Evaluating the story of every major Pokemon game from generation 1-7

Pokemon is probably one of the most interesting examples of an RPG not needing a particularly compelling plotline to succeed and the series massive following is only proof of that but with sword and shield on the way it really got me to wondering about all of the different things that its predecessors got right and wrong so I set out to play all of the main games in the franchise which encompasses eight different games in my eyes in this video I'm going to cover the writing of the various storylines throughout these games and give my thoughts on what was done well and what could have been done better this encompasses the amount of fun I have with the stories how well the dialogue is written and how well the characters and rivals interact with you of course many of these ideas are going to be subjective obviously but I think that's to be expected with this kind of evaluation also it's good to note that I'm going to be playing the original versions of these games this means no remakes no enhanced editions nothing like that my reasoning for this is that I really want to compare these games as they were released without any new revisions or additions to the games plots so without further ado let's jump into the story of red and blue first pokemon red is this fascinating instance of an RPG game that was extraordinarily well received without having an amazing story to tell this was pretty much unheard of at the time because turn-based RPG games tended to rely heavily on having a wonderful story to tell at this point in time we were long past the time where Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy brought something new to the table so the plots could be relatively basic I guess one could argue that the anime filled in the blanks in a way but I really can't imagine Final Fantasy 6 releasing with almost no plot alongside an anime and receiving the sheer amount of success that Pokemon did so needless to say read storyline and plot elements were pretty basic I'll be it definitely memorable if you grew up with it if the game's mechanics weren't backing up the story I think it'd be pretty safe to say that the plot wouldn't be considered anything special though you start off as a young kid who's immediately thrown into a world where no bad people exist besides the cartoonish villains you're given your first Pokemon and then you're sent out to start filling out a new technological device with information on the rest of them it's pretty easy to go on about how the adults don't care if a young kid runs off into a world of monsters to capture them and use them as war machines to fight other monsters in these games but applying any sort of real-world logic at this point is an exercise in futility at any rate you're given free rein to proceed how you see fit but the important thing is collecting all the gym badges to face down the Elite Four and beating down your absolute chat of a rival gary-oke or blue or [ __ ] whatever you named him really for this video I'm gonna call him blue now blue is pretty much the epitome of what a rival should be at least in my eyes as much as it's easy to roll with his anime presentation of being a completely smug [ __ ] he tends to give the player a lot more advice on how to proceed rather than just throw a fit about his loss and it goes beyond that really the guy's pretty much always one step ahead of you and is constantly working to get better and improve and continues to test and challenge you to make sure that you're ready to take on certain challenges as well it really is the perfect example of how a rival should feel at least at the time the dialogue is naturally pretty primitive and not super compelling but I think he serves his purpose pretty well as a confident kid to be I would absolutely love to dive into how badly I feel like Game Freak drops the ball with rivals and later games but I'll save that for when I get to the later games like I mentioned before the first Pokemon games for their time were such a rare phenomenon which put the RPG plot elements in second place behind the mechanics and as such tend to let the player just wander off and do whatever while occasionally raining them in by using the big evil bad guys to physically impede their progress to the Elite Four thus the actual plot is pretty bare-bones as far as any real substance is concerned after battling it out with your rival doing a chore for Professor Oak and plowing through Brock you make it to the tunnels where Team Rocket is introduced and then eventually to cerulean city I think the first bit of dialogue I encountered with these guys is this dude going yes we're evil all righty I mean honestly Team Rocket is one of the dopiest criminal groups and that they make no sense in pretty much every way their specialties tend to include blocking off vital progression routes and being a general nuisance to society the police sure don't seem to get involved and when they do it's to tell you how much trouble they have with seam rocket it's just particularly interesting when you think about things like lieutenants urges speech about having served in a Pokemon war which caught my attention even as a kid because I just hadn't thought of that application at that point when you think about it though if these big monsters with powers rivaling or surpassing modern-day war machines were discovered and tameable in today's world you can bet your ass that the US will be stockpiling the most powerful ones in some kind of underground private facility and when you start to consider the government organization of a war as a possibility it makes the whole Team Rocket part of the storyline even more ridiculous and just how inept able they and the police force are Pokemon Red's plot is just this weird idea of kids can do anything they set their minds to all while the adults are just baffled by how poorly they've trained their own pokemon of course there are some awesome settings like lavender town in the pokemon tower and all of the cool ideas that flow out of those concepts my question concerning all of this is the idea of the Silph scope which allows these previously intangible ghost Pokemon to become able to be seen and battled and captured the way that you have to infiltrate the Team Rocket HQ to get this seemingly proprietary piece of technology in order to even view these three ghosts in the game is really distracting when you consider the amount of ghost type trainers in the game including Agatha of the elite for now I suppose you could spin this in the other direction and say well these trainers are all mediums and very in tune with the ghosts around them through extensive practice which is a fine headcanon to work with but it also begs the question of what the average trainer sees when a ghost type pokemon pops out from one of these medium trainers and that's the main issue concerning speculation with these earlier Pokemon games these answers weren't there because it was just how a lot of these games were back then I'm sure there's even staunch support for that make up your own answer mentality from some groups out there Team Rocket is holding hostage the old man who's in turn holding hostage the poké flute which is used to get further into the game but in order to even get that far without a pokey doll you need the Silph scope from Rocket's hideout my biggest issue is how dumb Team Rocket is in their response to one kid SWAT team operations they give out vital information when they lose they fumble key items onto the ground they're just useless in about every single way this trend unfortunately follows the series for a long long time and it's really bothersome as an adult replaying these games because as a kid I didn't care and I actually thought that Giovanni was somewhat intimidating and really he still kind of is appearance wise but man after juggling this circus of clowns around like they're nothing that intimidation factor is just lost and this feeling really continues to the final act of Team Rocket the cilco building a company that Team Rocket has apparently just decided yeah we're just gonna take over this thing now even the employees are like I don't I don't really know what to do this really shouldn't work out this way at all without some sort of police involvement but hey I guess they don't really need to bother when two kids can come in and just wreck the joint I don't know why blue was here waiting to ambush you but he lets you know that you're good to take on Team Rocket's boss after his defeat then sits his eyes on the Pokemon League maybe he was grabbing the gym badge from Giovanni here before leaving after defeating the big boss he goes on about all Pokemon belonging to Team Rocket and that'll be back whatever that means back to the self building back to battle me but you know what I don't understand why is Blaine hiding the secret key to his gym and a burnt-out husk of a mansion this is like a weird pokémon trainer trial in Kanto why are all the people who follow Blaine around his trainers in his gym burglars and maniacs what about jugglers and tamers who follow kogas ninja school I feel like these trainer types were designed before they were put into specific gyms but I think the absolute most baffling part of it all is wrapping up Giovanni's character arc this guy it looks and acts like an evil mafia boss and somehow also runs are used to run a poking League gym his gym has been locked up until now which was apparently totally okay with the league I guess he retreated back to it to reform Team Rocket but then you beat him again and he's like well I was gonna try to drum up the gang again but you stopped me here's your badge here's a TM Team Rocket's defeated forever and I'm gonna go study Pokemon from now on what spot's sucks but yeah that's about it for pokemon red you head off to the league where you encounter blue for the second-to-last time he goes all right that battle loosened me up you need a little practice man but you know that what a legend of course that tune changes for the first time ever when you beat him down as the champion this is the first time that he really reacts to losing to you every other time has kind of been him being pretty positive about his loss and then focusing on his next goal but apparently this one was the straw that broke the camel's back and can you blame the guy he was champion for like a few hours probably and then on top of that oak swings by to scold the hell out of him Wow you were just champion and you blew it god I'm disappointed and it's all because you don't love your Pokemon enough what a disappointment anyways that's the plot of pokemon red it's not particularly fantastic in any capacity but I think we all knew that going into this at least I hope so pokemon silver starts us off the same as red does albeit a lot more directly there isn't a song-and-dance where you have to be escorted back to the lab because you stepped into some grass or an instant battle with your rival it tries to get you out into the world with your starter as soon as possible you choose your starter and then you just head out curiously enough a redheaded dude is peering into the lab and picks you up like a bowling ball when you approach him so that's cool I guess you sent off to meet the professor's friend mr. Pokemon when you arrived you're given an egg which is particularly interesting to me just because in this world an egg is a crazy discovery that requires urgent delivery and inspection by a Pokemon Authority Professor Oak is also here and he inspects you to make sure that you are indeed a little boy before giving out another really advanced piece of tech nology when you think about it the adults in this world are really bizarre in an almost purposefully naive way this is actually only further compounded when professor elm calls you frantically and explains that emergencies happen and that you have to come back immediately again little kid adult calling little kid for help something's not adding up anyways it turns out that the red-haired blockhead who launched you across like cannon fodder before broke into the lab and stole a Pokemon type which counters yours no man could stop him from doing this apparently despite the local police actually existing and doing a little investigation when he arrived this guy's our rival for the game and again not a horrible antagonist when compared to later rivals he breaks into the lab steals his Pokemon and basically as a check can to get lured I dig it after you figure out what happened you're sent off to do whatever you want which basically means go collect badges again the gym leaders and silver tend to add a little more flavor to the games background without expanding too much on it for example the first gym leader cries out my dad's prized bird Pokemon when you defeat him which is really strange to me because it means that this kid has the official capacity as an authority figure to give you a real official badge that affects a lot of different aspects of a trainer's life this children handing out badges thing is only further exemplified by the likes of Whitney who is actually the worst gym leader in any Pokemon game and ironically calls you a child as she cries her eyes out because she lost she mentions that she got into Pokemon training because it was the popular thing to do which is even more absurd because she's giving out 12 and a half percent capacity to challenge the Elite Four I don't know maybe I'm putting too much importance on the Elite Four and what they represent maybe most people in Johto view it as a kind of private Country Club and don't really think about it but when it's the end goal of the game it seems pretty damn important right so why are these actual children gatekeeping something with this much value maybe there's an adult test where like the first gym leaders dad actually steps in when someone with obviously tougher Pokemon and more experience comes but then how do you explain something like the ghost Gym Leaders quest for power which is cut short by you showing up and smoking his ghost gang dude's been training so hard that he has psychic powers and you just kind of waltz in and piledrive the poor guy he even concedes to you that you've seen more than him which just doesn't add up but again I don't know maybe I'm thinking too hard about it you continue along your gym route and Team Rocket shows up again to be evil for seemingly no reason I mean don't get me wrong they're definitely a heinous group of [ __ ] like they've always been I mean they're just chopping off slowpoke tails and selling them for tons of money but their primary motive seems to be just be dicks to everyone I guess in this case they're actually making money off the tails at least I just still find it strange that there are actually police officers in this world but they don't do anything to stop Team Rocket in any capacity what they will do is stop you along a public route and ask you what you're doing and then battle you at least the slowpokes with their tails cut off get to decorate the town like bad dragon merchandise after you rescue them as you move along the main legendary Pokemon of the game is mentioned repeatedly as protecting everything even though nobody seems to know what it is or what it's called I know that's a decision to preserve the mystery in a way but you have to realize that you threw the damn thing on one of the covers of these games right especially when you have a guy in the tin tower sitting there telling you that you need a rainbow wing to get the Pokemon to appear although the cooler mystery here is the 3 legendary dogs that reside in the burn tower and run off when you get to them it's a curious contrast between hearing all about a legendary Pokemon and what it stands for before meeting it or just leaving it completely mysterious and giving the player minimal knowledge about it I think I actually just like discovering a legendary with an overworld sprite rather than knowing everything about it ahead of time even if that isn't really pertinent to writing a good story from here it's a bit more Team Rocket interference in which they mug you for 1000 Pokemon fun bucks and force Magikarp to evolve you meet up with Lance from the previous game and go to deliver some street justice unto these jackasses starting with old Lance here hyper beaming this dude and then tossing this guy aside like he's trying to capture a Pokemon with his body there's a lot of tossing people in this game this plot isn't exactly super compelling it basically boils down to Giovanni going into hiding after getting thrashed by red in the events of the previous game his followers are just doing whatever evil things they can possibly manage to do until he's ready to assume command again but again these guys are just cartoonishly evil to a degree that doesn't even make sense a lot of the time Lance is pushing the whole love your Pokemon and have compassion for them agenda like it's a really brave stance to have and these ding-dongs are just running around with no motivation beyond let's be bad guys and even then they give up information willingly like they've been trained to give it out or something I just don't understand how I have to seek out HMS from seemingly random civilians but these rocket grunts are like hey by the way you need passwords to open the doors maybe you should ask Bill over there if he knows it I don't know I guess it's a step up from Pokemon Reds plot but only slightly it's just kind of upsetting that these buffoons somehow managed to take over a radio tower just to go hey guys where's our boss you miss her boss when you're done running from location to location to finally stop these guys from potentially affecting Pokemon with this almighty radio wave signal the guy who's leading the pack goes ah right we'll stop apparently it really just was that easy when you're finally done beating up Team Rocket it's time to collect the last badge except this dragon gym leader tells you that she doesn't accept your victory when you beat her she instead explains to you that you have to go to the dragon cave behind the gym to retrieve a Fang in order to prove that you beating her wasn't just a fluke that is the stupidest thing I have heard in this game and I'm honestly amazed that they managed to one-up their own bad storytelling by taking this girl who claims to be the best dragon master in the world and then having her throw a temper tantrum because she lost I mean you were just fighting alongside Lance of the Elite Four but yes the victory was a fluke and she's the best in the world what I think that with half of the gym leaders being completely incompetent when it comes to administering the passing out of badges which is literally half of their job I'm finally able to pin down the thing that bothers me so much about this whole experience when I went through all of the gyms in pokemon red it always felt like the gym leaders had their [ __ ] together like they were wise adults and beating them was a task even when it wasn't with this absolute circus of a badge collectathon I felt like the entire experience was cheapened by these whiny and adequate and arrogant people who honestly had no right giving out badges in the first place I mean for God's sake you just surfed through the cave behind her pick the Fang up and then she follows you and goes yeah right there you go so let's touch on the rival of this game a little more just to get a little comparison between him and blue apparently the official name is silver so we'll go with that silver is extremely anime he hates the weak so much that he's out to destroy every single person or Pokemon that he deems weak this interestingly enough includes Team Rocket he fused them as extremely weak people who have individually come together to form something that's artificially strong and he's honestly not wrong when he loses to you he says it's his pokemons fault for being too weak and then he storms off he also continues to call you a weak person after you repeatedly beat him over and over so this guy has some issues eventually you start to beat it into his head that he's not as strong as he thinks and he starts wondering if Lance was correct when he told him that he needed to treat his Pokemon better by the end of the game he's still trying to be the best in the world but he's accepted that he needs to treat his pokemon better to do so as much as I enjoyed blue as a rival I think Silver's arc is a lot more well-written and interesting yes blue is a bit of a dick but silver goes from full-blown Punk to someone who learns to better themselves and become more compassionate but as far as the plot of the game goes that's about it for pokemon gold and silver you defeat the Elite Four you get told how compassionate you are and all that jazz it's actually pretty awesome to see that kogas made his way into the Elite Four and that Bruno has advanced further up it the plot is a step up from pokemon red and blue and that it actually does try to tell more of a story even if it stumbles quite a bit along the way because honestly Team Rocket just lopping off Pokemon tails and generally treating Pokemon like garbage does make them villainous even if their entire structure and plan is completely silly it is actually kind of ironic and funny in that I was probably the worst trainer I could possibly be because I constantly let my Pokemon just get plowed because I was trying to gain them some XP but I didn't care enough to like heal them I am absolutely the epitome of everything that Lance was preaching against or at least that's how I played throughout silver version I know there's more to the game and that you can go and collect all the Kanto badges which is honestly an amazing amazing move by Game Freak but I think I've rambled on about one game long enough so let's move on to pokemon ruby and sapphire now pokemon sapphire was my favorite version for pretty much my entire life but it has been a while your character survives the moving truck and doesn't get crushed and your mom starts gushing about the move this game actually feels like it's going to have a bit more of a plot element to it over the previous games as she goes on about your father actually existing as a hotshot pokemon trainer of swords the plot element is only further exemplified when you have to go meet Professor Birch's daughter before you can proceed I mean she's kind of written like a cardboard cutout but they're drying I was hoping that you would be nice salt and that we could be friends oh this is silly isn't it I I just met you so she runs off to help her dad and promptly teleports to a different route right as her father gets mauled by a wild pokemon the infamous Pokemon professor could not apparently handle a level to put Jenna and didn't think to maybe have a Pokemon of his own to help him out with his studies afterwards you're sent to look for his daughter who promptly battles you you both run back to birch who makes sure that you're below age to give you a pokedex and then sends you out into the wild to protect more roaming professors in their