Review: Pokémon Sweet Version

Now Pokémon is already a pretty cutsie franchise. Of course there are some though ferocious beasts to deal with as well and quite a few world ending schemes to be had but overall we can still say a majority of our pocket monster pals can be deemed cute.  Now what if we told you this cuteness can be put in overdrive? A game so sweet hat 9 out of 10 dentist recommend that you do not play this game. Chibi Pinki’s teeth might have rotted away.. she can’t stop smiling! It’s time to review Pokémon Sweet version.

The Concept

This game is sooo fun! It’s like super cute and amazing and sweet, but it’s also a bit tricky to get.  You see Pokémon Sweet version is a Romhack.. that means it used to be a rom for a gameboy emulator and some pretty nifty egghead people changed it around into a new game. Kinda like how you would find a person you like well enough but are a bit tired off.. then peel off all their flesh leaving just their vital systems intact and then building a new person from it..but less bloody. So it means you have to download an emulator and the rom. If you are unlucky you’d have to download an emulator , the original rom and a patch file taking you about 10 to 15 minutes or so. That’s longer than my attention span. 

(Hehe I got Blue Balls)

Anyway in Pokémon Sweet version.. which is free to play,  you travel to CandyLand, where roads are made out of fudge and the grass is not covered with dew but with frosting. Instead of trees cupcakes will grow and instead of fences people use candy canes. You live in rural Cookie Village where the road has been eaten by a woman. Because you are bored you decided to walk inside Professor Cinna’s lab, who was wanting to give her three apprentices a so called pokésweet. Yet one of them overslept.. your friend and rival ‘placeholder name Garysprite’ so she decides to give you a pokésweet instead.  Pokésweets are like pokémon..but sweeter they like to be eaten and grow back after they do. You can choose from Brownisaur the Cherry and Chocolate flavoured brownie, Strawmander the strawberry headed and tailed lizard and Squirpie the apple pie with a turtle body. Alongside your Pokésweet you are sent on a mission to catch all the other sweets to complete the cookbook for the good professor. Meanwhile you can obtain some gym badges from other pokésweet users so you can compete to be the pokésweet champion housed at Cake Castle. Pretty sweet right?

Well not everything is great in the land of Candyland! An evil team named Team Sour is after the secret of rare candies and wants to manipulate the two deities of the land , who happen to be two chocolate bunnies, to get their evil ways. It is up to your to salvage the rare candies and save Chocobun and Dark Chocobun.. the last one is like Chocobun but edgier. Team Sour is not the only obstacle in your way though, there is also the dreaded Candy Pirates who want all the pokésweets for themselves and their pink little outfits. Instead of pokémon typings each pokésweet has flavours, including but not limited too, vanilla chocolat , blueberry lime and orange! As flavours clash you’ll have to create a good enough flavor profile to overcome even the toughest of trainers, while harder than the original fire red.. victory in this game is double as sweet

The Atmosphere 

While Candyland is basicly Kanto but from Candy one would suspect a bit of a lazy copy past but nothing is further from the truth. This game is such a treat to play. With a lot of attention to detail. There’s about 150ish pokésweets but rather than the original 150 it takes pokémon from all across the first five generations to create the ultimate sweets. A lot of moves have been renamed , retyped and refitted to pokémon for optimal enjoyment. Instead of Snorlax knowing Rest and Snore.. we get Smorelax.. the marshmallow pokésweet that restores his health by using Zest, and while it sleeps it can use the move S’more to harm his foes. Strawizard learns to use Fruit Punch and Squirt Pie can use Apple Toss.  While a Pokésweet can still get burned , fall asleep or be paralysed they would not go poisonous as it would harm the flavour of the world. Instead a Pokésweet can go hungry and will begin to nom itself.

There is no ocean to swim on.. instead the sea is replaced by cream.. the lakes are filled with grape juice. Not a single element is out of place in Pokémon Sweet version. The number of items has been drastically reduced, most of the unnatural stuff is gone, replaced by extra rare candies, lemonades and berries. Berries can be used in the regular way to heal status or health.. but they can also be used to BAKE new Pokésweets. That’s right some Pokesweets you can only obtain by gathering the right ingredients and baking one. Every single cookbook entry has been customly made and they are all adorable!
Spinacake for example spins vanilla cake for unwilling visitors. Piestoise  has grown candy cane cannons which it uses to fire muffins at his opponents to make them happy again.Chocowool loves hugs.. but when you hug it it can leave blobs of chocolate on your clothes.
It’s all just how it should be. Very sweet!

The people are loving and helpful and help to flesh out this quirky world out greatly.  The custom soundtrack can be a bit repetitive. The Mario Kart Snes music plays a bit too oftenly.. but I kinda like it. It makes the journey feel cute rather than epic and that is exactly what it should aim for. At times you feel it has been made by a small team and they went like… just fit this in here and it’s going to be fine but that is perfectly understandable and excusable for a romhack. I’ve seen rom hacks break down regions and completely building their own.. but such a journey was never these guys ambition nor would it have worked this well. This game is so different that the safety of where to go next felt like a warm blanket. This game is about the pokésweets and gathering them.. not to tell a compelling and grand  tale. Team Sour and Candy Pirates! This game knows what it is and what its want you to do… and it does that very well and in it’s very own charming way.

Technical Thingies

Now Rom Hacks are a bit different when it comes down to judging the technical thingies. They are not professional games, but unlike fully created custom games the skeleton is there so there should not be to much errors there in the first place anyway.  Yet at the same time because it’s not their own code .. things can conflict much easier. Overall I’d say Sweet Version does a great job. The flavor system ..which is way more than just a name swap from the other games (as there’s only 12 flavors) and all weaknesses are custom. For example Banana and Lemon are weak to each other, which we’ve never seen in a regular pokémon game. The game feels mostly balanced though the chocolate type is quite powerful and the orange flavour has quite a few weaknesses. I am not sorry how the balance is as I can not play with every little sweet and the type chart is a bit more ungraspable than the typing chart.

I can imagine why water beats fire.. or how grass beats water. Deducing why Apple beat Orange or why raspberry beats blueberry is  somewhat less natural. As a result the sense of balance is gone a bit.. but I do not mean that in a bad way…it’s like pokémon battling without the training wheels. The game definitely spiced up in terms of difficulty but in a good way. Trainers who stick to one pokésweet will usually outlevel you if you commit to a entire team. This make sense because in a way it enforces the rules of the game on the npc’s. Solid design but it does mean you’ll need a bunch of items or a lots of trips to the pokésweet center. Baking the Pokésweets works perfectly which are new mechanics they build in.. now you get locked into a gym and have to finish it in one go works like a charm and all those little things work wonders. Dialogue however has a few oversights. Quite a few trainers have their old dialogue intact. Mostly the one you never really notice unless you talk to them after combatting. But because this world is so new I talked to them all.. and I noticed quite a few of them slipped up and broke the suspense of disbelief. Some stores are a bit glitchy because items have been added or removed. Since emulation can already result in a few glitches I am not sure what I can and can’t blame on them so since it’s nothing that stops me from playing or even hinders me I don’t mind it too much. It just looks a bit sloppy. Like a bit of whip cream spilling out of  desert. Still tastes good even if it doesn’t look like it’s supposed too.

The Gameplay

Delicious as this game might be, it is not for the faint of heart. Pokémon Sweet version is pretty hard. I try to spend as little money on items as i possibly could but in Sweet version I carry a lot of medicine on me because the game wants me too. Not only do we get locked inside gyms and whiting out  means repeating ALL the trainers also the moves we work with are drastically reduced. Pokésweets are less offensive than Pokémon, they have limited good attacks. Instead nearly every sweet gets access to status inducing moves. Nearly every trainer battle is also a double battle, meaning you have to be prepared for two types or even two attacks onto a single sweet. With all that cream filling flying about I guess hitting moves is a lot harder as well because accuracy has proven to be quite a bit more of an issue. Not only can you toss sprinkles in your opponents eyes to make them less accurate, a lot of the 100% hitting moves are simply gone for more risky moves. This means you have to think a lot more about your actions and that’s good. 

I enjoyed this battle system so much, reminding me more of classic rpgs where you rarely get a new attack other then a support type move here and there. I love how they changed obstacles around though. HM’s are as good as gone with only fly and surf still existing, though these other obstacles are all non consequential the no hm method allows us to be so much more free in what sweets we carry along. Gym’s are infinitely repeatable making grinding up levels a breeze as long as we skip those with annoying gym puzzles like the Blueberry gym. When I say skip I mean for the grind of course you have to complete it once. The game has been thusly altered that you can basically complete the entire cookbook yourself. All starters will become available and there are no trade evolutions. I still have to discover how to evolve some of these but it’s just a delight to see your babies grow up and read all their adorable pages. The plethora of status can be a bit annoying when you start but these are pokésweets not pokémon.. they don’t like attacking so it’s something you will just have to get used to. It’s different.. not worse..as long as you carry medicine at least.


It’s a long game, longer than the same run would take you in Pokémon Fire Red (the rom it’s based on), a lot longer. Pokésweets are super cute and you will be very tempted to try them all out the way they designed the game also means that you actually get better things to put on your team as you get along. Some sweets will get outdated  or outclassed or just outlived. You’ll need to level quite a bit more than in the legitimate game but you’ll be given plenty of options for it as well. So while it does require some effort of you as a player this game features enough content to sink your teeth into.

The Verdict

Okay this game will not be a 10 out of 10 but it’s definitely something special. It’s something we will NEVER EVER see again and it’s something I have never seen before it. While other Rom Hacks change the game.. in some cases better than this little game, Pokémon Sweet version reinvents the entire concept. Recognisable to  keep the old charm while innovating enough to add a whole lot of sweetness. I can not in good conscious gave a game as cute as this where you walk onto a pink world anything lower than my highest ranking! This game is my soul emulated. Feel free to disagree .. but this game is sweet.

What do you think about Pokémon Sweet Version? Did you ever play a rom hack? Do you have any suggestion for me to play? Let me know in the comments and I will see you all in the next post!

The Pinkest Poké Blogger is blasting off again!
XO
Pinkie

Top 5: Most Expensive Pokémon Cards (On sale in 2019)

Good day loyal subjects!
Yugi Muto might be the king of games but I am the princess of Pokemon TCG..somehow that is better believe me. Noble as I am I do not participate in tournaments to give others a chance at the title as champion is a step down from princess anyway. Pokémon TCG is big business, in the Netherlands Yu-gi-oh packs are becoming increasingly rare while Pokémon is standing strong with new expansions just behind the horizon. When a trading card game is healthy, it does mean people actually like to trade cards giving value to these little sheets of paper. The five cards we will talk about today.. fetch quite a high price.

The Rules

Now there are many ways to do this top 5. I could rank based on rarity here and put up a list of cards that are most likely valuable and that are among the most desirable. Yet anyone who has ever seen a pawn show knows that with exceedingly rare items.. prices are all very relative. For example Yu-Gi-Oh has a card named TYLER THE GREAT WARRIOR a one of a kind item that was given to a young cancer patient way back in the day. There have been offers made that allegedly have 7 digits yet the card is not for sale. Maybe Tyler drew on the card when he was a kid, maybe he even lost it? Perhaps it’s still gem mint in a sealed case. Stuff like this would put the value of the card between 0 and 10 million or so and that’s a bit too wide of a range for me to operate on. After all I am a princess I am right! That’s my whole thing! So for this list we will only deal in hard cash. Cards that are out there WITH a price tag. Of course I could just put a common pikachu card out there for 12 million and take the top spot myself but I doubt they’d sell, maybe if I get more followers and become a pokémon icon, so if you haven’t yet.. please subscribe! For this post we will use cards that have been put on sale and either sold or are likely enough to be sold for a ‘fair’ price. Yet due to the nature of how this list is made.. someone might offer them a bit cheaper. 

(A Million Dollar Card..looks oddly familiar)

Number 5: Tamamushi University Magikarp Trophy Prize  (PSA 9)

Cards can be graded on their quality, the most common standard is the PSA. It stands for Professional Sports Authenticator and like the name suggest they are best known for authenticating and valuing sports cards. Yet they also grade nearly any trading card game, even those who can not be played in a sports like setting like amiibo cards and the likes. They grade a card from 1 to 10, 10 being gem mint fetching the highest prices.  In 2017 a PSA 10 version of this card sold at auction for about $2150, yet this PSA 9 is on sale for quite a bit more. The lesser quality PSA 9 is on sale for $48.978. That seems rather unrealistic right? Well the price of this magikarp has recently skyrocketed beyond belief. In 2018 the same PSA 10 card sold again but this time for $10.000 dollars. This year PSA 7’s of the card are selling already for $8000 and are selling out. There is a big gap in what people are willing to pay for a PSA 9 and a PSA 7. In general a PSA 7 in terms of more affordable cards sells for about as much maybe even a tad less than an ungraded one.  A PSA 10 can turn a 200 dollar card into a 1000 dollar one and the right PSA 9 can do the same. This particular card was handed out to a small group of Japanese school children who were selected to participate in a contest in Osaka. Only the winners of this contest (divided on several age groups themed around gym leaders) where awarded with this magikarp that knows the move dragon breath. The asking price for this card is bordering a bit on the iffy side of the spectrum..but hey magikarp has always been overpriced.

(I can’t help but feel that the price for this one is a bit fishy)

Number 4: Albino Zapdos

When there is a printing error on our card, the border is not neatly aligned or if it’s been cut sloppily cards loses value as quick as a Honey Boo Boo can make people lose faith in humanity. However if there is a misprint .. people totally go ham over these cards. One of the most famous mistakes are the so called Albino Pokémon. A type of misprint where one colour would not be printed. Quite oftenly just a detail this Zapdos had the ‘misfortune’ of being on a card where yellow ink did not find its way to the 6.4 by 8.9 cm piece of paper. When it became sealed in a pack the card that was only worth a few dollars otherwise suddenly became a $49.999,99 dollar card. It’s been marketed for that price for a long while and it’s commonly accepted that the card is worth that amount. Unfortunately recently the lucky german who pulled this card was forced to settle for a lot less. Ending up costing the new owner only $14.999,99 this would knock Albino Zapdos down a few spots.  Yet the $50.0000 zapdos was quite commonly accepted as the actual price and worth of the card.You can be the judge on that one.. but to keep it fair for the cards that have not received offers yet we shall list it under it’s commonly known asking price. It’s actually worth? That’s a bit of a grey area.

(I bet having to sell it for a third of the price was a bit shocking to the german)

Number 3: Shadowless 1st Edition Base Set Charizard Holo 1999 (PSA 10)

This is the most famous expensive pokémon card and most likely the least unique on on this list. This is basically something you could have owned as a kid.  Nostalgia for the card that was super popular back then has pumped up the value as a kid. Also as we were all kids who took that card everywhere the good quality ones have dropped of  the earth faster than basic human decency in Jersey Shore. This combination made this one of the most coveted cards out there. Every collector wants this one while most of the other cards are much more unique this one has a power over people. ‘Hey guy I got a albino zapdos card’ can still be met with a frown and a look like ‘dude what are you talking about’.. whilst if anyone says ‘Dude I got a holographic 1st Edition Charizard’  they will KNOW that is something impressive. I’ve seen lesser versions sell at auction in the $30.000 range. This australian man might be pushing his luck asking $68.725 dollars for it but recently the Charizard cards have all been picking up in price again. With about 15 views per hour..for a pokémon card that costs as much as more than decent car about 150 months of my rent this one still is likely to sell. The value of this card is quite stable as well so it might be a good investment if you have some cash to burn.

