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Pokémon OT - Gotta Catch 'Em All

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GameDadGrant

GameDadGrant

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I’m really digging this game so far. Especially the “Chrono Trigger-esque” battles that happen right there on the field. No more screen-swipe transition to a battle scene. Feels way faster and more organic. If the main line games adopt this, I wouldn’t be upset. The kinda non-linear mission progression is a nice change of pace as well.

I’ve been pretty happy with these Pokémon spin-offs lately. Between this, New Snap and Unite, it’s a great time to be a fan of the franchise.

 

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Keyser_Soze

Keyser_Soze

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24 minutes ago, GameDadGrant said:

I’m really digging this game so far. Especially the “Chrono Trigger-esque” battles that happen right there on the field. No more screen-swipe transition to a battle scene. Feels way faster and more organic. If the main line games adopt this, I wouldn’t be upset. The kinda non-linear mission progression is a nice change of pace as well.

 

Where were you in the Tales of Arise thread when I said this is how the battle system should be and people said nah you dumb?

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stepee

stepee

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11 minutes ago, Chris- said:

Ok.

 

@stepee

@Xbob42

 

Is it worth it?

 

I mean, at any time you can throw out all 6 of the pokémon you currently have on your team and they just hang out wherever you are. 

 

On a gameplay level I already feel like a lot of issues I have (and why I stopped the pearl remake about half way through) are resolved and I’m still early on. It’s just all about the speed of everything and respecting your time. I would get in random encounters in Pearl and well most previous entries and just get angry because it’s not what I wanted to do and it would take too damn long to get back to what I wanted to do. Random went away in Sword but now the speed of the battles themselves is correct. And with the pokédex research being more fleshed out with all the new various goals, it gives further purpose to battling and capturing the same mon, whereas before I’d kind feel like wasting time if it wasn’t a new mon. I didn’t even get to mounts yet but there’s a LOT of good here.

 

Just know the open environments (excluding towns) can look pretty freakin bad, if you are okay with that, no reason to skip this entry. The mon all look great and that’s what matters though.

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Chris-

Chris-

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10 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

I mean, at any time you can throw out all 6 of the pokémon you currently have on your team and they just hang out wherever you are. 

 

On a gameplay level I already feel like a lot of issues I have (and why I stopped the pearl remake about half way through) are resolved and I’m still early on. It’s just all about the speed of everything and respecting your time. I would get in random encounters in Pearl and well most previous entries and just get angry because it’s not what I wanted to do and it would take too damn long to get back to what I wanted to do. Random went away in Sword but now the speed of the battles themselves is correct. And with the pokédex research being more fleshed out with all the new various goals, it gives further purpose to battling and capturing the same mon, whereas before I’d kind feel like wasting time if it wasn’t a new mon. I didn’t even get to mounts yet but there’s a LOT of good here.

 

Just know the open environments (excluding towns) can look pretty freakin bad, if you are okay with that, no reason to skip this entry. The mon all look great and that’s what matters though.


Hmm that’s compelling. 

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Biggie

Biggie

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My impressions so far. 
 

Graphics are meh. Lack of any voice acting is very disappointing and leaves characters feeling sort of lifeless. The new mechanics are awesome. Very fluid. Switching between battles or capturing is great. The gathering of materials and crafting is very satisfying. The side quests and research tasks keep things interesting when catching the same Pokémon over and over. Atleast you are working towards a goal. The menus are very accessible. And I love how when you capture a Pokémon you get that little firework spark when the Pokeball closes. Fun factor is a 9/10. Having a blast. 

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stepee

stepee

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17 minutes ago, Biggie said:

My impressions so far. 
 

Graphics are meh. Lack of any voice acting is very disappointing and leaves characters feeling sort of lifeless. The new mechanics are awesome. Very fluid. Switching between battles or capturing is great. The gathering of materials and crafting is very satisfying. The side quests and research tasks keep things interesting when catching the same Pokémon over and over. Atleast you are working towards a goal. The menus are very accessible. And I love how when you capture a Pokémon you get that little firework spark when the Pokeball closes. Fun factor is a 9/10. Having a blast. 

 

Yeah it’s time for both voice acting and a non mute protagonist. I will say that at least Akari has some expressive looks as the rival that are pretty lol sometimes.

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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Characters definitely seem to have a bit more personality than normal, and the idea of everyone being fucking terrified of Pokémon is hilarious to me. The expressions people have are also great. 

 

But yeah, I stopped excusing the lack of voice acting in Sword/Shield, and that game had a gym leader who was a rock star, whose lyrics you had to read and imagine for some idiotic reason. Pokémon has had an anime with fairly iconic voice acting for decades, this silent shit needs to stop, and they need to hire at least 1 employee who has seen a video game released in the last 5 years, because "N64 game AI upscaled to look decent running a 3DS" should not be the end result they're striving for. 

 

Luckily, while those areas are extremely disappointing to me (BotW showed that the Switch could do a proper pretty open world game, even if it had some FPS issues at launch) the core gameplay here is massively,  MASSIVELY improved over every other Pokémon game. Battles are quick but not necessarily easy, turns are taken quickly and speed can actually net you more than one turn. 

 

You can change moves from the party member for free whenever you want, so you're never locked in, your Pokémon will always keep their full arsenal of moves available to swap to. Same with renaming!

 

Alpha Pokémon and swarms of Pokémon, especially in higher density areas, can really make it feel like you're in danger, and I believe you drop your entire satchel of items if a wild Pokémon knocks you out.  And that's not even getting into 

Spoiler

Time-space tears

that can ratchet up the intensity even further and help make the open world feel more dynamic and alive, along with your map showing dropped satchels of other players, which are fun to return and build up merit points to buy rare items. 

