11/01/2017

Pokemon Sun: The Decidueye solo run


A.k.a. my first-ever Grass Starter solo run, dear fellow gamers! Now, the reason why I always snubbed Grass Starters when considering potential candidates for solo runs is the exact same reason that made me choose Rowlet this time around: looks. Yes, I'm a fickle Pokemon player that chooses 'Mons for their appearance first and foremost; and Rowlet is the first Grass Starter that managed to catch and please my eye and make me want to pull off a Grass Starter solo run.


I'm saying "pull off", because Grass Starters are traditionally not considered great solo run material. I'm always ready for a good challenge though, and I was quite eager to see for myself how tough it would prove to cruise Alola with the Grass owl. And surprise surprise, it didn't prove much more difficult than cruising Alola with its Fire counterpart. I'll go further and claim that Litten and Rowlet are virtual copy-pastes of each other when it comes to their final forms. Indeed, Decidueye and Incineroar have eerily similar stats, and that includes a ridiculously low Defense stat. That took me by surprise, I must say. I mean, I fully expect a Fire 'Mon to have low Defense, but a Grass 'Mon? I thought these guys were supposed to boast sky-high Defense, for Rotom's sake! To add insult to injury, Incineroar actually has higher Defense that Decidueye, which doesn't make any sense. Overall, Decidueye felt like a alternative version of Incineroar, only with slightly crappier stats and a different move pool.

Although I fully enjoyed my Rowlet solo run, there's no denying that this 'Mon is not exactly stellar solo run material. Rowlet and his evolutions have one of the most miserable move pool I've ever encountered so far, and that tiny move pool severely restrained my enjoyment. I spent hours spamming the same old tired moves and desperately waiting for new fresh moves to come my way, only to be disappointed when half of them turned out to be defensive and buff moves. I would also have a lot to say about Decidueye's pitifully low HP, which put me in a bind more than once by sheer virtue of being so limited. Once again, I had to resort to the massive use of Battle Items to punch my way through and stand a chance to finish the game with Decidueye as my One and Only.


On the plus side, the Grass owl is a pretty memorable 'Mon that can lift up a whole solo run by sheer virtue of his colourful personality. Cute Rowlet is just too adorable to handle, coquettish Dartrix and his obsession with his hair is absolutely hilarious, and solemn-looking Decidueye oozes mystery and charismaalthough Game Freak could have tried a tad harder to make him look like a genuine bird rather than like a man in a cheap bird suit. It's great to see a Grass Starter whose final evolution doesn't look completely goofyif anything, Incineroar looks ten times goofier than Decidueye, despite the fact than Fire Starters are usually the ones blessed with badass final evolutions.

Cruising around with Decidueye also gave me the rare opportunity to experiment with move categories. During the latter stages of my run, I had access to two powerful Ghost move dealing similar amounts of damage, namely Decidueye's signature move Spirit Shackle and TM move Shadow Ball. The trick is that Spirit Shackle is a physical move while Shadow Ball is a special move; and after my Decidueye learnt both of them, I had tons of fun experimenting with these two similar-yet-different moves and trying to determine which one was the best fitted for each 'Mon I had to pummel into oblivionerm, situation. This is the first time I've ever taken this aspect into account, and it may well be the last time for all I know; but at any rate, it was a welcome discovery and it helped make the late stages of my run more exciting and rewarding.


All in all, this was a pleasant and entertaining solo run despite the Grass Owl's inherent limitations. I'd lie if I said that this solo run made me want to cruise around again with Grass 'Mons; but I'd also lie if I claim that it put me off all 'Mons grassy. Only time will tell if I ever tackle another Grass Starter solo run; but for now, I'm firmly planning to cruise Alola yet again with Popplio, thus making the Sun/Moon pair the first Pokemon games I've ever roamed solo with all three Starters. I've been playing Sun until now, but I will switch to Moon for that third solo run, as well as switch to a male trainer for a change. See you soon for more solo run goodness, dear fellow gamers! Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

6 comments:

  1. Hey Isleif, I am fresh from the switch livestream and here are my thoughts on it. Looking forward to your own thoughts on the presentation.

