Did you ever get around to playing the Crown Tundra? Also, do you think the Hisuian variants/evolutions of some Pokemon you’ve ragged on before make up for the originals? (sorry if you get this twice, i think i accidentally deleted this the first time)

I did! I thought it was quite fun, and a decent answer to the honestly pretty intractable problem of “how do we fit all these goddamn legendary Pokémon into this game?” (to which my answer, frankly, would probably have been “don’t,” but we’ve seen the kind of response that strategy gets). I mostly just didn’t think I had anything particularly important to say about it. Broadly, I think the Isle of Armour and Crown Tundra are pretty similar to the kind of stuff that Pokémon used to add in its “third version” games like Emerald and Platinum, but priced as an expansion rather than a whole new game, which strikes me as a good deal less exploitative. It is what it is, it does what it promises to do, I don’t know that I think it’s anything special, but I did like the Calyrex storyline, so… yeah, sure. It’s fine.

As for the Hisuian forms… hmm… trying now to remember which of those I have ragged on… I dunno if this counts as changing my opinion on Basculin, who is still pretty silly, but I do think Basculegion is a nice addition and takes the shoal/school theme in an interesting direction. That’s probably the biggest one. Uh. What about Lilligant, was I mean to Lilligant? Eh, I dunno if I’m that big a fan of Hisuian Lilligant either, in any case; it’s kinda just “what if Lilligant were Tsareena?” Qwilfish…? Nah, I just refuse on principle to allow Qwilfish to settle into my long-term memory, no matter what they do with it. The name Overqwil is worth a lot of points, I’ll give them that.