The Pokemon Topic

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Jesus christ look at how FABULOUUUUS the text on that page is. Wally took a lesson in looking bishounen as fuck.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Mega Rayquaza might look kinda dumb, but boy does it also look overpowered as hell, especially with that Delta Stream ability it has, which is sure to be a force to be reckoned with in double/triple battles. Odd that it has a Mega form instead of a primal form like Groudon and Kyogre do, though.

[Nel_Annette]

Dumb? I thought it looked badass. Like, final boss of an old school RPG badass.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Anyone keeping up with Pokken Tournament?







I would be very surprised if this doesn't prove to be very popular.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Finally got myself a copy of Alpha Sapphire last week and started playing it a few days ago. Which makes it the first non-fighting game I've played since...Pokemon Y back in November 2013, and I still haven't even finished that. Anyways, I thought it would be neat to try and do a simultaneous run of both Sapphire and Alpha Sapphire and compare the differences/gameplay between them. I also decided to go through them Nuzlocke-style, which is my preferred method of playing the games since it adds a little more difficulty, and forces me to use Pokemon I might not use otherwise.

So far, I've finished beating Roxanne, and I have to say, I'm really enjoying playing Alpha Sapphire. The battles are more fast-paced and fun, and the obvious additions of improved graphics, motion, and 3-D and such in the Gen 6 game really add to the experience. Sapphire is a little more tedious in terms of grinding, and in Nuzlockes you pretty much have to grind to survive, but the way Exp. Share works in Gen 6 and the fact you get it early on makes leveling up easier and the grinding load much less. Of course, it also makes the game easier, so at some point I'll probably have to turn it off so I don't get too overleveled too early. Interestingly enough, though, I've fucked up more at accidentally fainting the first pokemon I encounter on routes in AS than I have in Sapphire (to the point where I've only caught one other pokemon in the game so far), and I've been really lucky in Sapphire in terms of my first encountered Pokemon (so glad I managed to get a Ralts again, though I wish I could've gotten one in AS too). Anyways, both games are similar in terms of basic story/encounters so far, but I only just defeated the first gym, and from what I hear there's bound to be some divergence down the line that I'm pretty interested in seeing.

Here are my teams so far:

Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 16
"Anasui"/Ralts lv. 13
"Irene"/Dustox lv. 13
"Koichi"/Whismur lv. 12

Dead Pokemon:

"Will A."/Zigzagoon lv. 4
"Enya"/Slakoth lv. 9 (Losing this one was a real bummer. Really wanted to use a Slaking for once.)

Alpha Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 18
"Pet Shop"/Taillow lv. 18

I'm very interested in seeing how my teams in both games evolve as my runthroughs of them go on. I chose Treeko as my starter in both games since that was my first starter back in my original playthrough of Sapphire, but it'd be interesting if that remains the only one of my pokemon that's common between the two teams by the time I finish the game.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Second gym cleared in both games. Brawly went down way too easily; I basically two-hit KO'd his pokemon with just one of mine in both versions. That's kinda lame. I remember him being way harder to defeat when I used to play the gen 3 games as a kid, mainly Emerald since he had a Hariyama instead of just a Makuhita in that one IIRC. Hoping Wattson will be more of a challenge. As far as catching pokemon goes, I screwed up in AS again and fainted a Makuhita in Dewford Cave, so I'm going to have to wait a while to get a third pokemon for my team. In Sapphire, though, I caught a Sableye, which is interesting since it's the first time I've ever used one. It's pretty useful thanks to it's typing and moveset and it levels up quickly, so I'm glad to have caught it. I've been pretty lucky with encounters in Sapphire so far.

My teams after beating Brawly:

Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 16
"Anasui"/Ralts lv. 15
"Irene"/Dustox lv. 15
"Koichi"/Whismur lv. 15
"Miu Miu"/Sableye lv. 16

Dead Pokemon:

"Will A."/Zigzagoon lv. 4
"Enya"/Slakoth lv. 9

Alpha Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 20
"Pet Shop"/Taillow lv. 21

[LumRanmaYasha]

Welp, I wanted Wattson to be a tougher challenge and he certainly was. In Sapphire, at least. I actually lost two pokemon before I even got to him; my Dustox to a rider on cycling road and my Kirlia to the damn Winstrate family. Really disappointed about losing the latter particularly, since I really wanted to use a Gardevoir in my playthrough. As far as catching pokes go, I ended up snagging a Roselia, which might not have the best states in the world but certainly was essential for beating Wattson. Which took me, like, 5 times to do because none of my pokemon had moves that could deal heavy damage to his Magnemite and Magneton. I ended up relying on a leech-seed/mega-drain strategy and using up all my soda pops in order to take him out, though at least I didn't manage to lose any more of my pokes, miraculously.