    - It costs 300$, which is too much IMO;
    - Region locking is gone, finally! Welcome to the 2000's Nintendo;
    - Online is a paid service now. It won't affect me, but it's an absolute shit thing to do. I don't like with PS4 and XBOX and Nintendo joining it is another low for the company IMO;
    - Battery life is game dependent, from 6 hours to 2 and half hours. TWO AND A HALF WTF!!!! This is worse than the 3ds and completely kills the switch as a handheld system;
    - The joycons have motion controls, so ports of wii games is possible. This is a huge plus for me. But they look even tinier than I suspected and I very much doubt they are comfortable to hold;
    - Ugh, it seems Nintendo is still not giving up on the plague that is Amiibo;
    - The right joycon sensing how far away your hand is seems completely gimmicky and useless, typical Nintendo;
    - WTF was the ice cube thing all about?
    - 1-2 switch looks absolutely horrible to me, I cringed the whole way through the segment;
    - ATLUS SMT GAME!! I truly hope this isn't an exclusive again;
    - There was a one second shot of cows at the end when they showing a bunch of games on the switch. Story of Seasons? Or one of those garbage “Farming Simulator 20XX” games?
    - I also saw an RPG I didn’t recognize in those few seconds screens;
    - Overall, there were more RPG games showcased here than when the PS4 and XBOX were launching. This is potentially a good sign, but I'm still wary of it. We'll see if this variety of games is present two years from now;
    - No talk of a touchscreen or a stylus, which leads me to believe that touch controls are gone. At the very least I'm sure it does come with a stylus at launch. Not only is this terrible for some games I love (mainly Yokai Watch and Art Academy), but this means no ports of a lot of DS/3DS games. Atrocious;
    - Thanks for not talking about game prices Nintendo, truly;

    Overall, I am much less excited for the switch now and extremely worried for the future of handheld gaming. The price and battery life kill it as a handheld for me. There's a lot of games I saw (like the Warriors games) that I would love to play in such HQ and on the go....but I wonder, how long would the battery last? This issue is a system killer for me and I don't see how they can improve it.

    I'm glad I got a PS4 with the money I had saved up instead of waiting a switch. I am completely uninterested in getting the Switch until I see that most of the games and franchises I enjoyed on the 3DS move over to it. If the console ends up as barren of third party games as the Wii U did then the 3DS will be my last Nintendo console. Unless that SMT game is exclusive. Then I'll buy it about two years from now, albeit very bitterly (especially if Story of Seasons doesn't move over too). Damn Atlus has me by the ovaries I tell you.

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    1. Turns out I was wrong, and they did say that the switch has a capacities touch screen, which is an improvement over the 3DS. But still, there's no stylus that as far as anyone can see, and that is horrible for me. I cannot see myself playing Yokai Watch without a stylus, and again, what about art Academy? Plus I just don't like tapping things with my fingers, not even on tablets and on the Vita. There's no talk of them releasing a stylus separately either....

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    2. Wow, you actually watched the thing live? Now that's dedication! Despite my curiosity and despite the fact that I actually had to get up at 5:30 for work, I couldn't bring myself to wake up earlier to sneak a peek at the presentation. Lazy gamer is lazy!

      But anyways, my impressions are truly mixed. Although the Switch definitely has potential and upcoming RPGs, I didn't see anything that had me leaping and bouncing with joy. Nintendo's unwavering focus on bloody motion controls had me rolling my eyes, the ice cube segment had me gaping at the screen in sheer disbelief (like, how the hech is that even related to gaming at all?) and the clumsy attempt to tie up the Switch to the whole Nintendo console line-up all the way back to the NES had me sneering. Come on Nintendo, there are more clever ways to capitalize on nostalgia. Like, say, the Virtual Console/

      Overall, my stance about the Switch is the same as before: I'll wait and see. I guess I'll buy it at some point; but like I say, that will be much further down the line. First, I'm waiting for them games to come.

      I wish they had mentioned Pokemon, if only as a side note; that would have made me a little more thrilled about the upcoming game line-up. Because let's be honest, there is not a single game in that presentation that appeals to me. The promised RPGs are still too vague to be excited about them, the Fire Emblem/Dynasty Warriors crossover does nothing for me and the rest is just Nintendo IPs I don't care one bit about. But hey, let's wait and see.

