Tag: gen 8

Crown Tundra Has Truly Legendary Levels of… Grinding (Pokémon DLC Review)

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

I’m a big Pokémon fan, but I’ll admit that the series has been incredibly inconsistent. Sword and Shield are games that do a lot right, while also doing some things bafflingly wrong, compared to previous generations. The very vocal critics on social media don’t help the series’ case either, especially nowadays. The Isle of Armor does make a lot of improvements over the core game, but we really can’t have a final say on Gen 8 without playing through its second wave of DLC: Crown Tundra.

In the Crown Tundra, your character boards a train to the titular location and finds itself confronting some person’s very energetic father. After whipping his butt, his disgruntled child uses the opportunity to skedaddle. You join up with dad, and he makes you catch some Legendary Pokémon.

This campaign somehow has even less story than Isle of Armor. Literally, the entirety of Crown Tundra revolves around catching Legendary Pokémon. A LOT of Legendary Pokémon. I don’t know if Sword has a different cast, but for characters, I got Peony and his daughter Peonia. Peonia is kind of a brat, but her father is a fun, energetic, wholesome guy. They imply that he’s related to Rose somehow, but I don’t care deeply enough about Pokémon lore to look into it.

Structurally, I think this is the better of the two Pokémon DLCs… to a point. At the start, Peony gives you three Legendary Pokémon quests, which can be done in any order (it’s been a while since they gave you that much freedom). They’re all introduced with a hilariously long title and a fanfare, giving Peony even more personality (although I think Looker has done the same thing once or twice?). 

The main quest is to help the Crown Tundra’s Legendary Pokémon, Calyrex, who possesses Peony in order to talk to you. I think this is the first time in the main series that you directly engage with a Pokémon. You also have a case where you have to pick one of two forms of Legendary Pokémon by planting a certain type of carrot to lure its steed, which further incentivizes spending the $180 on both Sword and Shield (with DLC) in order to get 100% completion in either game. Anyhow, Calyrex is a pure Pyschic-Type, and his steed is either Ghost or Ice-Type. Calyrex and the steed are an instance of a fusion Pokémon (the first since Gen 5), and it gets both of their Abilities at once. 

For the other quests, there is a return of the Regis. As expected, you have to solve riddles. They are nowhere near as obtuse as the Braille stuff in Gen 3, but in case you can’t solve one, Peony will give you some helpful advice (not that I actually used him because I was overthinking or anything >_>). Gathering all three regular Regis at the final door does not give you Regigigas, but a choice between brand-new Electric and Dragon-Type Regis. The third quest is the most interesting because you actually get to catch regional variants of Gen 1’s Legendary birds. They’re roaming Legendaries, but unlike in games of old, you simply just run into them as they fly around in the overworld and fight them straight-up; definitely an upgrade.

Unfortunately, they seem to be following Isle of Armor’s model of making incredibly grindy mechanics to actually give you bang for your buck. No matter what you do, 99% of your time on Crown Tundra will be spent in the Max Lair. It is both a fun and awful idea. Basically, the Max Lair is a gauntlet of randomly generated Max Raid battles. Your team (or just you if you play with A.I.) picks a path and fights whatever is there. You can run into berries or helpful people along the way; either a backpacker who can give you a selection of hold items or a scientist who offers a random rental Pokémon. You fight four consecutive Max Raid battles, ending with a random Dynamax Legendary Pokémon. The big plus is that the Dynamax Pokémon here are nowhere near as bad as in the overworld (mainly because they don’t have shields), but the fact that you have to fight four of them in a row is rough because the “if four Pokémon faint, you lose” rule applies to the entire thing instead of individual fights.

