Aperson

Randomly letting some opposition Pokemon attack me to see what kind of moves they can use. So far I've learned that Pikipek can use Pluck and Yungoos can learn Bite... that's about it. I also found a wild Pikachu in the grass in the city. Not sure if that's where you'll be able to find them in the full game, but might be worth looking there. Unfortunately I didn't have any Poke Balls to catch them with.

Been having a look at the Greninja that you get given. It's OT is Ash, it's date met it 17th October 2013 which is the date where the anime episode that introduced Ash's Froakie was met was aired in Japan, the one I was given has a Hardy Nature and it's moveset is Water Shuriken, Aerial Ace, Double Team and Night Slash. Basically the same moveset that Ash's Greninja has in the anime expect with Night Slash instead of Cut.

There's a new Alolan form in the demo? Here was me thinking that it was just going to feature stuff that has already been officially revealed. I think I'm definitely going to avoid looking at sites like Bulbagarden, Poke jungle and Serebii for a month now or so, especially in the forums where massive spoilers are bound to pop up. Also going to be treading s lot more carefully on Youtube since some Youtube are no doubt going to air the Spoilers in their thumbnails and the public domain just to attract views. Sadly if you watch any related stuff the chances of these videos popping up in your feed are unavoidable. The identity of the Champion in both Black/White 2 and X/Y was spoiled by attention grabbing thumbnails for me although that was when I was trying to listen to those games' soundtracks.

I recall Twilight Princess has a similar dungeon philosophy but does have a few that make it more interesting, like Snowpeak Ruins and Temple of Time which are really nicely designed dungeons. But from this point on the level design becomes a whole lot linear and less open ended. I still like the Sky Keep as a dungeon concept, given the amount of block pushing puzzles in Zelda games, having a dungeon be a block pushing puzzle was a genius idea and although there is a way of beating the game a recommended way that involves all the rooms, it's entirely possible to skip the Earth Temple room (did it on my playthrough).

OK then, Greninja is rubbish because his Water/Dark type is resistant to Chesnaught's Grass/Fighting combintination and he can't even beat a Charizard when he's supposed to have the type advantage. Water Shuriken is played up as it's signature move yet is really weak and you're better off running Scald on it. Not to mention that Greninja was one of the first characters to get nerfed in Smash Bros. Happy now?

Yeah, depending on the demand we could see the Nintendo eShop crash tomorrow. Regarding what I was saying about the demo likely only taking a day to complete... demos of games like these don't tend to offer a really large portion of the game (in this case it looks like an entirely seperate non-canon short story) and the ORAS demo could be knocked out in about 20 minutes if you speed run it, longer if you took your time to explore. This is a bigger file size, but I'm presuming the new engine that they are running the overworld on may be a factor in that. Probably will still be a longer demo than ORAS though and contain enough battles to show off new Pokemon, Alola forms and Z-Moves. Kind of hoping that Greninja does have a non-damaging move because I kind of want to give the AI a chance to attack me with some of the new Pokemon to show off what they can do. Because Greninja is so fast the chances are it will outspeed everything in the demo. EDIT: It's also kind of ironic that they are giving us a demo that let's us use Ash-Greninja two days before the episode where Ash loses the Bond Phenomenon airs in Japan. EDIT2: New demo screenshots

Yeah, you can definitely have a much better moveset than that, especially considering that Greninja's learnset has such a wide range of types, even with just level up moves but boosted even further with TMs. Personally, an all out attacking Greninja would have Scald, Ice Beam, Extrasensory and Dark Pulse if it was up to me. On another note: https://twitter.com/PokeLoot/status/787676699630694400

I''ve seen some suggestions that the game has perhaps not fulfilled it's potential due to the Pokemon Company trying to gear it's marketing towards a younger audience. I still think this is a good game, but general interest seemed to flatline after about two months after the game came out. Wouldn't mind going back to this sometime, although I'm quite average at beat 'em ups and don't have much experience of playing well with anything other than Chandelure.

If this Greninja is based on Ash's Greninja that I guess it'll have a moveset of Cut, Double Team, Aerial Ace and Water Shuriken. Either that or the standard type of moveset you would expect a Greninja to have at the levels after it's evolved. Especially since Greninja doesn't get Double Team until Level 52 in X/Y unless they've changed that in Sun/Moon.

Only two days now until the demo hits. It's likely it will only take a day to complete, but I suppose getting the perfect IV and Nature for Ash-Greninja could be an excuse for repeat playthroughs...