So, Sapphire got much tougher to play, but Alpha Sapphire? Really goddamn easy. The Exp. Share overleveled my pokemon so much that my Grovyle took em all out without losing much health. Think I'm going to turn that off for a while so the game doesn't get too easy. I have to say though, Mawille city is super weird in these remakes. It's like some kind of building complex now. It totally threw me for a loop. Anyways, I got two more pokes in AS. The first was the Contest Pikachu you get as a gift for completing your first contest (which I won - go Swellow!), and the second was a Marill. The Contest Pikachu is really cool with it's special move(s) and neat costumes, and Lightningrod makes it a beast in the right circumstances. It's a lot of fun to use, and holds it's own quite well which is good since you can't evolve it into a Raichu. Marill was a good catch considering it's water/fairy typing, which is useful to have, especially with Flannery coming up.

My teams after beating Wattson:

Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 23
"Koichi"/Loudred lv. 26
"Miu Miu"/Sableye lv. 23
"Joseph"/Roselia lv. 25

Dead Pokemon:

"Will A."/Zigzagoon lv. 4
"Enya"/Slakoth lv. 9
"Irene"/Dustox lv. 18
"Anasui"/Kirlia lv. 21

Alpha Sapphire

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 31
"Pet Shop"/Swellow lv. 31
"Trish"/Pikachu lv. 30
"Miraschon"/Azumarill lv. 27

[Nel_Annette]

With the new Mystery Dungeon game announced for later this year, I just realized that this may very well be the first year we haven't had a mainline game released in the US in quite a while.

Platinum - 2009
HG/SS - 2010
B/W - 2011
B2/W2 - 2012
X/Y - 2013
AS/OR - 2014

[Kiddington]

Remember when I said years ago I hated Platinum and could never bring myself to finish it?

Yeah, no. I don't know what I was on, but I've come to appreciate this game so much more now that I'm older. There's really a lot to like here; the semi-creepy northern snow routes, and how the overarching Team Galactic plot ties into them, especially adds an interesting degree of surrealism to the whole experience.

I wonder if I'll ever come back to X/Y and have the same change of tune, but prevailing sense says I won't. Those games.....are just not very good.

[Nel_Annette]

I'd say what puts D/P/P towards the bottom of the list for me is just that Sinnoh as a region isn't very interesting except the snowy bits and the solar panel town, and Barry. Otherwise it's a pretty fun standard Pokemon game. X/Y is just... blegh.

Kalos isn't memorable to me. At all. They try do do a lot with it. They have swamp routes, autumn routes, snow routes, but the region never feels like it has its own identity beyond Poke'Paris. The rivals flat out suck, Team Flare is the dumbest team in the franchise (Lysandre especially), the Gym Leaders are there for about a second before they disappear out of the spotlight. I get that that's how it used to be, but B/W spoiled me with how involved in the fight against Team Plasma the Gym Leaders were. Gym Leaders should be trying to protect their region from whatever evil team.

Doubt I'll go back to that. The Kalos games are one of the very few where I don't own both versions.

[Daxdiv]

Gen V will always remain my favorite series/set of game. Unova was pretty balling and I will always praise the fact that Game Freak had to basically recreate the Pokedex from scratch. Sure there are some repetition (IE the monkeys, the genies. Well, at least until the genies got those alternate formes in BW2.) expies (Timburr line being like the Machop line, Rogenrolla being like the Geodude line pops into my mind.) and some design choices are questionable (But then again, when isn't that a problem. I don't see how ice cream and a trash bag is different than something based on eggs and magnets!) but it's still pretty solid outing of mons created (DON'T YOU LIKE GHOST ROBOTS!?). That and the story was pretty interesting as far as Pokemon games are concerned. Well, at least the first pair of games, the 2nd one.... not so much.  To me, this is the closet thing we'll ever get to a total reboot of the franchise.

As much as Gen VI made things easier, the product feels a little... rushed. Especially XY. ORAS felt like it had a bit more polish to it and also kinda improved some of my problems with the original RS games. I like Mega Evolution as a mechanic, even if it did give us some OP shit like Gengar, Kangaskahn, Metagross and Salamence to the table. However the pacing of the story is a little whacked. It felt like forever to get your next badge and it kept on talking about Mega Evolution until it gave you that Lucario. AZ came out of nowhere with little to no build up that his story didn't have that much of an impact on me. That and the casualization of this game. On one hand, it does make things easier like breeding, leveling up your team & EV training. On the other, it does make the main game a cake walk.

