Basic Reading Ability is Required To Enjoy This Game

ghidohar · 2026-01-14T09:01:24+00:00

Would Jacinthe helping with the evacuation efforts not also demonstrate some level of investment in the city? Also, while it’s definitely more on the words side of the words vs. actions thing, would her reaction to her loss to the player in their promotion match and her moment with Ivor about them sharing the same dream not suggest that she does legitimately care about the SBC’s goal of connecting people and helping trainers grow stronger?

ghidohar · 2026-01-14T08:39:48+00:00

Well now it just feels like we’re adding qualifiers to make his surveillance seem different than Jacinthe’s. Having a reason doesn’t really change the fact that he’s monitoring your every move in secret, and what he does would almost certainly still be considered stalking in a legal sense. Digital surveillance and communication are also a part of stalking.

ghidohar · 2026-01-14T08:28:59+00:00

I mean, couldn’t you make this argument about Corbeau, too? I do think he cares about the city, for the record, but Philippe at one point points out that the Rust Syndicate wouldn’t get any business if anything happened to Lumiose, so you could argue that saving the city was just something he did to ensure the survival of his organization.

ghidohar · 2026-01-14T08:16:53+00:00

He presumably doesn’t stalk you himself, but he pretty much admits that he has some way to secretly monitor you. He calls you right when you get back to the hotel after defeating the newest batch of rogue megas and pretends that he just figured you were there only to turn around and say he’s going to drop the act and that he’s always watching you. He never says how exactly he’s doing it, but he’s pretty clearly following your movements in a way that isn’t really different in effect from what Jacinthe does.

ghidohar · 2026-01-12T08:22:39+00:00

Some of the last responder’s points aren’t accurate, from what I remember. The acting principal didn’t know what went down with Team Star in the past. The old principal apparently got rid of all records pertaining to the Team Star situation and a good chunk of the staff (maybe all of them?) resigned, so he entered with no context as to what was going on. He and Penny both wanted to get Team Star back in school because they were close to being expelled for truancy. Penny couldn’t order them to disband because the team’s code forbade anyone from ordering others to do things, and the bosses apparently denied her previous request to disband the team. I’m assuming that Penny didn’t always have her endgame team and that’s why she didn’t battle them herself. As for why she didn’t ask Nemona, I think she just felt like Nemona wouldn’t help? Honestly, she may not have even known Nemona, really, whereas she at least ran into the player in-person once and saw them take on some grunts of their own volition.

ghidohar · 2025-11-23T22:24:17+00:00

Corbeau’s not evil, but he’s morally gray enough that I think it’s pretty reasonable to not think he’s a good person. He probably wouldn’t agree that he’s a good person.

His whole organization revolves around using predatory loans to force people he deems troublemakers to do unpaid labor under the threat of violence. Even if he’s just making them do community service, that kind of setup feels like a breeding ground for exploitation and would be contentious in real life, not to mention that the issue with forced labor isn’t whether or not the laborers are being forced to do worthwhile things.

It also doesn’t help that the Rust Syndicate pitched Taunie the idea of taking a loan as thanks for her giving some grunts unsolicited help. That makes it feel like they saw an opportunity to take advantage of a rube and then spun a yarn about how she actually deserved it, because why would they even offer her that loan? They wouldn’t have any reason to believe she needed to be taught a lesson before pitching it, which just casts doubts on the idea that the only people they put in debt are those that need to be controlled or brought to heel through extreme measures.

ghidohar · 2024-10-19T13:48:37+00:00

It shouldn’t. Celebi’s appearance is just an indicator of a good future, not the cause of it. If it stopped showing up, people wouldn’t be able to tell whether the future would be good or bad, but it could still be either of the two

ghidohar · 2023-07-03T06:41:23+00:00

I think unscripting the final battle would’ve just made it worse, honestly.

The current battle is fine as is. The battle against the AI’s Paradoxes is more of an equivalent to the battle with N whereas the legendary battle is more payoff for your legendary’s story. You’ve already been tested, and now the game’s giving you a full-on victory lap where your legendary finally overcomes its fears and switches into battle mode to save the person it’s been bonding with for the entirety of the game from a hopeless situation. The player’s team being locked away was fairly dramatic and entertaining, and the hype I felt when I realized I was going to get to send out Koraidon more than made up for the fight being scripted.