Pretty much settled on my final team now: Rowlet/Dartrix/archer owl (Been Team Rowlet for a long time) Rockruff/Lycanroc (Was one of my first picks for a team member as I like dogs, also Lycanroc Midday form reminds me a bit of Amaterasu from Okami which is one of my favourite games, but looks like I'm getting the Midnight form as I'm getting Moon) Pikachu/Alolan Raichu (Want an Alolan Form on the team plus both get exclusive Z-Moves) Salandit (Because Corrosion and because it completely walls Fairies. Enjoyed using Dragalge in Y and Salandit is probably going to be similar) Stufful/Bewear (Although the design isn't the greatest I love the concept and I always have a Fighting type on the team. Ideally want one with Fluffy) Type:Null/Silvally (holding Fairy Memory, can also use for Water moves and it's grown on me recently) Couple of 4x weaknesses on there and half the team is weak to Fighting until Type: Null evolves and I can sort that out. Then again, in Pokemon Y I caught a Skrelp to counter Fairy types as I assumed before it was common knowledge that Poison would be Super Effective on Fairy types, given the reason the type existed in the first place was seemingly to counter Dragon types which were previously only weak to themselves. Since Poison was only good against Grass I figured it would get another strength. I also needed a Water type on my team. As it was, the Fairy resistance was completely nullified as I didn't realise that when Skrelp evolved he became Poison/Dragon. Also he's not that strong in his base form at all. No HM moves in Sun/Moon is definately going to remove the need for a Water type on the team so that you can pack Surf. Though it's still a good type and they can learn Ice moves too so there is always that.

Psychedelic Muk... Interesting direction they went with Bounsweet's evolution line too.

My guess is that you will not be able to find Type: Null in the wild and can only receive it as a gift Pokemon. This either happens in the late game or the post game. Considering Type: Null and it's evolution now as the final team member for my Moon team. The fact that it can be any type means it likely will have a wide movepool, a bit like Arceus but with lower stats overall. Biggest downside though is that it can't use Z-Moves or held items if it's anything other than Normal type.

Going to be avoiding leaked stuff from now on and just focusing on official news updates and this month's CoroCoro. Speaking of CoroCoro...

This trailed has given us the most important news of all:

I would get Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. Great platformer with some great level ideas and to top it all off they even brought back David Wise to compose the music and he delivers a fantastic original OST. Also Splatoon is a great game. It still has plenty of people playing it online although I think that may start to die down as the NX comes out, but it's the best new IP Nintendo has come up with for ages. As someone said, Xenoblade X is probably the most in-depth game on the Wii U and easily the longest (I still haven't finished it yet), probably the closest you are going to get to Zelda until Breath of the Wild comes out. However, I think the original is a better game and if you've never played the original Xenoblade I highly recommend you download it off the eShop.

Is it likely that the names of the final starter evolutions would be something that would get revealed through datamining? I suppose it depends on how Game Freak programs the game to pull the info it needs and if they have a database of Pokemon to use in the game, whether they were prepared to make a modified version of that for the demo just to avoid spoilers from datamining.

Pretty sure it wasn't choice scarfed, I only show the part where it keeps using Fly but before that it did use Dragon Claw and Rock Slide. As someone who has used Flygon quite a bit before (I've trained two up to Level 100 as part of in-game teams) I would say it's possible that the other move it was carrying was possibly Earthquake which wasn't used because Grass type. I'm not sure if she was even aware I was part Fighting type too at first. This was towards the latter stages of the battle so I don't think we had much options left. My full team is in my sig since I was using my in-game Y team (so Chesnaught, Gardevoir, Charizard, Pangoro, Heliolisk and Dragalge) while hers was Gardevoir, Yveltal, Moltres (shiny), Flygon, Gengar and Milotic. By the time it was Chesnaught vs. Flygon I'd already taken out everything but the Flygon and the Gardevoir (which was on half health), and tbh that Mega Gardevoir would have destroyed my Chesnaught. I think what was really key though was that I had only lost Dragagle and Gardevoir by that point... anyway, getting a bit off topic here. Thought I'd mention that I like what they've done with the island names in Poke Pelegeo although Isle Evelup was the only one that I really understood the name at first.

