Glen-i

@Nicktendo, you coming? Typical, he would come online as soon as I post...

You need to join @BowserBasher via the Friends and Rivals option. His Mii's name is Simon. Make sure you have his friend code registered.

@BowserBasher, where you at?

It looks fine, but compared to the old one, it just feels a bit generic. The DS original had this nice rustic charm to it that helped it stand out from other JRPG's. Either way, I highly recommend it. It's got a great plot, some good characters and an interesting "Choose your own adventure book" style mechanic.

The demo is out now. I like the clearer resolution and the new voice acting seems serviceable so far. But... ...yeah... I'm buying the old art DLC and I hate myself for falling for that.

Nice to have that Baby Park mystery cleared up. Great video! I've missed them too. Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Group 1 @BowserBasher is host @Glen-i @BowserBasher @viceview51 @RedShell @Dcubed @martinist @S.C.G @Nicktendo @EEVILMURRAY (I assume you're in?) @Nintendo Fan Still time to sign up!

Guess I'm not making it to the end of Mario Kart League this year then.

I would have used Tora more if he wasn't so much of a pervy scumbag. I keep looking at Poppi (who I actually like, personality wise) and keep getting reminded of that side of him. Anyway, the fourth party member is way cooler.

@Kav I just got to Chapter 5, and so far I have Rex with all attacker blades with accessories that focus on nailing critical hits, which in turn raise the party gauge and heal Rex whenever he does so, Nia with all healing Blades with accessories that bolster that and keep her aggro low. Meanwhile, I've replaced Tora with the fourth party member, they're a tank that focuses more on agility than defense. So, basically Dunban from Xenoblade 1, and he was one of the best characters in the game. Accessories are focused on getting that agility as high as possible, as well as drawing aggro with all tanky blades. It seems to be working because I beat a unique monster 5 levels above my party, felt good.

