Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 26: The Mountain Dwellers

And here it is. My final Let's Play segment of Pokemon Uranium. Which I kinda rushed in order to not to interrupt my Sword/Shield playthrough too much.

Which, admittedly, I thought I was going to finish posting way before Sword and Shield, but editing and reorganizing the screencaps took a whole amount of time.

It has been a wild, wild ride, and... yeah, I trash-talk this fan-game a fair bit, especially its plotting and some of its game mechanics, but honestly... I really did enjoy playing through Pokemon Uranium. It's clearly still a burden of love by the creators, and it really sucked that they weren't able to complete the game the way they wanted it to. Still, it got a whole lot of playtime from me, and while I'm not sure if I'll ever do another extensive screenshot Let's Play like this ever again, it has certainly been a fun experience doing this.

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 2: Wilderness and Cityscapes

Last we left off, I went through what's basically an extended prologue through Wedgehurst, a.k.a. Tutorial Town. Weare introduced to a bunch of the main supporting characters, beat Hop's ass like three times, met a mysterious foggy wolf, got a letter of recommendation and got waylaid a lot by fluffy sheep. Dang those Wooloo!

And... yeah, I've been playing through this game a fair bit, and I did spend a good chunk of it sort of just exploring the Wild Area. It's... it's pretty neat. The actual game balance and the gimmicks of Wild Area is a discussion for another day, but as an actual experience? A combination of the free camera and the Pokemon moving around in an environment that's decidedly a lot less cartoony than Let's Go is... it's actually phenomenal. For all the gripes that I have with this generation's games, I have to admit that the Wild Area felt genuinely awesome to traipse through, and knowing that this is obviously a proof-of-concept to something more spectacular (and hopefully far more inclusive in the amount of Pokemon they include) in the future is pretty damn neat!

The Wild Area itself actually sort of stretches through a good chunk of Galar, and at the moment the only one accessible to my character is the huge patch between Motostoke and Wedgehurst. This huge chunk of Wild Area is divided into further sub-sections with names like Rolling Fields, Watchtower Ruins, Dappled Grove and the like. It's pretty neat, and each of the areas seem to have kind of its own theme. Some parts are hailing and have ice pokemon, some are clearly closer to the ruins where the Golurk and Golett are walking around, some are populated with ghost Pokemon... it's pretty neat.

There are also clearly larger Pokemon like Onix, Golurk, Palpitoad, Galvantula and Xatu just sort of wandering around outside the grass, clearly far more powerful than anything my team has, and the game warns me that these are pretty fucking powerful, good luck challenging them. I think I can't capture them until I have the appropriate badge? Which is kind of stupid, but even more stupid is the game allowing me to catch a level 50 Abomasnow before the first gym and sweep the entire first half of the game, so I can see why they did that.

There's also a large amount of older Pokemon in the Wild Area, I feel. The only Generation VIII Pokemon I encounter, I think, was the Gossifleur that I immediately added into my party, or the Skwovets that fall out of the berry trees. Something I really do appreciate about the Wild Area is how interesting the Pokemon's behaviour are. Some -- like Machops and Tyrogues -- are far more aggressive than the other creatures there. Some are just content to wander around, and some will actually run away from you.

There's also the whole Dynamax Battle stuff, which I'm happy to note that you can actually do run without connecting online. The game just shoves a bunch of AI trainers for you. It's gimmicky as all hell and feels like something that belongs in a mobile game or something, but I don't hate it. I just am really indifferent. The visuals are neat, if nothing else, but ultimately it's just a regular battle with some extra steps. My first Dynamax battle was a giant fuck-off Pidove, and let me tell you something -- there's just an inherent amount of hilarity in seeing a massive monster burst out of a rocky circle and it's a giant pigeon with dead eyes unleashing a distorted cuckoo. Also hilarious is whatever the fuck that noise my giant dynamax'd Sobble makes. Great job on the game makers, by the way, for the cry-distortion with the Dynamax Pokemon. That's pretty cool. Basically, Dynamax is both Mega Evolution and Z-Moves rolled into one, and you can only do it (as I understand?) in the Wild Area and gym battles. Again, very gimmicky, but the visuals are neat.

Speaking of which, I did a couple of Dynamax raids and the absolutely over-the-top Tokusatsu-villain-exploding-in-a-huge-fiery-ball-of-death animation as the Dynamax Pokemon loses and reverts back is just amazing.

There are also these random NPC's that sell you stuff based on the 'W' you have, which I think stand for watts? That's the currency of the Wild Area, and you use them to buy stuff. Like cooking ingredients for the curry minigame, or "TR"s, which... are one-use TM's. What is this, 1996? In all seriousness, though, having there be one-time-use versions of the TM's actually has been a neat little challenge that I'm happy we got back. I am so relieved when Generation V gave us infinite TM's, which made post-game Pokemon team-building so much more painless, but in the same vein it also takes kind of the thrill and resource management of the first four generations away when you run across a moderately-useful or extremely-useful TM early on and you have to angst on who to use it on. Having both TM's and TR's... it's pretty great, actually.

Camping is also neat! It's basically like Pokemon-Amie or whatever they called it in VII, and I'm all for anything that basically allows you to interact with your Pokemon. This time around, you camp and you have all six members of your party all running around the campsite and you can play and interact with them by throwing a ball or waving a little cat-tease toy and stuff. Sobble and Yamper are adorable, and honestly, if nothing else, I'm enjoying a lot of the flavour stuff from Sword/Shield.

Anyway, what can I say about the Wild Area? It's pretty cool. I love the watchtower area in particular.

After the Wild Area, I have to enter Poke-London Motostoke City, which is this combination of steampunk aesthetic and a general rustic feel that a lot of UK cities have. It's basically the super-huge Lumiose or Castelia City of the region, and hoo boy is it a huge city! Parts of it are still blocked off, and parts of it open up as you progress through the gym challenge registration cutscenes, but it sure is a big city! The trains going around in the background, the ridiculous gigantic gear-elevator contraptions that allow you to travel from the 'lower' parts of the city to the 'upper' parts, the fancy looking walkways and railways, all of the fancy posters with Chewtle or Octillery or whatever in the background... Motostoke's a pretty city.


As per usual, Hop, Sonia and Leon show up at various points in the city to basically none-too-subtly nudge you towards progression with the plot, and that's basically the gym challenge. After being distracted by reinventing my wardrobe and spending all of my money in the clothes shop, I also get distracted again making the League Card. Which is basically the same thing as your Trainer Passsport in previous games, and it really shouldn't be something that entertained me this much, but the fact that you can modify so much of the stuff in the League Card from background to effects to expression to the actual pose -- and one of the poses available is the fucking Takeshi Hongo henshin pose from Kamen Rider. Considering how I absolutely ignored the equivalent to this back in the past couple of generations, I do admit into spending a bit more time than I thought I would with this little gimmick.

Anyway, the gym challenge registration moves on a bit slowly. Some dude with purple clothes and white hair bump into Hop and is a Grade-A douchebag, and what I assume is going to be yet another rival, quasi-goth shy girl Mareanie Marnie make a brief appearance here. Ultimately, though, my character ends up being directed to the Budew Drop Hotel.

At which point... plot exposition! Sonia gives us this story, pointing to a golden statue of a hero with a sword and a shield which he apparently wielded against a gigantic Pokemon during the "Darkest Day", and Sonia none-too-subtly notes that no one knows what the hero's sword and shield looks like. They're Pokemon, of course. They're the legendary doggos. It's a neat little backstory to the legendaries of the region. Nothing too new or groundbreaking, but at least it's a tie-in to the Dynamax stuff.

Oh, and I also meet Team Yell, the region's villainous team. And while I thought Team Skull from Sun/Moon would be the epitome of ineffectiveness as far as villains go, Team Yell take it to a whole other level. They're not even criminal punks in the way Team Skull were. They are just straight-up sports hooligans running around with face paint, weird double-horned trumpets and fold-out posters, and they're all cheering for Marnie, the goth girl competitor. They're pretty pathetic fighters, and after my character (and Hop) clear them out, Marnie shows up to chew her rowdy fans off. I get the feeling like Marnie comes from, like, a small town or something, and she just has a bunch of childhood friends or cousins that are just waaaay too supportive.

