Glen-i

No idea, can't read Japanese. They might have an explanation for that for all I know. Because the games are localised incredibly well these days, it's impossible for me to tell if the original intent is altered when the English script comes out. The only person I can think of who could possibly know something on that subject is @Serebii himself.

The pocket monster. Evidenced by the numerous fossil Pokémon (Aerodactyl, and so on) that the games constantly mention lived in prehistoric times.

As far as the English localisation is concerned, they've never been called Pocket Monsters. In fact, no character in the games actually makes the reference to how that portmanteau comes about. This kinda gets reinforced in the PMD series, it's set in a parallel universe where humans aren't a thing, which means that Poké Balls aren't a thing either, yet every Pokémon refers to themselves as a Pokémon, despite that. So the likely answer is that they've always been called Pokémon for some reason. Whatever the reason, it's probably not because they can fit in a pocket in-universe. Worth noting that Gen 4 specifically puts forward the theory that even humans were Pokémon at some point. It's never actually confirmed nor denied though.

I prioritise getting to 10 research points for every new Pokémon I get ASAP. Because if I leave it, I'll only regret it later. So basically, I'm playing through the game with 5 pieces of chaff and 1 good emergency Pokémon in case I need to quickly win a fight. The emergency Pokémon is one of 6 Pokémon I would've otherwise had as part of a proper team. 5 of them are new Pokémon introduced in this game (Kleavor, etc), which means I've now ditched Typhlosion. I always aim to use nothing but newcomers with a new game, and regional variants don't cut it. Although I do have one variant at the moment. It's finally paid off though, I've not even finished the 3rd area, and I have 156 Pokémon with complete Dex entries and am currently Ninth Star Rank. Even better, I've run out of Pokémon that don't have a complete Dex to work on (Except Unown, for obvious reasons). Which means I can finally bring in all six of my good Pokémon and have a proper team. This has had the side effect of having them around the level 50-58 mark at this point, so I'm way overleveled. From now on, if I catch a new Pokémon, I'll simply box my highest level member, complete the Dex, evolve if necessary, and when that's done, bring the good Pokémon back.

Funny thing is, I thought it was tweaked to guarantee you get the Pokémon you're looking for during that quest, because I got it on my first attempt. I guess it makes up for the 30+ Buizels I had to catch at the start. Speaking of crazy luck, I got a shiny Cherubi from one of those trees! I know the much easier chance for shinies in this game (and the many ways you can make it even more likely) kinda devalues them a bit, but that one? Nah, that's proper jammy luck on my part!

The most difficult thing about Bayonetta is remembering how she recovers, because it's effective, but flat out bizarre for Smash. She's one of my favourite characters and I still mess it up from time to time. Side Special > Up Special > Mid-air jump > Up Special again. Trying to let go of that muscle memory is really difficult though. I was voice chatting with @BowserBasher last night and at the end of that match, I remember both of us immediately declaring that I didn't deserve to win that one, because you were clowning on us both throughout!

Oh right, it's worth mentioning that this follows current VGC rules, which allow for 2 normally banned Pokémon (Legendaries like Mewtwo, for example) in your team of six. So keep that in mind, if you're not planning on just throwing fights to meet the gift criteria.