      Amiibo support couldn't be avoided, I guess. They were one of Nintendo's biggest hits these last years and ditching them would have been a giant diss to all the ardent Nintendo fans that had to endure artificial shortages and sky-high prices to get their paws on them. And while we're talking about dissing, I'm SO glad Nintendo finally decided to heed collectors' wishes by removing the cursed region-lock.

      Regarding the touch screen, I guess games that require precise input will be sold with a stylus. That, or Nintendo themselves and Hori will include it in their accessory lines.

      In a nutshell: some points make me happy, others annoy me, but my plans regarding the Switch won't change. I'll wait, watch and hopefully put together a list of coveted games as the Switch's career unfold! ^____^

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    3. Oh, and no colour variations apart from the Joy-cons. Come on Nintendo, I want a white Switch!!

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    4. I wake up at 5 am to go to work too, so it wasn't too much trouble for me to wake up an hour earlier to check out the stream. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered.

      I suppose that in the end things didn't change much for me either, since I also had the "wait and see" approach since the beginning. But that battery thing is raising my alarm flags big time. I'm already annoyed with how often I have to charge my 3DS compared to my Vita, even though 3DS games are less demanding and I play with both the 3D and internet off. Two hours and a half of playtime sounds like the most awful thing ever. Maybe only truly demanding games will have it, but I have a bad feeling that games with short battery life will be fairly common...

      While I can see why they didn't drop amiibo, I at least want them to actually start stocking the damn things properly instead of the artificial rarity they created that lead to so much crap for the consumer. They seem to have improved their production a little bit lately, but not nearly enough given how hard they push the damn things. And the baffling scarcity of the new mini NES shows that Nintendo hasn't changed this mindset at all, so I wouldn't be surprised if some Amiibos become scarce again once the switch is out. This is another thing I hate about Nintendo that isn't going to change any time soon. I mean, either way I'm not getting them because I'm not a fan of DLC in general, much less when it's not fairly priced and easy to buy in a digital store, but still, I have compassion for my fellow gamers. And like the paid Online thing, Amiibo, as it is now, is bull and Nintendo spoke of no improvements to it.

      The lineup was generally disappointing, I agree. Even most of the RPGs shown didn't spark my interest. Xenoblade 2? Still having night terrors over the first one. Octopath traveller? I've been disappointed with Squeenix so much lately that I don't dare hope anything from them anymore. If it weren't for the warrior games, the only games I'd be excited for would be the SMT game and the new Suda51 game. But those games don't even have any screenshots yet, and they're not confirmed exclusives. I also like the Dragon quest tittles, but those are also available/coming out on PS4, so they are not system sellers. But still, better than the initial PS4 and Xbox lineup, and PS4 did end up with a wonderful variety of games. If Nintendo starts supporting the VC a little better, instead of only releasing two games a week and resetting everything once a new console comes out, then that and 3rd party support could make the Switch worth it for me.

      I admit I wanted some actual colour variation for the switch itself too, but at least the different coloured joycons give the system some life. I'm going to wait and see if they release pink and/or purple ones though, because I love that Nintendo lets me have girly systems, as long the pink isn't the terrible overly saturated one we got for the 3DS. But it truly is amazing how unappealing the plain Switch is, one of the ugliest consoles I've ever seen. And don't know why, my PS4 has the same color and seemingly the same texture, but I think it looks good. A white switch would look better with the colours I want for the joycons too.

      Oh, and at least the switch looks to be much tinier than I expected, tinier than my tablet, which does make me happy. So, even though the controllers seem awful to hold, at least my portability concerns have been eased up a little. If I don't think about the battery that is.

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    5. Sheesh, Octopath Traveller is the shittiest RPG title I've ever encountered. Squeenix outdid themselves with this one: tt sound both stupid and vaguely gross, probably because of the association with the word "octopus". I really don't want to play an RPG that reminds me of Hentai and grilled squid every time I boot up my Switch. Not to mention that, retro-ish aesthetics and beige tones again? Come on Squeenix, you already served us that soup in Bravely Default and Bravely Second.

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