Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 5: My Shiny Pony

And, as the title probably clued you in to, one of my favourite quests here is the unexpected free shiny Ponyta given by one of the quests in Jubilife City. A quest to investigate an 'unusual Ponyta'... for some reason, shinies didn't come into my mind at all, and I thought it's going to be Galarian Ponyta? It's not too far of a stretch, but I guess when you really think about it, it'd be kind of silly in-game for Galarian Ponytas to show up in Hisui. 

No, the 'unusual' Ponyta is in fact a shiny Ponyta in all his blue-flamed glory. What a glorious shiny Ponyta has! Always one of my favourite shinies ever... and, of course, that damned Ponyta just ran the hell away from me. Of course.

Thankfully, it's a respawning shiny Ponyta, one that respawns if I go back to Jubilife City and spend enough time there. I could've guessed it, but it sure was an intense 60 seconds of me waiting for the areas to load. 

Anyway, Shiny Ponyta has very easily replaced Chimchar as the fire-type in my party. A bit of a shame since I am trying to use the Hisuian variants and new species in this playthrough, but hey, sometimes you just really want to use Kricketunes and Shiny Ponytas! And just like Scyther, I don't think I've actually used a Ponyta in any playthrough!

(I named mine 'Cremation'. It's a My Hero Academia reference, because Dabi has blue flame)

There's a cute little bit where the quest-giver mentioned a friend from Galar being bamboozled at fiery-maned Ponyta. I get it! Because Galarian Ponytas are bubblegum horses!

I did the Drifloon-in-the-beach sidequest, which is... a lot shorter and a lot less creepier than I thought it would be. That Drifloon was totally trying to kidnap that random Jubilife City kid and drag him into the afterlife, but there's honestly a disappointing lack of resolution to that sidequest unless we'll getting a part two like Beauregard's quest?

Another sidequest I completed is a Parasect one. A mushroom expert asks me to give him a Parasect, and he got absolutely surprised when the mushroom turns around and reveals itself to be a Pokemon... and he got baffled that 'a mushroom is a Pokemon???' Man, you should see those Foongus in Unova, or those Morelluls in Alola! Actually, I did get the joke here. That this is a reference to Parasect's super-unsettling dex entry about how it is a mushroom that has taken over the insect bodyb like a zombie. And this Morel guy is so attuned to mushrooms that he could've sworn that it's the mushroom that looked at him and not the bug... yeah, enjoy your creepy zombie mushroom beetle creature, guy!

I completed Paras' pokedex entry at around this point and we do get confirmation that baby Paras actually don't have the mushrooms briefly after they are born, and the parasitic mushrooms only grow at a certain age. Interesting!

This is apparently sidequest day, because I completed the two minigames available to me. One has me run through Drifloon balloons with Wyrdeer, and another has be chuck infinite Pokeballs at Drifloon balloons. I ain't ever going to 100% these two parts, and I appreciate them not going full Ocarina of Time and only giving me the rewards if I do things perfectly.  Another one I completed is the "Pokeshi Dolls", a nod on "Kokeshi Dolls" (thanks, One Piece) and I basically get medieval-era Pokedolls for escaping!

Yet another side-quest I did was finding a damn 'big' Buizel that is 2'8". It's cute that they have Pokemon of differing sizes now, I guess? Alpha Pokemon are particularly large, too. It does make poor Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist's form differences feel extra-mundane in comparison, though. And... and it took me a long while just to hunt down one of those big-sized Buizels. 

A cute touch is that the lady that asked me to show her a Zubat ended up catching one off-screen and it's now helping her patrol nighttime Jubilife City. It's little things like these that make the world feel so much more alive, you know?

Eventually I ran out of things to do in Jubilife and Obsidian Fieldlands, so I go off to the Crimson Mirelands. I'm supposed to investigate the Solaceon Ruins, which is very cool! A great tie-in to Sinnoh in general. This might be a long time in the past, but I do really appreciate that we're seeing the original form of the Pastoria Great Marsh before it got cut down to size into a small nature preserve. The Crimson Mirelands is huge, swampy, and looks pretty amazing in general. Akari points out space-time distortions to me again, and apparently those are supposed to spawn stronger Pokemon? I guess I didn't spend enough time in the one distortion I ran around in before. 

The Crimson Mirelands has a whole new slew of Pokemon, and I appreciate this. I just spent so much time running around trying to capture and observe as many species as I can find. Gastly are the most populous creature here, especially at night, and they're as aggressive as Drifloons. Their sounds are a bit less cute than Drifloon, and a lot more noticeable. Haven't met a Burmy in a while, but the ones that drop out of the Apricorn Trees here are in their sandy cloak. Kind of a shame that Burmy, Wormadam and Mothim are all kind of... underwhelming. Burmy in particular isn't as immediately usable at low level like Dustoxes or Beautiflies or Kricketunes. 