Right, games I played in January. I am Setsuna is a turn-based RPG published by Square Enix and developed by Tokyo RPG Factory that was released on the PS4 and Vita in 2016, a Switch port, the one I played, was released a year later. Despite the title, you play as Endir. A mercenary for hire who is given the job of killing someone called Setsuna. Setsuna is part of a village that routinely sends someone to the "Last Lands" to sacrifice their life in order to temporarily stop a constant influx of demons hellbent on killing everyone. Guess what? Setsuna is the latest sacrifice. Endir changes his mind a bit and decides to help escort Setsuna to the Last Lands. She's gonna sacrifice her own life, anyway, so he might as well help. The plot is... fairly average. Not very engaging, really. It's pretty predictable, all in all. There really isn't much to say. It's just boring. Much like this line of text. Now, the gameplay? That's a little more interesting, at least. Because the weird thing is, as far as the battle system goes, I am Setsuna is actually Chrono Trigger 2. The base mechanics are exactly the same. Seamless transitions between overworld exploration and battles, ATB system, character specific techniques that can be combined into Dual Techs and Triple Techs. The game is not trying to hide it's inspiration one bit, as all the techs from Chrono Trigger appear in this game in some way, from X-Strike to Luminaire. It's not exactly original, but hey, at least it's got a solid base. The game does have some of its own twists on Chrono Trigger's battle system, the main one is best explained with the aid of a pic. Simply put, you have a number of slots with which you can equip various techs. So if a character has a tech that you think is no use to you, you can forego it and instead use the empty slot to equip a passive effect instead. So less techs means you can have more buffs. It's an interesting system that allows for quite a bit of customisation. The second twist is the momentum system. When a character's turn comes around, not acting will cause a guage to go up gradually. When it gets full, you get a momentum point, which can be used to power up a tech when it gets unleashed for bonus effects. Quite useful on enemies that utilise counterattack stances. With that said, it doesn't help save this game from being pretty standard fare, it's not a bad game, but it doesn't really stand out. It's fine, and I had a good time. But it's probably not good enough to warrant going back to it. I'm glad I got it on sale. And one last thing. This game kinda takes the theory that everyone likes snow levels and goes way too far with it. 90% of the game is snow. Snow and Piano. There's so many piano pieces, you do get sick of them after a while. In last year's diary thread, I mentioned that I gave up on Metroid Dread because I just couldn't stand having to evade the various E.M.M.I's that feature. I hate stealth, I'm no good at it, and the E.M.M.I's are very good at finding people who can't stealth. It sucked the fun out of it for me. Anyway, here's a quote from a different thread. @Dcubed got an OLED for Christmas, and therefore, hacked his old Switch. Which meant that I had the means to play Metroid Dread with one slight difference. If I ever got caught by an E.M.M.I. the mod would automatically counter the final window of opportunity for me. With the thing that ruined the game effectively nullified, I was free to enjoy the Metroid part of this game, and I loved it. It's SO much fun! It's surprising how much more I enjoyed it then MercurySteam's other Metroid game on the 3DS, Samus Returns. It's an amazing step up. Samus moves so fluidly, and while the game is tougher then your average Metroid game, it never felt unfair like the 3DS title did. The bosses have great telegraphs for their attacks, requiring a satisfying loop of learning patterns and then making your successful attempt look like cake. BTW, I beat the final boss on my fourth attempt, I basically died on each phase before using the knowledge I gained to perform much better the next go around. A few small things that bring it down though is the music isn't quite up to the standard of the series, and the plot doesn't live up to the promise of previous games, I won't go into too much detail, but I think Other M kinda scared the producer, Yoshio Sakamoto, away from the idea from having a more involved plot then "Samus goes to a planet, is awesome, and then blows it up". So the ending doesn't really live up to the foreshadowing that Fusion and Samus Returns set up. I'd be lying if I didn't say it felt a bit limp. I