Pokemon

[Andrew]

I agree with Hathen. I like Kanto and Johto. You were just a kid traveling the region, stopping the Mafia, maybe finding an old ruin here or there. Now it's just crazier and crazier world-ending schemes and I'm tired of it.

Agreed as well. Honestly, I feel like gyms and the Elite 4 are more and more on the periphery with every new generation. I'd be up for a much more simple adventure again, with a solid rival (get rid of the annoying friends) and a focus on being the best Pokemon master in the region.

[Draak]

Kanto and Johto were lovely adventures indeed. I'm really fond of Black1/White1 too, felt it was a modernized take on Red/Blue and God bless playing with older PCs. Sun/Moon, otoh were super boring, not to mention the PC was some creepy always smiling kid.

[Ranadiel]

New trailer is up. Speculation is that the first portion is about the after story episode. So avoid if you don't want spoilers I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXhtZHn3vDc

[Hathen]

That's kinda cool, kind of a reversal of the PWT from Black and White 2. Still, it's really weird that it's looking like there's going to be no new Alolan forms in the game, when you'd think that would be the most marketable thing they could go for (mirroring all the Megas they put into ORAS).

One more announcement in a week or so though, so we'll see. I'd be surprised if they announced more Alolan forms because it would mean they've done a really good job keeping it under wraps. More likely it'll just be an official announcement of the special Z Move Mimikyu is going to get.

[Ranadiel]

So as an FYI, a text dump of all the game's text files now exists on the Interwebs, so if you care about spoilers regarding new content be very careful when going to any place to discuss USUM as pretty much everything is now known.

[Hathen]

Read a couple of the leaks from the text files...I gotta say these games sound pretty disappointing. It's funny how with every single trailer that came out I kept hearing people say how they were holding back on the really interesting announcements either because they were saving the best ones for last, or because for once they were not going to reveal every last detail before release. Turns out it was neither and it was correct to just say they had very little to show.

Spoiler: show

I guess that's a bit unfair, fighting every evil team boss is a neat little feature, but I bet it'll just be a bunch of boss fights with little else attached. And I doubt there's significant changes to the story and in terms of new Pokemon to play around with that boils down to, what, 5 sub-legendaries? Compare that to ORAS which offered like 15+ new Megas, and I didn't even like ORAS.

[Hathen]

Double post, but it's been a month so why not, and I assume anybody who was going to get the game probably already has it.

Even though I wasn't terribly interested in it, I got Ultra Moon basically for free after my brother bought a two-pack. I'm a big enough cheapo to appreciate a free game, that's for sure.

Played the game a bit over the last few weeks it's been out, and I finished the game's main story. This time I decided to go with a Frankenstein's monster of a team which is different from my usual OCD method of only using Pokemon new to the gen. Endgame team was Ninetales-A, Dhelmise, Volcarona, Mantine, Magnezone and Tyrantrum. Volcarona ended up being way more overleveled than the other team members because I wanted it to evolve before I finished the game, which it did literally at the doorsteps of the Pokemon League. Wasn't sure what they were thinking when they made it evolve at level 59 until it started killing everything.

MVP of the playthrough was the Magnemite line though, it was available early and was just consistently useful. Disappointment of the playthrough was once again the Ice type. I even went and bred Snow Warning, Freeze-Dry and Moonblast on the thing but it was mainly useful for looking really pretty, which it does quite well. It did eat a couple Dragon/Flying/Dark types at the end though so it did something at least.

Some general thoughts on the game:

The Good
-Expanded Pokedex and Move Tutors are per usual third version content gating tactics
-They fixed some of the annoying things about using Poke-Pelago
-Mina's trial was a nice prelude to the Pokemon League
-They didn't need to do it, but Victory Road is actually a dungeon this time
-The new minigames are actually kinda fun, but they do get old pretty quick

The Bad
-When they marketed the game as having "twice the story", what they really meant was that they added a couple lines and made a few pretty hallway areas (I'd probably enjoy a whole game set in Ultra Megalopolis to be honest). The story changes even derail Lusamine's character somewhat. The story's like 90% the same really.
-No new Alolan Forms
-Personally I'm kinda disappointed they only remixed the normal battle and normal trainer of the battle themes

The Irritating
-Roto-Loto is just a crappier and less wieldy version of O-Powers
-Rotomdex never shuts up while having text scroll annoyingly slowly (this is probably the most worst thing in the whole game, let me use the minimap already)

Also I changed the title of the thread. A new Pokemon comes out almost every year so might as well just have a dedicated thread to it I figure.