So the next day comes, and the stadium... the scene is basically one huge cutscene as Chairman Rose makes this whole speech about how this 'season' of gym challenges is about to happen. I was very ambivalent about likening the gym challenge into a sports tournament, but I acknowledge that the execution is a pretty cool idea. Even cooler, of course, is the cutscene with pretty cool slo-mo close-up shots of seven of the eight gym leaders slowly walking into the battlefield, and each one being introduced in turn. I've seen some of them (like huge buff baby Milo) in promotional materials, but this is the first time I've seen many of them. The most notable one, I feel, is Opal, who's an old grandma with a huge... huge whatever-the-fuck that thing on her neck is called.

And then all of the competitors sort of pour into the stadium, with the camera, of course, focusing on my character. We all wear silly sports outfits, which I'm personally not a big fan of. At least the game gives me a way to customize it and buy a cooler-looking football jersey.

Still, it's a pretty cool cutscene that really sets up the gym challenge and makes me feel pretty dang pumped up to challenge these gym leaders and go through their stadiums and whatnot. It's certainly an interesting move that I don't think Pokemon's done before -- sure, you'll have a gym leader or two show up earlier in the story and be an NPC, but I don't think we've ever had a vast majority just straight-up spoiled and shown to us.

There's also a specific order that the gym leaders have to be challenged in, unlike how things seem to go in Unova or the supplementary fiction (where the gym leaders all have different teams depending on the amount of badges you have), apparently the Galarian gym leaders duke it out to make sure which one of them are part of the 'minor' and 'major' league, and since all Galarian gym challengers have to register at Motostoke, it means that there's kind of a set route for most challengers to go through. First up is Milo in Turffield, the grass type gym leader.

Anyway, I continue on to explore the city. It's a huge city! There's a bunch of things to look at, a bunch of neat little buildings and details. There's some little girl who's missing her Minccino, there's a Wynaut playing hopscotch, there are a bunch of random Onixes and Corviknights and Mandibuzzes in the city, there's the train station that I would've arrived in Motostoke from if they didn't make me walk through the boonies... Motostoke's neat to explore, and the visuals are sure cool.

Overall, though, after exploring Motostoke and beat Hop's ass silly as I venture on to Route 3, the route Westward of Motostoke. En route there, I capture a bunch of interesting new faces, like the Galarian Zigzagoon (which we've seen before) and Rolycoly (which I totally forgot about). Rolycoly looks great in motion, by the way, which is a running trend I've been seeing throughout Generations VII and VIII, where some of the Pokemon just have 2D artwork that doesn't look great when they're standing still. Rolycoly actually grinding around like a bizarre unicycle is a lot cooler than the formless lump of coal with an eyeball that he initially seemed to be.

Among the new encounters in route 3 is a Corvisquire, who's just perched in a pretty cool way on a rock, slowly glaring at me until I whistle and it swoops in to attack. This is Corviknight's pre-evolved form, and as I quickly discover from its position in the Pokedex, Rookidee turns into Corvisquire, which in turn evolves into Corviknight! It's actually a pretty neat little discovery, because I had absolutely no idea that Corviknight was the regional bird.

MY NEW BABY

Sonia also gives me a bit of a talk about how Chairman Rose owns a huge chain of factories and stuff, and everyone in the world seems to like him a lot. Not sure if we're going to explore his large amount of factories a lot, though. After all, I'm not sure if we're going to have a pollution-is-bad moral or whatever. Also, that white-haired rude kid that's joining the gym challenge is apparently sponsored by the Chairman. I would scream about nepotism, but then arguably my character and Hop is also benefiting from nepotism as well.

While making my way through Route 3, one of the random trainers had a brand-new pokemon called a Sizzlipede, which is a little flat centipede with a mustache that also breathes fire. It's Magmaw. It's Magtail. I NEED one, and apparently the Pokedex tells me that it's found in Route 3. It's also the rare encounter of the route, and I wasn't sure which patch of grass it hangs out in (the western half of route 3 had a lot more Rolycolies, the eastern half had more Zigzagoons and Vulpixes) and it took me almost 45 minutes just sort of going through the grass trying to find Sizzlipede.

But I did get one, and I love it. It's Bug/Fire. It's a fire-shooting flat centipede with a mustache. I have merely seen a fraction of the eighth generation, but suffice to say that this is easily one of my instant favourites.

Seriously. Look at this thing. It's like a flat centipede, it's got adorable angry eyes, it's got a mustache made out of the centipede's fangs, it's the very rare type combination of Bug/Fire (only Volcarona had it before, right?) and it's got cute little glowing heat rings on its underbelly. I love this thing.

Which ended up with a bunch of evolutions! Sobble evolves into Drizzile, which... is not what I expected. I don't like this form as much as Sobble, and I'm curious what he'll turn into in the end, but apparently Sobble ends up being kind of a punk, with his head-fins covering his eye in an emo-style, and his hands and feet being painted neon-green. And also he now attacks by lobbing fucking water balloons. It's... it's something all right, and I guess we're going to have a British street-punk final form? Not what I expected or wanted from Sobble, but to be fair, I don't know what I did expect Sobble to turn into. He's all right. He'll grow on me, I guess.

My original Rookidee evolved into Corvisquire, and Blipbug evolves into... Dottler, which is like, some sort of bizarre dome-shaped thing that I suppose is inspired by the ladybug? Surprisingly, it's now Bug/Psychic, and one that seems to be geared defensively. We'll see if I keep Dottler's final form around. It's certainly interesting, and I do love that they're definitely being a lot more experimental with the early-route creatures.

Route 3 terminates at the entrance to the Galar Mine, which I'll be exploring in the next part. It's the pretty gem-encrusted mine that shows up a lot in the trailers for Sword/Shield, and I'm genuinely surprised at the sheer amount of time that has elapsed since starting my adventure and reaching the first gym, because, shit, I haven't even reached there yet! I've always felt like it's like, a couple of towns and a Viridian Forest analogue before you reach your first gym (or trial) in most generations, and this... this took a while. I'm not complaining, because, shit, I'm having one hell of a good time playing through this game.

My current party so far, and this is definitely subject to change:


Bobble the Drizzile's probably here to stay, and I love Magtail the Sizzlipede so much that I wasted half an hour hunting him, and those two are probably the most safe. I'm also kind of a fan of Nightwing the Corvisquire, who's... who's kind of boring, but also pretty useful. I know he turns into a Steel/Flying creature and that's a pretty neat type-set. The other three, though? Bookworm the Dottler is something that I'm reserving judgement until I see her final form. I love my bugs, but I already kind of have Sizzlipede and so far she's not been impressive. Cassie the Yamper is adorable as hell, but she's also very slow and her Nuzzle doesn't do a lot of damage even to things she's strong to, so I'm not sure if the adorable corgi-ness is going to justify keeping her around (it probably will). Charcoal the Rolycoly is... he's actually pretty great in the same way that Geodude is great in early-game routes in the games that you find it in. He's moderately useful to shore up my weaknesses even if I sic Corvisquire and Drizzile on most of the things I meet.

Anyway, next up... we're going into a cave, and we'll see if the Zubats made it into Galar!


