CURIE

That's something I've been meaning to ask. How much does that increase the shiny chance?

...Then don't come here? Unless they bork the difficulty for the US release (a very real possibility) I've pretty much said everything you'd want to know without actually spoiling yourself. I think. I've been avoiding spoilers myself, so I may have missed some things. Well, there is one minor detail I wanted to clear up, about the whole "you can only recruit one of each Pokemon" thing. Yes, I mean one of each individual Pokemon, and not just one of each evolutionary family. You can recruit a Squirtle, a Wartortle, and a Blastoise, and then you can evolve the Squirtle and Wartortle to get three Blastoises. And if you or your partner is a Squirtle, you can have four Blastoises.

Where would Feebas go? In a lot of ways it's like Piplup, a much needed good water type with really good stats, that's held back by a not as good movepool. It's slightly better than Piplup, having access to Surf the moment you get it and some neat support moves, but it has pretty much zero type coverage. It's a complete powerhouse with certain TM moves, but only one of those TMs are actually in the game (and it doesn't even work due to a bug). And unlike Piplup, it's ridiculously late game.

Update 68: The Ametrine Gauntlet, Part 1 The Nuclear Trump Card did about 75% damage to the Pulse Avalugg (yes, that was with Misty Field up), and since Dashie was faster than it, she was able to finish it off with Moonblast before it could use Recover. Not much of a fight there. A few ice sliding puzzles later, though, I’m in Ametrine City, a place that is a bit more worth talking about. First of all, there’s an item up here that will forever change Dashie’s life, but I’m not quite able to get to it yet. For that reason, I’m gonna hold off on doing that department store sticker quest until after I have it. It’s not like I’m missing out on anything by not doing it yet, since I won’t be able to go to the department store itself anyway. Speaking of items and shopping, there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of sellable items lying around when I used the itemfinder. Wonder why that is. And despite them not being cost efficient, I bought some Max Repels because come on, I’m rolling in dough right now. Other than that, there’s still not much to talk about here, because it’s just a bunch of cutscenes and a puzzle. There is a story choice here, and there’s no question on which answer is required for the secret ending: When Blake asks you to give up the Ruby Ring, you have to refuse him every time. The game eventually forces you to give it to him, so it may seem at first like your choice didn’t matter, but the story actually turns out different. Much different. In this timeline, he refuses to give you Waterfall or tell you where Heather is, despite the fact that he just said he would if you gave him the ring, and runs off. After solving the puzzle, which stays the same, you find her locked in the shed and free her as usual. Oh and Cal shows up too. Turns out he and Shelly had something going on in the past, but he did something that hurt her feelings. You find that all out in either timeline. In this one, however, they kinda make up, while in the other one they just argue a bunch. Also Cal mentions Heather being an E4 member, which is a bomb that isn’t dropped until later if you play the other timeline. Now, it’s time for the one of the most annoying parts of this entire game: The infamous Ametrine City Gauntlet. As you chase Blake up the mountain, he sends wave after wave of Meteor goons at you, and every single one of them has 6 Pokemon, and they’re all double team-up battles. Which means you’re fighting 12 enemy Pokemon per battle, WITH the game’s crappy partner AI! What’s more is that it simply won’t stop hailing, plus the fact that it’s on a snowy mountain field. For this reason, I’ve brought along Pumpkin and in addition to double screens, he’ll be providing Rain Dance support. Why Rain Dance and not Sunny Day? Because boosting Fire type moves is kinda pointless when you’re on a field that weakens them. The only move anyone can learn to change the field is Heat Wave, and I don’t have access to the tutor for that yet. Probably won’t get that until around the same time I get the tutor for Hyper Voice. About how this field softens fire attacks, that’s especially annoying since in the first battle, your partner is Cal. After setting up the screens and changing the weather, I switched to Fangorn and burned the Slaking for obvious reasons. Horn Leech took it down to the point where the Burn killed it off, and at the same time Cal took down the other Pokemon. Now it was a Quagsire and an Arcanine. I didn’t want to die to the flaming dog, but since he was on a fire-weakening field in fire-weakening weather I decided it would be fine and OHKOed Quagsire. Ironically enough, before it went down the Arcanine used Heat Wave, taking out the field. The rest of the battle went smoothy, and I gotta say, Cal’s AI actually did really good. He OHKOed a lot of opponents with the right moves at the right time. I’ve typed enough for now, so I think I’ll continue this gauntlet next time.

