I seriously beat the crap out of this one kid with severe self-loathing issues at his hometown while taking with me a mythical creature that he's been obsessed with all his life, only to then follow him to his own school where I then destroy his whole career in front of a live audience. Oh he tried to fight back; but he couldn't stand up to my twelve foot, one-eyed bear that unleashes a giant laser from the power of a bloodmoon, plus the very same mythical creature from earlier but now she brought a fiery spiked club with his name written on it. This is probably the funniest plot since X and Y.
They couldn't get the landing quite right with Part 2.
Structure of the DLC is pretty much the same as the base game, "do battles against boss characters in any order, then proceed to the finale". I liked the new characters enough but it feels we didn't get enough time with them. Seems like there are post game conversations to be had with them at least, even found out the red-head has a crush with one of the others. That's cute, kind of wish it was integrated into the main story among the many other interactions that I might never see. Plus the plot with Area Zero had nowhere near the punch that the base game had during its finale.
Will give credit though, this DLC doesn't mess around. I personally never came close to losing, but that's only because I'm an obsessive freak who gulps EV trains all their Pokémon, plus alters their natures and hyper trains for perfect stats. But both regular trainers and boss trainers use competitively viable Pokémon and intricate strategies that adds a level of complexity to battle that you seldom see in these games outside the post game. They will use both Pokémon with their hidden abilities and held items that makes them more dangerous. This is ontop of every fight being a double battle which allows for a lot more possibilities for both your opponents the players themselves. As an example, I used a Great Tusk with Earthquake alongside a Levitate Vikavolt with Discharge, meaning that both of their attacks hit both opponents while being immune to each other. Like any Pokémon game, you can still power level your team to crush your foes with raw numbers, but with how high leveled everyone already is it's a lot tougher then usual. What I do like about these battles the most though is that they're also great teaching tools in the ways you can use certain Pokémon. They show you how strong reflect and light screen are, how to utilize terrains and weather, and what moves are great for certain Pokémon.
The BBQ quests are kind of a huge mess and the biggest fumble here. Firstly, don't do what I did and start trying to fill up the Pokedex till you unlock these quests by doing the very first story mission you get. That was a big mistake and wasted a lot of time. These quests are simple tasks that, very slowly, award a currency that's used for basically everything. Do you want to decorate your room? Do you want to change how your player character tosses a Poke Ball? Do you want new photo filters? Do you want to unlock post-game rematches with old Gym leaders and the Elite Four? Do you want to 3D print items, up to and including Master Balls? Then you're going to be grinding out a metric ton of these quests. Every ten small ones gives you one larger quest with a extra payout. For the most part though things are reasonably priced, except for the terrarium upgrades.
SO! Based on the Part 1 of the DLC, I knew coming in that there would be a special Pokémon or two unlocked by reaching a certain percentage of Pokedex completion. That is indeed true. If you catch 200 out of 240 Pokémon, you can catch two new paradoxes. Here's the thing: despite your best efforts in catching, evolving, and trading you can only get about 160. And that's where upgrading the terrarium comes in. For each of the four biomes there is a upgrade to add several wild starter Pokémon from all the past games to catch. Cool, right? It would be if they weren't 3000 points.
Each.
A single quest earns you 20 to 40 points, while the tenth special quest can earn you up to 200 or so. You see the problem, right??
But what can you do to make this tolerable? One is beating every trainer in a biome. Every five or so earns quite a lot of points. Problem: this is one-and-done. Once you exhaust all the trainers then your out of luck. Almost. The real way to wrack up points is to play with friends. There are special multiplayer quests that will earn you an actual reasonable sum of points. What if you don't have friends who play this game or have online?... ummm...
On one hand, this is mostly only a pain for completionists. If you just want to reach the end then you'll need about 200 or so points. That's completely reasonable. On the other hand, Pokémon hasn't had such a pain in the ass economy since the Battle Frontier that gave you pennies for playing battles that feel like their cheating at points. It's a regression that feels very disappointing. I ended up upgrading two biomes and managed to trade for a few more Pokémon to reach the 200 quota. Was it worth it? I don't think so. If you have friends then it's probably much more tolerable. The quests may be short and simple, but they're not interesting challenges and they can make you run all over the place. And and and and! If you want to catch all the past legendries' in the post game, then you need at least some group quests completed. I would not be surprised if these quests get an overhaul in a future patch, cause as they are now they're a unremarkable grind.
