Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 5: Bede-Style Arcaheology

Last we left off, we beat Kabu and his giant fire centipede!

And we're sent off to the Wild Area, where this time around we can explore the northern part of the Wild Area. And... well, as I mentioned in the previous part, I spent a long time exploring the Wild Area and just catching shit and beating up Wild Pokemon. I do like that the weather condition keeps changing, and that the population of the Pokemon that show up depends on said weather. I do like it a fair bit... I just really wished that it was integrated into the main story a bit better, y'know? Because there's a huge disconnect between the times that I spent running around the Wild Area and the actual storyline of the game, and they really could've integrated it a lot better, pacing-wise and layout wise.

Also, I've figured out why I can't seem to get anyone to join me on the max-raid battles, or to wonder trade or whatever. The game's kind of terrible at communicating it, but apparently I need a subscription to access any of the online features? Which... which I was already genuinely ambivalent and indifferent towards in the first place, so it doesn't really bother me a lot. I'm just kinda glad that we actually do have the option to do max raid battles with NPC's or something, I guess? But man, the more I play this game, the more I realize just how unpolished it really is. And I don't want to be one of part of those Anti-Nintendo fuckers out there who send death threats to game developers and give grief to anyone who's showing any positivity about Sword and Shield... but honestly, there is a lot of messiness in this game that really end up showing that it really has massive flaws in both gameplay and story.

Oh well. Onwards to Hammerlocke, which seems to be our next huge hub city. I don't think it's quite as impressive as Motorstoke, but it does have a pretty impressive-looking giant castle with... with whatever those things on either side of the main tower are supposed to be. I know they're probably meant to evoke the appearance of draconic wings, but otherwise I'm not sure if they actually do serve some sort of practical purpose.

And as I arrive onto the big-ass dragon-head door of Hammerlocke, Bede shows up! He apparently beat up Hop and dashed his dreams or whatever. That's actually kinda awesome! The handling of Hop and Bede has been pretty suspect, pacing-wise -- Hop's shoehorned in our face way too much with very little variation in dialogue; while Bede makes such sporadic appearances that there's not much to him beyond 'he's a dick', but now this event that took place offscreen's going to hopefully change the two for the better? One can hope. Bede's not a dick who bullied our happy buddy, and Hop's going through some adversity which I hope will lead him to have some character development.

There's then a bunch of extra cutscenes, involving Bede and Chairman Rose discussing stuff about the Wishing Stars or whatever, but the dialogue is so oblique and obviously not trying to give anything away. The Chairman then gives a bit of an information dump about the energy plant of Hammerlocke, and how it funnels energy from power spots that allow Pokemon to Dynamax and convert it into energy or whatever? It's a pretty neat little concept, of abusing the energy that powers up the super-powerful gimmick of the region as something that's as practical as an energy source for cities. Which makes me think that either Rose is going to be the main villain, or that Oleanna or someone's going to take over by abusing Rose's energy plant.

Leon also shows up for a brief cutscene, talking about how Hop's probably going to get out of his funk with some soul-searching or whatever.

After that, though, it's a bit of an exploration time through Hammerlocke. The town's sort of split into two 'wings' on either side of the main center tower, and there's a bunch of neat little sidequests. The first is a random house with a karate guy and a Cottonee.. who uses the infamous F.E.A.R. strategy, where a low-level pokemon hangs on with focus sash, tanks a hit, uses endeavour, and then uses a priority move to murder everything that has a single HP thanks to said endeavour. Thankfully Cottonee doesn't actually have a priority move, making this fight kind of toothless, but it's pretty cool to see the game makers referencing something from the community.