Carnivines are also populous here, which is appropriate since this is the original form of the Pastoria Great Marsh. They float, which... it's a thing I know of from the XY games, yes. And the sprites always showed them floating, yeah, they have Levitate I think... but... I don't know. It's just so different seeing them float in place versus them floating around and hovering over the terrain, y'know?

Croagunks are obviously pretty prevalent here, since, y'know, it's the Great Swamp. I do like that they're kinda hiding in the water? I was a bit baffled what the little rocks are when I first saw them. Turns out that they are Croagunks and they actually strike a gloriously fun idle pose when you walk past them! \

There are also a bunch of Psyducks, Yanmas and Parasects too, very appropriate for a swampy area. The Feather Balls I gained from ranking up to third star is very useful for capturing flying Pokemon like Yanma, since it shoots straight at them like a bullet!

Continuing on with the Sinnoh theme, there's a big-ass Alpha Tangrowth who gets a bit pissed off that I'm going around capturing its young in Apricorn balls. A whole lot of Tangela hang out on a ridge, and there's also a huge muddy segment where Hippopotases and Croagunks chilling inside muddy ponds, Geodudes and Gravelers hopping here and there, a lone Onix lurking nearby, a horde of Stunky and Skuntank at another part of the mirelands... the fact that the mama Hippowdons will charge halfway across the map to attack you if you try to disturb the Hippopotas around her...

I really do like everything about this, it really does make it feel like the people designing this map actually put thought into which species would interact with the environment. Not knocking the Wild Area from Sword/Shield since it clearly is more of a proof-of-concept thing (and it's clear that the Sw/Sh team had a better grasp of things come the DLC), but the biomes in this game really do feel like they are crafted with certain Pokemon populations in mind. 

The collectible items are also all very different than the Obdisian Fieldlands. This is where my extra inventory spaces matter. It's standard JRPG stuff, really, where I have to do a bit of inventory management so that I can properly loot the items I find. I also do like that some of the plants actually resemble real Pokemon like Florges or Drifloon... or rather, probably the other way around where the Pokemon evolved to look like the plants. 

Throughout my journey just running around through the Mirelands, my Buizel evolved into a Floatzel. I'll probably phase Floatzel and Luxio out eventually, but so far they've been pretty great and dependable members on my team as far as type coverage goes.

I eventually go to the Solaceon Ruins, and I meet with Warden Calaba, the jerk very traditional member of the Pearl Clan. She sure is an old woman and a crabby one at that. Not sure if she's a reference to a pre-existing character. Bertha, maybe? Or that might just be me saying that cause she's an old lady. She has a Bibarel, and she's immediately dismissive about me... though she also immediately goes into 'yeah, yeah, you saved everyone from the rampaging Kleavor, but are you sure there isn't another way?' Basically, that sort of extremely-dismissive way that a lot of old people who hear of news via osmosis from the news treat... basically any solution they hear that doesn't agree 100% with them. I dislike her already!

She also says that 'what I did is hardly different from bullying a Pokemon into submission'. Which... it would be a fair assessment if I caught or defeated Kleavor. But I threw a bunch of food paste at the giant mantis, that's not exactly bullying it into submission, is it?

Her being pissy about us carrying Pokemon in balls... yeah, you know what, grannie? I have nothing for that. That's a fair point, especially at this point in the Pokemon world's timeline. 

At this point, Calaba refuses to talk to me any further, but then that punk Volo shows up and is all like "show me your strength" right in the middle of the dang holy ruins! It's actually a bit surprising that Calaba didn't raise a huge fuss over us fighting in the middle of the sacred ruins. It's also at this point that I realize that Volo is meant to be an analogue for Cynthia, since his team has expanded to have a Togepi and a Gible. Apparently, someone stole an entire chunk of the runes of the wall, and Volo directs me to whoever pillaged an entire chunk of the Solaceon Ruins wall -- a group calling themselves the Miss Fortunes. 

I actually stumbled upon the empty campsite a bit earlier in my Mirelands exploration, but now the Miss Fortunes show up... and they're a gang of lady thugs with face tattoos! They are road punks that behave like Team Rocket, having a whole motto ready and everything that's a pun on their names. The oldest sister is an 'unlucky Charm' to those they cross path with, the middle sister is an 'Clover you can't pick' and the youngest is a 'Coin' that isn't my good-luck piece. 

...and it's so bizarre since I actually recognize Clover and Coin as the ancestors of... gym leader Candice and Galatic admin Saturn? Rather hilarious seeing them done up with face tattoos and hamming shit up. After delivering all their speeches about luck and stuff and doing a pose, Coin fights me with her Toxicroak. Toxicroak is actually somewhat tougher than I expected, although I guess part of that is sending out an under-leveled Ponyta to fight it. 

