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).
Who would win in a fight to the death, all the Gen 5 Pokemon you allowed to live, or all the Gen 5 Pokemon you condemned to die?
Well, in general one of the criteria I used for letting them live or die was whether they were actually any good, so… well, the ones who lived get most of the legendaries, all three starters, Hydreigon, Excadrill and Volcarona… and the ones who died get, like… fµ¢£in’… Watchog and Emolga and $#!t. I mean, it’s not all bad, they get Bisharp, and Bisharp is legitimately a lot better now than it was in generation V, but still… I dunno if I see it working for them.
What would your dream pokemon region be based off of?
I’ve answered basically this exact question a couple of times before, so I’m going to incorporate it with another question about Pokémon regions and go through some thoughts I have about this:
The Dag asks:
Which region so far do you think has best incorporated the history, mythology, geography, and biosphere of its real-world inspiration?
My traditional standard answer for “where do I want a region based on?” is India, just because it gives you so much to work with, in terms of environment, climate, fauna, history, culture, mythology, everything. The feel of that region would also be distinctive and recognisable to an international audience, but still leave a lot of room for incorporating material that would be new and interesting to players in both Japan and the Anglophone “West.” But let’s talk about that second question a bit.
Continue reading “H20 asks:”How would you…in glorious detail…imagine kyurem, zekrom, and reshiram finally combined?
(Disclaimer first: I’m not a designer or an artist, and a Google image search would give you multiple answers to this question that are better than anything you’ll get from me)
The thing is, I actually like that Game Freak never gave us a final realisation of this concept. Whatever they came up with, it would not have lived up to our expectations or done justice to the idea. The original primordial dragon represents the totality of all truths and the realisation of all ideals, the reconciliation of every pair of opposites and the resolution of every conflict. I suggest, though I obviously cannot prove, that the reason it never appears in the games is because Game Freak realised that there is no satisfying way to depict that, and decided it was better left as a mysterious background presence in the lore. Sometimes it’s more effective to leave things to the imagination; there’s a reason some horror movies never show the monster. A big mass of black and white wings and scales and $#!t is not as evocative or meaningful as the vague suggestion, buried in layers of mythology, of a primordial being who symbolises the impossible unity of all divisions. Frankly I think Pokémon could do with more of that kind of restraint, not less.
Continue reading “Hyper Beam 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:”
Are you going to do the series where you decide whether a Pokemon is actually good or not for Alola?
Good question. I mean, I’ll do some sort of individual review for each Pokémon once I’ve played the game, definitely. I don’t know how much I want those to look like what I did for Unova and Kalos, though. I think that depends on how I react to the overall feel of the whole group of 7th generation Pokémon. Like, when I did Unova, a lot of the way I wrote those reviews was the result of my being frustrated about one particular decision and its consequences – namely, that Game Freak chose to use no pre-5th-generation Pokémon in Unova, but simultaneously undercut that decision by including so many designs that felt like one-for-one replacements for 1st-generation Pokémon (this one is here because they couldn’t have Pidgey, this one is here because they couldn’t have Geodude, this one is here because they couldn’t have Muk… etc). And that’s why I did the whole “I hereby affirm/deny this Pokémon’s right to exist” thing, of course, because I had really strongly polarised feelings about… well, really everything in Black and White, not just the Pokémon designs. I had very different feelings about Kalos; the Pokémon were… not better, Unova at its best is just as good as Kalos, but more consistent; I had trouble finding anything to seriously dislike in Kalos. Well. Except Dedenne. But f%&k Dedenne.
So yeah, we’ll see what I think of Sun and Moon as a whole and go from there. Honestly I’m even kind of toying with doing something really weird, like some sort of in-universe in-character discussion of the different Pokémon that just totally jumps off the deep end with respect to, like, being a review. But I would have to see if I can make that work, or if I even like it.
If Unova is supposed to be New York, how does stuff like the dragon spiral tower and those extremely egyptian-like ruins make any sense? The native Americans (or pre-columbian migrants, whatever) in the northeast didn’t make stuff like that as far as I know. Doesn’t this annoy you as a RUIN MANIAC?
Well, it’s not “supposed to be New York.” It’s supposed to be the same physical shape as New York, and New York’s cosmopolitan character is supposed to influence the way we think and feel about Unova, but it’s a stretch to say that every feature of Unova, or even most of them, should map to something in the real city – especially given that New York is, y’know, a city, and Unova is a whole region. I mean, Johto is loosely based on the Kansai region, but I defy you to find the real world equivalent to the Ruins of Alph; Hoenn is Kyushu, rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, but it has a big honking desert in the middle of it for some reason; the Parfum Palace in Kalos is clearly the Chateau de Versailles, but it’s just as clearly in the wrong place. I think it’s reasonable to say that Castelia City is supposed to feel like Manhattan, but beyond that… meh?
Pokémaniacal 