Also, there's this whole little sidequest (well, more of an extended cutscene) where some love-sick dude wants to borrow my Applin to give to a girl, because in Galar, apparently giving an Applin you caught to another person is a sign of love or something? Of course, the game doesn't immediately remove your Applin for you, but this is how you get the Tart Apple that evolves Applin into its evolved form... Flapple! Which is basically a Bakuman, isn't it? The apple splits open into these wacky wyvern wings while the worm (wyrm?) finally reveals its true self. I'm still reserving my opinion on this thing, but I do kind of like the idea of the fact that this is basically a little worm that's incorporating an apple as part of its new biology. I don't think I'll be using Flapple in my run, but if I do find the need to have a Grass or Dragon Pokemon in my party, Flapple's probably number one on the list.

Other than that... there's a clothes store, and another cafe where you can do daily battles to get some of the many, many miscellaneous items in Pokemon's history. The game might not have enough space for all the 800+ Pokemon, but they sure do for random items! There's also a little girl that asks me to deliver a letter to her boyfriend in Ballonlea. My friends assure me that this is going to lead into an interesting side-quest, so I thought I'll mention it here.

Eventually, I make my way to the Vault, which is a small castle-museum thing on the West side of the city, where gym leader Raihan is waiting. He gives a brief speech about Hammerlocke and Leon and Sonia and whatnot, before letting me in, and what's inside the Vault is... it's sort of a holy-looking chamber with four massive tapestries, and I do really like how different the art style of the tapestries look, like they really did come out from another time. What we learn is honestly not much, and I feel the dialogue is a bit clunky compared to some of the other 'let's do an introdump about the history of the region and its cover legendary' sequences in other games, but I'm not going to complain too much. Basically, two kings fought against the Darkest Day (obviously a time where Dynamax Pokemon ran wild) with a sword and a shield, and everyone's surprised that there are two heroes.

And the game treats this as some huge, massive revelation, but I dunno, it's not like this seemed to be some sort of highly-hidden history? It's not like the Ultra Beasts in the Alola games where the lore of Ultra Beasts is hidden in a single dusty tome in an old library and everyone's trying to piece together and figure out how the legends of the island guardians and the extra-dimensional jellyfishes awork together; or the respective plots of the Sinnoh and Unova games where so much about their respective legendaries are lost through time and we learn about them from either ruins or old shrines. I dunno.

Anyway, not gonna complain too much. There are two heroes, a sword and a shield, and it's meant to be a huge revelation, but it doesn't matter now because the plot then none-too-subtly shoves my character out of Hammerlocke to continue on with my gym challenge.

And so I head west-ward through Route 6, where a bunch of Team Yell grunts are... blocking the way so that a clearly-not-sleeping Silicobra isn't disturbed, and only by asking nicely can you pass through. Okay? Unfortunately, apparently Hop and my character are rude shits, and instead of asking nicely we just challenge the Yell grunts to a fight, beat them up, send them running away, and Silicobra just slithers away. Okay? I'm not sure what the hell went on there. Are they trying to make Team Yell sympathetic? Or are they just supposed to be morons or something? I know they went for a similar approach with Team Skull and that worked out wonderfully for a bait-and-switch that Team Skull are just sort of punks and not villains, but Team Yell really felt like they're just doing whatever, y'know?

Hop is... pretty depressed, and it's definitely a neat way to take his character. He sort of mumbles how he's trying to figure things out before buggering off, and the old lady Opal, who we saw briefly in the gym-leaders-in-the-stadium scene, shows up and makes some cryptic remarks about how you should have fun in your Pokemon journey. Okay? Maybe Opal's going to be the cool old mentor to Hop?

Also, Silicobra's cool. I wasn't quite sure what the bugger was supposed to be in the cutscene, with massive nose-holes and a pouch-neck, but apparently it's not a "silly cobra", but a "silicon cobra", which means it's a ground-type snake that swallows sand and stores it on its neck-pouch, and based on its Sand Spit ability, any time it gets hit, it sneezes out the sand it's storing on its pouch to create a Sandstorm effect. That's kinda cool, actually, and I didn't think we would get another adaptation of a non-venomous snake. But here we go with a desert-dwelling snake that has a neat little twist to it. Not my favourite, but Silicobra's neat.