OK, I couldn't wait, 8 player Smash Bros. gets me all hyped up. Generation 3 - Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FireRed/LeafGreen Gen 3 started in 2002 on the Game Boy Advance with Ruby and Sapphire. Set in Hoenn, the game featured 135 new Pokemon, bringing the grand total to 386. The enhanced version, Emerald came out in Japan 2 years later. Something to note is the beginning of the Pokemon remakes. FireRed and LeafGreen are remakes of the original Gen 1 games, Red and Blue. It was first released in 2004 and bought the original games up to date with the more modern mechanics that Gen 3 sported. As well as having some extra post game content in the form of the Sevii Islands. We'll start with the main meat of the new mechanics introduced in this generation, introduced in Ruby and Sapphire. But before that, we have to acknowledge the bad news. This generation marked the beginning of the trend of old mechanics being dropped. Sometimes necessarily, sometimes... not so much. A long running series is bound to ditch some mechanics as it develops and sometimes, it's for the better. I'm not gonna get too hung up on the stuff I miss in these write-ups, we can save that for the in-between posts and my personal feelings at the end of this post. The most noticeable omission is the lack of backwards compatibility. You could not trade with any of the Game Boy/Game Boy Colour games in Gen 3. This was most likely dropped because it was technically unfeasible, not to mention a change in an old mechanic made it next to impossible to implement Pokemon from the Gen 1 and 2 games. More on that later. A more questionable missing feature is the removal of the day and night mechanic. Instead, Ruby and Sapphire had a simplified real time clock that only kept track of the current time, (Not the day of the week). Perhaps they just couldn't utilise it on the GBA for some reason? There's no way to know. Despite this, Ruby and Sapphire is one of the most influential games in the Pokemon franchise. Some of the features would become mainstays of the series, especially when it comes to the competitive aspect of Pokemon. So, apart from new Pokemon and moves, Ruby and Sapphire gave us... Double Battles are the biggest new feature Gen 3 introduced. The concept is simple. Each player sends out two Pokemon at once to battle. It's a simple change that would eventually end up shaping the competitive aspect of Pokemon. These days, it's the format used in the official Pokemon Championships as well as many of the online Tourneys that take place in the 3DS entries. The strategies utilised in Double Battles were much more complex than what you would see in the usual Single Battles. Some moves, like Earthquake, would hit everyone on the battlefield, including your own teammate. There were even some moves that only worked in Doubles, like Helping Hand. Another big change to the battling mechanics are Abilities. Each Pokemon now had a special ability, a sort of passive skill that activates in certain conditions. Some of the new Pokemon were defined by their ability, such as Kecleon's "Colour Change" which altered it's typing to whatever move it was hit by. This helped to make Pokemon more distinct from each other, and just like Hold Items in Gen 2, added yet another layer to the depths of strategy battles had. Along with these new battle mechanics, we saw Natures make it's first appearance. Each Pokemon could now have 1 of 25 different natures. 5 of these have no effect on the Pokemon, but the rest add modifiers to the stats a Pokemon has. Each of these natures adds 10% to one stat while subtracting 10% from another. (HP is never affected by this) This had the effect of making different Pokemon of the same species even more unique, but these days, competitive players use natures to help a Pokemon specialise a certain stat. Speaking of competitive, it's time to take another look at Effort Values (EV's). You should remember me talking about them in Gen 1. Well, Gen 3 completely redone this. This bit is gonna get quite technical, but I'll try to explain it as best as I can. The new system (Which is basically still around these days) allows one Pokemon to gain a grand total of 510 EV's. You gain EV's by defeating other Pokemon. There's one type of EV for each stat. (HP, Atk, Def, etc.) The Pokemon you defeat determines which type of EV you get. For example, defeating a Zigzagoon will net you 1 Speed EV. For every 4 EV's a Pokemon gets, the corresponding base stat goes up by 1. A maximum of 255 EV's can be put into a single stat, meaning you can increase one stat by a total of 63 points (255 divided by 4, which is then rounded down to a whole number, a.k.a 63) Because a total of 510 EV's can be given to one Pokemon, you could only ever max out two stats at most. Back in Gen 3, people didn't really fully utilise this new system, but these days, it's widely accepted that you need to carefully utilise this system in order to get the most out of the Pokemon you use (Charizard's best stats are Sp. Atk and Speed, so you wouldn't put EV's in Defense) if you want to play Pokemon competitively. Thankfully, if you just want to play through the single player content, you won't ever need to worry about this. But it's the foundation of competitive battling these days. By the way, this redone Effort Value is the most likely reason why Backwards Compatibility was dropped in Gen 3. Moving on, Mystery Gift was tweaked as well, getting renamed "Mystery Event". Instead of the Gen 2 method of getting you items for connecting with a friend, Mystery Event allowed the player to use special e-Reader cards (Remember those?) to unlock a room in a certain house and allowed players to fight special trainers. This didn't really see much usage outside of Japan though, due to the general failure of the e-Reader. Gen 3 had the first case of a Pokemon having different Formes. Some Pokemon would able to change formes under certain conditions. The poster child of this was Castform, who changed it's appearance and type depending on the weather that was in effect. If it was raining, it would become Water Type and so on. A number of other Pokemon would get alternate formes as the generations rolled on. Speaking of weather, Gen 3 had the first instance of external weather conditions. This helped to add some flavour to the Hoenn region, as well as affecting the weather in battles. Ruby and Sapphire also had Pokemon Contests, a minigame that utilised your Pokemon in a different style of Pokemon competition. Players entered one Pokemon into one of 5 categories (Beauty, Coolness, Cuteness, Smartness and Toughness) and compete to see which Pokemon is the best in that category. This would start a trend of similar minigames where players would utilise Pokemon and their moves in different ways to usual battles. Secret Bases also made it's debut here. Players could find many secret bases and commandeer it for themselves. They could then decorate it with various items you could find throughout the game. By utilising a feature called "Record Mix", you could even visit your friends Secret Bases. The Battle Tower also got a cool new feature. As well as double battle format. You were now able to team up with another player to take on the Battle Tower in a double battle format. Effectively, a co-op mode in Pokemon. Now, it's time to move on to Emerald, the Third Version of Ruby and Sapphire... There's one major feature that Emerald introduced which would become my favourite feature to date. The Battle Frontier was an absolutely humongous expansion to the Battle Tower, multiplying it sevenfold. They follow the same basic structure as the Battle Tower but have a number of twists that shake up the formula in interesting ways, from using rental Pokemon to enduring a randomly generated dungeon. Anyway, despite FireRed and LeafGreen being remakes, there was a new mechanic that Pokemon hadn't done before. Continuing from Gen 2, FireRed and LeafGreen (And later on, Emerald) would carry on the real life accessory implementation with the bundled Wireless Adapter. It functioned similarly to the Link Cable, except it did so wirelessly. Meaning that this was the first instance of wireless communication between two nearby consoles. And that's the main mechanics Gen 3 gave to us. Personally, I find this generation conflicting. The actual game is not one I rate that highly, but some of the mechanics it introduced were so damn cool, I can't help but give it credit for that. The amount of hours I burned with the Battle Frontier was immense! And Double Battles are cool. Anyway, this time, my next write up will be on Thursday with Generation 4.

