Super Secret Bases? More Like Super Secret Failures

Introduction

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (ORAS) brought back a lot of features we loved in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. Secret Bases, for some reason, were one of them. Around the world, you heard people scream with excitement. Secret Bases were back! And they came with the opportunity to get a Garchompite! What they didn't tell you was that getting Garchompite is a waste of time and that you're better off hacking it in. Here are the top four reasons why the Super Secret Bases were a flop.

The bases are too difficult to keep returning to

If you want to collect flags from every Secret Base... you're kinda crazy. In the original games, unless you lived in Japan, you probably didn't bother with the Secret Bases, and that's okay, as they really offered nothing. These bases offer a flag-collecting game, which is a fun idea on paper, but it's not so easy in practice. You can't fly to your own base, you can't instantly transport to the bases you see on the map, and to make it even better, the clues you're given are so vague that you will need to Google search half of them. That's okay, though, because there's a lot of locations, so it's easier to stumble across one, right? No, wrong. There's a handful of easy-to-find locations, but if you really want to collect all the flags, then you're going to have to walk to every single base on the route you're on. The only plus is that some people do make their bases look really cool, but the majority of people don't really care, so you're mostly going to be getting empty bases.

You can only keep five useful friends when you would be better off with 20

The first time I selected 'Pick something up', my Secret Pal, Zora, gave me a Master Ball. I thought, "okay, I guess either I'm pretty lucky or the game compensates for the fact that trying to get great items from Secret Pals is tough because you're limited to only five at a time." I was pretty lucky. Almost every day I talked to a Secret Pal I got a rare and highly sought-after item: The Float Stone. You never know when you're going to need a Float Stone, so having 99 of them is an absolute necessity. The thing is... I still haven't needed a Float Stone. And I don't think I'm ever going to need a Float Stone. I soon found out that some of your other Secret Pals can give you rare stones. My first thought was, "okay, great, time to stock up on Dusk Stones and other rare stones." My game's first thought was, "she really needs another Float Stone, so we'll just give her one." Secret Pals do have a few other benefits, but for the most part you just want the rare items, so being limited to five at a time (and only being able to speak to them once a day for most of the time) makes it something you'll eventually hate.

There's not enough space in the best Super Secret Base locations

Route 120 has what is considered by many to be the best Super Secret Base location. Is it big on space? No. Is it pretty? Definitely not. At night the lake lights up so you can see the galaxy above. It's the only area in the entire game that experiences this phenomenon. Wouldn't it be perfect if the base at the end of the lake was large enough to actually use as your Super Secret Base? It would, but that isn't the case here. Most of the optimal base locations actually are really small, and the only large ones are in the difficult-to-find areas. I wouldn't mind it if I could fly to my own base (and not just the route), but not being able to fly there kind of kills it. It's not like they are short on space, either. Maybe removing a frame or two from the extremely long and inescapable Delta Episode would be appreciated. Instead, we have to settle for bases that you can barely fit anything into. (Except a Float Stone—definitely not a shortage of space there to store them!)

Obtaining Garchompite is almost an impossible endeavor

How long do you usually keep playing a Pokémon game? Maybe a month at most, and then you move onto something else, right? This game expects you to keep playing for roughly 50 days straight if you want any chance of getting Garchompite. Want Pinsirite? Just look for it on the ground! Want Salamencite? Talk to an old woman! Want Garchompite? Keep playing the game for 50 days and we'll reward you with a subpar Mega Stone. Yeah. To get something as broken as Mega Rayquaza, sure—I'd gladly go through 50 days of activating Wi-Fi, traveling to each faraway Super Secret Base location, and slowly adding to my flag count. For Garchompite? Nah, but I tried anyway. I ended up giving up halfway through, after I had already invested what felt like half my life in flag collecting. Thanks, Aarune; you're a legend.

Conclusion

The main problem with the bases is that they are extremely repetitive. So if you want to take the challenge on, don't do it every consecutive day because you'll be hating ORAS by the end of it.

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