Route 6 is basically a bunch of cliffs with more ruins and standing stones, There's a fair amount of random creatures here, like Helioptile and Durant and Torkoal and Dugtrios, but most striking is, of course, the Galarian Yamasks! Which look remarkably similar to the Unovan Yamask, and I've been spoiled about the existence of. But instead of a golden death-mask, they have... a little block of concrete with a crudely drawn tail on it? I originally thought that this was going to be a Spinda or Unown thing where there are multiple variants of Yamasks with different runes, but they all just hold the same tail rune. Which... okay? Its dex entry is surprisingly dark, too. Quoting the Sword dex entry: "A clay slab with cursed engravings took possession of a Yamask. The slab is said to be absorbing the Yamask's dark power."

Which means... holy shit, Yamask, who is canonically the ghost of a human person turned into a Pokemon, now has the misfortune of being possessed by a random cursed clay slab that's just apparently this horrifying, parasitic cursed entity that's drawing energy out of Yamask! One can hope that the relationship is less parasitic and more symbiotic.... Also, Galarian Yamask is Ghost/Ground, which... yeah, I agree with that one random commentator on my blog that spoiled Galarian Yamask to me. It sure does look more like a Ghost/Rock creature!

There are also MASSIVE Diglett statues in the distance, which I thought was cool, and I had the pleasure to meet my first Generation VII Artist, who's this crazy sculptor that wouldn't look out of place trying to cosplay as Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I don't tend to comment on generic random trainers, but the Artist's look is just so psychotic-looking, I love it.

And also, I meet Cara Liss! Throughout my walk through Route 6, I find fossils. But instead of something like the Dome Fossil or the Root Fossil, these are called "Fossilized Bird" and "Fossilized Dino" or whatever, and apparently these are half of a fossil. And because apparently in Galar the scientists are far more insane and irresponsible, Cara Liss talks about how her machine's going to reconstruct what these creatures originally looked like... and it seems to be a nod to the quack-paleontology that ended up with falsified fossils like the Piltdown Man? Except instead of publishing a fake record to get fame and fortune, Cara Liss combines two fossils together to make abominations. I got Arctozolt, a creature that's half electric-bird and half ice-dinosaur, and... my god look at this horrifying abomination. It's like someone clicked randomize on Spore! Its Pokedex entry notes just how wretched this thing is. It's Electric/Ice, but the reason it's even electric-type at all is that the bottom half generates cold and the upper half ends up shivering so much it ends up creating electricity.

What the fuck!

No, seriously. What the fuck. There are apparently four different combinations to be made out of two 'upper halves' and two 'lower halves' that are apparently version exclusives, but, still, what the fuck. The concept is pretty neat, but this just feels so random and the resulting fossil creatures look like such tormented abominations. I'm not sure.

Also, as I venture on through Route 6 and the Wild Area, two evolutions happened. Locomotive, my Carkol, finally achieves her final stage, Coalossal, which is... a funny-looking duck-headed rock kaiju with a pile of coal on its back. It's still Rock/Fire, and... and it's pretty neat! I wasn't sure how I feel about Carkol, and I definitely still like Rolycoly the most out of the entire evolutionary line, but Coalossal does feel like a neat looking badass rock monster. It's not my favourite out of the creatures in my party, design-wise, but I definitely like it a fair bit!

And my starter Drizzile has evolved from an emo sad punk into... Inteleon, the... secret agent Pokemon? And it's this slender, noodle-limbed lizard-man with massive fingers, a cape that unfurls into wings, and apparently it's based on James Bond in a way, hiding and shooting people with guns and stuff? It's got Snipe Shot as a mold-breaking water-type attack, and it's got a neat animation with its finger guns, but I'm genuinely not sure how I feel about this final evolution. Maybe it'll grow on me? It's certainly not what I expected Sobble and Drizzile to turn into for sure, and... and I genuinely don't know what to make of this. Part of me likes aspects of Inteleon, but another part of me feel like the design is just kinda weird. I'm still somehow un-spoiled of what the Generation VII starters would turn out to be at the time that I saw Drizzile evolve. So... uh... yeah, it's sure something.