research endeavors so after running your way over to petalburg you find out that your dad is indeed a gym leader I like this concept a lot because the game not only shows you as having a dad for once but it also makes him seem pretty important and even lets you challenge him sometimes down the line that's a pretty great decision too because it would be kind of anticlimactic to just destroy your dad right off the bat the rival also decides to introduce Wally at this point Wally is really exists I guess he's a secondary rival of sorts I don't know he starts off as a kid who has zero experience with Pokemon which of course is the perfect way for the game to give you yet another tutorial by having you watch him catch a Pokemon you're then told to go collect all the badges as always as you're making your way through the regulation big bug forest you run into some research executive who's just been kind of goofing off he's then pursued by a member of Team Aqua or magma depending on which version you're playing the grunt goes on about the guy handing over some research papers and the executive sort of hides behind the child and asks for assistance you thrash the guy and of course he makes an allusion towards what they're up to next by telling you that they're planning something in rustboro for some reason nothing really spells evil like telling people where you're doing evil things at at any rate I find myself at the first gym facing another young and fresh out of school gym leader I guess I'm still trying to wrap my head around the gym system in these games and it might just be region to region because Brock seems to be an older dude with a wealth of experience in comparison to the average kids in young adults that are running around and yet these next two games first gym leaders are younger and basically say that they're either using their dad's Pokemon or the fresh out of school so I guess in theory it's totally realistic for someone to just roll in with a level forty spin de and steamroll this poor girls Geodude into granny after you collect your badge you witness the guy that you beat before it run off with the thing that he actually managed to steal apparently both cellphones and the police don't exist in Hoenn because this guy ran into an office building full of people armed with nothing but a one and a half foot tall pupper and stole some important goods when you chase him down he also apparently has taken a bird hostage I I don't I don't know either but it is impressive I mean a winged creature can probably just like go higher and he's holding it a dog point I guess weird well it doesn't really pan out for him because I don't really care about hostages and he gives the goods and the bird back you're rewarded with another great ball from the great ball god for your efforts the executive then takes you to the top of the office building that he works at to meet as president who sent you on a couple of errands in exchange for a map a map the thing that they just give out in other games for free 99 boy child labor sure is cool at least he actually gives you one of the best items in the game when you returned upon arriving in dewford I make my way through the fighting gym where the leader makes a bunch of references to water for some reason I'm not entirely sure why either maybe he just wanted to be a water gym leader you then deliver a letter to Steven who's at the back of a cave and he tells you how you're destined to be great and all that from here you set sail to Slateport where a flock of Team Aqua members are hanging outside of the museum until you find a specific person and talk to him they tell you the captain that you're trying to deliver the goods to is elsewhere and then all of the Team Aqua grunts managed to get inside the museum this is funny to me because this gang of dopey evildoers basically just all got in line paid the entry fee and then waited around the museum for you to show up to hand off the goods to the captain after defeating them their boss arrives to berate them you simps are being held up by a mere child he asks as he then proceeds to not fight you and leave you with the parts that they came here for man gamefreak writes some fascinatingly simple characters anyway his old Archie goes on to tell you that team aquas goals are basically to expand the ocean like less land more ocean okay moving on to the next town has you running into Mae again and I was totally not ready like even though she's a lot nicer than the last two rivals she will absolutely decimate you if you're not prepared which I was definitely not it's also worth noting here that there is a man who 100% has lost children in his basement which he has deemed the trick house I found no means of calling the police to report this but he did give me candy for managing to make it through his house of tricks so that's cool I guess after that we find Wally standing outside of the third gym with his level 16 Ralts he's really ready to go kick some ass but his uncle insists that he's not ready so I kick his ass instead to show him that his uncle's right beyond that the bike shop owner in this game makes no sense and that he just gives you a bike I find the increasing leniency of bike shop owners kind of funny because in the first game they want to charge you like a million dollars then in the second game they needed the advertising so they gave you one to help them with that and then in the third they're like oh wow your shoes are dirty well here's a bike after travelling through a few towns you make it over to meteor falls where Team Aqua is terrorizing a scientist into giving them some meteorite for their plan except this time their counterpart Team Magma shows up to try to stop them of course your character just kind of lets them shove your side and run away so okay I guess the first guy with the Devon Goods should have just done that but anyways if you can assess what Team Magma wants based off of team aquas stupid goals then you'd probably be not too surprised that they want more land and less water what a weird set of goals to create a group of humans around I mean honestly Team Rocket at least wants like I don't know world domination or something these guys just want more water or more terrain I've referred to them as evil a few times but I mean they're just kind of dumb we give things more water really water pokemon will be happy and you'll give people more places to swim you stop their plan to make an active volcano inactive actually it doesn't actually doesn't sound like a bad plan because of the village situated below it but well yeah you stop it and then move along and hope that those guys don't get buried in lava when you head back out of the gym may runs over to give you some goggles to help you cross the desert here's my continued observation about Mae she might be the nicest trainer on the surface but she's goddamn ruthless like she completely undermines whatever reasoning you might have for challenging gyms by saying that the reason that you're challenging them is to defeat her and then she tells you that she's gonna go beat your dad like that's just cold-blooded man so you race back to petalburg to beat your dad before May can and it's honestly more anti-climactic than I thought it would be I mean the guy uses three normal type Pokemon two of which are the same he wasn't expecting to lose to you but gives you your badge and tells you that Wally's parents want to see you when you arrive while his father gives you surf to express his gratitude with how much you helped him weirdly enough he phrases it as this isn't a bribe either way you're able to cross the next bit of map where team aqua is trying to take over the weather this time the weather you know same old situation really speaking of same old situation May sucker punches you right after you've dealt with a whole building of people and the closest Pokemon Center is actually the same direction you're heading at least she gives you a fly this time honestly Mae does really get more arrogant as time goes on just in a more like passive aggressive way than previous rivals she continues to tell you that you aren't going to beat her and even attributes your victories and desire to become stronger to the fact that she decided to battle you previously at any rate let's cut over to what team aquas doing real quick in the meantime they're off to mount pyre what are they doing at Mount pyre taking this red orb what's it for I don't know but this old lady goes you can't take that it can't be separated from the blue orb and my character goes fortunately Team Aqua always tells you what they're up to or will you follow us to our secret base in lilycove city located off of eggs at 8:00 if you see the wailmer line just head north west this chase continues to the next couple of areas and you always know where team aquas at because they keep telling you but you gotta find the means of getting to them this involves getting the next gym badge and then visiting Steven again it gives you yet another useful item when you finally catch up to Team Aqua Archie is somehow astonished that you beat him again before he unveils the orb that he stole to awaken the ancient pokémon Kyogre when Kyogre wakes up from his big nap he just starts wreaking havoc on the surface causing a torrential downpour to begin in Siddappa 'less and starts spreading around home so Team Aqua one right there happy right now of course not this is too much we wanted water but we didn't expect this much water man I cannot believe how much water is happening are you are you kidding me I don't know what to do anymore this plot is breaking me again Team Rocket was one thing but holy hell so now you got to go fix all of this as usual so it's off to the cave of origin a cave that's rumored to be the origin point of where all of life began you're led over to it by the eighth gym leader and Steven who send you in after noting that you have the blue orb from before you face down the mighty ancient pokémon in an actually pretty damn cool battle there's no dialogue there's no interference it's just you in this mighty ancient pokémon one revered for its power and one that deserves the utmost respect so after blinding the everliving hell out of it we stuffed Kyogre into an ultra ball and gave it a cute nickname that's a naughty boy when you pop out of the cave that's that's it I legitimately expected Team Aqua and magma to be standing around with Wallace and Steven I can actually picture it like wow you did it the sky cleared up amazing job we've learned our lesson come challenge me at the now but yeah it's like business as usual out here I was actually wondering if I broke a sequence by escaping out but it actually turns out the grand celebration is just Steven standing outside of the gym and going yeah good work also the gym leaders waiting and this is really it for the bulk of the story if you're me you decide to travel through Victory Road with no flashlights escape rope or repels because you're a goddamn idiot and eventually stumble your way out to meet Wally one last time dude I beat Wally so goddamn hard before that he became a good trainer like the last time I saw the guy was when he had a level sixteen Ralts and nothing else so seeing him with an actual team of 45 ish Pokemon blew my mind of course after this it's just your standard Pokemon League story oh you're so compassionate towards your Pokemon what a great bond you have I can't believe we still have an Elite Four that consists of trainers that only use one certain type of Pokemon also they made Steven the champion because who else would it be it was cool when Lance helped you out in gold and silver because he already knew who he was before he even showed up and so challenging him was a lot more meaningful at the end because he was a true ally who fought side by side with you and he was this legend from the previous game Steven was just a glorified item giver and someone who just kind of kept showing up around you to have a quick chat I will say that his team comp was leagues better than Lance's ever was though I still understand how people always make it into the pokemon league champions chamber after you defeat the champion because it happens every game I mean there's people standing outside to check badges before you can move in but maybe being a professor negates that requirement all in all I would still play sapphires plot above the previous two entries though we're kind of splitting hairs at this point the baddies in this game definitely have more of a clear goal even if it is really stupid but I'd be remiss to just brushed aside the fact that Ruby actually flip-flops the villains around which is kind of neat as hard as I was on the game storytelling it does do better than the last two games which is always nice may as a rival is probably the weakest in terms of how she was written just because she doesn't really have a character arc she just kind of does what she's always been doing I'd argue that wali has more ambition and ends up being someone compete with and Mei was more of a researcher who would occasionally show up to spar with you I think it would have been a lot more interesting if while he had appeared more in the middle and basically took over mais battles instead next up to the plate is Pokemon Diamond and Pearl the first of the Nintendo DS games in the series this guy's name is Rowan guess what the people call him the Pokemon professor what an honor anyways you start off in this game by watching a news report documentary thing about the raging red Gyarados which gets your friend here all riled up and ready to go spots something like that in the local lake berry definitely has a nosey and hyper personality type for sure he kind of reminds me of blue in a way if blue ever considered you a friend rather than a rival so you're off to Waddle your way to the lake in a miniature human centipede form man technology is really advanced visiting the lake is the Pokemon professor and his sidekick anime girl both of them are forgetful in the fact that they just leave this briefcase full of stuff in the tall grass well old barrels here wants to check that out but your character silently warns him of the dangers of being in tall grass he assures you that nothing's gonna happen and you two go check it out well the Birdemic occurs in two star Lee's come flying in at the speed of sound because apparently star Lee's are carnivorous or overly protective or just kind of [ __ ] like Canadian geese anyways the girlfriend before it comes back to get the case finds out that you two have liberated a couple of Pokemon from inside and then leaves off in a huff when you head back towards town Rouen is just standing there and he looks over to the two of you before just leaving you get to keep your Pokemon and your mom gives you some shoes to run over to the next town to talk to Rowan about what happened upon your arrival you're escorted to the lab and the professor conducts the standard age check to make sure that he's giving a pokedex to a child before sending you on your way dawn here takes it upon herself to tell me that the red buildings the Pokemon Center and the blue buildings the Mart despite me declining adventure information at the beginning of the game anyways as different as the start of Diamond seems to be it really winds up just being the same as usual no sign from dead yet in this one but you do get a bit of interaction from your mom before she tells you to piss off I know it isn't meant to be this way but her toy log seems really disingenuous Wow can't believe that happened well hope you have fun on your adventure at any rate you shove off back to san jem and then to tutorial city where you're encouraged to visit the school there and then go to learn about the basic tenets of the game in exchange for a pokemon watch from this guy it's a very weird promotional model but I guess we'll pretend like it's a well written device to teach newcomers about the game next you move on to a real city that has a gym and the gym leader just left I really dislike when I show up to a town and the gym is just unavailable for the challenge until you complete some kind of obligation it's fine for critical story elements but this is just the first gym of the game and apparently this guy's gone off to mine right as you showed up that makes it sound like there's some kind of crucial task that the leader needs to perform or oversee at the mine but he's literally just hanging out between two rocks waiting for someone to come by so that he can show them how rocks smash works let me iterate to you how this is written ah if you could get that badge from the gym in this town you could smash boulders like this of course you'd have to beat the leader first that'd be me and then he just walks away what why did this happen because the new players between sapphire and diamond are so incompetent but they never would have been able to figure out how rock smash worked without a tutorial from the leader I hope they teach me how to cut and surf too anyways this living mining helmet goes back to his gym and then you're able to crush him for the first badge this guy is just amazed that he got beaten by someone with zero badges even though it's literally half of his job so it's time to meet the latest iteration of Team Rocket Team Galactic their goal upon your first sighting of them seems to be to extort Rowan's research notes from them because apparently they want to know how to harness the evolutionary energy that a Pokemon exudes when it evolves even though these guys seem to be rocking the bad guy bull cut number 5 their goal seems to be the least stupid so far unfortunately their methods are par for the course the only real difference seems to be that team bull cut here talks like mooninites they basically constantly spell out their plans the same way aqua and rocket did although these guys definitely seem to be a lot more depressed when they lose they complain about lame the Pokemon that they have with them are after you beat them which seems to imply that they don't raise their own at any rate these guys want to harness the electricity that the wind power plant produces for reasons unknown so after you take out their boss they leave and proceed to the next area that they're terrorizing after this you encounter Cynthia who definitely is not the Lance / Stephen of this game and you definitely will not ever see her again she gives you cut which of course requires the second Gym Leaders badge to use outside of battle fortunately the second gym leader here waits outside of her own gym to tell people that they need to beat all of the trainer's inside before she'll fight them what a good person waiting all day for trainers instead of just having the information guy who stands in front tell people all right so first game bike voucher second game promotion third game dirty shoes how do we get a bike in this game hostage rescue yeah apparently Team Rocket is a whole building here dedicated to stealing Pokemon from other people like I'm not even joking this entire buildings purpose is for doing research on the Internet and taking Pokemon from civilians guys the building has spikes on it most of the grunts actually have no idea why Galactic is doing what they're doing some of the grunts go on about saving the future by discovering a new source of energy to use others say that they need as many pokemon as possible to accomplish their goals and the commander of this building says that their leader will rule all of sin Oh either way after returning the bike shop owners Pokemon you get a new bike and the entire building just leaves like this buildings purpose was 100% nefarious and then it's just abandoned again there are no police in Pokemon there's no intervention most adults are pretty helpless there is no government officer Jenny is a lie I am the law speaking of the law this blue haired Lord of edge is also unhappy with how society has turned out I don't know who he is or what he's gonna do but he is very upset anyways heart Holmes gym leader isn't in there's no explanation she's just not she is standing outside of the contest hall and then she still as an energem so you move on to the next town if you want to progress fortunately berry pops by to get his daily ass beating and relinquish some information on where the next available gym is after clearing the local flavor of pokemon tower and gathering the strength hm from the old lady at the top you move on to Vale stone the gym leader here insists that she has no idea why she's been appointed gym leader and after battling her I can only echo that sentiment after this I'm off to the great swamp but unfortunately it's 500 United States dollars and I don't have that kind of money so I'm off to talk to this guy instead he tells me not to follow him but I do it anyways when I catch up he tells me to not follow him again except this time he's paid off berry to come running into me to see how my trainings coming along so I toss his Pokemon around like it's an Olympic event and then he goes on to tell me that I should really keep chasing that fleeting bowl-cut because no one who's a good person runs away like that berry then runs away like that only further cementing his place as a galactic spy I continue to chase this guy throughout the area strategically beating up the smaller children that he's throwing into my path until he finally turns around and battles me god I wish he had just had like a level 70 after all that anyways I let the guy go for some reason and then there's Cynthia again she gives me a whole box of Tylenol Extra Strength to help the side ox with headaches who are blocking off the path and then she gets mauled as she walks off that was weird but at least that's the last time I know that I'll see her after administering the warm milk and cookies to the Psyduck squad they bumble off as Cynthia rolls up for the last time ever to give you something to give her grandmother I assume she can fly but apparently she just does not want to talk to her grandmother so I go to do that for her and her grandma tells me that there's a man in the middle of town just loudly proclaiming that he's going to blow it up with a bomb no one's doing anything about this so I go do something about it and he just leaves I guess shortly after this you get a little insight about the origin of the sinnoh region and the idea that a Pokemon God existed long ago with three other Pokemon opposing the god to keep the world at balance or something like that and then blue haired Cyrus stops by again to tell me his name and give me his business card so after running through a couple more I met up with Barry at the library where Don and Rowan were also Rowan goes on to explain that he's doing some big research and nothing really helps that research attained validity like investing in some child labor so he's shipping you off to one of three lakes to study a legendary Pokemon the other two were sent off to two other lakes to study their own legendary Pokemon as the plans are laid out in earthquake hits and everyone shuffles outside upon sniffing the air