His Hydrapple being Tera-Fighting is probably meant to counter Ice types
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(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
His Hydrapple being Tera-Fighting is probably meant to counter Ice types
What if Tera-Fighting is how he beat Drayton (Dodging a 2-Shot from anything Arch could use while keeping a 2HKO of his own with Dragon Pulse on both being Tera'd)?
I always took Kieran's Hydrapple Tera to be more of a Thematic choice than a Gameplay one (ironic given the state he's in during that battle) since he's so single-mindedly obsessed with battling (like Nemona levels but toxic). The type just also happens to have some benefits to his Hydrapple without being a "perfect" flip the way something like Fire -> Grass does for a type-change Tera. Every other major Tera-using opponent using a Tera of their type specialty (most Gym Leaders and both Elite Four) or same-type on their Ace (Nemona, Arven, and Penny), all of which were extremely simple "first choice" types, so I'm left to presume there was some deliberation behind Hydrapple's being neither of its types while Kieran doesn't have a Type theme to play into it like Lacey's Excadrill.
I will also go to bat that a few unique Tera usages pop up like the mentioned Lacey (Excadrill resists/is immune to Fairy's typical weaknesses to discourage them alongside Fairy/Ground having strong Neutral Coverage without specific Dual Types/Levitators) or Iono's infamous Mismagius, and Brassius's Sudowoodo isn't illogical for its placement thanks to Rock hitting the early game Grass answers (Fire, Flying, Bug). It's uncommon but they try it a few times, I think the main issue being that effective use of Tera for anything besides a Power Boost (either STAB stacking or adding a new one) requires careful timing and use when the AI is scripted to throw it as soon as the mon comes out at the end.
Yeah I think the stronger argument for Tera Fighting is that it hits Steel-types, because if you're worried about covering Grass/Dragon's weaknesses you're much better off going Tera Steel. Having said that, though, it knows Gyro Ball too anyway and it gets Body Press, so I think they could have had their cake and eaten it too with Tera Steel over Tera Fighting and Body Press over Tera Blast. I guess this battle's one of the few where Tera Blast makes sense as coverage, so maybe they wanted to showcase it while they had the opportunity.
Ultimately, I think the idea was to make him stand out with a less obvious choice (that also works well visually with Hydrapple's design) without being too threatening to a more casual player. I don't think that was a necessary 'nerf' if that truly was the logic, but I don't mind it as a choice.
Ultimately, I think the idea was to make him stand out with a less obvious choice (that also works well visually with Hydrapple's design) without being too threatening to a more casual player. I don't think that was a necessary 'nerf' if that truly was the logic, but I don't mind it as a choice.
Not sure if I'd call this an annoyance on my end but with the benefit of hindsight it's pretty weird that Indigo Disk didn't have a no-holds-barred BW character cameo chucked in. I think the unstated collective assumption was "Alright, they're saving Adult Cheren/Bianca/Hugh and co. for the actual new Unova game that is definitely happening" and well, we know how that turned out
They've really dialled back the fun-but-pointless cameos, haven't they? Thinking about how HGSS had Crasher Wake and Maylene show up for no good reason and how the Alola titles had a bunch of random characters like Wally show up in the Battle Tree, there's very little of that sort of thing in the more recent games.
Also Geeta uses a Tera-Flying Kingambit as her ace in her league club rematch (and leads with Glimmora)
Going off my comment about cross-generational cameos earlier, one other thing I miss is cross-canon references being subtle.
Discounting Pokemon Yellow, which is obviously a straightforward shout-out to the anime* most of the early games were quite subtle in their references. There's stuff like random NPCs being named for anime characters (several NPCs in DPP are named for film characters in the original Japanese, though the translation teams largely failed to notice these) and some slightly more blatant shout-outs like one of the Mt Battle trainers in XD having a team consisting of Cacnea and Chimecho and asking the player "I've heard someone else has the same team as me. Do you know him or her?" after being defeated. Everyone knows about the girl in GSC who tells the player that she once saw a pink Butterfree. And there's a bunch of mechanical stuff like Pokemon encounter rates being tweaked to reference the anime - in HGSS Pidgeotto is catchable in Viridian Forest and Mr Mime can be caught near Pallet Town, for instance.