As far as the exploration aspect of the game goes, absolutely. It's also the feature I like the most in Gen 2. But it wasn't integral to the main game. But sooner or later, you're gonna have to adapt to Dark and Steel Types or you're gonna make the game hard for yourself. I'm playing through Crystal again, and I'm floored that anyone can claim that Gen 1 was a better game than Gen 2. Everything about it is better and more polished. Sure, it has it's flaws, but they pale in comparison to the sheer improvements. I'm looking forward to writing up about Gen 3. That's when stuff starts to get removed, it also has one of the most subtle changes that would end up defining the competitive scene we see today. EDIT: Bugger! I forgot about the happiness mechanic. I've edited it in a short synopsis to the Gen 2 post.

Generation 2 - Gold/Silver/Crystal Generation 2 first hit Japan back in 1999, and with it, came a veritable smorgasbord of new mechanics and tweaks to existing ones. The game is set 3 years after Gen 1, making this one of the only Pokemon games that is effectively a sequel, story wise. It added 100 new Pokemon, bringing the total to 251. Apart from the new Pokemon and new moves, Gold and Silver introduced players to... 2 New Pokemon Types were added to the mix, Dark and Steel. Easily the biggest mechanic shift in Gen 2. Gen 1 had some serious balance issues due to the Psychic Type being incredibly overpowered. These two types both excelled against Psychic Pokemon and it changed a hell of a lot about battling. This type shakeup also had some smaller side effects, Magnemite and Magneton got the Steel type added to their typing, making them Steel/Electric. The move "Bite" also got it's typing changed from Normal to Dark. A real time clock was integrated into the game, allowing the game to have a day and night cycle. This mechanic was more than just cosmetic, certain Pokemon only appeared at certain times of the day, a number of special in-game events could be repeated once a day/week. A certain Pokemon even evolved depending on the time of day. Hold Items are special items that could be attached to a Pokemon to give different effects. While not as drastic a change as the 2 new types, this would have a lasting effect on battling, adding an extra layer of depth to building a team. Some hold items even evolved some Pokemon if you traded them while holding it. Mystery Gift made it's first appearance here. Although it's usage is completely different to modern-day Mystery Gift. Using the Game Boy Colour's Infared communicator, you and a friend could get a random item once a day. It also had a few other effects, such as being able to battle an AI controlled version of your friend's Pokemon team. I'll talk about how this changed in a future post. Backwards compatibility was a key feature that was also introduced here. Using the "Time Capsule", Players could trade with people who owned the Gen 1 games, there were some obvious rules when you were doing this, namely, no trading Pokemon that didn't exist in Gen 1 or Pokemon that had moves that didn't exist back then. Not every one of the Pokemon in Gen 1 is available in the Gen 2 games, which would have caused plenty of problems with cataloging some of the unevolved Pokemon. Thankfully, Game Freak thought of that and implemented... Pokemon Breeding is a mechanic that allowed a player to take two Pokemon of opposite genders (Another new mechanic) and have them breed to give players an Egg. If the player then walks a number of steps with the egg in their party, it would then hatch. What Pokemon you got depended on which Pokemon was the mother. For example, a female Charizard would produce an egg that would hatch into a Charmander. I would argue that this was the 2nd biggest mechanic that Gen 2 had. There were some nuances to breeding, clever pairing of Pokemon could give you a baby Pokemon that had special moves it could never possibly learn. For example, breeding a Male Tyranitar that knew Rock Slide with a female Feraligatr would produce a Totodile that knew Rock Slide. The Special Attack and Special Defense Stat was implemented here. These affected a Pokemon's ability to inflict damage with special attacks and it's defensive capabilities against said moves. You see, there are two main categories of attacks in Pokemon, Physical and Special. It was determined by the type of the move. Fire, Water, and Grass moves were classified as Special moves while Normal, Fighting and Steel moves were Physical ones, etc. In Gen 1, Special Attack and Special Defense was rolled into one stat, Special. Gen 2's new stats would change a lot about how each Pokemon would perform in battle. Pokemon with high Specials in Gen 1 were no longer both great in attack and