something Rowan is easily able to ascertain that this was no simple quake a sailor comes running over to confirm this as news apparently travels extraordinarily quickly supposedly a bomb went off at the lake that you were supposed to go to now let me break down and explain the severity of this situation because the earthquake was felt over here and the explosion occurred here so what does this mean it means that Barry's gonna go check out his lake and you're gonna go to yours surely this means that Dunn and Rowan are gonna tag along with these two children to check out this act of terrorism right yeah I gotta get to that other leg dude dawn asks you'll be safe right god you better hope so or that's a dead kid on your hands professor I don't know what kind of sentencing they have for this kind of neglect in this lawless land but you better pray it's Swift old man upon arriving the lake is sure as hell exploded like dying Pokemon everywhere exploded that's that's pretty brutal as silly as galactic is they do have a clear or semi clear goal and they're now showing just how far they're willing to go in order to achieve it so my lakes legendary is m.i.a and visiting Dawn's doesn't yield much better results as the Galactic has also extracted the legendary Pokemon there so the only one left here is Barry's although Mars here insisted that they've captured all three Triforce pokemon and are now ready to make a wish soon either way I march north to collect the seventh badge and then infiltrate the lake I think one of the things that bothers me the most about the story in Pokemon games is the utter lack of personality that your husk of a human exhibits like I get that it's supposed to be a blank slate kid where you project your own kind of personality onto them but there are these little instances where you try to accomplish push something and all an adult has to do is stand there and go now we're not letting anyone in until they finish doing what they're trying to do and it just makes no sense to me because my character doesn't even feel real in the context of the world that he inhabits he just feels like a drone I don't know at the end of the day it's just a plot for a Pokemon game but I just feel like it wouldn't take a large amount of effort to make this story make just a little more sense I mean you're making me play through it why not make it a little more believable anyways I grab my badge then I'm allowed back into the lake where one of Galactic's commanders has filled in for my shift of beating Barry's ass as Mars said it is too late for me to do anything because this elaborate blockade of - grunts has really put a kink in my rescue operation so I head back to Vale stone to take on the criminal enterprise that is Team Galactic the boss of Team Galactic gives me a master ball because he surrendered his emotions as well as his brain cells you may be trying to stop me from achieving my goals but I feel nothing and therefore the part where you beat me means nothing also you can free those legendary Pokemon we kidnapped the rest of Team Galactic may use Pokemon as tools but I instead make their power my own I don't know what that means but I can only imagine that he's absorbing their power to become some kind of ultimate Jojo character the Sega Saturn doesn't know what his boss is up to either because he at least questions why he would let you roam free and release the Pokemon either way the Pokemon are freed but Saturn tells you that Syrus is now on his way to mount coronet to do something with the power he extracted from the former enslaved Pokemon so I hiked back up the mountain and took on more bulk cuts than I cared to count till I finally made it to the summit are you ready for this so this guy frees dialga basically the god of time who helped in the creation of sin oh the three Pokemon of the lakes were the ones that kept dialga in check it's the whole reason that Team Galactic enslaved them to harness their power cyrus here wants to destroy the world and create a new one in which he is the god and ruler so we've basically reached Kefka levels of villainy but the execution might be the worst that I've ever seen because you built this guy up as an evil dude who wants everything to start over with him as the leader and then he's like yes go ahead and free the three Pokemon who kept God in check also here's a master ball to help you catch God what what's happening why have the three Pokemon you freed come to help you so yeah Cyrus wants to fight again because I've taught him to feel the emotion of anger but this time all of his Pokemon have evolved for someone who doesn't care about anything including Pokemon his golbat sure liked him enough to evolve into crobat anyways he loses and then leaves after saying that he will become God one day yeah it's nothing to worry about better let him go dawn and Rowan make their way up the mountain to tell me that dialga seems upset maybe even sad because of the circumstances that it was pulled into by Team Galactic Don tells me that Dialga seems like it's waiting for me specifically and then I have to give it everything I've got I like to imagine that my character nodded and then slowly turned around walking towards this monster this god of a pokémon before chucking a master ball at it good thing that Cyrus guy didn't need a master ball for anything after this Rowan tells me how he's never been more thrilled in his life than when I fired off a 100% catch rate ball at a god and Don tells me how brave Rowan was for coming up to the top of the mountain to cheer for me a fellow child while I engaged a crime boss and God in potential world ending combat what a brave guy that professor Rowan so I think we're about ready to wrap up this whole thing but before we take on the Elite Four we need to take on the 8th gym leader first apparently he's been a bit upset and bored because he keeps beating all the challengers at his gym easily you're told this by one of the elite four members who happens to be in the town this guy is goddamn annoying all you had to do was tell me once but then he repeats that he really wants me to show the leader a good fight like three times for whatever reason whoa there hotshot you're a tough guy well you're big tough guy you didn't take on the gym leader here hotshot you got to blow his dick off ha ha with your Pokemon whoa so you do just that and actually meet up with jasmine one of the old leaders from gold and silver it's always nice seeing callbacks to older Pokemon versions I enjoy that a lot it's pretty much the same ending as always from here although berry comes around for one last ass-kicking as a warm-up for the Elite Four and surprisingly enough in a twist that even M night Shyamalan couldn't pull off Cynthia is the champion of the pokémon league wow you're really branching out with these storylines huh Game Freak but yeah I get complimented about how caring I am as a trainer and what a brilliant tactician I am when the reality is that I basically ran my Pokemon headfirst into a wall until they passed out and barely scraped by the worst professor in the series so far somehow smuggles himself into the champions chamber like every other game except this time he's welcomed into the last room like he's Professor Oak and that's it for Diamond story really not a strong showing at all again these stories are pretty goddamn close to each other and how good or bad they are I would have to say that diamond story is probably just below sapphire maybe above silver I don't know it's really all of its not very good so far all right so I've never played pokemon black or white I did play white too but only because the two really intrigued me and it was on sale at Best Buy 20 books anyways I went with the black here and I don't I don't really know what's going on but this is the most lore I've ever seen from a Pokemon game and it's in the introductory cutscene before you even press the start button so this is looking like a pretty good game from a storytelling perspective so far you start out meeting the newest flavor of Pokemon professor one that's actually a younger woman which is cool to see professor juniper actually completely streamlines the beginning process of the game this is an amazing quality of life change especially when this is your fifth came back to back cheran is the smart and focused one and bianca is the ditzy and clumsy one the two let you choose your pokemon first and then you have to pay for it by having a room trashed in a Pokemon battle which is a nice touch the game also makes your mom seem like a real person remarking on when she had her first pokemon battle and all that stuff I'm actually incredibly impressed with the start a flock of woo bats fly by Bianca's father actually forbids her from going on an adventure at such a young age there's an actual dynamic between the characters even if they are pretty cliche you have the smartass who calls out everything before the professor can finish and the clueless one that is here to help explain things to the player through her it's not like I'm reading the musings of Hemingway but it is a welcome change for the better after you all meet up on route 1 you're taught how to catch a Pokemon and then you're sent on your way first you have to have a little contest to see you as the most Pokemon by the end of this tiny route the top number seems to be 3 so I catch too soon to be deposited fluff dogs and win the contest I got nothing for it the primary means of mobile communication seems to be in the form of a phone that always has a video feed at least they think after you're taught about Pokemon centers the game's villains make themselves known already but here's the thing so far they don't actually seem like villains at least not yet in fact the only thing that informs you that they're the group that you'll likely be facing down is the fact that they're called Team Plasma and the music that plays as the guy in charge makes a speech gets us here gathers a bunch of people in town and basically says that it's wrong for Pokemon to be enslaved in pokeballs and that they will never be equal as long as humans use them the way that they do this is literally the most compelling and realistic argument I've ever heard from a group of Pokemon villains yet then they just pack up and leave it's all they do there's no evil hostile takeover there's no demanding for people to hand over their Pokemon there's no world domination proclamations it's just a speech and marching away shortly after a kid in the crowd approaches you and your friend and claims that he can hear your pokemon speak no one knows what that means exactly but the guy's name is a letter so he's probably a weirdo also his hair color is almost identical to get sis who was giving the speech earlier so even though the game is getting a lot of points for a cohesive plot that foreseeable twist is pretty weak so when you arrive in stride Sin City the gym leader is of course away for the gym I don't like this form of delaying the game at all and everybody knows that by now but I'm gonna be a little more forgiving here just because of all the good stuff the game is done so far basically you're told that the leader went off to the school here and then of course when you get there the leader isn't there anymore you must have just missed him Wow what a shock you battle your friend and then buzz off back to the gym where the leader is now hanging out he basically assesses what type your starter Pokemon is and then informs you that you'll be facing the Pokemon that its weak against I actually really dig the idea of three Gym Leaders it teaches the player the hard way about type advantage and disadvantage so moving outside of the first gym leads you to an encounter with one of junipers assistants she basically tells you that she needs something called dream mist which is a mist that is used to show people dreams or something like that in order to obtain this mist you need to encounter a mushara or a mana and obtain it from them here's where Team Plasma comes in again so you've got these two grunts who come in and start kicking the [ __ ] out of this mana in order to try to get it to expel some of its dream mist yet a great compelling reason to win people over and actually give these villains a purpose which someone could think about and even see themselves joining their side and then you just throw it out the window we want to free all the Pokemon because we view them as equals and we'll even abuse them to make it happen yeah all right so these guys are basically just PETA anyways you move along to the next city when some Team Plasma members come running by and Bianca follows shortly after along with a child apparently the full templar arm are wearing nutjobs they use faulted the child's Pokemon and now it's up to you and Charon to rescue it their reasoning is that a Pokemon will never be as happy as it could be in the clutches of a trainer so they're gonna steal the Pokemon to prevent that reality now if this was their entire mo it would be easy to say oh their intentions are good but they're misguided but I mean a couple of them just kick the hell out of a small Pokemon earlier so yeah I don't know maybe those two were just particularly heinous but I guess we'll see eventually you make it to the next city only to encounter and again n makes zero sense to me and I don't really know if he's supposed to be edgy or if he's gonna make sense later but the way that he's written is incredibly frustrating he babbles on about basically wanting what Team Plasma wants but more eccentric I guess he then insists on another Pokemon battle to test you I guess I'm not getting why this guy's goal is to stop people from using Pokemon the way that they do but then he does it himself he even says that he needs to train harder to gain more power and/or capture the legendary Pokemon zekrom after you blast the second gym leader her husband comes running down the stairs after you're finished battling to inform you guys that Team Plasma is attempting to steal bones but why they totally steal the skull of this Dragonite and then just bounce leaving Lenora to react like an oblivion guard what's going on yeah I don't know I feel like I was pretty easily impressed by the plot and ideas in Pokemon black because they seemed like they were more thought-out than previous entries but honestly this plot is already wearing thin I mean at the end of the day plasma is still a group of Pokemon villains and that basically means that no matter how much they doll up the storyline ideas they're still going to be a bunch of little instances of wait how did they do that or why did they do that basically a visiting gym leader meets up with Leonora and she fills a min on the stolen skull and the to pursue plasma into the woods and it's just a big goose chase that has you fighting the same kind of grunts that you've been fighting in previous games while they say the same type of things you're a kid you can't beat me I'm just stalling so the rest of us can get away of course they don't get away because the guy with the skull is just standing in a forest clearing after you retrieved the skull a guy comes in and he looks more important and he introduces himself as one of the seven sages of Team Plasma so basically we're Zelda now he doesn't fight you yet because the guy who said he was going to wait at the exit decided to not do his job and follow you in after you did all of the work and then the second gym leader comes in right after the explanation after Team Plasma leaves is boy those guys were speedy huh I don't know it's just hard to look past a lot of the silly stuff even more so when the plot seems to be taking itself way more seriously than usual for a Pokemon game don't get me wrong the dynamics between the gym leaders speaking to each other and having actual interests and interactions with others is definitely a great step in the right direction but it's hard to dismiss stuff like oh man those guys were so fast I mean come on just give him a flying Pokemon that's like literally the easiest way for them to get away without it sounding goofy or right an actual feasible story and turn the person who snatched the skull into the police for once maybe he can escape at one point and become a character who actually matters and he tries to take his revenge or something like that what did catch my eye is the fact that Gorham basically says that Team Plasma won't tolerate your interference anymore despite two of these people being gym leaders I don't know why that stood out to me but it's almost as if he was implying indirectly that gym leaders have some sort of authority as law enforcement or something along those lines maybe he was just referring to their power though he also mentions that getss is trying to win people over with words alone but the rest of the sages are directly seizing Pokemon from people all right we can finally move on to the next city and challenge the next gym after talking to your friend who made it to the gym before you you head on in and [Music] it's happening again it's making me do things before I can challenge the gym leaders again my patience has just diminished with this storyline already especially because it's literally the exact same thing that you just did before the last city they stole a Pokemon this time it was Bianca's oh no you chase you find them standing outside because that's really good hiding and then eventually you retrieve Bianca's Pokemon they also tell you pretty much the exact same thing as before ancient dragon hero talks to ancient dragon you Nova's formed now they want to bring it back so they can reshape the world does this plot sound semi familiar to you [Music] come on dude just some imagination that's really all I asked for at any rate you clear them out then head on over to the honey nut cheerios gym to clear that out too then Bianca challenges you to a battle because someone told gamefreak to make sure that there was a mandatory minimum of six hundred and seventy three rival battles between gyms in this game but wait there's more Sharon wants to point his sweaty finger at you too before getting crushed in battle thankfully after this is over you can white yes okay I was going there already but first I got to walk all the way back to the bottom of Big Sea city for a Pokemon healing fun time and then all the way back up because my friends are [ __ ] and juniper stops me after the desert to give me ultra balls Sharon goes to catch a new Pokemon Bianca goes to look for a musical-theater I get a bike for beating plasma members then Bianca drags me against my will to the music theater to play dress-up with my Pokemon then Bianca's dad comes to drag her away because he doesn't like his child of a daughter being off on her own on a potentially dangerous adventure you know kind of like a halfway-decent concerned parent I mean it's not like she's an adult but yeah sure this guy's a dick I guess in fact we know he's a dick because the gym leader of this town comes up and says hey you go on an adventure little girl it doesn't matter what your dad says also I'm a model oh well if she's a model what am I to say huh me no Jim she's a model yeah well go on my actual underage child bon voyage honestly though there's really not a lot of dangerous stuff involved in becoming a renowned trainer anyways well whatever let's go challenge the gym leader wait let's go talk to end guess what fellas and is the king of Team Plasma after your romantic ferris wheel ride with him he challenges you to another battle and then turns into an anime before leaving now it's gym leader time and then it's Charenton again at least you get to meet the champion of the Innova league next he seems like a pretty chill guy and basically questions your friends motive of simply becoming stronger I think what bothers me the most about Sheren is yes he is a smartass know-it-all and that's fine but he continuously loses to you and says the exact same thing every single time why can't I beat you afterwards the gym leader of this city calls the gym leader of the next city and tells him that two trainers want to battle in let me run this one by you the gym leader of the next town physically controls the bridge between these two towns no other way to get to it from land unless you travel further north or by sea surf but it gets better because right after the gym leader lowers the bridge the one-way bridge with one path out you get blamed for letting Team Plasma escape because we requested passage because these Neanderthals couldn't seal off a one-way exit I don't I just don't get it man but what's important is y'all showed up and then Team Plasma escaped de ha shoot guns Texas so you know what's about to happen next right I've got a fine Team Plasma then I can challenge Big Tex over here look there's got to be a point where I look at the game as a kids game right I'm sure a lot of people grew up with this story and they think it's amazing because they were at an age where this kind of lack of plot cohesion was totally fine maybe it was their first Pokemon game I guess if you look at it that way I'm just being an ass here for berating the plot so hard but I mean it doesn't take much to make this make a bit more sense I just I don't feel like a series should get a pass just because a chunk of its audience or kids I mean I think I was 19 when this one came out something like that honestly I'm hyped for sword and shield as someone well into my adulthood despite the potential issues that the games are rumored to have and I'd love to be able to just play through the plot and have it not be absurd to a point where I just don't care about it anymore sorry about that I just figured there's going to be a point here where I think I should clarify or try to clarify why I'm being so tough on the plot of a Pokemon game anyways cherán joins me for this pain in the ass and I'm actually surprised he didn't come over to challenge me to a battle but you do all the heavy lifting in this icebox and then he meets up with you when you finally find the plasma members the most peculiar thing that happens here is the mere fact that this may be the first time I've ever seen any sort of law enforcement of sorts in a Pokemon game basically all of the workers that you just defeated card these grunts off in a line including the sage men cheran says the smartest thing I've heard him say all game that the plasma members are a waste of oxygen of course right before this he also said that separating people in Pokemon is the same as there being no Pokemon so it kind of dampens the big brain moment but yeah all of this is for nothing because getss shows up with less people than we just battled and captured already and then convinces the gym leader to release his people the guy that reprimanded us for letting Team Plasma get away then says sorry they're fillers we done daeng deed lit them their plasma get away with all your hard work praise the Bible he y'all you fight the guy and then he clears out some webs from a cave but not before Bianca stops you to have a battle as is required in the Pokemon black contractual