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.
You have the most interesting blog to read, as I myself am a huge fan of the unova region and I really appreciate all these in depth reviews on each and every one of them instead of a simple “this sucks”.
Aww, shucks; thank you! “Interesting” is always the goal! Well, except when “ranting” or “inflicting my unbelievably specific research on the public” or “telling stupid jokes” is the goal. I guess in reality the goal fluctuates. But “interesting” is definitely a plus!
Design-wise, you’ve always seemed quite fond of magcargo. More than once you’ve praised it for having a unique and interesting design that diverges from the standard “animal on fire.” But I think we can all agree that in terms of usage, magcargo is absolute trash. Gen 2 screwed it over terribly with horrible typing and quite unimpressive stats, and the later generations did nothing at all to help it. So, if you were in charge, what exactly would you do to save magcargo?
Oh, Magcargo. I’m fond of him because the idea of a snail made of lava with a shell made of cooling rock just makes sense on a level that, say, a lizard with a fiery tail or a horse with a fiery mane doesn’t – it takes a snail’s pliable body and rigid shell, and applies that to the Fire element in a way that recalls the formation of a crust of solid rock on the surface of a lava flow. But yeah, Magcargo is terrible in so many ways. Double weaknesses to Ground and Water make it impossible for Magcargo to be a top-notch defensive Pokémon, and awful speed and average special attack make it impossible for him to be anything else. I think it would be thematically appropriate, and helpful, for Magcargo to have an ability that absorbs Water attacks and turns them into a physical defence bonus to represent the hardening of his lava skin into rock (instead of f#$%ing immunity to freezing, which is what he’s got now). That just makes Magcargo less obviously awful though. Without evolving to jack up those depressing stats there’s only so much we can do; at the moment he’s so slow even Shell Smash doesn’t make him a very good attacker. The nonexistence of special Rock attacks is also a big stumbling block. But Magcargo actually gets Yawn, Recover, Reflect and Light Screen, Will’o’Wisp, Stealth Rock… given halfway decent HP and special defence, and a strong ability, it seems like there would be plenty there for a more tanky-supporty role.
Could I use the idea of house mottos for Pokemon in my own work? Not taking the ones you created, of course, just using the same idea.
*shrug* I can’t be the only person who’s done it, just the only one ambitious/stupid enough to try doing it for all of them. People make Game of Thrones-style mottos for all kinds of stuff, after all. So absolutely, go ahead.
I’m starting to think Eevee might be based on the common ancestor of dogs, cats, weasels, foxes, otters, etc. Sound cool? Maybe the bunny ears symbolizes it’s evolutionary leap from herbivore into a predator.
Well, the basal Carnivora probably looked something like this – much more distinctly cat-like than Eevee and probably tree-dwelling – so I think it’s highly unlikely Game Freak specifically had something like that in mind. I think conceptually they may have had ideas like common ancestors and adaptive radiation in mind – they did call her “the Evolution Pokémon,” after all. But we already knew that.
Attack and Sp Attack are not great stats. A special attacker doesn’t use physical attacks, so why do they need any points in Attack? Mixed attackers are generally less efficient at doing their job without speed or bulk to protect them. Do you think there could be more added to these stats to make them more useful so that a Pokemon like Absol and Cacturne don’t have massive dead weight stats that they aren’t using.
Hrrrmm. Well, I do see your point. Mixed attackers have kinda been on a downward slide for the last couple of generations thanks to the gradually increasing options for getting overwhelming power in a single attack stat (particularly now that we have mega evolution). Flexibility is great, but that’s what your teammates are for. And because Game Freak seem to use a Pokémon’s base stat total as a rough guide for how powerful they want it to be, a Pokémon like, for instance, Arbok is wasting a limited number of notional ‘points’ by having 65 base special attack instead of 15; Arbok isn’t going to use special attacks anyway. The trouble is that this is, in theory, a way of helping Pokémon who, like Absol, have moderate scores in attack stats that they will never use… but what could you possibly add to special attack that wouldn’t be just as helpful to Alakazam? My instinct here is that, whatever you try, odds are good you’ll wind up with exactly the same situation as we have now – strongly preferring one stat is still better, just for slightly different reasons. You probably wind up nerfing all defensive Pokémon, but I don’t think this is your intent. The best I can come up with to address this would be such a radical change I’m not even sure I’d want to do it – namely, replace the strict division of physical and special with a spectrum, so that you can have 100% special attacks like Psychic at one end, 100% physical attacks like Close Combat at the other, and a bunch of mixed ones like Thunderpunch being 40% special or Flare Blitz being 20% special. Like I said though, that changes the game so radically as to make it unrecognisable.