Now it's all "HEY DID YOU KNOW ASH EXISTS WOULD YOU LIKE HIS SPECIAL GRENINJA". Which just feels like fanservice, and not good fanservice. I've always thought that Ash-Greninja being available in the games was a dumb idea and the fact they abandoned the alternate form mechanic after a couple of generations pretty much validates that. The various Hat Pikachu were not quite as egregious since... well, they're Pikachu, so it seems far less likely Game Freak will ever remove their data from the games. I'm not a massive fan of novelty costume Pokemon in general though.
I'm sure others will disagree on this but personally I've never wanted to play "as Ash" in any of the games so stuff like that turns me off. They're two different continuities and while references like the XD thing are fun (and event distributions like Cilan's Pansage are pretty cool) they're more than enough.
*though still actually fairly restrained! They could have gone a lot harder with it than they did
Discounting Pokemon Yellow, which is obviously a straightforward shout-out to the anime* most of the early games were quite subtle in their references. There's stuff like random NPCs being named for anime characters (several NPCs in DPP are named for film characters in the original Japanese, though the translation teams largely failed to notice these) and some slightly more blatant shout-outs like one of the Mt Battle trainers in XD having a team consisting of Cacnea and Chimecho and asking the player "I've heard someone else has the same team as me. Do you know him or her?" after being defeated. Everyone knows about the girl in GSC who tells the player that she once saw a pink Butterfree. And there's a bunch of mechanical stuff like Pokemon encounter rates being tweaked to reference the anime - in HGSS Pidgeotto is catchable in Viridian Forest and Mr Mime can be caught near Pallet Town, for instance.
Now it's all "HEY DID YOU KNOW ASH EXISTS WOULD YOU LIKE HIS SPECIAL GRENINJA". Which just feels like fanservice, and not good fanservice. I've always thought that Ash-Greninja being available in the games was a dumb idea and the fact they abandoned the alternate form mechanic after a couple of generations pretty much validates that. The various Hat Pikachu were not quite as egregious since... well, they're Pikachu, so it seems far less likely Game Freak will ever remove their data from the games. I'm not a massive fan of novelty costume Pokemon in general though.
I'm sure others will disagree on this but personally I've never wanted to play "as Ash" in any of the games so stuff like that turns me off. They're two different continuities and while references like the XD thing are fun (and event distributions like Cilan's Pansage are pretty cool) they're more than enough.
*though still actually fairly restrained! They could have gone a lot harder with it than they did
crasher wake got dexited :(
I kind of think this might be on the back of them not wanting to root themselves on the Pokemon timeline too hard. Like we can make references to the past & how things are passively changing to always be contemporary, of course, but I suspect they don't want to define themselves by "oh Clay is like super old now" or "oh Red is even older, huh..." or "Hey shouldn't Professor Oak be dead by now". & they probably want to also avoid just dropping characters unchanged; easier to get away with that in sprite-based titles.
Seems like their way of doing refences in the modern titles is less cameos and more stuff like the outfits you can wear or flavor text you can see.
Honestly Alola probably only did it because it was poised as an anniversary title, which also probably justified just plopping Wally & Cynthia completely unchanged in the battle tree while everyone else got a new design (& the USUM villains get handwaved by wormholes). Gen 6 didn't do any cameos either outside of textual references & Looker iirc.
Could also make the argument that Pokemon Masters being a continual cameo machine kind of takes the heat off, I suppose.
Oh but having said that, Gen 10 feels set to be a 30th anniversary affair, so perhaps we go back to that Alolan-style update anyway. Who knows, right? Maybe we see middle aged Red and retirement home Oak after all
not that there's been particularly many since...well gen 4 anyway, huh?
I can't recall any direct references in Gen 5. Gen 6 at least has Rayquaza & Deoxys as an allusion to the movie....and an even vaguer allusion that the birds in XY roost in "Sea Spirit's Den" (surely Lugia would've been there in Z Version, but....)