obligations when you pop into this cave you can see n why can't I just go somewhere in this game like holy [ __ ] what's even more absurd is the fact that n has two ninjas that appear by your side walk you four steps and then go away why is everything involving n so needlessly edgy after n tells you some vague BS about how you've been chosen by Team Plasma he tells you that getss wants to meet you midway through the cave the shadow triad uses their highly expert skills to escort you across a bridge and then tell you to keep moving thanks guys I hope plasmas paying you well it's all just nonsense and challenges you to a battle at the end of the cave and then Ponder's on the idea that he might not be winning because he doesn't want to make his Pokemon fight dude come on if I shoot everyone who has a gun that no one can use guns anymore then he admonishes professor juniper for her use in endorsement of the Pokedex then he just leaves after juniper says that she respects his opinion but she still has her own I feel like I'm in Hell playing this game like I just want to go challenge a gym just want to go challenge a gym without anything else happening before or in-between I don't mind the idea of these gym leaders having personalities and conversations with you but there's always immediately some kind of task for you to complete before you can challenge them this particular leader goes on to tell you that she was flying her plane when she saw a sick Pokemon on top of a tower she must have been flying really goddamn close to that tower to make out that there was an ill pokemon on top of it the thing that made these moments where gym leader would walk with you somewhere or help you do something was that it happened so rarely I'm not opposed to being introduced to the leader beforehand getting to figure out their personality and whatnot but it feels way less special when it happens with every single gym leader more or less I mean this scenario also pretty much happened already in Pokemon silver when Ampharos was at the top of the lighthouse and the gym leader wouldn't battle you until you helped it get medicine I guess the difference here is that the leader heals the Pokemon and it flies away before you even get there and you get to ring a bell that reflects your character depending on its sound [Music] afterwards you face down the leader at our gym and then stumble across and again this time he quizzes your first Pokemon to see how good of a trainer you are he also goes on to denounce Pokemon battles saying that people justify battles as getting to know each other better this guy has battled you a few times now with the express intent of getting to know you better the logic is there the follow-through is just not he basically goes on about how he wants to change the world but not by force and then mentions that he's going to awaken a legendary Pokemon to change the world with probably by force I'd reckon this bit of story is followed up by another cheran battle because hey you both got a new badge although all there shows up again to complement both of you on battle Jaron gets irritated by the praise because he lost the battle and all there basically tells him to grow up and accept the compliment which I actually enjoyed I feel like the excessive battling is the writers way of handing out important tools like HMS and whatnot I get what they're going for here because honestly sometimes just finding a random dude in a house to obtain an important HM to proceed there's a bit obtuse and I guess trying to incorporate a future important figure into the storyline while also giving the player a key item be tough just finding an HM in the middle of an underwater passage like with what happened in sapphire it just feels excessive because it is excessive when combined with a lot of other battles which don't give you a key item afterwards at any rate Big Tex is waiting for you inside the mountain and basically tells you more or less that the gym leaders met to try to figure out where Team Plasma was which definitely asserts them even more as people who deal with villains which is cool ironically he also tells you that he doesn't want to involve you two kids in the affairs of Team Plasma which is literally the exact opposite sentiment he had before when he commanded you to go chase them down in order for him to battle you but then the most magical thing happens of all I walked right into a gym without any interference and then this gym leader comes out of the gym and notices the shadow Triad hanging out and then calls them out and then the shadow Triad goes come to Dragon spiral tower and god damn saint of a gym leader tells Sharon that he's gonna have to wait to challenge the gym until after he deals with this the game has been redeemed ten out of ten five stars Grammy Grammy Grammy but now it's off to Dragon spiral Tower which is said to be the birthplace or the current place of the legendary Pokemon apparently it's never been set foot in until now when you make it through all of the plasma people and awaits at the top I figured the game was gonna be a repeat of Diamond at this point but n actually takes control of the legendary pokemon and then tells you to seek out the other one to see if you're worthy of opposing him seems like this is kind of poor advice to give someone if you're trying to accomplish your goal but maybe he's trying to play the whole thing another way because the guy is a bit of an oddball after this Jaron actually figures out the answer to his question which surprised me because it really did look like he was gonna go down the Ipoh route of not figuring it out for a long time or at all so after draining an entire vending machine of its soda and lemonade it's time to see where all of this is headed and scoot on over to relic Castle home of restoran at least that's what I was hoping was gonna happen but the pokemon isn't here and the whole goddamn journey through this sandy hell was for nothing but at least you get to learn a few new snippets of info apparently and challenging you directly as a show of force one that is basically used to assert his dominance and willpower thoroughly as edgy as the guy is I gotta respect the power play after this large amount of sidetracking you get a call from juniper saying that something big is happening in that green city but nothing's happening they just had the thing that you are looking for and relic castle the entire time but no one knows how to use it so we gotta go meet the last gym leader to figure it out this is one of those times where the extra curricular battle does not need to happen at all Bianca's standing right there she wishes you luck and all that and then you leave to go to the bridge that leads to where the last gym leader is and then suddenly she just rolls up on you in this icy ass wasteland and asks you to battle because she wants to become a researcher dude come on we were just with each other and I beelined it here and you were literally right behind me as you cross the bridge the shadow triad collect their next paid check by escorting you may be eight steps this time so I assume they got overtime you're promptly bullied by getss who continues to flesh out the idea that n wants to put his ideals on the line against yours and beat you that way get this is the smarter villain who basically says that you should just hand over the stone that's housing the legendary Pokemon so what this all really boils down to is this gullible kid who wants to make everyone stop using Pokemon to fight their battles and separate them from humans so that they can achieve perfection or whatever and then you've got a villain who's been pulling the strings since his birth and basically plans on conquering the region using n's ideals to get everyone else to surrender their Pokemon willingly all while plasma is still allowed to use their own Pokemon so the Lora keeps piling on here as the dragon-type gym leader explains to you that once upon a time the two dragons were one and it was used to create the you know of a region along with the twin heroes now it's set multiple times that these two heroes are twins but then they say older brother and younger brother so I don't know what that's about but basically the two starts would disagree with each other they fight and then the Dragons split into two halves here's another weird part of the story the first dragon and its hero wanted to usher in a new and better world the second dragon and its hero wanted to usher in a new and good world I have read this script over and over multiple times now and it makes about as much sense as it did the first time because it sounds like both heroes wanted the exact same thing incoherent plot points aside the Dragons fought on and on until they were exhausted and the twins came to the conclusion that neither side was correct but then their children got into a fight and this time their legendary Pokemon Larry David the entire you know of a region out of existence so they made a new one anyways I collect the final badge and I get directed to victory road ends plan at the moment is to defeat the current champion and then defeat me afterwards so alder went back to take his place in the Pokemon League and now I'm going to figure out what's going on with all that so after crawling through the Pokemon League and I mean crawling I finally make it up to letter and alder who have just finished their fight apparently and won and with his victory he makes a damp castle rise up from the ground actually is kind of a cool cutscene it is a bit dampened by cherán running up because he just beat the league right after you I guess I mean as much as you can sit here and justify Bianca sneaking up on you right after you just saw her by saying that maybe it took a little longer to like I don't know sleep or eat or whatever I'm pretty sure I'd have the seen Sheren running around doing the same thing that I was either way I have now been issued a challenge by N in his castle but before this six of the seven sages are waiting for you and start babbling some cryptic nonsense before letting you know that they're not going to be totally incompetent the entire game and are going to take you out right now before you can get to end but then the gym leader squad comes rolling in in full force this is actually really goddamn awesome I mean I've been stabbing this game's plot for a while now but it's really cool to see some gym leaders actually united to take out a threat it's easily the most interaction with them that we've seen from the series at this point so this is what this all comes down to get to says 100% been manipulating N by bringing him sick or abused Pokemon that had hurt directly from horrible trainers and brain watching him into thinking that people in Pokemon are just like oil and water meanwhile Team Plasma has been using Pokemon they've been liberating from random people and overworking them to do stuff like build the castle this is all while they've been preaching to the rest of the population that Pokemon and trainers should separate with the plan being to roll over everyone else to rule the region after trainers have started to follow this idea they're basically a way more sinister and organized Team Rocket and that is excellent as much grief as I've given to this plot for its various holes Team Plasma is the best villainous group I've seen in any Pokemon game thus far a small detail I've noticed is the disparity between plasma grunts some seem to be outright fanatics who truly believe that all Pokemon will be separated from all people some are tuned into the idea that team plasma and Getz's specifically will assume the reign of you Nova once they control everyone else's minds and hearts causing them to turn their Pokemon over there's a grunt that notes that he thinks that Pokemon are just tools and another that admits that they've grown attached to their Pokemon one of the grunts even goes on about Team Rocket and Galactic drawing way too much attention to themselves I'm assuming in reference to them constantly taking over whole cities but the most important lore point in the game actually stems from visiting ends room it's here that we learned that the sport of basketball exists in the Pokemon universe you think there are teams of Pokemon that played basketball all right let's finish this thing once and for all so you meet with n he calls in Zekrom after some deliberation restaurant pops out of his stone and faces you where and encourages you to try to capture it so I throw the ball that can't fail and give my new friend a hot nickname after this it's finally time to battle ends a pretty fair guy through and through and he heals you up before the fight starts unfortunately for him he can't battle particularly well but it was still a pretty cool fight shortly after this defeat getss comes in and berates the hell out of n I know I've called him plenty of names but I think ket's has probably hits him twice as hard he calls him a worthless freak god damn son getss then takes me on himself after confirming what we basically knew after his defeat gets his his picked up by alder and Sharon and then taken away where n tells you about his horrible childhood and why he thought the way that he thought all right here's the part where I half apologize I'm a hundred percent sure that there are slash war people watching this that are livid with me because I trash this game's plot a few times and I easily could have removed that criticism but I think a lot of it still stands pokemon black and whites plot is easily the best pokemon game plot that we've gotten so far there are a lot of bumps in the road from things not making sense the pure tedium - just how frequent interruptions were and I still stand by those complaints I think that Game Freak bounced back with this plot masterfully even if it was Sam I predict I thoroughly enjoyed watching n go from this edge Lord weirdo in my eyes to actually figuring out his background and watching him grow after being exposed to the truth it was all very anime but hey I like a good anime I enjoyed the beginning and ending a pokemon black a lot much more than I ever expected what the bar set so low from the previous entry I wish the middle didn't have so much filler or at least wish that the filler wasn't so absurd at times I think that nearly everything in black and white is leaps and bounds ahead from any previous entry and at the end of the day I really can't hold its faults against it too hard in the next episode of living hell I'm here to evaluate white 2 storyline so white 2 starts out with the same kind of stuff as black did but this time you get the option to refuse receiving a Pokemon for the secret ending [Applause] actually this kind of questioning appears like three times in the span of two minutes where you have no choice in your answer but people ask you anyways even green hat Logan asks if you'll help them out before giving you your Pokemon but yea you're basically recruited by Juniper whose first name is apparently Arya to join the Legion of children and trekking across the land to fill the Pokedex your friend rival is called Hugh and so far he's just kind of an amalgamation of all the rivals that you've seen wants to get stronger tells you to get stronger to wants to travel demands of pokedex also but yeah a pretty standard start after stressing that you really want to nearly kill a pokemon before you can catch it ideally kind of [ __ ] it so that it can't limp away bianca leaves you to move along before you promptly get cut off by alder apparently this guy does his best to make himself anything but useful and can consistently be found just hanging out on cliff ledges waiting for unsuspecting trainers he Usher's you off to go train I guess but not before you deliver the other town map to Hugh it's at the ranch that we see Hugh's personality become a little more unique when the couple who own the ranch note that their Pokemon is missing they mentioned that it's probably just off playing somewhere but Hugh flips his [ __ ] and basically assumes the worst possible scenario has happened which isn't exactly a normal reaction it'd be like if somebody said that their cats usually around a certain part of the house and it's just not at the moment and someone loses their mind it starts fervently searching for it at any rate as it turns out there's a Team Plasma member who chased the dog into the woods where they were closing in on it to capture it or whatever thank God some awful horrible traumatic event happened to Hugh because I would not have bothered if he didn't force me to look so yeah there's your introduction to plasma in this game one grunt dressed like new Team Rocket trying to do things that are reminiscent of Team Rocket fortunately for Hugh's anxiety my character is mute so no one finds out about the incident alright after all there has you do a little training to learn about type advantage and disadvantage he jumps off a cliff again to give you some berries and then it's off to meet Sharon Sharon is the newest gym leader in the region sporting the basic badge with Multi Pokemon a severe downgrade in my eyes from the last games first gym but this does answer a few questions I've had about the series gym structure in gold and silver kantos leaders all upgraded monumentally cherán definitely beat the Elite Four Ori took advantage of the chaos and rushed in and lied either way he definitely had a pretty strong team before the Elite Four and now he has a pretty weak and basic pokémon team to lead the gym in the first city I guess it varies from region to region too because my mind goes back to the more inexperienced trainers that were gym leaders in previous games either way white one and two seemed to flesh out the Innova region's gym system a lot more than other games did for their regions in the series at this point in time Sharon even mentions how weird it is to not use his usual team to fight challengers as the first gym leader now it's time to bring up the second gym leader which may come as a shock after what black put the player through and yeah there was still a few handful of informational tidbits which were given to me along the way but I wasn't challenged by my rival 20 times or forced down a different route by the story which is a breath of fresh air who knows how long it'll stay that way but I was relieved that the story part came after the gym leader for once with Roxy she's upset at her dad who's the captain of a ship and also wishes to pursue a career in acting but pursuing this dream is going to make people who needed to take the boat to different places late so she storms off to the gym where you can challenge her immediately and then she leaves to track her dad down afterwards anyways I head up to the movie studio here because well I'm kind of forced to by a recruiter who saw my battle with Roxy then I'm required to watch a Pokemon movie of sorts and a gym in which the leaders dad fights and loses to the former seventh gym leader from the previous game after that the player is forced to create the film properly which I honestly was not interested in but again I had no choice but I left shortly after an encounter Team Plasma a second time they explained that they were betrayed by their former king two years ago and are struggling to retain relevance much like rocket in gold and silver they take off after their defeat and you give chase as his tradition they tell you where they're trying to go next when you beat them explaining that they need to take a boat from Burbank so heading over to Castella city on your big chase lands you a free bike from a clown apparently getting a bike is just a vital sign monitor of escalating and de-escalating reasons at any rate we're back to normal with burg not being in his gym go figure he's off pursuing plasma and so am I now I guess so it's off to the sewers where Hugh comes along like a goddamn paladin to try to hunt down the plasma fiends some other weirdo pops out of the woodwork after beating down a few plasma grunts in addition to berg who moves out to his gym so after absolutely embarrassing the poor guy in his newly renovated gym i met up with the weirdo from earlier whose name is colress man I get the whole trying to make the important people stand out thing but what the hell is wrapped around this science man's head apparently colorist his entire purpose as a scientist is to bring out as much power in Pokemon as possible he sees the way that you and the Elite Four treat your Pokemon kindly and how the Pokemon seem to grow stronger from it but then he goes off about wondering if there's another way which is a bit concerning he shows off one of his experiments in which he causes a barricade of rock crabs to move out of the way by energizing them and then mentions that it'd be so much easier if someone could just talk to Pokemon but surely no one like that exists anyways you battle him and he gives you some of his platonic protein and then you press forward after bopping the fourth gym leader you encounter Hugh who's actively antagonizing Team Plasma grunts my favorite part about this is that he's asking them what they're doing here and they're like standing honestly I can't even consider Hugh a rival if anything he's teamed plasmas rival dude rolls up on any plasma grunts that he sees like he's some kind of arbiter of justice and it's all apparently because they took his little sister's Pokemon a few years back after crossing the bridge into drift Vale we get a little more insight about the Team Plasma situation apparently the ones who are still donning the medieval chainmail are following in and the ones who look more like Team Rocket are following getss so I guess the Templars are the good guys in this one we find out more about this after high Inquisitor hugh comes flying in at mach 10 and just decimates this poor man before being able to challenge the gym leader here or move on from drift fail in general you have to go meet with one of the former seven sages or maybe he still is considered one but what we know for sure is that he has allegiance to n and he's trying to actively take care of Pokemon that have been separated from the trainers during Team Plasma Sampson so until this point I actually thought that this was just going to be another golden silver situation where plasma had resorted to being particularly heinous for no apparent reason besides the lofty and boring goal of taking over the world but I like this split a lot I just wish that the X Team Plasma members actually rebranded themselves into something besides X Team Plasma it's just kind of silly from even a lower perspective to wear the exact same clothing is when they were terrorists and used more or less the same name either way you're given in Zorua which is awesome and then Arthas here comes rolling in to continue to berate X plasma for doing what they did before and then storms off to take on the next gym so after taking on that gym myself I'm taken to the new site of the Pokemon world tournament and forced to participate apparently cheran was called in for this too which likely means that