Taking a break from the forums was hard.
Taking a break from Pokémon turned out to be surprisingly hard as well.
I missed the forums.
I missed Pokémon.
I missed you guys and all the great discussions we always have here at Orange Islands.
I made a post in another thread a few days ago, but this is my real comeback. Without further ado, let’s get back to positivity!
I have an upcoming project about battle facilities which is going to start later this year (hopefully soon) and it made me think about one thing. I have said many times before that I like battling in battle facilities, but I have never talked about my
favorite battle facilities in this thread.
Let’s start with my favorites from the standard facilities. There are three that I like better than the others and I guess it should be obvious which those three are.
I really like the Battle Subway. As a standard facility, it was an improvement over the Tower in several aspects. One of the most notable things it did was that it split the formats into Normal and Super lines, which was great. It meant that once you had beaten the Normal lines, you never had to go back and do the boring first 21 battles again (unless you really wanted to). Instead, you could start directly with the harder battles at the Super lines. It was a change I really appreciated. I also like how the Subway started the trend of having a unique boss for each format (except Multi), which was great. I have personally always found the Subway to be really hard, way harder than the Towers in Gen 3-4 or the Maison in Gen 6. Since battle facilities are meant to be tough and challenging, I think that is a very good thing. At the same time, this was the first generation with TruAnt, which allowed you to break the Super Single line so hard. So it basically allowed you to set your own difficulty, which is cool.
Another thing I like is how the Subway rewards you with a Lansat and Starf Berry for beating 105 and 203 battles in a row, respectively. A trend which continued in the following generations, which is great. The Subway is also one of the areas in Gen 5 which features dynamic music: more instruments get added the further you go on your current set of 7 battles, ending with the complete track before the 7th and final battle in every round. Despite my love for the Subway, it feels like I never played in it that much during the Gen 5 days. While I did battle in it quite a bit now that I look back, it doesn’t
feel like I battled in it that much. But I returned to it in later years, notably in 2020, where I finally completed everything I had left in it. Overall, the Subway is great and I’m looking forward to returning to it once more in the (hopefully near) future as I still have some things left that I am planning to do in it.
After the Subway, we have the Maison. It kept all of the great things from the Subway and added Triple and Rotation lines. Those were really fun, Triple especially as it became my favorite format in battle facilities, and it is one of my favorite battle formats in Pokémon on the whole. While I didn’t find the Maison to be quite as hard as the Subway, it still offered a challenge and was not by any means a walk in the park. It also ended the tradition of having battles in sets of 7, instead allowing you to battle for how long (or short) you wanted, which was a great change. In addition, it started giving you BP after every battle instead of after every round (which it more or less had to do since there are no real “rounds” in the Maison). I think this was a great change since it meant you always got BP for winning compared to in the previous generations where you only got BP for beating an entire round. I battled in the Maison a lot during the Gen 6 days and it was tons of fun. I am not done with it either, there is still more to be done once I get back to it.
Third, there’s the Tree. While it removed the Triple and Rotation lines, I think it more than made up for it by adding other great things and improving upon the standard facility even further. The most notable is that it really spiked up the difficulty compared to the Maison, I think it is more on the level as the Subway in terms of difficulty. Which is really great. The fact that opponents can now use both Megas and Z-moves definitely added an extra layer of difficulty compared to the Maison. Another cool thing it did was to add special trainers that you got to face in every tenth battle, it was really cool. I also like how it allowed you to use the usually banned legendaries and mythicals in the Normal lines in US/UM. Being able to smash through the trainers there with Mega Rayquaza and Ultra Necrozma was fantastic. I battled a lot at the Tree during the Gen 7 days, and just like with the Subway and Maison, I am not done with it yet.
Then there’s the special Facilities. While I like many of them, there are four that stand out above the others.
I really like the Battle Dome, it is one of my two favorites from the Emerald facilities. I like how you get to battle in tournaments here. I think it makes the battles very interesting and unique when it comes to strategy. You can see your opponent’s Pokémon before the battle and then you get to choose two of your own to battle the two that your opponent chooses. When I battled at the Dome, I always tried to pick the two that had the best matchups against all three of the opponent’s Pokémon, a strategy which usually worked. Since there are only four battles in each round, going through a round at the Dome generally goes pretty fast. And nuking Gold Tucker with Shedinja is an amazing extra bonus.
The Pyramid is my other favorite from the Emerald facilities. I really like the exploration aspect of it, walking around while looking for the teleporter and advancing to the top, battling trainers and wild Pokémon, as well as picking up items. You also need to manage your resources a bit since your Pokémon never get healed after battles, you need to heal them on your own when it is needed. Running out of items is something you can’t afford since it means you will likely lose. I like how the theme of the wild Pokémon change for every round up to the 20th, forcing you to adopt your team for every round so that you have an advantage against the current kinds of Pokémon you will face. But at the same time, you need a team that can win against the trainers as well. I also think the view from the top of the Pyramid is really cool. I always liked getting to the top after going through another round and see the view from there.
From the facilities in Platinum (and HG/SS), my favorite is the Castle. It feels like it is the most strategy-focused non-standard facility in Gen 4. I like how you get Castle Points which you then can spend on various things to change the outcome of the following battles. You can use everything in your ability to get an advantage over the opponent, or you can make the fight harder in order to get more points after winning (providing you manage to win). There are so many alternatives for what to spend your points on: items, checking the opposing Pokémon and their sets, raising or lowering the levels of the opposing Pokémon, ranking up to get more options, or just skipping the battle altogether! Or you can just save your points until you need them. One interesting thing here is that you can have the same hold item on multiple Pokémon, and you can change their hold items between battles, which allows you to adapt your strategy for every battle. But no matter how you play, you need to be careful with your points so that you don’t lose all of them (or lose because you don’t have any points left!). This facility is basically about managing your resources, which is really cool and it allows for many different strategies.
I really like the PWT. It is a tournament-style facility similar to the Battle Dome, but with slightly shorter rounds as it is only 3 battles in each round here. I love how you can battle almost all of the Gym Leaders and Champions from the first five generations at the PWT. All of the different modes are fun too, I enjoyed the Type Expert Tournaments surprisingly much despite the fact that I was originally not even going to do them! But I like the others too, like Mix and Rental. You can also do Rotation and Triple Battles here, the PWT is the only facility alongside the Maison where you can do that. Another thing I like about the PWT is how you get a consolation prize in the form of a Shard if you lose, which is neat. I think the PWT is the only facility where that happens. Overall, the PWT is really great. When combined with the other battle facilities and battle challenges in Gen 5, I find them to be superior to the Battle Frontiers of Emerald and Gen 4.
Those are my top favorite battle facilities.
Next, I want to talk a little more about music in the Pokémon games. There’s one track from Gen 5 which I really like, but I didn’t even know that it existed for a very long time. It is a bit special since it doesn’t appear in the games, only on the official soundtrack. It is a “summer version” of Lacunosa Town. If you haven’t heard it, give it a listen:
I think it is really great, it is similar to the original Lacunosa theme but with some notable differences. It gives a real “summer” feeling to me, though that might just be because of the name. I wish it was in the games as well and not just on the OST, but thankfully, there’s always Youtube. Maybe we can see it in the games in the future, whenever they decide to make another Unova game.
Please no B/W remakes though
That’s all from me for now. Whenever I can find the time, I am planning to go through this thread and read through all the posts which have been made here since my last post in October, and comment on some of them as well. I also have posts to make in some other threads as well. See you around.