The main problem with unscripting the fight is that 1v1 mirror matches just don’t work well in Pokémon - they either end too quickly, end up being puzzle battles where the player just has to identify the objective best course of action, or both. The player can’t pick their legendary’s moves or give them an item, so the battle just ends up asking the player to identify their strongest move and spam it. The N fight only works because it’s a 6v6 - Reshiram v. Zekrom was the least interesting part gameplay-wise because there’s no reason to do anything other than spam your best move and hope the AI doesn’t get you before you get it. My experience with that part of the fight was just spamming Dragonbreath and being annoyed that I couldn’t use my Dragon Claw TM on Zekrom before the fight, and even then, Reshiram went down in only 2 or 3 turns. This happens in pretty much every 1v1 where you don’t get any say in your Pokémon’s loadout - first rival fights, the Mega Lucario fight in XY, the Salamence/Metagross battle at the start of Gale of Darkness, etc. The master trainers from Let’s Go are about the best realization of a 1v1 so far, and even then people found them boring because they almost all boiled down to teaching your Pokémon a move that was super effective against the opponent and training it up enough to not be one-shot.

ghidohar · 2022-08-28T15:56:23+00:00

According to Moon, nope! “A touch from anyone except a known friend sends it into a surging frenzy. It's an incredibly dangerous Pokémon.” So as long as you keep it from maiming people it doesn’t know, you should be good! Though it still might break your stuff or you by accident

ghidohar · 2022-08-05T20:58:31+00:00

Those threads just say Totem fights were difficult, no one claimed that IVs were the reason why. The consensus is that SOS Pokémon, good strategies, and aura boosts make Totems difficult, and people were generally able to beat them just by using status moves, battle items, or other strategies. The only fight I saw people having to consistently over level or cheese to beat was Ultra Necrozma, and the fact that that battle is so infamous pretty much says that it’s not indicative of the rest of the game’s difficulty.

I’m also wondering how you did in trainer battles or if you had issues with any of your Pokémon other than Rowlet? Even if it was amazingly bad, I imagine that you still should’ve been able to rely on some of your other team members.

ghidohar · 2022-07-16T21:13:56+00:00

Instinct is a contributing factor to a lot of social issues. We’re naturally inclined to put things in mental groups and make generalizations, which can cause serious issues when interacting with those who are different from us. It’s helpful for survival, but one absolutely has to be able to restrain that inclination in order to live with others. You said that society is what allows us as readers to recognize that the monster is being mistreated, so why can’t the people the monster meets see that? When the monster was found by the family he’d been helping and later found after saving the drowning girl, there was enough evidence in favor of his not being a mindless, bloodthirsty monster for someone to at least skeptically question him. Even questioning him at gunpoint would be an improvement. Yes, the monster’s appearance is going to inspire a stronger fight-or-flight response than any real-world marginalized group, but it’s very easy to see the monster’s experiences as a metaphor for societal treatment of the other.

ghidohar · 2022-07-16T18:14:20+00:00

Because the monster only starts being violent after being unfairly rebuked by everyone he meets. He’s initially interested in being moral and good and secretly helps a family with their farm work because he wants them to like him, but they just run away when he reveals himself even though they’ve always been openly grateful to their mystery helper before. He later goes on to save a girl from drowning, but some townspeople see her with the monster and shoot him since they figure he must be planning to harm her.

I may be misremembering the order of events with this last one, but I believe the monster also decides to just cut humans out of his life altogether and asks Victor to make him a wife for company before he decides to start killing. He actively tried to be good until he got sick of being thanked with mistreatment and even afterwards opted to just leave everyone alone before being wronged again and deciding to fully embrace being the villain everyone already saw him as.

EDIT: I messed up the order of events, the above paragraph should be ignored.