he'll be involved in this game's plot as well after winning the tournament by defeating huge Aaron and colress a grunt from Team Plasma goes sprinting by hue gives chase as always as does cheran so we're on another goose chase that actually winds up with us figuring out that plasma is using a ship as a base of operations after defeating 12 trainers with one to two Pokemon each the shadow triad actually does something useful and teleports us off the ship before it leaves but not before one of the stages from the last game comes out to get mad at Charon and explained that plasma plans on using the legendary dragon to do what it was trying to do before so this means two things one the sages split between old plasma and new plasma and two they're still really fun of telling everyone what their plan is so that other people can try to stop them all in all black and white two's plot is a lot more tame than the last adventure and I'm holy okay with that and I bring this up now instead of later because the amount of significant plot related events are a lot further apart and feel a lot less like filler in this game than the sheer amount that they seem to shove at the player in the last so far it seems like most of the time the events tend to just introduce new mechanics and things to do rather than intense story elements for example in the amount of time between the last encounter with Team Plasma on their ship and my latest encounter which I'm about to mention Iran through charge stone cave made it through the 6th gen met up with juniper and flew out to Len Thomas where it was very briefly mentioned that my goal was to meet the Dragon gym leader for answers and during this it wasn't like we landed in LAN Thomas only to find a barricade of plasma grunts who all decided to run away and I have to check every house for them no I basically just plowed on through twists mountain through in Delaware Hugh battles it out for me for the first time in a while and then over to the next town where I'm briefly told about the legendary Pokemon that crashed into the planet in a meteorite before coming out freezing pokemon and people and eating them now that's a cool legendary so I'm supposed to ask Raiden about this other legendary Pokemon as well as the two dragons from the last game but before I can hoof it over there Hugh and I run into plasma again where one of the sages explains his views on Pokemon and trainers he thinks it would be interesting to see civilization stripped away to a time where pokeballs didn't exist to contain Pokemon that's honestly more of an interesting reason than seeing the same tired wanting to take over the world just because whatever so after passing over this amazing bridge running into a wild legendary Pokemon getting told how much fun my Pokemon are having despite them all being Kayode by said roaming legendary Pokemon and defeating Drayton in his remodeled gym I get to sit down with the gym later and discuss the events of black and white but in addition to the stuff that we already knew he also mentions that there may have been a third Dragon which was left over from the Zekrom slash Reshiram split named Kirin while it's just speculation at this point what solid is the fact that Drayton has something called the DNA splicers which are supposedly used to split cure em from Zekrom or Reshiram or both I don't know but it's at about this time when team plasma flies in on their final fantasy airship and just blows Agha as the everliving hell out of this town they're apparently after the DNA splicers and they start searching than the now frozen over town for their location so after a few battles the sage here tells you that he's leaving because it's so cold not only is this guy fully dressed for the weather but he is also the reason that the cold as bad as it is in addition to this he's rocking an all ice Pokemon party and then goes on to say that he wants to achieve the glory of a frozen wasteland more or less and any complaints constantly about the cold alright anyways after the sages to feed Raiden runs inside his gym to present you the DNA splicers you decided to hold them up above your hand like link before they get swiped by the magic ninja brigade so the chase is on but not before defeating the eighth Jim apparently what you're looking for Marlon the man named after a fish you're not gonna find him he does what he wants he's named after a fish us like the worst tone ever did but more importantly than any gym leader this girl's dress is comfy and easy to wear and I really don't like how Marlon speaks I'll be at the gym kay you don't just look strong you're strong for reals I'm gonna go drown myself after finally conquering the Innova regions badges again it's time to push onward towards the end of this thing Cole rest gives me a thing that does something and then I have to move on to a giant chasm except that's blocked off by - grunts that are really good at ignoring me and talking about their plans so I go over to the seaside cave where the device that Cole dressed gave me makes itself useful by moving an entire rock crab all right onto the frigate which is swarming with grunts ninety percent of which are incompetent as always when you get through their flawless defenses you have a completely meaningless battle after which the sage unveils that they've had the ice dragon legendary all along and it's what they've been using to start global cooling this entire exchange is meaningless because ssj Purple Sage has an ace up his sleeve where he calls ninjas who can teleport human beings away oh and also he wants his sister's purloined back more than anything because it's grandpa who kicked the bucket caught it for her so plasma flies off the giant chasm you give chase there's a big showdown between ex plasma and new plasma and then you get back onto the ship seems kind of like a weird time waste but alright so you go through the ship again but this time you wind up confronting colress who was with team plasma all ah no one could have predicted this yeah he's the kind of insane that wants to draw out the max power Pokemon no matter what the cost this includes world destruction that it seems a little bit silly but either way it doesn't matter because he just gets to choose aside apparently at least he gave me the rock crab moving device anyways we move on to the big boss gets this who runs off while you deal with the shadow triad the member who stole Hugh's sister's purloined gives back the Pokemon and then you go hunt down getss he commands qrm to murder you and right before that's about to happen and swoops in with Reshiram you learn a little bit more about how Goetz is found and in a forest surrounded by Pokemon that he talked to and decided to pick him up to try to raise him well there goes my father-son theory although I guess they still kind of are in a way right as it looks like the day is saved getss pulls out his polymerization card and special summons cure him except with two USB adapters the adapters turn Russian ROM into a majin buu candy and Kyra meets it to become super cure now he's got the power of fire and ice that really doesn't stop my big pig from bitch-slapping him to death also gets us decides the Polson playground B s where he goes by the way my sword stops pokeballs from working so plan master ball is out the window for this game after I tossed qreshi I'm off into the distance like Bowser gets us a steaming mad and he challenges me to a round a final destination no items fox only i oblige and he gets carted off by the shadow people after he gets four stocked and tells me about his favorite episode of friends before riding his big white monster off into the night sky this is pretty much it for the bulk of the main story for black and white - and meets you again before you run through the league and also mentions it if you have a Zorro with you he's definitely matured as a person and now understands that battling with pokemon isn't always bad he talks more like a real person and he's grown to be less weird and edgy he understands what he wants in life that's some pretty good character development it turns out that iris is this leagues champion now but beyond that there's no major challenges to the Pokemon League in over two years which I found to be a little strange I expected all there to be at the top if I'm gonna be completely honest and I couldn't care less about Drayton's tag-along sitting at the top of the Pokemon League as one-track minded as the other games have been about making the champion painfully obvious based on how frequently they involved themselves in your adventure iris is definitely the antithesis of that idea as she really only appears when you visit Drayton's hometown and unless I missed it I don't think anyone referred to her as the champion it just seems to me like they're probably going to go with alder and then they decided wait no people will expect that I guess they were right to put a bow on both of these games extended plot I think Team Plasma is the most intricate and interesting set of villains that we've seen so far in the Pokemon franchise there's still pretty dumb at times but the back and forth between the different leadership and their motives were interesting to witness even if they were a bit predictable at times I believe gets this is also the first villain who directly tries to kill your character which is a nice touch and being a puppet who fought for a good albeit flawed cause was a great choice when writing these two games plots because even if I joked about how edgy he was for a while I could still see where he was coming from and the best villains are the ones that you can understand expand on this idea with the fact that n matures really reasonably and you have a good character with a good arc overall the black and white saga have had some of the best plot elements that we've seen and even if you could still pick apart some of the key points it still leagues ahead of sapphire diamond silver and red as hard as I went on the game at times it was honestly because I wanted them to be as good as I knew that they could be and giving harsh feedback as part of that either way that's a wrap on these two let's move on to Pokemon X & Y so Pokemon X has you starting out by meeting a professor I know this is a strange start but let's see where this bold new move takes us so the Kalos region is home to Professor Sycamore it's also home to you wearing pajamas which is cool but kind of oddly pointless you go down to your mom she goes good morning go change out of your pajamas like the way that they frame this interaction it almost seemed like they were gonna let you customize your clothing in the mirror but you just change and then you just head back down it's just a really odd time waste anyways professor Sycamore is actually well ahead of the curve when it comes to tracking down children he managed to wrangle a record-setting five children at once which is an impressive feat when you can two previous professors you're told by Shana and girl number two that you've been selected when you walk outside and then you head over to the next town where the five kids meet at a random outdoor table then nearly all of them try to give you a nickname which is too close too fast this isn't like oh hey this is your friend what's his name or you've known this child for a long time this is hey what's up dude I'm gonna call you a little big s Meister after choosing a much better nickname you're given a starter Pokemon and a pokedex because these are apparently the most trustworthy kids ever then you're given a letter to your mom which is particularly suspect all things considered I mean this has got to be the oddest start yet in terms of how you begin your adventure you move to the town and no absolutely no one and then you're randomly selected to go off on an adventure with no proof of your competence and you're suddenly friends with a wealth of other random children then you're given a letter to your mom that says hey person I haven't met I gave your son a Pokemon and now I want them to scour the region for other ones goodbye your mom responds like most reasonable adults in this universe by giving you a town map and telling you how to use it no matter how you respond these characters all tend to be written with one glaring personality trait which is kind of a step down from these last two games it's very possible that they'll develop more but for now they're all really OneNote Shauna's kind of a ditz like Bianca but she's also kind of good at like puzzles and knows things apparently Serena's more serious and analytical and tends to know a lot more things because her parents were trainers or are trainers I guess tierno is a chunky boy who enjoys dancing and watching pokemon and trevor is quiet and reserved and tells Tiano to stop being himself constantly after grabbing some skates from the skate fairy you move on to the first gym the leader is just a walking embodiment of photography puns which hurts me with every line of dialogue as you go to exit the gym the information guy tells you to go brag to the professor who gave you the Pokemon that you got a badge which is weird I miss being able to miss stuff sometimes I have no doubt that just getting to the next town will probably involve me being pointed towards the professor's lab upon arrival well actually we don't make it that far we make it to the route before Lumi elsewhere - horror movie children are waiting for you and matching clothing they tell you to come with them they also tell you that their names are Cinna and Dec Co why I tried to escape the lab tour but man apparently the rest of the entire city of Paris is experiencing a blackout yeah don't look too blacked-out to me boss so sycamores waiting around for everyone to show up and explains that he was only going to give a Pokemon to one of the children but then he heard that you were moving to Kalos along with your semi famous mother who was apparently known for Rhyhorn racing once he heard about this he just went nuts and started handing out pokemon left and right to any child who didn't have one apparently but the more interesting note here is that he has you battle him and then you choose a Gen 1 starter from him I actually totally forgot about this part and probably would have ran with chespin and picked out Charmander but that's alright he goes on to give you a mega stone and one like for you to figure out the mystery behind Pokemon mega evolutions apparently that's his main goal which is only accentuated by Trevor going well what about the Pokedex and him going huh Oh pokedex yeah I don't do whatever you want with that [ __ ] nerd I'm trying to figure out mega evolutions here when you head back down you meet another elder looking type this dude's name is Lysander and he really wants the broadest possible thing that anyone could ever want for everyone to live in harmony and a more beautiful world no one knows what this means except for him god I'd miss when people were just called bill and Brock after pushing on to the cafe you find Lysander again talking to a movie star named diantha it's like Diane with a thaw while Lysander here is spouting on and on about how he could help her retain her youth in how he thinks everyone in the world should be like her because she makes people happy so he's 100% a crazy person and we're not really acknowledging that apparently he goes on and on about how he wants to stop the world from changing because he doesn't want it to get uglier so here's our main villain boys and girls but not yet he's gonna have to really blindside everyone first before that's revealed after he marches out diantha here walks her caterpillar eyebrows towards you and gives you a crisp high-five for being a pokemon trainer before bouncing also after being assaulted by a guy who's pedaling Oh powers you scoot along to the next town the two T's are here waiting ahead and the chunkier one challenges you to beating his dancing corphish then you're told by the next guy ahead that if you were to leave town without visiting the castle then you'd be missing out on one percent of life so you visit the castle and the guy here is downright astonished by the idea of having two visitors at once seeing as the castle is basically an empty husk filled with nothing then he's drawn away to route seven buy some mini emergency and you follow along the way you run into a man and his kid who shanghaied you into some child labor by insisting that you take care of his berry fields for him you know if there's anything I've learned here it's that I really should just wait around for like children to come by and perform free labor for me since my back hurts it's honestly a really brilliant idea thanks Game Freak but anyways the big emergency goes back to the old Pokemon red issue of a Snorlax blocking the way at this point I guess enough time has passed for it to be like a throwback rather than you know like lazy writing or anything like that you need the poké flute from a place called parfum palace I'm sure I'm pronouncing that wrong I don't care which charges you one thousand fun bucks to get in the door which is kind of messed up because you don't even get the option to say no the game just rips one thousand dollars from you and I kind of wonder what would happen if you didn't have enough money anyways in this next episode of I'm a millionaire who charges kids money to get into my mansion the man in charge is having issues finding his dog Pokemon he even checked all of the statues for it as it turns out the dogs just chilling in the backyard so you know what that means we got to chase it after learning the extremely important lesson of always corner and animal nothing could possibly go wrong the millionaire guy tells us to meet him on the balcony of his house for some hot fireworks action Shauna mentions that the dog probably ran away on purpose because of how messed up that trainer is but oh well fireworks you think you know I've never watched fireworks alone with a boy before I'll never forget them because I watched them with you yay then this dumb [ __ ] sets off fireworks in the middle of the day you grab the flute this man plays the flute the snore like wakes up from the flute and then you continue on eventually the ace trainer Serena decides a fair battle would be taking you and her and then pitting you two against this bull cut in the dancing meme after arriving in the next town you're directed very casually towards the two ideas of either going to the aquarium to leave or going to the glittering cave since Serena is heading to the cave it's now the mandatory option and you have to ride horn your way over trust me I tried to just leave Serena at the glittering cave but as you proceed up the beach this woman goes oh don't I drop my fossil I have to use my item you hat you can't go any further you might accidentally step on my fossil please turn around so why did you give me this option why did you give me the option why did you tell me that I can go through the aquarium to the next town why just tell me hey we got to go to that cave man don't even tell me oh man you can you can go up the beach you can do that because I can't I can't go up the beach alright I get restricted I get restricted by this bikini over here and our item Finder antics along with these trees on this Beach that don't even match the like it's not even it's not even the right type of tree on the beach I don't anyways glittering cave is where you encounter the villains of X&Y team flare oh boy here we go again the team flare grunt gives you the courtesy notification that they literally only care about themselves and don't care at all about what happens to others it's a little on the nose but alright I guess they're all about fashion also I can't really tell finally a team the average person can relate to anyways you grab a fossil and move on to the next town where it's bike time in this flavor of Pokemon you get a bike for free just for being the ten thousand and first customer of the shop thank God this guy doesn't know that the prerequisite for being a customer is paying for something right have to shell out a million monopoly money for one at least going by Kanto standards you blow out the Rock Gym and then roll over to the next chunk of land which seems to be a rock field sorts apparently there's some kind of hidden power about them because team Flair is here trying to figure out their mystery or something these guys have got to be the goofiest villain group so far and that's honestly impressive when you think about Team Galactic's existence this guy who's apparently the same guy I thrashed back in the cave goes on to receive some kind of mission update on this hollow caster he then says aloud oh boy whoever invented this thing must have been really stylish well it's just so handy well let me drop this little tidbit on you this dude was the one who did that same guy who's been going on about the world being beautiful what an unexpected plotline we find ourselves in today either way you give chase to the dude who ran off and he tells you something about making the world better for Team flare by using the stones and then disappears into a dead end boy geosenge town sure is useless it definitely won't be used in any sort of major plot development so after beating a roving gym leader who repeatedly reminds me that she is in fact a gym leader she challenges me to a little game I like to call this battles pointless because apparently only beating gym leaders in their gyms rewards you with a badge I know it's a bit of a long title for a game I guess I'll take the time to expand on the group of four friends here for a moment I'm getting a little bit of a feel for their personalities a little more after interacting with them in shallower so I don't like Trevor it's kind of like a lesser Sharon to me he basically can't battle for [ __ ] so his form of challenging you is seeing how many Pokemon he can log in his pokedex and he loses at that every time so far - so he's really bad at everything and then on top of that he tends to give off that know-it-all vibe while putting down his buddy for always thinking about dancing it just kind of rubs me the wrong way tierno on the other hand is a goofball who focuses on just coming up with new dances which is kind of cute then on top of that he's always trying to give you things because he knows he can't be as good of a trainer as you basically he recognizes his weaknesses and acknowledges your strengths instead of running his head into the wall trying to overcome you the whole game I like him then there's Shauna who I misjudged as being kind of ditzy she seems to have quite a bit of basic knowledge and tends to be pretty headstrong when it comes to charging into things she's alright and then finally there's Serena who seems to be the very basic embodiment of a she just kind of checks all of the boxes of the basic tenants required of arrival in Pokemon has a drive to beat you despite you always beating her is always very bold and confident can't believe it when she loses you know all that stuff though she does compliment you on