 

Side quests can be quite a bit of fetch this or that, but there's also some legit pretty fun minigames, and while it might technically count as a fetch quest depending on how far you stretch the definition, I find things like "bring me a male and female of this Pokémon" or "fill out this Pokedex entry" (which is NOT just catching a single Pokémon anymore) or "bring me this Pokémon at least this tall" to be much more involved and compelling than just bring me 5 bear assess, because it involves interacting with the core gameplay loop of catching Pokémon, and your knowledge of where that Pokémon is, and in some cases (Fuckin Buizel...) your ability to plan a route to catch many of a certain species into you get the size you need. 

 

As for that Buizel over a certain height...

Spoiler

After catching like 30 of them I looked it up to see if there was a trick to it. I found an article that basically said just keep randomly catching them until you get one 2'8" or taller, but my tallest after like 50 was 2'7". I decided to explore more and found an Alpha Buizel, not too far from the Alpha of his evolved form, and caught it. That fucker was almost 5 feet tall, so skip the grind and find the Alpha! ... unless the alpha only spawned because I caught so many. I assumed Alpha Pokémon were predetermined, but I could swear I had been too that area several times and there was no Alpha Buizel...

Also I always like it when Pokémon gets into the ethics of the concept of catching Pokémon, and the native tribes of this land straight up think you just use Poke Balls to basically enslave Pokémon and use battling to essentially bully other Pokémon into doing what you want, WHICH YOU TOTALLY DO.  Of course it's always hand waived ("Oh okay the ball is just a tool not a slave machine we good") but I appreciate that they think about it, because in my opinion it makes for some of Pokémon best storytelling when they get into it. Looking at what you're doing from a different perspective and pondering whether it's right or not is a classic RPG trope for a reason!

 

Can't wait to dig in some more today. I can't express how nice it is to play a Pokémon game and feel unchained from all the bullshit that usually holds them back and makes them take so long. 

 

Speaking of, I typed this on my phone and it autocorrects to Pokémon with the accent, which I'm tempted to go back and remove out of principle and pettiness 

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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Just now, Biggie said:

I’d fuck her not gonna lie

I'm all dressed up to shoot my shot man, hope she likes leprechauns.

 

lCruW0P.png

 

Also it's super weird to see really good IK (mmm feet are planted properly based on terrain height) with a really nice skybox and then just run into the open world and it's like someone thought the Wild Area from Sword and Shield looked too good and that it needed to be dialed way back so as not to overwhelm our mortal eyes.

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Brick

Brick

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The lack of voice acting is weird. Not even the fact that there's no full voice acting, but no voices at all, not even little noises or grumbles like you would hear back in old Zelda games like Ocarina of Time, like, "oh?", "hmm", "ah ha", "gaaar", nothing! Even if it had that it'd be a step up. Give me someone like Beetle screaming, "THANK YOU!" at me when I buy an item. It's like Game Freak uses the bare minium budget needed in order to maximize profits. 

 

Anyways I think I'm just about sold on this game. I wonder if my girlfriend would like it too. She's an absolute chicken shit so I can see an alpha Pokémon chasing her and her just panicking not knowing what to do, and dropping the controller. She can't even beat Link's Awakening lol. 

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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There's a quest you can take to get a shiny Pokemon, but I just encountered a wild one! Just a fuckin' Bidoof but aside from Pokemon Let's Go Eevee where I found a shiny Rattata in the absolute worst possible space (the house that you get to by dropping down over and over) and it vanished by the time I actually got to it, that makes this the first ever wild Pokemon I've seen naturally without farming or anything. Neat! Funny part is I didn't even see it since it was hiding in grass, just the shiny visual and sound effect.

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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So one of the best side effects of the game so far, unrelated to the game itself, is getting "used" to the 30ish FPS it runs at, and then logging into FFXIV which I have at 4k/100ish FPS, which is so incredibly jarring it feels like moving around is too much information for my eyes. :epilepsy: 

 

Pokemon Legends is great if you've lost appreciation for how nice other games can look and run!

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GameDadGrant

GameDadGrant

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11 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

So one of the best side effects of the game so far, unrelated to the game itself, is getting "used" to the 30ish FPS it runs at, and then logging into FFXIV which I have at 4k/100ish FPS, which is so incredibly jarring it feels like moving around is too much information for my eyes. :epilepsy: 

 

Pokemon Legends is great if you've lost appreciation for how nice other games can look and run!

 

FKb0JkRXsAEzpAH?format=jpg&name=small

 

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Xbob42

Xbob42

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On 1/31/2022 at 8:58 AM, johnny said:

I'm still in the first area, haven't fought Kleavor yet. 

 

Anybody who is further long do you recommend grinding and completing more of the dex before going to more areas?

Grinding for levels? There's no need for that at all.


Completing more of the dex is always good as it gets you more stars, which I think presents some minor progression gating later on... I think? My star level has never been low enough to be blocked so I'm not sure if they actually do gate you or if it's just how things are worded when you unlock a new area, but lots of side quests also benefit from you having a completed Dex entry for certain Pokemon. Higher star ratings also unlock new ball and healing items and their associated recipes as well as serving the "pokemon x level and below will now obey you" function of badges. It's also how you make most of your money!

 

In other words, filling out the Dex is very, very good for you in several ways.

 

As an aside, you don't need to complete every research task to complete a Dex entry, just enough to reach research level 10, so usually catching a few of said Pokemon, beating them a few times, etc, will be enough. There's just lots of options per Pokemon so you've got a variety of ways to accomplish this.

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