The site hasn’t been the most active lately… 2023 has been a sledgehammer to the face of a few of us and it’s hard to get the time to keep up with everything. I can’t speak for everyone here, but the annual tradition of us opening all the calendars and being shocked at the iffy builds is something that we look forward to.
We’re doing it a bit different this year, or more specifically, Nick just couldn’t find all that much joy in just doing the LEGO Marvel Super Heroes. So he’s decided to do more than that one and compare them all a bit. Ace is going to do his normal review of it as well, and Eric will be covering Harry Potter yet again, for whatever the wizarding version of Groundhog Day is. And double the Star Wars!
We’re also bringing back our “random advent” calendar tradition, because it was fun last year. So tune in to see we go through and talk about. Maybe I’ll even bring in a special guest expert to talk about the one that I picked up…
It was an interesting start to everything, with Marvel continuing it’s tradition failing to even achieve mediocrity, Star Wars starting strong, City going weird, and Harry Potter being Harry Potter.
I don’t know what this is. Judging by the color and general shape, I’d guess it’s some sort of ship. I’d also fathom a guess it’s an Imperial vessel but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s from Ahsoka. I haven’t watched that one yet. But hooray for obscure ships making the cut I guess? I’m ambivalent towards it so I’ll give it a thumbs up. Giving it a thumbs down would feel like I’m punishing it for my own ignorance so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that it’s done well, whatever “it” is supposed to be. And no I’m not going to cheat and read ahead to see what Nick wrote about it.
Day 2 of the chocolate calendar gives us a “Lindt Mini Milk Chocolate Double Milk TEDDY”. Not sure why TEDDY is in all caps. Perhaps he’s a loud fellow and sends all his texts in all caps.
Gotta had it to fine chocolate makers around the world for shaping their chocolates into the shape they are supposed to represent. TEDDY is no exception and looks the part.
When I read “double milk chocolate” I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be white chocolate. I feel cheated. I was hoping for a slightly different milk chocolate texture on the inside. To be fair, that’s exactly what I got but after I took the bite I was like, “this is not what I was expecting”. It was passable as a chocolate treat, but the bar is raised when they claimed “double milk” and the treat fails spectacularly by giving you sweetened cocoa butter instead. Thumbs down. I’m sad that I have two more of these things to ingest in the coming days.
Harry Potter Day 2 – Eric
Okay, now that we’ve gotten our court-appointed Harry Potter minifigure out of the way, we can move on to potentially more interesting builds.
Potentially, I said.
This isn’t…I mean it’s not bad. But it’s hard to really say a whole lot about it. I’m assuming this is meant to represent Honeydukes Sweetshop based on the color scheme. Also, weirdly, looks like Honeydukes has a specific address in Orlando – 6000 Universal Blvd if you want to send them some fan mail.
I do approve of this jelly bean print. Unfortunately I’m going to sort this in with the rest of my 1×1 bricks, which means I will likely never see it again. So now’s my only chance.
And what about the tea, I hear you pleading with me?
It’s called RELAX. These names aren’t exactly specific. Let’s give it a try.
Well, it’s definitely better than yesterday. It’s still pretty light, and to me it tastes like drinking grass water. There is a nice aftertaste that keeps drawing me back to sip, but overall I’m still unimpressed. 2/5.
See ya tomorrow!
City Day 2 – Nick
Okay, take note other calendars… this is a perfect little insert. A printed tile that has Santa and a reindeer? There are so many little joke tiles that could have gone into every single calendar like this. A great Day 2, and the clear winner for the things I put together (spoiler, to the other entries, I guess).
Marvel Day 2 – Nick
Bricklink calls this a Holiday Quinjet. Except… is it? It basically looks vaguely like the red-and-white Avenjet crossed with a Quinjet. Maybe if it had some green or something in there.
No matter, though, it’s just ugly. The flat-across wings really kill it, and it’s fragile beyond belief. Better than Iron Man, but still a miss.
Bonus Star Wars Day 2 – Nick
The Justifier is an ugly and forgettable ship that appeared in one Bad Batch episode – Cad Bane is also whatever the villain version of a Mary Sue is, and he brings down almost any episode he’s in (except Book of Boba Fett, where he got what he deserved).
I didn’t even realize that this was the Justifier at first, I had to look it up. I assumed it was some weird speeder or something. Seriously, if you’re going to go with the Bad Batch, why not do The Marauder, which is more important to the Clones and an actual important part of the show.
Swing and a miss, Star Wars. Or whatever Star Wars-y pun makes up Baseball. Shoot at a womprat and miss… gonna have to workshop that one a bit.
Pokemon Day 2 – Nick & Family
My kid’s review: “Oooooh, a little Piplup, that’s so cute!” Cute, but he doesn’t stand up for anything.
So that basically kicked my ass into high gear and there are a couple of goals I wanted to accomplish in my portable Pokémon games before the shut down. And here they are in no particular order:
Complete the Gen VI National Dex
Having Pokémon X, Pokémon Y, Pokémon Omega Ruby, and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire, it is possible to complete the National Dex with just those four games. I found that little factoid really neat and welcoming as a new player. I started with X so being able to get every Pokemon introduced in previous games in that then-current generation was kind of exciting. Of course things happen, and my interests wanders like a leaf in the wind. I never completed the National Dex, but now I feel like I have to before the shut down.
