RedShell

The game wanted me to be Squirtle but fuck no. I chose to be Pikachu, because Pikachu is the best. Haven’t played it that much yet, but what I’ve seen so far has been pretty entertaining. My team is Pikachu and Meowth. Not too sure about how it plays though, movement seems very odd. I assume it’s done to retain the feel of the original, but I get the feeling this could work better without grid based navigation. Also, is your character supposed to get kind of stuck whenever an enemy Pokémon is nearby? And what’s up with the running, it seems to go into fast forward for a while before you suddenly get momentarily stuck again. Anyway, I think I like it, but the controls will really need to click a lot more if I’m to check out the full game.

I reckon at least half of the direct will focus on that revolutionary merging of sleep and entertainment.

I checked for you, but the only Seismitoad I currently have has Poison Touch I’m afraid. Have to say though, that actually sounds like a better ability to me. Although it’s most likely that I’m just not understanding the potential of Water Absorb. Anyway, random trade request for me, but does anyone have 6 of Bob's Food Tin that they’d be willing to trade via 6 disposable Pokémon? It’s the Sword exclusive food item for cooking curry. I can send over 6 of the Shield exclusive ingredient, Bach's Food Tin in return.

You know what, I’m pretty sure we both had full HP when it ended though.

I had this on my watch list for ages waiting for it to go on sale, but was hoping for much more of a discount than 20%. I think it’s because I remember getting the 2nd version of KORG on 3DS at full price when it launched, only for it to be like 50-70% off a few weeks later. Plus, I’ve kinda lost my music creation mojo a bit too, which has also made me somewhat reluctant to pick this up. So yeah, I’ll continue to wait for another sale. Will hopefully get it at some point though, those Sega and Taito sounds must be a lot of fun.

Yep, this is the unfortunate truth. As someone that likes and frequently uses unpopular Pokémon, I have lost many battles as a result of having an underpowered or defensively weak team. It’s a shame, but in order to have any kind of prolonged success in competitive battles you basically have no choice but to make use of the top tier Pokémon. I’ve recently been breeding/training up more and more of these Pokémon, and while there’s no doubt I’m able to win more consistently with them, it’s just not as fun as using my “cute ’til I die” teams. I’m pretty sure nobody will agree with me on this, but I actually think the entire training and battle system could do with a bit of a reboot. Make it so the stats aren’t set in stone, that any Pokémon in the game could somehow become competitively viable. The problem with everything being so mathematical and precise as it is now, is that the game loses the element of surprise, it forces the majority of players down the same path. I have no idea how, or if, it could even be done, but if it was possible to have a more organic and variable system in place, whereby people couldn’t simply go on a website and see exactly what stats or moves a certain Pokémon has, I think the battles would be far more interesting and entertaining. But anyway, speaking of mathematical precision... Does anyone know how this game determines the outcome of a battle when both players are down to their last Pokémon and the time runs out? I was in such a battle recently, where it ended up as Toxapex vs Toxapex and neither one of us could really do anything. When the countdown ended it said that I’d won, which didn’t really seem fair but I’ll take it. Or did it perhaps say the same thing to my opponent?

New ranked season is now live. I’m still doing pretty badly, but sometimes there’s the perfect opportunity for a bit of Pika-power!:

Sorry, didn’t see this until just now, I did wonder why you were doing link code raids though.

Cheers. Looks like 2x Great Ball tier rewards for me this season then. They should invert the prizes though, anyone that can reach Master Ball rank doesn’t really need Gold Bottle caps or BP. There seems to be a new Max Raid event going on at the moment involving Magikarp which rewards extra gold nuggets. Any Max raids that give me the opportunity to out perform other Dynamaxed Pokémon with Pikachu are fine by me: I love how Pikachu gets obscured by a rock too.

Nice. Any idea what the prizes are for the other ranks?

Yep. This is a good (and more sensible) suggestion though. As much as I love the Yakuza series, it’s blatantly not for everyone, even some of the people from here who eventually got into it weren’t too sure at first. And I’m pretty sure Yakuza 0 can be picked up very cheaply these days. @LazyBoy, some more recommendations for you... Alien Isolation (although this is now also available on Switch) Metal Gear Solid V Nioh Transformers Devastation Trackmania Turbo

There’s the Battle Tower, but once you reach the Master Ball rank on single and double battles in there the rewards get pretty limited, just 2 BP per win. At that point the main post-game content is really the online battles/competitions.

No problem.

Ok, @Ike the fossils are on 2 of those Pokémon, can’t remember which. So that’s everything yeah?

What are we trading now?

OK, ready when you are. So the first 2 we’ll trade and then trade straight back, and the rest will be a one way trip, right?

Gotta pop out for a bit now, how about 3pm?

I can help you out with those. Don't need anything in return, unless you have some of Bob’s Food Tin that is. I need 6 of those to complete my Currydex!

Gonna call it a day there, cheers for the games!

Any games planned for tonight?

Thanks for the hunts everyone, that was great. @S.C.G, that is some tough armour you got there!:

Sure, I could do with taking a break from Pokémon. Hopefully I remember how to hunt.

Oh man, that last one.

I was just messing around in the last GP, but now I seriously think we need to do a reverse only battle mode theme at some point.

Nice to see this get another update. Shame there’s no new themes to unlock though, I already have all of the original and past event ones, so any tickets I get now are basically useless.