Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 7: Hisuian Side Quests

More side-quests!

Kamado did tell me to wander around, so I did. I leave behind a Psyduck to help expand the fields in order to give me a larger mushroom harvest. An old man has adopted an Eevee for his daughter and he wants to spoil the Eevee with food. The saga of Tao Hua and the general store vendor Choy (who looks like Platinum's Charon with a more athletic build) continues as Tao Hua continues to be a jerk to him. The photography guy wants me to hunt down a Duskull, and Anthe the fashion lady wants to see the two different types of Shellos. 

There's a guy called Zeke, asking help from the Survey Corps... that can't be a coincidence, can it? That's totally an Attack on Titan reference, isn't it?

Beauregard's partner has also finally evolved into Dustox. Glorious! I love Dustox, and I love this background story where this random guard has finally accepted his little partner buddy.

Arezu, meanwhile... has actually settled in Jubilife City! She has talked to the elderly barber lady, who lets her stay as her apprentice/successor. Arezu did foreshadow this by talking about how her 'special skill' is giving haircuts. It's a bit of a scattershot development going from being a red herring villain to a well-meaning but suspicious wildcard and now to a barber lady, but okay, Arezu. You're pretty fun. 

I finally figured out the space-time rift. I have to wait inside it, and then a bunch of weird-ass items and pokemon appear in it! There are weird stuff like Nuggets and Ice Stones and Blue Shards that fill up my inventory quickly, while very hostile Drifblims and Gastlies and Floatzels and rarer Pokemon like Loppunys and Flareons and Porygons of all things appear. I guess Porygons appear from the future? Did these space-time rifts cause a time paradox that sent a digital duck organism to a period of time before computers were even invented? Does Arceus the creator god even care, considering he gave me a goddamn smartphone?

The aggressiveness of the creatures in the space-time rifts do cause me to have to bug out after a while, though, lest I black out and lose these special items I gathered. I've gotten pretty good at running the shit away on the back of my Wyrdeer!

Exploring around the Mirelands (it's a large area, huh?) I also come across a little patch of land that is almost exclusively conquered by... Pachirisu? I mean, I guess Pachirisu comes from Sinnoh, and I guess it's cool that we get a special area for it. Having an Alpha Pachirisu right after I face the likes of Alpha Hippowdon, Ursaring and Rhyhorn is kind of... hilarious. Catching a Pachirusu also ends up unlocking a little side-quest where one of the random Galaxy team members asks me to show him how a Pachirisu can fight... by only fighting him with a Pachirisu and nothing else. Well, I'll have to train up one of the Pachirisus I have captured, but... hmm! Is this an in-joke to that one Pachirisu that won the real-life world tournament?

A bit further on from where the Pachirisu are hanging out is an area populated by Petilils -- it makes sense that the overworld area whose Noble Pokemon is a Liligant would have Petilil as possible encounters, huh? I capture a couple of Petilils (who are very skittish) although I'm not sure if I'm going to use one. Hisuian Liligant is cool, but I already have a Grass/Fighting Hisuian Pokemon in my party. 

Running around with Ursaluna, I also come across some 'Old Verses' in addition to the regular loot. The one I got, Old Verse 1, seems to be talking about Dialga and Palkia creating the world? Once there were two and all that? Again, it's a lot of collectible quests. I do like getting my money's worth out of an exploration game, let me put it that way. 

At the tip of that landmass, though, is a small lake populated with Goomy. GOOMYGOOMYGOOMY, and at the center of that little lake is an Alpha Hisuian Sliggoo... who looks so much cooler than the static images of him that I've seen online. It curls up into its wheel-shaped shell and zips around trying to slam onto me and unleashes what I think is a Hydro Pump. I didn't manage to catch the Alpha Sliggoo, but I did catch a couple of Goomy. I think I like these snails enough to use one in my party!

...and then my party got absolutely wiped out in an attempt to capture an Alpha Torterra, who is around 20-30 levels higher than my party. Interestingly, I don't 'black out' when all my Pokemon are knocked out. I just... I just run the hell for my life on top of Wyrdeer, while all of my Pokemon are crossed out. Seems like I will only black out if I'm actually physically knocked out. 

Some of the sidequests I was able to complete almost immediately. There is a lady who wants to see the full Pokedex entry on Roselia and got surprised that the species is actually poisonous. There's another person who wants a certain type of vines for its fragrance, and it turns out that the vines come from Tangela specifically... I wouldn't really think of Tangela as a particularly fragrant Pokemon, but here we go. Another sidequest is me finding a missing locket or whatever that's fallen into an Alpha Hippowdon swamp. It's kind of cute, honestly, that most of the Pokemon species has a little side-quest tied to them. It's nothing too substantial, but it's really nice that old and new Pokemon like Tangela, Cascoon, Roselia and a bunch of others got a bit more spotlight.

With Loonatic the Drifblim having evolved, I've gone back to Zusi and learned a bunch of extra moves on her too, adding Icy Wind (a much-needed Ice-type move!) to my repertoire and swapping out Hex for Shadow Ball. 