Complete a living shiny dex in Gen VII
Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon introduced a new method of shiny hunting by way of SOS battles. Pokémon you battle may call for allies and as more and more allies are called, your chances of encountering a shiny one increases. I really like the SOS battles as it allows a bit more of a passive approach to shiny hunting. Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon tweaked the mechanics a bit to make it a little more convenient. The other Gen VII-related side quest is to ensure I get the regional variants of some Pokémon. This should take care of itself as long as I complete the main goal.
Get all the wormhole legendaries in shiny form
Those Gen VII games also introduced wormholes to encounter all of the previous games’ legendaries (except for Deoxys which is still a bit of a headscratcher why it wasn’t included). I am hoping to catch all of them as a shiny through this game feature. Unlike the main method for shiny hunting, this one involves a whole lot of soft resetting. Save your game, check the legendary, if it’s not shiny, reset. Rinse and repeat. Back in the day before I became a shiny hunter, I’d read stories about people soft resetting their life away and thought it was excruciating. MMORPGs and the constant grind for anything has conditioned me enough to not see it as such a chore; it’s like a cake walk for me now. I’m almost done with this particular side quest too so that’s pretty exciting.
Get a shiny Shaymin and shiny Darkrai from Pokémon Platinum
Thanks to the DNS hack, I was able to get the necessary event items in my copy of Pokemon Platinum, items I’m fairly certain I didn’t get in BDSP (otherwise, I’d be doing the hunt there and not even bothering with Platinum). Having basically just rushed through the game, I still found myself enjoying the game. There’s something about the tried-and-true Pokémon formula that is comforting, like your favorite childhood snacks. I’m currently soft resetting for the Shaymin shiny. Those games didn’t have the shiny charm so this is a full-odds hunt. I’m crossing my fingers, hoping to get lucky and have it pop before I hit 10k resets.
Get a living dex in Gen I and transfer that down to home
I don’t know why I’m doing this one. This one makes no sense to me at all. There’s no piont. There’s no exclusive Pokémon to be had, no bonus, no prize, just bragging rights I guess. Don’t even know if Gen I Pokémon have their own symbol or not. This might or might not just be my justification for buying the virtual console titles. And I may or not be fancying doing the same for Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal.
Hunt for a shiny Manaphy… NOT!
There is this insane hunting method for a shiny Manaphy. In a nut shell, you have to complete Pokémon Ranger. There is only one egg per game, no matter if you restart it with a new save file. ONE EGG. Transfer that egg to a Gen IV game and hatch it. If it’s not shiny soft reset and then transfer the egg to a NEW Gen IV game save file. You can keep passing this egg back and forth between new save files in your Gen IV games. The time consuming part is playing the Gen IV games long enough to get to the point where you can do trades and receive eggs. Ideally you’ll want to transfer as many eggs as possible to increase your chances. It is insane and something I am not going to do… unless I finish all my other goals first. Even then I only have two Pokémon Ranger games that still have the egg and it may not be worth it. There are mods and programs you can load up on a 3DS to do things like duplicate the eggs. It’s not really my cup of tea as it feels like a bit of a cheat. I was going back and forth about the DNS exploit for the Shaymin and Darkrai event items but in the end made peace with it. But actually hacking the game feels like it’s a bit too far past the moral line.
So that’s it. It’s almost the end of December, and all my goals are in various states of progression. As I write this I’m soft resetting for a shiny Articuno in USUM, using the run away method in Platinum for Shaymin, and when I’m untethered to my desk, I’ll play Pokémon Red via virtual console on my 3DS. Let’s see where I end up come pull-the-plug-on-Pokémon-bank time.
Yeah, I gave up on trying to get a shiny Type: Null. At least for now. I was at 5,200 soft resets combined on both Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon and threw in the towel. It was both anxiousness to start catching Pokémon and boredom of doing the same button presses over and over again. When looking at my plan from a high level, I should be going after the low-hanging fruit first (completing the dex), and then the tasks that are more invovled should follow in order of the amount of time required. I have this habit of jumping right into the hard stuff first and then figuring things out along the way.
It’s how I started Resident Evil 2 Remake; I played that game on Hard difficulty first, which was a huge mistake. Playing the game on the easier levels first netted you items that helped make the harder levels slightly easier to finish. I should have had the same approach with Pokémon: fill out the Alolan Pokédex first, then get the shiny charm, then get a living shiny dex which will help fill out the national dex, and THEN work on getting the legendaries. Easier to harder.
So I gave up and started hunting regular Pokémon. I got 44% done on the Alolan dex which isn’t too bad considering I wasn’t really trying all that hard at first. I only put in a couple of hours of actual trying to hit this mark. I’m still mindful that I have to play through US and UM both again to get a full set of normal and shiny Type: Nulls and Poipoles and as I recently discovered the fossil Pokémon, but I think if I can scratch that itch of catching them all first, sitting through mindless soft resets should be less soul crushing.
