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Little things you like about Pokémon

I have been rather negative in the S/V thread during the past week, so in order to make up for that, here's some more positivity. I started reading through everything I have missed in this thread since October, though I still have a few pages left to go through. For now, here's some replies.
green_typhlosion said:
Good to see you back.
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Thank you! I didn’t think anyone would miss me so seeing this makes me very happy!
The Mind Electric said:
Durant dreams of breaking the Battle Subway in half.
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Yeah. It is funny how giving one of the worst Abilities to an otherwise average Pokémon ended up making it one of the most broken options for Battle Facilities. I always wanted to use a TruAnt team in the past, but I didn't get around to using it until 2020, when I used a TruAnt team in the Subway. I more or less auto-won every single battle with it. Almost every battle went something like this:


Continuing on that track, I want to talk about Truant a little more.

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While Slaking and Durant might not look that great because of Truant, they are both solid despite it. Durant has been talked about, but Slaking can also be good. I had great success with it in the Emerald Battle Frontier, it was a member of three of my Gold Symbol teams there. Being unable to attack every other turn doesn’t really matter if you can kill an opponent on the turns that you can attack. Slaking with a Choice Band hurts so hard that it is incredible. It can be pretty good in competitive Gen 3 as well.
Yung Dramps said:
5 years of one of the most awesome gens :D what's some stuff you liked about Alola?
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A belated happy anniversary! I remember being extremely hyped for these games, getting Moon on the release date and Sun later on, playing both of them a lot until US/UM were released. Crazy to think it has been over five years already, it feels like it was just yesterday. And now we're on the road to Gen 9… time flies.

Here are my personal favorite things from Sun & Moon:
- The Alola Pokémon
- Poké Pelago
- The Battle Tree
- Pokémon Refresh
- Z-moves
- Hyper Training
- Most of the music and graphics/designs
- New moves/Abilities/items
- The Poké Ride, HMs done right

And maybe more things that I’m forgetting. Now, all of this can be applied to US/UM as well, but S/M had them first so credit where it’s due. Overall, I think S/M were fun games, they had a lot positives and many great features.
Yung Dramps said:
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Wow. I posted about this once in the past, but I had no idea there was such a deep meaning to it. Makes me wish I knew Morse Code.

Next, I want to give some praise to an individual Pokémon line. One from Gen 1? Yes.

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I am a big fan of the Staryu line. It is one of my favorites from Gen 1. Starmie has a great typing in Water/Psychic, it has a solid movepool as well. It has the standard SPIT moveset, but also other alternatives such as Recover, Trick, Thunder Wave, Rapid Spin and more. It has solid stats with great Speed, good Special Attack and decent bulk. It has a great Ability in Natural Cure, or Analytic which can be the better alternative for competitive play. I have had great success with Starmie on many different teams, including some Battle Facility teams. Notably in the Emerald Frontier where I used a Starmie on all of my Gold Symbol teams! I also recall having great success with it in the D/P Battle Tower.

But what really stands out about Staryu and Starmie are their designs. I think they are among the few Gen 1 Pokémon that really have amazing designs. I noticed this a while ago when I was looking through sprites for various Pokémon. Staryu and Starmie have a cool yet simple design which makes it basically impossible to get them wrong in sprites. Looking through all of their sprites and models, I think all of them are awesome.

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:bw/staryu: :bw/starmie:
:sm/staryu: :sm/starmie:

Most of their sprites are very similar, but I'd say that's a good thing since it is hard to make something different with Staryu/Starmie without making it silly or stupid. Their sprites in Yellow and Silver are a little different as they are laying down, but I think they are fine anyway. Overall, I am a big fan of the Staryu line, both in terms of design and battle capabilities.
 
Suspicious Derivative said:
Next, I want to give some praise to an individual Pokémon line. One from Gen 1? Yes.