[Nel_Annette]

I think that B/W has the better overall story (and Gym Leaders/Champion), but B2/W2 has a much more interesting Unova with the added areas and more to do post-game.

I actually quite liked the slower pacing at the beginning of X/Y. There's a long stretch between Gyms 1,2 and 3, but after the whole Mega Evolution thing comes to an end and you beat Korrina the game seems to go right back to the usual pace of a Pokemon game with Gym Leaders and Team Flare encounters happening much more often. It feels like the game suddenly goes into hyperdrive to get you through the Team Flare story and that left me feeling rushed.

Personally I feel like Team Flare should have been scraped altogether along with AZ (he really does feel like an unneeded part of the story) and the post game story with Looker and Emma should have been the main story. Imagine if

Spoiler

Emma was your main rival, but the twist was that by the third Gym she went missing and the person in the suit appeared and by Gym six you found out it was her and she was being controlled by that scientist, who was using her to steal Pokemon. And then by the endgame you'd defeat him and knock some sense into her to get her out of the suit. Would have been a nice twist compared to what we're used to.

[close]

[LumRanmaYasha]

Beat Flannery in both games. The battle against Flannery was quite tough in Sapphire. Most of the new pokemon I caught that could have resisted fire type attacks were taken out long before I ever reached the gym, and so I was left with the team I've had since Wattson, two of which were grass types, so...yeah. I actually game overed the first attempt I did. On my second attempt, knowing that Torkoal's fire attacks wouldn't be much of a problem after it used it's first overheat, I decided to use Sableye against it after having my Loudred take Overheat before switching it in. I did not expect Overheat to OHKO my Loudred, which was a huge blow, since it was the strongest pokemon on my team, and being a normal type in a team half composed of grass types, my most versatile. After beating Flannery, I went to Route 111 hoping to catch a ground type to cover some bases...but I ended up catching a Cacnea instead. So now my team is 3/4ths grass types, the only exception being Sableye. I'm going to need to catch a water pokemon using a fishing pole on some route in order to proceed further in the game after Norman and stuff, and I hope I catch something with a good secondary typing, since my team is looking dangerously unbalanced.

On the flipside, Flannery wasn't much of a fight in Alpha Sapphire; my Azumarill pretty much took all her pokemon out with Aqua Tail and/or Rollout. In terms of battles, the game is just way too easy and I'm getting a bit annoyed about that. Not to mention there is no wait-time between the fourth and fifth gyms since you can immediately challenge Norman after Flannery if you follow May/Brendan back to Petalburg. However, I love most of the presentation, from the redesigned locations, cutscenes, and etc. I just wish the game was more of a challenge. I've only lost one of my pokemon so far, a Zubat I caught at Meteor Falls, and that was just because of a mistake on my part when training it rather than from a trainer battle. And while I still haven't caught many pokemon, my team is so overleveled and balanced that I don't feel the pressure. The game plays and looks so great, but it's so easy that I'm not having as much fun playing it compared to the originals, at least so far. I don't think I'll bother leveling up before challenging Norman. I have a Machoke at lv. 31, so I have a feeling that it's really not going to be much of a problem.

My teams after beating Flannery:

Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 30
"Miu Miu"/Sableye lv. 31
"Joseph"/Roselia lv. 31
"Gyro"/Cacnea lv. 23

Dead Pokemon:

"Will A."/Zigzagoon lv. 4
"Enya"/Slakoth lv. 9
"Irene"/Dustox lv. 18
"Anasui"/Kirlia lv. 21
"Avdol"/Numel lv. 16
"Gwess"/Slugma lv. 16
"Rikiel"/Swablu lv. 15
"Koichi"/Loudred lv. 30

Alpha Sapphire:

"JoJo"/Grovyle lv. 33
"Pet Shop"/Swellow lv. 33
"Trish"/Pikachu lv. 33
"Miraschon"/Azumarill lv. 33
"AC/DC"/Machoke lv. 31

In Box:

"Boingo"/Spoink lv. 19

Dead Pokemon:

"Rykiel"/Zubat lv. 18

[LumRanmaYasha]

Mewtwo has a new form - Shadow Mewtwo - which will be playable in Pokken.

I felt Mewtwo had enough forms what with two Mega Evolutions and whatnot, but it looks kinda cool, so I can dig it. Looking forward to the Wii U release of the game.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Red, Blue, & Yellow heading to the 3DS eShop in February.

Definitely picking up Yellow. Always regretted giving away my copy of that game, and I'm glad to have a new means to play it again.