Now, having played through all of Ultra Sun, the post-game quest known as Episode RR, where you go and battle Team Rainbow Rocket consisting of all the main bosses from the previous games, really felt like a farewell to the handheld format that I underappreciated so much. The bosses are the same between US and UM, but the legendaries they control are different depending on the version. It was a neat way for me to experience battling them without having to play through the entirety of their respective games. The battles were tough but here’s a hot tip if you’re playing Ultra Sun: use Primarina and level up your team to at least 75 before attempting to beat the bosses.
I’m at 44% and I’m eager to fill out the rest of the dex. I’m looking forward to the SOS battles for shiny hunting; the mechanic is pretty enjoyable.
I don’t really have much to say for today’s PokéMonday’s post. In Ultra Sun, I’m still soft resetting for a shiny Type: Null and am currently at 3,854 and counting. This one’s a bit more grueling to do just because of the sheer amount of dialog you have to cycle through to get to the gift. My aim was to get Ultra Moon to the same point so I can double my rate of resets using two games instead of one. I’m just about to get to the point of summoning Lunala in UM so I’m pretty close I think. I’ve decided if I hit 10k resets without hitting a shiny Type: Null, I’ll just progress through my dex and try again later.
I still haven’t bought Sword and Shield. But I may have to soon. With Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl on the horizon, I’m gonna be way, WAY behind on my dex, more so than I already am. Part of me not getting Sword/Shield was that I was trying to resist getting more games that just add to the backlog. Part of it was that I just didn’t find those games all that appealing. Pokémon on a home console just isn’t the same. The whole idea of the game on a handheld was to be able to take the game out of the house, meet other players and trade and/or battle, just like in the game. It’s a bit meta but it worked so well. If I was young and still in school, I would have totally brought my system with me and played with friends at school or on the bus.
Playing so much Pokémon on the 3DS, I kind of wonder if the target market has shifted or if there are as many new, younger players. I got into the series really late. X/Y were my first games and they were internet-enabled, meaning I didn’t have to venture outside my house and seek out other players in real life to trade or battle. But now that the 3DS is retired, I don’t really get a sense that the in-person aspect of Pokémon games happening as much on the Switch. The Switch is more of a family system and I can’t imagine it being a dedicated handheld for kid to play Pokémon on let alone take to school. Maybe that’s what the Switch Lite* was trying to do, fill that one user-one system void the 3DS left behind. If it was, the Switch Lite is a beast to carry around compared to a slim 3DS model. Even the 3DS XL is still way more pocketable and portable than a Switch Lite will ever be. Pokémon GO on smart devices may be one way to do that too but that’s not really the same either. That may be another topic to cover in a separate post but long story short I don’t see myself ever going back to GO.
I regret not getting into Pokémon sooner. They’re such fun, little, digestible JRPG games, perfect for the handheld space. I’ve been picking up older Pokémon games here and there whenever budget allows. Do I honestly think I’ll ever get around to playing them? No. But it’s nice to see the series together as a collection. And if my research in collecting shiny Pokémon is accurate, there’s at least one or two I’ll have to play to catch them all.
* – It’s funny how, if you look at the DS family of systems, Nintendo made the DS at first. Then they wanted to go smaller and introduced a DS Lite. Then when the DSi was a thing, they wanted to go bigger and released a DSi XL. Same with the 3DS and the 3DS XL. With the Switch and Switch Lite, I’m expecting a Switch XL to be their next hardware release.
As I was soft resetting my life away again, this time trying for a Type: Null, I realized that I was doing it all wrong. See, I’m one of those Pokémon players that gets both versions of a game because I’m an adult and don’t know any adults or kids that play the game that I can go trade in-person with and mostly because I can’t stand the GTS. I’d rather just work on catching them all myself. Anyhoo, I had this copy of Ultra Moon just lying around. I also had a stash of 3DS XL’s that still worked. What I should be doing is soft resetting both copies of the game at the same time to double my efforts. The chore now is to get Ultra Moon to the same point in the game as Ultra Sun. So I fired Ultra Moon late last week and ended up with this beauty:
Shiny Rowlet. Now, I’ve read posts and seen videos about how people would do the reset thing for a starter and it, too, would take hundreds and even thousands of tries to finally get one. I’ve briefly tried my hand at it in Omega Ruby but got bored cause I just wanted to play the game. I didn’t even try to get this one and was absolutely stunned that Rowlet came up green with no resets, stunned and ecstatic. I had to stare at it for a good 3 minutes to make sure I wasn’t imagining things, then looked it up online to verify it was indeed the shiny color. I can imagine, if I was a first time Pokémon player with no idea what a shiny was and this happened, that I would have thought the game was broken since its color did not match the in-game cinematics before and after your partner Pokémon is revealed to you; broken enough to want to reset the game. How tragic would that have been?
Normal Rowlet
If I’m doing my math right, there are 392 possible shinies in US/UM. Here’s to number 2; only 390 more to go.
There’s a feature that was built into Pokémon games back during the Diamond/Pearl/Platinum days when Nintendo WiFi was a thing called Global Trade System, or GTS for short. On the surface it was awesome. No longer was trading Pokémon constrained to being physically near someone to exchange ‘mon. It was a bigger boon when the later games came out and new players started playing: you could fill up your pokédex from the comfort of your living room/bathroom/kitchen/backyard/under the sheets with a flashlight past your bedtime. And you can trade between generations too. You deposit a Pokémon into the GTS system, list a Pokémon you want, and hope for the best.