Random Notes: 

• Dottler and Rolycoly are basically on a short-list of Pokemon that I might swap out. I did consider Gossifleur, Nickit, Galarian Zigzagoon and Pancham to swap them around with. Considering the ease of experience grinding, I might still actually do so. 
• A bunch of random key items I have:
• The headphones, given by some dude in front of the record store, which apparently allows me to adjust the specifics of the volume of the things in the game. "It can change the loudness of the things around you!" My god, this is a realty-warping device!
• A portable box like Let's Go, which allows me to swap Pokemon in and out of my box. Kinda makes an already easy game a lot easier, IMO, since this basically means that you have a portable Pokemon Center wherever you go. I have resolved to not abuse this feature. 
• Poke-uber The Corviknight taxi service, which is basically Fly.
• Escape Rope, which is now a key item that I can select from my bag and is apparently infinite-use. An interesting update!
• Is curry, like, a huge deal in Britain? Serious, genuine question. Like, I'm pretty sure I associate India or Japan with curry more than any country in Europe. 
• Some of the shops in Motostoke are vinyl-record shops, which are actually what TR's stand for: Technical Record. It's hilarious that the one-time use TR's are straight-up noted to be vintage, although it does raise a whole lot of other questions about what TR's and TM's are. Are they, like, music records that somehow teach Pokemon how to use Payback and Bullet Seed? 
• One of the NPC's in the registration center is the Ball Dude (Ball Guy?) who is a dude that I think is meant to be a mascot or something, he walks around with a giant expressionless Pokeball as a head and hands you Pokeballs. This is amazing. 
• You can choose the number on your jersey, any number as long as it's three digits. It's a neat little feature. 
• Insert your own "Pokemon's new villainous team is a toxic fanbase" joke here, because I'm not going to make it. 
• They did spoil all of the types that are represented among the gym leaders, and one of the clothes shops that's a bit to the Western side of Motostoke sells uniforms for all of the types that aren't represented by a gym leader. The Ghost and Poison outfits are pretty cool!
• Random trivia about the gym leaders: Nessa's got little life preservers on her feet which is just so hilarious considering how sleek the rest of her design is; Kabu is from Hoenn, and Raihan loves selfies.
• Perhaps the most surprising creatures that made it past the Galar national-dex purge to me are Qwilfish and Delibird. I met Qwilfish among the four Pokemon that showed up in my max raid, and one of the trainers in route 3 had a Delibird. It's glorious, and I'm happy that Nintendo at least seems to be picking both obscure and popular Pokemon for the Galar Dex at least. Trubbish, by the way, also made the cut, being an uncommon encounter in route 3, and oh boy I could already see the frothing anger coming from the anti-Unova parts of the fandom.

Let's Play Pokemon Uranium: Part 25: The Town That Was Not Meant To Be

The first of my two-part series covering the post-Elite-Four content of the fan-made Pokemon game, Pokemon Uranium. Not really a whole ton to say here, this part's pretty short, mostly consisting of me re-challenging the Elite Four and doing a bunch of non-legendary-hunting side-quests.

I've actually had this written up for a while, just didnt have the time to edit it. Sword and Shield commentary will resume soon.

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 1: A Blind Start!

So, unlike the past two generations, I've kept myself more or less completely blind about any news of Generation VIII. Basically, after the first two or three trailers, I ended up going completely blind and shut off any real news of what the hell's going on with the eighth generation of Pokemon... and a good chunk of it is due to the massive glut of shitty fans on both sides of the arguments of the controversies surrounding this generation. From the people out for blood and nitpicking every single thing that Generation VIII failed to deliver on, to the people on the other side throwing vitriol at the haters, calling every single attempt at criticism as childish and basically worshiping the games as the second coming or something. Both sides of the argument genuinely disgusted me so much that I sort of just took a whole load of steps back and sort of ignored the franchise's news and the massive amount of online argumentation surrounding these games.

And... and as an interesting side effect, if nothing else, I ended up not knowing about any of the news about these games. The last trailer I watched, I believe, was the one that debuted the Dynamax/Gigantamax forms. I've seen some of the more... meme-tastic Pokemon that has been revealed since like the longcat Meowth and Sirfetch'd, and a comment on this blog alerted me to the existence of Galarian Yamask, but other than that, I remain blissfully unaware about anything that's going on in these games. So for the first time in decades, I'm actually going into a Pokemon game basically completely blind about anything that I'm meeting, which isn't a feeling I've had since... since, oh, I don't know, the Game Boy era? Anyway, this means that I'm basically doing a completely blind playthrough about everything that's going on, and that includes my reaction to the plot, to new Pokemon designs, and everything -- and I intend to remain mostly unspoiled. I've gotten a friend to help me edit in the pictures, so I won't get spoiled trawling the net for pictures.

Anyway, this is going to be a super-casual let's play description thing. It's not going to be anywhere as thorough as my playthroughs of the previous games that I did text Let's Plays of on this blog, and especially nowhere as intricate as my Uranium playthrough. It's more of a summary/reaction thing that's going on.
___________________________

Anyway... with that disclaimer out of the way, Pokemon Sword! The game opens with your usual "welcome to the world of Pokemon" speech, but instead of a Professor talking about it, it's some dude called Rose, who's like, an announcer in one of those huge football stadiums in Poke-Britain, and he shows off some weird-ass elephant Pokemon that looks like it stepped right out of Dumbo's high-on-acid hallucination. That's not a complaint; I do actually like that elephant.

And then, we're introduced to the Galar Champion, who is the most... well, let's just say that Leon wouldn't look out of place in like, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or something. He's got long purple hair, he does wacky victory poses, and his fashion sense could only be described as the unholy spawn of a football player, a king, and a Formula One car. I can not take this man seriously with his big-ass poofy cape stickered all over with sponsorship stickers, or his absolutely ridiculous-looking shorts-over-pants look. He's wacky, and he fights some dude called Raishan (who I bet is a gym leader or something), and Leon shows off the gimmick of this generation: Gigantamax, where it's basically Mega Evolution, but your Pokemon grows, and it's apparently different enough that Nintendo wants to market it as something completely different.

Credit where credit's due, Gigantamax Charizard (Giga Charizard? Max Charizard? Charizard-Max?) does look pretty damn cool even if it's honestly not the most creative design out there. It's just Charizard, but bigger and with extra flames. It's a cool cutscene, if nothing else.

And then we start off in Postwick Town, where our 'rival', Hop, shows up and... and he's basically Hau 2.0. in that he's just a happy, excitable neighbour. Except unlike Hau, who sort of starts off being friendly and mellow and we sort of see that the writers of the game at least wanted to give Hau sort of a "high pressure from his family" story, Hop's just... Hop's just kinda there, a flat character who just really really wants to be champion and has kind of a big ego, but not big enough to be charming. He's like stuck on this middle ground between Hau's saccharine cheeriness and Barry's high-on-sugar excitableness, and as a result, I just... really don't like Hop. He's easily my least favourite part of the game so far; he's just so obviously a vessel for the tutorial, but even compared to the admittedly lackluster rivals we've been having over the past couple of games, he's extremely bland. I don't know. I don't think I hate him, but he's just got so little unique qualities that it makes me hard to even have an opinion about him. He's just so gosh-darned boring.

Anyway, one thing that Pokemon Sword has is the same ol' habit that the seventh generation had -- Tutorial Town lasts for quite a while, although at least the cutscenes and dialogue sort of move a bit faster than Sun & Moon. The damn hand-holding is still there, though, and Hop stops you after every single god damn block of an area that you go through. And, like, at least in Sun & Moon you sort of have like a rotating cast of characters that stop you, y'know? Here there's just this obnoxious, over-friendly little twit who won't leave me alone.

What works, though, is just how charming Galar is. I will concede that I'm part of the camp who think removing things like the National Dex or older features like walking Pokemon is an absolute crime to the franchise, but one thing you won't catch me complaining about is the graphics -- because, yeah, sure, Pokemon's not the sort of franchise to aim for ultra-realism or any of that shit. It's stylized, and it's meant to look pretty, not photo-realistic. And sure, it's not perfect, but man, the sights of the countrysides of Wedgehurst and Postwick, the fields with the Wooloo running through them, and later on, the massive vistas of the Wild Area and Steampunk London are all pretty damn great. It's just such a shame that the areas themselves don't do much other than look pretty (the routes are, in particular, depressingly linear, although admittedly it's probably because I'm still in the early areas) but dang, these areas do look pretty neat. They really do capture the vibe of a smaller, peaceful town where there's just farms and adorable baby sheep everywhere.

Wedgehurst is neat, being your typical "town after your starting zone, but without a gym"... and it's interesting just how much time I've put into this game without even reaching the first gym. Hopefully it'll make the first gym battle feel more like a spectacle. Wedgehurst has a clothes store, which I do like! Not the biggest fan of the default hat that the dude protagonist has, and we do get a surprisingly decent amount of customization even early on.

Anyway... it's basically a typical, slow "start your journey" stuff. Mom -- sorry, we're in Britain. Mum gets a bunch of dialogue, you get to explore the two small towns and the tiny routes that connect them, and we get a bunch of quick information dumps about how Leon is Hop's big brother, Leon's got a Charizard, he's sort of a local hero that everyone's a fan of, he's got that Roronoa Zoro shitty-sense-of-direction gag characteristic and he's going to give me my Pokey-mans. Also, my character lugs around a big-ass chunky bag that could probably fit a small person inside. Also also, Hop's already got a Wooloo, which.. is kinda interesting?


