My first day in Galar

Hello Island-guests. Today it is time for a new blog, and of course we will be talking about Pokémon. A diary of my characters journeys across Galar. This will mean some spoilers for the Sword and Shield games, although most of what is revealed in this first installment will be part of the common knowledge.It should come to no one’s surprise that I am really enjoying this game. The issues people have with these game either come from rushing or holding expectations based on different IP’s from different developers and I think both are unfair. Sure these games are not technical master pieces, but no pokemon game ever was. Sure the story mode CAN be resolved kind of quick, but that’s not even the point of playing a pokemon game. Yes not everything is in the game , some pokemon and some moves did not make it. People say that gotta catch em all is no longer applicable.. but it NEVER was , those others you just transfer from other games, this changes nothing of Galar’s collections aspect, we can start over again at an equal playing field. It only changes what pokemon we can use in competitive, and most of those who complain aren’t even in that scene. So quit nagging people and enjoy a really solid game the way it’s meant to be played. Slowly.

Pinkie’s journey begins

Dear Diary, today my pokemon journey began, it all started out like a normal day and I was watching Chairman Rose introduce us to the wonderful world of pokemon, he showed the cutest elephant pokemon and I want it!  Can you believe that in other regions the professors do this speech. The old hag Magnolia barely gave me any time of day! Her assistant is kinda cute though. I was watching someone challenge our champion Leon, who kinda has a weird sense of fashion. I wouldn’t call it bad.. but it kinda is. Like a cape and a weird hat and I could swear he is wearing pants under his shorts. I mean we girls wear leggings and it kinda looks like those, but why would a manly man like Leon wear them and why add a pattern to those leggings … I mean ewwwww.  He just doesn’t really look nice face down… he can pose though but hey I can pose too!

Anyway Hop came in.. I think he has ADD and went hyperactive that we had to go to his house to meet his brother. He ran ahead.. I swear he is like a combination of that Barry guy from the Sinnoh region that was like a rival to the hero of space and time and Hau .. the freeloading Malasada guzzling lovable goof who was like best friends with the first Champion of Alola. He kinda looks like a combination of those two too.
Gaaargh…..Leon wasn’t at his house and we had to go all the way to the next town to pick him up from the station and then run back. I do NOT like using my running shoes. In the end it was great though Leon gave us some starters so we could participate in the Gym challenges. Since Hop already had a Wooloo I could choose first I chose Sobble , because it cried when a berry fell in it’s pond. I decided to name it Neno. Hop picked a Scorbunny  and when we had to battle he already used two pokemon! Kinda unfair if you ask me…but his Wooloo went down so easily that my Sobble leveled up and allowed me to hit Scorbunny super effectively. Yay!

A mysterious encounter

After that a wooloo entered the forbidden forest and we had to go in and save it. Of course Hop  just ran ahead so I had to deal with a bunch of Skwovet, Squirrels with a weird name and tendency to eat my berries. I also encountered a bird named Rookidee, it looked angry so I had Neno knock them all out for me. Then I encountered a wolf in the mist. I thought it ate Wooloo and that it would kill me as I could not hit it at all.  It was very strong and super mysterious. So everything went white . Leon came and saved us as Hop did nothing but comment. Leon never saw what we saw and he told us to get our pokedex from Professor Magnolia.. and Hop ran off. I had to go the long way around and captured a few pokemon. Cool huh! I feel like I am the only person ever in existance in this world who can capture pokemon before getting this weird expositional talk while clearly everyone in this world knows how pokeballs work. I managed to catch a woolooi I named BeepBeep, one of those squirrels I named Nutella and even some others.  I only planned on using BeepBeep though, and I would take this little fox pokemon along. I decided to name it Barrelroll. I mostly like BeepBeep though.