My first games were X/Y and the GTS was a great way to get stuff from older games because I didn’t have any intention back then to play them. I could fill out my national dex pretty easily but two things happened that made me swear off GTS.
The first was a ridiculous trade that happened. When I first started trading it was for older Pokémon that weren’t in X/Y, nothing too fancy, nothing hard to get like shinies. It was pretty neat going into GTS and seeing a lot of the box legendaries from the old games in there. On a whim, I put up a zigzagoon and asked for a Zekrom in exchange. The next day I got it! I was really excited at first but once the excitement died down I really questioned the logic: who in their right mind would trade the legendary from White/White 2 for a zigzagoon of all things? There was another easy trade that happened, I can’t remember what it was but it was along the same lines of unevenness. I theorized that these Pokémon must have been hacked together. Once I started looking into it more and more, the more I realized that what I got was a fake. There’s no provenance when it comes to these things so getting a fake in a lopsided trade seems way more plausible than someone playing through White, catching the mascot, and just giving it away for such a common ‘mon.
The second was that Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were released. This was kind of a big deal because that made it possible to complete the national dex with just X/Y and OR/AS with a little help from Pokémon Bank. All the box legendaries were included in OR/AS so I could skip having to replay the old games and the GTS entirely to get everything. Nintendo was also releasing most if not all of the mythical Pokémon too as download events.
So that was my goal at the time: complete the National Dex with just those four games. Something happened though and I kind of lost interest. Splatoon 2 happened maybe. I don’t know, but I’m back to finishing that goal. I’d rather earn every single Pokémon on my own than rely on a system that allows for fraudulent Pokémon. I’m at 1,598 soft resets (and counting) for a shiny Type: Null and wouldn’t have it any other way.
When I started playing Pokémon again after a very long hiatus, I kind of had a loose idea of what I wanted to accomplish: complete the ‘dex, get a shiny charm, complete a living shiny national ‘dex. I held no delusions about how long it would take. This isn’t something that can be done over a few weekends; this is going to take me a long time. My plan with Ultra Sun, initially, was to complete the game as quickly as possible so I can work on completing the ‘dex. But along the way, I got distracted by Poipole.
Poipole is an Ultra Beast Pokémon that gifted to you by an NPC. It wasn’t shiny locked, (shiny locked Pokémon can never be obtained as shiny in whatever game you’re playing), so soft resetting was the only way to get it. Based on my light googling, gifted Pokémon isn’t affected by shiny charm, so I was facing a choice of just accepting it and continue burning through the game or soft resetting the game until it pops up in its alternate color. I decided to do the latter. Soft resetting involves saving your game at the last possible point before triggering the gift dialogue. You load your game, accept the gift, see if it’s shiny. If not, do a soft reset by pressing L, R, and Start or Select at the same time, rinse and repeat. I did this 4,302 times before it finally popped. It took about a week and a half, maybe two, a couple of hours a night just vegging out watching TV, and soft resetting. It’s a pretty low-bandwidth task so it’s not like I wasted time since I was able to do it while doing something else. And honestly, I feel like I got extremely lucky. Because your chances don’t get better with each reset; I could have very easily not hit the target and still be soft resetting my life away for the next week, month, or even year. I will tell you this much though: after 4,302 tries, I am ready to move on.
The sad truth of the matter though is that I’m going to have to eventually do the same thing when I get gifted Type: Null, the other gifted Pokémon that can’t breed and hatch from an egg, even if I don’t do it during this playthrough. I’m going to have to play this game at least four times most of the way to get normal and shiny versions of Poipole and Type: Null and their respective evolved forms Naganadel and Silvally. I’ll probably do it for Type: Null this time. Sounds daunting, but it could be worse: I could have accidentally soft reset over the shiny, like this guy:
I’ve had my fair share of video game fails, but this hurts to watch.
Shiny Type: Null, here I come. Please RNG gods, be nice to me.
Today at 7:00am PDT, The Pokémon Company celebrated the 25th anniversary of Pokémon with a video showing the history of the franchise along with some new announcements.
They showed a preview of New Pokémon Snap where you can travel through the Lentil Region and take pictures of Pokémon in their natural habitat acting naturally. Take pictures, get rated, and fill your photo album. New Pokémon Snap will be available April 30, 2021 with pre-orders starting today.
In Pokémon Sword and Shield, special Gigantamax Pikachu max raid battles will be taking place from 4:00pm PST February 25 through 3:59pm PST February 28, 2021.
In Pokémon Café Mix, you’ll get a one-time special login bonus of 2,500 golden acorns starting 7:00am PST February 26 through 9:59am PST February 28, 2021.
In Pokémon Go, the Kanto Legendary Raid Boss battles will let you fight Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Mewtwo starting 9:00am local time February 20 through 8:00am local time March 1, 2021.
In Pokémon Masters EX, you can now fight Galar region champion Leon starting 10:00pm PST February 25 through 10:50pm PST March 17, 2021.