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I am a big fan of the Staryu line. It is one of my favorites from Gen 1. Starmie has a great typing in Water/Psychic, it has a solid movepool as well. It has the standard SPIT moveset, but also other alternatives such as Recover, Trick, Thunder Wave, Rapid Spin and more. It has solid stats with great Speed, good Special Attack and decent bulk. It has a great Ability in Natural Cure, or Analytic which can be the better alternative for competitive play. I have had great success with Starmie on many different teams, including some Battle Facility teams. Notably in the Emerald Frontier where I used a Starmie on all of my Gold Symbol teams! I also recall having great success with it in the D/P Battle Tower.
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Starmie made for a particularly memorable boss mon as well. Seeing Misty wielding a Starmie that early in the game was definitely something most people remember from playing RBY growing up. In Red & Blue it looked particularly menacing with that light coloration around an ominous looking black gemstone in the middle:

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This coupled with the devastatingly sounding Gen 1 Bubblebeam made for a pretty memorable experience.

 
So uh, mildly interesting lore "discovery" that was made recently

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If all 6 people who remember the Emma quest are here, you may know that she's stated to be 16 via a few in-game documents. Well, according to Bulbapedia, in the Japanese text Emma refers to the player being older than her. This makes Calem/Serena at least 17, the oldest protagonist by a pretty substantial margin. The known runner-ups are Akari/Rei at 15 and Hilbert/Hilda at 14, for comparison.

I dunno what to do with this info, what it's meant to signify or if it's even reliable info, but I dig it.
 
Yung Dramps said:
So uh, mildly interesting lore "discovery" that was made recently

XY_Calem.png

If all 6 people who remember the Emma quest are here, you may know that she's stated to be 16 via a few in-game documents. Well, according to Bulbapedia, in the Japanese text Emma refers to the player being older than her. This makes Calem/Serena at least 17, the oldest protagonist by a pretty substantial margin. The known runner-ups are Akari/Rei at 15 and Hilbert/Hilda at 14, for comparison.

I dunno what to do with this info, what it's meant to signify or if it's even reliable info, but I dig it.
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Hilda/Hilbert were apparently visualized as 16, not 14.
Incidentally that'd probably make Cheren & Bianca also around 16, and thus 18 in BW2.


Also I guess, since Akari/Rei are dead ringers for Dawn/Lucas they'd also be about 15.
 
Cobalt Empoleon said:
Although anime Dawn is 10 and the DPPt Pokedex lists PC Lucas and Dawn's heights as 4'8 and 4'6, respectively, so I feel like it makes more sense for them to be 10-12.
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As far as the anime is concerned like all the main cast is 10, probably to make it less weird as a traveling group, so I'm willing to not look too deeply into that. If absolutely nothing else know several of the Trial Captains are not; Kiawe & I believe Mallow are, in the games, pretty close to aging out of the Captain position but are all in the same class and treated as rough equals with Ash, Lillie, etc.

I think those heights could still line up approximately with being 14~15. Some folks have later growth spurts.
 
R_N said:
As far as the anime is concerned like all the main cast is 10, probably to make it less weird as a traveling group, so I'm willing to not look too deeply into that. If absolutely nothing else know several of the Trial Captains are not; Kiawe & I believe Mallow are, in the games, pretty close to aging out of the Captain position but are all in the same class and treated as rough equals with Ash, Lillie, etc.

I think those heights could still line up approximately with being 14~15. Some folks have later growth spurts.
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I guess. I just felt like those were stronger indicators than exactly matching their ages to their ancestral counterparts at the precise time an unrelated person begins their Pokemon adventure.

(Also this is an incredibly pedantic and petty thing to look up haha but they'd literally be in the bottom percentile of 14yos of their respective sexes for height)
 
Cobalt Empoleon said:
I guess. I just felt like those were stronger indicators than exactly matching their ages to their ancestral counterparts at the precise time an unrelated person begins their Pokemon adventure.

