SPOILERS! Legends: Arceus Playthrough Discussion

[Missingno.1998]

Beat the aggresive mons in the area first (like alpha Skuntank), so they dont disrupt the fight.
Hide behind a rock and try to take the first few shields with a wing ball from a safe distance (try to hit and run if she still attack you), for the last shield charge with Wyrdeer and throw something right next to her so you can quickly send out a mon to fight before she can recover, you may need some luck as she loves to use hurricane where you are standing, try using evade as soon as you leave wyrdeer if you have too much trouble.

Thank you, I'm going to try this! Seems like a lot of luck is involved. I tried to use Braviary to jump down, attack, and retreat to the sky. But her attacks can reach me from up high!

I'm up to attempt number 6 so far. The area is terrible and she is stationary for like two seconds.

 

[RocketSurgery]

Ok, I take back my statement about the outbreak shiny hunting method being amazing and am bordering on conspiracy theories about it being glitched. I haven't encountered any shiny zorua today, and I'd say I've hunted for at least 6 hours. It takes about a minute for me to do a checking loop, so if we round that up to 2 minutes to account for some variability and having to soft reset occasionally, that's 180 outbreak checks over those 6 hours. Since there are 4 zorua per outbreak (without engaging to spawn more), that's effectively 720 checks. With dex level 10 and perfect for zorua, an outbreak gives 29 extra rolls, so unless I'm misunderstanding something that's a 29 in 4096 chance per mon. Assuming those are all independent chances, the odds of not getting at least 1 shiny in those 720 checks is about 0.6%, or on average 6 in 1000 people would fail to get a shiny in this many checks.

That's not unbelievable odds, so entirely within the realm of possibly that I am having a streak of rather bad luck here. On the other hand, I don't think I've seen an alpha zorua today either... I have, however, picked up another shiny swinub and a shiny aipom.

The main difference from yesterday is that I stopped saving after every outbreak check in case I accidentally ended the outbreak, but I wouldn't think that would somehow mess with the mon queue...

At any rate, maybe it's time to pause the shiny alpha zorua dream for a bit. :P

 

[Steel With It]

RocketSurgery Did you see my post about suffering through 1560 Basculins before striking gold? =P On the other hand, it took friggin' hundreds of rerolls to find a Goomy swarm but only ten swarms to find God - and on the mutant third hand, I've found two random shiny Psyducks and a random shiny Golduck (???).

The inner workings of RNGesus are incomprehensible to the minds of mortal men.

 

[KaenSoul]

The main difference from yesterday is that I stopped saving after every outbreak check in case I accidentally ended the outbreak, but I wouldn't think that would somehow mess with the mon queue...

As long as you save the game each time you return to the map it should work, as you need to move the seed by returning to the town after each reset, then go to the map and save at the camp, check the outbreak and reset the game, the best way to know if it is working is seeing different mons in the outbreak (as in size, gender, etc).
Also seeing different mons outside of the outbreak doesnt mean you are actually moving the seed as the outbreaks work by its own as far as i know, i would be worry if i dont see a single alpha in the outbreak after a few tries.

 

[R_N]

Beat the first leg of the post game

you know the battle

I uh, completely trounced him with legendaries. I kind of overprepared lmao.
So first of all, this was a game where I just...didn't really have a set team at all. The way the game is structured I just never felt the need to out side ofa few pokemon here & there, then the post game was mostly just capturing a bunch of dweebs so I just ran around with dailga & palkia and went sure whatever and put more legends on the team as i got them.
Then I shoved them full of exp stuff to around level 74/75 and gave them a bunch of grit. And then I head into battle and oh
he's level 68

Somehow, this entire time, I thought he was late 70s to early 80s. OOPS

it was still a cool battle, I especially liked the transition from Altered to Origin both in effects and in the music. But I want to finish out the game before really commenting on the story beats here

 

[Eriorguez]

Yeah, the battle is cool but you still get punished with a revenge kill or 2 without doing anything wrong, and the fact that you don't get experience at all until the battle tends to make it that the MVP gets KOed at the tail end and gets no experience.

The battle system is obtuse and I won't miss it.