defense. The new Pokégear would start a trend of convenient Gadgets designed to provide the player with important features to assist them in their journey. Gen 2's Pokégear provided a map (Originally an item in Gen 1), a clock, an in-game phone, and an in-game radio. While the gadget form and name would change in future games, they all have the same basic idea. The bag in Gen 2 had separate pockets which helped the player better keep track of their items. General Items, Poke Balls, Key Items and TM's were all separated from each other, making it easier to find what you're looking for. Gen 2 was the crowning example of the Post-Game Quest. While Gen 1 technically had this with Cerulean Cave, Gen 2 went fully in with this. After completing the game, players were able to travel to the Kanto region (The place where Gen 1 took place). This added a tremendous amount of content to the game. The Move Deleter is a person who allows you to force a Pokemon to forget one of the moves it knows. While this sounds pretty useless, this is the only way you can have a Pokemon forget HM's. Which is much appreciated by everyone really. Roaming Pokemon are special Pokemon that aren't confined to one area of the game. They effectively roam around the world. In this game, Raikou, Entei and Suicune are 3 legendary Pokemon that never stay in one place. Every time the player went to a new area, they would also move to a new area themselves. The player would have to try and intercept them. If successful, the player would be able to battle them... for one turn, before they bolt and start the whole process again. Thankfully, they didn't recover health in between encounters, so sooner or later, perseverance should win out. This feature didn't show up in Gen 7, so who knows what the future of this is? Happiness of Pokémon was also introduced, while there was a very simple of version of this with the Pikachu in Yellow, Gen 2 applied this to every Pokémon in the way modern games do. Treating your Pokémon well would cause them to become more affectionate. This doesn't have much of an effect on gameplay, except for the moves Return and Frustration, which got more powerful the more the Pokémon liked you/disliked you. There were also some Pokemon that evolved once they became happy. As you can see, a lot of new mechanics already, but Gen 2's Third Version, Pokemon Crystal also introduced us to a handful of new features. The one feature most people would remember is the option to play as a girl, seems like such a simple option in hindsight, but this helped female players to feel like the game was more their adventure, and considering that the idea is that the playable character is meant to be you, that's kinda important. Another biggie was animated Pokemon. Rather than explain it, I'll just show what happens when you encounter a Pokemon in the two games. Gold/Silver on the left, Crystal on the right Purely cosmetic, of course. But it helps add a bit of life to the many Pokemon you encounter. Strangely enough, this wouldn't be implemented in every game after this. For the next 2 generations, it generally only appeared in the Third versions of games. Move Tutors are people that could teach your Pokemon certain moves, kinda like TM's, but for a price. In Crystal, there's a person in Goldenrod City that offered to teach Pokemon either Flamethrower, Ice Beam or Thunderbolt for you. Effectively providing an infinite supply of these moves. The Battle Tower also made it's debut here. This was a facility that let players fight AI opponents to see if they can string together 7 wins in a row. Certain restrictions were placed, namely, only 3 Pokemon on a team which must be different species and have different items. Pull off 7 wins and you are rewarded with hard to get items. By the way, in the Japanese version of Crystal, the Battle Tower made use of the Japan-Only peripheral, Mobile Game Boy Adapter, which makes Crystal the first Pokemon game that had a real life accessory implementation. It provided a sort of psuedo online capability to the game allowing people to trade and battle with other people in Japan. This no longer works, by the way, the service ended a long time ago. And that wraps up Gen 2, just like any good sequel, it refines the mechanics of the original game with new features, Quality of Life improvements and general rebalancing. Gen 2 has a lot more presence in modern day Pokemon than Gen 1 does, which is quite remarkable really. For me, this makes Gen 2 a lot easier to replay, thanks to it's general polish and cool new features. I highly recommend Crystal if you haven't played an old-school Pokemon. It still holds up well. I won't be around until Thursday now, so you'll have to wait until then for Generation 3.

