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Julius

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (28th January 2022)

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I played a fair bit of this when it came out but haven't touched it in over a week. It all felt a bit bare bones to me, but maybe it'll pick up.

I may be in the minority, but I do still like the 'stale' formula of 8 gyms and Elite 4 providing the towns and the adventure around that is entertaining enough. 

This was ok for a short time but started to bore me. Too much text, a story that didn't really interest me in the slightest and repetitive gameplay added up to a disappointment. 

I may try again to get back into it, but right now I'm certainly not itching to. 

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3 hours ago, Aneres11 said:

I played a fair bit of this when it came out but haven't touched it in over a week. It all felt a bit bare bones to me, but maybe it'll pick up.

I may be in the minority, but I do still like the 'stale' formula of 8 gyms and Elite 4 providing the towns and the adventure around that is entertaining enough. 

This was ok for a short time but started to bore me. Too much text, a story that didn't really interest me in the slightest and repetitive gameplay added up to a disappointment. 

I may try again to get back into it, but right now I'm certainly not itching to. 

Finally! Someone who agrees with me! I haven't played it in around a week either, despite being right near the end.

I'm the kind of person who would blitz through a new Pokémon game in about a week without ever really stopping because I'm enjoying the gameplay loop of battles with a hint of catching stuff I want, but this? I just can't bear more then an hour before wanting to play something else.

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Somehow it's already been three weeks since launch, so Pokémon are now showing off some of the Pokémon and characters not shown off in the build-up to the game's release. 

I'll throw the video in a spoiler tag for now as I know some are still playing:

Spoiler

 

 

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Found the final wisps today. Needed two in the final area and I had to use a guide for the final one. It was hidden in plain sight but blended in with the background when seen from above. 

Then I need to finish the post game content to get some more new Pokémon, and finally I have to find a Munchlax. The rest I need aren't hard to get, I think. 

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19 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

Found the final wisps today. Needed two in the final area and I had to use a guide for the final one. It was hidden in plain sight but blended in with the background when seen from above. 

Then I need to finish the post game content to get some more new Pokémon, and finally I have to find a Munchlax. The rest I need aren't hard to get, I think. 

Keep chipping away at it. You're nearly there!

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Finished the Pokédex today, kind of sad it’s over - while I still had main missions to do I would spend hours hunting shinys and doing requests. Now it’s 100% over and the Pokédex is complete I most likely won’t pick it up again :(

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1 hour ago, Esequiel said:

Finished the Pokédex today, kind of sad it’s over - while I still had main missions to do I would spend hours hunting shinys and doing requests. Now it’s 100% over and the Pokédex is complete I most likely won’t pick it up again :(

Go for fully complete/perfect Pokedex entries. :D 

I actually fired this up again today. My youngest niece popped over and she's into Pokemon at the moment. I let her play the game for a while and she loved it. It was great watching her having fun and I had a laugh at her reaction when I told her that there was no Charmander/Charizard in the game. 8 Years old and she wants Gen 1 Pokemon in these modern Pokemon games. Love to see it. :D 

Edited by Hero-of-Time
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33 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It was great watching her having fun and I had a laugh at her reaction when I told her that there was no Charmander/Charizard in the game. 8 Years and she wants Gen 1 Pokemon in these modern Pokemon games. Love to see it. :D 

Legit one of the few good things about the Pokedex in this game.

I mean, I like Charizard, but it's been in all of the Switch mainline titles up until now! A fourth in a row would be just super boring.

This is why Sword/Shield's Champion sucks. Ever since Gen 3, each Champion has used a newly introduced Pokémon as their "ace". Leon? No, he uses an effing Charizard! You have so many great Gen 8 Pokémon to choose from and you go with the most boring mainstream Gen 1 pandering choice! Hop was way more fun to fight with his Zacian/Zamazenta.

Charizard isn't even that good since it lost it's Mega Evolution!

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17 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Legit one of the few good things about the Pokedex in this game.

I mean, I like Charizard, but it's been in all of the Switch mainline titles up until now! A fourth in a row would be just super boring.

This is why Sword/Shield's Champion sucks. Ever since Gen 3, each Champion has used a newly introduced Pokémon as their "ace". Leon? No, he uses an effing Charizard! You have so many great Gen 8 Pokémon to choose from and you go with the most boring mainstream Gen 1 pandering choice! Hop was way more fun to fight with his Zacian/Zamazenta.

Charizard isn't even that good since it lost it's Mega Evolution!

