Tag: QandA

Mewtwo has less defense than Mew. That’s kinda weird, isn’t it?

No.

What, you want more?

Fine.  What do we know about Mewtwo? He was created in a lab by manipulating Mew’s DNA to create the ‘most powerful Pokémon in the world.’  Now, to me it seems likely that what they were primarily aiming for was pure offensive might, so perhaps they were willing to sacrifice a little of Mew’s resilience (and it’s not a huge sacrifice; Mewtwo’s physical defence is still pretty good) for larger gains in psychic power.  More to the point, Mewtwo’s origin story is essentially a somewhat ham-fisted fable about the dangers of ‘playing god’ with genetics; to me it makes perfect sense that the resulting creation might have some flaws that would not have been apparent in advance.

Would you like to see some sort of in game content explaining the villainous team leaders’ history? For example, Ghetsis might’ve been part of a “museum” type thing where he could’ve easily located people of wisdom, of technological intellect, and legends pertaining to the Unovan legends?

I think they’ve already started to play with that kind of concept – things like Black and White 2′s Game Sync, which gave you access to a whole bunch of extra scenes with N and other characters, both major and minor.  Likewise the time-travelling Celebi event in Heart Gold and Soul Silver, although that’s not quite the same thing because it allows the player to actually get involved in past events.  I do believe there’s room for more of this, though – in particular, I think we really need to get more of Lysandre’s backstory before the sixth generation ends, because until we get a clearer understanding of what it was that drove him to breaking point he just doesn’t convey the kind of moral ambiguity they seem to have wanted with him.

What are my orders supreme overlord.

The moon is dark, my brother.  Ptolemy has failed us, and the swallow has taken flight.  You must find the hidden bishop and take the last of the salt flowers.  Our eyes are closed against the north wind, so do not tempt the serpent until daybreak.

Remember – the white goat stalks the plains in summer.

it’s a completely senseless question in itself, but how’d you get the self-interlocutor idea to make an analysis so pleasant to read? www i’m just reading through some of your stuff right now, but you definitely have a thing for captivating eloquence. great analysis too! ah, i don’t where i’m getting with this though. anyway, great job!

Well, it kinda just ‘happens.’  The ‘Rivals’ series is the product of actual Skype conversations between me and my best friend, Jim the Editor (with the exception of the second one, on Barry, Lucas and Dawn, which happened when we were both home for Christmas and just went for a walk together instead).  Obviously they’re not a transcript – I polish them up quite a bit; our actual conversations include far more pointless tangents and indecipherable inside jokes – but I type up notes as we’re talking, and those form the skeleton of what I write, so the finished entries follow the path of the original conversation, and there are usually several lines of our exact words, if I can remember them.  It was Jim’s idea, actually.  Sort of an experiment in a different writing style.  I’m glad you think it’s working!

Are you open to the idea of not fully evolved pokemon getting megas? I think it would be cool to have megas for vigoroth, scyther, magmar, electabuzz, rhydon, and dusclops. Maybe they could make mega pikachu, but the light ball already gives it mega stats, so the boost for weaker pokemon like that would have to be proDIGIous (see what i did there?), like +200 base stat points.

I’m actually kind of surprised we haven’t already seen a Mega Pikachu.  I’m not in the habit of making predictions, but there’s a tentative one for you; Pikachu will eventually Mega Evolve.  Having said that, this is sort of a tricky question – not for gameplay reasons because, like, sure, whatever (most unevolved Pokémon would need much larger stat increases than normal in order to be worth using over another Mega Pokémon, but there’s no reason we can’t give that to them); more so for whether and how it fits into the world.  At the Tower of Mastery in Shalour City, the Guru calls Mega Evolution “a transformation of Pokémon that were thought to be unable to evolve any further,” and while it’s pretty clear that the characters in X and Y do not by any means know all the rules of Mega Evolution, not even him, I think it’s telling that the writers would choose to emphasise the fact that only fully-evolved Pokémon do it – he actually mentions this before bringing up the fact that it’s temporary, which seems like it should be a more important point.  I think there may be an idea in play that, because Mega Evolution “transcends” normal evolution, because it’s above and beyond normal evolution, it would not make sense for Pokémon to be able to do it before completing their normal evolution.  Unless the evolved Pokémon can also Mega Evolve (in which case why are you even using the younger one?) then evolution for that species would become a loss, a sacrifice; it would mean being cut off from this “transcendant” state.  I don’t think Game Freak would like that notion.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

There’s a fair bit of ninja pokemon: Greninja, Ninjask, Accelgor, Toxicroak, etc. Just for fun I’m going to add a Ninja Type. The pokemon that gamefreak chooses to exude ninja-ness are mostly composed of Poison, Bug, Dark, and Fighting types, so if we put those traits together, it’s weaknesses include fire, flying, ground, fairy… oh no! Those are the worst common type weaknesses, and we should throw in a weakness to pirate type attacks, but at least it resists fighting and ghost.