(While the other cards come and go 1st Edition Charizard will always be hot)

Number 2: Trophy Kangaskhan Parent & Child Tournament 1998 Pokemon Promo Card Japan (PSA 10)

Can you imagine sending little Buta to school in japan, he picks up a magazine and comes back all excited saying if you enter a pokémon tournament together you can win some neat prices. So you decide to enter, letting little brother Bosu participate alongside his mother as well. Bosu and mom are out of the competition quite fast. You never had high hopes for that kid anyway. You and Buta make your way down the ladder but end up eliminated after a few wins. Hey you still did well enough to receive a price. A Kangaskhan card… neat.  It has a symbol that it’s special but hey.. it’s just a piece of card so Buta can keep it. Now 21 years later you are reminiscing those memories sipping your green tea while checking ebay to see if you can buy that card again. Buta .. being a kid lost it.. but now that they have moved out you want it as a memory. You see the only copy currently on sale is in the hand of the British and it’s being sold for $98,126.85. You curse as you realise now Bosu has to become your favorite kid. I am sure this must have happened to at least one japanese father. Who could have expected that the little card you won by playing card game with your son would grow out to be one of the most sought out pokémon cards ever. Not even part of one of the most prestigious tournaments and more just a fun promotion. The design and story around this card has made it amongst the most valuable of them all.

(Paying 100k for a card is far from normal)

Number 1: POKEMON 2001 TROPICAL WIND TROPHY CARD
(PSA 9)

Psyduck in a hammock, along with a igglybuff and smoochum. In the background a Executor is riding a boat. This card was only handed to winners of a tournament and no visitor version was ever handed out. Since there were two age classes back then.. this card by all means should exist twice only. The seller on Ebay prides himself on having the highest rated of those two copies. There will never be a PSA 10..he holds the highest rarity of one of the most rare cards in existence in Pokémon. So what is that worth? NO ONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD OWNS THIS PSA 9 CARD!!! Says the add. While about as subtle as a 90’s comedy or action movie it does hold true.  So if you ever want to spend half a million dollars, that’s right this card costs $500.000, on a Psyduck in a hammock.. this is your only option. At least unlike the Kangaskhan and the Magikarp you can get bragging rights with this one! This one at least belongs to the champion of a semi-prestigious tournament rather than just a fun event. So hey that’s worth 400k right? I mean not for me, I am already prestigious enough so I will not let my staff bring out a bid on this one. If you want to donate it to me though.. I would be fairly appreciative. I’ll even get you your own hammock.. and a real duck to go with it.

(This is the only card on the list that has free shipping)

Now that we wrapped up this post please do not take the attempt to donate the card to Princess Pinkie seriously of course unless you are a billionaire who’s all like ‘Oh that sounds like fun’ in which case you can go right ahead. What is your most expensive Pokémon Card.. or even other collectable! Let us know in the comments and if you are new don’t forget to follow this blog for more Pokémon content ..most days!

The Pinkest Poké Blogger is blasting off again!
XO
Pinkie

How to: Beat A Team of Legendaries with a Magikarp

Hey big people reader folks. Chibi Pinki here! This week is all about having fun. Our regular schedule is thrown out the window and now the Pinkie that has something fun  to tell for the day will write their thing. I encountered a super cute song yesterday while i was playing with my Mime Jr. It talks a little about magikarp.. and since mondays are supposed to highlight a single pokémon we still kinda meet the brief… but differently. 

The Subject

Name: Magikarp
Original Name (Japan) : Koiking
National Dex Number: 129
Base Stat Total: 200
Battle Tier: Never Used
Combat Role: Physical Sweeper
Best know for: Splashing…but nothing happens

Magikarp is a cute little koi fish that was known as the useless pokémon in generation I. You could fish it up with the first rod you got and only knew one move! However you would soon find out that while using Splash nothing happened. With the old rod you would catch it at level 5 and for 10 levels it would not have any offensive moves. After that it would only get tackle, a very weak physical move with one of the lowest base powers. It’s base attack stat , which powers up the tackle is only at 10 to this day putting it in the absolute bottom in terms of strength. To this day he still holds that honour along with a few other pokémon.But off all the pokémon with a physical attack of 10.. magikarp has the lowest base stat total (power level). Nearly every stat for magikarp is bad.. it’s defence is close to okay and it’s speed is fair. On paper it is useless in every sense of the word until it evolves in the mighty gyarados. 

It’s still cute though right?! I mean.. I still like it.. and so did the world. Poor Magikarp has been memed a lot , but it’s also gotten a lot of love. It’s gotten it’s own game , has been featured in some pokémon stadium minigames and to this day there is always a trainer somewhere in the pokémon games that uses a full team of magikarp. Game Freak must have loved Magikarp as well because nowadays the red koi can ‘oneshot’ every legendary in the game…in fact he can even take down a whole team of them if you set it up right.

The Inspiration

I don’t think the lady in the video has sung this song all that pretty but she has a pretty good point. Magikarp is a lovely pokémon because of how iconic it is to the franchise. Yet so much is unknown about this Pokémon. Did you for example know there is a gender difference visible between male and female magikarp? The males have gold tendrils and the females have white ones. See now I made it even MORE special. Because of how great and useless it is Game Freak even decided to make it’s shiny gold. Quite like caterpie the weakest bug pokémon in generation I. For the longest while that golden bug was also able to oneshot everything, but these days it needs a bit more luck to take down Ultra Necrozma and the likes… Magikarp however can still take that beasty down. One can wonder, is the game balanced in such a way that magikarp could? Is it something they take into account?… Well no.. unfortunately it has trouble taking down steel types so Palkia , Registeel and perhaps Solgaleo are safe from it’s wrath. Magikarp can easily beat Mewtwo though.. So is the song wrong? Does magikarp have some hidden super saiyan like ability or something? …. Not really.. to sweep Magikarp needs the powers of love and friendship!

The Shopping List

What do you need to make this possible in online battles?  A stupid amount of luck and a enemy team that has no hazard removal. Tricky..but in fairness those who use all legendary teams are usually twelve year old boys/your average fortnite player trying to show of the size of their trouser ekans. Magikarp can’t take down these enemies all by himself though..but in the set up he is the only one that has to actually attack. The rest is just there to help magikarp shine. To pull this off though there is a lot of things you need, and not all of these are easy to comeby.

By far the easiest is thing you need is a Skarmory. It needs to know the moves stealth rock and spikes and has to have the ability sturdy. You’d be smart to teach it some speed IV’s and EV”s as well. The way to train these up vary to much in each game for me to discuss how to do that. It will require some time though.

Then you need a speedy bug that knows sticky web, either equip it with a choice scarf (an item that boosts speed but locks you into a single move) or a focus sash (easier to get) to ensure it can use the move. Araquanid is a good choice in recent games , but any bug will do. Shiny Ariados is my favorite because it’s pink! Just find a spider you like.

You could add a pokémon that sets up toxic spikes as well..but this is unreliable, yet since you are allowed to use a team of six why would you not? In our set up would would have a spot left. Anything that can learn toxic spikes will do. I recommend a Fortress for survivability but you could also show off and run a mega beedrill for example. This one really doesn’t matter that much it’s just a cherry on top.  

The most important pokémon you need besides Magikarp is a Smeargle. The painter pokémon this one you need to give some speed ev’s and equip with with a focus sash. It needs the moves spore, belly drum baton pass and substitute. It would be best off with a timid or jolly nature. Since this one is so crucial to our team, you’ll want to run it twice. Give them an Iapapa  berry to hold.. but make sure the nature is either Timid or Jolly. A Hasty nature will ruin your run.. because the berry would confuse it in the match!

Now finally our magikarp! Since it’s a legendary killer would would like it to be shiny which of course is not required..but hey.. the set up isn’t easy anyway and you’ll need to hatch quite a few smeargle so why not shiny hunt a bit while doing it.  I prefer to use lonely natured one but a naughty one can also work. Using a Hasty or Naive one allows it to easier outspeed things at the cost of damage which could also be helpful. It needs full EV’s in both Attack and Speed as well as IV’s of course so be prepared to suffer while making this team.

I recommend trying this team on Pokémon Showdown rather than the actual game for convenience and speed. Magikarp needs to know the move Flail, which now it can learn, but he only gets splash tackle bounce and flail nowadays anyway. Flail however is going to be your bread and butter. Equip it with a Focus Sash and we are good to go.

The Spiel

Lead of with your webbing Bug and use sticky webs. Stickywebs reduce the speed of your opponents incoming pokémon  to 65% of the original value, which is crucial to Magikarp being faster than them. If they are removed for any reason.. you lose the game. However legendaries tend not to get access to hazard removal so for the sake of this  mock game.. we are good. Watch as your bug gets crushed by the legendary might. Should it survive a turn.. just make sure it has a non damaging move.. let it know string shot thats a good addition.

Next skarmory comes in…Stealth rocks are must! They break sturdy (some pokémon can not be oneshot) unlike spikes for example who don’t hit flying types. It also invalidates the enemies use of items like focus sashes. You need that for Magikarp to sweep. If an enemy holds on with 1 hp.. you will lose the run. So stealth rocks go first.  Should skarmory live just set up more entry hazards with spikes to make magikarp job a bit easier. I know it would detract from the oneshot feeling a bit.. but in some cases these sweeps are damage rolls (damage is partially determined by rng) and spikes can help you reduce the odds at a bad luck fail.

Your toxic spiker goes in next if you decide to use one, again this one is just here for RNG manipulation. You stack the deck in your favor with these, which is kinda cool right?! You could also run a third Smeargle to ensure you get the actual trick off, just know that if one Smeargle pulls it off the other two become useless. So just do what you think is best. With the forretress you could still win the game if magikarp would get killed with toxic stalling or exploding on a last enemy or such.. so he’s my choice. You can choose to let them go down or swap in a sacrificial smeargle depending on the odds.. the magikarp spiel has better odds of success if you let the spiker go down first.

Next comes in the Smeargle… this is the one who will ascend magikarp to levels of godliness. Use spore to send the enemy to sleep… if the enemy is a grass type..you are in a pretty bad position.. but use substitute instead and hope the enemy doesn’t break your little fake buddy right away. When the enemy is (hopefully) asleep use the move Belly Drum. This move quadruples damage output.  If the enemy is still asleep set up a substitute otherwise use Baton Pass to swap into Magikarp. Should you manage to set up a substitute use Baton Pass to go into magikarp anyway. Hard Swapping into Magikarp will not work as the stat boost will not carry over. Baton Pass allows stat buffs to be passed on to the pokémon coming in so it’s crucial.

Now it’s time for Magikarp to obliterate. In this stage a few scenarios can happen. What is important is to find out of Magikarp is faster than your opponent. This is most likely the case if your enemy has made a switch while fighting or if the enemy uses a really slow base speed pokémon.. you probably outspeed it. If this is the case you just keep splashing around unti your enemy manages to hit you once and your focus sash keeps Magikarp at 1hp. After that you just keep happily flailing about and watch as one after another legendary will fall.  If your enemy is still the one that opened the game just start flailing from the get go. This should ensure a victory over  nearly every legendary with just one attack. 

The Message

So the pokémon that has the weakest stats in offence of all pokémon, the one that could not do ANYTHING for quite a while has just taken down an entire team of legendaries. Gods or pinnacles of science alike. With a lot of hard work, some help of your friends and just the right amount of luck even you can  take down mountains. In real life you also might not have the right stats for the job but never give up hope. Your friends can raise you to new levels and at times you can get a lucky break. When life knocks you down just crawl back up and show it the skin of your teeth. The impossible is often way more possible than we initially would have thought. Just add love and never fight your battles alone.

Now you know how to take on legends with a low tier Pokémon.  Shout out to Pimpnite’s youtube channel , I used his video’s to provide some screengrabs of the battling as I don’t have proper means to capture my own screens myself.  Check out his youtube channel for some great how to’s on pokémon battles. Our sets are a bit different in some choices but they function the same. In fact I adapted my core to mimic his latest.. my smeargle did not have substitute first.. but his set was better. You teach me and I teach you Pokémon.. yet again. Did you know Magikarp could take down legendaries? Let me know in the comments.

This Pinkest Poké Blogger is blasting off again!
XO Pinkie

Review: Pokemon Masters

We haven’t been feeling all that nicely lately.. a bit sick.. though that isn’t unusual for us it really made writing a bit difficult, but hey at least I Chibi Pinkie got to catch up with a lot of games I needed to play. I really managed to get some progress in the Pokémon Masters game as well, and even though we haven’t completed the story yet i’d say I’ve played enough to give you a good first impression of the game.

The Disclaimer

For this review , no money will be spend on Pokémon Masters to see how playable it is without spending money on the game. Any money I might invest will be kept out of my verdict. For the story playthrough I will only use trainers I acquire through the game or that I farmed with free credits. Keep in mind though that should I have gotten any duplicates with payed credits it could level up my free partners so there might be a SLIGHT difference in difficulty. At the same time I will not tell you about my monetised pull because I can not do a lot of them, therefore until I see more online content about them (which I haven’t seen to much) there i no way to tell how lucky or unlucky I have gotten. I will not be reviewing the multiplayer.. right now the game is not available in my country so my friends don’t want to download it .. so I can not try it. I might bring that to the table in my re-review. Finally, even though there is a stigma on mobile games still, I will not talk about if this is a good platform. I will evaluate it like any other Gacha Mobile game as well any other Pokémon game but we won’t talk about if Nintendo should just focus on Switch of the sorts. Hence it will not be marked down for being something that promotes microtransactions as that’s part of its DNA. 

The Concept

In Pokémon Masters you “create” your avatar by picking a gender, hair colour eye colour and skin colour. Like in Pokémon Go the model of your hair is set, but unlike it’s older brother for now there is no way to customise your avatar further. The protagonist version of you, you just made travels by boat to the Pasio Region. Where the PML will be hosted. The Pokémon Masters League. A tournament where the great of the greats gather to compete to be the strongest of them all. However in Pasio , there are no wild pokémon to capture nor can participants bring their entire team of Pokémon. In Pasio you fight only with your partner pokémon. Since this would be unbalanced and the super effective typing would always win the PML is fought in teams however. PML teams can consist out of hordes of trainers but in official battles you can only fight three on three. So you will have to build creative teams from trainers and pokémon for each stage and setting.

Trainers and Pokémon share a four set movepool, with the Pokémon dealing damage and trainers being able to give out buffs or healing.  After battling alongside each other trainer and pokémon have build up enough energy to unleash a devastating Sync Move, which to those in the know are basically a lot like Z-moves. The game tells its story in a almost visual novel like style, but very simplified, with some simple branching dialogue options here and there. You can encounter three types of stages. One being the story stages, your basic exposition scenes with dialogue options mentioned before. The combat stages speak for itself, you get one or two encounters to get trough and you just have to be the very best. The last type are the investigation stages. These are a bit of a mix of the two earlier ones, except you can look around freely on usually about 4 different screens to look for additional lore and some items. In doing so it puts on a much more cinematic concept compared to other gacha games. With a lot more focus on exploring facets of the pokémon world rather then just forcing you to pull as many units as you can.