Gen 7 had Ash-Greninja was effectively limited to a demo and existed mostly so that the fancy new form they helped make had a home. & Cap Pikachu (/Pikashium-Z) was more an anniversary thing & seems they gave up on the idea of continuing to support more of them after adding the 2 caps in gen 8.
Gen 8 Dada Zarude...exists! Also feels like something that could concievably exist unattached from Koko. So that's nice? I guessssss the fact the birds & Lugia are VE in BDSP is kind of a reference. The event Shiny Zoroark mask from the hisui webisodes can also count.
& Gen 9 had no references to the anime at all to my recollection. I mean, beyond supporting the Cap Pikachu and Dada Zarude.
But outside of that it's just been event giveaways like Liko's Sprigatito and such, and they've being doing those since at least gen 4.
Legends and SV to a degree also gives them an avenue of "here's someone who's clearly related to the character but also decidedly not the same person" with the ancestors (in reverse with Perrin) at the expense of not being able to feature them in story without a handwave in Masters (like Adaman's excuse would be Dialga but Irida might have to piggyback off him since Palkia is Space). A lot of the flavor text options in SV also seem to come with a character of their own like Drayton or Lacey being related to Drayden and Clay rather than just an off-hand reference by NPC's as passing conversation.
I can't recall there being that many anime-based event distributions in Gen IV outside of movie Pokemon (though I assume there were at least a couple); Gen V's where they pivoted to doing a lot more event distributions directly based on the anime (Ash's Pidove, Iris' Axew, Cilan's Pansage, there was a Team Rocket Meowth at one point I'm fairly certain) so I'd say that's where the shift began
Though Gen V's allusions are still, in the main, fairly low-key: there are the events with Zoroark and Celebi in BW which are a pretty direct reference to that one movie, though those are not dependent on having seen the games (the Zoroark is always female, but equally you could just read that as... it being a female Zoroark). Similarly B2W2 also had a couple of downloadable tournaments for the PWT which IIRC were based on the anime but it's not like you needed to be familiar with the characters involved to play it. The main subtle(ish) allusions that comes to mind is Striaton City filling up with Stunfisk at night in B2W2 or Drayden referencing the Village of Dragons.
In general I'd say it feels like later gens have attempted to bring the two continuities closer together more directly*, with things like Steven referencing meeting Alain in ORAS and the Alola games referencing Ash as a trainer who exists in-universe. There are also a lot more event distributions of the Gen V type where it was "X's Pokemon from the anime", like Dawn's Piplup or Serena's Fennekin.
Dada Zarude is such a weird one because to me it existing at all is a prime example of an unnecessary and really forced anime shout-out. I mean we see Pokemon which have some sort of distinguishing physical feature or item of clothing in the anime, why is this one so important? It's a purely cosmetic addition; it would be like making Richie's Pikachu its own form.
*though as you note ScVi largely did away with this
Things are gonna get freakin' wacky in this department if Legends Z-A is actually set after XY. Like I've always assumed the reason Masters hasn't added Alola Red and Blue is because they don't wanna figure out the logistics of an alternate version of the mascot characters existing that is visibly older than them but now they potentially have a bajillion Alola Red & Blues coming their way. Am I gonna have to analyze the number of wrinkles on the face of Silver Fox Sycamore (judgement day for the female and gay fanbase) to figure out the length of the timeskip?
On the topic of anime references, wasn't Alain referenced in all by name in the Delta Episode? With it being related to the event shiny Beldum? -that I could never get despite being free...- or am I remembering some wacky dream?
For the Indigo Disk, it should also be considered how badly Unova designs could clash with the more realistic ones in SV. Clay in particular would look strange.
I kind of dread Gen 10. I have enjoyed SV's base game greatly and it didn't need past references/cameos, and the ones in Indigo Disk and epilogue were cool because of the setting. I loved LA and it was full of ancestors as we all know, and I loved Perrin and her (first, the sexond one was disappointing) quest. So I shouldn't be against cameos per se, I love the more unexpected ones...but it's hard not to thing they have not throw Kanto nostalgia at us for a long time and they will for sure enjoy doing ir on the anniversary. Ironically enough I think it was at its worst in XY which was not an anniversary game. I can deal with it if it isn't too extreme.