Update 67: Charlotte and more Yeah, she had trainers in her gym, but they were just Diggersby fodder. Let’s get on to the main attraction herself. I actually had several conflicting ideas on how to begin this battle. I gave Pumpkin Rain Dance, which was a necessity, so I had to lead with him. For the other Pokemon to start with, I chose Strider. In the first few turns of the battle, I had Pumpkin use Rain Dance, Light Screen, and then Reflect, and had Strider spam Surf. It lowered my accuracy each time I used it, but I didn’t mind. That is, until he got outsped by a Rotom Oven (?????? That’s a base 86 speed vs a base 122 speed!) and OHKOed by a critical hit Volt Switch. I sent in DiggersbyTho and managed to survive getting off a Swords Dance, and for Charlotte it was all downhill from there. All my own Pokemon got one-shot by her Earthquake spam, but I didn’t care because so did the opposing pokemon. I just used their turns to heal what damage DiggersbyTho took, and in no time all that was left was that impossibly fast Rotom. It of course outsped me and used overheat, but thankfully it missed (I only had Diggersby and Braveheart at that point). Needless to say, it went down that same turn. Well that was short, and to think everyone considers it to be the hardest gym fight in the game. I wonder how badly I would have been wrecked if I didn’t have Rain Dance. Anyway, since this was a short update, I’ve decided that I will, in fact, train up Fangorn and add him to the team in place of Jack. I trained him to the max in Attack, gave him balanced defenses, and threw in some HP. No speed, which means Dashie’s no longer the slowest one on the team. His ability is Harvest, and his held item is a Sitrus Berry. Now, every time he goes low on health, the Sitrus Berry activates and heals him, but then his harvest ability causes him to get the thing back. His main attacking moves are Phantom Force and Horn Leech, and Will-O-Wisp was a must have. But I was conflicted on his fourth move. Should I give him Destiny Bond, Forest’s Curse, Trick or Treat, or Wood Hammer? For now I’m going with Wood Hammer. And since I was grinding him up from 60 to 70 anyway, I decided I might as well take him and everyone else to 75. While I was doing that, I also decided I might as well evolve Bergmite and Surfboard. Speaking of fully evolved Slaves, I then realized I would need a Fly slave later on. So remember that shiny Noivern that I wanted to train but never did? Well now he’s been “promoted” to future Fly slave. His name is now Slavebat Jr. Why not just bring back the old Slavebat, you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? Because SHINY NOIVERN, that’s why! P.S. In case you’re wondering what Fangorn’s hidden power type is, it’s grass. Now I own two Pokemon whose hidden power type is the same as their own type.

I'm interested in that Reborn exclusive held item. Hopefully "next up" doesn't take two more months.

I found another negative. A big one. You guys are gonna hate this like 12 year old Minecraft fans hate the nerf to spam clicking. Like, if you dislike the game in general, this will be why. - When I said recruited Pokemon get locked out of use for story purposes, I don't just mean "you can't bring those guys on this specific mission because it's important to the story". The Pokemon you recruit will randomly go on vacation and you won't be able to use them until they get back. Combined with the fact that you can only get one of each Pokemon, and people are gonna HATE this. Why this is done is obvious, so that you don't spend the entire game with the same team. Also, whether this is positive or negative is up to you: - The availability of Pokemon is very Reborn-ish. Most of the "good" Pokemon are post game, and some of them are really late post game. If your favorite Pokemon is, say, Garchomp, you're gonna have a real bad time.