The next town is called Stow-on-Side, and it's... a pretty neat desert market town, with a modest bazaar in the center of it. It's not particularly big, but I do like what little we got to see here, with the humans and Maractus running shops, Digletts just hanging out wherever, little alleyways and steel tarps that I can explore behind, that random kid who's sticking his head inside a Bronzong (no, really)... and some dude on top of a rooftop who trades me a Hatenna called Fringe for a Maractus. Shit, I ain't got any use for a Maractus, but I did like what I saw form Bede's Hatenna. Hopefully it's got more powerful evolutions! And if nothing else, it's a cute new buddy.

Hop waylays me and talks about his new strategy... and surprisingly (and it took me a while to realize), his strategy involves dumping all of his Pokemon. Other than Raboot, of course, but that even includes Wooloo, his starter! Granted, his Pokemon are still kinda shit and un-evolved, with the Toxel and Silicobra being particular pushovers, but you'd argue that those have far, far better typing than his pure-Normal Wooloo or his pure-Flying Corvisquire do. It's interesting, and I'm curious to see where the story takes Hop.

I defeat him soundly, of course, and he sort of runs away in depression, talking about how he's failed his brother and his family. Grandma Opal shows up again and sort of mutters about how "the champion doesn't need anyone to defend him, we all know he's strong". Which... which would actually work a lot better if Opal actually said it to Hop instead of my character, y'know?

Anyway, I go up and look at the massive painting or whatever that Stow-on-Side is famous for... and it looks like children's graffiti made with crayon. Which... okay, that's unexpected and kinda neat. But after that it's gym time!

There's very little buildup to this gym. Unlike the previous three, we don't meet Bea, and she has about the same amount of personality as Brock in the original GBC games, which is to say that she's just a serious fighter. Her gym, bizarrely enough, is... it's a giant pachinko machine, and you ride around in a spinning wheel thing and get punched around by boxing gloves. It's a cute mini-game, even if I don't think it fits the theme of a Fighting-type gym or Bea herself particularly well.

The gym's otherwise pretty simple, for the simple reason that I brought along my Corvisquire with me. Which evolves into a Corviknight upon slaying the third gym trainer's Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee! I don't really like using the starter birds, and I don't remember when the last time I used one (it was probably when I Nuzlocked one of the GBA or DS-era games) but Corvisquire has been an absolute unit in going through this game, and as a Steel/Flying final giant knight bird, my Corviknight does look pretty damn badass.

Bea has four Pokemon, and... it would probably be a decent challenge if I had used any other members of my team, because the rest of my team quite literally has nothing super-effective against Fighting types. But Corviknight just absolutely swept the entire party with nothing but Drill Pecks. Hitmontop? Drill Peck. Pangoro? Two Drill Pecks. Sirfetch'd? Critical Drill Peck.

I really need to figure out how to turn my own Farfetch'd into a Sirfetch'd, by the way.

Surprisingly, Sirfetch'd wasn't the Dynamax Pokemon for the gym, but instead it's good ol' Machamp! Who ends up GIGANTAMAXING and... okay, that's kinda neat. He does look like that four-armed muscle alien from Ben 10, but with weird orange energy flowing through the cracks on Giga Machamp's veins, and his wrestling briefs are now wrestling yoga pants. It's a pretty decent design, I feel, not really altering Machamp's inherent design too much while still looking like a decent power-up (it's not just red steam like Pokken). Unfortunately, Giga Machamp doesn't even get a single hit out because my Corviknight also Dynamaxes and one-shots this thing.

I know Corviknight can also achieve a Gigantamax form, and I'm curious how I go about achieving Gigantamax forms for Centiskorch and Corviknight. I've been feeding Centiskorch some dynamax candies, but even at a maxed-out 'dynamax level' Centiskorch can only dynamax. It's kinda puzzling. Maybe I have to reach some sort of story point to do so?