What spices things up is that everyone gets random rental Pokémon. These rentals are actually pretty good, and a lot of interesting strategies can come up. I imagine this mode is amazing with friends, but as a noob who doesn’t have friends or a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, well… Max Lair sucks. For starters, you can get a bad setup of rental Pokémon options versus the Pokémon you encounter in the actual dungeon. And while you can catch a beaten Dynamax Pokémon and switch it out of your team, the fifteen seconds you get to decide a path is nowhere near enough to optimize a root. And if you have A.I., one of them will always switch out for the newly defeated Dynamax Pokémon, even if you choose not to catch it, and even if it has a type disadvantage against a future opponent. Save-scumming works, but you eventually have to spend Dynite Ore for doing it too often. “What’s Dynite Ore?” you ask. Dynite Ore is your reward for playing Max Lair. Completing a run only nets you nine. NINE.  And to get the good stuff, including an item that gives your Pokémon its Hidden Ability, you need hundreds of the stuff. You do unlock an endless mode that gives you more Dynite Ore in exchange for not getting to keep any caught Pokémon, but I didn’t dabble in it. Overall, Max Lair WILL kick your butt, especially if you’re using A.I., and since you only have a vague idea of what Pokémon you’re up against, you won’t know if it’s worth save-scumming for a particular Legendary. The even better part is that you only keep one rental Pokémon at the end of a run. And guess what, some of the regular Pokémon you encounter are exclusive to Max Lair, which means you’ll still be playing through it even if you catch every Legendary! This also includes the opportunity to catch Ultra Beasts once you complete Crown Tundra, but I couldn’t find a single one in the attempts I made.

Other than that, I presume that completing both DLC campaigns unlocks the Galarian Star Tournament (since that’s how it happened with me), which is a repeatable team battle royale thing that will pit you and a partner against other Gym Leaders and characters. It’s easy if you have Hop, since he has his Gen 8 Legendary which can pretty much eat anything that isn’t Fire-Type. In other news, Peonia alludes to some weird woman who runs around at night, but I couldn’t get that to trigger. I tend to always miss some kind of post-game quest or whatnot in Pokémon games, so take this review with a grain of salt.

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Final Verdict: 8/10

While Crown Tundra is very small (and VERY grindy), I believe that it, along with the Isle of Armor, are a step in the right direction for Pokémon as a whole. They take the open-world mechanic of the Wild Area, but give it more variety and substance. Plus, the idea of putting dedicated sidequests in an area is cool. If they take these same ideas and integrate them into a future core game, then we might have something good. But of course, knowing the series’ trends, any new idea they implement will be discarded, regardless of how objectively good it is. 

Overall, I’m not entirely sure if the Expansion Pass is worth it. Obviously, you need it if you want completion, but both areas are still incredibly grindy. I kind of agree with the critics that the series hasn’t been the best it could be, but that’s mainly because I love Black and White 2 too much (maybe I’d do a retrospective on it if I had time or the willingness to erase either of my save files). Well, with Pokémon, I’m willing to pull a Star Wars fan and blindly hope that they’ll eventually release something really good despite them very consistently failing at every turn (Ooooh snap). Well, this got long-winded. Basically, I recommend the DLC if you’re a Pokémon veteran and just love the games in general.

Pokemon Shield First Impressions

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Gaming

You’d think that with eight whole generations of Pokemon, that Game Freak would be out of ideas. However, the latest installments, Sword and Shield, might just be the best games yet. I will be covering my impressions of Shield on today’s blog.

So, the premise is a return to form; no more having to “make the Pokemon League” crap (although it was pretty interesting conceptually). In this instance, your rival character, Hop (who, unfortunately, still chooses the Starter with a disadvantage against yours), is the younger brother of the Champion, and said Champion gives you your Starters. You and Hop also have a run-in with some weird Pokemon that is immune to all attacks, and it is most likely a pre-evolution of your game’s titular Legendary. But hey, Gyms are back! Thank Arceus! 

Every new Generation feels like it has a billion new mechanics and changes, so it’s overwhelming to talk about stuff… Gah, I guess I’ll just go off of whatever comes to mind first. Let’s talk Pokemon Centers. These things baby you; allowing you to buy each type of healing item other than Full Heals and REVIVES before your first Gym Badge. But other than that, these are the best Pokemon Centers ever because they EACH come with a Name Rater, Move Reminder, AND Move Deleter; no Heart Scales required!

On the field, Gen 8 borrows from Pokemon Let’s Go!, and shows wild Pokemon in the overworld. However, it’s a bit confusing. While some appear visibly on the field, there are still old-school random encounters, except those tend to have completely different Pokemon. Intuitively, the invisible Pokemon are ones that are too small to actually be seen above the grass, which makes sense, but it’s still annoying. Also, the Pokedex yet again does not have the Habitat List from Black and White 2. Instead, the Pokedex tells you what Pokemon you can catch in a given area, but it only shows one area at a time, and in chronological order, meaning that you have to catch EVERYTHING as you go along in order for it to actually show the next place.

