released, but I wouldn’t be totally shocked if they had originally planned a more typical “Grey version” – Black and White with some extra bells and whistles – and changed course only when they realised there was too much material that wouldn’t fit in the initial release. So it’s plausible that there was something unusual about the writing process in Generation V that could be responsible for that truncated feeling you’re sensing. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:”
Pokémaniacal 