Pokemon: Sun & Moon - Nov. 18th

What the fuck tutorial. Hours in, nearly got stage 2 owl and only just started route 2!

Heavy gating of first island, mandatory slow cut scenes, mandatory pokemon school and even a fucking helper fairy. Please tell me that isnt all the way through the game like fucking Skyward Sword.

Member when you just started your adventure within 2 minutes and did whatever the fuck you wanted?

Also is my DS broken or did they not bother putting 3D effect in?

Anyway I have Munchlax and Pichu so I'm happy. Need me an Eevee and Growlithe now since Pokemon Go taught me that Vaporeon and Arcanine are awesome.

Chris said:

What the fuck tutorial. Hours in, nearly got stage 2 owl and only just started route 2!

Heavy gating of first island, mandatory slow cut scenes, mandatory pokemon school and even a fucking helper fairy. Please tell me that isnt all the way through the game like fucking Skyward Sword.

Member when you just started your adventure within 2 minutes and did whatever the fuck you wanted?

Also is my DS broken or did they not bother putting 3D effect in?

Anyway I have Munchlax and Pichu so I'm happy. Need me an Eevee and Growlithe now since Pokemon Go taught me that Vaporeon and Arcanine are awesome.

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Tutorial is mostly over by the end of the first island. At the end of the second island it's pretty much gone but you will still find story-related gates until you beat the story. Also yeah, there's no 3D in this game.

Chris said:

What the fuck tutorial. Hours in, nearly got stage 2 owl and only just started route 2!

Heavy gating of first island, mandatory slow cut scenes, mandatory pokemon school and even a fucking helper fairy. Please tell me that isnt all the way through the game like fucking Skyward Sword.

Member when you just started your adventure within 2 minutes and did whatever the fuck you wanted?

Also is my DS broken or did they not bother putting 3D effect in?

Anyway I have Munchlax and Pichu so I'm happy. Need me an Eevee and Growlithe now since Pokemon Go taught me that Vaporeon and Arcanine are awesome.

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Sounds terrible, maybe I won't be getting this after all.

Anyway, all the Eeveelutions are good in the actual games, and Arcanine has an insane stat total for some random ass stone evolved pokemon. For reference, any pokemon over ~500 total stat budget is generally a top tier pokemon. Pseudo-legendaries, the real powerhouse of each generation (Dragonite for example), have a stat budget of 600. True legendaries can range anywhere from the upper 500s (Legendary Birds, Forces of Nature, Swords of Justice) to the upper 600s (Generational mascots like Lugia/Ho-oh from Gen 2, Zekrom/Reshiram from Gen 5, Solgaleo/Lunala from Gen 7) and 700 plus for gimmick legendaries like Arceus.

Arcanine's stat budget is 555, which is super high for some random chump fire pokemon. That's even higher than Togekiss, and you don't have to deal with hatching an egg and then maxing the happiness of a baby pokemon, which usually just involves biking back and forth (or in an infinite loop in some games) for an hour or two.

Twilight Sparkle said:

Anyway, all the Eeveelutions are good in the actual games

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Except Flareon.

Twilight Sparkle said:

and Arcanine has an insane stat total for some random ass stone evolved pokemon.

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But it doesn't make him great, just flexible.

Kriptini said:

But it doesn't make him great, just flexible.

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Yeah, stats aren't everything but they make a big difference.

I just recently finished Pokemon Y and I have to say...holy fuck Gardevoir went from being arguably the worst top tier psychic-types to being one of the best pokemon in the entire game. It might be mainly a Gen 6 thing, because Gardevoir has a strong attack against every single pokemon fielded by Team Flare except Houndour/doom, but it seems to me that the psychic/fairy pairing is probably the single best type combo in the entire game. Psychic and fairy shore up their respective weaknesses to dark and poison perfectly, dazzling gleam hits all adjacent enemies in multi-battles and psychic attacks are generally the best thing to fall back on if you can't swap in for a type advantage.

So few all purpose counters to Gardevoir too, the only ones I can think of are Lucario and Metagross. I'm sure there are specific counterpicks to Gardevoir like Scizor or maybe Roserade, but none of those I'd expect to see in a general lineup.

Poison hits Psychic for neutral damage so Gardevoir still takes super-effective hits from Poison attacks.