A quest in Jubilife City's medical department has the Nurse Joy looking lady (from her hairstyle, though, she's a ringer for Mira, that little girl with a Kadabra from Platinum!) ask for a Croagunk, because she wants to distill Croagunk's poison to create a medication for the back pain of that one guy who got attacked by... a Shinx? Or was it the Noble Kleavor? Whatever the case, I give her one of the many Croagunks I have captured, and she muses about how maybe in the future we'll have a facility or a building where we can cure Pokemon alongside other Pokemon. Hmmm, maybe like a CENTER for Pokemon, yes?

There's a sidequest in the Bogbound Camp where a random guy wants to water a Sudowoodo, thinking that it's a tree, and asks me to Water Pulse him... before the Sudowoodo attacks. That's kind of a funny quest -- if only it wasn't completely raining at the time, which kind of spoiled the joke that Sudowoodo got soaked by my Psyduck. 

I end up finding the Psyduck medicine in Jubilife City's medical department, and... and it's actually kind of yet another great little nod to previous Pokemon games. I really do love it when things like this end up becoming a bit of a callback -- the lady that gave me the Secret Medicine hails from Johto, and this calls back to that very long fetch quest where you have to go back and forth between Cianwood and Olivine to cure Jasmine's Ampharos. The Secret Medicine cures the three Psyduck and they're all happy and no longer holding their heads, though the hut they're in... doesn't actually contain the Unown A as I had thought it would be. That's another quest done, regardless.

I eventually find Wanda, though it's nothing really special. She's just... randomly in one part of the Mirelands, apparently having a worse sense of direction than Roronoa Zoro. She even walks in the opposite direction from where I pointed the village out to her. Silly Wanda. 

A lady who wants a certain type of herb is also shocked to find out that it came from Petilil's head, and now refuses to use said herb because she doesn't want to hurt little itty-bitty Petilil.

At some point I did talk to Kamado, who tells me that the next big area is the Cobalt Coastlands. It's apparently a location where the Noble Pokemon had passed away (holy crap they acknowledged death!). Irida and Kamado tell me that there are strange shadowy figures where the Noble Pokemon used to dwell, and I'm supposed to go and investigate the alleged 'ghost' attacking people in Firespit Island. Is there a ghost Pokemon that's new? I don't remember? Irida can't tolerate the desecration of her 'late lord's seat', so... okay, then. 

That little cowboy hat kid that took care of Kleavor also shows up, and talks about how the warden in Cobalt Coastlands is kind of unpopular even among the Pearl Clan. He gives me some exposition about evolutionary stones, while also hinting at a specific stone that contains the power of creation of the Almighty Sinnoh... maybe it's the Adamant/Lustrous Orb? Or something new?

From the map, the Cobalt Coastlands seems to be where Sunnyshore City is, basically all the part of Sinnoh that leads upwards to that waterway that leads to the Pokemon League in Sinnoh. I think that little island with the Pokemon League is the Firespit Island? I played too much of Platinum back in the day. 

Anyway, arriving at the Cobalt Coastlands, it's... it's pretty neat! It's kind of like a little beachside vacation. Irida talks to me about the two wardens in the Coastlands -- Iscan from the Diamond Clan, and our focus for this 'arc', Palina. After a brief battle where Irida tries to gang up on my newly-evolved Decidueye with a Glaceon and an Eevee, she talks a bit about Palina. Of course, she says that while giving some appropriate dialogue about space and how small she is within space. 

Again, it's something that I felt really helps with the world-building sense of this game. Palina basically hasn't moved on from the death of the previous Noble Pokemon she was in charge of, and hasn't gone and selected or raised that Lord's child. Palina also is Irida's childhood friend and they used to compete for the position of the leader of the clan. Just like Calaba in the previous area, it is kind of built up that we're going to have to deal with Palina's personal problems in order to proceed. 

I've only ran around parts of the Coastlands, but it does feature a bunch of repeat Pokemon like Floatzel, Tangela and Golduck... but also a bunch of others that are pretty fancy! Trash Cloak Burmy, Mothim, Aipom, Chatot, Glameow... hell, even a random level 34 Togepi that's just wandering around. I think that's the rare encounter? I used enough Togekisses in my Generation IV playthroughs, but it's neat to see one. Glameows, in particular, are very skittish and I finally have some use out of the Smoke Bombs. Feather Balls are useful, too. 

My casual runaround in the Coastlands did cause me to compelte a couple of quests. The Pop Pods (which are... pressurized sponges, I think?) allow me to prevent part two of the drama between Tao Hua and Choy, and gives me the recipe for... Scatter Bangs? Cyllene also gives me the recipe for Ultra Balls for reaching six stars. Also, one of the random NPC's who wanted to see a Pokemon with a tail like a spring (I thought it was Spoink!) ended up being happy to see the Glameow... before the Glameow, like all cats, scratched the shit out of his face. Oh, cats. 

My Ponyta also evolved into Rapidash, finally, after getting some leftover experience points after I killed an Alpha Golduck. I like the soft lavender purple on shiny Rapidash, but honestly, I think I still prefer shiny Ponya's baby blues.

Current Party: Hootle (Decidueye), Loonatic (Drifblim), Uzumaki (Goomy), Cremation (Shiny Rapidash), Manterror (Scyther), Bartholomew (Alpha Ursaring)