With Pokémon Go being a simplified version of catching and raising Pokémon, this game can be described as a simplified version of the battling concept of Pokémon. It puts on a charming narrative with each stage providing a logical step in your trainers journey and a lot of fanservice…..in the nostalgic non lewd kinda way.  It’s quite the happy little game that does drop the ball on some occasions. Badgeholders you defeat usually end up tagging along with you.. because there are others that hold the batch as well, and the rules of the PML would allow them to. That’s just odd to me. I mean I love Flannery in my team but I would have much rather seen for example narratives of Flanery trying to take Blaine down who was the gym leader and after you done so .. she decides to follow you. The fact that others hold the same badge just harms the world building just a bit for me.. getting a badge is no longer a sign of overcoming a challenge..but that you find the weakest gym leader. The fact that the story gives you free gathas (pulls) that are usually helpful in the next part of your journey though I can only be happy about.

The Atmosphere

By far the games strongest aspect is the atmosphere. Pasio is a beautiful place that comes alive through the spot on visuals and nicely remixed tunes.  The Pasio Pokécenter is a place where you are going to spend a lot of time managing all your stuff. It’s design is neat and feels vibrant with all your collected team mates as well as people you battled showing up, with plenty of cute dialogues. tips pokémon lore and more. As a result your ‘home’ feels super comfy. For fangirls like me it’s a delight to see Whitney show up talking about herself being so cute, or Korina giving you an empowering speech. I do hate when Crasher Wake shows up though.. but that’s personal.. he is kind of intimidating and I got him in a free pull… now his swoll bod keeps blocking up my screen all the time as he shouts and laughs like a D&D dwarf. It’s not really a negative.. his personality pops out and I don’t really like it so he annoys me.. in a way he feels alive. Every character has these typical japanese style voice acting bits where they aren’t fully voiced but have ‘emote’ like shouts they usher at certain emotions. They also introduce themselves when you pull them and such.  Because of that I do recommend everyone who played the games to use the english voice setting. Though not all voice actors are as good as the japanese ones it really doesn’t scratch the same nostalgia itch to see Misty introduce herself as Kasumi.. it doesn’t line up with the text either. The english dialogue is ..passable enough but taglines can get a bit annoying on extended play. Whitney and Rosa for example have higher star rates, and thus higher maximum levels, on free play it means you’ll use them a lot and Whitney’s : Ain’t I a cutie can get obnoxious when she tells it to you for the 46th time.

Of course you can choose not to read the dialogues in the center .. but they are often so cute and charming you’d be missing out.
The music is nice even if not very memorable, this to me is a good thing though. The game can be bit of a grind meaning repeating stages are bound to happen. I never got annoyed by repeating music throughout any of my grinds so that’s a good thing.

Though the story unfolds in a visual novel like style, the models are all 3d-ish models who can show a lot of emotions. Not just the humans but the pokémon as well. Little choices like how a pokémonon delivers it’s cry oftenly when their trainer talks about them makes the world feel even more alive. In fact it’s so alive that I’d say just talking to the trainers and finding out about the bond with their pokémon would be my favorite part of the game. DeNa the developer provided me with a perfect chance to enjoy this in the form of Sync Pair Stories. Cute little stories all over the island featuring the many characters and their most beloved pokémon in the pokéverse have gotten to know each other.  Lucario is no longer a static pokémon that by level we know to be Korina’s ace.. no we learned that in the beginning they did not really get along that well at all because of Korina’s personality. We see Liza , one half of the psychic gym twins, miss her brother now being seperated for the first time but finding solace in her pokémon. Characters never feel reinvented these people we see moving and emoting now like we never saw them before we knew them already and this is not a new model wearing their skin they all keep their old personalities and their development. Barry is still fining people millions of dollars for each thing they do wrong in his eyes.. but now we find out why. The game presents everyone in nice and rich colours which make the pokémon blend in really well.

Now onto the negatives of the atmosphere, and note this is not a gripe to me,  which is a bit difficult to explain. DeNa (I am not using the emote in the name because wordpress turns it into a smilie)  clearly loves the POkémon games there is so much reference there is so much that is spot on from the games. Every single character IS the one you encountered in the games. Now for those who don’t know anything about pokémon this will result in the game having a lot of fluff dialogue. Barry saying that if you don’t show up in time he will fine you a million poké might sound serious or you’ll go like.. what the frizzlesticks is that blonde kid going on about. Flannery being shocked that she will have to face gym leader Norman is inconsequential. These reactions and dialogue arcs are catered too those who have played the games. While the main story is enjoyable to both old and new players this is definitely a legacy game and a lot of story elements are a lot better if you know the games. Secondly this game loves the games, not the anime or the manga.. but the main line games. This means Brock and Misty aren’t anything like the shouting red-head and the lovable goof you might have seen on tv. Brock is focussed determined and tactical, Misty is bubbly and happy and somewhat naive, she respects Blue though hates his arrogance. Brock and Misty are also designed after their more recent models so they don’t even look like their most know counterpart that much. For a lot of kids who saw the show or for those wanting to pick up Pokémon again this might seem a bit confusing. So as alive and good looking as this game is you REALLY need to keep in mind where it’s coming from, for those who really know nothing about the game should wonder if they should start with a LEGACY game.

The Technical Thingies

Though apparently there were a lot of troubles for Android users, i can honestly say I never really experienced any trouble. While a little over halfway through the game I did not encounter majors bugs weird glitches or anything. My game crashed only once and that was on busy hours during an event. I found the game plays nicely, the controls are smooth and your input is accepted accurately and quickly.Technically it’s quite a solid game , though I wish some things would have been made differently. Most of these gripes are in the form of information provided towards the trainer. For example to upgrade your trainer’s stars you need items much like any other Gacha.. but unlike most of its peers never does an item state where or how you can get it. Other games I play like Dragon Ball Legends allow you to access stages to get required material with a single button press. You just select your character tab it to level  and select the item you lack going straight into a mission after which you go back to the upgrade menu. Back in our game, if you want to upgrade Misty’s passive ability you first have to open your sync pair dex, select misty, click on the little plus to find misty’s role, back out go into the training stages, find the right training stage for her role that’s in a tab within a tab , grind it out, move towards the trainer select abilities, move to passive abilities and than purchase it.

The game however , half way in never even told me about these roles. They do tell you how to upgrade your attack, but never mention there is a second tab there , easily to overlook. When learning an offensive move.. the effect of the new attack is hidden until purchase. Now these effects are the same as in the main game so I am fine with that but I doubt every pokémon player in the world, let alone every pokémon masters player knows what the move close combat does.  It means rookie trainers could spend resources into upgrading an attack that is not really worth it. Never is it explained that the burn stats halves strength stat of it’s target.. yet it does. There is a FAQ section and a trainer tip section in the menu to help you…but once again you are never told about them.

What they they do do right is how they communicate what pokémon to bring. Each stage has two advantages types. The most advantageous in the first slot the supportive in the second. If you follow the advise stages are quite passable. I intentionally played a bit worse than I could (not focussing on abilities I know would work well together but on what superficially seems okay)  and the stages are quite clearable. Grinding is going to be needed but it’s kind of fun the game chose to not have an energy system .. so this actually feels like a game. It’s just a game that if you want to play it properly you might need to do some reading up on.. because the game doesn’t tell you a lot and from a kid friendly game we might not expect that.

The Gameplay

Overall I find the gameplay enjoyable but to do this properly I will divide the gameplay in a couple of main aspects. Battling your way through the stories, interacting with other characters, leveling up and training and finally collecting new trainers. Incidentally there are also events. We shall discuss these one by one.

First let’s talk about the combat , the main selling point of this game. While I do not agree with the entire combat system I do feel it’s a rather unique interpretation that does feel like pokémon and trainer are battling together. It feels close enough to the core series gameplay while still feeling fresh enough. For example Dragonball Dokkan Battle is a bad game in this regard, it feels very little like dragon ball and the collecting itself feels like a main part of the battle gameplay. Though team members can sometimes boost each other and it might be smart to create synergy in between your trainers, it’s not always needed nor possible. Marley for example uses an Arcanine as her trainer and her abilities allow to boost everyone’s speed which is neat. Rosa is a grass type trainer who boosts everyone’s special attack. You would think these go well together but in truth not that much. Rosa’s special attack buff is neat.. but Arcanine prefers physical attacks , so he doesn’t benefit from her boost.  Marley’s speed boost is not very effective alongside Rosa .. because she has the ability to cheer and energise everyone.. (which makes speed a bit unneeded) .

Even with their conflicting abilities however it can be advantageous to have both on your field due to type advantage.. or in some cases even with type advantage you are better off creating a different team because it’s really specially resistant or something. What I mean to say is, unlike most Gacha’s there isn’t a perfect team, the game encourages you to swap.
You can play with the highest rank trainers all you like.. if they lack the abilities or typing you need it might just be better to swap it out for lower levels. Yet the game never goes that brutally difficult that you can never bring your favorites either. Unlike plenty of other games in the genre

Battling works quite simple. On the bottom of your screen you have an energy meter which contains 4 ,  but upgradable in quantity , blocks. Each attack of your pokemon costs an amount of blocks to use. For example energy ball costs two energy and ember costs 1.
Each attack has a base damage and an effect, the higher the cost the more damage, or the better the effect. The speed stat of your pokémon determine how fast your energy bar fills. Trainers can use their actions without spending energy but each trainer action can only be used twice. These usually are items from the games in the first slot you get.. like potions. x attack/defence/etc (all or single) full heal’s or dire hits.  The second upgradable spot usually holds a big boost like how Rosa can fully bring your energy meter to full. Opposed to normal pokémon, every pokemon only has one weakness, for you as a trainer they are set, for npc’s they can vary per stage. In one stage Swanna is weak to electricity in the other it’s weak to rock.. all so you can see different type of pokémon.. and softly urge you to make some pulls.

The alternating weakness is something I do dislike, Swanna in reality is quad weak to electricity, I do feel with 926 pokémon to choose from if you design a battle where they want you to fight with rock and grass, you pick pokémon whose primary weakness ARE that, not let you attack with better options available. I do get why they chose it to be this way as not every battle is just three pokémon but it does feel super weird to me when a swanna takes more damage from a Torkoal then from a Pikachu. Resistances do not exist. All in all it’s an adequate battle system that feels comfortable and simplified enough for new players, yet at the same time there is so much for the fan present in the other aspects that it feels a bit unnatural but that is only if you know the type system by heart…so in actuality it’s fine… this is just weird for fans like me.

Interacting with other characters is to me the most fun part of the game. People react like they should and are given the depth they lack. I love their stories and they are nice to follow. I do question some of the dialogue options you get though. At times people will ask you ‘Will you help me?’  sort of questions. The game decides to give you the possibility to answer at times but a lot of times they are only an illusion of choice.. quite obviously. ‘Will you help me?’ at times can be answered by either ‘Yes’ or ‘Sure’ alternatively. One might be read a bit more enthusiastically but in the end there’s a lot of choices like this. ‘Tell me how you met’ .. ‘so how did you two end up together?’ It feels a bit to samesy to me. I do know in Japanese there is probably more tonal distance but still. Ever since Nugget bridge your choices did not matter in a pokémn game so this might just be some odd wink. Other then an occasional odd eyebrow raise i really love this aspect of the game. Except for Crasher Wake… he’s so swole!

The leveling up and upgrade characters is done okay. It’s behind a bit of a grindwall, but an easy one at that. Experience quests give a lot of leveling up items, even on the easiest level. Need to raise a character too about level 50 is easily doable in a few minutes. From what I have seen so far the higher levels will never be painstakingly slow. Do note that I absolutely hate grinding so me saying this is definitely saying something. If you have still new characters to watch sync move animations with it can even be fun to knock some experience out. Like I said in technical thingies already though, finding the correct items initially can be a major slog. Trainers with a fist Icon need items from the Strike Course in training, trainers with the exclamation mark are those of tech quality and those who bear the symbol of a heart belong to the support role. Strikers get red tonics, Techies get green and Supporters get all the blue drinks. Grinding these out is less fun and not as fast. Finding enough megaphones (which bestow moves)  can be even trickier. Though it requires some searching eventually you can easily overcome it and once your a bit familiar with it leveling up is kind of a breeze.. except from starring up. Which is a lot trickier.

Pulling for characters is a important part of every gacha game and doing that for free in Pokémon Masters is absolute Trubbish. This is where the game falters… BIG time. Daily Discounts ..are only available with PAID credits. Guaranteed Pull banners… only with PAID credits. Yes this game has paid and unpaid gems/credits for pulling. A decision I have mixed feelings about. I do not think it’s that bad of an idea to reward those who decide tro pay for your free game. In fact I’d be all for it if buying credits wasn’t as expensive as it is. A multi summon (10 scouts) is 3000 diamonds, mid game I gathered up a little over 5000 I’d say.  To buy 3200 diamonds costs you 30 euro’s .. probably 30 dollars as well respectively. For 10 cards spend 30 dollars. Now truth be told.. undiscounted this is about the same as Dragonball Legends with the latter only being 3 euro’s cheaper. But we would not talk about money today.. grinding out the credits in the latter is a whole lot easier.  Plus you can get the summon discounts on free credits. I played Pokémon Masters for a week.. and managed to pull a multi scout once.. alongside some single attempts on the Blue banner to find out. On my free banner, I managed to boost Whitney a Four Star a bit.. but other than that.. my free pulls were really bad. I spend a week.. only to make my Crasher Wake my most powerful three star. Swole….

The Verdict

In my re-review where I will come back to see how this game has developed in awhile I will discuss on if events add something. So far the game brings a lot to the table and definitely is in the running to be my favorite gacha in terms of gameplay. It’s the absolute winner in terms of charm and feeling and it’s quite a solid pokémon game. Would it not be for the low level cap on three star units and the lackluster information provided I would definitely love it… well there is one thing that makes me rank it down as well…as far as as a collection game… this one is the worst I’ve ever played. Gotta catch…just enough so I can finish the story.

Whoops got a bit carried away by this one! I mean.. uhm oooh no Crasher Wake made my post swole as well. There just was a lot for me to tell. Still I haven’t said everything I wanted to say…so if you play maybe we can be friends in the game!  This blog was written on saturday but pain prevented me from finishing it. There was little news to report on anyway after my thursday post. Next week we are going to try a more liberal schedule for our content. You can expect to see a lot of Chibi Pinkie next week, a trainer profile about myself and a Sunday Special where I talk about lovers in Pokémon for OWLS. Hope to see you there.
The pinkest pokémon trainer is signing off again!

XO
Pinkie.

Pokémon Sword and Shield News: Camping in Style

Five september 2019 will be mostly remembered as the day Sans got into Smash. Although he wasn’t exactly a character he’s still there. Along with Terry Bogard from Fatal Fury it will be fun new faces to welcome to the smash family. Yet of course to this reporter and her other personalities that was not the most interesting announcement of the day. We got mesmerized by the new Pokémon Announcements and here’s what’s new. 

Camping

Pokémon games are often filled with silly features you use once or twice in your playthroughs and on first glance.. camping might be one of them. Yet for those who played Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee  know there might be more to this than meets the eye. In Pokémon Sword and Shield we can put up our little tent in the Wild Area. The Wild Area quickly seems to become the hot spot for all Pokémon Sword and Shield features. Basically everything online that isn’t versus takes place here. Max Raids were already announcement and now there is camps. 