The wonder combo is still Ghost/Dark with Fairy being its only weakness. Ghost/Fairy is also very good as its only weaknesses are Ghost and Steel, and it can hit any Pokemon in the game with one of its STABs for neutral damage, except for Pyroar, who is totally irrelevant anyways.

Ok at the end of Island 1. Minus the tutorial gating, the level design is the best ever. I've spotted lots of bonus areas I can get to with "HMs" so I know there's ALOT of exploration to do later.

Only gripe is evolving Pichu/Munchlax before they get too high level.

The first island is a bit rough if you're over the age of 10, but the game as a whole is fantastic. I can't imagine if you're a fan of series you'd be disappointed after finishing the entire game.

Kriptini said:

Poison hits Psychic for neutral damage so Gardevoir still takes super-effective hits from Poison attacks.

The wonder combo is still Ghost/Dark with Fairy being its only weakness. Ghost/Fairy is also very good as its only weaknesses are Ghost and Steel, and it can hit any Pokemon in the game with one of its STABs for neutral damage, except for Pyroar, who is totally irrelevant anyways.

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Well yeah that's why I mentioned Roserade as a specific counter, but poison in general is pretty awful offensively even with the addition of fairy types. Also ghost/dark may be a solid combo for avoiding type weaknesses, but neither type is a powerhouse on offense like psychic is and Spiritomb has such terrible hps that it's still pretty easy to KO even without super-effective damage. Mimikyu does seem slightly better than Spiritomb, although that steel weakness will be troublesome.

Twilight Sparkle said:

Well yeah that's why I mentioned Roserade as a specific counter, but poison in general is pretty awful offensively even with the addition of fairy types. Also ghost/dark may be a solid combo for avoiding type weaknesses, but neither type is a powerhouse on offense like psychic is and Spiritomb has such terrible hps that it's still pretty easy to KO even without super-effective damage. Mimikyu does seem slightly better than Spiritomb, although that steel weakness will be troublesome.

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M-Gardevoir is okay. Her HP and Def is pitiful and her Speed isn't great allowing pretty much any Physical revenge killer in the game to stop her easily. Hyper Voice can do some absolutely nutty damage with her, so her role is more of a wallbreaker than anything.

I wouldn't call Psychic a "powerhouse on offense" because Dark is immune to it. At least with spamming Dark-type attacks you never have to worry about your move not hitting.

Mimikyu is an absolute god. Its ability (Disguise) allows it to take zero damage from the first attack that hits it, and it also has three immunities, meaning it's really easy to switch in, get a Swords Dance or two, and then proceed to steamroll anything that tries to stop you due to a very good Speed stat, barring something like a Mega Scizor with Bullet Punch.

Kriptini said:

M-Gardevoir is okay. Her HP and Def is pitiful and her Speed isn't great allowing pretty much any Physical revenge killer in the game to stop her easily. Hyper Voice can do some absolutely nutty damage with her, so her role is more of a wallbreaker than anything.

I wouldn't call Psychic a "powerhouse on offense" because Dark is immune to it. At least with spamming Dark-type attacks you never have to worry about your move not hitting.

Mimikyu is an absolute god. Its ability (Disguise) allows it to take zero damage from the first attack that hits it, and it also has three immunities, meaning it's really easy to switch in, get a Swords Dance or two, and then proceed to steamroll anything that tries to stop you due to a very good Speed stat, barring something like a Mega Scizor with Bullet Punch.

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Ok I guess the intricacies of really high level pokemon pvp are something I have no experience with lol.

I do hope Sun & Moon has more post-elite 4 stuff than X/Y did. I thought bw/bw2 went a bit overboard on post-game, but y didn't have shit. A single quest series and the ability to go dig up more mega stones.

Well... there's a lot of one-shot stuff to do, but as for repeatable content, there's more than X/Y but not a lot.

So recently got the game and just did up to the end of the first trial.

Any pokemon up to that point I should be focusing on? or are most of them kinda worthless later?

They buffed almost all the Pokemon to the point where you can use anything and it will be viable, with the exception of like Delibird.

Posting this here because it hit me right in the feels. ;_;

Doing the 2nd island and already super tied of the fucking SOS feature.

Did they ever add a system where getting decently IV'd pokemon isn't some massive RNG fuckall?

Arcanine's stat total is so high because he was supposed to be one of the legendaries along with the birds, but that idea got scrapped.