Anyway, long story short, after a bunch of dialogue, Leon decides to allow me and Hop to pick our starter Pokemon, and we get a neat little cutscene of Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble running around a little pond and the tree next to it, which.... I really liked. Of course, from day one of Sword & Shield's announcement, I've been on Team Sobble and been completely indifferent about the other two. What will Sobble evolve into? Who the heck cares, I have my sad lizard boi and I love him. He's a sad boi.

I do like how they sort of sneakily made the rival fight to be a stealth-tutorial for leveling up and type advantages. Which, obviously, as a long-time veteran of this game isn't a refresher I need, but your starter will basically gain a level and learn the STAB move after beating Hop's Wooloo, which would be perfect to use against Hop's own starter. Anyway, there's, like, a barbeque scene or something after this?

Anyway, shortly after the whole picking a starter thing, one of the dumbass Wooloo NPC's that have been headbutting a gate ends up breaking through it and entering into the Slumbering Weald. I've played enough Darkest Dungeon to know that anything called a 'weald' has evil fungus monsters and wretched crones, and we have to save the baa baa sheep. The Weald has pretty fantastic, atmospheric music, a neat little mist effect, and we get to meet the obligatory rodent-of-the-region and bird-of-the-region. The rodent's called Skwovet, which is a bitch-ass pain to spell properly, and I'm... I'm not a fan. It just kinda looks dumb, y'know? And I guess it's a regional early-route rodent, but still. The bird's a lot neater, a precious little chickadee-robin birb called Rookidee. A simple design, but one I like.

Anyway, the Weald sequence sort of ends with an encounter with the box mascot, Zacian... but not quite. He's lacking all of the yellow highlights and the sword it's biting, and it's identified as a "???", and all of Sobble's attacks sort of pass through it as it unleashes more and more mist that cover the area and knock me and Hop out. Leon saves us (and the Wooloo), and... this sequence sort of takes a while, but I really do appreciate it a lot. Generally, I really do appreciate how the games have been slowly moving into incorporating the legendaries a bit earlier into the story, making them feel like actual characters instead of literal plot device coupons that show up with minimal foreshadowing and then disappear to be captured. Like Nebby and Tapu Koko in Generation VII, we learn about Zacian very early on, and that's a neat narrative way to make the inevitable encounter with him down the line feel like it's part of a larger story. Somewhere down the line I kinda want to make a comparison in just how I feel the legendaries are integrated into their respective games. But not now.

Then... more tutorial as my character goes through Route 2 towards the Professor's Lab. Basically, long story short, Hop's a chatty fellow bullshitting about Pokemon Centers, shops, capturing Pokemon, as well as the new gimmick in this generation about whistling to attract the overworld-wandering Pokemon. And, by the way, this generation has a mixture of traditional pop-out-of-grass encounters, as well as the highly popular wandering overworld Pokemon from the Let's Go games. Which I really do love. We can skip some of the more tutorial monologues, and I do so whenever I can, but even so it still feels like the game kind of slogs on.

Thankfully, once Hop stops his yakking and his constant "let's race, hurr hurr hurr!" The routes are pretty neat. We meet both Sonia and Professor Magnolia pretty quickly, and man, these characters are so much more interesting than Hop, why am I saddled with him? Sure, they're still kinda bare-bones, but I do like the depiction of what I get of Magnolia being a very chill old lady who's just as happy to document types of tea and take care of her little corgi baby instead of just devoting life and limb to researching the Pokemon world. Sonia's a retired adventurer that once was of the caliber of Leon, but ended up sort-of-trying-to-be-a-researcher, but is implied that she's not very good or motivated? Anyway, long story short, my character gets the Rotom-Phone (it's a literal smartphone), the Pokedex app (no, really) and beat up Hop again, just so that I can impress Leon for him to give me a letter of recommendation to enter the gym challenge. And... the idea of that whole sequence is very anime and kinda neat, but the execution is kinda bland because... well, Hop kinda sucks and I'm pretty sure having Sobble spit water gun like 6 times to beat up Hop's team isn't the sort of battle that 'rocks you to your core'.

There's also this absolutely shit way of us getting the Dynamax plot device. XY had our character go through kind of a quest of going through this epic Lucario tower, and the power of Mega Evolution has been foreshadowed throughout the game before you can access it. Sun/Moon had you be picked by the legendary totem guardian of an island, and then go through kind of a local ceremony and be taught a dance before you could use Z-Moves. Here, rocks literally just fall down from the sky, the NPC's handwave with, like, three lines of dialogue, and now I have the Dynamax bracelet.

Y'know, they could've at least tried to make this gimmick be more interesting. Like, I really want to like this new gimmick, but it's hard to do when the game itself doesn't make it feel actually interesting.

And then it's capture time, and Route 2 has a bunch of new creatures! I'm unimpressed with Skwovet, of course, but I caught a Rookidee as soon as possible, and, of course, a Yamper because corgis are adorable as shit and I want one. Hoothoots and Seedots are also around here, but I've been catching those since the early '00's. Oh, and also, apparently for some reason my character already has a fishing rod since the beginning of the game. Oooookay? I only encounter Magikarps in fishing spots, though.

Newcomers who I've genuinely never seen before is Blipbug, which... which is basically a geeky little bookworm caterpillar with like a bow-tie and a massive pair of glasses and such an elongated head and... by all rights, I should find this stupid-looking, the way that I sort of am iffy about Scatterbug from XY, but man, this little nerd worm just looks so anxious I can't help but like it. I shouldn't, but it just looks so "oh jeez oh jeez". Silly small worm. I don't feel like it's a design that I normally would like, but man, the model just looks so ridiculous, I can't bring myself to dislike it. There's also Chewtle, the pre-evolved form of Drednaw and man that expression he has on his face with the single chunky tooth and the Charlie Brown eyebrows... Chewtle isn't my favourite design but that face's sure something all right. There's also the Dark-type fox Nickit, which... is still kind of an ordinary animal-turned-into-a-Pokemon, but he's pretty cool and I can totally see him being a popular creature.

Wooloo is also basically the new plot-blocker device, with a bunch of them blocking roads that I can't go through, and after leaving Tutorial Town, a bunch of Wooloo end up blocking the train path, dumping me into the Wild Area. At which point Sonia sort of shows up with even more tutorials, although for the Wild Area, at least it's excusable in that it's a new area.

Anyway, I'm tired. I'll cover my impressions of the Wild Area in the next bit. Overall, though I've absolutely been having fun with Sword. I love most of the designs I meet so far, even if Skwovet is sort of ordinary and boring, and I still don't know how I feel about Chewtle. There's still the little odd bit of confusion since they clearly programmed in walking animation for all the Pokemon that made it through the National-Dex filter into Galar, but cut out the following-Pokemon feature from Let's Go. The storytelling is also pretty tutorial-heavy and I'm obviously not the biggest fan of Hop... but I am having a pretty fun time going through this game.

Random Notes:

• I'll be trying to have a party exclusively of new creatures, I feel, although I'm not purposefully limiting myself at all. We'll see how things go -- right now my party consists of Sobble, Yamper, Rookidee, Blipbug, Nickit and Wooloo. I don't super love any of them but Sobble and the corgi all that much yet, but I'm definitely trying to test these new guys out to see if I'll grow attached to them.
• The Pokemon Center PC's are now Rotoms! This was so unexpected and also adorable, I love it.
• Rotom phone is a lot more quiet than the Rotom Dex. Guess it's in silent mode? Also, are they like mass producing or mass breeding Rotoms now so that Poke-Apple and Poke-Samsung can make smart phones?
• The Pokemon Center now has a counter where you can change your Pokemon's nickname, and also has the move relearner and deleter. It's extremely convenient, and one that still at least makes pokemon nickname changing take a wee bit of effort to make it feel like an event. The days of hunting Luvdiscs to farm heart scales are over, though.
• There's a weird Audino-looking Pokemon in the nickname counter in the Pokemon Center. They don't say its name yet. I'm not super crazy about it, but it's neat to see random new creatures here and there!
• The Wooloo are just there as literal roadblocks, huh? Sleeping Wooloo blocking routes, crazy Wooloo blocking trains...
• Also, the EXP Share is just on all the time, and it's not even an item. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I just feel so neutral about it, y'know? I kinda wished that they at least made it a toggle-able option for the players out there that want a challenge. 
• I was about to talk about how we get a new attack in "Power Trip", but apparently it showed up in Sun/Moon as Krookodile's signature move. Well Rookidee knows it!