But enough of that, can we talk about the Synchro Machine? It allows you take control of any of your Pokémon. "Is it useful?" If you're asking that question then you've already failed. You can toss a ball with ZR and play with it. You can play as a Joltik whose as big as a flea and hops around like a tiny bug. You can play as the slowest Pokémon imaginable or one who zooms through the sky. You can play as a Alolan Exeggutor, the funny tall palm tree dude. It's stupid fun and I wish more games in general had things not tied to any progression or goals but instead just allows you to fool around with something silly. As an aside, I saw online how one person controlled one of their shiny Pokémon and fooled their friends into thinking they found a glitched shiny that they couldn't catch. That's why you do stuff like this. (Also I caught my first shiny in Gen 9, a shiny, female Meowstic (https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-sv/meowstic/#))
Also did you know that Meloetta is in this DLC? Probably didn't since it some cryptic bullcrap you hear on the school playground from a kid who says he beaten every game in existence. No that's not physically possible Michael you stupid ass- erm anyway nice to see devs continuing to include some wild mysteries to their game and see how long it takes for people to find them. Not long in this case, if only this game was made a decade or so sooner then this would've been the wildest shit imaginable.
Wrapping back to the intro here, Kieran is one of the more interesting characters in Pokémon mainline. He's probably one of the more, for lack of better words, realistic characters for his age. I can somewhat emphasize with him as someone who used to have a severe inferiority complex, feeling as if there are people who are factually better then you in every possible way. When that belief embeds itself in your mind it can be hard to pull it back out, taking over every fleeting thought in your damaged head. Still, he's a kid. Completely immature and rash. Lashing out at others who try to look past and question his façade. He uses a Porygon-Z with Adaptability, a Life Orb, and Hyper Beam; in other words, completely fucking overkill. He created a persona of a tough guy when in reality he's a huge dork. He is someone who says "Wowzers" unironically, that's the level we're dealing with.
Whether you actually like him is a different story, for me I was both laughing at and with him. Anytime he gets those distressed anime eyes where his pupils shrink and his eyes bulge is really entertaining. I like the times where he breaks his "badass" caricature and is real bad at recovering from that flub. And you know, even if you do hate him then he's a good foil as he takes his losses really badly. So either way I feel he works as a character.
I will say, maybe I'm a very distrustful person but I counted three characters I was expecting to be twist villains. In hindsight I'm glad that wasn't the case since that might've been pretty lame, but apart from Kieran and his sister Carmine there's a lot of characters that don't get much, if any, satisfying developments or memorable moments. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but Pokémon can and has done better in the past. I don't need a ton of story sequences in a Pokémon game, but I feel a few more here or there would've gone a long way to make this a much more satisfying conclusion to Gen 9.
And what a Gen this has been. It's real close to the apex of the franchise, it just needs more polish in both an aesthetic and technical level. Plus I'm a big advocate for adding voice acting to these games. When there's several cutscenes that show a much a higher level of character acting with them seemingly lip synched to their dialogue, the exclusion makes it all the more baffling. Wishing the devs the best, and here's hoping Gen 10 can deliver something new and exciting.
Also I didn't make Michael up. He was a real kid at Elementary school.
Kids sure are something.
They couldn't get the landing quite right with Part 2.
Structure of the DLC is pretty much the same as the base game, "do battles against boss characters in any order, then proceed to the finale". I liked the new characters enough but it feels we didn't get enough time with them. Seems like there are post game conversations to be had with them at least, even found out the red-head has a crush with one of the others. That's cute, kind of wish it was integrated into the main story among the many other interactions that I might never see. Plus the plot with Area Zero had nowhere near the punch that the base game had during its finale.