also find the map a bit too big. I'm not really in the mood to speedrun it, as it's too complex for me to realistically remember it. The map screen is also a bit difficult to parse at times as well. But even with this mod, I can't ignore the fact that to me, Metroid Dread is fundamentally flawed, so I can't in all honesty place it any higher then I originally did. (2nd least good 2D Metorid. It's better then the NES game at least) I played Banjo-Kazooie on NSO. In fact, I played it twice. The second attempt was a 100% speedrun. I posted about it on the NSO thread, so I'll just leave my time here. I'm still upset that I didn't get under 4 hours. And finally... Fun Fact: She barely features in this game. Square just placed her there because they wanted to push Lightning that hard. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII, I'm sure some of you remember me really laying into how crap it is. So you can just imagine my utter delight, when right before I finished XIII, its sequel got added to Game Pass. So I jumped straight in, because third party games don't last forever on Game Pass (I'm looking at you, Kingdom Hearts), and I needed to continue my quest to play every non MMO Final Fantasy game. Now, I'm gonna carry on with the assumption that you've read my write-up on FFXIII. Because I'll be comparing the two. Mostly on how (or if) it addresses my problems. But first, the plot. You play as Lightning's sister, Serah. While she's chilling out at her new home, everyone around her seems to completely forget that Lightning even exists. Some bozo called Noel materialises out of nowhere, declares that he's from the future, and that someone is trying to change history so that the stuff that happens in Final Fantasy XIII doesn't happen. We're meant to stop this, apparently. Don't ask why. No, Serah. I don't like Lightning either, but the plot demands it. In my XIII write-up, I talked about ten things that I hated about the game. But somehow, this game defied almost all of my expectations and did something completely mad. It actually made me like it! I couldn't believe it! It actually took the worst Final Fantasy ever, and salvaged it into something I genuinely enjoyed. And here's some of the reasons why: 1. The plot is nowhere near as hard to parse in XIII-2. You might be a little lost if you've not played the original, but the story is built up of various vignettes as Serah and Noel jump around time and sort out problems as they try and fix history. Kinda a bit like how Doctor Who series go. 2. The game is much more open compared to the original title. Think of the game as Mario 64 meets Radiant Historia. Yeah, I know, that's a bizarre mixture. There are various time periods that you select from a menu. Each of these places has a number of "Fragments" for you to find. Think of them like the stars in Mario 64. You get them for all sorts of things, beating bosses, solving puzzles, etc.. This means that you're not funneled through corridors! 3. The erratic difficulty curve is much more reasonable in XIII-2. There's a few spikes here and there, but nothing too horrible. It made for a more enjoyable game in all. Although some of the optional bosses were pretty tough, but that's fine. 4. You don't a Game Over if the character you're controlling dies! OK, you get one if the two humans die, (The third party member is one of the many monsters you can recruit) but at least you have a chance to revive if one character croaks. 5. OK, everyone still has hitboxes in this game for some stupid reason, but enemies don't make sudden movements all the time, so no-fault misses are few and far between. 6. This stupid animation sequence whenever you first use Paradigm Shift in a fight? Gone! 7. There's no arbritary limit on leveling up here. Theoretically, you can reach the max level in the game in the first area. You shouldn't, it'll take forever, but you can if you want. Grinding is an option for getting past a difficult fight again! 8. The weapons actually progress in quality as you proceed through the game! Like a normal damn RPG! 9. You get money from winning fights! Like a normal damn RPG! 10. The music is actually quite varied! It's weird as hell, and not exactly great, but at least I don't have to listen to 5 million versions of "Blinded by Light". I even bothered to go for 100%. The secret ending was a big, and funny, middle finger, but I didn't mind. As of writing, the third FFXIII title, Lightning Returns, isn't on Game Pass yet, so I'll be waiting until that happens. But I'm looking forward to it a lot more now because of this, genuinely decent, game!