And finally, the big news is that the next two Pokémon games are Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl, remakes of the original DS games. Both games will be released in late 2021.
But wait there’s more! In order to avoid giving away free mythical Pokémon and monetize it as much as possible, a new game was announced called Pokémon Legends Arceus. This one has a release date of Early 2022.
I guess Nintendo didn’t want to be upstaged by themselves, and decided today was a great day to announce a new Pokemon Snap game, a follow-up to a Nintendo 64 cult classic. A lot of fans had been clamoring for Snap to get released, so seeing a whole new one (it doesn’t look to be a remaster, more a sequel) is kind of surprising.
Update: They posted a video after I’d started this draft, and it looks pretty interesting, and very much like snap, only better looking.
There aren’t a ton of details on it, like price or a release date (though a $60 price point seems kind of a given). It’s not being developed by Game Freak, which is good and bad, but by Bandai Namco, who has worked in the franchise before with Pokkén Tournament Deluxe. Of course, I don’t know anyone who bothered to play that, but I won’t hold that against them. It is a little bit odd that HAL Laboratories wasn’t asked to make the sequel, given that they made the first one. They’re still firmly in the Nintendo stable, having worked on Kirby Star Allies, and have a very close relationship with big N.
Of course, the big news for today is the launch of the major DLC for Pokemon Sword and Shield. I enjoyed the games, but the business model around it has been a cause for much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The DLC is a hybrid of a true expansion, building out the game, and the “expanded” editions that came before, since it puts a whole ton of new Pokemon back into the game. The pass runs $30 for each game, and includes this DLC and one that will show up later in the year, The Crown Tundra.
I’ve been trying to write this review pretty much since Pokémon Sword and Shield came out back in November. I honestly don’t know why it’s been so hard for me to get it done and out there, or why I’m deciding to revisit it now after my time has been dominated by an infernal raccoon and his mortgage bubble schemes, but here we are.
The lead up to the latest releases in the mainline Pokemon* RPG series is the most toxic that I’ve seen Nintendo and/or Pokemon fandom get. I mean… the Pokemon Company and Game Freak have never really been above criticism; people were right to get frustrated with what happened with Ultra Sun / Ultra Moon. Released about a year after Sun and Moon came out, they were basically just remixes that felt more like DLC than a game, despite adding a lot of “content.” Had they been spaced out more, or just a single game (like Yellow, Crystal, or Emerald), it would have felt different… but this just felt more malicious and greedy.
*Yes, I know it’s supposed to be Pokémon, but that’s such a butt to keep typing.
The Danger of Buzz
I’d normally say a 2-on-1 fight isn’t fair, but very few of the random challenges were ever actually challenging
The initial buzz around Sword and Shield was actually pretty positive. There hasn’t been a Pokemon game on a home console in ages, and there hasn’t been an RPG on it in… ever. Well, kind of… we had Pokemon Let’s Go, which was a remake of Yellow, but designed around the Pokemon Go mechanics. Let’s Go is actually a very polished and incredibly fun game to play, but I totally get not being able to get into the game because of everything that’s missing.
The initial reveal of Sword and Shield looked nice, we were getting a different sort of setting in pseudo-Britain, and the ability to pick up and go, or sit down and play, with your Switch is still a huge draw. The starters all had a charm that Sun and Moon starters not named Litten really lacked (and I’ll admit that my adorable Fire Kitty’s evolutions were junk). That it was all on a more interactive world than Let’s Go had, but had the same aesthetic and styles, set any fan up to get excited.
Then… we got the biggest bombshell to drop on a Pokemon release in recent memory: that these games would be the first in the series to get rid of the National Pokedex. Not just “not available in the game” to catch, but not available to transfer in with Pokemon Home ( the replacement for Pokemon Bank). This situation wasn’t at all helped by the fact that Game Freak and Nintendo never bothered to clarify what it was going to be like, what would be missing, etc.
The assumption was that it’d be mostly later Pokemon cut… they had, after all, 3D and high-res models of the first generation, and the focus would be on moving more over and introducing the Galarian versions we saw in the preview. Unfortunately, as we got closer to release, we learned this wasn’t the case. The new Pokedex came in with just over 400 in early leak, and let’s just say that things were gutted. More than half of all Pokemon, including a lot of the first generation which had been done for Let’s Go, were gone. Squirtle was your favorite of the starters (as he should be)? Too bad, he’s gone. Oh, you like Ekans, cool because he’s just snake backwards? Nah, you’re going to get a snake that looks like he’s turtleheading and seriously needs to see a doctor.
The biggest improvement over Sun and Moon has got to be making the evolutions of the starters not suck
Of course, since that point (and well after I started writing this review), we got news that there were expansion passes coming to Sword and Shield that would be restoring around 200 of the cut Pokemon. That’s since come out, and it’s not perfect, but Pokemon Home has replaced Bank, and allowed for a one-way move that restores the “national” dex in Bank, and lets you import forward any of the restored Pokemon into Sword and Shield. The downside, which I’ll talk about more later, is that the moves right now are all into Home from Bank and Let’s Go, and only Sword/Shied can move in and out of the game.
