They probably just figured that a lot of people will have X or Y and the Bank, and can thus transfer a lot of pokemon over pretty easily.

 

Okay, so I actually looked at May in profile and turns out she's wearing a shirt and white and black shorts. The white on the shorts (the top part) is nearly the same tone of her skin when a battle starts, so I can't unsee this shit. So annoying.

In other news, I'm ready to go to Dewford. I've caught all the Pokemon so far, and shaking grass Pokemon are very interesting. Not all of them come with a special move and sometimes the special move can have drawbacks. Poochyena gets Thunder Fang but it replaces Tackle, so it can't do jack shit to a ground-type at early levels.

Otherwise, I've calmed down from my earlier rant, and Hoenn's trumpets have lulled me into a state of pleasure.

 

I love the new pokeradar thing. It's fun seeing all the random egg moves a pokemon can have when you get to a high search level.

 

Yeah, so far the whole new Pokenav thing is making this for me. Being able to complete every route and know how many more I need to capture is making me go slow and completionist. I love it. I want to catch all of 'em.

 

Heh. Search level 13 just got me a Taillow with two perfect IVs and boomburst.

 

Yeah the Pokenav stuff is fun times. Makes me cheat a bit for my Nuzlocke-y run by knowing what I'm going after and stuff, but eh. I just reaaaaaally wanted that Gulpin.

Also, Mauville City's new design was such an amazing surprise. I love it. A gigantic insulated futuristic castle-sized shopping mall city with an upper residential level restricted to only the rich and powerful? Throw in an apocalyptic-esque story element making the city get locked down and you have a grimdark fanfic about a crumbling mini-society showcasing the worst parts of human greed warring against desperately violent lower classes just waiting to be written. Which is what's totally going to happen. I got dis.

 

Just started. The fact that you can make your character sneak by barely pushing the analog stick is amazingly funny.

 

Just learned that Sharpedo's surf speed is double the regular surf speed. That makes my choice between it and Crawdaunt easier.

Also, you can get both the mach and acro bikes in this version.

 

All the gym leaders are wimps. Where's Wattson's damn Manectric? For a gym leader who liked traps, his gym puzzle was pretty awful. I also like how the bike shop has all these colorful bicycles on display and I don't get to choose a color.

This game is so damn linear. You don't need to stop me in the middle of the road to give me a tutorial on secret bases, game, I don't fucking appreciate it.

Route 113 is my favorite route in the entire game, and after listening to identical unchanged music throughout the game, THIS ROUTE'S music is the one they fucked with? They took all the beauty out of it, and made it some garbage tune with the original barely in there.

Fuck, I wish this game was never made. I like the weird Pokemon searcher and all, but it doesn't mean much if the Pokemon selection is awful. You'd think this would be easy to fix. Just make Hoenn's route more diverse. I hear you get the National Dex after the eighth gym, but you couldn't do it after the first gym? Really?

 

*shrug*

I just shitcanned Norman and I'm after a kickass trapinch in the desert. Still having a blast.

Also, FR/LG didn't have any gen 2 pokemon until you got the national dex, HG/SS didn't add many during the main campaign either. Neither game really messed with the original pokemon that appear on the routes either. I'm not sure why you were expecting otherwise.

 

Those games were two to three generations ago. We just came off of X/Y, the most diverse Pokemon yet. Pokemon from every generation were being thrown in your face, there were so many Pokemon to use I know some people who had revolving teams just to use every single one they liked.

Hoenn is so empty of Pokemon it baffles me. I came to this one route where there was only two Pokemon. Two, wtf? Sure, it was how the original games went down, but if you're updating everything else, you might as well update the Pokemon in the routes.

This game had so much potential. So damn much, but it wasted it.

 

Yeah but... It's a remake. So it's remaking it. Not updating and reimagining. Remaking. Minor adaptation points here and there but again, remake. FRLG and HGSS were exactly the same too. Especially Pokemon-wise. In fact ORAS's dex actually has some upgrades in the form of adding pre-evolutions and evolutions that cropped up in fourth gen (Gallade, Budew, Roserade, Froslass, Magnezone, Probopass, Rhyperior et cetera). Which is a step forward from FRLG which I recall actively having Golbat be unable to evolve into Crobat (straight up get to the evolution screen and then go, "Oh nothing's happening yet") until after the National Dex was obtained post-game.

I get what you're saying, but eh. I mean, X/Y had good diversity. But it was a new game that could do what it wanted and had like 60 new Pokemon involved so it needed it. ORAS has a dex of 210, over 130 of those being Pokemon introduced in Gen 3, so making an all Gen 3 team is doable and flexible for those that haven't used Gen 3 Pokemon in this current gen metagame climate - like me, for example - or even those that never played them - aka the kids who were two years old ten years ago aka the target audience - but there's not a bad variety in the other 80. Love me some Slugma action, totally forgot Doduo was even in this dex, hyped to grab a Magnemite for the first time since Gen 2 and try out getting it all the way to a Magnezone, and oh my god Phanphy's here I love that cutie pie.

And I mean c'mon son. Of course the game'd stop you to give a tutorial on Secret Bases. The game'd stop you to give tutorials on how to breathe if it could. Press A to breathe in, press A to breathe out. Would you like to send your results of breathing to the PokeGlobal Breathing Uplink? Oh, you don't know what that is? Allow me to demonstrate for ten minutes! Wait where are you going? Come back! Pls. ;_;

 

I'm actually gonna go the other way and mention that Crystal was definitely present in HG/SS. Interesting that the Hoenn remakes haven't gotten the same treatment given how much more...complete Emerald felt.