(Also this is an incredibly pedantic and petty thing to look up haha but they'd literally be in the bottom percentile of 14yos of their respective sexes for height)
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the real reason BDSP went with the chibi aesthetic was to hide how baby they are
 
I thought the implication was that either Akari or Rei (whichever one you play as) was literally Dawn or Lucas sent back in time. Them being 15 is because it had been a couple years since the events of Diamond and Pearl.
 
DrPumpkinz said:
I thought the implication was that either Akari or Rei (whichever one you play as) was literally Dawn or Lucas sent back in time. Them being 15 is because it had been a couple years since the events of Diamond and Pearl.
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The implication I had was they were, indeed, different people. Considering the strange nature of timeloops it's very possible there just happens to be dopplegangers elsewhere in the world. Akari wears an Alola tee, Rei wears a Kalos tee...if the unused modern room is from a scrapped opening sequence that doesn't fully align with any hints they're Dawn/Lucas.
 
(This used to be available dubbed, but the copyright bots came for it. Oh well.)

Brock, a Kanto Gym Leader, battles Kiawe the Alolan Trial Captain, Mega Evolving his Steelix, a Johto Pokemon, which the anime soundtracks with a rendition of a Unovan game's music. Oh, and he references his original R/B sprite as a Gym Leader.

I love cross-generational references. It feels like a celebration of the franchise as a whole rather than just whatever the current or nostalgic region/generation de jour is.

(Oh, and I guess there's a battle there too, that's pretty good.)
 
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This Cofagrigus artwork depicts canopic jars, which were used to store the internal organs of mummified people back in ancient Egypt. The Pokémon chosen mostly line up too: Rowlet represents Qebehsenuef, who was depicted with the head of a falcon, Riolu represents Duamutef, who was depicted with the head of a jackal, and Mankey represents Hapi, who was depicted with the head of a baboon. The odd one out seems to be Natu, who represents Imset who was depicted with the head of a human. Still, it's pretty cool that they snuck that reference in.
 
This is probably something that's been said plenty of times before, but I really appreciate that Pokemon lets some of its mysteries stay mysteries.

There's a tendency in media nowadays where every little thing has to be explained or have its own spinoff story or sidequest. It's not always a bad thing, but I feel like it often leads to really lazy fanservice and makes the world feel smaller and more protagonist-centric because everything that happens to you turns out to be Secretly Very Important and you're continually pulling back the curtain on every strange phenomenon you encounter.

Pokemon, however, still manages to strike a good balance, giving you interesting tidbits to investigate without leaving you feeling like you know everything about the world you're playing in. We got an explanation for the Marvellous Bridge ghost girl, but there are like three other ghost girls who just exist to be a jarring and spooky moment without any further explanation beyond wild fan speculation. The Mysteries and Conspiracies thread is full of stuff that's fun to theorise about but which hasn't been given an official explanation through gameplay or insider sources.

Idk I just think it's neat
 
Cobalt Empoleon said:
This is probably something that's been said plenty of times before, but I really appreciate that Pokemon lets some of its mysteries stay mysteries.

There's a tendency in media nowadays where every little thing has to be explained or have its own spinoff story or sidequest. It's not always a bad thing, but I feel like it often leads to really lazy fanservice and makes the world feel smaller and more protagonist-centric because everything that happens to you turns out to be Secretly Very Important and you're continually pulling back the curtain on every strange phenomenon you encounter.

Pokemon, however, still manages to strike a good balance, giving you interesting tidbits to investigate without leaving you feeling like you know everything about the world you're playing in. We got an explanation for the Marvellous Bridge ghost girl, but there are like three other ghost girls who just exist to be a jarring and spooky moment without any further explanation beyond wild fan speculation. The Mysteries and Conspiracies thread is full of stuff that's fun to theorise about but which hasn't been given an official explanation through gameplay or insider sources.

Idk I just think it's neat
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On a similar note to this I want to add that its neat that this expands to Pokémon themselves too. We don't know what Cubone's face loiks like, we don't know what Diglett's body looks like, we don't know what the Original Dragon looked like, we don't know what caused Porygon2 to glitch as Porygon-Z, we don't know what Mimikyu looks like, etc. I often see fans asking for these forms to be eventually revealed but imo part of the fun of Pokémon is when they try to immerse you through letting you be as clueless to these mysteries as the characters.