I think it’s also worth noting that, if you’re not in a competitive online setting – that is, if you’re just playing through your game, and not paying all that much attention to EV training – then the flexibility of mixed physical/special sets is a significantly bigger deal. Sometimes the difference between a Pokémon who flat out cannot do something and a Pokémon who is merely not very good at it can be much greater than it is on the competitive scene.
(Not the anon, but curious regardless) If you did do a Gym Leaders series, you could do it like the anime and do two or three Gym Leaders at once, united by element or theme or region, and you could definitely talk about their anime incarnations at the same time. That way we could get your opinion on Leaders and their Gyms in nice little packets and if there did turn out to be ones who you find yourself with a lot to say about, they could have their own posts.
Hmm. Well, to be honest the likelihood of me doing this at any point in the near-to-medium future is slim to none, but if I ever find myself wanting ideas, I’ll bear that in mind. Could be interesting to take it as a way of doing a thematic look at different types.
Bunch of random thoughts on my favorite type, Poison? I think some simple tweaks, that also make logical sense, would make the type much more balanced: poison should be super effective on water(cause toxins affect aquatic animals more strongly), and the poison status effect should sharply lower special attack(analogous to burn). Maybe throw in effectiveness on bug and resistance to dark? Also, what do you think of the idea of a Poison/Fire legendary that creates oil spills and sets fire to them?
Poison, Poison, Poison…
Poison is underrated, I think. Like, everyone knows Poison attacks are terrible, but Poison as a type, defensively, is actually really good; just ask Weezing. Making all of those changes would make Poison much too strong, I think – but making it super-effective on Water types probably wouldn’t be too much, and it’s thematically appropriate. As for the poison status… well, thematically burns weaken your physical attacks because they make movement painful and make the affected parts of your body tender; I guess you might justify an equivalent special attack penalty from poison by claiming that the poison damages concentration or something? But I think thematically I would prefer just making all poison “toxic” to bump it up to the level of other status effects. For the attacks that currently cause that status (Toxic, Poison Fang, potentially Toxic Spikes), give them a head start on the damage ramping – start at 1/8 of the target’s HP on the first turn instead of 1/16. The legendary Pokémon could be interesting; I think I’d be inclined to see it as a sort of souped-up Muk, an avatar of industrial pollution, which potentially comes with some interesting territory to explore – if something is born out of toxic waste or oil spills, does that make it evil, or mean that it doesn’t have the same rights as other Pokémon? Does it spread pollution itself, or does it actually wipe out oil spills by burning them away, and what is its overall impact on the environment? Mechanically, what could also be neat there is a signature move along the lines of a Fire-type Venoshock – fire damage, with a bonus on poisoned targets (much stronger than Venoshock though, obviously).
What is lickitung?
Lickitung is what you turn into if you’re making a face when the wind changes.
What do you think of Clampearl/Huntail/Gorebyss? Beyond the weirdness of an oyster evolving into two fish…
I talked with Jim the Editor about the evolution thing, and he thinks Clamperl is actually an egg, of sorts, surrounded by an elaborate protective shell – Huntail and Gorebyss ‘hatch’ out of it. Also, weirdly, while it looks like Clamperl’s face is in its pearl, its Pokédex entries suggest that the pearl – the one pearl that it makes over the course of its life – is left behind when it evolves, so I’m not really sure what’s going on there.
Anyway. I don’t think either of them are spectacular. Huntail, I always felt, was somewhat lacking in personality, but I like the stark contrast between Gorebyss’ beautiful, elegant appearance and savage behaviour. I suppose if I have a problem with them, it’s that they’re not nearly as weird as they could be. Considering some of the bizarre stuff that lives in the deep ocean, a couple of eel-like Pokémon with mostly generic Water-type powers is… something of a let-down, to be honest.
What’s your favorite English Pokémon name, and why?
Tricky; it’s hard to pick just one… there’s quite a few that just roll off the tongue in a way I really enjoy, particularly Octillery and Galvantula; they have this wonderful sort of dactylic rhythm to them… Octillery is also an undeniably badass name (likewise Clawitzer, for much the same reason). I love the sonorous feel of Bronzong as well.
Pokémaniacal 