In your camp you can play with your Pokémon and let them bond with your team. While fan reception so far seems a bit lackluster I truly believe that this is our new Pokémon Amie or Pokémon Grooming. Not everyone is a fan ot this, but the bonus experience a max affectionate pokémon provides as well as the ability to break free from status is well worth the effort on story playthrough. The way you can play with your Pokémon so far looks absolutely adorable. You’ll gain access to a few Pokémon toys they can interact with.. like one of those cat rod thinges.. not sure how to name it as cats hate me in real life so I avoid those playthings as in my hand it drives them mad.  There also is a bouncy ball you can toss and your pokémon will go and fetch it.

It’s absolutely and utterly adorable I melted as soon as I saw the trailer of Vileplume bring back the ball. Now I want to run it on my team .. and that’s already so full! I’ll need several teams already! Now I want a vileplume just so I can toss a ball towards it. I am already inspired to catch them all now, because I feel like there is something I can do with my less offensive pokémon.

I can check out their play animations, I can train up some support pokémon for raids and keep it fun to alternate. Now your own camp is not the only camp that is available for you in pokémon sword and shield.  While in the Wild Area you can encounter tents of others players and interact with them to access THEIR camp (as longs as you pay to be able to go online with your Switch) you can take along one pokémon to play with everyone you can find at the camp to all gain some benefits. You can even cook together, which brings us to the second announcement

Cooking

In order to gain more affection from your pokémon and quite possibly gain some stat boosts making food is going to be a requirement. There is only one type of food in the Galar region and thank ARCEUS it’s not malasada! In Galar we make curry, now let’s hope that Hop isn’t as big of a curry fanboy as Hau was of the malasda. Cooking happens in a minigame similar to making poffins like in generation 4. Controlling the fire and stirring the pot. You can do this alone or a bunch of friends, with the latter allowing for better ranked dishes.

However curry-crafting goes a lot further than just that. There are ample curry-dishes to make ..so much so that there even is a curry-dex for you to complete. From Sausage Curry to Fried Food Curry to Tofu Curry and beyond. You can use your berries to add the classic flavors like, dry , sweet , bitter and spicy and depending on what nature your pokémon have .. they will really like one and hate another so much like a long time ago, you’ll have to know your pokémon and its nature a bit if you want to optimise your synergy.

A great choice and alongside camping to me this feels like a much more natural way to farm your pokémon’s affection. It makes you feel much more like a traveller and good food is available to everyone. Magic balls of yarn and magic fruit trees or picture puzzles like in Kalos aren’t available to everyone. While you are deep inside a frosted cavern it feels weird that you could suddenly blowdry your eevee in Pokémon Sun and Moon. This is how it should be done and this is what I will feel happy about.. and I can look pretty darn good doing it.

Trainer Customisation


Yaaay we can go shopping again! When Gen VI revealed shopping for clothes had become a thing I nearly wet myself in excitement, finally I could make the trainer I wanted to make. Even though the options were fairly limited I had great fun into making a character feel like me. Alola and Gen VII improved this a bit for me… because i was a female trainer. As a boy in Alola you did not really have to splurge on vanity items. In this game though. Customisation looks very neat. In the past we could only play wearing a very natural hair colour.. which made NO sense at all given that there were SO many gym leaders with extreme hair colours. Now a lot more will be available to us.

We can finally feel like an anime character having access to shades of green, blue and…. *drumroll* pink! There is plenty of outfits that look cute and unique. In Alola you had three options with other skin variations from.. tank top with short skirt or hot pants to sundress. Here it seems you can dress both formal, casual , though or even hippie like. If there is a pink dress i’ll be one happy camper!

New to features is the ability to have some detailed make-up and you can epilate your eyebrows.  Neat! Your brand new look can feature on your customisable trainer card. This trainer card allows you to pose and add your backgrounds add cute little details etc.
This card will be displayed at your important matches (i’d reckon online as well) . Trainer cards can also be handed out and collected like it’s own little trading card game. If there actually is a trading card game remains to be seen but it’s cute nonetheless and your trainer has never felt more like your own character than is this game. 

Two or maybe three new Pokemon. 

Alright Gamefreak I’ll give you ONE more trailer to reveal my sweet little Impidimp!  Yet again the devilishly pink pokémon was not revealed in the new trailer but we got two pokémon announced by name .. and maybe one other .. but we are quite unsure about it. However let’s not cross that bridge until we get to it shall we?  The first pokémon that was announced was Polteageist, the black tea pokemon.

A cute little teapot embodied by a little ghosty boy. Only 20 centimeters high and weighing 400 grams this pokémon is a perfect ornament in your daily life. You can drink it’s tea, but drinking to much of it will give you a stomachache.They can mostly be found at hotels and castles and the likes where they are oftenly be treated as pests. If a Polteageist sees a teapot with some tea remains in them it can pour some of it’s essence into those remains and another of it’s kind wil be born in the new teapot. This leads to them being somewhat of a plague and pest in hotels and restaurants. It is a pure ghost type.. being only the 10th pokémon ever of that typing.  It’s ability is weak armor, when it is hit with a physical move it’s defence stat is lowered but it’s speed is boosted. A nice way to simulate a cracking teapot but with a lot of priority physical moves out there, the strongest being it’s greatest weakness it remains to be seem if this pokémon can make it in to competitive play. It would need to have some solid speed stat to be begin with and some creative moveset to get around sucker punch.

The second pokémon that has been announcement was Cramorant. This Pokémon was part of the big leak that has nearly predicted everything right so far. I love it!  I am a big fan of ducks and though this isn’t really a duck it sure is part of the duck family. It’s super blue!

Smurfs were less blue than this derpy looking boy. It brings back memories of psyduck for me which is good.. because I also loved that one. It’s a flying water type which isn’t particularly unique but with electric types not being ran THAT much in both the games as well as in versus it’s solid enough of a typing to help you deal with a lot of obstacles on your way. Cramorant is described to a loyal but mostly hungry pokémon.. there seem to be a lot of hungry pokémon in the Glar region.  It will eat just about anything it can fit.. or even cant fit in its beak. While it is a scatterbrain it is said never to forget the bond with it’s trainers but don’t you dare steal it’s food. The waterbird is said to even ferociously attack it’s own trainer if they steal or take away the pokemon’s food. It’s most interesting feature however is it’s special ability. Gulp Missile allows the pokemon to scoop up a fishy after it uses surf or dive.

This little creature remains in it’s mouth after. This is called its Gulping Form, unable to swallow it whole Cramorant tries to eat..until it’s hit in combat after which it spits the sea creature at it’s opponent like a little projectile. This could be really fun.. and given that it works on dive AND surf it seems like Cramorant can work as both a physical or a special attacker. I am a fan of this duck-thing and I will find a shiny one!

Now this was all that was announced in the Nintendo direct. ‘But Pinke you told us there might be a third Pokémon’.  Well yes! Pokémon doesn’t really have much ‘classic’ animals in their ecosystems.. there’s hints some might be left.. but I do belief that little fishy is it’s own Pokémon. We saw pokémon eating other before. The toxapex evolution line preys on corsola so perhaps this little fishy can be the prey of my already beloved ducklike. Is Fishy an entirely new pokémon? Or could it perhaps be a Galarian Wishiwashi ? Due to how small it is I am inclined to say the latter, it would also make sense in a way as it’s a schooling Pokémon. It’s all speculation so it’s to early to tell.. but mark my words we will see more of Fishy in the future… lets just hope Impidimp goes first.

So we conclude the this post of  what is to come. Currently I am having some issues with my muscles which is vastly distracting from writing. This may result in a post or two missing near the weekend but I will try to be here and do my regular thing. Just as a precaution I would like to warn you all. Leave a comment or a like and make my day happier!

Until we read again! Hopefully sooner than later.

XO
Pinkie

What if Ash was a girl (Part 2)

Hey little monsters, today we return to one of my personal favorites stories to tell. What if Ash was a girl. Regular Ash was a stereotypical boy so for this story we use a persona Ash has used several times throughout the anime ‘Ashley Ketchum’ but rather than being Ash in a dress, like any 90’s anime did at the time, she is a typical girly girl.  In the last part we saw that being a girl made her much closer to her mother than Ash was and listened to Delia’s advice going to bed early. As a result Ashley unlike Ash did not oversleep and get her first pick! A Bulbasaur she nicknamed Flora. Quite infatuated by the young Gary Oak, Ashley determined to be a strong trainer who could beat Gary in a battle so he would fall in love with her. Yet Gary upon seeing Ashley’s pick decided to go Charmander.. putting her at a disadvantage. After failing to catch a Pidgey because her throwing skills suck the young girl gave it some thought and decided to catch a water pokémon first. This let to her staring at a young tomboyish girl that was fishing.  If you want to catch up on part 1 you can do so here.

Chapter 5: The Tomboy and the Girly Girl. 

Misty stared at her line in bliss, not noticing the girl standing behind her. As she felt the wind on her skin and rustling through the grass she was grateful for this serene moment. That moment would be fleeting though as suddenly her line went tense as she had a bite. With a brisk pull she fished out a Goldeen out of the water. This pokémon looked somewhat similar to a horned goldfish. Most of its body was in a silverish white though.. but goldfish like patterns coloured it up top and it’s fanning tail. She grabbed a pokéball and before the fish pokémon could flop more she hit it dead on with the pokeball causing the pokémon to be turned into energy and being sucked up in the catching device. As the Pokéball fell into the grass Ashley back in the bushes could not contain her excitement anymore.  ‘That was amazing can you teach me how to do that?’ As our heroine tried to make her way through the bushes her dress snagged on a branch causing her to trip into a bike that was standing on top of the hill causing it to fall down. ‘Hey that’s my bike!’ Misty shouted when her pokéball opened at the second wobble. Being to distracted by the incident Misty was unable to prevent the little goldeen from bouncing in the water. ‘Well thanks for nothing.. you made me lose my second goldeen of the day’ Misty shouted towards angrily towards Ashley. Ashley not used of negativity sobbed a bit at how her plan failed and how awkward she must have looked. ‘I … I am … so.. sorry… I … did not know… it went into the pokéball right? So why did it not stay in there?. Misty scoffed ‘Well if you don’t even know that you best better go home and study instead of destroying my bike’ Misty walked up to inspect her expensive means of transportation.  Fortunately nothing to bad had happened to it.. the headlamp was a bit off position. Ashley had trouble fending of the mean comments and some tears brimmed in her eyes she had to spend all her focus on to ward off, Misty noticed. ‘Hey.. I didn’t mean to make you cry.. did you hurt yourself? Why were you there in the bushes?’ The ginger fisherman’s newfound compasion soothed the new trainer a bit as she began to explain her story. “I am Ashley Ketchum, from Pallet Town.. I started my trainer journey today… and I picked Flora my bulbasaur, but than the boy I like picked a fire type..and I really want him to notice me so I was looking for a water pokémon when I saw you..but I really suck at throwing pokéballs..so I thought maybe I should keep watching to see if I learn anything. Misty chuckled the girl that was so awkward and lost looking, she could not help to feel some compassion for the kid. ‘Sit with me kid.. .. Ashley right? I’ll try to teach you a thing of two then you can try for yourself.’ Ashley nodded and followed Misty down the slope. Misty looked at her and began. ‘Lesson one! All boys are dumb. They always think we like them anyway.. but dont show it that much.. when you see the boy again tell him he is stupid.. and it’s not like you like him or anything’

Chapter 6: Ashley catches a Pokémon.

The girls spend a long while talking about boys and water pokémon. Misty told Ashley that she and her sister ran the cerulean city gym but that she preferred to be a bit more free. She came here in the hope of catching a Magikarp as she really wanted a Gyarados to show her sisters that she in fact was the best trainer in the family. Ashley nodded and told Misty that if she would catch a Magikarp she would let Misty capture it. In the distance a bit of a thunderstorm rumbled. ‘Seems like there is bad weather around Viridian City’ Misty said, I know we are close but perhaps it is better if we camp here tonight?’ Ashley blushed a bit, she never really had friends before, her mom told her stories from before the war but in Pallet Town there only were boys of her age and they all thought she had cooties. ‘W-W-We?’  Ashley asked stammering. Misty frowned. ‘You do have a tent right? It will be like a sleep over.’ She looked and saw as the pink dressed girl’s face twisted looking completely puzzled. ‘What’s a sleep over’ Ashley asked. The Cerulean city Gym leader let out a tiny gasp and asked ‘Ashley don’t you have any friends?’. The girl from pallet town panicked, this would make her look bad , her brain wasnt working when she blurted out ‘Well mom is my best friend’ clearly this was the wrong answer as Misty began to laugh hysterically. Ashley puffed up her cheeks and stomped the floor at the girls rudeness when suddenly the water surface cracked and a tadpole with feet and a spiral pattern hopped out of the water. Looking startled at the loud sounds all of the sudden. ‘Ashley wait look it’s a pokémon’ Misty shouted loudly once more scaring the little poliwag into hiding behind Ashley.  “What do I do, What do I do?’ the pink dressed trainer asked panicking. ‘You capture it’ shouted her new friend. Grabbing for her pokéballs frantically our heroine felt how a ball slipped from her hand and plummeted straight down.. bonking the poliwag on the head. With a red light the poliwag was morphed into energy that would soon be contained into the ball. The ball wobbled three times while a red LED light changed green with a melodical ping. ‘What happened?’ Ashley asked. ‘Where did it go?’ Misty walked closer while ruffling the frantic girl’s hair a bit she picked up the pokéball and handed it to her. You just caught your first pokémon Ash.

Chapter 7: You’ve got a friend in me. 

‘I can’t believe I captured my first pokémon by accident’  Ashley moped a bit as she stared at her pokéball embarrassed. ‘Yeah you are pretty green kid’ Misty laughed. Say how about we travel together for a bit? You can use the help and I can use the company’ She gave the sad looking girl a pad on the shoulder. ‘You’ll become a great trainer I am sure, after all  you are my student and I am a gym leader .. and we are friends now.’ Ashley felt a bit better after those words and nodded. ‘Poliwag I choose you’ Ashley sad as she threw her pokeball randomly. The adorable tadpole Pokémon appeared again ushering it’s name’ poliwag poli’ Ashley picked it up and examined it closely. ‘Polly huh.. is that your name girl?’ ‘Poli’ said the water type in reply. ‘Okay I will nickname you Polly then… Polly meet Misty my first human friend and also meet Flora.. your sister and teammate’ She called her Bulbasaur out as well and the two pokémon seemed to happily converse. ‘See how happy they both look’ said Misty’ that must mean you are a great trainer greeny! You just don’t know it yet yourself’ She looked at the girl who stared at her new pokémon gleefully and asked’  You don’t know how to set up a tent I presume? So how about I set up the camp and you cook some food?’ ‘Oh that’s a great idea Misty’ Ashley said ‘Mamma thought me how to cook from when I was like six.. she told me she made Pappa fall in love with her through her cooking.’ She smiled as she got a small cooking kit from her backpack as well as some supplies. The orange headed girl unstrapped Ashley’s tent from her bag first and began to set it up with ease. ‘Tomorrow I shall teach you how to set this up okay, are you close with your father by the way?’ The awkward silence that followed cued Misty in on what the answer was gonna be in advance. ‘Dad left to fight in the war one day, he never returned it’s been me and Mamma since almost as long as I can remember. I remember he showed me a rapidash.. but that is my only memory of him’ Ashley said.  She wanted to tell more but suddenly two strong arms grabbed her and hugged her tightly as Misty had her locked in a strong embrace. ‘My parents also left me and my sisters, after the war though, not even that long ago.. but I could never go out because we had the gym to take care off.. we hoped they would come back but…..’ Her words were cut off by grief and sadness. As dusk began to set in the two shared a meal and some deep conversation about their parents their duties and such. Ashley told how she tried to befriend the boys in town by baking them cupcakes, but when she gave them they threw them at her saying they did not want cooties. Misty shared stories on how her sisters felt superior to her just because they were older and how she had not been happy for a long time. After Ashley told a few more stories of her lonely childhood Misty began to realise something. She had friends once, but when she became gym leader those had all faded because of her duties. She might have been Ashley’s only friend but the reverse was quite true as well, this rookie trainer now was her only friend as well. She would need a friend for the horrible part of her journey that was to come anyway but she decided not to tell her new best friend about this yet, she was the cool one of the two for now. After a long night of sharing the two retreated to their own tent falling asleep with a content smile. 