Dude, she's 8. All she wants to see is the big red dragon. She doesn't care if it's been in previous games or what generation it's from. :laughing:

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9 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Dude, she's 8. All she wants to see is the big red dragon. She doesn't care if it's been in previous games or what generation it's from. :laughing:

It's orange. And it's not a dragon.

Here's your big red dragon.

697.png

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1 minute ago, Glen-i said:

It's orange. And it's not a dragon.

Here's your big red dragon.

697.png

Looks more like a dinosaur. She's coming round for dinner tomorrow and I'll ask her what she thinks. I'll let you know if you're wrong or not. :p 

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1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Looks more like a dinosaur. She's coming round for dinner tomorrow and I'll ask her what she thinks. I'll let you know if you're wrong or not. :p 

I don't need her approval! All I need is typing knowledge!

And Tyrantrum is Rock/Dragon.

Charizard could've been a Dragon type, but Game Freak ditched that form!

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1 minute ago, Glen-i said:

I don't need her approval! All I need is typing knowledge!

And Tyrantrum is Rock/Dragon.

Charizard could've been a Dragon type, but Game Freak ditched that form!

It's hilarious how serious you seem to be about this. I can just see you arguing with little kids in a playground over what colour and type a Pokemon is. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what she says now. :laughing:

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1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's hilarious how serious you seem to be about this. I can just see you arguing with little kids in a playground over what colour and type a Pokemon is. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what she says now. :laughing:

That is why you fail.

Pokémon is SERIOUS BUSINESS!

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3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Go for fully complete/perfect Pokedex entries. :D 

I actually fired this up again today. My youngest niece popped over and she's into Pokemon at the moment. I let her play the game for a while and she loved it. It was great watching her having fun and I had a laugh at her reaction when I told her that there was no Charmander/Charizard in the game. 8 Years old and she wants Gen 1 Pokemon in these modern Pokemon games. Love to see it. :D 

I don’t think I could put myself through 50+ hours just to get a shiny charm! I might finish the last few requests but that will be me done!

 

I actually find the repetitiveness of the challenges in the “perfect” Pokédex annoying and uninspired. Why do I need to catch 25 of them, or use agile moves 40 times for a hundred Pokémon….. it’s a bit daft.

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2 hours ago, Esequiel said:

I actually find the repetitiveness of the challenges in the “perfect” Pokédex annoying and uninspired. Why do I need to catch 25 of them, or use agile moves 40 times for a hundred Pokémon….. it’s a bit daft.

Because it's an attempt to give the player something to do in this big, massive, empty world.

Open world games always have the same problem of needing the player to do something to distract them while they're playing the game. The problem is that it almost always devolves into check lists and busywork.

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7 hours ago, Esequiel said:

I don’t think I could put myself through 50+ hours just to get a shiny charm! I might finish the last few requests but that will be me done!

You don't need to get perfect entries for the charm. Getting them to level 10 is enough.

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Got Munchlax! But then I found out I also need Cleffa and Bonsly... god damnit. Other than that, I need the other two starters and the post-game Pokémon. 

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20 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

Got Munchlax! But then I found out I also need Cleffa and Bonsly... god damnit. Other than that, I need the other two starters and the post-game Pokémon. 

Nice! 

Cleffa isn't too bad, you just need to go to...

Spoiler

...the Fabled Spring in the Coronet Highlands at night, they're supposedly rare but I came across a whole bunch. Just be careful because like all of the other baby Pokémon, they're very skittish.

As for the starters...

Spoiler

...if you've seen credits roll, go visit the Professor in Jubilife! 

I think you can also get them in Rifts but I didn't bother with that ::shrug:

Out of those, Bonsly is probably the one that spawned the least for me, but I picked a few up while roaming around during the story. I think they're in the second area? 

Edited by Julius
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Spoiler

Well, got each of his Pokémon without much trouble but I was never allowed to change Pokémon between Volo's KOs so when I faced Giratina, I only had Garchomp left.  He took down Giratina but then it changed to its Origin Forme and got to attack first. Come on... I'll swap Gardevoir with Cresselia and Floatzel with Palkia to get more coverage. I can also see that its adviced to bring Blissey as a tank to revive Pokémon before the last fight but I don't have a high leveled Blissey (though I caught 10+ to level up my Pokémon before the fight).

But at least. I got Cleffa and Bonsly!

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3 hours ago, RedShell said:

:laughing:

 

I don't know if he's mispronouncing Arceus on purpose, and that bothers me.