It also works both in a mythological sense and a biology sense as well - Myths always spread out about how or why X thing works and in Pokemon's case tha often comes down to old tales about Pokémon being the cause of some natural disaster or whatever the case, such as Dusclops in PLA saying there is a rumor of whoever sees its hollow inside gets their soul sucked in, yet doesn't conform this being any more true than common folktale (because Laventon was tok scared to verify). Things like this are super noticiable with legendaries and mythicals. Arceus in game always has been refered to "The one who was said to have shaped all there is" rather than straight up saying it is the creator of everything. I feel that the mystery and uncertainty that this gives us makes them feel way more real as mythical creatures with tales that we can't be sure are true

And in the biological sense simply because even in real life we don't know all there is about wildlife. For an example, to this day we don't know how Eels reproduce. Its something minor, but goes to show what I mean as an example, the Pokemon having features that are mysteries to the scientists of their world is not something too out there and imo is actively a better representation of how science would work in a world with magic animals than "oh yeah we have superpowered creatures but we know everything about them"

Lastly I just think some of them are just not super necessary in the first place. Having the design of the Original Dragon revealed would not really impact either Gen 5 games' plot much nor would it necessarily improve on the lore they have layed out already. Similarly, the "real versions" of the Gen 8 fossils imo don't really need to exist either, I see people often ask for those but imo they really lose a lot of their charm as individual fossil mons instead of the abominations we know of today. I feel getting their real versions would really just feel like its here for completionism rather than the 4 of them having a strong and interesting concept behind their creation and design.



also this way its more fun cause we get to see more fan interpretstions of how those mysteries are like
 
DrumstickGaming said:
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That's actually really cool attention to detail! I love it!
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Something cool about Decidueye that I didn't see it coming that in my language (Bahasa Indonesia), Owls are called "Burung Hantu" (lit. Ghost Birds)

I was perplexed when Decidueye, the species that we've been calling Ghost Birds, is literally a Ghost type! I don't know if GF took account of my languange or not.
 
we don't know what caused Porygon2 to glitch as Porygon-Z
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Probably just bad code. I mean that's not a joke it's a "Dubious Disc" and its clearly glitching out and the dex mentions it had an error in its coding. That''s...just how glitches work!

The actual mystery without an answer surrounding Porygon-Z is who made the code to begin with. A disc with "dubious" data designed to "upgrade" Porygon2 (who btw was designed for space travel and failed to begin with so this is quite the leap) to go through alien dimensions? Raises a lot of questions.
 
R_N said:
Probably just bad code. I mean that's not a joke it's a "Dubious Disc" and its clearly glitching out and the dex mentions it had an error in its coding. That''s...just how glitches work!

The actual mystery without an answer surrounding Porygon-Z is who made the code to begin with. A disc with "dubious" data designed to "upgrade" Porygon2 (who btw was designed for space travel and failed to begin with so this is quite the leap) to go through alien dimensions? Raises a lot of questions.
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Team Galactic seems like a safe bet. They were investigating alternate dimensions, and the disk can be found in Galactic HQ in platinum.
 
R_N said:
Probably just bad code. I mean that's not a joke it's a "Dubious Disc" and its clearly glitching out and the dex mentions it had an error in its coding. That''s...just how glitches work!

The actual mystery without an answer surrounding Porygon-Z is who made the code to begin with. A disc with "dubious" data designed to "upgrade" Porygon2 (who btw was designed for space travel and failed to begin with so this is quite the leap) to go through alien dimensions? Raises a lot of questions.
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People mod any commercially available technology they can get their hands on, I'd always assumed it was in the same vein. A couple computer whizs or nerds who thought "what if we turned the Digital Duck into an Alien tracker?" and just made that a 2-3 year project based on P2's existing "code"
 
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