Almost immediately, there was a loud backlash from a minority of fans that see it as the obligatory “slap in the face” – look, let’s just get rid of that phrase in regards to any product – which drowned out the legitimate concerns about the Bank. The top of those legitimate concerns is absolutely the price; while the new app introduces a new “free” tier, it’s about as close to useless as one can imagine. You can place a grand total of 30 pokemon in storage, you can only participate in room trades, but not host, are you cannot transfer them in from the old Pokemon Bank (i.e., no moving forward your old ones).
This guy was my favorite leader in the game, and the most interesting part of the story
The price to remove these limitations? $15.99 USD for a 365 days (they specifically call that out… or 12 months), $4.99 for 90 days, or $2.99 for 30 days (it says 1 month there, but 30 days would only cover 4-ish months, or give you a couple of bonus days in February). Compared to Pokemon Bank, which ran $4.99 for one year, it’s a sharp increase in price.
This, unfortunately, seems to be how Nintendo is going to work going forward with things like DLC, services, or the like. A mixture of “you have no choice,” “it’s not that much,” and exploiting FOMO. That’s how it works for Online, which still doesn’t really feel “worth it,” it just carries a more acceptable price than other online services. To be clear, I don’t expect Nintendo to just give away legitimate online services for free, but this feels especially odious for what you get.
Another Pokemon Game
If you’ve played a Pokemon game in the past, you’re not going to be shocked at the general story: kid goes to be a trainer, has a rival, there’s a champion, and someone is up to no good. At a high level, it plays on the same beats that Pokemon always has, and it won’t really knock your socks off with how the story unfolds or the world just exists. I’d love to see Game Freak actually get creative with the stories and take a chance, but I don’t see it happening until they see sales drop compared to a previous generation.
I honestly never really got tired of the fight introductions for Team Yell
That being said, it does do a number of things which shift the story more than titles have in some time. The biggest one is in the “generic baddies” that we get in the game, Team Yell – dating back to Team Rocket, they always have to be teams. They’re typically lumped under the title of villainous teams, but that honestly doesn’t apply here. It unfolds about halfway through the overall story, but they’re basically just superfans of a particular challenger and not tied to the big bad. Once you get past that gym and challenger, they fade to the background, and once the bigger story with the “bad guy” comes into play, they’re going to be on your side.
The big bad… honestly isn’t that big, or all that bad. He’s misguided, not evil, and Pokemon Sword and Shield take an oddly anti-corporate and pro-environmentalism stance, while at the same time, leaning hard into the idea of corporate celebrity and lifestyle. The whole thing that Chairman Rose is concerned about is making sure that the Galar region can keep generating enough power and maintain their way of life.
There was a surprising amount of variety in gyms between the editions
Fun fact… when I wrote that paragraph above, I was fresh playing the game at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The most notable thing was that Australia was on fire and there seemed to be a lot of bad things that lined up. It was before anyone ever heard “Coronavirus” or we started to talk about the economy in terms of the great depression, so, wow, way to talk about accidentally destroying to planet and somehow managing to be understated compared to real life.
I’d love to say that this takes as strong of a stance as, say, The Outer Worlds does in going after it’s core message, but the problem is that when you’re taking an environmental message and you don’t have “what if we change our way of life some” in the mix, it’s always going to fall flat.
While none of these things add up to making something that will just knock your (presumably pokemon-themed, like mine) socks off, they are different enough. It won’t surprise you for the most part… Chairman Rose is sickeningly nice throughout the story but you still know that he’s going to end up turning on everyone. You’re going to beat the unbeatable champion, and best your rival, because that’s what Pokemon games are all about.
Don’t buy into all the comments that the graphics don’t cut it. This game looks as nice as any 1st-party Switch game
That’s not to say that it’s a dull experience, not in the slightest. A big thing that helps, especially with gym challenges, is the music really draws you into it. Within those gym battles, or Dynamax battles in the Wild Area (more on that later), the music just ratchets up with the fight. If you’re like me, you really look forward to those fights just for the moment when you get the gym leader down to their last Pokemon (who they will dynamax without fail), the whole gym is cheering for the fight.
Ultimately, the base game is the base game. If you like the gameplay loop of literally every mainline Pokemon game, you’re going to like this. If you don’t, well, you’re probably not all that interested in this game or review anyway.
Game Beyond the Game
Pokemon has always been defined by what happens “after” the game. There’s the underlying focus to catch them all and complete your Pokedex. Normally, that means you are going to do a whole lot of wandering, and hatching, and all sorts of things like that. That’s still in Pokemon Sword and Shield, though the general mechanism for catching and finding is a fusion of what Let’s Go added, along with the classic game. You see a certain portion of Pokemon running around in the over world, and can just run up and initiate a fight with them.
The professor and researcher in the game is one of the NPC highlights.
There’s also a classic “tall grass,” though they aren’t random encounters, per se; you see where the movement in the grass is and can choose to avoid it, or try to grab it and roll your dice. Weather, time of day, and other factors play a part in what you can catch and where, but generally, you can be a bit more focused in what you chase down.
Once you beat the various somehow undefeated people, the trials open up where you can go and grind out all sorts of battles with leveled teams and things like IVs and nature have meaning (and people like me have to go google them every time). If that’s your thing, more power to you, but it’s never been what brought me back.