 

[RocketSurgery]

RocketSurgery Did you see my post about suffering through 1560 Basculins before striking gold? =P On the other hand, it took friggin' hundreds of rerolls to find a Goomy swarm but only ten swarms to find God - and on the mutant third hand, I've found two random shiny Psyducks and a random shiny Golduck (???).

The inner workings of RNGesus are incomprehensible to the minds of mortal men.

Yes, I feel for you! My estimates of encounters were conservative to try and see if it was reasonable that it was bad rng luck, or if something else could be going on in my hunt (and potentially yours). e.g., I was also concerned I hadn't seen any alphas in a while, which seemed like it should be even more unlikely, as KaenSoul suggests below.

As long as you save the game each time you return to the map it should work, as you need to move the seed by returning to the town after each reset, then go to the map and save at the camp, check the outbreak and reset the game, the best way to know if it is working is seeing different mons in the outbreak (as in size, gender, etc).
Also seeing different mons outside of the outbreak doesnt mean you are actually moving the seed as the outbreaks work by its own as far as i know, i would be worry if i dont see a single alpha in the outbreak after a few tries.

Great, thanks for chiming in, I was wondering if not saving could have mucked it up. I tried to see if the Zorua were changing, but it's hard to tell from above since they don't vary a lot in size. I started saving again and got an alpha within a few tries, so I'll keep going to see if the shinies return soon.

 

[KaenSoul]

If it wasnt for the icon you wouldnt know both of those are shiny

Spoiler

At least their evolutions are better at that.
Mass outbreaks are broken.

 

[R_N]

Is there no way to predict the weather or am I just going to be spamming sleep at the coastlands until a storm comes in so I can actually try to catch Thundurus

 

[Kurona]

Does raising your survey corps rank to 10 do anything for you (raise shiny rates etc) or does it just get you the items Cylenne gives you?

 

[R_N]

Does raising your survey corps rank to 10 do anything for you (raise shiny rates etc) or does it just get you the items Cylenne gives you?

Rank 10 & I think getting all the dex entries (well, i dont have rank 10, so those might be basically the same thing) gives you the shiny charm.

 

[Kurona]

Rank 10 & I think getting all the dex entries (well, i dont have rank 10, so those might be basically the same thing) gives you the shiny charm.

Nah, just completing the dex gets you the shiny charm. Completing the dex doesn't get you enough research points for rank 10 though (in my case I was about 6000 points short) so I am wondering if there's any real reward to it. Looking it up on news sites tells me there's a couple item rewards as usual but I wasn't sure if there was anything beyond that, especially since the items didn't seem that special on their own

 

[R_N]

Nah, just completing the dex gets you the shiny charm. Completing the dex doesn't get you enough research points for rank 10 though (in my case I was about 6000 points short) so I am wondering if there's any real reward to it. Looking it up on news sites tells me there's a couple item rewards as usual but I wasn't sure if there was anything beyond that, especially since the items didn't seem that special on their own

Oh I see, I must have gotten Research Level and Star Rank confused.
in that case I think rank 10 is just a prestige thing.

 

[Goodra]

Finished the main game and now into the post content (my copy arrived late). This game is such a breath of fresh air after a decade of decline. The graphics are terrible and it still needs some fine tuning plus online battles but it should be the foundation for future games. Anyone hoping they release an expansion this summer for the game?

Also the team that carried me to the post content

 

[UninspiredLunch]

Just got the shiny charm! What a great entry in the franchise overall, it feels so weird enjoying the vast majority of the gameplay of a pokemon title instead of speeding through the story to get to the 10% of side content I actually give a shit about. Hopefully the DLC gives us more battling stuff and more pokemon, those are basically my only complaints. I think my favorite part was the gradual expansion of the village, I really took my time to get those villagers some alphas and even a couple shinies so my town looks freaking stacked!