your bond with your Pokemon and how much strength you have as well I don't know it just seems like one of those things where they take the you know like the stereotypical Elite Four or strong gym leader personality template and then put it into a rival I just think it'd be a lot more interesting to see a super hot-headed girl who's kind of like the counterpart of like blue or silver anyways the game starts to go full DBZ when referring to mega evolutions and how they work the Guru of mega evolutions goes on about how different pokemon can be pushed to go even further beyond the power level of their normal limits and how it requires a stone and a ring to do so you and Serena battled to see which of you is gonna get the ring and after you win the third gym leader who you already beat once in the town prior wants to test you to make sure that you're worthy of it this is just asinine to me given that you just beat her like I'd say that if this was one of those things where she tests you at the very beginning of the game and then goes back to her seventh gym town or whatever then this would be a different case but this is back-to-back towns why did they write her to challenge you this way and it really only gets worse because after you beat her again she not only does you the discourtesy of fitting the word roll into as many sentences as she can because she's a skater get it she makes you climb to the top of the tower of mastery to fight her again after you get the mega evolution ring which is less of a ring and more of a bracelet dude she even goes I'm not trying to give you the runaround well then you're not trying very hard are you but I guess we already knew that assessing from those last two battles look I know the real reason for all of this is the devs going well we want to give the player a mega evolution tutorial but what if they don't have a Pokemon that's ready to mega evolve yet and this was basically the solution because the entire build up to this thing was that they wanted it to make sense for you to use her Lucario seeing as it's been eyeballing you since you first met it senses that you're a strong trainer so it wants to go with you and Vatel cements that idea it's honestly just very inorganic to me so you grab the pokemon and the stone and the ring and the knowledge that you can't have this time back in your life and you leave the tower some of the oddest dialogue happens in this game I don't know if it's just a lack of writing or if it's a lot of these conversations just being intentionally Curt but like here's an example so you're leaving Cholewa and Serena comes running after you and says hey neighbor here's Cerf and then she goes kind of weird how you came to Kalos and we're on this journey now it's almost like destiny and then she just leaves what a weird thing to conclude a conversation on without any sort of farewell it really does just exemplify the idea that the most of the main conversations and plot points in this game are to solely give the players something to progress with you can just see the devs going alright we got to give the players surf for literally the next area and then realizing that it would be silly to just have Serena go well here surf with no other dialogue you could argue that every game does this and they might to a degree but this is the first one that I've really felt like they've been forcing this kind of stuff in in fact I'd argue that there's a really good counter example in this game that gives the player an item as well and that would be getting the flash TM tierno gives it to you in the cave before this and says that he uses it because he's not particularly great at battling and it keeps wild Pokemon away from him which by the way flash has been repurposed because there's no dark caves in this game that's kind of cool I mean dark caves were kind of a silly mechanic but that's a good way to use someone's character to give the player an item rather than hey by the way here Cerf also us meeting was destiny at any rate it seems like Pokemon X is trying to catch up to black and white because Serena immediately contacts you in the next city and says hey let's battle even though you just thrashed her in the last town I don't get that I really don't get that on the way out of the fourth gym city lysander just directly contacts you and tells you that he knows that you have access to mega evolution now all right a couple of things first of all this is like Mark Zuckerberg sending you a message one day and going hey man I heard you were getting your boss's job good war on that just be responsible about it secondly this guy goes I trust that you'll do what needs to be done to make the world more beautiful I'm sorry what what the hell are you talking about how dare you keep us waiting haha just kidding gamer yeah this next ten minutes is just packed with god-awful dialogue you got lice Anders government spying you got these two Jehovah's Witnesses upgrading your pokedex and then you've got the incompetent team flare grunt who's really just trying to sell you this dowsing machine there's been quite a lot of hype for the idea of the item finder in this game my key card is probably around the boulder nine paces east of me if only I had a dowsing machine what the hell my car keys are on the table if only I had a metal detector in the next episode of this games quest to break me as a human we have to go through the power plant that team Flair's taken over after working my way around the circle in what is the most boring team encounter I have ever seen in my life I find myself face to face with an admin and a scientist named alianna yeah they leave after completing whatever task required them to SAP the power from lumiose by the way that's why lumiose was experiencing blackouts nobody was doing anything about that apparently also why was I not allowed to go into the blacked out part of the city it's not dangerous it just has no power anyways after they leave deck CO and Senna show up while wearing masks they uh they're pretending did not be themselves I leave before being left I decide then you got this massive homeless dude just towering over the landscape what is happening he it's just mutters about flower Pokemon and eternal life and then he just leaves where did he go how are you gonna take the most interesting thing in this game away from me so quickly that guy was like ten feet tall not even the fifth gym leader suddenly popping out and is dr. octopus arms to throw pokeballs better can make up for my disappointment in this game right now I really can't help but wonder how someone like lieutenant surge would react to this kid as always I'm contacted almost immediately to guide me further along in my on Rails adventure upon setting foot outside of the fifth gym this time it's professor Sycamore who wants me to meet him at a cafe so I show up to the cafe and he waved me over like I can't find him in the ten by ten foot cafe and then proceeds to act like I ran into him by chance dudes like ah I just ran into my buddy Lysander here did you know that he's the descendent of a king who invented something that absolutely decimated populations 3000 years ago why Sanders like yeah he did some bad [ __ ] but I mean the idea was pretty good when you think about it anyway here's a rock I'm gonna go be in st. elsewhere now sycamore looks after him like a good guy that Lysander why did you call me here God knows I couldn't possibly figure out where to go without my hand being held so trevor then tells me to go meet the gang over at route 14 after my run-in with the professor I almost guarantee I cannot lose to Trevor when it comes to seeing Pokemon because I saw whopping nine Pokemon in the mountain region and he lost to that also Serena can't stand when everyone does the same thing what's the point of you talking right now I wish I could decline her xx Pokemon battle for the same reason that she just gave I mean everybody's battling how are you doing anything differently I also wish I could have just said yeah I don't want to go to the scary house I tried to avoid it but I was ripped away by Shauna and what can only be described as the biggest mandatory waste of time in Pokemon so far you go to this house that the guy inside doesn't take care of the outside of and you listen to him tell a lame ghost story and then he wants you to tip him there is no difference if you tip him a thousand caps or nothing at all there's no new dialogue there's no new item you don't get anything I had to look this one up apparently if you tip people in Kalos you have a better chance of finding a shiny pokemon and getting new clothing choices cool after beating the sixth Jim the game further Wade's into territory that I hope that Game Freak would never touch as the leader proceeds to tell you that she always wanted to be a Pokemon as if the fact that her eyes look inhuman and then she has wings weren't enough I have to say the timing of delft Fox's existence and this girl LARPing are unreasonably close to another after nabbing the Badger guided to the pokeball factory by these two great characters it's explained that pokeballs actually catch Pokemon which makes me wonder why Trevor is lying to me I don't have footage for this one but I actually spent 12 great balls 15 pokeballs a dusk ball and a premier ball trying to catch a maul while with three health left that was in glittering cave and I really wanted a mall while it makes you wonder how the poké ball Factory is in business at all I also at this point know better than to try to progress beyond the game's careful guidance so trying to move on without visiting the factory was more of a let's see what they do to keep me away this time apparently all it takes to stop me is to team flare members going I'm not allowed to go that way unless I joined them and to join them I got to pay them five million sticks of Trident layers so it's off to the factory here we're team flare is trying to rob the entire factory of all of its pokeballs they say to this guy come on work for Team flare or for five million Walmart money you can join team plan is there a difference between those two options at all and then and another fit of actual Shakespearean poetry this guy goes I'll never forgive any group that tries to take all of the pokeballs for itself what a weird response I'll never forgive any group that tries to take the world's supply of bird cages those aren't for one group those are for everyone who likes birds anyways I was gonna let Serena handle the rest but that would be way too much choice for one player to handle so I helped her out and flare vacates the factory owner gives you a master ball and a big nugget stating that even he doesn't know the use for a big nugget another really weird chunk of dialogue this is followed by the speculation of what on earth is team flare gonna do with all those balls I mean unless there's some other functionality that I haven't picked up on I'd reckon that they're probably out to catch some Pokemon I just wish that the news report that you receive afterwards would have said something along the lines of due to the large amount of pokeballs stolen inflation skyrocketed to a point where many Pokemon centers were now being robbed in rioting was taking place in the streets of lumiose as demand for pokeballs reached an all-time hi or that the report didn't happen at all Lysander is now actively badgering me when I'm just minding my own business rambling on about mega evolutions and what we can do with them and what if humans have superpowers also you can chalk this up to being a Pokemon game all you want but you know that if someone was behaving like this in real life you'd probably avoid them like the plague or not maybe you dig it but yeah I don't know at this point it's easier to just skip talking about the non-essential dialogue I keep giving in to my every reaction about every little bit of cutscene because I keep thinking oh well this will be important and then it's not like you just left lumiose and beelined it to den DeMille and then the professor had to have followed you out of the cafe so that he can talk to you about how good cafes are and then he mentions that the legendary Pokemon of Kalos is xerneas and it sleeps when it's tired and whatnot I just I just don't understand what the writers were trying to accomplish here but it really does seem like it would just kill them to condense these conversations down to one big one next up we have Flair trying to capture an Abomasnow which isn't really a heinous action when you think about it but I'd imagine most Pokemon that I beat within an inch of their life before capturing are probably also scared even more so when I paralyze them and whatnot they spell out their goal of we just want to be the only people with power and good things in life and then they get sent packing Trevor talks about how scared he was yeh so then it's off to anistar where you grab the seventh badge Olympia might actually be one of my favorite Gym Leaders because of how little she talks God it's so weird to say that because I literally went from man I wish people like Koga Serge Blaine etc would tell me more about themselves I went from that to being appreciative of gym leaders that don't run their mouths on and on and it's honestly because the writers don't seem to have a good story to tell with these leaders that they pump out you'll get the bug gym leader in black and white who chases Team Plasma all around the city before you fight him you'll get the leader that won't leave a tower until Ampharos gets medicine you'll get the leader who flies around in her dumb airplane and spots trouble from miles out there not compelling and it's not for a lack of trying it's just for a lack of writing something interest at any rate my sander decides to contact every single trainer with a hollow caster and tell them hey guys if you're not part of team flair you're gonna be eliminated by the ultimate pokemon weapon so yeah bye I guess I can't even be surprised about the bad guys telling everyone in the world that they're gonna kill them you would think there'd be a point where gamefreak would just go you know maybe an effective villain would start by just wiping out a city without warning or something like oh yeah this would incite panic in people typically and then have everyone everywhere just like stop battling to try to assess the situation but these details are just unsurprisingly lost so it's off to the secret underground lab thing which is a requirement in every Pokemon game where the people outside tell you the password and you face off with Lysander immediately this one actually caught me off guard but I guess he wants to do that thing where the villain kind of assesses your intentions or whatever it's here that we actually get a glimmer of real believable motivation from my sander supposedly he used to run his company with the idea that he could change the world for the better and save everyone from themselves but basically stupid people exists and hindered his progress at every turn at least that's the gist that I got from Matt that's some real human stuff right there and I can actually relate to that to some degree so he got fed up with humanity and decided you know what I'm just gonna take over the world and then like call all the stupid people and save it that way I mean sure it's flawed but hey man that's actually an okay background story for a villain I'm impressed but Jesus that was a long walk for a little sip of water so we make our way through the revamped Team Rocket hideout eventually stumbling upon deck CEO and Senna looking for that really tall dude from before apparently Flair is after him - for some reason also Senna calls you by your name and this is the issue with this whole setup if my character had a mouth he would say wait I've never told you my name but now we've got to insert this realization really oddly by having her suddenly sail out wait I've never heard your name you've never told me it after these two you encounter two of the super-science sisters and beat the answers out of them they basically tell you that they needed all the energy from the power plant to energize the ultimate weapon and then they needed the stones from the beginning of the game to help power or activate it as well those stones are actually the graves of dead Pokemon who were sacrificed to end a war 3,000 years ago now that's pretty gnarly Pokemon death has really only ever mentioned in any sort of explicit detail when a tower of dead is involved usually the deaths mentioned seem to be a lot more peaceful like a pet in real life passing away this is the first time in my own recollection where a game directly mentions that Pokemon were sacrificed as fuel for a weapon that was powerful enough to end a war this is all getting very World War 2 ish but I'm on board for this one so far moving along has us run into the third science sister who tells us that the ultimate weapon can max out a pokémon's power in the same way that mega evolution does she also briefly mentions that xerneas has the power to grant life to everything around it and speculates on what would happen if they fueled the ultimate weapon with its life force after this run-in you finally make your way to Lysander who's watching over the giant guy that they have apparently captured the guy proceeds to tell you his story which just seems weird because Lysander doesn't say anything to stop him but all right so 3,000 years ago there was this big war and this guy's Pokemon participated in that war it died because of the war and the guy was so distraught that he created a machine to bring his Pokemon back to life it wound up actually working but the man was still pissed at humanity for letting this happen to his Pokemon so he turned the restorative machine into a destructive one and unleashed hell ending the war and then his Pokemon leaves him after seeing what he's become that's not a bad story Game Freak I'm actually impressed so this guy's name is a Z I'm not sure if that's like AZ or a Z but I'm gonna go with a Z so he's over 3,000 years old and he's tallest [ __ ] he also shares the name of the king who ruled over the land 3,000 years ago what a coincidence he tells you to stop flare from activating the weapon again as Lysander tells you to meet him further down in the base it really is too bad that Game Freak only knows how to write villains one because the whole will just see if your convictions are stronger than ours thing can only end up one way the bad guy giving you a chance so openly just allows you to stroll in and win and then they go what that's impossible it just seems like it'd be cooler to be able to overcome a villainous group while they're actively trying to shut you down in any way possible at any rate there is something really cool that happens with all this in that the head science man has you choose which button to press in order to either activate or deactivate the ultimate weapon I chose the one that activates it and it kind of has like a giggle and then tells me that even if I had deactivated it you would have activated it anyways which makes sense so this big-ass flower type thing blooms in the center of that one town that I said would definitely never be used as a plot point much to my utter and complete shock but this thing popping on the ground is pretty intimidating which is a huge step in the right direction for this game's plot so the long and short of this whole ordeal with Lysander is that he's sick of the overpopulation that's causing people to steal and compete and be dicks to one another so his solution is to kill a large portion of the population and every single Pokemon as he believes that Pokemon will always be used as tools by people inevitably yeah it's along the same lines of the philosophy that n had for a while albeit a lot more extreme which kind of sucks because you had something going there for a moment he's still not a bad villain he's just heavily flawed I suppose that's ok and then he just kind of lets you go because it's too late and all that stuff so you run past him and run into the smartest grunt I have ever seen in any one of these games I mean every single Pokemon game from generation 1 to 6 this is hands-down the smartest grunt this admins like stop right there because the legendary pokemons at the end of this hallway and the grunt goes why did you tell them that who would even do something like that just I mean that's the best thing I've seen this entire game after that you make it down to the weapon take out four more grunts and then old sword feet here revives itself to face down the business end of your master ball after bestowing the proper nickname to the ancient pokémon it's time to beat down Lysander for the final time although this time he has a set of those robot arms at the Eiffel Tower KITT had I don't I don't know what the purpose of these are but alright after our battle on the actual Sun Lysander seems to accept the world will continue to be a place where war exists and that people only live selfishly for themselves that is until he goes completely nuts telling you that he's going to grant you and your friends the gift of eternal life shortly before he launches a laser into space and Akbar's himself the biggest thing I wish they would change with these stories is some kind of alternate ending like you ever played Chrono Trigger well spoiler alert if you lost to the final boss of that game you would see that grandiose ending where the boss destroys the entire world your save file was still at the last save point so you could reach allenge the boss but that feeling of dread in awe when watching the bad guy win is just infinitely more powerful than you getting knocked out returning to a pokemon center and then just walking back I don't know maybe that's just a little heavy for Pokemon games although all things considered they just went on about sacrificing the lives of so many Pokemon to stop a war or something so I don't know but either way everyone goes back their separate ways and Long John Silver here seems to escape from his underground cage as he goes on about how his Pokemon that he revived never came back to him the main thing I want to know about him is why he's so goddamn tall it's like he's 3,000 years old and it's but but people don't keep growing as they get older they stop growing after a certain age it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard historically humans have gotten taller on average so Sycamore wants me to meet him in the next town we battled there and then he tells me that he always knew Lysander was a nutjob but he just never made the time in his schedule to talk to him about it and then he tells me that he buried a good item for me as a token of thanks for stopping team flare and then leaves god this games dialogue is so goddamn bizarre could you imagine telling someone thanks for doing something big and important and that you hid something nice for them in the town somewhere as a token of thanks after this I guess we have to wrap up Shauna's story I don't I don't know but she challenges me to a Pokemon battle