With Bea out of the way, a bow-wark heralds the arrival of Sonia and her Yamper... and then there's a huge explosion! Apparently Bede's stolen Chairman Rose's Copperajah (it's Cufant's evolved form!) to literally beat up the crayon mural, because he thinks... uh... he thinks it'll give him wishing stars and the chairman will be pleased or something? Bede's kinda dumb. The resulting fight goes about how you expect it to, except this time it's Centiskorch murdering his full-Psychic team with Bug Bite. Bede's evolved all of his Pokemon other than the Ponyta, but honestly, they all go down pretty easily. Hattrem's adorable, though! She looks like a cute little anime mascot. I'm a fan. Is this the final form, or does she have a third stage? I don't know!

Bede goes fully crazy and stuff, and... and I kinda wished we spent a bit more time with bede before this, y'know? Maybe have him show up a bit and interact a bit more with us, and show just how desperate he is to impress the Chairman instead of just being a condescending prick? The game does show this to us, but I genuinely do feel like it's like the bare minimum of scenes. Chairman Rose shows up with security guards, arrests Bede and strips him of his challenger status and... and I'm curious if this is all we're seeing of Bede? Since his team hasn't fully evolved yet, I don't think so. Maybe he'll break free and end up becoming a straight-up antagonist. That'd be neat.

And... and all that is sort of for naught, because when Rose buggers off, apparently the kaboom that Bede and Copperajah did before was enough to shatter the mural, causing it to collapse... and reveal two massive statues of Zacian and Zamazenta and two princes. More of the same revelation, honestly, and I kinda wished that we had combined the Hammerlocke Vault scene and this one together or something, because Sonia's speech does end up feeling redundant since it's another revelation of "oh, there are two people! And the sword and shield are POKEYMANS!" I might be going a bit too harsh about this because the storyline's so easy to guess. Sonia basically speaks a bit... and next up, I have to head on East to Glimwood Tangle, easily my favourite area in the game so far. I've gone through it at the time of writing, but I figure I'd cover it alongside the city that we reach at the end of the area.

Speaking of which... there's a little side-quest I've embarked to evolve my Farfetch'd into a Sirfetch'd, which was the main reason I picked Sword in the first place. I've been assured by my friends that it's not a level-up, or a trade evolution, but something that I have to figure out. They also assure me that by this point in the game, I could definitely have gotten a Sirfetch'd already.

And my first instinct is... obviously, it's an item evolution, right? So I went back to the route that Farfetch'd showed up in, and Farfetch'd is kind of one of the more uncommon encounters, so I had to spend some time encoutering them and then catching them and then checking to see if they're holding a Leek -- a held item that's been around since forever but was never utilized because Farfetch'd is kind of not a very powerful Pokemon. Surely it's an item evolution, right? He evolves with the Leek?

...turns out it does jack shit. I mean, I'm not angry, I did basically hand my Farfetch'd a tailor-made weapon that boosts its critical rate, but it was a significant amount of time spent that didn't really accomplish what I set out to do.

So I guess it's a move-specific one? Like how Piloswine evolves when it learns Ancient Power? I'm not quite sure what move would turn Farfetch'd into Sirfetch'd, though. Swords Dance, maybe? Does this duck learn Sacred Sword? Those are the only real knightly moves I can think up of. Or maybe it's something far, far more bizarre. I mean, we've already had a Pokemon that evolves when your freaking game system is upside-down. I dunno. I am committed at this point to not spoiling myself, so that's definitely going to be an interesting journey.

This has been a neat little journey. It's a bit cutscene-heavy, and I do feel like Route 6 could've stood to be a bit longer and maybe throw in a desert-themed Wild Area segment or something. But I really do like the vibe of a small desert-side town with a bazaar built next to the massive Diglett statues and whatnot, and I generally do love the vibe of Stow-on-Side in general. I did come off as a bit too negative at some points in this let's play, but hey, I call it like I see it. The parts of the game I like, I'll praise, and the parts of the game that I dislike, I'll knock down.