 

[R_N]

Alright all the Incarnates are done

From hardest to easiest:
1. Tornadus. The glalies almost killed me i had to spend time getting them out and i SWEAR that bringing the barrier down wasnt registering properly. And it was having trouble reading my throws too for that matter. Also I swear i kept getitng hit by tornados no where near me.
2. Thundurus. I HAD TO WAIT SO LONG FOR HTIS STUPID THING TO SPAWN and I hated riding around on Basculegion for this, but thankfully the slow down effect helps and at least there's not a ton for thundurus to hide behind.
3. Landorus. This was the first one I went after since I didn't have to wait for weather spawns..it didn't go too bad? It was harder mostly because I was just getting used to how these fights work, but he doesnt seem to throw out nearly as many tornados and you can sneak hits in thanks to the weird terrain of Ramans island
4. Enamorus lol. I know people consider this one the hardest but I dunno guys I only saw tornados once and I didn't even interact with any of the alphas near by. I was employing Jet Ball strategies to break the barrier from a distance and while it wasn't going great for Tornadus & Thundurus (since they move so erratically) it works GREAT in the bog since she kind of rests in places more. I also had no problems walking through the muck to get a pokemon close when she finally got stunned.

Also saw a Pichu swarm, which was great to help fill in that dex. Incidentally in all my pre-swarm checks I finally saw a Happiny and a SECOND munchlax before ever seeing another Pichu. Absolutely ridiculous.

So the list of pokemon I got left now are:
-Cherrim. I want to fill out Cherubi's entry in first which is annoying because early game pokemon keep running away and cherubi can barely stand up to midgame pokemon even at level 38. So many absorbs.....whyyyyyy...i havent seen a single one from the trees since i caught this one it sucks.
-Gallade. I do have a male kirlia but I think I'll just backtrack to the temple and catch the alpha there.
-Bonsly....the ore will shake any day now!
-Spiritomb. Found 62 now...getting there slowly but surely. I'll just reference a guide since this is the last big thing to do
-Magnemite, Magneton & Magnezone. UGHHHHHHHHHHH. I seriously spent so long in the coastloads traveling everywhere the hard way for anything I had to do here and even just sat around for 30 minutes while waiting for weather to change instead of spamming rest and it's just never spawning the rift I need. I know I can get Magnezone from the one flying around but that doesnt matter if i'm just not getting the other 2!
-Gliscor. I've almost got the merit needed for the item and i dont feel like grinding on gligars
-Weavile. same (I already bought sneasler's but I'm waiting to see if my next rift has a razor claw in it).

e: Turns out there was a permanent alpha gliscor spawn. so that's one down.

 

[KaenSoul]

Alright all the Incarnates are done

From hardest to easiest:
1. Tornadus. The glalies almost killed me i had to spend time getting them out and i SWEAR that bringing the barrier down wasnt registering properly. And it was having trouble reading my throws too for that matter. Also I swear i kept getitng hit by tornados no where near me.
2. Thundurus. I HAD TO WAIT SO LONG FOR HTIS STUPID THING TO SPAWN and I hated riding around on Basculegion for this, but thankfully the slow down effect helps and at least there's not a ton for thundurus to hide behind.
3. Landorus. This was the first one I went after since I didn't have to wait for weather spawns..it didn't go too bad? It was harder mostly because I was just getting used to how these fights work, but he doesnt seem to throw out nearly as many tornados and you can sneak hits in thanks to the weird terrain of Ramans island
4. Enamorus lol. I know people consider this one the hardest but I dunno guys I only saw tornados once and I didn't even interact with any of the alphas near by. I was employing Jet Ball strategies to break the barrier from a distance and while it wasn't going great for Tornadus & Thundurus (since they move so erratically) it works GREAT in the bog since she kind of rests in places more. I also had no problems walking through the muck to get a pokemon close when she finally got stunned.

Also saw a Pichu swarm, which was great to help fill in that dex. Incidentally in all my pre-swarm checks I finally saw a Happiny and a SECOND munchlax before ever seeing another Pichu. Absolutely ridiculous.