Not neccessarily. Catching them doesn't actually mean "Catching" them. It means receiving them. So, as an example. Say you need to catch 30 Pikachus. Well, you can get a friend to start a trade session where you both trade each other a Pikachu. Every time you complete the Pika Trade, that counts as catching a Pikachu, even if the one you receive is the one you literally just traded away. It doesn't completely mitigate it, as you still have to defeat wild Pikachus to get that task done, but you can cut the time spent looking in rifts by almost half.

Tonight, I noticed a lot of matches ended with pretty sweet comboes from the winner. You can't really begrudge losing to a well executed series of attacks.

Stock format tonight at 8pm.

Oh, they do different things all the time. Annoyingly so, because they tend to unceremoniously chuck cool ideas they had away just as easily. Pour one out for Rotation Battles.

Possible. I tried maxing out my boxes with the ol' "1 Pokémon in every box trick" in the second area. If there's 1 added with each new area you go to, that would make 32 by the fifth.

Huh... Then it's arbitrarily blocked me from getting to 32 boxes for some reason. Now. That is new. I don't like it.

Yeah, that's been a thing for ages. As soon as you have at least 1 Pokémon in each box, you get given more. The max this game allows is 29.

Really, in this day of online trading, there really is no reason to buy both, unless you're a parent with two kids. For one person to get any use out of two versions, they'd need two consoles, just not worth the cost.

That means that in a single week, it has already sold more then Pokémon Crystal's entire lifetime sales. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't rub me up the wrong way. I barely make any progress before wanting to do something else.

I also wasn't aware of this. Nice to see such a massive faceplant in action.

I have played the Sword/Shield Expansion Pass. So I'll chime in with my thoughts as well. But I will also pre-empt those thoughts by clarifying that A: The Crown Tundra is the only area that I think is remotely interesting to explore and B: I've only been in the first two areas in Legends. I've played a lot of Sword/Shield, well over 400 hours. Most of that time is spent in the three Wild Areas, but the thing is, I was certain that I was only there because of Max Raids. A single area in Legends is about 10 times bigger then the Wild Area, but this comes with the caveat of feeling like it takes 10 times as long to get anywhere. Even with riding Pokémon around, the place is just too damn big and it's made even worse by the far fewer places you can warp to. It takes 2 minutes tops to get anywhere in Sword/Shield. You'd be lucky to get anywhere in that time in Legends. To make it even worse, riding a Pokémon limits what you can do. You can't throw items or Pokémon out to interact with things, so if you see some materials you want or a Pokémon you want to battle/capture, you have to dismount. This has led to quite a few moments when a rare Pokémon has unexpectedly spawned for me, only for it to skedaddle because I frightened it by barrelling past on a massive deer. In Sword/Shield, you can do everything while riding a bike. In Legends, it feels like I'm being punished for going fast too often. And I've said it before, but I'll emphasize it. Legends areas are so damn empty. Without the distraction of Max Raids or visiting other people's camps to see their Pokémon and make curry, there's not much in terms of landmarks. The Crown Tundra was a promising sign that a more open Pokémon has potential, as it has a quite a few landmarks, like the Regi Temples, or the complex cave to try and get through in order to get to the top of the mountain where a ruined castle hides. Legends has some such as the Lakes that feature in the Gen 4 games, but they are sparse, considering the size of the place. I also don't actually agree with this. Each area is kinda split up into sub-areas and you'll see the same group of Pokémon depending on where you are 99% of the time. In Sword/Shield, what you find in the Wild Areas vary much more dramatically and change daily with the weather. This is likely to accommodate the smaller size, Legends has to spread out it's diversity to cover a much wider area, so you'll expect to see the same Pokémon pop up often.

It's OK. The battling aspect has been kicked to the wayside in order to focus more on having a big (and empty) place to explore. I get bored of it quite quickly though, and can't go on for more then an hour before wanting to play something else. Which, for me, is basically unheard of for a Pokémon game. If you liked Let's Go and BotW, you'll likely enjoy this. The reviews are mostly favourable because it's "open-world" and that's the in thing currently. It's got some cool ideas, but the negatives outweigh the positives.

Is that that comment that stated they weren't sure how to get joy out of it? That's such a "Political No" answer to appease shareholders.

I was so close to typing that at the end of my post!

Families with two or more children? I also think Let's Go's very poor reception in Japan (Lowest opening sales in mainline Pokémon history over there) might have caused some concern with Arceus, which is essentially Let's Go 2 in everything but name. The difference is Kirby has the choice to do so. If there was ever an argument for not having the anime voices in Legends, it's Arceus itself. Because the voice is, um, let's go with "interesting". I first heard it in Smash 3DS where it was one of the Pokémon you can get from a Poké Ball, and even in Ultimate, It still makes me laugh whenever it pops up.

Simply put, if two mainline Pokemon games are released on the same day, they're counted as one title for the purpose of sales figures.

That's easy, @bob. Porygon and it's evolutions being banished from the anime series because Pikachu caused seizures in viewers. They were scapegoated.