Update 66: New team member, maybe? Even with Meteor’s base conquered, it’s still not a straight shot to Calcenon. I still gotta go through Route 4, a twisty path through a forest with a couple trainers. In that forest, I caught yet another Pokemon to add to the collection: A Phantump. But is he really to be just another addition to the collection? I’ve been debating for a long time now, whether or not I want him to replace Jack. Trevenant has a higher attack, some more well-rounded defenses, is just a liiiiitle bit faster, and most importantly: Has a much better ability. It doesn’t learn Shadow Sneak, but it does learn Destiny Bond, it gets both Trick or Treat and Forest’s Curse, instead of Seed Bomb it has Horn Leech (actually it DOES get Seed Bomb, but Horn Leech is better), and it can also get Will-O-Wisp and Wood Hammer. Oh, and it also gets Phantom Force. Whether or not I end up using it, I already used a Link Stone on it since evolving doesn’t change its leaned moves. Also I’ve already come up with a name: Fangorn, after the forest where Ents come from in the Lord of the Rings. Other than that potential new team member, not much of significance happened on Route 4. The trainer battles weren’t noteworthy, aside from one particularly annoying Snorunt with freeze hax and attract. And even though I didn’t need the experience, I did the Absol event. I wonder if it’s the same Absol who’s been following me around throughout the game? Well, we’ll see if it ever shows up again after I defeated it. I finally made it to Calcenon and had more than enough money to repair the bridge, but it turns out I don’t have the option to until I’ve beaten Charlotte. Next up, the gym that everyone regards as the hardest in the game… No wait, not yet. There’s still a story choice: Do you say you’d sacrifice Charlotte in order to keep the Ruby ring or not? I scouted ahead and the scene plays out almost the same either way… almost. If you say “yes”, she gives a couple extra lines of dialogue that give you a little insight to her view of humanity and some foreshadowing to the twist of her being responsible for the death of her parents. So I’m pretty sure that’s the answer you have to give for the secret ending.

Update 65: Eclipse’s grand finale This is the final battle against Aster and Eclipse, and boy does Ame intend to make you remember it. Normally I’d lead with Pumpkin and set up screens, but this time I led with Strider and used Surf. It’s important I take out those first two Pokemon (Solrock and Lunatone) asap, as they’ll spam Bulldoze and make the rest of the battle a nightmare. Aya’s Dragalage was Dragon type anyway, so she could tank it. Turns out one of the two barely survives it, so I switched Strider from the Dread Plate back to the Splash Plate. That 20% boost was enough to get the double KO. As it turns out, the next two Pokemon are also weak to Surf, but this time one of them barely survived. Aya took it out with Dragon Pulse (wow, she did something helpful!), but not before it used Thunderbolt and OHKOed Strider. Now, I brought out Pumpkin for some dual screens action. While I did this, Aya surprised me with another good move: Using Thunderbolt on the enemy Milotic! Too bad it didn’t do much damage… I then used Swagger on Rhyperior, and the AI made an odd move of switching Milotic out with Vileplume. Upon coming in, Vileplume took a critical Sludge Bomb and was reduced to about 30% health. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to finish it off with Psychic, but nope. Hyper Potion. Also, Dragalage got taken down and replaced with Nidoqueen. I took the Vileplume down next turn, and Milotic came back out. It was then that I realized I made a stupid move by using Swagger on Rhyperior, because I just boosted its attack. Thankfully my mistake didn’t come back to bite me, because it KOed itself. Next up was Electivire, who I also Swaggered not realizing it was also a physical attacker. THAT time it came back to bite me, and I got Thunderpunched and KOed despite Reflect still being up. I sent in Braveheart, and she started Hyper Voicing. It didn’t do that much damage to either of them. Electivire fought through confusion again, and took down Aya’s Venasaur (oh yeah I forgot to mention, she switched Nidoqueen out for some reason), but took life orb damage and killed itself. The experience from that thing was apparently enough to send Braveheart overlevel, so I had to switch her out with Apollo. The opponent sent out Vespiquen. This was actually the perfect time to send that guy out, since she summoned Nidoqueen again and both opponent’s Pokemon were weak to electric. Also, the field effect boosted electric type moves. Now I could use Parabolic Charge and not hurt my ally… no wait, Nidoqueen went down and was replaced by Tentacruel. You know, the guy who’s WEAK to the move. And who has liquid ooze, which means using Parabolic Charge HURTS me. It was annoying, but I kept spamming Parabolic Charge anyway. Eventually Tentacruel and Vespiquen also went down, and next up in Aya’s lineup was Gengar. Since it’s immune to Earthquake, I switched to DiggersbyTho and spammed Earthquake. Milotic didn’t stand a chance. The field broke, Aromatisse was next, and one side of the field was all out of Pokemon. Two Earthquakes later, I had beaten what was probably the hardest miniboss in the game. And what is my reward? Eclipse turns good for a second only to get double plus killed (it’s like being killed, except your soul also dies and you get no afterlife), Aya gets captured and I’m left alone. My team doesn’t even get healed up! Doesn’t matter really because there’s a healing machine right next to where the battle takes place, but still! Oh, and the only known way at this point into Labradorra gets cut off, too. The fact that meteor grunts can go between the two cities in that underground tunnel, though, indicates that Mr. Mime’s barrier doesn’t go underground or through caves. This leads me to believe we’ll get into the city by going to the desert, getting rock climb, climbing up the back of the mountain, and sneaking in from behind. Oh, and I got the TM for Grass Knot. I taught it to Strider in place of Smack Down.