Chapter 8: Viridian City

The next day the pair would travel towards Viridian City. Misty told Ashley they would need to go shopping because Ashley’s pink dress was not ideal adventuring gear. They would need something they could climb in and something that would not snag at every tree while they are crossing a forest For some reason Misty did seem quite adamant on the option to avoid the forest. Even if traveling would take quite a few extra days.  The trainer from Pallet Town however disagreed with that, she had hoped to rush towards Pewter city as fast as she could to beat Gary in a battle using Polly so he could fall in love with her. Polly and Flora were taken out of their Pokéball and walking alongside the pair as they passed a police station that was surrounded by people. ‘What’s happening here?’ Misty asked one of the random bystanders. He was a chubby man, wearing a purple t-shirt and some jean shorts that were to short for him, big curly hair and a heavy morning shadow made the water trainer think this man did not go out a lot. ‘You see! Last night officer Jenny apprehended two criminals who were attacking the pokémon center but they had like a talking Meowth or so is said.. so people want to see and they want some answer on the recent thefts as well. ‘Oh a police officer stopped criminals last night? That sounds exciting’  Ashley said slightly holding her sleeves in front of her nose to drown out the man’s potent body odor’ Yes you see, she arrived at the scene a bit late .. the team had already snatched quite a few pokéballs along but this made them slow, giving officer Jenny enough time to take down their Balloon with her Growlithe. They attacked with ignitable gas so there was risk of explosions throughout the battle that could have compromised the structural integrity of the pokémon center but Jenny was to smart. Eventually her Growlithe went down and Team Rocket tried to steal her motorcycle but she had the keys so they could not flee. Stuck in the sidecar the man and the meowth where apprehended. The woman tried to fight again but she could not get passed the amazing Chansey of Nurse Joy! So I came here today to ask both on a date. The main straightened his thick glasses. ‘But they are way out of your league’ Ashley blurted out. ‘Girls want boys who take a bit better care of themselves you know’ The man ogled her with disdain. Do you not know who I am? My name is X! That’s right X Posure! The greatest pokémon complot theorist blogger there is. If I can date either of these two girls I will get insight in the government and can find out if they have just planted Team Rocket to seem capable themselves. These two criminals seem grossly incompetent in my analysis after all, so why would team rocket send these two?.  ‘That’s not the right reason to date a girl’ Ashley picked up. ‘You date a girl because you want to be with her and because she makes you feel special and in love.’ The man scoffed ‘Such naive.. could you possibly be a government spy trying to take me down?’ As Ashley wanted to begin to explain again Misty grabbed her by the ear and dragged her away. ‘Alright that’s enough of this insanity.. no need to keep up this stupid debate he is just there for Exposure…. the blog.

Let’s spend our time in a more worthwhile way! Shopping! The pair visited the mall and looked at some cute boys and even cuter outfits. Ashley got two new outfits. A sky blue tank top with matching socks and a red turbine skirt. She combined this with some white clog-like walking shoes with cute red straps matching her skirt. To accessorise she bought a white felt boater hat and a cute little yellow purse to carry everything at the ready.. so she did not have to rummage her backpack all the time. Her other outfit was a black tank top and some jean hotpants of Misty’s favorite brand. The tanktop would have a sky blue collar leading into a fist size blue dot on her sternum. Sneakers in matching colours would be great for walking through the city. She would accessories by wearing some cute white flannel wristbands with a ring on the top. Each city she would visit she would buy a charm and add it to one of these rings. She found a cute one that was shaped like a silver feather that was split at the top. It was called the silver wing. After they were done shopping Ashley immediately redressed in her city outfit. ‘How do I look she asked’  Misty nodded at her approvingly and gave her a thumbs up. ‘You look super cute in that outfit Ash… still a bit Green though.

Ashley’s story might began quite a bit slower paced than the original or my other stories but soon the pair will have to travel Viridian Forest and from there on out Ashley’s  journey will truly begin. With no Ash to to blow team Rocket up and away.. Jenny was able to make the arrest as due to her function she would be much more focussed on apprehending the thieves than Ash ever would. Ashley unlike Ash.. never encountered Ho-Oh, but due her conversations with Misty being more open has gathered a lot of experience and information Ash would not acquire till much later. With very different motives and a very different persona Ashley will continue to go down a completely different journey with quite different encounters you never know what happens next. To find out you’ll just have to wait and read our next episode! Until then leave a comment and remember!

I am not weird. Just Very Pink!
Until we Read again!

XO
Pinkie

Top 5: Pokémon Fan Games

As a princess I deserve some quality entertainment and though my court jester Aipom occasionally provides some good antics for me to laugh at as well as your silly mistakes in Pokémon games this princess is not that easily satisfied. Pokémon is our passion and even though the official Pokémon games are quite entertaining.. I deserve to be rich and have as much games as I want. Luckily we have some slav…. uhm ‘fellow fans’ who develop  their own take on games for us and their results can be quite amazing. Oftenly giving us more of a challenge, something a bit different. Today I will show you such content as I show you five gems of my treasury.
My top 5 favorite fangames. 

Fangame Number 5: Pokémon Clover

Pokémon Clover is also known as Pokemon V.. or Pokémon 4chan. Now to answer your first question… yes that is exactly as stupid as it sounds. Instead of pokémon based on dogs snakes or plants, we get pokémon based on cum, dicks and poo. We get a pink horse named Geigh it’s pokédex says it pushes the gay agenda. Instead of diglett tunnel we have a cave leading across the border where a bunch of lazy sombrero working people are trying to cross the border if you help them, they offer you the poo flute.  Which can wake up the Cacademon pokemon. This game feels like 4chan in every single way. Not spending a lot of time myself on such things to me it kinda felt like Seth McFarlane’s version of pokémon… or Family guy pokémon if you managed to miss Seth created it. I started this game as a female.. but I quickly restarted into being a male.. because the female rival is amazing. While you are playing a female.. you get a very dopey but fun looking avatar and a fairly normal rival who is somewhat douchey.. but also bland and generic. Similar to how Brandon was a rival in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.. you barely remember him. If you start as a male.. your rival is KEKsandra, a girl who speaks in memes and L33T.. a whirlwind of jokes and fun.

The game is set in the Fochun region (clever right?) and you get invited by professor Stump to take one of the three following pokémon. Grasshole the butt pokémon. Arabomb.. who is a bomb wearing a turban and Ejacasmn one of the many sperm pokémon in the game.
Grasshole evolves into Analgae and Rectreem respectively, the last one being a big ass with an entire tree growing out of it. Arabomb evolves into IguAllah and Lizackbar respectively.. the last one being a lizard wearing an explosive belt and arabian headwear. Ejacasm evolves into Hosajack and Condoom with the final evolution representing a filled blue condom.. being a water and poison type. It barely gets any better from there.

(Leader Kanye)

Gym Leaders battles have a mysterious musical theme and if it plays seven times the final gym leader will appear. Gym leaders you will face are people like Brock, Tumblrita , the hologram of Freddie Mercury, a random neonazi  and of course Kanye West who is suffering from Ebola. Trainer classes you can encounter are Neckbeards, Weebs, Feminists, Trannies, Immigrants Meth cookers (Walt and Jess) Memers and Midgets. The game is unfair and seeks to offend you or anyone else all the time.

At the end of the final dungeon.. victory road (which takes about 15 minutes just to navigate through) you encounter Fuckin L Jackson who has a team of 6 extremely overleveled Pokémon called Motherfuck. They only know one move.. explosion with the ability shadow tag.

If you dont have a ghost pokémon or revive on hand (which is likely cause your at dungeons end and ghost types are rare and not that good..by design) you will lose and be send back at least 15 minutes.  There is a plot about team Karma and their leader Kymmi (KnowYourMeme) who is trying to find the legendary pokémon but yeah, this isn’t a game you are playing for the amazing story. This game is nothing but silliness. Eventually somewhere the game will make the ultimate your mom joke.. after which you battle her. Her ace pokémon is a box of dragondildos. For how silly the game is, it’s set up pretty well.. besides the screw the player moments the game is easy enough to breeze through coming closest to the actual pokémon experience of all the games on this list. With plenty of support and A LOT of custom pokemon to catch this game is as fun to play as it can be offensive. You better learn the konami code to beat Anonymous though. There are references here for everyone to enjoy.

if you know nothing about pokémon you can still play this game. For example what dual typing would  Gym Leader Snoop prefer? That’s right Grass and Fire! If you want to have a silly fun time with pokémon and dont take their insulting your beliefs to serious this can game can be your lucky charm. P.S. Don’t use cheat engine in this game.. you will get the bad ending.

Fangame Number 4: Pokémon Uranium

A fakemon game like clover but less silly. I personally enjoyed playing through clover more but Uranium is more inviting for a replay edging it out in the number 4 position. In Pokémon Uranium you travel across the Tandor Region. You have lost your mother in a nuclear incident and now throughout the region these problems seem to play out once again with your custom made starter you once more travel to gather all 8 gym badges so you can travel across the world and prevent disasters from happening. Would I judge a game soley it’s qualities Pokémon Mega Adventure would have taken this spot, but the latter is a bit to much of a classical adventure making it harder to reckoment. It does everything Uranium does somewhat better… but arguably so do the original games and Mega Adventures is like a bigger version of those.  Uranium gives you something unique. Their Fakemon are the best I have ever seen.

Not only their completely own mons they also gave a few classic ones a brand new evolution including Dunsparce and primeape, which I am really happy about. In fact some of their designs are so good that I actually confuse them for the real ones. My Baashaaf for example was beloved and I quite oftenly namedrop it when naming sheep pokemon. Not every mon is that well designed and unfortunately I am not a big fan of the starters. Those have that bootleg feel to me, being somewhat over designed in their first form and underdesigned in their second form. They seem like something from a freemium imitation. I do respect them for making your starter only evolve once and adding a mega evolution to that as an alternative though. That is something new.

Tandor is a fun region to explore with pretty beaches, deep jungles and creepy crawly caves,  each location feels unique yet everything feels like it’s own region as well. It’s quite impressive what they managed to squeeze out the generation 4 tilesets. Their biggest gimmick is the new typing. Radiation Pokémon. This typing does not work like any other typing and doesn’t rebalance the type system… which is a good call. Radiation pokémon work more like Shadow Pokémon , from the gamecube games. They are effective against all non Radiation types.. but everything non radiation is also super effective against them. More powerful than the regular versions they take some damage every turn and can on occasion not listen to you. They are basicly just alternate versions of regular pokemon but all n jet black and green giving them a very sleek look.. that is kind of too edgy for me.

I ended up not using them at all due to it all yet they had an impact on the story and I was happy they were there.. it could be quite a challenge to fight some of them. Like raising radiation pokemon the game can be a bit tedious though. There are so many secrets and reasons to revisit a location you never really get the feeling you can really explore it.  Each cave has several layers which you can backtrack to crack after you received more hm’s and stuff alike. Yet this was done so often that I never felt really in control. Tracking back is also nearly always optional.. so it’s not like a metroidvania..it’s just you spending an hour more to get a lackluster move or item. The most inventive game on this list by a mile, but one you have to put a lot of work and effort into.

Fangame Number 3: Pokémon Insurgence

This game begins with you about to be sacrificed in the name of Darkrai. A evil cult is planning to make you a blood offer to make the legendary appear. You are saved by Mew and begin a truly epic journey across a huge map and deep and complex story filled with renewed pokémon and extra mechanics. After escaping you use mew for a very short while.. before reaching the starter town.Professor Sylvan has a problem with Bulbasaur Squirtle and Charmander and asks you to take one of them off their hands. Now Bulbasaur is  the best starter ever.. but these are not regular Bulbasaur Squirtle and Charmander.. these are so called Delta species.. in the land of Tellor these are strange mutations that have been showing up more and more. Charmander is now dead.. and is a dry bones like ghost dragon type. Our former water type is now a Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirtle.. literally. being a dark and fighting type. So these look insanely cool! Bulbasaur is a pink fairy with a magic flower on it’s back. I am so happy I could vomit rainbows. Not only is Bulbasaur PINK , my favorite typing and kawaii as fizzlesticks it’s also strong against both others.. though charmander can still hit it like a truck.

Pokémon Insurgence had such a cool idea with the Delta Species and the amount of time I’ve spent on getting myself a Delta Ralts was ridiculous.. it kept dying on me. In the end.. an electric Ice type wasn’t even THAT good. Now I do need to replay this game sometime because on my initial playthrough I wasn’t able to finish it.. this game is HARD.  Not in the way the next entry will be .. but as in… you better grind girl.. kinda heart. I even cheated in a bunch of rare candies to skip one particular part of grinding yet a few minutes later my team was underleveled again. Maybe I used to much pokémon? I will find out next time I play through it. This game shines in it’s story though.. with complex character political betrayal and a story of children chosen by destiny.. and legendaries this game feels special throughout. So do you.. for the first time in a Pokémon game you matter you aren’t just a nobody. There is not just one evil team.. there’s several cults and even some other bad guys beside that giving off the feeling that it’s you against the world. This raises the stakes and the tension for this higher difficulty.

With a lot of custom features like armoured evolutions, brand new skills you are granted from other trainers legendaries and a truly beautiful journey to partake on its such a shame that this game is bogged down by the grind. A few puzzles are also necessary to further the plot, I think a few of those slider puzzles as well taking the wind a bit from under this games wing but with a darker and complex story, cute and cool new pokémon forms and a whole lot extras like trainer customization it’s no surprise that this game has gathered a cult following. 

Fangame Number 2: Pokémon Reborn

You start this game on a train on your way to reborn city when terrorists attack the train causing it to explode just as it drives into the station. As your trainer walks outside they can see the devastated station. A cheery girl comes excited about the explosion saying cute stuff.Everything seems kind of like pokémon so far.. but with a stronger start. Than you see the standard “technology is great guy’ .. (a npc which brags about what new features there are in games found in every game)  you talk to him. He doesn’t brag about technology.. he looks at you and asks.’You were on that train’ . a white text box reveals an awkward silence before the third one says.. so was my wife. Then you realise this is not going to be your regular kind of pokémon game. As you exit the screen, we cut away to the police having arrested a terrorist. He is strapped to a metal chair as the policeman summons a torkoal to heat up the chair. We cut to the reborn logo. Pokémon Reborn does not play around, you know this from the get go!