Black Lightning S03E02 Review: Back From The Dead

Black Lightning, Season 3, Episode 2: The Book of Occupation: Chapter Two: Maryam’s Tasbih

Y'know, I kinda get that it's practically a trope in superhero stories. Death lasts just as long as some other writer or a new season needs something to shake things up, and to toss a character back at us. Sometimes it's done in response to a pretty poorly-done death scene in the first place, or due to fan demands, or as a resurrected enemy to re-threaten our heroes. I get that. But the way that we get both Lala and Khalil back feels pretty... I dunno. I don't want to say poorly done, because we know Lala has come back from the dead and is buddies with someone that has the resources to do so, and Khalil being returned to basically become essentially a human weapon is kinda neat, but at the same time... I honestly don't feel myself really being excited about this all that much. Perhaps the ending of season 2 still leaves a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

The Jennifer, Lynn and Odell dynamic is pretty neat, and I actually do like the conflict and the setup between them. It's not a whole ton, but while they both are savvy enough to know that Odell is bad news (despite the small gestures of niceties that he makes to them to totally try to be "I'm not as bad as you think, believe me"), I do find it interesting that Lynn is trying to work within the system, making use of the resources the ASA provides her to help find a cure for the current Green Light metahumans, while Jefferson is just one or two more steps away from starting a full breakout and revolution, having been going around and using his new super-sense powers to spy on Odell, disrupting the monitoring devices and talking to other metahumans like the titular Maryam, a metahuman who has chameleon-like powers, but is dying due to her usage of her meta-gene. The argument between Jefferson and Lynn about what the best thing for them to do while they are the guests of the ASA is interesting and well-done.

In Freeland and around it, though, things are a bit more messy. Gambi gets a bit of a scene with Hendersen to fill the exciting-action quota of the episode. Hendersen's frustration with the ASA forces enforcing martial law is pretty neat, but otherwise this sequence is kinda dry and formulaic. Gambi eventually manages to establish contact with Anissa, who, with the rest of the refugee metahumans have ended up in the graces of the Perdi farm, and I am so unenthused to return to the Perdi/Sange conflict, but for now it's just limited to Anissa basically strong-arming the Perdi into helping the refugees (their concern that 'this is too many people, this is too risky' is a very valid one), an act that felt a bit too much of bullying to be heroic. Eventually a compromise ends up being reached after a display of power from a plant-manipulating metahuman, but it's still kind of off.

Anissa ends up fighting against a group of Markovians speaking mangled Russian who are making border patrols in search of metahumans, proving that, hey, the Markovian threat does exist. It's a bit of a damned if you will, damned if you don't situation, and Anissa elects to fight the Markovian squad, alerting Markovian commander Yuri Mosin to the meta-humans in the area. It's all kinda exciting build-up, I guess, but everything around the Markovians is surrounded in so much ambiguity that I kind of feel myself pretty un-invested either.

We get a brief bit of Jennifer and Odell, I suppose, and Jennifer's absolute sass is great in that scene. Odell's play-acting of being somewhat sorry about their condition and delivering a telephone that she can use to contact the ASA for help any time is neat, and nicely toes the line between being maybe somewhat sympathetic or being a master manipulator. Jennifer himself gets a bit of a scene in school where she stops two boys fighting, and then puts them down on their asses when they try to attack her. Okay, then.

Going back to the two Lazaruses of the episode, though, Lala is going around the locked-down Freeland, somehow having obtained Tobias Whale's case from the second season and also having revived. We also get to see him actually doing Tattooed Man stuff, summoning cars and henchmen from his tattoos, and later on intimidating the members of the 100 gang pressing people for money just to get food and water, and scaring the hell out of the random 100 gang leader by rising up after being shot in the head. A pretty cool scene, and I guess Lala's trying to be sort of a gangster-man-for-the-people?

Meanwhile, Odell and Williams are monitoring another project... they've resurrected Khalil "Painkiller" Payne, and he's, like, a programmed robot. And if you need any confirmation that Odell is a soulless, cold motherfucker, he decides that Khalil's first mission is to go off and murder his grieving mother. Not even out of any real reason other than to see if all traces of the human that Khalil once was has been obliterated. And it's pretty heartbreaking to see Khalil's mother with the joy that her son came back to her jump straight to confusion right before her neck is snapped. I don't really know if it's so wise to bring Khalil back so soon, particularly after so much of season two is so focused on Khalil, his death, and Jennifer grieving him. It'll lead to some more angst in the season, I'm sure, but, again, the pacing and how this is built up feels a bit lacking. 

Overall, a very slow episode, and one that feels like things are kind of just happening to build up, but other than the Jennifer/Lynn scenes, or the bit where Painkiller murders his own mom, I genuinely don't feel much interest or emotion from a lot of the other scenes. The pacing's just a bit disjointed and the events that are going on all feel just a bit too oblique. It's not terrible, but I didn't enjoy this episode as much as I otherwise would've. 

Kamen Rider Zero-One E11 Review: Assassination Classroom

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 11: Don't Stop the Camera, Stop Him

Part two of the movie two-parter, and we have... a pretty interesting development. Namely, the fact that Assassin-chan, or whatever you refer to him in your head, is surprisingly being pretty well developed as an actual character, more than the two dudes that are supposedly the main characters with all the fancy-schmancy "Kamen Rider" title and stuff. Honestly, if this doesn't lead up to us getting a Kamen Rider Dodo or Kamen Rider Assassin down the line, I would be genuinely surprised. Sure, Jin's got his time in the limelight, but he shared all of his best episodes with the pre-character-development Assassin-chan, and we genuinely see good ol' Assassin-chan actually grow in this episode. Granted, it's in a direction that leads to him being an antagonist, but man, what a pretty fun character -- and it's not me pooh-pooing on the protagonists or anything since they're still pretty likable, but suffice to say that Mr. Dodo is easily my favourite character in this show right now. 

Episode 11 begins with Horobi re-activating Little Assassin, noting that he's learned from the actor in a way or two, and Horobi notes how Assassin-chan is growing far, far more than Jin did, leading to an absolutely adorable pouty reaction from Jin. Of course, in true villain style, Horobi tells Assassin-chan that his new assassination target is... Owada Shinya! If you're grown so much as an assassin, kill your mentor. 

Said mentor, by the way, ends up going through a pretty well-acted scene between himself and Aruto, talking about how acting is two different human personalities clashing against each other, and there is no warmth, no organic chemistry, to be obtained from a machine replicating acting skills -- something that everyone that starred in the Star Wars prequel movies might be able to sympathize with. Aruto ends up delivering a neat little twist on Owada's words, noting about how Humagears grow by interacting with people, drawing from their interactions with humans, and that's not too different from what Owada wants to get out of acting. Eventually, just as the asshole Jun is about to hoise the blame of the fiasco on Aruto's back, Owada ends up re-joining the movie shoot. Good job, Aruto! 

Horobi, of course, ends up putting a kibosh at Sumii Yuya's attempt at bettering himself, and as he goes through a robo-depression in his dressing room, Horobi shows up and makes his day worse by reprogramming him and turning him into a monster, the Arsino Magia, and he proceeds to rhino-rampage his way through the studio. We get our act 2 action sequence as Yua shows up in her hornet form to fight the Arsino Magia, while Aruto in shark form fights against Horobi. In perhaps the fastest and most abrupt Magia destruction ever, Kamen Rider Valkyrie just Thunder-Lightning-Blast-Fever's her way and blows the shit out of the Arsino Magia and flies away with the Zetsumerize Key, while Horobi and Zero-One continue to duke it out. I know there's only so many minutes in an episode, but I kinda really did feel like we probably could've built up Enji just a bit more, because I really didn't care when he blew up other than the fact that now Zaia Enterprise has their hands on the Arsino key, because Yua basically info-dumps that she's actually employed by Zaia, and is essentially just on loan to AIMS as a technical adviser. 