this battle logistically makes zero sense unless a large amount of time has elapsed since taking on team flare or Shauna stole someone's Pokemon if she had sent out level 30 Pokemon it makes sense but she insisted on being useless in team Flair HQ because she wasn't strong enough now she's tossing out xerneas level Pokemon like they're nothing but wait there's more chunk and bowl-cut also stumble up with level 49 s for absolutely zero reason if all of these guys have been with me at the team player base I mean I wouldn't have even had to fight most of those battles this is just atrocious writing no matter how you slice it you wrote these kids to be like normal kids to be the ones that kind of focus on their own things and that's admirable it's more realistic to have the kid that goes well I'm not particularly good at battling but I love dancing so that's what I'm gonna focus on or the kid that just wants to spot as many Pokemon as they possibly can you spend your whole game having these kids figure out what they're good at and then stop worrying about battling as much and then you just throw it away by magically giving them semi competitive pokémon to battle you with I just can't believe such an oversight exists for the sake of trying to make these kids feel somewhat equal for some reason either way they give you waterfall and you move along after recovering the gym leader from the nearby woods you snag the eighth gym badge with almost zero resistance then you walk outside and the game makes sure that you know about the Pokemon League by having some no-name guy come out and tell you about it and then having the gym leader come out right after him and say the exact same thing like they both just back-to-back said so I guess you're gonna be taking on the Pokemon League huh but even more absurd than this is the actual goddamn gatekeeper standing outside the front of the Pokemon League entrance the dude counts your badges and it's like alright let me test you what no this is my test I brought badges who cares if I stole them what am I gonna do on Victory Road get mauled by an Onix no just my rival who tries to beat me one last time before stating that she's renewing our rivalry I cannot imagine how much more of a rival she can be I think we battled at least ten times in this game at any rate we wrapped this whole adventure up by taking on the league upon entering through the gigantic door is one of the members basically gives you the rundown about how the Pokemon League works the funniest part about all of this is that she basically says that she knows about you defeating team Flair and calls you a hero in quotes which I assume means that she's saying it disrespectfully it's kind of messed up because it implies that she thinks that the league is a lot stronger than you and yet none of these [ __ ] showed up to stop team Flair when they fired off a warning message about literally killing off most of the population and then that kind of weird I mean truth be told the gym leaders jumping in to help in black and white was some of the most realistic and cool stuff that I've seen in these games because these guys should be helping to stop a threat this big meanwhile you've got this pinko talking down to you about saving the region and possibly the world I guess she's always this unpleasant because she mentions that she's a movie star some BS what a weird off-the-cuff mentioned from someone so far along in their trainer career at least diantha actually thanks you for your work before your battle she's not too bad of a person she's very likable although she does have the weakest champion music so far after you defeat her you do the whole Pokemon register thing and that about wraps it up but wait there's more so Sycamore put together this whole parade celebration thing to hell you both as a hero and the new Pokemon League champion wait what the hell are these people doing next to me now Serena makes sense Serena makes sense she companied me into this entire thing battled with me helped me save [ __ ] cool what are you doing here what is this inclusive [ __ ] these three did nothing and then in the middle of this celebration here comes the nameless King to get slapped around a bit while you teach him the true meaning of Christmas you beat this man so hard that he has an epiphany that causes his three thousand-year-old floette to come back to him okay this is cute as hell but it's just super marred by like literally everything else this whole thing is just about the strangest ending I've seen so far it's just nonsense in almost every regard it's it's super hard to stomach honestly but I don't know whatever I guess this one story probably gets put somewhere in the bottom middle maybe even the very bottom I don't know it's it's pretty rough with just the sheer amount of oddities in its dialogue and the reckless amount of loopholes that exist for almost no reason other than to make the story feel deeper than a jar of pickles all right let's move on to Sun and Moon before this franchise makes me have a stroke so the finale of this video has us being greeted by the lowland Regents professor he goes through the same stuff as all the others and then you walk away from your computer that you were talking to him on but you don't get control of your character for another three minutes because we need to watch some nameless blond girl escape with a Pokemon and a duffel bag man only there was some kind of device for Pokemon to be housed in while trainers were on the go maybe somebody will come up with something like that so she's about to get caught because the enemy here decided to use the patented technique of standing in the way of her only exit when suddenly the duffel bag Pokemon makes a big old shine and then bamps them away do you feel that yes I too feel my heart pumping faster at that riveting sequence of events I hope we get more of that anyway is back on boring island your mom and not your dad tell you that it's the big day but first you got to put on your hat can't go adventuring without your hat your new dad compliments you on your hat and then you're off to receive a Pokemon from the islands Kahuna from here you're basically escorted by the professor who gives you the basic rundown of the game and I suppose a more organic manner like it feels less force than the other games also Kukui is definitely his own unique character he's very positive charismatic and loves where he lives he doesn't actually feel like a professor honestly and he has this mannerism of inserting yeah mid-thought to break up his sentences yeah I know it's such a little thing but it does make the guy seem more human anyways he can't find the Kahuna so he sends you off to find him probably the most amount of time that you've ever been Pokemon less in one of these games but it's okay because apparently Pokemon only lurk in tall grass thank God here to prove that theory wrong is blonde girl and her possessed bag as her puffball pops out of the bag and onto the bridge it gets attacked by three whole birds green eyes white hat is too scared to move so you heroic lead I've into the birds before the bridge snaps because this sentient ball of fluff decided to fight back as you're falling to your certain demise the tapu of the island flies by and just absolutely annihilate s-- the sparrows before swooping in and saying aloud i'm electric and ferret are after this you ask for the girl's name and she's like yeah but here's the stone that must be yours the stone did not belong to me but I kept it out of spite because she did not tell me her name then she asks if I'll escort her back to the playground because she's scared I don't know what my non Pokemon having ass is gonna do besides tuck and roll at more Pokemon but whatever so I flail my arms towards her and then move her back to town because US hats got to stick together she tells me not to tell anyone about all of this because it's a secret but then cuckoo is like is my assistant and she's like my name's Lilly what I asked you before what the hell then she goes oh yeah so these sparrows attacked nebby and then this guy jumped on them and then the bridge collapsed and then Tabu koko rescued them I don't understand why you told me to not tell anyone about this stuff did you just did you just want to tell them instead you could have just asked my favorite part about this exchange is the island Kahuna going wow that's weird taboo Koko is supposed to protect us and all but usually just lets kids die at things fickle as hell finally after maybe 18 minutes of introduction I get a Pokemon but first it has to choose me as well after this touching scene is over I think I'm allowed to move again but not for long this is how I hate how I don't remember why but I played this game once before and this was the feeling that washed over me when I saw him again how once the battle with me and his Pokemon is the one that's weak to yours you would think this makes him not your rival but Sun and Moon are the first set of games to have your rival choose the Pokemon that's weak to yours which makes your rival even more of a punching bag than they were before anyways like I said I'm unsure why I hate how yet but I do know that at first glance he's a very positive person who doesn't care about losing and seems to be ridiculously energetic and carefree from here it's noted that that sparkling stone from before was supposed to indicate that the islands top who has chosen you or something and then you head off back home to show your mom the Pokemon that you chose and sleep the next morning you're greeted by the professor again who teaches you how to catch pokemon before you move onward to the festival this festival exists to please the island's legendary guardian i guess people just kind of battle at it and that's about it besides dancing and eating and stuff so you battle howl again and he's just really goddamn stoked to get his ass kicked by you I mean like super excited about it then you get another bracelet that's referred to as a ring but this one doesn't allow you to mega evolve your Pokemon it allows you to do some powerful moves referred to as Z moves then you go home and watch the same scene of your mom stretching and talking about the day before the doorbell rings again this time it's Lily who's escorting you at the professor's behest while telling you that her Cosmo gives a very rare Pokemon with a lot of power that other people want to abuse so she ran away from them dude I'm like 40 minutes into this game and it feels like the sequence should have ended 20 minutes ago but we're off to the lab to learn that - to learn that to learn that I know it's not what it sounds like but dude come on anyways my pokedex now talks to the power of fusing it with a living being and then I'm to set off on my island challenge which is Sun and moons equivalent of challenging Gym Leaders I guess you're supposed to undergo the seven trials and beat the fork in Pokemon battles but I have to go to school first this school is kind of weird because you drop by and beat the hell out of these preschoolers and then you get called to the office man I'm not even enrolled here you're giving me anxiety I haven't felt in 10 years after decimating the entire School in becoming its leader you move out to the next city with Lily you also mean how along the way how's the type of guy that turns out to be a serial killer after being friend-zoned because this guy is jumping around in front of a tauros like that's just what you do when you see a big bowl I mean who says something like I knew I recognized the sound of those feet but yeah this whole thing isn't boating well for me so far I think I've spent more time watching cutscenes than being able to move in this game the only thing that fixes this is an option that says hey I played this game before let me skip cutscenes if I want to but again I'd say that's kind of counterproductive to evaluating the storyline but I mean I'd say half of these scenes are not plot related at all hey kids if you see a crack in the wall somewhere and you can see through the other side without that camera and get ready for some good pictures well thanks for that important lesson Game Freak man I just want to get on with the plot if I'm gonna run into cutscenes [Music] on second thought I think I'd rather follow how around this is actually probably the most realistic reaction I've seen to a team in one of these games every other team has been reacted to with some kind of seriousness or fearfulness no matter how goofy they are oh no Team Aqua is here to flood the world help Oh God Team Galactic is here to give everyone bowl cuts you know [ __ ] like that this captain just glances at them and then just ignores the hell out of them that is how most people would or should react as weird as it sounds this interaction really pumped up my expectations because my first view of team skull was this has got to be the cringe eeeh still inist group I think I've seen so far and then it turns out that no one takes them seriously either which honestly makes all of the ridiculous posturing when they talk a lot funnier than it would have been if the captain here had responded with you fiends I mean one of the lines they drop a little later is what now you're saying I'm lower than a Pokemon I already have self-esteem issues but yeah after they get sent packing Alima has you battle against him and then you make your way over to his trial as you make your way through his trial team skull suddenly drops back in and attacks which only winds up further cementing them as goofballs like after you beat them they come back to warn you that the totem Pokemon is super powerful and then they inadvertently help you seal off the exits that you've been chasing this last Pokemon around between anyways you complete the trial and Alima here tells you that you have to strike the z pose in order to activate the z crystal I'm telling you right now that this ginyu force pose could cause my Pokemon to Animorph into a human that has the knowledge to cure cancer and I wouldn't do it if I had stage 4 leukemia after this wealth of knowledge it's off to the starting town to take on the Kahuna after pecking the Kahuna's Pokemon into the ground I complete my first grand trial and start the process of getting off the island apparently Lily wants to bring Cosmo to safety but she's not a trainer at all she's an escort mission so you agree to the terms and conditions and I guess she's coming with you now seems like cutting out the middleman and just giving me the legendary wood the more optimal play here but hey that would make for a good story so after saddling up the local cattle and forgetting where my house is and therefore not saying goodbye to my mom it's off to the next Island it's here that you meet mallow and Olivia Olivia is the Kahuna and you gotta wonder if her legs getting enough blood flow mellows a trial captain she makes a bunch of cooking references so I imagine she'll have you gathering ingredients for her or something I think everyone in this game is taller than your character Kukui says that because it's your island challenge you can proceed however you want I don't believe that for a second and to further cement that sentiment lily is waiting up ahead and she still hasn't figured out how a pokeball works she tells you that she's meeting a very special friend up at the hotel ahead and I assume that if my character didn't have the personality of what sandpaper this would be the part of the anime where he mistakes what she means and thinks that some guy is waiting for her in the hotel to do something lewd like holding hands but before we get to the bottom of this scooby-doo mystery the Deb's took it upon themselves to bring back the best two characters this series has ever seen deck CEO and Cinna I don't know why either I thought they developed the whole thing where Lily's at the hotel but she just kind of tells you that she's waiting so I took off down route 4 and eventually to the wild wild west town to battle howl again I'm starting to get why I disliked him so strongly before so let's break down how as a rival like I mentioned before he chooses the starter that your starters strong against which is the first time that we've seen this from a rival Lenny's got this whole Challenger attitude about him like he's really competitive he says stuff like let's show this newbie how we do it in a Lola or something like that which is just laughable because he got his first Pokemon right around the same time as you and he's lost to you three times at this point so it's not arrogance per se it's just bad writing because it's like he doesn't even register how many times that you've battled or what you've accomplished so far and on top of that he's just a Melvin I don't really have any other way of putting it you know how Shauna and Trevor and tierno all suddenly had level 49 Pokemon at the end of the game despite being garbage at pokemon battle it feels like how is a side character like these guys and every time he tells me that he's past the trials it just feels like he shouldn't have his responses to losing - you never really seem to have him reflecting on what he could have done better he's just a cartoon character who blabs on about how that's how life is and that he should go get some food he's easily the least likeable rival despite being the most positive but now we have the other extreme gladion is the edgiest anime boy I think Game Freak could possibly fathom he introduces himself as doing part-time work for Team skull which is the funniest small-time job I could think of seeing as those guys failed to rob a berry farm that was giving out free berries earlier gladion is man you know how it was like oh man this end guy sure is edgy well if n was a knife then this guy is a goddamn katana he makes some decent criticism of how in the way that he battles but it's really hard to take someone seriously when they're wrestling with their own hand like they're trying to prevent it from writing in The Death Note at any rate after you beat him down some skull members show up to basically make fun of him and tell him that he'll never fit in with team skull even if the boss likes him old palsy hands doesn't have much to say about that so they all depart and howl struggles to show any other human emotion beyond happy a little further down the road we run into Lana the next trial captain she has you check out a few splashes and whatnot before you undergo the official trial which is okay I guess I just can't help but feel weird about this kid saying stuff like maybe it's a strapping young swimmer all of this water in this 11 and 19 year old is apparently parched but then it turns out that you were doing the trial the entire time twas a trick yeah Lana's a pretty fun character she likes to mess with you and make up stories to see if she can get you to believe them she's probably one of the better characters from recent times especially from the gym leader type role I don't know man the way that this is going I feel myself being introduced to character after character with no real story substance for instance next is hop who you and her defeat some team skull grunts and then she threatens to have her big horse Pokemon stop them presumably to death I like her but her entire interaction so for brevity's sake at this point I'm just gonna cut to the meat of the plot and I'll mention any earlier interactions as they're deemed important so the main things to note here is that one Colgate is back and looks even stupider in 3d I guess he got away with being an actual criminal and it's now studying the bond between humans and pokémon as a source of energy number two this guy's whole trial is hilarious and I think it's great to have some light-hearted gems in these games number three the trial leaders are all getting together and messing around and that's kind of cool but you gotta wonder who's getting shafted when they show up to take on a trial and the captain is off doing whatever I wish it was how but somehow that bastards always right behind me with this stuff all right finally we get to some semblance of plot after clearing the trials out by the way that's actually not me complaining I've just been waiting for more story related stuff to show up this entire time for this particular video apparently Lilly was found on the beach three months ago by cuckoo EES wife also Kukui as a wife which surprised me too but the real important bit here is the introduction of the ultra wormhole this wormhole has been rumored to open up over the alonein region and unleash mysterious and new Pokemon into the world from another dimension and their presence tended to be particularly terrifying and malicious so much so that the Guardian Pokemon from each Island supposedly battled against them a few times of course right now it's all a theory but we all know how theories and legends go in these games after this it's time to head over to Olivia's trial which has us running into members of the aether foundation they're a group of Pokemon conservationists who strive to help Pokemon and people where they're needed in this particular case they're trying to shoot Diglett away in a safe manner so that people don't have to fight so many goddamn Diglett when they're coming through god these people are needed and so many other caves in so many other regions but an important thing to note here is that their uniforms match the ones of those that were chasing Lilly at the beginning of the game they openly admonished team skull which makes me wonder if it's a facade or if Lilly just shouldn't have done what she did or I guess maybe the inner ranks of the aether foundation could be the ones ordering team skull around oh hey look they have police officers even that doesn't seem right because further along we encounter a couple of the team skulk grunts who are attempting to steal a slowpoke from to either members one of the members is referred to as chief by the other one and in turn they refer to themselves as the aether Foundation's last line of defense so I don't know what to make of all this but goggles here tells me to meet him later at the hotel so I guess we'll get to it then we also meet plumeria she basically says that team skull is a bunch of idiots but they're her idiots I can respect it I don't know there's a lot of little dialogue that exemplifies how much more human the characters in this game feel especially given the last games absolutely embarrassing dialogue you have stuff like kuku ease wife going on about how hot his alternate persona is you have stuff you have stuff like plumeria being overly protective of her grunts unlike the leaders of every other game sofa every other game so sorry something keeps distracting me I can't quite put my finger on it mm-hmm anyways the dialogue in this game is just leaps and bounds above X&Y so far and it's honestly impressive after the grand trial you got to go meet goggles at the resort so that he can tell you that his name is saba and then whisk you away to an artificial man-made island in the middle of the ocean called either paradise this