  After you have chosen from all 21 current starters you are off on your journey throughout this new region. There is no route 1. You start out in the slums of Reborn city. On the first bridge you see , you encounter some vagrants beating one of the typical route 1 rodents to shit.. they want to toss it over the bridge inside the canals of reborn city which have turned acidous by years of pollution.These trainers challenge you to a battle.. my piplup was underleveled and lost, there was no rematch when I restarted at the pokemon center and went back to them they had murdered Bidoof.  I restarted the game and choose Charmander as a more potent starter.. was I gonna need it. I trained Coal the fire lizard and Rusty the Bidoof up in the slums. Instead of young kids I fought doxies , punkers and other trash. Doxies is a nice word for… certain types of women who make money buy doing certain things which usually involve movement while sparingly dressed. They use pokémon that spam moves to make you fall in love. Implying they use it to find John’s.

No matter how many doxies and hobo’s I beat though.. I am not making money.. these people don’t have anything. Terrorists attack the power plant and I stop them before advancing to the gym.. Rusty and Coal are ready.. and wait .. why does the first leader have six pokémon?! We wipe… every gym leader in reborn  uses six pokémon because of course they would .. they are gym leaders they have to properly test you. Pokémon in the wild usually have weakness recovery.. because it makes sense that an animal in a hostile environment learns to defend itself against its greater foes. Reborns theme is survival, survival of the fittest and survival against the odds. Reborn is different.. from the get go you can choose any sprite for your character.. you can use the “token female” who identifies as a male. There are even non binary sprites and it’s selectable as a gender as well.
Our journey is not one to be the very best it’s one not to die or see the world end. After defeating the first gym we can access the second ward of reborn city.. the evil team has build a machine to mutate a tangrowth into a monster .it’s roots have caused use cracks and is splitting the city apart. A few npc’s talk about how they can see their dead friends down in the pit or how their child got consumed by the rifts. On the journey that follows we amongst other things see, children unrightfully prisoned into an asylum getting electroshock therapy from electric pokémon. We see a gym leader commiting suicide and dropping inside a 12 year old gym leaders room where he splatters in front of her eyes.. causing her to land in said asylum where you have to rescue her.

We have gym leaders being bisected and their pokémon being tossed and melted to death by a volcano. Reality shattering, brainwashing lies deceit and a whole lot of murder.  Pokémon manages to create a pokémon world that for the first time feels .. close to our world.. close to modern.. the other worlds are all very utopian and this is the other side of the spectrum. With custom shinies and them appearing more frequently the game makes collecting pokémon fun and tactics come into play like nothing before.

Each gym and some dungeons have special fields.. which react under circumstances. For example there is a lights on/lights off type field. Electrical attacks can switch on and off the lights while Dark attacks get stronger or weaker depending on the current state. There is a field made of mirrors, where missing a physical attack causes the mirrors to cause some shattering bleed damage.. and missing a special attack allows it to be reflected back towards your target once more.. if they dodge once more however the attack is coming towards you. The field also enhances the power of beams. I played the game while it was not fully finished but while I played there were about 10 gyms to conquer.. with 4 more i’d say  to come? Yet in truth is there are more. You find out that once a gym leader dies.. their badge is invalidated. Gym Leader death does happen several times during your story. Grinding in this game is easy enough.. which is good because you need to do it a lot. You do not run a team if 6 pokémon.. because of how gym leaders work your team will be closer to 12 or even more pokémon. Unlike other pokémon games EVERY pokémon who is overleveled starts to disobey.. that means you can not use one single team against all the gym leaders. You have to have teams for each and every one of them.. not only paying attention to their types but also to their fields. The team I build against the first poison gym leader could not work in the field against the second so I had to switch them up.

Even more difficult than Insurgence.. this feels right.. this is a challenge I like to face.  The level cap is a lot harsher and I hit it quite oftenly… it’s even so common they introduced items for it.. called common candy, unlike a rare candy that levels you up.. this one levels you down.  I ended up using them a lot and I love that I had too. This game pushes you to build teams.. to switch movesets and to think about your items and supplies. Money is limited but quest lines are plenty.  Right in the beginning you can buy a magikarp..it looks like the classic magikarp scam from pokemon Red, I did cause I wanted gyarados..leveling is easy… but no this is reborn city.. the magikarp scam .. is a scam.. not only overpriced.. this time you flat out get robbed.  As you progress you can keep pursuing this quest for revenge like a 16bit Liam Neeson. You can play a bit of Westwide story with remnants of team aqua and magma, you can take a plotline to rescue the real daycare center people. Reborn is brimming with content. Every evolution is fixed for offline play, shinies have been made much more awesome .. and they created a few custom evolutions. Whether you are saving a popplio from death by poison or trying to find the abundance pokémon of that gym leader who commited suicide everything has a purpose in Reborn. It just takes a lot of wiping and a lot of work. This definitely isn’t a game to play for a week this one will take you hundreds of hours. On a game like this I do not mind wasting that many hours because each time I play it I feel reborn.
Unlike that one gymleader that jumped of a bridge.

Fangame Number 1 : Pokémon Infinite Fusion

This one will be short … well not really I am just referring you to my review of this game for all the details. This game takes the number 1 spot because it’s just a lot more completable than the other 2.. unless you count the 90.000 + pokédex of this one. Easier so more accessible, while still keeping that uniqueness towards it. It’s side quest system being quite rewarding. It simply does not require the grind and the motions needed to play Reborn and Insurgence. With as story that complex you can not just drop Reborn or Insurgence either, this one you can leave alone to a while and come back to without any trouble. Especially when you use the subreddit for custom sprites like me … this one really feels like a build your own pokémon game. You can go broken as fizzlesticks in creating combinations.
Like I once more will tell you in my review this game is infinitely fun!

Now my loyal subjects I do realise these game sound way to fun for your price range, but I can assure you all six games mentioned are completely free to play. Perhaps not quite legal to make, you are well within your rights to play and procure them. Because I do wish to keep this post relevant I shall not place direct links to the games as these sites might change or become unsafe , they are easy to find with our friend google. Among the six of them (Mega Adventure being mentioned in number 4 being the sixth one)  I am sure there is one to your liking. I will most likely revisit insurgence or reborn soon though there is a particular rom hack I might get to first… but more on that next week. Until then let me know what game you think you’d like in the comments and remember

I am not weird.. I am a princess!
Until we read again

Your Highness
Princess Pinkie

Arceus: The Pokémon God

Greetings young trainers, Professor Pinkie  here , after a two week Hiatus I am finally back to teach you a bit about pokémon again. Today we will talk about religion in the pokémon world.. and the single deity everyone in this world worships. The Alpha and the Omega of the Pokémon world Lord Arceus. 

The Omnipotent

Good day dear sir/madam/person do you have a minute to talk about our lord and saviour Arceus?  There really is a lot to talk about. Introduced in the fourth generation of Pokémon as a mythical Pokémon. At first it seemed like a bit of a generic pokémon that tied in heavily with the so called creation trio. The creation trio were the Pokémon Palkia , representing space, Dialga representing time and Giratina representing chaos or antimatter. These represented pokemon Pearl, Diamond and Platinum respectively. Yet we found out there was a pokémon above them Arceus, the creator of Sinnoh. In retrospect it became clear that people .. rightfully so were worshipping this pokémon. Yet it wasn’t that strange to find out that a Pokémon was responsible for the creation. Yet on a closer look, this had a much larger impact than people initially had thought.  In subsequent games it was revealed that people in Johto also worshipped Arceus and in ancient times Arceus also created the island of Ransei.

Ransei was a region shaped entirely like Arceus itself and housed 17 kingdoms of samurai warlords including the great Nobunaga. If Arceus was worshipped throughout the world and it could even create islands in it’s own image.. perhaps he was more than JUST the creator of Sinnoh It does make sense that the being that created time and space created everything. The theme of being all-powerful is quite interwoven with Arceus from the get go. Arceus depending on how it’s depicted either is said to have every type (it’s depicted in it’s own movie as such)  being able to switch types (the anime) or being every possible type depending on a held item (the video games). An argument is easily made to disqualify the view of the games due to technical and balancing limitations. After all, Omni Type Arceus would have seven immunities and would only really be weak to rock type moves, which aren’t THAT present  in the battling scene. Most mythical pokémon are only released after a movie about them triggers an event or the event promotes the movie so it is a safe bet to take the movie’s depiction as their intended vision of the actual character. Reinforcing the belief of an almighty pokemon. The games , though bound by balance try to confirm this in their own way by giving Arceus the highest base stat total (let’s compare it to a dragon ball power level)  at 720. Respectively Mewtwo .. the runner up has only 680. Though the latter can overpower god with his mega evolution and moveset. Arceus is also the only pokémon that can learn the move Judgement. Now that seems like some divine intervention to me. In the anime it’s shown watching from above in dangerous situations when it needs to .. wielding several typings.. to intervene if it has to.. choosing an advantageous type. 

Theology

Now Giratina might be a pokémon that is older than Arceus itself but things get a little vague. Cynthia and a nameless hiker that can be found exploring Sinnoh on multiple occasions are our biggest source of exposition on our one true god. Pokémon at least answers the question what came first the chicken or the egg. Answer THE EGG.  At first the wonderful world of Pokémon was nothing but pure and primal Chaos… which may or may not be Giratina already existing, when suddenly an egg appeared in the midst of it. When the egg tumbled from the vortex it gave rise to the original one. Since Arceus here is referred as the original one it would seem like it is the first pokémon yet chaos already existed so it’s somewhat unclear.  To create Order.. from itself Arceus created two beings.. (though unnamed in this story they refer to Palkia and Dialga) as time began to flow and space began to expand (Palka represents space and Dialga is the pokemon of time).

(Palkia Giritina and Dialga)

Later Arceus created 3 living things.. that wished for it and so spirits came to be. These three living things would be identified as the lake guardians Azelf, Mesprit and Uxie.

Even though the story the hiker tells us ends there as it states that Arceus went to sleep after creating the Lake Trio iit is pretty commonly accepted, if not confirmed, that Arceus also created Mew (who created all non legendary pokémon) as well as other creation pokémon like Groudon and Kyogre and Rayquaza (who created land and water and air). Arceus is believed to have created all legendary (and mystical) pokémon or at least created the legendary every pokemon can be traced back to Arceus… with the exception of Ultra Beasts which are like the eldritch beings of the pokémon world. Cases can be made for Time, Space Chaos and Spirit creating the rest yet the limited typing of the 5 Arceus factually created makes people more inclined to think Arceus had a bigger hand in this. 

Theorycrafting is more Detective Pinkie’s thing.. so we will not delve to much further into who created what. I simply wished to highlight two fairly common streams of belief.  Now the mythos of Arceus seems very similar to the shinto religion. Arceus is said to have created everything at the location of the spear pillar. In Shinto religion there is a god named Amenominakanushi, whose name is much too to type again, was the first god that came into existence by itself. The name roughly translates to something like divine ancestral deity that is the originating heart of the universe. So yeah… I am nicknaming it First-First. So when First-First plopped into existence he created Izanagi and Izanami.. a brother and sister who ‘loved each very much’.  Aside from playing with her brothers spear..Izanami actually had another spear, which the two used to stir the chaotic sees to create the many islands of Japan though this required some more incest and pillar building for some reason. I guess it’s wincest after all. She ended up dying and becoming an evil deity after though ..so unsure. 

While there are definitely some similarities with Shinto religion arceus connection to theology goes a lot deeper. If the player in the fourth gen Pokémon games has an Arceus on their team the man reveals he is actually a philosophy major who is researching the creation story.  On several locations he gives you the type changing plate items as well as some insight to Arceus story. At one point he says “When that spirit came to be, there followed awareness about the world. Within the Newborn spirit, time and space were intertwined as one, People and Pokémon where but the same presence’ Unlike Shintoism Arceus seems to have a lot more in common with a monotheistic views. There are a lot of hints towards christianity and judaism in their lore and symbolism. For example the Judaistic principle of Kabbalah has a symbol known as the Kaphtziel. 

Some people of faith wore this symbol as a tribute to Cassiel, the angel of Saturn. Saturn the planet as you know is known by its rings. Arceus currently typing is depicted by it’s ring. Even more so followers of arceus carry their own symbol that looks A LOT like that symbol the Kabbalah used. Too much to be purely incidental. 

Yet this is not the only symbol that is used to identify Arceus with. There is also a circle inside a triangle that is seen in the Pillar.

 Cynthia has her visions on how these symbols symbolize Arceus and the creation trio.. as well as the roles the lake guardians play in the story, and of course she is not incorrect. The gear symbols refer to space and time.. which was later reestablished in the pokémon mystery dungeon games. Leaving the third one to be giratina represented by the triangular symbol.

Yet once more this symbol is eerily similar to a thing tied to yet another religion. Christianity! The symbol is a spot on match for the Shield of trinity. Depicting the holy trinity of father son and holy ghost with god sitting in the middle. Though it might be inverted it still is pretty  much spot on. I would be willing to believe it was a coincidence if but one religion shared some symbology, but three separate cases of religion? That seems a bit unlikely.. but you can judge for yourself. 

Alchemy and Philosophy.

Pokémon HEAVILY relies on a few alchemic concepts throughout their mythos and Arceus is no different. Let’s begin with kicking in a open door it’s golden ring. Arceus literally has the ability to turn his circle gold. Now.. Arceus ring..  is a circular shape with crosses on it. This has nothing to do with christianity but everything with alchemy. Ladies gentleman and other readers let me introduce you to the alchemical symbol for lead.

Pretty right, though it might not be directly linkable to Arceus ring.. their shape is kind of similar. Now before you crucify me for overreaching here.. because the symbol is not THAT similar.. Lead in alchemy is considered as the original metal.. the first into existence.. like Arceus. Still reaching for straws? Well remember that jewish symbol that looked a lot like Arceus religious symbol? The Kaphtziel.. that represents Saturn.. and guess what planet in alchemy is connected to lead in alchemy? That is right Saturn!

(I totallly wanna buy this )

Now I will come back to the links with Alchemy in a bit, but saturn returns once more in the mythos about our divine pokémon and to explain that we will have to delve into some greek philosophy first. Alchemy is part of what is called Western Esoteric Tradition a collective name for many doctrines which also include Astrology and Kabbalah for example. Like pokémon all come from Arceus every doctrine in the WET share roots in the Neoplatonic Philosophy works of Plotinus.  This philosopher described The One in his work as someone consisting of three aspects. The divine mind which was the impulse for creation, the physical reality in which matter and multiplicity exists and the Soul World or Anima Mundi which is quite complex but basically can be described as the force that actual makes things happen.

(Anima Mundi depiction)

Now returning to our dear hiker’s story.. the chaos was Arceus impulse to create the world. The creation of space can easily be tied to the physical reality, and though  the Anima Mundi is way more complex than anything in the pokémon world it is basically the engine that makes things happen.. much like time. Now when we remember the hikers words ‘When the new born spirit came to this world time and space were intertwined as one.  People and Pokémon where but the same presence. This does seem to be applicable to Arceus and Plotinus ideas. With the new born spirit resembling the principles of the divine mind very closely and the intertwined existence being a manifestation of both the anima munda as the physical reality.  Now this concept has been utilized in both Alchemy as well as the Kabbalah by their Tree of Life. A upside down tree.