I would prefer ZA to be a standalone story that can hold its own without playing the related games as LA was, but if it is in the present like many of us guess, it would be very unlikely.
For the Indigo Disk, it should also be considered how badly Unova designs could clash with the more realistic ones in SV. Clay in particular would look strange.
I kind of dread Gen 10. I have enjoyed SV's base game greatly and it didn't need past references/cameos, and the ones in Indigo Disk and epilogue were cool because of the setting. I loved LA and it was full of ancestors as we all know, and I loved Perrin and her (first, the sexond one was disappointing) quest. So I shouldn't be against cameos per se, I love the more unexpected ones...but it's hard not to thing they have not throw Kanto nostalgia at us for a long time and they will for sure enjoy doing ir on the anniversary. Ironically enough I think it was at its worst in XY which was not an anniversary game. I can deal with it if it isn't too extreme.
I would prefer ZA to be a standalone story that can hold its own without playing the related games as LA was, but if it is in the present like many of us guess, it would be very unlikely.
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it was really bold of Genius Sonority to include the most cancerous final boss I've seen in any video game
Seriously. Evice is so unfun and overtuned that he's one of those final bosses that completely sours my opinion of the entire game. Even if the game sets up a checkpoint once you beat Nascour so you go straight back to Evice if you lose, it's still a brutal move for the first time player. Four back-to-back fights before you heal, a pretty good but slightly tough Nascour battle, but then the absolute insanity of Evice is too much.
The previous bosses are tough but mostly fun. While Colosseum has underwhelming team options, you can make some of it work for everything but this.
This...no.
Final boss or not, Evice skews way too close to rom hack design for me to feel comfortable. The other bosses had some shades of that (ex: Venus 1's Vileplume having Stun Spore / Attract) but it never went into outright nonsense like Evice does. A team this cracked needed to be scaled down to Nascour's mid 50-levels, maybe even lower. I would not blame any kid if they never saw the ending of this game because it's locked behind hours-long grinding just because "it's the final boss!"
Evice is why I can't recommend Pokemon Colosseum to people and just tell them to play XD instead. XD's final dungeon might take a while but I think the scope and atmosphere is at least worth playing once.
Seriously. Evice is so unfun and overtuned that he's one of those final bosses that completely sours my opinion of the entire game. Even if the game sets up a checkpoint once you beat Nascour so you go straight back to Evice if you lose, it's still a brutal move for the first time player. Four back-to-back fights before you heal, a pretty good but slightly tough Nascour battle, but then the absolute insanity of Evice is too much.
The previous bosses are tough but mostly fun. While Colosseum has underwhelming team options, you can make some of it work for everything but this.
This...no.
Final boss or not, Evice skews way too close to rom hack design for me to feel comfortable. The other bosses had some shades of that (ex: Venus 1's Vileplume having Stun Spore / Attract) but it never went into outright nonsense like Evice does. A team this cracked needed to be scaled down to Nascour's mid 50-levels, maybe even lower. I would not blame any kid if they never saw the ending of this game because it's locked behind hours-long grinding just because "it's the final boss!"
Evice is why I can't recommend Pokemon Colosseum to people and just tell them to play XD instead. XD's final dungeon might take a while but I think the scope and atmosphere is at least worth playing once.
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Something I find funny about this is how this design is mostly difficult because of Colosseum's Roster, though the main "gotcha" is if you don't know Evice's team to avoid his combos getting in together
Most of the Physical attackers would be hard-shut-down by burns, but nothing available has WoW as an option. Misdreavus sits pretty well on Slaking but is literally the only Ghost option and in turn can't do very much back (even without the level gap). Skarmory is in a similar position for it, Machamp, Salamence, and Scizor, but you literally would have to just stop and go Purify it since Gonzap is the last fight before the Colosseum gauntlet.