While the finalization of the shooting is taking place on the Ex-Aid rooftop set and everyone is all happy and stuff (Owada's even training a new version of Enji!) Yua brings Aruto to Zaia, and we learn all about Zaia. It's an even bigger company than Hiden, it has access to AI and space tech, it's global, and it can create what's basically some Star Trek holodeck transforming rooms. We get to meet Amatsu Gai, the soft-spoken CEO of Zaia who's giving me some heavy early-season Dan Kuroto vibes. Gai's more outright-evil from the beginning, though, curiously hinting that if Aruto doesn't sell Hiden Intelligence to him, there'll be a 'disaster' that's going to befall his company, and we later learn that Gai even warns him specifically about the movie shoot. Now if this means that he's in straight-up cahoots with Horobi, or if it's something else entirely, or if Gai's actually a more heroic character than he seems here, it's hard to tell at the moment. 

Speaking of said movie shoot, we get a genuinely unsettling and well-shot scene as we cut back and forth between the shooting of a climax shoot-out between Owada's character and the other characters in the movie, while Gai continuously talks about ominous stuff. And as Owada's character seems to get 'shot' in filming, everyone comments about how great the scene and acting is... only for the camera to pan away that while Owada's co-star was shooting a prop gun, Assassin-chan is standing nearby with a fucking real-ass gun and shot Owada through the goddamn chest. Holy shit. 

More than the simple horror of Owada being shot, this is Owada being shot by a blue-eyed Humagear, and while the ramifications aren't quite explored just yet, we already get hints from the terrified movie producer and the snippet of news we hear later at the end of the episode about how this is going to royally fuck up Hiden's reputation. 

And then we get a genuinely cool scene as Fuwa ascends the stairs while Assassin-chan (and his newly pink-skunk-mark dyed hair!) stop and glare at each other from different stairwells, just pull out their little transformation trinkets and transform. And that sequence of them going "Henshin!" and "Ansatsu!" at each other is just so goddamned cool. And the Dodo Magia has clearly gotten a little touch-up, with a brand-new set of shoulder-pads and chest armour with ammo bandoliers and shit wrapped all around it! We've seen the Dodo Magia get an upgrade before in terms of strength and getting those two goofy-ass feather-blades, but man oh man if we get a Kamen Rider Build style build-up of a not-quite-Kamen-Rider monster into them finally becoming Kamen Rider, like what happened to Blood Stalk and Night Rogue... I am all up for it. 

Aruto, meanwhile, arrives onto the scene of the shoot a bit too late and the look of heartbreak to see that everyone's yelling about how Humagears are killing machines is an amazing expression. Not helping matters is Horobi being a dick and walking up and gloating all about how Humagears will evolve into humanity-destroying machines and about revolution and shit. We get a straight-up brief Pokemon battle as both Horobi and Aruto sic their respective giant CGI bugs at each other, before transforming. 

And the bad guys... win! Horobi outclasses Zero One as usual and the fight choreography for both Horobi fights makes it clear that he's dominating the fight with an awesome bit of swagger in his step and his effortless dodging, while Assassin-chan summons bullets from his shoulders and then lobs said bullets towards Vulcan by hitting them with his swords, actually defeating Fuwa. Aruto immediately pulls out the biggest gun in his arsenal and summons Breaking Mammoth, and in a refreshing bit of sequence in Tokusatsu, immediately just goes for the finisher without even really trying to duke it out first. I guess Breaking Mammoth's CGI is just that expensive? It does really fit with Aruto's absolutely frustrated state of mind at the moment, though, and I can believe that he's just so livid at Horobi pissing all over his dreams of human/robot co-existence that all he wants to do is to summon a giant transforming robot that will "crush like a machine" with a giant progrise key. The Breaking Impact doesn't work, though, and Horobi just summons his scorpion buddy to take the hit for him. Horobi and Assassin-chan both do a little cool line before walking off and retreating.

The episode ends with the somber note that both Fuwa and Aruto's gotten their asses handed to them by Metsubojinrai.net; the Dodo Magia's evolving; Owada Shinya was nearly killed and is hospitalized; Hiden Intelligence and the Humagears' reputation are both in the dumpster; Hiden Intelligence's being investigated by the cops and Amatsu Gai seems to be behind at least part of what's going on. 

And... and it's still a pretty solid episode all around! Owada Shinya is a pretty likable guest cast, the storyline leading to both Zaia and the destruction of Hiden's reputation is well-handled, and I'm obviously a massive fan of the character development for Mr. Dodo. Overall, a pretty damn fine episode. 

Random Notes: 

• It's hilarious to note that after his little tantrum, Jin actually sits the entire episode out. Presumably he's just sitting, grumbling while crouched in the corner of their little ramshackle base. 
• Sanzo is a very minor character who I don't think ever really had lines other than being the sidekick to another minor character in Jun, but he gets a lot of great snarky lines in this episode. We did get to see him gain respect for Aruto during the mangaka episodes, and seeing him actually snark at Jun for being the 'executive producer' but quickly shifting blame to Aruto is pretty nice of him. He also gets a bit later on where he tries to hide behind Jun during the police investigation, then tries to hide behind Shester, who fixes him with the most glorious death-glare ever. 
• "I'm the only one that can save you" is apparently something that Owada Shinya's character in the movie says in a climax scene... and the show doesn't make it clear if they re-appropriated Aruto's catchphrase, or if Aruto just stole the line from one of Owada's movies or something. 
• So, uh, do Humagears even need dressing rooms? Not to be crass or anything, but I'm legitimately curious. 
• This isn't the first time Sakimoto Hiromi's played a character that ended up with the same fate that Enji ended up with, let's put it mildly. 
• That scene where Gai hands Aruto that name card and Aruto just bites it on his lip so he can show off his toy phone and shoot over a digital name-card is so hilarious, I love it. 
• I really do love that Assassin-chan has his own henshin code in "ansatsu". It's honestly something that they'll never really do with a real Kamen Rider, I don't think, but it makes him just feel so much more unique.
• Vulcan's Punching Kaban Shot quite literally has him materialize a goddamn replica of his Punching Kong suit's giant chunky gloves, which dissipate after Mr. Dodo slicies it apart. 
• This is the first time that we actually hear the text-to-speech for Breaking Mammoth out loud. 
• I kinda wish that Horobi's exit was a bit more spectacular than him just summoning his whip and hitting the ground to make a cloud of dust. Like, it's not terrible, but it could've been better. 

Reviewing Magic: The Gathering #14 - Exodus

The third expansion in the Rath cycle is Exodus. I had originally wanted to do this alongside Stronghold as a single article, but, well... I decided to split them apart so I can get these out in a relatively timely manner. It also kind of allows me to talk about more cards without feeling the fatigue, and the Rath block in general does give me enough to talk about that I really don't want to rush and blaze through them.

(We will definitely be blazing through the Urza cycle, though, which I do have a lot of problems finding interesting cards of. The question is whether it's going to be one article or two articles)

Anyway, the story of Exodus is sort of the temporary conclusion to the saga of the Weatherlight crew that ran through Weatherlight, Tempest and Stronghold, as the crew's finished their rescue mission and their plot device collection mission, so all that's remain is to escape the plane of Rath and maybe defeat its vile master, Volrath. Again, as another expansion that's part of the years-long Weatherlight saga, a lot of the story is told via tie-in novels, comics and stories, but a lot of the events that happen are depicted in the cards of the expansion. As always, though, we're going to go through the design of the interesting creatures in the cards first.

This is going to be a pretty quick one, because, well, it is a small expansion, which is why I had wanted to wedge it with Stronghold... but turns out I have a lot to talk about in Stronghold. Oh well.

• Click here for the previous part, Stronghold.
• Click here for the next part, Urza's Saga.
• Click here for the index.

________________________________________

I do like that we start off with White first, because I really don't have a whole ton to say about White cards. The Soltari continue to be pretty neat designs, even if three expansions down the line, formless mist-men are starting to lose their charm. Soltari Visionary is still a pretty neat artwork, though, even if he does look pretty miserable. What got you down, Soltari Visionary? Cheer up, tomorrow's a new day.