Are you @Ugh first aid? She had the same reaction once I told her that. A shame too, because Ampharos is one of the few Gen 2 Pokémon that's actually quite good in Crystal.

Time for my highlights, I got a lot!

That Boomerang throw actually worked twice!? Wow! Spectacular! I'm so proud of myself! Even if karma hit me like a ton of bricks in Ribbon Road. Righto! Here's the table after the first night. Very early days, of course. Averages will fluctuate all over the place over the next few weeks. Of note is @BowserBasher and I both getting a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place tonight. Creepy. What's even creepier is that @viceview51 and @Nintendo Fan have the exact same score. How'd you manage that? So, all warmed up with racing? No? Cool! Let's get you up to speed on Battle Mode then! Next League Night: 1st Feburary 8pm Room 1: BowserBasher is host Glen-i BowserBasher viceview51 Pretty simple schedule here. Because there's only 8 courses in Battle Mode, I won't enforce the "Don't choose the same track twice" rule, obviously. But let's try and do each stage at least once, right? Sign up Now!

Playing through Crystal has made me remember that a lot of the Gen 2 Pokemon are really not very good at battling in Gen 2. Whether it be utterly awful movesets (Chikorita), completely awful stats, (Any Pokemon that got an evolution in Gen 4) or even a type that just doesn't suit it's stat spread. That last one is a strange one. Mostly because of coolest starter Totodile. It's a Water Pokemon with high attack, makes perfect sense as a concept. A Crocodile Pokemon would be expected to focus on attack and be Water type. Shame Water moves are classified as Special. Still, it learns Bite. Oh wait, hang on. That's a Special move in Gen 2. Because reasons. Gen 4 really did fix a lot of stupid problems with some much needed evolutions and the glorious Physical/Special split. I started my journey by doing the most important thing, throwing away my bed. I'll be damned if I'm gonna let Mum use it when I'm gone. I got Joey's number, than immediately deleted him, the thought of him trying to phone me, but not getting through makes me very happy. I beat up Falkner's hacked Lv 9 Pidgeotto, which was a breeze compared to the HG/SS version, and some other stuff. Anyway, I'm up to Goldenrod City, here's my team. Nickname in brackets. Croconaw (Dalbert) - Lv 25 Yeah, that's it. I'm probably gonna trade 3 of my team from Yellow (Charizard, Marowak and Hypno), might as well. I definitely remember the huge grind needed if you want to battle Red, that should cut down on things. I plan on getting a Scyther from the Bug Catching Contest on Saturday, so I have to wait for that. And then round it up with a Tyranitar, which is available only after getting all 16 badges... Bugger. Gen 2 might have a pretty small region, but the speed of everything makes it a million times more playable than Gen 1, which is like watching paint dry. @Shorty, did you manage to get Mystery Gift working? I'm gonna try it once @Ugh first aid gets to Goldenrod City.

That Theme name is nothing short of outstanding!

Great, send me a link when you can then. I'll post the results some time later after Rocket League and food.

@BowserBasher, did you happen to get a screenshot of the first GP results? I kinda spaced on it.

Well, that was a hilarious first race! I'm such a jerk.

Next League Night: Tonight 8pm Room 1: @BowserBasher is host @Glen-i @BowserBasher @viceview51 @S.C.G @RedShell @Clownferret Still time to Sign Up! League hasn't even started yet, and we're already seeing underhanded tactics. Good job!

Oh my daze! Lyn is total ridic! I want to get her Support Rank with Ryoma's to A just to see how insane she is with Astra. I totally see what @Ike was on about with her GBA-esque animation. Very cool!

I hate it when games misspell my name... And accuse me of eating people. I've just reached Chapter 4 myself. I like how Chain Attacks net you extra EXP and Loot if you kill an enemy with it. And you get more when you go way too overkill with it. Latest Rare Blade I got was Aurora, who is probably the best design I've seen so far. On account of her dressing reasonably modestly. And the Polar Bear.

Personally, the longer it stays free to play games online, the better.

I had the exact same issue. Maybe having it all on one screen will help me keep track of all the chaos better.