My hang-up is just that while Evice uses more complex strategies than most opponents (Baton Passing, Skill Swapping his Slaking), you ultimately don't deal with him very differently than you would most other opponents (Taunt to prevent the Status moves, maybe Paralyze, and otherwise a Slugfest) unless the level gap hits your team that hard. It's not to the extent I can't recommend the game, but there's also the bungled design of the Gauntlet trainers themselves not really escalating until Nascour and Evice jump in levels, nor are they that removed from Gonzap's levels just beforehand. It results in not really having a good spot to grind if you need the level increase or to purify Shadow Pokemon for new strategies, and I always recommend in favor of the Master Ball duplication glitch simply because removing a Pokemon for free is legitimately a fight decider at this stage.
My hang-up is just that while Evice uses more complex strategies than most opponents (Baton Passing, Skill Swapping his Slaking), you ultimately don't deal with him very differently than you would most other opponents (Taunt to prevent the Status moves, maybe Paralyze, and otherwise a Slugfest) unless the level gap hits your team that hard. It's not to the extent I can't recommend the game, but there's also the bungled design of the Gauntlet trainers themselves not really escalating until Nascour and Evice jump in levels, nor are they that removed from Gonzap's levels just beforehand. It results in not really having a good spot to grind if you need the level increase or to purify Shadow Pokemon for new strategies, and I always recommend in favor of the Master Ball duplication glitch simply because removing a Pokemon for free is legitimately a fight decider at this stage.
From my experience the best strategy for the final boss is to Master Ball Skarmory, TM Toxic on, spam healing items.
Maybe not recommending the game just because of Evice is extreme, but even discounting it, I just don't think Colosseum is all that fun to play. You use the same 8 or so generic goodstuffs every run. A lot of Colosseum's interesting options have many caveats to them. Remoraid having non-trash availability? It starts at Level 20 for no reason. Plusle sounding cool in Double Battles? Minun is not in the game at all. Qwilfish sounds kinda neat? Too bad you need the Sludge Bomb TM from the Under with endgame levels to make it actually usable. Slugma has Flamethrower? Magcargo has lol Fire/Rock defensive typing. Hitmontop would be cool...if you didn't require the Brick Break TM to do much of anything. VERY RARELY you'll get something kinda okay like Swablu which gets Safeguard or Meditite with HJK or Furret being amazing in general, but it's the exception and not the norm.
Compare this to XD, where almost every Pokemon has actually usable stats / typings and amazing movesets (bar a few Poke Spot things like lolTrapinch). Because Colosseum spikes levels constantly, you simply cannot afford to use trash like Sneasel or Delibird or Sunflora or Yanma or Dunsparce or slow vulnerable stuff like Piloswine or Sudowoodo. XD has a way more balanced level curve that encourages you to experiment a little with teambuilding. Even some of the decent Colosseum options like Mantine come with pretty much one good offensive STAB move and that's all they are doing. XD has actual coverage stuff like Gulpin with Shock Wave, Kangaskhan with Earthquake, Chansey with Thunderbolt, Starmie with Ice Beam, Golduck with Brick Break.
One of Pokemon's greatest attributes in the installments that stick with the core teambuilding gameplay is the replay variety. Colosseum gives you limited tools but a lot of them have insane asterisks. Almost every XD option, even most of the late ones in the final dungeon are capable (tho idk why they included Farfetch'd in a boss roster lmao) and it goes a long way in making me want to play it again.
Unless you're trying to use level caps in a game especially not designed for it, where 90% of the experience comes from grinding Mt. Battle and trainer rematches (Not to mention all the battling necessary to purify the shadows), Evice is a joke I shit stomped at first try at 11, the Gonzap fight before the Colosseum was harder.
Umbreon two-shot Slowking, Magcargo melted Scizor instantly, Suicune obliterated Salamence, and Machamp just kept missing Cross Chops until it went down, I don't remember what Slaking did, but I remember ignoring its existence while trying to catch Tyranitar before giving up and just using the Master Ball.
If you're just playing normally without slapping a bunch of restrictions on yourself you'll just plow right through him, especially since story trainers in Colosseum don't have EVs and I'm pretty sure they also have random IVs.
Evice would be difficult if he didn't have randomized leads, so his strategy is a crapshoot.
Slowking is also, well, slow, so you can quickly demonstrate why Skill Swap Slaking shenanigans never really took off anywhere if he ever gets that leading pair off.
I get why people would be scared of him, but it's frankly overblown. You have plenty of options to handle him comfortably.