The new feature introduced in Sword and Shield, though, hits well before the endgame, and just keeps unfolding: The Wild Area. In the map, it’s a huge section that is inside the normal route loop, and is a pseudo-open world where you run around and can catch all sorts of Pokemon. They are area specific, and in the area, weather has far more of an effect on what you can find.
You also see a whole ton of other trainers running around in the “not really multiplayer but come on we’re trying” system, and they hand out food (used in the camping curry cooking mini-game) or useful items. You can also find normal stuff, shake trees for berries, or collect a special energy currency from Pokemon dens.
This bike basically on magic
Those dens are the real draw of the Wild Area after you get far enough in the game, because they are what drive raid battles – your chance to catch powerful pokemon, and often special pokemon that have unique Gigantamax looks (they appear different when you Dynamax them, like a Snorlax lying down and a forest growing on his belly). These are the main ways to farm items and XP candies, which greatly improve the grinding process.
Once you hit the endgame, the Wild Area is just a fun way to waste time and hunt for stuff… but it’s not without it’s frustrations. The biggest issue is that the weather that controls when a lot of the Pokemon spawn, is typically connected to the month you are in, not random effects. It looks like it could just happen, in how the messages pop up, but only one weather can really happen in any given month. Ultimately, this means you either have to wait a lot to finish your Pokedex, or do what most of us do and just go change the clock on your Switch to find the ones you want.
More than the timing, though, there is an added frustration with the Wild Area that was introduced in addition to the “pokemon don’t obey you” mechanic that was in place from previous games. For those who aren’t familiar or don’t trade, if you had a pokemon above a level you could control from outside your game, it would randomly just ignore you. Getting badges is how you got around that, and by the time you had all your badges, you could use any Pokemon you want.
In the Wild Area, the badges also prevent you from catching the Pokemon above a certain level as well. It won’t even let you throw a ball at them, even should you weaken them down or slug one out with your team (which, if you’re playing in the Wild Area much, will be over-leveled for whatever point you are in the story very quickly).
By the time you can capture everything in the Wild Area, you don’t need to capture anything in the wild area
I understand that they didn’t want a bunch of low-level trainers running around and grabbing a Pokemon a few dozen levels above with some lucky throws, but keeping the disobey mechanic in place for that would have worked just as well, and still let you complete your Pokedex. Given the rarity of some spawns, it’s disheartening to see a Pokemon, only to start a fight and needing to run away.
Beyond that, though, there is an upcoming DLC packs that is going to extend the experience (and also reintroduce a lot of the old Pokemon back into the game – including some old legendaries). This likely spells the end of the “remake” versions of the game, but it has also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way for the price and how old pokemon are now behind a paywall…
… sort of. In what is kind of a nice move, the new Pokemon (and those that come in through Home/Bank) can be pulled in by those who own the DLC, but traded to anyone who has the game – even if they haven’t purchased the DLC yet. It will be tougher, especially without Home, but it is possible.
Let’s Talk Camping
Every Pokemon game has some little thing added in as a weird minigame or flavor-piece that has comes up an inordinate amount of time. Sun and Moon had the island you could drop your Pokemon at, where they could passively level and get you a whole bunch of berries. It also had a grooming system where you could smudge your 3DS screen up a ton to get your pocket monsters to like you. You have the farm, or hatchery, or things like that (the nursery is still in Sword and Shield)… and they’re often forgotten in the next title.
With Sword and Shield, we saw early on that there was a camping system with the Pokemon, a way to gain happiness that seemed to be an extension of the grooming system. It is that, in a way, but instead of focusing on one Pokemon at a time, it lets you do things with the whole team. You can throw a toy, get new toys and throw them, or “talk” to your Pokemon, which is really just a way for you to check your affinity.
The real WTF moment in the early reveal, though, was the introduction of the “Currydex” and a cooking minigame. Cause when I think Pokemon, I think… curries? It was just bizarre, and the way they pitched it, it was some sort of ground breaking reveal and huge part of the game. In truth, it’s “optional” except it sort of isn’t, because it’s the easiest way for you to heal up and rest your Pokemon outside of hitting a Pokemon Center.
More than that… the most insane thing is that the stupid little curry cooking minigame is just a little gameplay loop that’s fun. Really fun. Much like that little visceral feedback of Breath of the Wild’s cooking, except far more involved, it’s a dumb thing in the game that for some reason I enjoyed every time I ever did it.
I played the curry game a lot more than I’d care to admit…
It tied into the social settings of the game more than anything, because if you were online, you could put down your camp and others could join, and the more people that joined in to the cooking meant you could potentially get higher rankings for your dex, and better effects from it. There are five levels, Koffing is the worst and does little, Wobbuffet above that heals up half the teams’ HP, Milcery refills everything and removes status conditions, Copperajah heals and restores PP, while Charizard, the best, does all that and grants a huge XP bonus (each tier gives some XP and affinity bonus). In general, doing everything well hits Copperajah, which makes the minigame essential to long sessions trying to grind or capture without having to run back to a center to heal up.