is where the foundation supposedly protects Pokemon and creates new types of pokeballs goggles is extremely self-important he makes it clear that he's of a higher rank in the foundation and constantly asserts his position in any way possible which tells us that he probably isn't a good dude he then leaves you with wick to show you around the conservation she talks about the preservation of certain pokémon species and the like before introducing you to the President of the æther foundation loose Ameen I can tell you right now I don't trust anyone who Styles their hair like that man the little things in this game how mentions Lillie because he's a brainless jackass and Lucy means expressions shift for I don't know maybe like half a second her eyes go from big and caring to angry and Stern before she lectures about children listening to adult that's honestly some awesome detail so we're having this conversation in this big load of a jellyfish just scoots in from another dimension like he owns the place but I guess it's deemed as threatening by everyone else besides loose amine so you fight it and at 360s away afterwards loose amine talks about needing to have that ultra beast despite it looking like even existing in this dimension brought a pain yeah she's definitely a troubled individual anyway she has WIC sent us off who gives how some food and me at TM for psychic I mean if that's not completely representative of the personality and focus split hair I don't know what is at any rate you get dropped off on the next Island battle howl and then talk to Kukui in the park after howl makes you walk around the outside and a weird sort of power play then you come back into town and meet Lily who's looking for the library and then you meet professor goddamn oak my guy is grown out his hair and gotten a hell of a tan what a legend it took them this long to really start putting old characters in the new games but man I'm glad they finally started doing it sure there's been references to former characters before but this is a straight-up appearance I mean come on how impactful was it to see read silently sitting in the cave in Pokemon silver and that was only one game after the first I don't know what can I say I'm a sucker for nostalgia team Skull has got to be my favorite team out of all these games I mean every other group will say or do something pretty damn stupid and you'll go wait that makes no sense but they're still doing it and they're really self-righteous about it team skulls stand in front of a concrete bus stop sign and try to steal it so the bus drivers can chill out how is that not the best heist any team of villains has attempted to pull off but back to it here's an interesting concept that I think I'd probably never would have thought of a low-low just straight up doesn't have a Pokemon League but Professor Kukui wants to round up the best trainers on Olalla to establish one which is actually kind of really cool every other Pokemon League from every other region seems to be this long-standing traditional thing but the fact that oh Lola is just now catching up means that you have the opportunity to be the first Pokemon League being from the region I like that idea a lot guz mahou ever doesn't it's unclear to me just what exactly Guzman wants he is from what I can tell the leader or at least a very high-ranking member of team skull he talks extremely tough and gets in people's faces a lot he's absolutely chocked full of bravado that stems from god-knows-where because even after losing he storms off after telling you that he'll beat you at any time he very much reminds me of silver in a way sure he'll lose but he's gonna call you a nerd as he walks out so believe it or not the plot is actually getting better if you could imagine that I mean so far we'll see gladion pops out of a building and says hey you guys know where Kosma is and how it gives away because he's how but then gladion goes just make sure that you protect it no matter what I'm not sure why team skull even knows about it which all but confirms that he's in team skull as a spy or he's using them for some other reason from here team skull actually manages to force you into coming to their turf alone by stealing some kids Pokemon from the aether house on your way to retrieve them you actually run into the dark type elite form member from black and white Grimsley well not quite as awesome as seeing oak again it's kind of cool to see this gaunt dude fleshed out in 3d so it's onward to Poe town where a couple of skull members are sitting out front and instead of letting you in after you beat them they just lock you out which is what every other villain seems to neglect to do in every other Pokemon game fortunately for us this tired looking fella comes by to let ascend dude basically says he'll ship your remains back home if Skull defeats you which see that's weird to me because it seems like skulls mostly comprised of wayward kids not that they aren't capable of killing someone but more that they've always been taken way less seriously than that I guess I never stopped to consider the consequence if you lost to them not that that's an option wouldn't it be a dramatic alternate ending so you make your way through the dark town and up to Guzman he does his song and dance before and after losing making it clear that he really wants to beat you one of these days he then commands the grunt off to the side to give you the Pokemon they stole and then takes off if you sit in this chair afterwards you can confuse the hell out of a random grunt which is a nice touch after you head back out you run back into this dude who's a police officer I guess I'm not exactly sure what his angle is but he seems to be working to try to stop team skull in his own way as acerola comes by oh no how do you say that one well according to merriam-webster dictionary I got that one right - as acerola comes by and mentions that he's a hard-working police officer also this is acerola she's the six trial captain lives at the aether house and says that she's the descendant of royalty she's alright after you returned to aether House Lily's been kidnapped along with cosmic by team skull who basically just hid around the corner until all of the strong trainers left the building I mean that's pretty smart because how sure as hell isn't gonna do anything and he didn't good job working your way out of your grandfather's shadow there how so now it's off to rescue her but not before Shadow the Hedgehog comes rolling in to scold you about letting team skull get away with this he then battles you out of frustration but the cool part is that he actually apologizes for lashing out afterwards that's pretty human also I mean the dialogue in this game is lengthy but it really is solid so you set off with gladion to rescue cosmic and the blonde girl but officer nanu from before shows up as well and says hey I'm a Kahuna by the way so battle me I mean nothing has ever been more shoehorned in but I honestly appreciate the expediency at this point all things considered I like nah no he's kind of a grimy Noir beat cop kind of dude that tends to do things his own way alright I think we're finally at the apex of this game's plot gladion explains that team skull is hidden out in a their paradise but doesn't explain the tie between the two so now it's time to bust through the base to get to the bottom of this gladion makes a point here that I had considered before but I guess I would still stand by my feelings on the matter he says that kids and adults are on equal footing when it comes to Pokemon battles and that's been proven very true but I guess when I've given every other team hell because they let a single child dismantle their criminal operations it's more one of those things where you have to consider what else the child in the world yes it does make sense that a level 50 dragon is gonna scare the [ __ ] out of most adults to a point where they don't want to stop the kid anymore but this makes a lot of human roadblocks meaningless if that's the case and God knows that there are a lot of human roadblocks in these games including this one I just feel like fanatics from some of these teams would eventually just band together and throw themselves at a single child to restrain them anyways as you push further in you learn a bit more about gladion how he used to live here how he and his Pokemon were designed to be something that they might not have normally been this tells me that loose amine is probably gladion's mother hell she's probably Lilly's too just looking at them I mean they all look almost identical so it's not a huge shock cosmic is the key to opening ultra wormholes according to researchers so it makes sense why Lilly would have tried to run away with it my favorite thing that these researchers do is just go well you beat us but that doesn't mean we have to tell you anything and then they just walk out why did it take this many games for villains to stop giving out crucial information to children goggles sent us to the basement on purpose because he knew it was a dead end and then used that time to get reinforcements who basically say that they know that aether is messed up but they're still willing to work for the foundation regardless I'm guessing it's a plasma situation where some of the employees are totally fine with torturing Pokemon to open ultra wormholes and others are actually good people the best thing that house done in this game was point out that if goggles had stayed hidden we wouldn't had any means to progress that's a neat way of pointing out the fallacy while still including it as a means of progression I'm not exactly sure if it's good writing but I also think my standards have drastically lowered throughout this series gladion's just knocking out dudes at this point before he has to stop to try to control the inevitable Gallic gun that's threatening the spout from his hand unfortunately for him gasma shoots him down before getting knocked out of his Slav squat by me man you know what really bugs me the most about this story me my character this dude has no expression except for this one and that's the problem with cardboard cutouts as protagonists I mean come on Game Freak at least pretend like my character can use his face but enough about that lucemon is a [ __ ] like goddamn some of the things that she says to her daughter I mean I really don't like Lily either but Jesus now that is an antagonist so she strolls off to the next room where she just has cases of frozen pokemon ice cubes how comes bumbling in and starts cheering for some reason learn to read the room how loose of me and then spells out that all of them are related in an epic plot twist that was impossible to see coming if you're how she then explains that she wants to unleash all of the ultra beasts that she can find onto the lowland region just I don't know because after a few battles between different parties which take place all at once lucemon has Gus my follower into the maxi-pad portal to get whisked away into another dimension where dangerous beasts roam I mean you gotta be goddamn nuts to do that the next day Lily changes her hair style and clothing and says she's gonna stop being totally useless so that's nice also gladion gives you the sun flute and says that the legend says that if you play it alongside the moon flute the legendary pokemon of the region will appear gladion may be an edge Lord but he rounds out his character pretty well by apologizing for leaving his sister behind and acknowledging strength and numbers while working together with you after this it's off to the last island and search for answers about the legendary Pokemon Pony island is a relatively untamed region of Aloha with very few specks of civilization spread it throughout the grasslands canyons and shorelines it mostly seems to be a lot of trainers who come here to train up their teams against the region's strong Pokemon it also doesn't have a Kahuna according to habu oh yeah ha boos appeared a few times now to give you stuff and then leave she lives here and tells you about the lack of Kahuna and then runs off to the ruins to become the Kahuna five minutes later didn't really spread that plot twist out too much huh I guess she was rejected by the top who once before and then decided to try again now since you just asked her something so after Hapuku who notices herself she tells you that the other flute is on a remote island which you go to with Lily it's here in the rain that Lily recaps how useless she's been for the sixth time in the past thirty minutes then she pretty much confesses her love for you but not quite it's basically like anime confesses her love she goes on and on about how great you are and how you're always there for her and how she wants to travel with you and become a trainer after you're done with your Island challenge of course my character goes [Music] then we go up to the moon flute where we receive the option of taking it or not in a twist that I honestly never saw coming my character declines the flu hops on a Charizard and leaves Lily to die on the remote island salt then became a humble poke a bean farmer supplying his beans to all of the allall in cafes so after dealing with the remains of team skull plumeria admits that she's been a big Meany and to Lily and that she wants us to help them get Guzman back from the void it's not a horrible turn for the team of villains as they've always seemed a lot more like a goofy group of wayward teens than an actual crime syndicate also eyebrows here gives you the final kahuna exam before you head on into the canyon so you make your way through this gigantic Canyon battling trainers running into Pokemon and pushing boulders around getting the fair easy crystal from a wandering hippie plowing through the final trial site and making it to the altar of the moon this gigantic Canyon is actually probably the equivalent of victory road in this game which is interesting because it has a lot of the mechanics of past victory roads but it isn't called that it's just vast Pony Canyon and you don't really realize this until later on in the game when you go up the mountain to the Elite Four and you realize how short of a travel that was anyways I'll pop slew Nala who Lily understands of course I just really dislike that trope of people understanding a Pokemon or animal perfectly what's that boy there's no footage of the Pentagon being hit by a plane on 9/11 despite the area being under very heavy surveillance well that's just kind of irrelevant if you ask me but you believe what you want to believe stung key into ultra space you go where Gus Mislav swatting up on a rock thing he goes on to tell you how he tried to capture a big jellyfish Pokemon by charging at at full force well that didn't work out and now he's scared of them geez then you've got this absolute nut of a human being loose amine good god she just goes on about leaving her there to be with the big jellyfish and I'm all for that honestly she can't hurt anyone else here in this purgatory I don't know if she even has food she goes on basically to say that she just wants the things she wants that she has no interest in being with her daughter or anyone else Lilly calls her out for treating living beings like they're objects and loose amines like alright yeah whatever dude even trainer's box their Pokemon when they're not useful there's something that this game really is good at and that's cutting through that safety net of acknowledgment that keeps them more ethical questions of Pokemon at bay for the past few versions game freaks really made it a point to go look at the pokémon that trainers use when they battle they love battling with their trainers but they never really acknowledged the part where trainers shoved them into balls and toss them into pcs when they're done this game actually manages to address both lucemon makes a halfway decent point that would be taken way more seriously if she wasn't absolutely insane and nanu actually Ponder's on whether pokémon like residing inside pokeballs or not there's not an answer for these questions of course because the game doesn't make it a point to show you what's going on inside of a ball or a PC or anything it's just that they toss them out there with no elaboration which i think is probably the best way to handle it anyways back to this lunatic she pulls out a pokeball throws it up into the air pops out a big jellyfish and then she merges with the jellyfish you don't understand the gravity of this moment this is the one thing that made my character form a different facial expression I don't get the reason for it though this is like Lysander coming in with his big stupid robot arms popping out of his back like we're having a Pokemon battle dude not a street fight I really don't understand this one at all but you have a normal last Pokemon fight with no ultra beast involved except I guess her Pokemon all seem to be boosted like ultra beasts get boosts maybe that was the point of polymerizing with her Pokemon I don't know what I do know is that afterwards Lilly calls the nala over and it just [ __ ] kills her mom damn kidding she makes it can you imagine she tells Lilly she's beautiful and then passes out and everyone gets pulled back into the real world so you capture the big shower-curtain give it a new nickname that Lily refuses to respect and then she goes off to take care of her mother yeah Lily's alright as much as she needed constant protection she definitely has a pretty strong conviction to be charging ahead all the time with no fighting Pokemon after all this is said and done nanu actually shows up to tell you the head to the newly constructed Pokemon League and even escorts you there of course Clarion is waiting for you and he goes thanks for everything you've done man I really do appreciate it more than you know well I guess the only thing I can really offer to thank you is a great Pokemon battle so what no no no no no just a fond farewell would be stellar for me my dude from here it's up the mountain and a final encounter with how he's got a bit more bearable now that he's finally seemed to have acquired a fighting edge to want to overcome you but that was a lengthy endeavor to reach this stage and finally we take on the elite for the four people that you take on are all people that you've met and gotten to know across the game this includes Halle Olivia the rola and the fan favorite golf lady after you mash through them all you wind up face to face with the champion and creator of Lola's League professor Kukui I think this was all handled pretty well after you become champion you go back to the first village of the game to celebrate so after utterly melting the island sacred Guardian and a wave of poison we come back to the party so that I can reject Lily's advances by pretending to get distracted by fireworks so yeah that's about it Lily leaves a Lola after being shot down and my character goes back to having the same Groundhog Day scenario play out with his mother stretching on the porch and someone being at the door I assume that howl gains a bunch of weight from trying to eat himself to death there's actually more to the story as far as ultra beasts and that that one tree that you battle act what's that called ah battle tree it's cool as hell because it's actually a pretty damn challenging tree and red and blue actually show up there and you can battle them but yeah this is uh this is my 47th page of script and I think I might be going insane so I think I think we'll put the brakes on this one and call it a day oh and all Pokemon games have really almost always put the plot second behind everything else red and blue had a basic outline but it really didn't need to have more at this stage gold and silver had a little more meat but it fell far short of anything spectacular Ruby and Sapphire started to push the plot a little more but at the cost of some serious logistic issues diamond and pearl took its plot way too seriously with very little substance and had some horrid issues with pacing and character personalities black and white really tried to push Pokemon storytelling to new heights and I'd argue that it very much did succeed even with a few hiccups black and white two's pacing was a lot better even if the actual story was a bit weaker than its predecessor X&Y was a walking disaster of a plot that really tried to cut deep but wound up overshooting its entire premise with horrific dialogue weak character premises and a baffling conclusion that did not feel good despite the attempt at tugging on the heartstrings and finally I have to say that Sun and Moon has the most fleshed out and well-written plot of the series and a lot of people are gonna take issue with that opinion I mean honestly there are quite a few things that Sun and Moon did do wrong including stuff like not having the National Dex for the first game ever but despite the long long cutscenes every character felt pretty realistic they weren't always likable but they were all written pretty well they all show development in their own ways and I did enjoy the plot for what it was it's not a story that I'm gonna look back and tell people about besides in this video but I'd say it's about as good as I ever would have expected out of the series thanks for watching I think I've spent like three months making to Pokemon videos because apparently I don't think about the ramifications when I come up with ideas for videos I was going to initially do another video about mechanics too but it's just too much at this point anyways my next video is gonna be about Skyrim so hopefully that'll tickle a few people's fancy also I'd like to give a huge thanks and a brief mention to Ben Q these dudes sent me over this screen bar reading lamp for my monitor and it's honestly infinitely more useful than I thought it would be if you have any interest in using a light source to see better in the dark check out the Amazon link in the description beyond that I make some really cool tweets about very important information that people can't afford to miss out on I remember that I have a twitch and I stream on it at least once a month and I have a discord where we talk about we talk about it's looking like anime so good and pop into that if you want to talk to people about topics that's all I got have a good one

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 2,840,961

Rating: 4.7704496 out of 5

Keywords: Pokemon, Story, Evaluation, Review, Rant, Generation, I-VII, 1-7, Red, Blue, Gold, Silver, Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, Pearl, Black, White, Black 2, White 2, X and Y, Sun, Moon, Gary Oak, Lance, Giovanni, Elite Four, Pokemon League, Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Game Freak, Archie, Maxie, May, Dawn, Rowan, Barry, Cynthia, Natural Harmonia Groupus, What a silly name, Ghetsis, Cheren, Bianca, Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, Alder, Lysandre, AZ, Serena, Kukui, Lillie, Lusamine, Gladion, Rival, Hau

Id: 1tlAoVLcaj8

Length: 174min 26sec (10466 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019