The quote "Oh shit! We forgot to put Pokémon battling in this Pokémon game" sums up my issues exactly, I hate how stripped of its nuance it is and how backseated it got. It feels like such an afterthought.

Still haven't finished it, BTW... I've lost all interest in it once I started playing EarthBound Beginnings/EarthBound again and remembered why I like RPGs.

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And there it is. Arceus is obtained. It took me 55 hours and 49 minutes, a good 15 hours more than completing the first part of the main story. The final fight against it was brutal and took me half an hour, I would assume, restarting the battle again and again. But all is well now.

I found the hunt for the four legendary, roaming Pokémon in the end to be the most frustrating part of the end game of this game. The final one made me black out several times, losing important stuff from my satchel! Has anyone ever got anything back from people finding it or is it just an artificial gimmick with no real people behind it?

Still, quite the game, quite the journey. It is by far the most fun I've had with a Pokémon game since Black and White. I enjoyed X & Y and Sun & Moon to som extent but this was far more pure fun. I hope they let the freedom slip into the main games now. I cannot go back to locked routes, cut-off areas and random, unseen encounters in tall grass. I want a lively world with Pokémon running about, I want to feel bad for catching a Blissey that's just minding it's own business trying to touch its feet. I want to chose whether to fight a Pokémon or just catch it without interruptions in the main games, they have over time felt too slow and old-school to me.

The battle system is alright. Just keep the non-generic backgrounds. I found the Agile / Strong versions of the moves interesting but in the end, I felt they just were a bit unfair, the agile version was just not weak enough so and agile and a normal attack would make my Pokémon faint. It was an interesting concept, though, and I like that they at least tried.

And I want a better story than just wanting to become the best Pokémon trainer in the world. I'm fine with the Gym structure but it shouldn't be the main driver of the story. Also, side missions need to return to the main games. Simple as that.

But I don't want Pokémon Legends 2. I don't think the concept would hold if we just got another 50 hours long game with new areas and new Pokémon. It should be tightened a bit, smaller, interconnected areas, a deeper story with focus on lore and characters / Pokémon. 

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44 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

But I don't want Pokémon Legends 2. I don't think the concept would hold if we just got another 50 hours long game with new areas and new Pokémon. It should be tightened a bit, smaller, interconnected areas, a deeper story with focus on lore and characters / Pokémon. 

You see, this is my concern. If Arceus ends up selling better then Sword/Shield, I'm worried Game Freak will take the wrong lessons from it and make their next game feature another huge, empty, sprawling landmass that will likely burn me out before I even see the credits.

Because there's good stuff here, how you initiate battles is cool, but when the actual battle system blows chunks, it feels like a proper monkey's paw.

If bringing over the few good things into the next mainline game comes with the caveat of having another region as large as Hisui? I'd rather they just didn't. The negatives far outweigh the positives to me.

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On 17/02/2022 at 10:45 PM, Aneres11 said:

I played a fair bit of this when it came out but haven't touched it in over a week. It all felt a bit bare bones to me, but maybe it'll pick up.

I may be in the minority, but I do still like the 'stale' formula of 8 gyms and Elite 4 providing the towns and the adventure around that is entertaining enough. 

This was ok for a short time but started to bore me. Too much text, a story that didn't really interest me in the slightest and repetitive gameplay added up to a disappointment. 

I may try again to get back into it, but right now I'm certainly not itching to. 

I'm starting to feel this more and more, the credits have rolled and all I'm stuck with are a small handful of missions, the majority of which are the "catch the rare Pokémon", I'm not entirely sure how the Weather Trio will appear in their respective areas during these storms, but I'll have a little fap about before I get bored and Google it. I spent the majority of yesterday sleeping on and off to get a full moon for the Clefairy mission, whilst trying to complete the Cherrim entry for another. It's amazing how many aren't in trees when you want them. In the end I just had to use agile tackles against a Luxray which shortly knocked me out + short trek to the camp = rinse and repeat.

I don't know if I'll have the energy to complete the 'dex. I'm getting the sensation that it's more of a slog than walking in the wild grass and hoping for something rare to jump out.

I'm not sure why they've gone with the anime trope of people whipping off their clothes to show their "true form", especially when they look fucking stupid and not even hinted (from memory) that they're anything other than what they were originally (Pokémon "Wielder"?! really?!). The only one who ever had that effect was Giovanni being the Viridian Gym Leader, and he didn't need a wardrobe change.

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