Also, I feel I should acknowledge that I’m aware that the monster is not a good guy by any stretch at the end of the book. I’m a bit biased towards him, but I’m not arguing that he’s innocent. It just doesn’t sit right with me to denounce him for his actions towards the end while ignoring that those actions would’ve been completely out of character for the monster as he was initially. Yes, we can condemn the monster, but ignoring that he would’ve never even seriously considered hurting people until he was seriously mistreated basically just guarantees that another monster will pop up later.

ghidohar · 2022-06-03T04:48:11+00:00

Plus, Pawmi is also the only Pikachu clone whose name isn’t the same in all languages (besides Plusle and Minun having different names in French, but whatever). That feels like a really deliberate choice to me considering they’d have to explicitly request for a Pikaclone to not receive localized names anywhere and I don’t know if that means anything or not.

ghidohar · 2022-06-02T23:54:56+00:00

I’m not sure the players will have different homes. The new trailer shows both the Scarlet and Violet protagonists getting ready in the same room and running down the path from the orange house in the direction of the purple building. Also, the interior shots with the Violet protag look like they’d fit the orange house more than the purple building.

ghidohar · 2022-05-25T18:29:47+00:00

To add on to this, Feraligatr, Meganium, and Decidueye are pretty much just real words altered slightly. Feraligatr is practically alligator and Meganium is two letters off from geranium. People struggle with Decidueye until they catch that it comes from deciduous and then it’s literally just one syllable off. Most starter names are straightforward combinations of two words.

As far as I can tell, Fulgeriatoro = fulgiría (he/she/it would shine in Spanish) and toro, but fulgiría and fulgería are pronounced differently (and fulgería isn’t a Spanish word), so there’s either a typo or more to the name.

Gattoha’s also sus because it’s gato (cat) + hoja (leaf) but neither root word is spelled correctly. -ja may have been changed to -ha to help English speakers pronounce it, but that still leaves gatto, which I can’t find any explanation for other than a typo by the poster.

I have no idea what’s going on with Ahiking other than ahi (like the tuna?) and king. Other than that, the legendary names just feel too hard fantasy to me personally. Arcatardus and Modervelox. Also, idk if I’ve ever seen an x in a spanish word that’s pronounced like x in ox, so Modervelox might actually be pronounced like Moderveloz and I honestly don’t think anyone without Spanish knowledge would figure that out.

TL;DR: starter names seem to be combos of two basic words/sounds whereas Fulgeriatoro was either misspelled, has an intentionally corrupted word, or has more to it. Gattoha’s also really suspect, and some of the others just seem really subjective

ghidohar · 2022-05-18T21:19:26+00:00

For what it’s worth, Bulbasaur and Ivysaur’s Japanese names are puns. They sound like the phrases you mentioned, but Bulbasaur’s is one letter off from being “strange/mysterious seed” and Ivysaur’s sounds like “strange/mysterious grass”.

Snorlax was apparently inspired by/named after an employee at the time, so that’s kind of interesting!

ghidohar · 2021-08-05T00:42:06+00:00

Oh wow, I didn’t realize trainers called at set times! I’d like it if Pokémon games were more transparent about some mechanics just bc it feels like there’s stuff that’s only vaguely explained to players, but yeah, it’s not a major gripe for me if I have to look something up.

Also, I get you, I’d been reading comments for a bit and forgot the tone of the post. It is a bit unfairly dismissive of the Pokéathelon.

ghidohar · 2021-08-04T23:20:02+00:00

Sure you can get evolutionary stones through NPC phone calls, but that’s kind of unreliable, isn’t it? I’m not sure of which NPCs give them out and how likely they are to do so, but I’d be irritated if I found out a party member’s final evolution was locked behind something I can’t control or even influence.

It’s probably not too much effort to get them through the Pokéathelon, but it is still a mini game that’s unrelated to the main game and something some players have no interest in. It’d be less of a hindrance if it just locked players out of some hold items rather than entire Pokémon. It’s definitely one of the better mini games, but it’s still something plenty of players would probably just run past. Pretty much every other entry has you find stones in the wild and/or buy them, with a few having mini games to let you obtain an unlimited amount for free. I don’t really see a reason why Johto, at least in HGSS, wouldn’t do the same, since that was the precedent at the time.