Pokemon Needs to Evolve
The new stuff added to the game is all pretty great; the fusion of Let’s Go “show the Pokemon on the overworld” and the classic running through the grass really feels like a best of both worlds solution. I’ve spent a whole ton of my life playing random encounter RPGs, and the more I play games that are messing with that formula (like Final Fantasy VII remake, for example), the more I find that I’m just over RNG battles.
There are some decent quality of life improvements as well, but so many little things are starting to feel dated and tired. The menu interfaces and organization has some improvements (like being able to access your boxes anywhere), but other things, like having to click through a half dozen prompts to do anything, are just tired. Inventory management continues to be a chore, and there are just too many steps to do much of anything.
At least it was only one button click to rest the pokemon, rather than 2-3 of previous titles
More than that, though, the formula is just starting to feel stale. The game did little to surprise you, and it takes absolutely no risks. I’m not expecting this kid’s game to suddenly starting going in insane directions, but once upon a time, the story did do interesting things (like say in Black and White).
It’s kind of sad how little of the base game has actually changed, since Sword and Shield are ultimately the start of the next era for Pokemon games. It’s no longer strictly a handheld title, it’s entered the home market. To be fair, it isn’t just Pokemon… the dated feel permeates almost all of Nintendo’s games (come on you stupid Dodo, you saw the Nook Miles ticket, just give me that option). But it feels especially hard here.
Conclusion
I’m not going to lie, but every time I hear talk about “slaps to the face” or “being stabbed in the back” by fans of a series I am not going to have a lot of sympathy for the person complaining. Ultimately, the reality is that this is a product, and that’s all. They don’t owe us anything past delivering a game, and we don’t owe it to them to buy it. In the end for Nintendo and Game Freak, and they are looking for how to continue it and keep it going. There was no promise that was broken, customers aren’t entitled to their specific vision, and the companies aren’t owed any money.
I’ve obviously talked about this before, both with LEGO and in gaming. Much like the backlash and anti-backlash to films and games, this is exposing some of the ugly side of fandoms out there. In truth, the companies bear a great deal of the blame… they stoked the “gotta catch em all” and systems that set a certain level of expectation, and traded on FOMO to get people excited. When they stepped away from that, people felt hurt, because that was the sort of relationship that was set up and exploited.
Even the world of Pokemon has been taken over by “influencers”
At the same time… fans take a sense of ownership that is kind of undeserved, and then lash out when it doesn’t meet their own personal expectations; but no two people will have the same expectations, and anger doesn’t make any argument valid. It’s perfectly fine to be disappointed, and to not buy the game, Pokemon Home, or any of the DLC.
All of that being said, and all the frustration with Nintendo’s pricing, or even the repetitive plot don’t change the fact that, at it’s core, Sword and Shield still make for a satisfying game. The reason that Pokemon works is because the gameplay loop is just that good and it works even when they phone in so much. The things added, and the game after the game is still fun to play.
Is Sword and Shield the best Pokemon game ever made? No. Is it still fun and worth playing? I’d say yes. There is so much I want to have changed, but none of it kept me from having fun. I like the DLC coming up, and look forward to it, even if my efforts to catch them all kind of fizzled out when new games distracted me (I owe that raccoon a lot of bells).
I understand the criticism that this is just a theme done so many times, but it’s not as fair to say this is just “the same” game again. It’s the same in the way that Sun and Moon were the same as X and Y, and X and Y were the same as Black and White. There’s so much to the game that still works, and I’m torn between a 3 and a 4 out of five. I had a ton of fun playing it, and both my daughter and I sunk a ton of time into playing it. That seems more than enough to call it a four out of five. Your mileage may vary, but I didn’t regret purchasing or playing the game, and given how the world is right now, it’s a great game to escape into when you’re tired of waiting for Flick to come and buy all of those spiders and scorpions from you.
Buy Pokemon Sword and Shield
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I don’t know what this is. Judging by the color and general shape, I’d guess it’s some sort of ship. I’d also fathom a guess it’s an Imperial vessel but I could be wrong. Maybe it’s from Ahsoka. I haven’t watched that one yet. But hooray for obscure ships making the cut I guess? I’m ambivalent towards it so I’ll give it a thumbs up. Giving it a thumbs down would feel like I’m punishing it for my own ignorance so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that it’s done well, whatever “it” is supposed to be. And no I’m not going to cheat and read ahead to see what Nick wrote about it.
Day 2 of the chocolate calendar gives us a “Lindt Mini Milk Chocolate Double Milk TEDDY”. Not sure why TEDDY is in all caps. Perhaps he’s a loud fellow and sends all his texts in all caps.
Gotta had it to fine chocolate makers around the world for shaping their chocolates into the shape they are supposed to represent. TEDDY is no exception and looks the part.
When I read “double milk chocolate” I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be white chocolate. I feel cheated. I was hoping for a slightly different milk chocolate texture on the inside. To be fair, that’s exactly what I got but after I took the bite I was like, “this is not what I was expecting”. It was passable as a chocolate treat, but the bar is raised when they claimed “double milk” and the treat fails spectacularly by giving you sweetened cocoa butter instead. Thumbs down. I’m sad that I have two more of these things to ingest in the coming days.