Will give credit though, this DLC doesn't mess around. I personally never came close to losing, but that's only because I'm an obsessive freak who gulps EV trains all their Pokémon, plus alters their natures and hyper trains for perfect stats. But both regular trainers and boss trainers use competitively viable Pokémon and intricate strategies that adds a level of complexity to battle that you seldom see in these games outside the post game. They will use both Pokémon with their hidden abilities and held items that makes them more dangerous. This is ontop of every fight being a double battle which allows for a lot more possibilities for both your opponents the players themselves. As an example, I used a Great Tusk with Earthquake alongside a Levitate Vikavolt with Discharge, meaning that both of their attacks hit both opponents while being immune to each other. Like any Pokémon game, you can still power level your team to crush your foes with raw numbers, but with how high leveled everyone already is it's a lot tougher then usual. What I do like about these battles the most though is that they're also great teaching tools in the ways you can use certain Pokémon. They show you how strong reflect and light screen are, how to utilize terrains and weather, and what moves are great for certain Pokémon.
The BBQ quests are kind of a huge mess and the biggest fumble here. Firstly, don't do what I did and start trying to fill up the Pokedex till you unlock these quests by doing the very first story mission you get. That was a big mistake and wasted a lot of time. These quests are simple tasks that, very slowly, award a currency that's used for basically everything. Do you want to decorate your room? Do you want to change how your player character tosses a Poke Ball? Do you want new photo filters? Do you want to unlock post-game rematches with old Gym leaders and the Elite Four? Do you want to 3D print items, up to and including Master Balls? Then you're going to be grinding out a metric ton of these quests. Every ten small ones gives you one larger quest with a extra payout. For the most part though things are reasonably priced, except for the terrarium upgrades.
SO! Based on the Part 1 of the DLC, I knew coming in that there would be a special Pokémon or two unlocked by reaching a certain percentage of Pokedex completion. That is indeed true. If you catch 200 out of 240 Pokémon, you can catch two new paradoxes. Here's the thing: despite your best efforts in catching, evolving, and trading you can only get about 160. And that's where upgrading the terrarium comes in. For each of the four biomes there is a upgrade to add several wild starter Pokémon from all the past games to catch. Cool, right? It would be if they weren't 3000 points.
Each.
A single quest earns you 20 to 40 points, while the tenth special quest can earn you up to 200 or so. You see the problem, right??
But what can you do to make this tolerable? One is beating every trainer in a biome. Every five or so earns quite a lot of points. Problem: this is one-and-done. Once you exhaust all the trainers then your out of luck. Almost. The real way to wrack up points is to play with friends. There are special multiplayer quests that will earn you an actual reasonable sum of points. What if you don't have friends who play this game or have online?... ummm...
On one hand, this is mostly only a pain for completionists. If you just want to reach the end then you'll need about 200 or so points. That's completely reasonable. On the other hand, Pokémon hasn't had such a pain in the ass economy since the Battle Frontier that gave you pennies for playing battles that feel like their cheating at points. It's a regression that feels very disappointing. I ended up upgrading two biomes and managed to trade for a few more Pokémon to reach the 200 quota. Was it worth it? I don't think so. If you have friends then it's probably much more tolerable. The quests may be short and simple, but they're not interesting challenges and they can make you run all over the place. And and and and! If you want to catch all the past legendries' in the post game, then you need at least some group quests completed. I would not be surprised if these quests get an overhaul in a future patch, cause as they are now they're a unremarkable grind.
But enough of that, can we talk about the Synchro Machine? It allows you take control of any of your Pokémon. "Is it useful?" If you're asking that question then you've already failed. You can toss a ball with ZR and play with it. You can play as a Joltik whose as big as a flea and hops around like a tiny bug. You can play as the slowest Pokémon imaginable or one who zooms through the sky. You can play as a Alolan Exeggutor, the funny tall palm tree dude. It's stupid fun and I wish more games in general had things not tied to any progression or goals but instead just allows you to fool around with something silly. As an aside, I saw online how one person controlled one of their shiny Pokémon and fooled their friends into thinking they found a glitched shiny that they couldn't catch. That's why you do stuff like this. (Also I caught my first shiny in Gen 9, a shiny, female Meowstic (https://www.serebii.net/pokedex-sv/meowstic/#))
Also did you know that Meloetta is in this DLC? Probably didn't since it some cryptic bullcrap you hear on the school playground from a kid who says he beaten every game in existence. No that's not physically possible Michael you stupid ass- erm anyway nice to see devs continuing to include some wild mysteries to their game and see how long it takes for people to find them. Not long in this case, if only this game was made a decade or so sooner then this would've been the wildest shit imaginable.
