Tag: Pokémon

Pokémon Generations: Episodes 15 and 16

I’m a big fan of episode 16 of Generations; 15 is nothing special, but it covers characters who were already quite interesting, so it’s worth looking at anyway.  15 is the last of the generation V episodes, and focuses on the confrontation between N and Ghetsis in Black and White 2, while 16 is the beginning of generation VI, and is all about the characterisation of X and Y’s main antagonist, Lysandre.  15 follows the games quite closely, but 16 is a bit more exploratory, and it’s when Generations tries to depart a little from the games, and show the bits of backstory that we haven’t seen before, that it does its best work.  Let’s take a look.

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Cheshs asks:

You have no idea how excited I am for your opinions on S/M. The story was phenomenal, I loved the characters, all the new Pokemon, plot twists I didn’t expect … I genuinely and eagerly await your thoughts when you get the game! I just beat the main story with 58 hours clocked in.

An anonymous user also says, on a similar note:
“i’m genuinely excited for you to start gen VII because the new features remind me a ton of your “if I were in charge” series”

Well, colour me intrigued!  I thought generation VI was very well-done all around, and I approved heartily of a number of its new features, which addressed a number of the same things that “If I Were In Charge” was supposed to; I’m excited to see how VII might build on that design philosophy.  I’m scheduled to crawl out from under my spoiler-proof rock and begin my journey in Alola this Sunday (the 11th), so you can expect my initial ramblings either that day or the next.

Anonymous:

How do you think Pokemon breed?

…hoooooo boy.

So I wrote this thing about it once upon a time, and I think the big takeaway from it should be not so much anything I actually said, but that we know so little, and what we do know makes such little sense, that you can pretty much say just about anything and have it be on some level justifiable.  Game Freak has always been quite insistent in telling us that there’s an awful lot about Pokémon reproduction that no-one knows at all.  Back in the original Gold and Silver, a Pokémon egg was supposedly a major discovery because before then, no-one actually knew for sure that Pokémon hatched from eggs, which sort of makes you wonder how Pokémon ranchers and the like ever managed to do their jobs.  Then in X and Y, sensing that we foolishly thought we knew what we were talking about, Game Freak decided to remind us that we don’t know a damn thing by telling us that Pokémon eggs aren’t really eggs.  At this point you could tell me that Pokémon come from spontaneous generation and I wouldn’t quite be willing to rule it out (I mean, I’m also on the record as suggesting – only half-jokingly – that Pokémon originally evolved from rocks, so it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot of credibility to protect here).

Anonymous asks:

What are your thoughts on a potential Diamond and Pearl remake?

Eh.  On the one hand, I sort of think there are better things Game Freak’s designers could spend their time on – the original Diamond and Pearl are basically fine, I feel.  They hold up a lot better than the original Ruby and Sapphire did, anyway.  On the other, I suppose I wouldn’t exactly be averse to seeing the writers tackle the cosmic Pokémon of generation IV again, take a fresh look at them, maybe play around a bit more with their roles in the Pokémon universe, and try to do something interesting with the way myths and legends work in shaping our understanding of their world.  I guess that means I’m basically neutral on the idea.

Anonymous asks:

Now that Gen VI is over, which, in your opinion, has been the weakest/worst generation of the main series games so far? (Not counting VII) Conversely, which generation do you think was the best?

I’m not sure I do have an opinion on that.  Like, obviously they’ve been improving over the course of the franchise’s lifetime, but just as obviously I’ll be lynched if I say that I and II were clearly the worst.  Also they’re not uniformly better and worse at everything they do.  Like, V in my opinion has the best story, but I was never wild about its Pokémon designs, IV made some really important changes to the game mechanics but does some kinda screwy things with the world-building, and III was basically decent all around but nothing really sticks out about it for me other than its unique musical style.  It’s sort of difficult to say “right, this one was overall the best,” because how on earth do you compare things like that?  VI was just pretty solid all around, I suppose, and I liked aspects of its general design philosophy, which makes me optimistic for when I check out VII.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

I just found out Rare Candy Treatment ended his webcomic two years ago. I’m bummed that he’s not going to do any Gen 7 gags; but you’ll still be updating until the end of time, won’t you?

When the stars burn out, when the final gasps of humanity are extinguished in the endless void, when space and time themselves collapse and Pokémon’s nine trillionth generation draws to a close, here I will stand, still bitching about the latest electric rodent.

Pokémon Generations: Episode 14

This episode of Generations features Team Plasma’s assault on Opelucid City from the second half of Black and White 2, in which the city is frozen by blasts from their flying ship’s Kyurem-powered cannons.  It’s another one of those episodes that is basically showing us something we’ve already seen and know about, but manages to make it just that little bit more evocative through the cartoon medium than the games could originally manage.

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Ultimasheir asks:

You denied Bisharp’s right to exist back when just Black and White were out. Now it’s a defining metagame pokemon, with exceptionally powerful options in Knock Off and Sucker Punch, as well as Dark/Steel being excellent offensive typing due to the changes to Dark and Steel in Gen VI. Are you satisfied with the pokemon, now?

Sure, I suppose.  I  mean, most of the stuff I said at the time about Bisharp’s design (on which I was fairly equivocal) still applies.  Rereading the entry, I feel like I could very easily have gone the other way on him if I’d found a little more to like in his flavour text or something – after all, I described him as “at least vaguely competent” in battle, which I still think is a perfectly fair assessment of Bisharp’s capabilities at that time (generation VI has been very kind to him).  So there are definitely things about Bisharp that I still feel decidedly ‘meh’ towards; it’s just that he’s now so obviously strong that I’m sort of forced to overlook them.

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