Another noticeable thing is that all Pokemon naturally gain battle EXP together from the get-go. Also, there’s the Pokemon Camp ability, which allows you to play with your Pokemon and cook Curry (which is this game’s version of the crap you make with Berries in past games, and it’s just as convoluted as ever). This gives them even more EXP and increases their affinity towards you. So far, it seems that they at least got rid of the EXP boost from affinity, but kept the more luck-based perks. I’m sure you’re looking at this and thinking, “Oh my God the game’s even EASIER than ever! 0/10!” I thought that too, but this game’s actually proven to be reasonably difficult so far. You really need to know your stuff (fortunately, they still have the Battle Info button for noobs). Even with the bonus EXP from catching Pokemon (which I’ve been doing pretty liberally), fighting Trainers, and using the Camp, I’ve been cutting it close, with major bosses being the exact same level as my strongest Pokemon. They finally designed those Pokemon-helping mechanics around the actual challenge factor (as long as you don’t grind). Speaking of Pokemon-helping mechanics, you also have PokeJobs. These are accessible from the PC and are basically Merc Missions from Xenoblade 2. You send out boxed Pokemon for a set period of time, and they come back with a chunk of EXP (with bonuses for the Types specified on the request). This will be important for breeding tons of Pokemon at once. You can also farm new EXP Candies, which do exactly what they sound like. They are much more powerful than they look; only 5 or 6 of the smallest units can level up a Pokemon early game.

Overwhelmed yet? Well, there’s also the addition of Wild Areas. These are where Pokemon becomes a true JRPG; they are vast, open, and have tons of Pokemon of wildly varying levels and draw points to get items from. The most important materials are Watts, which are obtained by visiting glowing red Pokemon Dens and pressing A on them. These can be exchanged for items, such as the new/old TR items. TRs are like TMs of old, use it once and they break. They are much more common, and generally contain better moves (seriously, most of the TMs are going out of their way to give you crap moves), plus they can be obtained multiple times, such as from Pokemon Dens…

…which segues into the BIGGEST (pun intended) change made in Gen 8, Dynamax Pokemon. Inside some Pokemon Dens are Dynamax Pokemon, giant versions of regular Pokemon who are much stronger than regular ones; so strong, that four Trainers need to band together to take one down. So that means that you have to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online and connect to the Internet and fight them alongside some randos, right? Fortunately, no; you can play offline and you’ll be joined by some fairly competent A.I. trainers. When fighting against Dynamax Pokemon, you’ll be able to Dynamax the Pokemon you chose to fight in these battles, turning them gigantic as well. Dynamax is basically a fusion of Mega Evolution and Z-Powers. When your Pokemon are Dynamaxed, they get a big stat boost, and their moves are modified. Offensive moves become a much stronger move of the same type, and leave a free effect like a multi-target stat buff on your team, a multi-targeting debuff on the enemy team, or a Weather effect, and Status moves just become a stronger version of Protect. Dynamaxing lasts for three turns (and I assume you can only use it once per battle?), so coming out swinging isn’t always the best. A lot of battles were decided by me timing my Dynamax so that the opponent’s would run out while mine was still going. Overall, Dynamaxing is by far the most gimmicky and least necessary mechanic in the game, but they made a good decision in restricting it to Pokemon Dens and Gym Battles.

Hey, another segue! Gyms are back and, well, the same, really. They build up Gyms as this whole extravagant thing, just for them to be the same. The problem with this is that you basically have to go through a whole extra step for no reason. When you enter a Gym, you now have to go to some receptionist and change into a tokusatsu uniform before actually starting the Gym in earnest. Also, when you actually get to the boss, the cutscene leading up to the fight is really long. But hey, I’d take this over those stupid Trials in Gen 7. 

But unfortunately, the Gym Leaders have taken a downgrade again. In Gen 8, they’re once again one-note characters that you talk to a single time outside of the Gym, then fight back inside the Gym. And it doesn’t end there; the whole cast is as one-note as ever. Hop shows that they gave up at making the rival anything more than free EXP. They tried to give him a defined character arc by making him edgier later, but it feels very cliche and contrived. Meanwhile, the cloud-headed Bede is a return of the obnoxious rival of old, but this guy is at least obnoxious as part of his job, working for Chairman Rose, the guy in charge of Galar’s biggest source of energy. Rose is at least kind of funny, as he comes of as this business-y guy, but spends more time wearing summer casual clothes than taking his job seriously (*cough* totally not the bad guy *cough*). Team Yell is our new mischief-making group this time around. Despite their similarities to Best Team Skull, they seem pretty unremarkable, and only seem to serve as justifying the game walling you with NPCs at the exits of towns (which seriously needs a new approach; it’s getting old).