Wrapping back to the intro here, Kieran is one of the more interesting characters in Pokémon mainline. He's probably one of the more, for lack of better words, realistic characters for his age. I can somewhat emphasize with him as someone who used to have a severe inferiority complex, feeling as if there are people who are factually better then you in every possible way. When that belief embeds itself in your mind it can be hard to pull it back out, taking over every fleeting thought in your damaged head. Still, he's a kid. Completely immature and rash. Lashing out at others who try to look past and question his façade. He uses a Porygon-Z with Adaptability, a Life Orb, and Hyper Beam; in other words, completely fucking overkill. He created a persona of a tough guy when in reality he's a huge dork. He is someone who says "Wowzers" unironically, that's the level we're dealing with.
Whether you actually like him is a different story, for me I was both laughing at and with him. Anytime he gets those distressed anime eyes where his pupils shrink and his eyes bulge is really entertaining. I like the times where he breaks his "badass" caricature and is real bad at recovering from that flub. And you know, even if you do hate him then he's a good foil as he takes his losses really badly. So either way I feel he works as a character.
I will say, maybe I'm a very distrustful person but I counted three characters I was expecting to be twist villains. In hindsight I'm glad that wasn't the case since that might've been pretty lame, but apart from Kieran and his sister Carmine there's a lot of characters that don't get much, if any, satisfying developments or memorable moments. Maybe I'm expecting too much, but Pokémon can and has done better in the past. I don't need a ton of story sequences in a Pokémon game, but I feel a few more here or there would've gone a long way to make this a much more satisfying conclusion to Gen 9.
And what a Gen this has been. It's real close to the apex of the franchise, it just needs more polish in both an aesthetic and technical level. Plus I'm a big advocate for adding voice acting to these games. When there's several cutscenes that show a much a higher level of character acting with them seemingly lip synched to their dialogue, the exclusion makes it all the more baffling. Wishing the devs the best, and here's hoping Gen 10 can deliver something new and exciting.
Also I didn't make Michael up. He was a real kid at Elementary school.
Kids sure are something.
6 Comments
@DeemonAndGames Thank you kindly as always! Fixed the image, sort of. Just linked it to Serebii, though it defaults to the male variant instead of the female one so you'll just need to click on the right icon for it to show.
Honestly I find DLC for any game to mostly be better then the base game for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the ability to take player feedback into account or being able to design around an already existing game as opposed to a game whose core mechanics are still being tweaked till launch day. When you look up development stories, it's crazy how some high-profile games were real bad to play till a month or two before release. When you're jumping off from that as a starting line then things tend to go a lot smoother.
Honestly I find DLC for any game to mostly be better then the base game for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is the ability to take player feedback into account or being able to design around an already existing game as opposed to a game whose core mechanics are still being tweaked till launch day. When you look up development stories, it's crazy how some high-profile games were real bad to play till a month or two before release. When you're jumping off from that as a starting line then things tend to go a lot smoother.
Good review, pretty much agreed with everything u said. Im honestly pretty sad the ending of the story didnt have anything close to the same amount punch as the base game had, especially since Kieran and terrapagos had so much buildup. I was also excepting some kind of fucked up thing to happen, like that teacher hoing haywire and stealing terrapagos or something. /: every time i play i still get a little bummed out with all the loose threads, but whatever. Hope gen 10 takes all this and runs with it, paldea fuckin rules
@moschidae Yeah when it's all said and done, Paldea is a fantastic region. I'm excited to see what real life country they'll use as a basis next. I personally want to see Australia.
WHAT do you mean there's going to be a added epilogue?!?
"damn we didnt tie up shit, guess we'll add an epilogue"
DeemonAndGames
4 months ago