So the list of pokemon I got left now are:
-Cherrim. I want to fill out Cherubi's entry in first which is annoying because early game pokemon keep running away and cherubi can barely stand up to midgame pokemon even at level 38. So many absorbs.....whyyyyyy...i havent seen a single one from the trees since i caught this one it sucks.
-Gallade. I do have a male kirlia but I think I'll just backtrack to the temple and catch the alpha there.
-Bonsly....the ore will shake any day now!
-Spiritomb. Found 62 now...getting there slowly but surely. I'll just reference a guide since this is the last big thing to do
-Magnemite, Magneton & Magnezone. UGHHHHHHHHHHH. I seriously spent so long in the coastloads traveling everywhere the hard way for anything I had to do here and even just sat around for 30 minutes while waiting for weather to change instead of spamming rest and it's just never spawning the rift I need. I know I can get Magnezone from the one flying around but that doesnt matter if i'm just not getting the other 2!
-Gliscor. I've almost got the merit needed for the item and i dont feel like grinding on gligars
-Weavile. same (I already bought sneasler's but I'm waiting to see if my next rift has a razor claw in it).

Im 100% sure there is an alpha Gliscor somewhere in Coronet Highlands (the dex say primeval grotto tho), i think the place is actually clamberclaw cliffs, not too far from the Alpha Probopass at the entrance of Primeval Grotto. And Gabite spawn near Gliscor and Gabite is from clamberclaw.

 

[R_N]

Im 100% sure there is an alpha Gliscor somewhere in Coronet Highlands (the dex say primeval grotto tho), i think the place is actually clamberclaw cliffs, not too far from the Alpha Probopass at the entrance of Primeval Grotto. And Gabite spawn near Gliscor and Gabite is from clamberclaw.

Correct, I found it shortly after making the post. It's in that dead end near the grotto. Clears up the merit for another razor claw very nicely, Weavile's done.

I also wound up catching that magnezone that's flying around so....well that's nice, I guess. Still no Bonsly though.
Speaking of, the dex says Bonsly shows up at cloudpool ridge, but serebii says that's only as a Swarm, is that accurate? Serebii's legends maps have been pretty....iffy, on full information (gliscor isnt on the grotto page ata ll, for example). I wouldn't mind another spot to look for bonsly just as a change of pace, otherwise.

e: Serebii wrong, it does just show up there. Its apparently a rare spawn but for once I was lucky and got it first try.
...wow could they really not bother to put the Mimic task as a double? I hate it when they do this...

 

[Ema Skye]

Finished!!

Closing thoughts in no particular order or significance:

• Arceus fight is really cool. I don't know if I just got the right RNG but it started using Judgement once it was under half frenzy. Made the fight really interesting, though it already was. The fight had a big learning curve to it as a lot of the attacks were just throwing out giant hitboxes and left you to figure it out. Felt like it was designed so that you had to die to figure out what the moves do.
• Genies ranged from pretty dumb to total bullshit. I didn't really struggle with Torn/Thund (took out the Glalies and Torn wasn't that bad; Thundy was a joke). Lando felt kinda dumb but that might've been that I was still figuring out how the tornados worked (I felt like they kept hitting me from behind). Enamorus felt borderline unfair given the bog impedes movement so much, so you're always playing catch up. Ended up devolving the fight into Smoke Ball sneaking which made it a lot less eventful but made it tolerable. Genuinely felt akin to Dark Souls because I probably got 15 deaths just trying to put a mon against Enamorus. If Enamorus wasn't the last mon I needed to complete the dex, I would've probably left the game unfinished; it was that bad.
• Related to the above, throwing a Pokemon out seems to not register, but I can't figure out why it's so inconsistent. I would throw a mon at a genie but nothing would come out and the ball would return to me (this was after I removed the cloud barrier). I had this same problem with some of the Nobles too.
  • Missing wouldn't be so bad if the damage you take during these real-time battles (basically anything you throw balms with) wasn't, essentially, permanent, as the damage heals way too slowly and it feels like you get punished heavily for fights.
• Given the above, menuing feels excessive given how crucial timing is in these boss fights. Scrolling through the item menu with the triggers is definitely easier than pulling up the item menu, but you're still spinning through them (alternating between Poke Balls, Smoke Balls, berries, and mud balls takes forever when it counts). I don't know a good compromise here but this way doesn't work.
• Controls in general are weird. Plus assigning the DPad Up button to be the Pokemon menu, the item menu, the save button and the help button (and more) just felt really weird considering the standard menu buttons are +/-. - even pulls out a map, which feels standard, but + is for rides. But Left/Right Arrow are also for rides, which makes sense, but why is it so far away from the button that summons them. I don't know why the PokeDex gets its own button but half the game feels like it's locked to the UpArrow. Dash button also didn't seem to always register as the character would just stop running after a bit.
• Arc Phone felt pretty underwhelming given that it's basically a map. I felt like the game kept hyping it up to be something cool, but it wasn't.
• Some kind of wisp/Unown locator feels required, even if it's a radar item like Ursaluna. Having a map of the locations is barely helpful if you can't remember which you found before. I spent probably 30 minutes looking for one wisp in Alabaster.
• Jet Balls are ridiculous and once you get them, you don't need any other balls.
• Would like some way to be able to trigger Distortions (or at least to know how to trigger them) because waiting on them feels so random. I suspect it's based on catching Pokemon.
• Not really sure how the Lost Satchels work. I only ever had satchels for the same 6-8 people and I never had a satchel picked up.
• Frostbite and Drowsy are welcome upgrades to Freeze/Sleep and I hope they become permanent. On the other hand, what is the Fixated status?
• Still not feeling it on the battle system due to the Volo fight. The fight essentially devolved into trading Pokemon so I feel like a lot of the strategy isn't there. As I mentioned in my last post, the battle forecast doesn't tell you turn order when another Pokemon is switched in so you're left feeling blind (I oneshot the Spiritomb with Gardevoir only to get KOed with Roserade's agile Energy Ball into Poison Jab). The Giratina portion is stupid thanks to Shadow Force granting evasion and I only one because my Alpha Garchomp lived a Dragon Claw due to its level lead. It's a cool idea though.
  • In general, I feel like I need more information on how action speed is determined. There are moves that increase it, but only sometimes, and Agile Style only sometimes seems to give me more attacks. Unless I missed something in a menu, this is never explained.
• I love the moveset customization and I hope it becomes a permanent feature to change moves on the fly.
• Baby Pokemon are generally just a pain in the ass to find, with sub 10% encounter rates. Most of the babies were the last Pokemon I needed to find (Cleffa, Bonsly and Magby were the last three I spent hours searching for before doing the legendary quests).
  • I would love in a future game to bring back breeding, and breeding becomes how these babies are obtained. This is a cool callback to older games where you couldn't get the babies without breeding. Plus it brings back another loved mechanic and probably helps create some buyback of people not sold on the formula yet.

In general, I loved the game. I am mostly sold on the formula (once they clear up how attack speed works, I'm in). A lot of quality-of-life improvements would definitely help out, but for the first attempt at this kind of game, I'm satisfied. It took me about 50 hours and I feel it was worth it.

 

[R0cky505]

You know I never realized that Heatran dried up the Firespit Island Volcano until I went there for an outbreak. It even stays dried up after catching it.

 

[R_N]

I'm starting to think Bonsly isn't a rare encounter. While I was grinding out cherubi's absorbs I reset the day two more times and each time had a bonsly.

Now I'm just...in the coastlands, forever. Waiting out those magnets....I'm passing the time (literally!) by just grabbing random mons out of storage to flesh out their entries.
In the meantime I also finished out Cherrim's entry for that quest and what on earth where they thinking wtih this quest coming so early? Most of Cherrim's tasks involve seeing it in battle or evolving it from the also-rare cherubi. And the primary way to level up the ranking is with Petal Dance, a move it doesn't get until level 47.
Even if you're extremely lucky, if you want to actually complete this quest when you unlock it you have to catch a bunch of cherubi and then evolve them because that's all you can really do outside of the occasional agile move thrown in. And you do all that, with a rare pokemon, and your reward is ~5 vivichokes~???