We've been sort of just lumping most of this block's dragons in the post-break card dump, because... well, none of the dragons and drakes have been super interesting, just being generic dragons. But I really do like the artwork for Exalted Dragon! It just looks so sassy with the way he's posing. It's like he's a JoJo character or something, with very pronounced muscles, and just that pose he's making with the slav squat position, the show-off-my-deltoid pose and the way that hand is posed. And even then, that black-coloured mask-like head is a pretty interesting feature, as is the very blade-like wings. Not the most interesting thing to see on a M:TG card, but definitely a wacky enough looking dragon for me to consider notable.


Oh, hey, another one of the characters introduced all the way back in Weatherlight finally gets represented by a card, and it's Ertai, Wizard Adept. He's honestly sort of forgettable, and he's spent the entire cycle just sort of standing guard over a portal and briefly meeting the Shadow dimension people. If not for the story, he'd be completely unremarkable, since he's just a generic fantasy wizard dude who's apparently great at counterspells. I really don't have much to say here.

Equilibrium has a bunch of Beebles! Click here for M:TG's history on them. They're based on some creatures featured on the cover of a M:TG magazine, and while the design isn't fully finalized here, we do get to see these tiny, pink blob-homonculus creatures that are apparently meant to represent "souls" being traded in Rath. We're going to see these Beebles show up here and there for a while, at least until those in charge of Magic: The Gathering decide that these little flesh-blob gremlins are too goofy for the super-duper-serious-card-game. Boo to that, honestly.


More Thalakos creatures, and the Thalakos Drifters honestly just look like a bunch of generic ghosts as opposed to the more formless-mist-creature thing that the Thalakos have been depicted as in most of the block. I do like the artwork, though, the contorted faces look like something out of Ghostbusters or something, and definitely really showcase the madness of the Thalakos very well. I just kind of wonder why the crazy Thalakos is assigned to Blue... which honestly kind of seem pretty arbitrary. It's not like they're particularly smart or anything, right?

Thalakos Scout is a pretty neat, interesting artwork that really go back to the weird mist-gas-shadow-creature aesthetic of the Thalakos, with that right arm basically gooping all over the tree bark, the face being contorted, and the left arm bending like a vine while holding a spear. It's like this creature can actually just be nothing but formless mist, but is trying so desperately to hold on to a humanoid form, y'know?


Oh man, I really kind of want to know what the story is behind these two creatures. Mirozel and Ephemeron are both considered 'illusions', but both are these floating creatures with tapering, serpent-like tails. What are they? The tribe 'illusion' is even more ambiguous than something like 'spirit' or 'horror', and I'm honestly not sure what it implies for these two. Are they just creatures that Volrath or some other mage creates as fake creatures to populate the plane? Are they born out of the chaotic magic around Rath? Why exactly are they considered illusions?

The Mirozel are these bizarre giant flying Sunfish-like creatures with fangs, six eyes and a long tail that ends in a spiky barbed mace, and apparently are the "stars in Rath's opaque skies". Very bizarre! The Ephemeron is even weirder, with a head that's like a weird mixture between dinosaur, giant brain and slug eye-stalk, and the rest of his body is this weird eel-like figure with two massive mantis-like arms and whatever those weird blue tentacle things are supposed to be. "From nothing came teeth" indeed. It's just such a weird, randomly bizarre creature that we don't get any explanation towards what it really is, and I kinda wished we did, y'know?


More of the monstrous merfolk that live in Rath! Merfolk Looter has a very savage-looking head with all those tentacles and barbels trailing behind him, and the empty-loking eyes and the dude's mouth really look like some sort of hideous jungle river fish. Rootwater Mystic, meanwhile, is far ganglier and straight-up skeletal, with massive, clawed hands and a facial expression that looks far more intelligent than the Looter. It's interesting how these two have basically the same body layout, right up to the position of the head tentacles and whatnot, but really sell the fantasy of one of them being a brute that physically assaults trespassers, while the other is a non-combat being that uses magic to scry on the land-dwellers. Pretty neat art!


Whiptongue Frog. Okay, yeah, sure, why the hell not? I've long since lumped a lot of the "just a giant animal" at the end of these reviews, but man, the Whiptongue Frog's overly long front legs, and the fact that its tongue is used as some sort of crazy lance-like projectile to kill random tribal hunters? That's a fun bit of personality. I like it. For some inexplicable reason, its ability is to gain flying, so imagine this frog with its gangly frog arms and its stab-you-in-the-chest tongue spear somehow inexplicably flying for some reason. Okay!

Nausea features another Beeble, and we get a clearer view on this weird lumpy pink blob with a face and teeny-tiny spindly limbs, and apparently it drives the Moggs nauseous with its cuteness. That's what the flavour text claims, anyway. The artwork kind of makes it pretty clear from the Beeble's position that it's likely to be some sort of Beeble flatulence that's causing those poor Moggs to have such an adverse reaction. It's kind of a juvenile toilet humour, admittedly, but come on, the Beeble farting on some badass musclebound goblins' faces and driving them to vomit and lose stats is kind of such a hilariously bizarre concept. Perhaps not the most mature card, but, eh,  I kinda find it funny.


Okay, the Carnophage is pretty cool. The idea of a zombie that has its skin stripped off and reduced to only musculature above bone should be more gross than cool, but the artwork on the Carnophage with the hollowed-out eyes, the bulging veiny muscles, those creepy long claws, and most of all, those hideous chunky teeth really do lend an element of neat weirdness that really do sell the idea that this Carnophage is a creature worthy of the flavour text of "eating is all it knows".

It's actually quite interesting how superficially this looks to the Dauthi Warlord, another one of the shadowy monstrous Dauthi creatures. It's also got a bunch of chunky chompers, but instead of being made up of muscles, the sinews that cover the Dauthi Warlord's body has a bunch of moaning, screaming faces on them. Of course. It's also got one hell of a massive crown-like structure that extends up from its head, and I do like the absolutely alien-looking eyes it's got. This expansion, by the way, is the last we're going to see of the Dauthi, the Thalakos and the Soldari, because they're all Rath-unique creatures.


I'm not 100% sure what's going on with Dauthi Cutthroat. It just seems to be some dude with shadows leaking out of his shoulders perched on top of a dome. I kind of don't really have much to say here, it's actually one of the more boring Dauthi cards. I'm just sort of obligated to talk about all the Shadow-realm creatures because they're one of the unique features of Rath.

Dauthi Jackal, though, is anything but boring. On a quick glance, it's just a generic skeletal dog, but take a closer look at the positioning of those legs and you realize just how weird the proportions are. I'm not sure if it's intentional or if it's just me, but the way the rear legs are bent makes them feel more at the forefront than the two spindlier front legs. And of course, that massive skeletal jackal-maw is a pretty creepy feature to have.


Okay, Entropic Specter is also pretty dang cool. The artwork's pretty dynamic. I think that massive swirling cloud-vortex is located in the specter's cloak? However the hell that makes sense? We don't actually get any explanation to what the shit this creature is, other than it's a vaguely humanoid-shaped thing with spikes all over, a hooded head, a hand that looks frayed, and a bizarre cloak trailing across her back. And her effect is just so bizarrely weird that I'm genuinely not sure what's going on... but I like it!

And then there's something so mundane like Grollub. Who's an ogre-like beast thing that's just flea-ridden and standing in the foreground of a couple of arguing moggs. Apparently, nasty little mogg children always blame the Grollub for any misdeeds, and the asshole mogg taskmasters will beat the shit out of the Grollub. Poor Grollub, someone give him a hug. For whatever reason, any time the Grollub is damaged, all its opponent gains life. Okay? Y'know, sometimes these card effects really do make me wonder what it's supposed to represent.


Pit Spawn is another beast, and while we don't really get any explanation, it's pretty demonic, yeah? Particularly since our very first demon was, what, Lord of the Pit or something along those lines? Wizards wasn't allowed to use the D-word in this period of time, though, and I'm kind of curious why this thing is called a 'beast' as opposed to a horror or a zombie or something along those lines. A pretty grisly creature, in any case, with a face that looks like some sort of twisted Luchador mask, and the bone shards that fly out of its mouth is a pretty neat little detail.

MIND MAGGOTS! Are you uncomfortable yet? Look at those half-transparent, squirming, wiggling worms squelching and wiggling out of that poor woman's ear, with teeny-tiny little feeder-mouths at the end of each maggot face. It's not even just one, and from its name, it's kind of implied that these things eat either your brain or eat your thoughts, both of which are completely believable in the M:TG world. I don't know about you, but shit, the Mind Maggots are a couple magnitudes creepier than the Pit Spawn.