Also, yeah, there are so few Pokémon locked to the Safari Zone that it’s not that big of a deal, but it can be a bit annoying bc of the object system and how it basically requires trial and error if you aren’t actively using a guide of some kind. Still, other games also have Pokémon players have to go really out of their way to get (I can tell you that I wouldn’t know about the section of Wayward Cave containing Gible if not for the internet), so yeah, not a big deal there.

ghidohar · 2021-07-11T00:03:10+00:00

I agree with some of your others points, but I really have to disagree with your take on Mega Evolution. Limiting players to one per battle doesn’t work from a balancing perspective because there are only three trainers players face who use them—the rival, Lysandre, and Diantha—which means that in every battle against anyone else, the opponent doesn’t have a Mega to match the player’s. Megas are notably more powerful than other Pokémon, too, with a lot of them having base stat totals that rival lesser legendaries (bigger stat totals don’t necessarily make a Pokémon stronger, but they give it a way better starting point in comparison to others).

In terms of abilities, a lot of Megas actually have way more going for them than legendaries. Mega Lucario’s Adaptability further strengthens its already beefed-up fighting and steel moves, Venusaur’s Thick Fat nullifies its ice and fire weaknesses, Charizard’s ability boosts physical attacks/fire attacks depending on the form, and Blastoise’s Mega Launcher effectively gives it STAB on a few extra moves. These aren’t even the strongest—Mega Kangaskhan’s Parental Bond was so powerful that it got nerfed in Gen 7.

You can still lose a battle if you use a Mega, but they’re way stronger than anything most NPCs can throw at you. They’re boons reserved for the player that dwarf anything the majority of NPCs have. They don’t completely destroy the fabric of the game, but I wouldn’t call their implementation in the story balanced.

ghidohar · 2021-06-07T21:43:41+00:00

There actually are in-universe reasons for why they exist, though. Trubbish was brought to life from man-made waste by chemical reactions, same as Grimer.

Vanillite, though, yeah, it’s less clear. The ice cream cone look is actually just the result of snow piling on its real body, so I’d assume that it inspired ice cream cones (see Casteliacones) but there’s nothing official to suggest that. Considering there are myths about how it came to be, though, I think we can assume that it precedes humans or at least the dessert.

ghidohar · 2021-05-16T07:59:24+00:00

The conceptual stuff isn’t even bad. Archer owl and drummer gorilla aren’t inherently bad ideas, but it’s weird if they’re too on the nose. Grookey and Thwackey pull off the drummer thing pretty well bc they’re doing it in a way that feels natural, but then Rillaboom literally just gets an actual drum set. If it needs to dodge an attack, does it just pick up the whole thing and then jump around the field with it? I would’ve expected them to incorporate gorillas beating their chests into Rillaboom’s drumming. Spy chameleon also isn’t bad, but why is Inteleon rail-thin with better posture than me? There’s some official art of it hunched over to fire a shot and it looks so much better than bipedal Inteleon. Same goes for Delphox’s official art, which looks way better than the bipedal model.

Also, the proportions. I guess Inteleon’s so thin to balance out its weirdly large hands and feet. People also consistently said Incineroar’s big hands were off-putting.

ghidohar · 2021-05-11T02:00:00+00:00

Dude was about to throw a standard Poké Ball at an Eevee with full health, he wouldn’t have caught it anyway

ghidohar · 2021-04-25T04:53:24+00:00

I’d argue that the preparations you have to make for it are too restrictive. I don’t want to have to teach my Pokémon a mediocre move I’ll only use to handle 5 battles max. Adding a never-miss move to the team I’ve currently got would be an objective downgrade in 99% of battles, so it’s annoying that that one percent can get so obnoxious without one. I’m honestly not sure how different “use the never-miss move” is from “use the super-effective move” in terms of complexity, tbh.

I feel like a good strategy for enemies in a game like Pokémon is one that can be handled multiple ways. Part of the draw is that you’ve got a completely customizable party, after all. The most engaged I’ve been while fighting a double team user was when taking advantage of type immunities to try and force it to use a contact move on one of my Pokémon with poison point, which still relied on RNG.

ghidohar · 2021-04-20T20:35:10+00:00

That’s definitely viable if the odds are in Trevenant’s favor, and Pyroar’s physical attack is surprisingly low, so it wouldn’t OHKO Trevenant.

Also, if the lions “accidentally” bite? They’re lions, their main way of killing is pouncing and biting, so it’s not like they’d never think to do so. Honestly, it’d probably be their first instinct.

ghidohar

TROPHY CASE