Let’s discuss cutscenes next. These have been a replay-killer in Pokemon for a while, and it was OBNOXIOUS in Gen 7. In Gen 8, it’s at least been far better than Gen 7, but still kind of bad. The Poke Ball tutorial is still forced, but they at least not bother telling you to weaken it first. However, to be honest, the cutscenes here aren’t actually terrible. With the more cinematic camera angles and more expressive character models, the cutscenes have a lot more personality. For example, the cutscene that introduced the Starters might be overly long, but it gives off a subtle visual cue of their Type matchups, to save from people actually having to tell you in a forced tutorial. Also, to make the game more anime, bosses offer comments during battle. While they are cool and will no doubt give later fights much more emotion, you can’t skip them, and are onscreen for what feels like ten whole seconds. Curiously, there is a setting to skip cutscenes. However, it is a toggle to automatically skip all cutscenes, not a button prompt to skip them, which is kind of stupid. Most modern JRPGs at least give you a button prompt… I guess in Gen 9, then.

Next, I’ll give my impressions on the new Pokemon. Thankfully, they actually made them pretty common out in the wild, unlike Gens 6 and 7, where you’d be hard-pressed to find actual NEW Pokemon. Regional Variants return, but this time it’s not limited to Gen 1. The best one I’ve found is a Ground-Steel version of my boy Stunfisk, and it’s freakin’ great. But as far as the new-new Pokemon, I’ll say that I’m not screaming “WTF?!” as consistently as I was in Gen 7, but overall Game Freak’s still got it. The starters seem to continue the trend of being unremarkable until their final form, which in my case is my water Starter that ended up evolving into Michael Phelps the Pokemon. I have a Pokemon that I really like, design-wise, but it only knows Withdraw and Astonish. This is a sign that it will evolve into something amazing, but when and how? What if it’s a trade evolution?

Speaking of trading, the fact that this game is on the Switch has a down side for me. As someone who is uncomfortable around people, I just used two DSs to exploit trading in the past. Since I believe that Gen 8 is the first game in a LONG time to let you ACTUALLY complete the Pokedex, I’d like to be able to do that. The problem is of course, the other two starters, trade evolutions, and the opposite game’s titular Legendary. While I do have a copy of Sword that I would love to play in the future (any%, of course), I only have one Switch. I have no idea if you can trade between save files. But if I can’t, I’d have to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online, and see if randos are willing to give up a Legendary just so someone else’s Pokedex can be completed. You can also use Link codes to trade with a specific someone, but that requires real, human friends.

Lastly, I will discuss the visuals. The Switch has made Pokemon look like a true JRPG, or to be more specific, those new-fangled “animu” JRPGs, with cel-shaded anime kids, vibrant colors, and amazing lighting effects. This is definitely the best-looking that Pokemon has ever been.

But despite how glowing this review has been, I do have some concerns. According to the Map, there only seems to be two Wild Areas in the game, which feels like a vat of wasted potential (maybe they’ll abolish Routes entirely in Gen 9). Also, I didn’t notice a Victory Road AT ALL on the Map, which is really bad, especially since the lack of one in Gen 7 sucked ass. And if that wasn’t enough, Gen 8 could have the worst postgame yet, since the Map doesn’t show anything interesting past what I assume is the Pokemon League. The only thing of note is a mysterious dot adjacent to the foggy area that you couldn’t do much in at the beginning, but that would make it even more miserable than vanilla Gen 7, which would be quite impressive in of itself. But alas, these are just concerns formed just by looking ahead at the Map.

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Current Verdict: 9.25/10

Despite the alarming possibility of a weak postgame, Sword and Shield are looking to be the quintessential Pokemon games. They’re not perfect, obviously, but like Disney Parks, perfection would mean no more strives for further improvement. The game’s options for different Pokemon you can use are a bit overwhelming, so I’d still recommend noobs start with Gen 7 (or Gen 5’s sequel, Black and White 2, if you don’t mind those stupid HMs). But seriously… Pokemon Sword and Shield is lit.