The Cross Chop Of Friendship Is Always A Critical Hit.

[rionaleonhart]

It feels good to be back in a Pokémon mood! I always loop around to my earliest fandom eventually.

I finally picked up Pokémon Shield and finished the main story, after a break of about a year! My final team: Tem the Cinderace, Sophia the Dubwool, Tekken the Mudsdale, Nikki the Thievul, Dipper the Boltund and Trouble the Pelipper. ('Trouble' is so named because he was an absolute pain in the arse to catch.)

Can you imagine how weird it would be if I'd said 'the protagonist's final team', rather than 'my final team'? I wonder if there's anyone who actually thinks of the Pokémon they raise as the protagonist's, rather than theirs.

Trouble has the ability Drizzle, meaning it starts raining whenever I send him out. I feel using Pokémon with that ability must be considered a bit of a faux pas in the open-air Pokémon stadiums.

It took me the entirety of Pokémon Shield to decide how I felt about him, but I've concluded that I like Hop. His enthusiasm is endearing. I like how genuinely he respects and admires you, and it's interesting to see how, after his early confidence, his self-esteem suffers from being beaten by you over and over and over again.

Plus I love how unashamedly British his dialogue is. 'You're pants with directions' absolutely delighted me.

It's fascinating to play a Pokémon game inspired by my home country! The train interiors are so deeply, viscerally familiar. There's a part of Pokémon London (Wyndon) that is clearly Piccadilly Circus, and I'm sad that nobody in the game ever calls it 'Pokédilly Circus'.

Having gym battles in football-style stadiums is a brilliant choice. I'm not even a football fan, but I can't deny that we're a football-obsessed nation, so it's the perfect way to make Galar feel like Pokémon Britain. (Pokémon England? I'm not entirely clear on how much of the UK Galar is intended to cover, but it's not the entire UK; I'm fairly sure it doesn't have a Northern Ireland equivalent.) It's also very cool that the crowd's cheering gets folded into the battle music!

I love that you gain fame as you progress through the gym challenge. Strangers cheer you on! You gain fans! You overhear people discussing how good your chances are! It's a very cool touch.

On a less positive note: sometimes the game says that your Pokémon seem like they want to be petted, but there's no way to pet them, and this is an absolute crime.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

On a less positive note: sometimes the game says that your Pokémon seem like they want to be petted, but there's no way to pet them, and this is an absolute crime.

What? That's unjust!

[rionaleonhart]

I don't understand why this game would do this to me!

[aestivalis]

:O but you can pet them when you camp in the wild area, right? Oh my god, or can you only throw the ball for them.... oh my god, no... ;_;

[rionaleonhart]

As far as I can tell, you can only talk, wave the toy or throw the ball; you can't actually touch them, and that is a tragedy.

[shinsengumi]

As a person who still struggles with a lot of the UK's slang despite having lived here for almost a decade, I was absolutely over the moon when Hop described himself as 'cream-crackered'. Like, I don't like cockney rhyming slang but there is little I would describe as more British than that.

[rionaleonhart]

That was great! I love that the game's not afraid to throw in slang that will make absolutely no sense to a large proportion of the players.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, Pokemon, those were some good times. I've not played any of the games since they started unreasonably not putting them on the gameboy. Why are you not still putting them on this 30 year old console, Nintendo?!

On a less positive note: sometimes the game says that your Pokémon seem like they want to be petted, but there's no way to pet them, and this is an absolute crime.

Hideous. Even with tamagotchis you could play with your pets!

-

Speaking of old stuff, I've been thinking recently about memories and music, and the link between them (at least for me). My memory is notoriously awful, but I link nostalgia to music a lot. I can listen to some music and associate it with whatever else media-wise I was consuming at the time, as it takes me "back" to that time period. (As we have established in the past, as a person who gets obsessions I consume media in a very all-consuming fashion - seasons in days, the same song on a loop for 12 hours, all day game playing).

Then I got thinking about how awesome video game music is, even from back in the day. Pokemon music was nice. Lucas Arts' old adventure games (sorry, "Lucasfilm Games") had really amazing music for being early 90s stuff. I remember being fascinated by this few minutes from LeChuck's Revenge (the bit I'm referring to starts about a minute in, but may as well watch the whole 3 minutes since it's a nice look at how even back then, the music blended so nicely between areas): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHgRlsOvN3M The music is so coordinated it gives the impression of voices even without any voicing! That's pretty awesome for very early 90s (it came out in '92).

-timydamonkey

[rionaleonhart]

Even with tamagotchis you could play with your pets!

You can play with your Pokémon in Shield! But you can't stroke them, and this is an outrage.

Music can definitely be a powerful nostalgia trigger. There are Gackt or Ayumi Hamasaki songs that remind me so strongly of being a teenager, back in the days when I was always listening to an MP3 player that had room for about eight songs.

THE HIP BONE IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE ARM BONE, SKELETONS,

I QUESTION THE ANATOMY OF THIS ENTIRE SONG

[(Anonymous)]

I was always convinced as a kid that "the arm bone is connected to the leg bone" was a line in this song. I knew of course that such a thing was nonsense.

(It's for a puzzle later, rather than anatomically correct, if it makes you feel better! It's actually fairly sensible for a Monkey Island puzzle. The worst one of the game is where you need to use an actual monkey to unscrew something because you need a monkey wrench. The word monkey wrench is never referenced, you just have to know the term and work out that it's a pun.)

[bluapapilio]

I played Sword version too as Gloria. If I ever play again, I'll go for Viktor. I haven't played the DLC yet.

[rionaleonhart]

It's always so strange for me to think of the Pokémon game protagonists as having official names. She's not Gloria; she's me! (I always played sprite-based Pokémon games as the male protagonist out of habit, after not having a choice in Red version, but in Let's Go and Shield I've gone for the female protagonist.)

Also, hello! I think this might be the first time we've spoken. It's nice to meet you!

[bluapapilio]

I see the character half as me, half as a character of their own, it's weird. Their JP names are Yuuri and Masaru, so I named mine Yuuri.

I also play male out of habit! Can't remember why I decided to play as Gloria for Shield. 🤔 I'm playing FireRed right now as 'RED'.

Nice to meet you, I found you through Latest Things, I really enjoy finding new people. 😊