So I tried to train up BeepBeep and I noticed how in the Galar region pokemon grow very differently from that in other regions, it turns out they have an item called EXP share, our pokemon do that naturally. But where the the item distrubutes a small portion of EXP our party gets like half the xp they would have gotten had they actively been in that battle. If they are in that battle they get full experience. This means we can easily bring full teams along from the earliest parts of the game and check out all sorts of cute evolutions.  The final Pokemon I caught in route one was called a Blipbug I named Freddt. I went home to kiss Mum, yes we call her Mum here in Galar and we also watch the Telly and not TV, and went to the old bags lab with Freddt in tow. Turns out she wasn’t even there! I had to move ANOTHER route. Like these shoes were not made for walking! So of course I had to shop first.

Shopping and Hopping

So I decided to go and shop and I picked some super cute pink clothes rather than the grey and green Mum picked for me.. I mean my name is pinkie after all , you gotta live up to the reputation. Shopping in Galar is quite expensive though so perhaps I should fight some trainers with Neno , Beepbeep and Freddt . So that’s what I did. While fighting other trainers I also managed to catch a snapping turtle which I send to my box early, and a cute dog named Yamper. Which I added to my squad under his new name of Buttermutt. It’s funny because it has a heart shaped bright yellow butt. It’s moves are super nice to capture new pokemon as well so as some plumber from some country just south of the Kalos Region just said “let’s go” .. ……. back to the shop to get my pink shoes and pink hat as well. All pinked up I was ready to move to Professors place. Doing some more battles along the way. I noticed how I enjoyed the music and the rich saturated colours in the landscape. Sure I have seen like cards from like the Hyrule region that looks a bit more beautiful, but I think we should be glad with the beautiful landscapes we have gotten. Compared to like Unova or Sinnoh this place is absolutely stunning and our pokemon also feel somewhat less stiff than those of Alolan ones.

Professor Magnolia gave me an app… for my phone… jeez… thanks I guess..  no way I could download a pokedex in the appstore myself in a world where everyone has pokemon?!  Yet something good came from the visit anyway. I got to battle Hop again, if we proved our worth as trainers to Leon he might endorse us to take part in the pokémon league competition. Like that’s kinda cool right?  How the strong look for young talent to find someone who will eventually surpass them and push their skill with pokemon to the next level. Like a metaphor how the pocket monsters we know and love can grow into Kaiju, so  can our trainers from young ones grow up to be a poorly dressed champion. Or like how the pokemon franchise started out as simply professor Oak’s research with him believing there were only 150 pokemon to knowing there is almost 1000 now. From being just his research to being like puns on teacups and with tv shows and movies. But I am getting off topic again. I could battle Hop again, I could see how much he train…..he ran over here again and barely bothered to train didn’t he….  yep… BeepBeep trashed his sheep, Neno washed his bunny and Freddt evolved into a Dottler. It’s like a bug night light with LEDS. Two meteors struck like a meter from our battle field revealing stones about the size of a wristwatch. I think the impact should have killed us all, but hey we didn’t so good for me.  So we spend the night at the old woman’s place and Sonia showed up and told us more about HER research or her work for the professor at least. She told us about dynamaxing and how the phenomena is only possible in the Galar region and more stuff. The professor just made Leon gave us our endorsements so now we had to go to Motostoke. Luckily we could go by train.  It will save me a big walk! Yay!

So far along I really enjoy this new pokémon adventure, the galarian pokemon are cute and overall well designed by Arceus, I visited some cute towns got some cute clothes and heard some cute music… though I am not sure if  that plays in my head or is actually there. No other trainer ever mentions it .. but it always changes when I battle. I really like the tracks so far. I like the new experience system because it makes pokemon battling available to so many of us and the story I embark on seem to have just a bit more invested in making me seem special and relevant, making it more credible that I am heading into some great adventures.  Of course the pretending to be me already made it a lot further into the game and but she decided that this was enough content for one day. So apparently soon the next part will follow where I explore the wild area and face the first three gyms. In that part we will discuss the quality of puzzles , and the wild area feature among other things so stay tuned for that… Wait why did i write this weird stuff in my diary?