While you’re at it, I have a few additional new Pokémon types to suggest:

– Light (blinds you with bright lights; Grass-types are immune)
– Sound (deafens you with loud noises; Grass-types are immune again, because f&%$ you, that’s why)
– Taste (incapacitates foes with overpowering spices; strong against Psychic)
– Steam (because we have Water and Ice)
– Science (Fairy and Science are weak against each other)
– Antimatter (using one against a Pokémon of a different type annihilates both of them)
– Human (is actually an enslaved Pokéfan in cosplay)
– Potassium (like Steel but weak against Water and strong against bananas)
– Furniture (is good to sit on)
– Scottish (strong against Rock, Steel, Dark and alcohol, weak against the English)
– Spiders (not like Ariados or whatever; actually made of millions of tiny spiders)
– Hard Cheese (should require no explanation)
– Soft Cheese (similar to Hard Cheese but obviously is softer)

If you were to give meganium a mega-evolution, what would you make it’s stats, ability, and typing be? I’ve always thought atanky + support mega meganium with filter as it’s ability would be nice.

Eh… well, the thing about Meganium is that her main problem is a bad movepool, and Mega Evolution doesn’t actually do anything to fix that.  Adding a new type to her would be nice, but it’s also kind of difficult because she doesn’t really learn any attacks outside of Grass and Ground (due to the rule that Grass-types Don’t Get Nice Things), and I don’t know if Ground makes sense for her.  Mostly Meganium trades on her support attacks – Aromatherapy, Leech Seed, Dragon Tail, that sort of thing – so buffing her defences is kind of a no-brainer, and a nice defensive ability like Filter can’t hurt.  Something like Grass Pelt might be more flavour-appropriate, but it’s not like Filter really has a consistent link to any particular kind of power anyway (I mean, Mr. Mime and Mega Aggron?  What’s the common theme there?).

I always found it odd that Butterfree can hold on to harden and string shot, and there’s also stuff like Gorebyss with shell smash and iron defense. The pokemon should logically forget those moves, but then players would be angry when their masquerain loses sticky web. Not sure what I’m asking; just… ramble about it. Also: HOW DOES SHROOMISH INHERIT FOCUS PUNCH????????????????? (note: it couldn’t back when the TM existed)

Well, in fairness, is “stiffen[ing] all the muscles in its body to raise its Defense stat” really any more ridiculous than all of the other stuff Butterfree can do?  Whirlwind, Solarbeam, Dream Eater?  Electroweb, for goodness’ sake?  I mean, the fact that Butterfree can learn Electroweb surely implies that she can still produce silk of some kind, even though we don’t normally expect adult lepidopterans to do that.  Gorebyss seems weird, but she actually has a higher physical defence score than Clamperl, so there isn’t really any reason Iron Defence should be inappropriate (especially since, on really any non-Steel-type, we should probably assume that it’s magic).  And Gorebyss does in fact have shells; they’re just this… kinda weird… impractical bra thing.  Actually harder to explain Huntail, but again, very high physical defence stat there.  Maybe they both have calcareous scales or something.  As for Shroomish and Focus Punch… well, this is why I normally refuse to deal with specific moves on specific Pokémon.

Chansey and Blissey are those pokemon that everyone hates, but always avoid getting banned. If either or both of them got a mega evolution, how would you handle it (besides “don’t”)? For me it would be to crank up Blissey’s special attack and special defense with a little sliver of extra defense and make it Normal/Fairy, and I imagine that would be gamefreak’s mindset, which may be enough of a drastic powerup to push it into ubers, but you usually have different approaches to these things.

Funnily enough, I’m kind of okay with the idea of Mega Blissey being a thing, because at the moment we have this weird situation where Blissey is actually overshadowed by Eviolite Chansey, because Blissey’s main advantages over Chansey are greater special attack (who cares?) and Leftovers (meh, they have Softboiled).  That… brings up an interesting point.  Evolving into Blissey doesn’t actually make Chansey significantly better at her core role: her HP and defence only increase by minuscule amounts, and Chansey is already so good at special defence that Blissey’s extra points aren’t a huge deal (besides, Eviolite).  The real difference is that Blissey can actually use attacks.  So… if we’re doing a Mega Blissey, why not embrace that?  Put most of her mega evolution bonus points into special attack and speed.  Either leave her other stats as-is or only give token increases, maybe even cut her special defence a bit (there’s precedent for that; Mega Garchomp is slower than regular Garchomp).  Looking at something like [255/15/15/135/120/100].  Do some kind of vaguely seraphic design, lots of feathers and too many wings.  Add some gold to the colour scheme.  Make Serene Grace her sole ability, or even make a jacked-up version that triples the odds of weird stuff happening, just for fun (Thunder with 90% paralysis chance FTW!) – if that sounds like too much, remember that Blissey has no good special STAB; even if we go Normal/Fairy she’s only got Dazzling Gleam, which doesn’t synergise with Serene Grace (EDIT: correction; Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby have a move tutor for Hyper Voice – still, that doesn’t work with Serene Grace either).  If there is even a slight chance of a weird-ass [Gravity – Blizzard – Thunder – Fire Blast] set becoming a thing, I’ll be happy.