After defeating Coin, I thought I'll have a boss gauntlet between the three of them. Instead, Charm quotes a poem about falling blossoms in spring or whatever, says that my days are numbered, calls me a 'Galaxy Fool'... before the three of them abscond. Okay, sure. 

I return the giant slab to grandma Calaba, who's surprised and impressed by my willingness to help her. The wall fragment end up making a bunch of writing in Unown-script: "all lives touch other lives to create something anew and alive". Calaba has apparently only truly understood the significance of this line now, after someone helped her out with no desire for reward. (Except, well, clearly my desire is to encounter Ursaluna so that I may progress with the main story). It's pretty simple stuff I guess just so we have some plot at this juncture in the game. I do appreciate that, after a little look-see into the wiki, that the writing here is almost 100% identical to the version of the Unown slab we see in the Diamond/Pearl-era Solaceon Ruins... which is where I think we found the Unown in D/P/Pt.

Calaba tells me to meet her in Sludge Mound, where Ursaluna resides. Another boss fight time!

Interestingly, the fight against Ursaluna is just... we just fight Ursaluna. Calaba makes sure that I am not allowed to capture her precious Ursaluna. It is admittedly a bit weird that I haven't seen any Teddiursa or Ursaring so far, but I guess the 'Scyther Grove' in the Heartlands was a bit out of the way and I suppose I just haven't explored the Mirelands enough. A couple of Magical Leaves later, and Ursaluna is taken out. Calaba takes this chance to give Ursaluna some medicine, which calms him down... and Calaba actually points out that this is different with Kleavor. There's no golden light shooting into the sky, meaning that Ursaluna isn't actually berserking in the way that Kleavor was. 

More interestingly, Calaba seems to find some powder and essentially speculates that Arezu might have had some ulterior motives in pointing out Ursaluna to me and the Galaxy Team. Is she behind all this? Hmmm, the plot thickens. Again, it's relatively simple as far as these sort of plots go, but I absolutely love that there's actual plot and politics in this land. 

Ursaluna also gives me the Earth Plate, and he is registered as one of my ride pokemon. In this case, Ursaluna is my Item Finder, going around sniffing and getting faster and faster and making a happy little dance when I get to wherever he directs me to. Okay? Not sure if I prefer him over Stoutland from Alola, but that's a big cute bear regardless. 

Going back to Professor Laventon, turns out I've got something sticking onto my back... an 'A' Unown! Unown is in this game! I guess the Unown stuck to me after I exited the Solaceon Ruins? Laventon adds some notes to my Pokedex, which is basically the 'Unown Dex'... but then suddenly my God Arc Phone activates and I think it transcribes some riddles in Unown-alphabet on the Unown Dex segment of my pokedex. It's a bunch of riddles that directs me to the locatoin of all the Unown, with some being simple like "within the settlement where time rules"... something that I probably don't quite have access to just yet!

It's about at this point when I realize that the Wi-Fi connectivity has me discover 'lost bags' by other adventurers, which is some Dark Souls style mechanic where I can find things left behind by other players. It's pretty simple, unobtrusive and not obnoxiously shoved in my face like the Gigantamax co-op experience from Sword/Shield, which is pretty miserable all around for anyone who just wants to have a single-player mode. 

Running around, I also discover a whole lot of other creatures! Budews, Roselias and Ralts (!) just wandering around the broken ruins -- they seem to be the rare encounters here. My Luxio evolves into Luxray, and I complete a whole ton of Pokedex achievements (mostly the 'see a Pokemon use X move' ones) that allow me to rank up to four-stars... I gain access to crafting the Leaden Balls, which are more powerful versions of Heavy Balls. 

I return to the city and go to the move tutor and reward myself with a bunch of brand-new moves. Floatzel and Luxray both pick up Crunch (from regular level-up); I let Dartrix learn Shadow Claw; Kricketune gets the insane-after-buff Leech Life; Scyther gets Psycho Cut, Swords Dance and X-Scissor.

I'm having a lot of fun! Did a lot of exploration in the Mirelands, and I've been just spending time looking at the dex and trying to complete the side-objectives. Using certain bait to lure Pokemon and stuff... this game has truly been a blast. A fun little sidequest I did was to help open up a second base camp in the bogs, which involves me fighting three Stunky at once. I do really like that I have to at least do something to progress!

Another fun sidequest that progresses part of the game is showing Anthea the two gender differences of Hippopotas... which... inspires her to stock bowler hats, full-on modern-day suits and monocles in her store. I'm honestly not entirely sure how two sand hippos with oversized mouths managed to inspire her so, but I'm not a fashion designer, so what do I know?

Current Party: Hootle (Dartrix), Sparky (Luxray), Chopin (Kricketune), Manterror (Scyther), Jet (Floatzel), Cremation (Ponyta)