(Seems like Thanos would like this tree as well)

Paracelsus (whose name sounds like a battery)  was a alchemist in medieval times who also used this tree. The roots on the higher level represent gods coming into existence from nothing.. quite like Arceus. Then in the second phase , whose details I shall spare this tree begins to emanate a light that is slowly moving down the tree.. the life energy leaking into the material realm. Granting it souls.. to make it go round.. making things move as it were.The lower level is just plainly the physical level. But Paracelsus described a plain of existence that as it were is a border between the physical reality and the astral plane. A level of the astral plane that was so dense it can basically manifest in the Malkuth.. or the physical plane. He called this form of existence ARCHEUS. Now Arceus is a pokémon.. it materially exists..sort off not always.. it can cross between those layers. So the intangible pokémon only exists to us.. when it’s in the ‘Acheus’. Now.. since battery-bloke was an alchemist things seem to come together quite nicely yet earlier I told you that before returning to alchemy teachings I still had to tell about a link with saturn right?  Well.. the Archeus in a fair few translations or subsidiary works is referred to as the path of Saturn. With so many references to Arceus ring.. we could deduce and hypothesise that the pokémon we know as the god is not goat or quilin like animal in the middle at all. Arceus the Pokémon.. might very well be the ring.. and that what we know was it’s true body might just be how it can manifest in the Archeus. For those who do not know, this is a Quilin vairant. Usualy more dragon like this one came closest to our god.

Now I  could go on and talk about the Azoth of Philosophers, the alchemic alphabet and their link to Unown script or the teachings about alchemical shapes, the principles of the lake guardians and Arceus impact on the human spirit and link that to Plotinus and other beliefs but let’s save that for another time, as it would involve a plethora of other pokémon I would need to explain as well, to fully finish Arceus tale. I would rather close off with some rather convincing proof that Arceus is indeed tied to alchemy.  In Pokémon Heartgold and Soulsilver you can also encounter the Alpha Pokémon. This time you find him on YET another symbol since linked to it.. this one is vastly more complex.

Many people use this one to figure out which pokémon created which in the pokémon universe. Plopping in Pokémon at all the little dots. Though I have seen many convincing variations of this idea there is something else this picture very much resembles. Those who ever watched fullmetal alchemist might already have an idea what I am talking about. Arceus new symbol looks very close to a transmutation circle.. an insanely complex one but a alchemy circle nonetheless.

Now what not a lot of people know is that the outer circle is required for ritual but the shapes inside  tell you how complex the transmutation is.  The triangle is the simplest form and provides mind matter and energy… space replacing matter, time replacing energy and the determination to end chaos replacing mind in arceus case.  The triangle is outside the circle though symbolising they are infinite power Arceus has.. basically being its own philosopher’s stone, the interior patterns consists fully out of circles so iit is my belief that what we say in Pokémon HG/SS is Arceus transmutation circle for all existence The only circle fit for a god. Oh and Shiny Arceus is gold as well.. if you need more links!

So you see my eager little knowledge students, no matter what religion you follow, from christianity to judaism . From astrology believers too pseudo scientists, much like in the games there seems to be a type of Arceus for you. Explaining a god feels really good after this professor was forced to be absent for two weeks. Would you like to hear more about pokémon connected to alchemy?  Do you have suggestions for my next post? Do you want to pat me on the hat for all this research i’ve done? Let me know in the comments and remember!

I am not weird, just very pink!
Until we read again

XO

Pinkie

Pink-Poké-News: Week 35

Ladies and gentlemen it’s sunday again. Time to find out what announcements you might have missed during the week.. as we leave the month of August today it’s time for a brief edition of Pink-Poke-News.

Pokémon Masters is LIVE!

The new mobile Gacha-game  Pokémon Masters is now available worldwide.  The highly anticipated three versus three pokémon legacy game launched earlier this week. Due to personal circumstances the reporter however was unable to acquire a copy for reviewing. When finally getting back into the swing of things, it turned out that Pokémon Master would not be released in the Netherlands and Belgium because of their strict laws against loot boxes However should YOU live in the Netherlands or Belgium yourselves a bit of research has allowed this reporter to find a work around. Trough using a so called APK file you can download an app that is not available in your app store. Since this reporter is about as technically apt as her D&D 5th E characters, she is utterly unable to tell if a site is safe or unsafe. She just clicks and hopes for the best. Therefore there will not be any links to sites for a APK and the reporter asks the readers interested in playing this game to google it themselves. “How to play Pokemon Masters in (your country)”  worked as wonderful search prompt for me.. of course in your native language. Our copy of the game has been handed over to Chibi Pinkie for a review which will follow as soon as she makes it through a bit of the game. Pokémon Masters also have revealed that their first event will feature Blue. He will most likely be obtained through this event with his signature pokémon Pidgeot.

Once more we unfortunately can’t go into details due to massive system updates in the beginning of the game .. taking their sweet while. However finding out about the game yourself can also be quite fun and discovering how to unlock mister “smell you later’ can feel rewarding on it’s own. Pokémon Masters launch has been quite successful , though on launch day there where a few crashes and log in problems, this sooner testifies of success these days as to failure because most of these errors were caused by it’s sheer popularity. Quite like pretty much every Blizzard release. The new game is already the most downloaded app in over 25 countries, even though it already was downloaded several million times during pre-registration.  The player count thusly being very healthy at launch and reviews are mostly quite positive, which for a mobile game is still a win. People are praising the gameplay and looks but are all complaining on how expensive it is to spend money on pulls, yet since everyone seems to agree with this statement most reviewers also feel this issue will be solved in the future. 

Pokémon Go shoves more Eevee down your throat.

We at Pink-Poké-News have made it pretty clear that we aren’t big fans from the direction Pokémon Go is currently going. However the announcement of Unova Pokémon coming soon has rekindled some hope… this week Niantic snuffed out that hope again by announcing the september breakthrough research. By doing our dailies like a good loyal player in september we can get.. Floral Crown Eevee.  This is an Eevee with a flower stuck on it’s head. What makes this event Eevee..somewhat special is that it can evolve into all of it’s seven eeveelutions. Once more proving that Niantic is not interested in letting you fill up your pokédex.. they just want you to fill up your box with faux unique pokémon. Adding a flower to Eevee means players who want to collect everything are forced to allocate another 16 bag slots to fill get every possible variation. Floral Crown Eevee, Flareon, Vaporeon, Jolteon, Espeon, Umbreon Glaceon and Leafeon.. as well as all of their shiny counter parts as well as their shiny variations.  Currently a standard box in Pokémon Go can hold 300 pokémon, for upgrades you need to spend money or coins that takes at least 4 days to grind up. No matter if you grind or pay each upgrade costs about 2 dollars for a 50 pokémon upgrade, not a whole lot but still annoying. Now.. let’s see how broken Pokémon go has really become to the true collector. The game currently features 394 ish.. pokemon. So already.. you can’t collect them all without spending money… you can still complete the pokedex though.. but that isn’t were the game caters to anymore. Currently you lack about 100 slots to fill your box with everything. Now there are 32! (Maybe more if there was another headgear Eevee)  possible Eevee combinations to currently collect. There is 38 shadow Pokémon that also have a purified version meaning that is 76 additional combinations to add that do NOT really contribute to you catching them all. There’s 8 spinda forms .. which also has a shiny meaning there is 16 Spinda to collect. Since Pikachu has a noticeable gender difference between male and Female.. as well as having a shiny there is currently 44 Pikachu’s to collect, most hat forms can evolve or hatch into a prevolution.. so there’s (rough estimate) over 100 pikachu evolution line pokemon. 100+ Pikachu line , 76 shadow pokemon with their 38 regular counterparts, 32 eevee’s 16 spinda’s.. that’s already 262 pokémon for you to fill you box with that equal  51 legitimate Pokédex entries. That’s over 5 times as much! Niantic is inflating their Pokémon count to force players to spend money on getting the same pokémon over and over again.

We aren’t even that salty about it as it seems like smart business strategy.. but just LAST month we had an event where you could get floral crown Eevee AS well. Rehashing the pokémon in this period makes it feel like creative poverty. It marginalises tradability by rehashing event pokemon over and over again until everyone has them .. just like how community day has killed the values of shinies… as well as filled up my box. I would not nag about how unfair Pokémon Go is treating their player base if they at least launched a new variation that is unique to playing in september. It would force us to trade again. They marginalised raids by putting former raid pokémon and cramming them into the field research as well.  Sure it is nice that you can get some pokémon the way you want to play but it feels conflicted with how they initially meant the game to be played. Everyone can get anything if you wait long enough and rather then come up with something new .. or at least keep something unique to a certain aspect of the game they just rehash and repack so everyone can fill up their box space as soon as possible to spend their money on upgrades.
This game used to have a soul but Niantic is quickly selling it out for an easy buck. We will admit we understand why you cater to the hardcore and new players.. but me as a casual high level player feel completely forgotten and forsaken by niantic right about now.

Hidden Fates and Cosmic Eclipse

Now that I finished my rant how about a rave! Pokémon Hidden Fates launched last week and it’s slowly becoming available throughout the english speaking world.  Hidden Fates is a translation of the long time japan only GX Ultra Shiny packs with a twist. Unlike Japan we do not get guaranteed GX’s in our packs.. but we pay a lot less as well. It uses a few more modern cards from recent sets as well to make it more relevant. What makes this set so special is that it features a lot of shiny pokémon. Both as GX’s as well as some regular holographic ones. Unlike the japanese set.. HF comes with a lot of set unique GX’s that though lackluster in battle strength feature some nice close up art. One of the unique cards in this set is Articuno Zapdos Moltres Tag Team as well as a shining Charizard of course. Hidden Fates much more a collectors set than a battlers set though. There are some very good cards in the set still but you’d sooner by this set to collect rather than to play. This is reflected in the prices a card can fetch. Shiny Charizard graded will most likely fetch a few hundred dollars, while even the quite oftenly pulled legendary trio of Kanto fetches a few bucks. Pull rates for this set also seem quite well, that being said we mostly saw the promotional blister box being opened which admittedly does have some better pulls than your more conventional booster box or elite trainer box.The set is gorgeous and expansive with plenty cards for the true collector. However those who seek to build a deck would be better off with unified minds or unbroken bonds. Quite possibly even the last Sun and Moon set that will ever be release Cosmic Eclipse.

The Pokémon Sun and Moon card sets have decided to go out with a bang. Around the 10th of November.. just a few days before the release of Pokémon Sword and Shield.. the final card set from the series will arrive. and boy will they deliver some goodness.  For those who don’t know.. as soon as a new series begins generally all cards from the older generations become tournament illegal at least at official games. (With the exception of like the last two sets.. if they haven’t changed those rulings). Since Hidden Fates is a legacy set.. it will most likely mean that besides some good supporters you from HF Cosmic Eclipse singlehandedly has to close the gap between  the new V cards and their own generations Tag Team cards.
While we got the gist of what will be inside the packs , the specific content was only teased at.  The set will contain 9 new tag team cards, 7 additional gx’s and well over 20 supporter cards and a brand new form of special energy. New in this set will be the so called Tag Team Supporters. A supporter card featuring two trainers liked “Red and Blue’  as well as “Cynthia and Caitlin’ How these will impact the game remains to be seen. Other than that.. two new triple tag team cards where announcement. The Sinnoh Creation Trio: Arceus & Dialga & Palkia GX as well as the ultra cute pink card Togepi & Cleffa & Igglybuff GX. These were briefly depicted in the trailer for the Sword and Shield set at Pokémon worlds but now.. they are finally rolling of the press. I bet you guys can guess which card this reporter will be pulling for.

Pinkie’s Pokemon Reached 50 followers.

Now existing for about 2,5 months Pinkie’s Pokemon has reached 53 subscribers at the moment of writing. Once more I would like to thank everyone who has made that possible. Blogging about a niche in a niche we never expected things to grow this fast. With plenty of content experiments planned in the near future like Trainer Profiles.. where I turn you favorite character, blogger  or celebrity into a trainer. Little crossover stories of your universe of choice .. mixing it with Pokémon as well. We will delve into some material deeper by providing you tutorials for it then later discussing it in depth referring to these base posts amongst other things. Still we all wonder what YOU’d like to see on this site.

What would make you frequent it more and what would you like to see added.  Here at Pinkie’s Pokemon we would love for this little community to grow and ambitious as we are there is a certain other pokémon blog whose way of bringing content I am not a fan off that I would like to surpass one day. Though our next milestone is simply 100 subscribers that will not be our final goal. Pinkie’s Pokemon wishes to properly showcase passion and love for her fandom in her own unique way without resorting to copying and pasting tweets and calling it a post. Yet Pinkie is not the only one who makes this blog.. it’s everyone reading as well. So tell us what you would like to see. I’d really love to hear more from you all! I might be the Pokémon trainer of this blog.. my readers are like my Pokémon.. I would not be anywhere without them.. so what flavor poffin do you like best? What’s your nature and what would raise our friendship?! Tell me in the comments or look around for if I finally manage to knock out a content page on my actual site! For some reason I can not do a contact form so I will have to be creative. I am happy that I can grow you all helped! Thank you for making Pinkie’s Pokemon possible!


This concludes week 35’s edition of Pink-Poké-News.  In the following week you can expect: Professor Pinkie talking about Arceus, Pinkie returning to the what if Ash was a girl story, a Pokémon rendition of “Star Wars a New Hope’  (Part 1 of Part IV) a review of Pokémon Masters and more! Do let me know what you’d like to see on this site yourself so we can grow. Thank you all for your support during my difficult time last week and for following this blog! Remember
I am not weird, just very pink!
Until we read again!

XO
Pinkie

How to Play: Pokémon the Trading Card Game

Chibi Pinkie has been wanting to talk to you all about the Pokémon Trading Card Game with you for a while now. With a new set releasing called Hidden Fates, which is a genuine treasure trove a goodness it would be nice to ramble about but since most of our readers aren’t to aware we will start with a post on how to play the game first.  So in the future we can let you refer to this. Not only will this post feature the basic rules but also some practical tips about them.

i WANNA BE THE VERY BEST

Hi big people monsters, Chibi Pinkie here and today , even though I am a bit sad, me and Fun the Mime Jr will teach you to play PTCG, thats short for Pokémon Trading Card Game and the official term for it. PTCG is one on one card battling games with some faint familiarities to Cardfight Vanguard and Magic The Gathering. Like in Pokémon the  video games this is done by one on one Pokémon duels and you can win a match by completing one of three conditions. Be the first to claim six prize cards, clear your opponent’s field of any pokémon or deck out your opponent. Although little old me doesn’t really think decking out is all that viable.. as the game is relatively fast to play with little room for THAT creative tactics. Clearing the opponent’s field is hard and requires some heavy RNG thingies..so think of it more as an bonus winning condition than YOUR goal. Claiming six prize cards  is the way to go. You can claim prize cards for knocking out your opponents pokémon in battle. Though the game would want you to believe this is normally one per knockout but in special cases two in reality more often than not you are facing the special cards. Knocking out a plain monster will net you one price card, taking out an opponent’s EX- GX-Tag Team or soon to be.. V cards equals a double dip in the price pot. Given how these cards are so much better than the regular monsters though, nearly every deck you are going to encounter while playing this game is featured around the big hitters. So to beat your opponent you just have to beat down everything he brings.

LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS

In PTCG everyone builds their own deck or buys a starter deck. No matter how you build, your deck always has to contain exactly 60 cards. Another official rule is that a card can never have more than four copies in the deck. In fact you can’t run more than four cards with a single name in your deck. So you can’t run 4 pikachu’s from set A and use four Pikachu’s from set B!  You can however run 4 mewtwo’s AND a MEWTWO GX. On rare items there might be a single card limit. A deck can contain several types of cards.

-Regular Pokémon Cards
-Special Pokémon Cards (EX-GX-Tag Team etc)
-Energy Cards
-Special Energy Cards
-Items
-Supporters
-Stadium’s


All Pokémon Cards and Energy cards can exist in eleven different colours representing typings or a group of typings.  Pokémon cards exist in three tiers as well. Basic, Stage 1 and Stage 2. Stage 1 and Stage 2 function as evolutions and can not be played right away, Pokémon have to be evolved over time. Basic Pokémon can be played once in your hand.
Energy cards are comparable to mana in magic but rather than playing them on the field they are attached to a pokémon and thus much more a limited resource. But more on the rules in later parts.  Special Energies can only be attached to a Pokémon whose card colour is equal to that energy colour(except for colourless) and you are limited to having four of them in your deck. Special Energy however do activate special effects to power up your Pokémon’s offence or defence. 

Item cards are comparable to magic cards in Yu-Gi-oh, you can activate them from your hand allowing various weaker effects to incur like switching a pokémon or preforming a deck search. Supporters are themed like people in the Pokémon world and are powered up versions of items, they will allow you to search for better cards or more cards. allow you to influence your opponent in a way you pick rather than himself etc. Basically everything items do, they can do better. As a drawback you can only play these once per turn while items have no such limitations. Stadiums are very much like field spells in Yugioh, they determine the battlefield only one stadium can be active and a newly played one destroys the old one.Using these tools you build yourself a deck. Usually you want to run either a single colour deck or two colours. 

Most starting decks are two coloured decks but every starter deck is pretty much useless against someone who at least had one or two lucky pack pulls.  Starter decks are insanely lackluster. So if you just want to buy a deck, buy one of the world championship decks , each year they release a  few special decks based on the competitive meta. Not tournament viable but if you want to play against some friends with actual decks this would be the way to start.

However a big portion of the fun is creating your own unique deck in this game. It really is a  collectible card game in that aspect. Unfortunately to properly play means to properly invest. What to use and not to use as well as aspect ratios for energy to pokémon vastly differs per deck.  Is your deck hero a Tag Team Card (whose mechanics work on excess energy) you’ll run an energy heavy deck. Does your deck hero revolve around certain effects you might want to run more items to keep it healthy or take it off the field to retrigger it’s effect. It is however important to build your deck around the mechanics of your cards they have to be a team. It generally is a bad idea to run a deck with multiple strategies. Commit to one and build support around it.

TO CATCH THEM IS MY REAL TEST

Now that you know how to build a deck it is time to discuss how to set up the game. A game usually starts with a coin flip oftenly replaced by a dice roll (odds and evens) . The winner determines who starts the game. Speaking of dice, it is generally a good idea to keep a set of  about 10d6 as you play for damage calculations before you play. Some decks work better when starting first (but this player can not attack on their first turn) some decks work better if they can come out swinging right off the gates. After the turn order is determined players shuffle their decks and draw 7 cards. If the player draws at least one basic Pokémon they can select which one they make their active Pokémon and put it  face down in front of them.
Should a player have no basics, they are forced to reveal their hand and mulligan. Reshuffling and drawing seven cards, repeating this process until you have one basic at least. Each time you mulligan your opponent gets the choice to draw an extra card.

After the active Pokémon has been set both players can choose to play other basic Pokémon to the bench.  This is your back row of Pokémon which can contain up to five monsters at the same time.  When facing a serious deck it is wise to at least play one or two on your bench if you have the option, as long as these cards have over 30 hp.  A few cards allow your opponent to send back one of your monsters allowing for a turn one knockout if you only play an active pokémon. Keep in mind your effects though, abilities that trigger when played to the bench do not trigger turn 0.

After both have at least an active Pokémon, both players place the top six cards of their deck  face down separated on the upper left side of your playing field (your deck generally would be on your lower right side and discard pile just above it.  These are your prize cards. You can only obtain them by knocking out your opponents pokémon. Which brings me to our next deck building tip. NEVER build your deck around a deck hero you only have a single copy off. The way PTCG is played, you usually have on champion in your deck.. the pokémon  that ties everything together.Because the price-pile is a thing there is a 10% chance of your deck hero being locked off from you if you run a single copy. So even if your deck is build around drawing it from your deck (which anyone should) there still is a fair chance your strategy is sealed away from the start. Since price cards are face down coming back from this mistake would be very hard to do and would rely on a lot of luck After the price pile has been formed players flip open their active pokémon (and bench if you played those face down)  and the first player takes their turn.

TO TRAIN THEM IS MY CAUSE

So now that we have your field setup its FINALLY time to get into the action. Each and every turn begins with a draw and ends with a pokémon attack or the turn being passed around. As soon as your active Pokémon attacks.. the fat lady sings …at least for that turn.
As soon as you have drawn you have a few possible actions.
You have a few ‘limitless’ possibilities. These actions you can take as often as you want.. or more likely as often as you have the cards for it. These include:

-Playing item cards
-Use a Pokemon’s abilities
-Playing new basic Pokémon to your bench.
-Evolve a pokémon that has at least sat on the bench for one turn. -Withdrawing Pokémon.
-Playing a Stadium

As long as you have the proper cards you can take these actions. Item cards basically tell you what they do on the card art and you can play them as long as you hold cards in your hands. Upon activation of an item it is either equipped to a pokémon or sent to the discard pile to release it’s effect.. like the special pokéballs that let you search your deck for pokémon. Items are very important to every pokémon deck and are key in keeping it consistent. They improve your card cycle , offence or defence in a quick way. Crucial  in all three of my decks you want to feature them in your deck plentifully. 

Using a pokémon’s abilities isn’t THAT important depending on your build , there are only a few cards that have an active ability. Though two decks of mine rely on this most meta decks don’t rely on active abilities to much. Though in the 2018 season it was a staple with Tapu Lele GX being a play it to grap a supporter card. That has since faded into obscurity a bit. It generally is smart to use pokémon with abilities  though, PTCG does not have any trap cards like yu-gi-oh does and these pokemon abilities are probably what comes closest to that, allowing you to redirect attacks, negate damage at times or draw. Every single deck of mine relies very heavy around the abilities of pokémon, though there s plenty more straight forward sweeping decks as well.. starter decks tend to have no or few pokemon ability cards. Just like I said, abilities you have to activate like my sweet Ariados One punch deck, are rare, abilities themselves are not.

Pokémon come in few varieties. Basic, Stage 1 , Stage 2 and Mega Evolutions.  Basic Pokémon are the ones you can play directly to your bench as long as you have one of your 5 bench slots available that is. You can not play a basic from your hand into the active pokémon zone. As soon as a pokémon leaves the active zone you have to immediately replace it with something that is already is on your bench. If you can’t .. you lose the game. As long as you have slots you can play basic Pokémon.

On a basic pokémon you can play either a stage 1 evolution or a mega evolution.. play a stage 1 or a mega evolution on a basic is allowed if the pokémon has at least spend 1 turn on the field (bench or active)  For player 2.. turn 0 counts towards this as well.. for player 1 it does not. Meaning player 2 can evolve in their first turn. A stage 2 can be played on any stage 1 that has been on the field for at least one turn. There are items that bypass stage 1..but those are far and few in between and only reliable in certain decks (like my fighting one). Playing a Mega evolution generally leads to your turn ending unless a specific item is equipped to that pokémon. Mega evolutions are however not really viable cards anymore. I just thought I’d tell you about them as their card design is really cool and older sets are often quite a bit cheaper to construct decks with.

Each Pokémon has a retreat cost depicted in the lower right of the card , this is the amount of energy you have to discard to move your active pokémon back to the bench (you can not move it to your hand without items) as long as you can pay the cost you can technically do this as much as you need to. A pokémon that is under status conditions is harder to retreat if not impossible. You can not withdraw your pokemon if you don’t have anything on your bench to replace it with.

Placing a stadium card is free as well.. should you have a hand filled with stadiums in theory you can play them all in rapid succession.. it’s stupid but you can…Stadium cards are almost like field abiltiies. Some allow certian pokémon to heal.. other change how status works and yet again others improve damage. Only one field can exist at the same time and you and your opponent share the same statdium card slot on the field.. meaning your opponents  new card sends your old one to the discard pile and vice versa.

Then you have a few actions you can only use once per turn.

-Play A Supporter Card
-Attach an Energy card
-Attack

Suporter Cards make the world go round.. this is the big reason why many of the starter decks fail so hard. They lack ANY good supporter so they are very unreliable. Pitting starter decks against each other is very unfun in my opinion due to how slow and clunky everything feels. Like any card game PTCG relies on luck of the draw.. but items and even more so supporters mitigate that problem.. you build your deck to draw or search.. but not in starter decks.. they offer you the bottom of the barrel supporters to heal damage counters or give you lackluster effects. A proper deck needs proper supporters. Throughout these you gain your momentum.. and thusly you are also only allowed to play one. If your opponent plays three supporters by the time you have played one.. you will notice there is a shift in power. 

Attaching Energy and Attacking I will discuss in a single paragraph because to attack you need energy .. and the use of energy is to be able to attack, so in a way they are two sides of the same amulet coin. Once per turn you play an energy card (special energy counts towards this as much as normal energy)  and equip it to a pokémon. Each Pokémon card holds one or more attacks it can do depicting an energy cost. As long as this cost is equipped to this pokémon they can attack. White energy can be replaced by ANY form of energy Attacking does not consume the energy unless the attack effect mentions cards have to be removed. So think of it more like training up your pokémon for battle. Attacks cause either an xx amount of damage (always a tenfold..unless REALLY old and useless) which is then placed on the opposing pokémon as damage counters (usually we use dices where each dot on the dice represents 10 damage) when the damage counters exceed the hp that is depicted on the pokémon card, that monster is knocked out and you take the appropriate amount of prize cards.  Prize cards are added from your price pile to your hand, but as soon as your attack is finished your turn ends so you can not play those cards you obtain that turn anymore. Claim all six of your prizes to win the game. 

The Power that’s Inside

And basically that is how you play Pokémon the Trading Card Game. Now a lot of these rules have some slack because of the many abilities, special status conditions enhancements and much more. For example there are a few status conditions like sleep, confusion, paralysis, burn and poison. These are either dots or stuns of varying degrees. 
However since these are very situational and their effect can vary depending on fields items and even the pokémon themselves i’d recommend reading up on these if applicable. They are feature that you do not find in every single deck with burn being virtually useless and confusion and sleep being RNG heavy. What I do want to discuss here is HOW to start your PTCG adventure .. because if you haven’t noticed.. I am NOT a big fan of starting decks.
So I am giving you a few options on how to get into it.

Option 1 : I have no friends interested in playing and I do not want to spend a lot of money.
Way to play:  Download PTCG the online game. It’s basically free to play with packs a fairly easily in game grindable currency. It can be a bit of a slog to get a proper deck to start with but there is an online market for cards to ease your burden a bit.

Option 2:  I have no friends interested but I might play at cons or just collect it and I have a bit of money to burn
Way to Play:
Download PTCG the online game and learn how to play with a starter deck, find out what card series of recent you like in online matchups and then go out and buy an IRL Elite trainer box.  These boxes cost you around 50 dollars for 8 packs ,which would be too expensive, but these boxes feature 60 fancy (but very sticky) card sleeves , a set of dice and energy of all kinds. Which makes it a good starting position. Usually a box like this has one or two GX cards in them.. and using your pulled ace you construct a nice deck around it.
With little money to burn you want to look up your staple cards and buy them online directly. Most cards can be bought form a few cents up to a few dollars. Make deck recipes in the online game and use it as a shopping list, a few of the latest sets have had VERY bad pull rates or  huge card pulls meaning the chances you draw what you need is slim. By far the most homeworky way too create a deck but at least you get all your supplies + code cards to enforce your online account as well. Each Pokémon card pack irl has a code you can redeem in the online game to get a pack as well.  Giving them perfect synergy for a somewhat adventures starter. Do keep in mind though that prices of cards are mostly based on nostalgia and emotion. Good cards can cost a fair bit.. like Tapu Lele GX running up 40 dollars back in the days it saw a lot of play. However cards like special Charizards or classic starters sell for a lot more for no other reason than populairity. Try to stay away from building around such cards as it will cost a LOT.

Option 3: I have friends who are interested in playing it with me but we wish to have fun in playing each other, not be the one who spends most wins.
Way to play:
You may have to omit the type advantage rule for this one (which I tend to do as well cause I play with friends). I hate this rule.. pokemon cards have a resisted type (depicted on the left lower half of the card)  from which they negate 20 damage, and an advantaged type.. from which they take double damage. This rule is stupid and unbalanced as 20 damage in the current meta game is nothing and double damage basically means a win for your opponent if you play a mono type deck. Basically it forces you to remove synergy from your deck for safety and it just feels very busted. If you play with friends DO NOT use this rule, it will only result in you type countering each other. If you do not want to break any rules.. create decks that aren’t super effective or resistant against each other.  With that established pick up as much world championship decks as you can . There’s usually three per year..but don’t go back more than one year. So right now 2019’s and 2018’s championship decks are still fun to pit against each other.. older than that and it would be under powered. A championship deck usually runs around 25 dollars. These decks are fast smart and fun to play unlike the starter decks.. they are how pokémon should be played and if you happen to go to a convention, people are usually willing to square of against these decks in non official tourneys even if they aren’t officially tournament legal.
The art usually is pretty and you get a good time capsule of pokémon in that day and age.

Option 4: Shut up and take my money! I wanna pull cards from packs!
Way to play:
Do NOT buy booster boxes, elite trainer boxes or single packs.  Focus on buying blister packs. The Elite Trainer Box has the worst pull rates of the entire series.. they just offer you a nice series of supplies to get started with and a great way to keep all those cards sorted neatly.  Booster Boxes are oftenly the cheapest way to get packs and tend to feature a set number of good pulls. So you will never come out robbed. Downside being that in an entire set of 36 cards you will never get more than 1 rainbow rare.. sometimes 2 in a good set, and never more than X.. Gx’s cards.. averaging at about one  in five point something packs being hot. The three pack blister card is king of the pulls, though these aren’t officially documented the pull rates. From what I have seem and pulled these are astronomically better. With a hot pack in something very close to one in three packs. These blisters aren’t THAT more expensive.. just somewhat limited in availability. A booster box will have a single pack cost you about 3,50 (european prices ..cheapest source) while a blister a single pack equals about 4,60. A notable difference yet when we but adding quantum discounts on more sets .. of the blisters online we can more or less purchase 10 blisters equaling 30 cards to one booster box.  The 36 packs will give you 7 hits while with the blister cards you are somewhere in between 9 and 10 hits. So if you collecting is your style..go blisters.

Speaking of blisters his article has become so long I am starting to get blisters from typing. We will go deeper into the subject of the card game in the near future when I fix my PTCG online launcher and start getting back into the game now.  Have you ever played the PTCG? Let me know in the comments. Next week I just might play the Pokemon TCG gameboy colour game for a review..or talk a bit about online battle simulator of pokémon showdown! Let me know which one you’d like to see more.
Remember I am not weird, just very pink!

XO
Chibi Pinkie