 

[Yung Dramps]

Ok so for anyone who's given it a shot, if any, I wanna know: How's the replay value on this game lookin'? With the whole collectathon-esque nature of it and traditional fixed team of 6 building not being as viable I am mildly concerned about it not holding up as well as other entries on future go-arounds

 

[sb879]

Ok so for anyone who's given it a shot, if any, I wanna know: How's the replay value on this game lookin'? With the whole collectathon-esque nature of it and traditional fixed team of 6 building not being as viable I am mildly concerned about it not holding up as well as other entries on future go-arounds

Fixed teambuilding is totally fine so I'm not really sure where that's coming from, but I don't tend to find large games like this very replayable. It's not even necessarily that they aren't still fun the second go around, but that they can be kind of exhausting, especially compared to the fairly linear main games. I have maybe thought of taking a more straight shot approach on another playthrough to get around this, but honestly I think most of the mandatory story bosses in this game aren't that good, so I'd basically be sacrificing what I like about this game - exploring the world and finding Pokemon - to get more quickly to the parts I don't.

edit: I see now you were specifically asking for people who had actually tried replaying it. oops, but here's my thoughts on the matter anyways :x

 

[R_N]

As someone who is probably not replaying this game I think you have to detach it from something like a normal pokemon game and more like, well, a normal single player game without any real extra fixings outside of the content.

If the thing that gets you replaying games is specifically tackling something in a different way every time (in pokemon that'd be team composition, in something like mario odyssey has different moons you can go for instead of OTHER moons, in dark souls that'd probabyl be different builds, etc) then you specifically will probably not get THAT much out of it; like you absolutely can set up a specific team but with how battles get deemphasized on the whole idk if you personalyl would get what you want out of that ordeal.
on the other hand if you just .... like the game... and like replaying games you like....then yeah it'll be fine. No one's hemming & hawing over the staticisity of A Link Between Worlds or New Super Mario Bros U, you know?

 

[The Crusade]

Hallelujah hallelujah, let the holy anthem rise!

Arceus, mine old friend, Thou art beautiful as I found Thee in the year of Thy lordship 2008.

I got him. I finished the dex and got him. Now that I have, I think I'm finally qualified to share some thoughts on the complete experience.

• Overall: it was a joy from start to finish. I was not expecting to enjoy the "open world" and crafting aspects seeing as I loathe what BotW did to LoZ, but being able to fabricate Poké Balls right from the item menu was handy. Battles are integrated almost seamlessly into the surrounding environment—Lopunny changes her posture when standing on sloped surfaces!—and battle text unfolding alongside the animations rather than between them is all I ever wanted. The rapid nature of this new system is addictive. I don't think I could ever go back to SwSh.
• Difficulty: I found it suitably challenging. I was a little worried when Kleavor rolled over after flailing around in a straight line several times, but the late-game and postgame content ramps up the difficulty to something an adult can find engaging. And not in an artificial way like "ur 'mons are Lv. 50 now, grind sum BP." The Tornadus chase had me gnashing my teeth, and the villain is the first in the main series to feel like a JRPG final boss with multiple phases and unique buffs. It's harsh stuff, but it flows naturally from the core gameplay and encourages the player to use their favorites to their fullest potential.
• The World of Hisui: I had my doubts, but it mostly turned out positive. The graphics are... unimpressive, except for that gorgeous nighttime skybox. Some teaser characters like Mai and Ginter turned out to have the depth of the average Poké Mart clerk. I'm still not sold on Irida, but Volo and Adaman are both standouts and great additions to the series. I do not understand why the Pearl Clan relegates itself to one corner of a glacial wasteland when their whole deal is making the most of space (of which there is plenty), and more than anything else the meagerness of civilization beyond Jubilife Village makes the world feel a little incomplete. With that said, GameFreak nevertheless did a solid job turning the GameBoy geography of Sinnoh into something more sensible.
• Favorite new Pokémon: without a doubt, it's Enamorus. I had wondered if we might be receiving another cloud genie the moment I learned of Khu's riddles, and on arrival she has proven to be everything I imagined. I already shilled her plenty in the other thread, but that was solely on a conceptual basis. Now I'm here to say she's fun to play too. Her tail animation is always satisfying to watch, and I have to credit her for singlehandedly fighting off Arceus-Steel in the final battle... twice. Enamorus is the hero of my team.
• Other comments: never let Lv. 78 Alpha Sylveon use Mimic to acquire Springtide Storm—worst mistake I've ever made as a trainer.