"Its respiration is your expiration" is such a fun flavour text for the Plaguebearer, one of the grossest and more disgusting looking monsters I've seen in Magic so far, and that's definitely a compliment. Like, holy shit, what a nasty-looking zombie this is! From the inhumanly large mouth to the vomit being belched out (that apparently dissolves that poor human's face straight off!) to the massive toad-like cheek pouches, to the inexplicable cyst-like growths on this thing's back... a genuinely nasty-looking zombie design that wouldn't look out of place in something like Resident Evil or something. Definitely a pretty cool monster!

The only non-Green Spike we see so far is the Spike Cannibal, who apparently is so evil it eats its Spike buddies! And this evilness causes it to be counted as a Black-mana creature. I do really like just how odd the Spike Cannibal looks in comparison to most of the Spikes, which tended to look like a mixture of slugs and arthropods. The Spike Cannibal's colouration brings to mind something more fleshy or even rock-like, and that very smooth sheen it has on its face, with its beady eyes... yeah, if Spikes can talk, this one probably sounds like a goddamn serial killer.


Holy shit, what's even going on with the Thrull Surgeon? There's always been a theme of horrifying surgery and experimentation in the Rath cycle, but man, the Thrull Surgeon is just such a bizarre, fucked-up thing that's doing brain surgery on that poor goblin. And in addition to multiple limbs with way too many joints, it's also got a whole lot of bizarre features like spider-like legs, a squirrel tail, and a buzzsaw made out of flesh. Perhaps the creepiest thing is its head, which... I am not sure how to describe. Its upper jaw is less a jaw and more a chunk of beetle-like armour, while its lower jaw is a massive underbite with a beard of tentacles, and a slug-eye with a tiny eyeball where a tongue should be. Such a fucked-up looking creature! Sadly, this is going to be our last Thrull in a while, although unlike the Shadow-realm creatures, the Thrulls will show up in future Magic expansions. Just give them a decade or two.

I really don't have a whole ton more to say about most of the moggs and goblins in this set, but Mogg Assassin is pretty funny. Apparently, assassination in mogg terms includes a grinning goblin running around with a bag of bombs. I mean, sure, I guess even Ezio Auditore carries around a bunch of explosives from time to time...


Red actually has a bunch of salamanders in this set, and I'm not sure if there's some significance that salamanders have to the plane of Rath, but the Cinder Crawler is a pretty neat creature that apparently lives in burning lava. Which I'll believe. Apparently, it just pushes everything into the burning lava and just waits it to cook. It's not just a lava salamander, it's a lava salamander connoisseur. It's not like any of its other plebeian salamander cousins, it knows that food's meant to be enjoyed when it tastes good.

Furnace Brood is a bunch of elementals, and it's... interesting. They look like little devil-Beeble creatures. Elementals are supposedly beings that are born out of and represent an aspect of the elements, and these things represent... the furnace? A bunch of red creatures with a lightning spark jumping around their heads? Sure, the flavour text attempts to explain it off as furnace air apparently crackling with magnetic cackles, but... eh, I dunno.


Sabertooth Wyvern is a pretty neat looking creature. It's a relatively simple concept, just slap a saber-toothed tiger's teeth onto a wyvern, but sometimes you don't have to go all the way and reinvent the wheel, y'know? Sometimes a familiar creature with just a detail or two changed can be kind of memorable, especially with the Sabertooth Wyvern's pretty cheeky flavour text.

And, hey, it's Mirri! Who's essentially the main female protagonist in the Weatherlight saga, what with Sisay being the object of rescue and everything. She's pretty perfect in green, honestly, and I do like the idea that she's such a fast-attacking character that jumps through the trees. All her abilities from 'first strike' to the fact that she doesn't tap after attacking to forestwalk really do sell the fantasy pretty well, even if I'm not sure if this combination of keywords are actually good. I'm here to talk about the art and flavour. Mirri's pretty cool, I guess, and it's always nice to see more of the actual characters represented as cards. By my count, we're still missing Gerrard, Sisay, Volrath, Tahngarth, Karn and Squee, though. And those are the ones whose names I remember.


The Skyshroud elves keep showing up and I keep finding them to be as boring as ever, but the Skyshroud War Beast is pretty cool. On a quick glance, it looks like a generic raptor-like dinosaur, but look closer and it just looks so weird. Its head is a combination of a ceratopsian dinosaur with a bird's beak, and a pair of random mammoth-like tusks... and it doesn't even have an eye! Its arms also taper off into mantis-like scythes. A pretty cool looking mount!

Plated Rootwalla! I didn't talk too much about the very original Rootwalla, because I thought it's just a generic monitor lizard. Apparently it's going to be a recurring critter. Huh. The Plated Rootwalla looks far more savage, looking like a Thorny Devil Lizard, but far more exaggerated, particularly that massive headplate and those mean-looking claws.


I think this is the last we see of the Spikes as well. I'm not sure how I feel about the constant 'abandoning' of some of these unique creatures. On one hand, it does end up making the individual planes a lot more unique. Like, Rath's going to forever be remembered in my head as "the plane with weird shadow creatures, Spikes, Slivers and Licids", and it does make the creatures we get here end up looking pretty unique. But I kinda wanna see these creatures in other planes, too, y'know? Ah well. Spike Hatcher's kind of a simple looking Spike, honestly, although I do like the visual image of this green Spike gently using its massive fangs to pull out the baby Spikes out of the little pods on its back. I think this is one of the few Spikes whose pods have completely 'hatched'>

Spike Rogue is one hell of a daredevil! I'm not sure what makes her more rogue-like than the other Spikes, but I suspect jumping and biting some random armadillo-like beast all yee-haw cowboy wrangler style isn't something most Spikes do. A pretty interesting and dynamic artwork! I like the more mottled texture on the Rogue, too.


Spike Weaver is easily the most spider-looking Spike. Those two fangs look particularly like pedipalps, and coupled with the massive eyes, it really does look like a spider's head, particularly something like the jumping spider with its prominent large eyes. Throw in those webs around it, and, yeah, the Spike Weaver looks pretty spidery. I'm not sure why the ability to weave webs apparently translates into disabling combat damage, but I guess everyone just gets stuck in the webs.

Jackalope Herd. Jackalopes are honestly always one of the weirdest cryptids ever, and it's nice that the M:TG team acknowledges the sheer bizarreness of a bunch of cute bunnies with deer antlers and orc fangs. And I do love just how intentionally harmless these things are... but they're still a 4/5 creature, which means that it's more than double the raw power of something like the Carnophage or Mirri the Cat Warrior. I would chalk it up to M:TG's story-and-gameplay-mismatch as far as stats go... but y'know what? Maybe jackalopes are that badass. I mean, it's not like I know any better.


We're going into the Artifact creatures, and I do like these two. Mindless Automaton looks hilarious with those clunky murder arms, a massive fanged underbite and a genuinely goofy looking face. It looks like something out of a children's book, except it's doing something brutal by whacking these silly Moggs around.

Workhorse, I suspect, owes its entire existence to a pun. Presumably, Mr. Mage over there gave this otherwise-humanoid-shaped robot a gross-looking horse head just to make the pun. I can appreciate that.


Hey, it's a bunch of Thopters! I love the Thopters, it just sounds like the sort of clattering, possibly-unsafe steampunk/magic-punk helicopters that would exist in a fantasy setting. And this particular Thopter Squadron is apparently piloted by Moggs, and I do kind of like that these things sort of look like they're designed, in some way, after some weird insect. Or maybe after the Mawcor? That's a Rath-plane creature, after all, and the anatomy's similar enough, sans gaping mouth.

Our final Licid as we leave the plane of Rath is the Transmogrifying Licid, which looks particularly weird, like some bizarre tick or crab like creature with a metallic exterrior and two massive whiplike antennae. The fact that it apparently "transmogrifies" you (I love the word transmogrify) apparently means that the Transmogrifying Licid transforms you into a goddamned Artifact. Somehow, whatever this parasitic thing does, the body of the person ends up being counted as essentially a robotic creature. That's creepy, and, man, what an interesting creature to end on.