Or maybe that's why in and of itself, and it's just an attempt to preserve real differences between the games.

Disclaimer: Even Emerald couldn't make me actually like Hoenn. *shrug*

 

I just learned that Sharpedo doesn't have the rear fin of a shark. He kind of just ends... with a star shape.

This is distressing

But, then, another new badass discovery. You can fly to routes now. Not just cities

Also, it's worth using Sharpedo just because of how fuckin fast it surfs. Even if it is half there.

Like, I know I said before that I'd read that it's twice as fast as normal surfing, but perhaps an even better comparison: It's pretty much mach bike speed.

---------- Post automerged at 07:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:16 AM ----------

Yay automerge!

But yeah, in case nobody has visited yet, the Berry Master has a giant plantation now. Looks like all of the damage reduction berries are there.

 

So anyone gotten the free Pikachu? Contest beast.

 

The free-kachu is on my main team, because I never liked elektrike enough to evolve into manectric and I wanted some electricity for the water routes.

I've just finished up the groudon storyline and that's

Spoiler

when you get to fly latias around like a boss. You get an Eon Flute to call her down whenever you like, which means you can also select menu that shit. The animation time and obviously fly time is longer, but it's really freaking awesome. Also lets you not run fly on any pokemon in your main team. You don't need to have latias/os in your party either. Also, you can visit some places that I don't think are available otherwise. I caught coballion at one spot and happiny+foretress at a woodsy area in another. All 3 showed up as "not in Hoenn dex" when the pokedex info came up. I don't have my eighth badge yet.

Things I liked/disliked:

• Groudon has rest, which made catching him a pain. I had a leveled spore-false swipe breloom and it was pretty difficult to catch compared to the stationary legendaries I've seen since Emerald.
• Pokenav is pretty rad. Finding the pokemon you want is really nice.
• It doesn't seem quite as easy to level as the last couple games, but you still get the super-exp share. You can disable that though but what's the point?
• Gym leaders need six pokemon starting from like gym 4. It's really easy to level up 4-5 strong battlers with a level advantage, so with type coverage that wide the gym leaders really should be more difficult.
• Spoiler

  They fucking give you a latios/as for free? For no reason?!?
• That shiny metagross is too strong. Comes with a version of false swipe and relevant moves instead of just take down? You can pretty much use it as your starter and roflstomp the world. Also, it gets boosted trade exp but you can't rename it. Annoying.
• Using pokenav to find a trapinch, my second catch (I think search level 4) was a shiny and turned out to be adamant. 3 hours later she was EV trained, amie-d up, and leveled to match my party. This is the first shiny I've ever caught in the wild.
• Feebas is stupid. You can find him anywhere via fishing or surfing or pokenaving on route 119. You can prism scale trade him or just beauty block evolve him. New pokeblocks are super simple to make though so it's a silly exercise. Catch him on route 119, feed him some blue pokeblocks (which you make by mixing 5 blue-colored berries together) and you have yourself a milotic. I farm every berry tree but I was able to get a milotic and have plenty of leftovers without ever harvesting one of my planted trees.
• Handholding seems a little silly in this game forreal. I understand stupid tutorials and stuff, but it actively ports you between different areas now. You finish up at the mountain and it ports you back to Norman.
• Puzzles seem to be at an all time low for difficulty. I haven't been there yet but a friend says the sky pillar is just a few floors of climbing without tricks.
• Secret bases are pretty awesome.
• Dat Shiny Flygon doeeee! I'm really upset that Flygon didn't get a mega.
• I have been reminded that I hated that Altaria got a 3d sprite, because I don't like her anymore. I liked it when she was an ostrich/emu/secretary bird thing, but can't stand her form now. Her mega is ridiculous and she has a beard too. Leveled one up, stopped using it.
• Catch a Surskit early and you can get sweet scent. Sweet scent lets you trigger horde battles whenever. Horde battles give you five pokenav search points. If you are looking for an egg move/dreamworld ability for a pokemon and they are a horde battle, this can really help. I did this with shroomish early on.
• Pelipper holds the lucky egg. You can find him in grass routes pretty early or as soon as you get surf. Use the search function to find, kill, and level up while finding a lucky egg.

Overall it's a pokemon game and they haven't done anything super exciting yet. I haven't finished it or beat the Elite 4 though, so maybe there's more coming I'm not expecting. Either way, I'm enjoying it.

Current team:

63 Pikachu (Beauty form with icicle crash)
65 Swampert
64 Shiny as fuck Flygon
67 Milotic
55 Breloom (spore+false swipe for catching)
45 Tropius (fly/strength/rocksmash/cut)

I've spent a lot of time finding new pokemon and replacing members of my team. In reserve I've got:

56 Altaria
50 Metagross
40 Latios
45 Groudon
50 Coballion

 

Okay, bought it, picked Treecko because the last two times I ran through Emerald I picked the other two. Did the whole tutorial, I thought... Then comes the sneaking (which is hilarious) tutorial, and I get a Thunder Fang Poochyena?

This'll be interesting, but WTF is it?

 

What do you mean?

 

The different move on a Pokémon. Isn't that going to be hilariously imbalanced, or are the different moves random and you can get, say... A Zigzagoon with something like Baby-Doll Eyes?

 

They only get egg moves (scroll down in any Serebii Pokedex entry to see what's possible there). And the more times you see the Pokemon your Search Level goes up which means higher chances of better bonus move/dream world abilities/natures.

And also: Zigzagoon learns Baby-Doll Eyes at Level 12 in ORAS naturally, so.