My ass meanwhile having the worst rng for worst natures for mons
...which affects the already garbage purification rate
I did not enjoy Colo. Ignoring that Evice took 3 tries, While I did a good chunk of Battle Pike to grind, I was very underleveled cuz I lost mons easily due to slowness and "status hax" in most boss fights, while Pike starts at very low levels. Plusle has some neat utility tools (false tears, usable sp atk, quick attack), but the grinding needed to make it useful since you get it ay lvl 15 is ridiculous. Campaign wise, there's less to do than RS, and lot of the roster are fodder
There's a reason speedrunner brute force RNG to ensure Typhlosion and natures, it's just a slog otherwise
...which affects the already garbage purification rate
I did not enjoy Colo. Ignoring that Evice took 3 tries, While I did a good chunk of Battle Pike to grind, I was very underleveled cuz I lost mons easily due to slowness and "status hax" in most boss fights, while Pike starts at very low levels. Plusle has some neat utility tools (false tears, usable sp atk, quick attack), but the grinding needed to make it useful since you get it ay lvl 15 is ridiculous. Campaign wise, there's less to do than RS, and lot of the roster are fodder
There's a reason speedrunner brute force RNG to ensure Typhlosion and natures, it's just a slog otherwise
I'm (mostly) a Colo defender but one thing I will say is that it badly needed a mass-purification mechanic like XD had. Any time I've played that game and purified all 48 Shadow Pokemon, it's been by swapping them in and out in batches of seven* every few hours while I do that infinite-walking glitch where you fool the joystick into thinking that neutral=down on that one bit of cliff in Agate Village. Not fun at all.
*six in party, plus one in the daycare
*six in party, plus one in the daycare
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I also misused Exp share entirely for Plusle, so I was underleveled for Nascour/Evice even more
Well that one's on you.
But seriously, Plusle wrecks in Colosseum and it's heartbreaking that so many guides tell people not to bother with it. My most successful Colo team ever was Espeon, Umbreon, Qwilfish, Plusle, Suicune, and Raikou. Very nearly the perfect rain team.
My biggest gripes with Colosseum is that it somehow didn't have every TM available, and Water-types are often boom or bust because most high-end Water moves are HMs and those aren't available either. It also feels a bit short, but maybe I was having too much fun.
The roster is something that people criticize a lot, and while I get it, it does enough.
For example, you get very good offensive options with Espeon, Raikou, Suicune, Meditite, and Flygon.
Even if you don't want to use the beasts, Ampharos and Feraligatr are pretty good replacements.
On the defensive/supportive ends, you also have solid options and they also work because doubles allow their teammates to pick up the slack. For example, Jumpluff barely deals any kind of damage, but that doesn't matter in the slightest with an outrageously fast Sleep Powder and Flygon spamming EQ late-game.
It gets even crazier. You can use DD Altaria + Psych Up Medicham. This is a thing that actually works.
Colosseum gives you a bunch of Johto mons and some Hoenn rejects and says "Have fun". Sure, having a Swampert would probably be more fun, but they give you things to work with. Especially if they have access to screens. Doubles is a fun format.
The roster is something that people criticize a lot, and while I get it, it does enough.
For example, you get very good offensive options with Espeon, Raikou, Suicune, Meditite, and Flygon.
Even if you don't want to use the beasts, Ampharos and Feraligatr are pretty good replacements.
On the defensive/supportive ends, you also have solid options and they also work because doubles allow their teammates to pick up the slack. For example, Jumpluff barely deals any kind of damage, but that doesn't matter in the slightest with an outrageously fast Sleep Powder and Flygon spamming EQ late-game.
It gets even crazier. You can use DD Altaria + Psych Up Medicham. This is a thing that actually works.
Colosseum gives you a bunch of Johto mons and some Hoenn rejects and says "Have fun". Sure, having a Swampert would probably be more fun, but they give you things to work with. Especially if they have access to screens. Doubles is a fun format.
That's because you're doing it wrong. Like yeah, the glitch works but just taking 6 Shadows through the early areas of Mt. Battle just only using Shadow Rush to repeatedly call them out of Hyper Mode is faster.