Chesnaught was awesome, I can't remember what inclined me to pick Chespin as my starter in the first place in Y but although Quilladin is rather bland in design the wait is worth it once you get to Chesnaught. In a way now retrospectively he's kind of like Torterra in that he's very slow, but has a lot of attack and defence. Plus getting his own version of Protect that does a bit extra damage can be useful sometimes. For example, in a random 6v6 battle online earlier this year (neither team or players were competitive standard), my Chesnaught managed to kill a Flygon using only Spiky Shield. That said, I'm surprised the opponent kept persisting with Fly when it clearly wasn't working. On another note, I'm going to see what I can find regarding new Water types in the Alola region that haven't already been revealed but if I can't find any I'm half tempted to take the Ash-Greninja from the demo and add it as the final team member. Only problem is that it would give half the team weaknesses to Fighting (Greninja, Bewear and Lycanroc) but it's in-game so shouldn't matter that much.

Wasn't entirely convinced of the plausibility at first but this is looking more legit the more you look into it now.

Yeah, Pokemon games have never been really difficult. Despite the fact that the game encourages you to build a balanced team you can breeze through every game with just one overlevelled Pokemon. Or six if you're playing Gen 6 (and possibly 7 because they may leave the Exp. Share as a Key Item). New news tomorrow. According to a certain Chinese riddler it is supposedly going to reveal an aspect of the Z-Ring that we don't know about yet and that the "全" symbol is the key. Could Z-Forms actually be a thing?

I would, but I'm busy this evening, so I'll pass. Anyone got to Mission 12 yet? That mission is insanely difficult by yourself, defeating a boss within a time limit which doesn't seem to be enough to get the guy to fall down, probably could do with someone focusing on shooting each of his legs so that he goes down more often and then have everyone open fire on his mouth, by yourself you have to circle him and shoot all the legs which means he makes more progress towards the goal.

I'll add my own two cents to this. When I started playing Pokemon I didn't really train up a team of 6, rather my own style was to power through the game with one or two Pokemon that were much higher levelled than what I was facing and I was more focused on catching Pokemon for the Pokedex than trying to build a strong balance team. As a result, my levels for my Feraligatr and Ampharos who were pretty much my two go to Pokemon were not that far off Red's team by the time I got to Mt. Silver (it was a long time ago so I can't remember what they exactly were and my copy of Gold I no longer have), it was a bit more bearable doing it this way so I had no idea how much grinding was really needed to take on Red if you had a full team of 6. However, recently I got HeartGold and did a playthrough of that game, with the idea of the game effectively replacing Gold in my game collection and I decided to evoke my original playthrough of the game by picking Totodile and catching a Mareep to go alongside it, except this time I developed that further into a full team of 6. I know for sure that one of my backup Pokemon in Gold was a Piloswine because I used it in linked battles as my third choice if Feraligatr and Ampharos both went down, so I took that a step further this time around and trained the Swinub I got into a fully fledged Mamoswine, the other three Pokemon were Jumpluff, Togekiss and Hitmontop. I tried to avoid grinding when I didn't need to but I ended up having to mass level grind at Mt. Silver before even attempting Red because I knew that I would have to be facing a team of Level 80+ Pokemon and my team were only in their late 50s at the time. The remakes make the grinding a bit more bearable by giving you an extra double battle against Clair and Lance as well as a rematchable rival and a higher levelled version of the Elite Four which includes newer Pokemon, capping out at a Level 75 Dragonite for Lance. Still, even with the added challenges it still took me forever to grind to a more respectable level to take on Red and even then I was at a massive level disadvantage. This was my team when I took on Red (sorry for the bad quality image, it's a phone camera capture as I don't have any way of screenshotting DS games). Feraligatr has Waterfall, Crunch, Surf and Ice Fang, Ampharos has Rock Climb (needed it for Mt. Silver), Signal Beam, Thunderbolt and Power Gem, Jumpluff had Leech Seed at the time although I replaced it with Stun Spore, but it definately had Giga Drain, Aerial Ace and U-Turn, Togekiss had Air Slash (of course, it's a SG Togekiss), Fly, Extrasensory and Flamethrower, Mamoswine had Avalanche, Return, Ice Shard and Earthquake while Hitmontop had Revenge, Rock Slide, Fake Out and Close Combat. Overall though I would have to say that while Gold/Silver were my favourite games for a long time, their remakes completely blow the old games out of the water and even then I would put the Gen 5 games on an equal/better pedestal than HGSS.

Also, Passimian & Shedinja could be a doubles combo... especially if Passimian can receive Wonder Guard after Shedinja goes down so can only be damaged by Psychic, Fairy and Flying moves.

On a side note, Lycanroc's two forms, a sun based midday evolution and a night Evo with some red fur kind of reminds me of this: I realise that there's only a vague connection between them, but it's enough for me, going to be naming my Rockruff Oki now.