Monday 28 October 2013

Pokemon X

Gotta catch em all, once again. I’m The Joel MH, I remember it, because who else will. Boy has this taken me a while to get round to this, probably cause I’m so addicted to playing it, I present to you, Pokemon X.



Before I begin I need to just get round to the elephant in the room and no not Andy this time. No it’s the save file glitch in the capital city of Luminose. Basically if you save a switch off in the streets, your game is fucked. Well here’s a simple solution that costs nothing, DON’T SAVE IN THE CAPITAL! Now where was I oh yes, what’s the game about, do I really need to say it, Pokemon plays like it always does, child gets a monster and a dex and goes on adventures, fights some bad guys beats gyms and beats elite four and champion, catching a legendary on the way, it always happens. But this game does have it’s own new starters with their own special stats and moves.
As well as a return of the original starters after the defeat of the first gym.
So the question you may ask is, well what’s different, what sets it apart from the others, well for one it’s in 3d.
Another fact of the matter is the game’s type match ups have been changed, introducing the fairy type, which is strong against Dragon and Fighting, resistant to fighting, dark and psychic and dragon cannot hurt it at all. As well as including new monsters with this type a lot of older monsters have been changed as well. Monsters like Clefairy have had their normal type removed and have become full fairy, as has Togepi and Snubbull. Others have had it added to their type matchup such as Jigglypuff who is now normal/fairy and Gardevoir and Mr. Mime who are now Psychic/Fairy. There are more but I won’t spoil them. But of course there is a new fairy Eevee as well, named Sylveon.
Other type changes are that Grass is now immune to the spore moves such as poison powder, spore, sleep powder etc. Electric types are now immune to paralyze moves and Ghost types can no longer be trapped by moves like Mean Look. Other add ons to the game include customisation of your character beyond gender choices, hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, costumes etc. Though at the start your choices are pretty much what gender, and three base versions of each, for the male, White with black hair, white with blonde hair and Black with black hair, though you can change hair and eye colour once you’ve beaten the first gym, hence why I started as a blonde. Also included in the game are places where you can take photos to be posted online on the Pokemon Global Link website which can then be shared via Facebook.
The GTS also returns allowing to trade online, except this time, all online options can be done on the fly rather than having to run to a pokemon centre, in fact, all that’s in the shops anymore are the nurse joy, the pc, a place to change clothes and the mart. Of course the GTS has it’s problems, one that is their, where trades that have already been completed are slow to be removed from the lists and second is more of a players fault. Stupid motherfucking idiots who think their low level monster for trading is worth a FUCKING MEWTWO! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!! Okay I’m calm, I’m good, another trade option is called Wonder Trade, where you get rid of a monster and get something random in return, in other words, you dump crap for crap. Another form of battling has been introduced. Gen 3 introduced double battles, gen 5 introduced triple battles and rotation battles and Gen 6 introduced inverse battles where the type match ups are in reverse as well as sky pokemon which only allow flying pokemon or those with levitate as their ability. Wild pokemon double battles have been removed and replaced with hordes. You are attacked by five pokemon at once, all of which are far lower levelled than the others in the wild. Turns out you can get hordes of wingulls, I know that’s someone’s worst nightmare!
Of course there’s something that feels out of place, oh yes, Pikachu. While all the other old monsters have their old cries, Pikachu’s has been changed to match the anime, this wouldn’t be a problem if Pichu and Raichu did too, but nope, still old cries.
Okay now we reach the setting, in case you haven’t guessed what it is, look at this picture and you can easily guess.
Yep, it’s france and the routes all have their own names as well as a number, all of which are french names and the game uses a lot of french places in real life as inspiration.
The french inspirations doesn’t stop there, a lot of the music has a french feel to it and to be honest it’s some of the best the series has ever had. Though this doesn’t do this in battles, they have their own style. Though Mewtwo’s theme is a updated version of the classic red and blue battle theme which sounds awesome.
Other new additions are Pokemon Aime which allows you to play with your pokemon, which can lead to your pokemon being more likely to get critical hits and avoiding attacks and is the only way to evolve eevee into sylveon.
Super Training is a selection of mini games that can raise pokemon stats similar to the hp ups and calciums, however this is free but you have to beat the mini games for upgrades which can get quite difficult.
Black and White gave us 2 rivals, well now we have four, 2 girls with the startes you don’t pick and 2 dudes with other non starter monsters, though the dudes are hardly a threat, it’s only really the girl with the starter stronger than you, you have to really worry about.
And last but certainly not least is the Mega Pokemon. Mega evolutions is something that can only happen to old monsters in their final form and this is not all old monsters. Pokemon such as Blastoise for example when mega evolved get more powerful, Gyarados type changes to water/dark from water flying, reducing his terrible lightning resistance, while pokemon such as Kangaskhan, well, when mega evolved, the baby fights too, meaning you can have 2 turns instead of one. Some megas are version exclusive like Charizard, on Y it’s type remains unchanged but is more powerful, but Charizard on X changes it’s flying type to Dragon. But to keep things fair, only one Mega evolution is allowed per battle and if your mega faints and you revive them, they will be normal again, being that it is a temporary evolution but it never runs out, and with the game’s country being so huge, you’ll have these from after you’ve beaten gym 3.
Speaking of the country’s size, there are now 3 dexes, based on sections of the landmass, central, coastal and mountain and no there are not starters for each so in the mountain dex, Diglett is No.1. Each dex has around 150 pokemon in each meaning there are 450 pokemon catchable in the game. The one downside,new monsters wise there are only 69 new monsters but many have had their types changed and the type system has been overhauled, and this hasn’t been overhauled since gold and silver when the only monsters that were changed were magnemite and magneton.
Oh and I forgot one little thing. Pokemon Black and White despite being good games had one little problem, they were kinda accidentally racist. The 2nd gym leader was a mamma, and black trainers were either dancers or sportsmen. This wasn’t on purpose as alas people in Japan on this subject don’t know any better but with this game, I saw a black trainer and was like, wait, he’s normal, he’s not a stereotype, thank the gods above, the stereotypes are gone!
And oh yes, we also have the game’s newest team, Team Flare, I won’t spoil what they’re about but they like to look FABULOUS!
But is Pokemon X good, of course it is. The game also came with a poster…
…when preordered and this little thing.
It holds games while looking like a pokeball, but you can’t have one, HA!
I’m The Joel MH and if you excuse me I have pokemon to catch.

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