With the games coming out in two weeks from the time of me posting this, I've been doing a bunch of research and it's been really hard to figure stuff out without going to sites like Serebii (since they'd give spoilers and not give a crap). Basically, all of my information comes from people who have played the japanese game, or at least claim they did, both on the internet and IRL. Here's what I've found. Don't worry, this is all without spoilers. Positives - Automatically better than Gates to Infinity due to having far more content. As a matter of fact, it has more content than any game in the series, although that's to be expected when there's 720 pokemon to get - There's a bigger focus on strategy, as the game in general is presumably the hardest in the series so far. High level Pokemon appear early on and dish out tons of damage, but it's kinda balanced out by the fact that high tier items like Reviver Seeds are cheaper - Soundtrack is the best in the series. This I can confirm myself, I've heard some of it. - Story is at least on par with the explorers games - Going back to the ridiculous amount of content, the entirety of the first three games are in this game. Basically, there's 5 continents in the game, and the previous games each take place on one of those continents - All the characters of the previous games also appear in this one, and many of them are recruitable. I don't know if Grovyle and Shiny Celebi are among the recruitable ones, but I do know they're there - Like the games before Gates to Infinity, there's a ton of difficult post game content - No more "one quest at a time" stupidity - Rescuing other players is back - The text speed and camera issues from Gates are fixed - There's a new way to recruit Pokemon and it's no longer up to stupid RNG, which means you won't have to do the same 50 floor dungeon a million times in a row to recurit a legendary - DLC is a thing, so Zygarde's new forms, Volcanion, and future Mega Evolutions will hopefully become available later on Negatives: - The difficulty will inevitably be a turn off to many people (which is why Game Freak didn't give us the Battle Frontier...) - The new recruiting system means you can only recruit one of each Pokemon. This doesn't really matter that much since there aren't natures or seemingly IVs - The story takes forever to actually get going - Pokemon you've recruited often get locked out of use for story purposes (though I'm pretty sure this happened in previous games as well) - People will probably want the old system of recruiting back, especially if they haven't tried to recruit a legendary before - The difficulty plus the sheer amount of content will make it a completionist's worst nightmare

Update 64: The quest to Calcenon “It’s not far at all” Hardy says. “Just around the corner” he says. Well, he would have been right, if it weren’t for the PULSE Clauncher conveniently taking out the stairs and making us go the long way. And then taking out the long way and making us go the even longer way. Now, because of that, I’ve got to do a ton of double battles with team Meteor. And I can’t even use that Strider/Apollo strategy I mentioned earlier, because I’m stuck with Aya as a partner. You know, If I weren’t already at the level cap, this would be the ideal time for level grinding. I encounter two wild Pokemon at a time, and get healed after every battle. What a shame. Anyway, the “even longer way” happens to be through a meteor base, so that means lots more double battles with Aya. I would say that Apollo dominated these with Parabolic Charge, since Aya’s first Pokemon resists it and her second is immune to it, but it seems every single trainer we met had at least one ground type who used Earthquake and one shot him. And then they’d use it again, even after Apollo was down, which causes the ceiling to collapse and kill everyone- me, Aya, and them. It doesn’t help that all of Aya’s Pokemon are weak to Earthquake, either. It seems that she only served to get in the way, her only useful purpose being to soak up hits in place of my own Pokemon. Which is ironic, because if you talk to her during this whole ordeal one of the things she says is “plz don’t use me as meat shield”. Didn’t help that her AI sucks, one time she kept spamming Thunderbolt even though one of the opponents was a lightningrod Manectric. The other foe wasn’t weak to Thunderbolt or anything, either, it was a Machamp. And then, one time when one of the opponents was weak to sludge bomb, she used sludge bomb… on the other opponent. Also, it seems that even a much needed Rock move doesn’t justify my keeping Sassy around, she gets one or two shotted by absolutely everything. Next up is one of the most dreaded non-gym leader boss fights in the game, and if the last couple of battles were any indication, my greatest opponent in that battle will be my own partner.