Current party:


Considering swapping out either Boltund or Coalossal for either Toxel, Hatenna, Yamask or Silicobra, I think. I kind of want a bit more of a variety in my team building.


Random Notes:

• Speaking of weird evolutions... evolving Milcery into Alcremie involves you finding the specific held item (which I got from a cafe) and then spinning around with a Milcery in the party. Which... at least the item sort of gives you a clue, talking about how "Milcery will spin around" or something. I'm actually genuinely surprised that, yes, this is the case. That's pretty cool!
• I did try my hand out at a bunch of random mini-games:

• The Rotom Rally is neat, and it's sort of the obligatory race-game that most 3D Nintendo games seem to have in some way or form. So far I've only done it like once or twice and got a TM out of it. 
• The Poke-Job thing feels like something from a mobile game, where you just send some of the critters in your box out for a job. The little blurbs for the job is neat, and we've got a similar feature in the Poke-Pelago in Sun and Moon. Since the Nursery apparently doesn't give your Pokemon experience points, this is how you gain 'passive' experience points for the pokemon you don't use or something? It's 
• I'm not going to do the Poke Jobs thing too much, though, for the simple reason that when your Pokemon return, they just get stacked wherever in your box, which sort of means that I have to re-move things around and that's pretty annoying.
• There's a second Pokemon Nursery in the Wild Area, which I felt is a bit redundant, but okay. 
• In Pokemon Shield, you fight Allister the ghost boy instead of Bea, and looking at screenshots of Allister's gym, the whimsical, wacky nature of a spinning Polteageist theme park game does fit a childish ghost-type leader a lot better. 
• I suspect that the designer team having to code Allister and Bea into two different games ended up with them deciding to not have any of the version-exclusive gym leaders do anything outside of their gyms. Poor resource-strapped game developers!
• Copperajah is... it's an interesting design. I'm not sure how I feel about it. 
• There's a bit of a "old history versus progress for the masses" theme to Bede's rant as the other characters confront him, but it goes by so quickly and devolves into Bede's desire to impress Rose that it doesn't land as well as it could've. 
• I do like that the statue of Zacian and Zamazenta are actually not holding the stylized anime swords and shields they have in the artwork, but far more... rudimentary looking ones. 

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 4: Scolopendra gigantes

Last we left off... we beat Nessa! And after that, I end up sort of meeting with Chairman Rose, Oleanna and Sonia on some fancy restaurant, where we get a pretty fast little conversation that was cut short by Oleanna reminding Rose about some meeting or other. Basically, though, we learn that Professor Magnolia was the lady responsible for channeling the wishing stars into Dynamax bands and whatnot, and that she's worried about not understanding everything about Dynamax and is sending Sonia to investigate with 'power spot detectors', which... presumably is there to detect the glowing rock circles in the Wild Area. A bit of an odd narrative choice, introducing a cutscene talking about them after basically allowing us free rein over the Wild Area and its many, many power spots. Okay. Sonia also goes off to "The Vault" in a town called Hammerlocke, which sounds ominous, maybe? I dunno. I don't feel a whole sense of urgency or intrigue to any of these, but okay. It doesn't help that the conversation ends up basically being cut short with the dialogue basiaclly ending abruptly.

Anyway, this restaurant... its sole purpose in the game is to serve as a backdrop for this conversation -- it's genuinely perplexing, in one of the older Pokemon games, once the cutscene conversation is over random NPC's would probably populate the restaurant, and it might even serve some simple function like a shop or a battle place, but again, it's small moments like this where the restaurant's just kind of empty even after our conversation with Rose that I felt were some of the parts of the game that really would've been caught if the game developers were given more time to polish this game. Again, I'm not the sort of nitpicker who will get all pissed off because the frame-rate drops or whatever or the textures on the ground isn't Breath of the Wild level or some inane bullshit, but there are certainly moments in the actual gameplay and story progression where it's kind of obvious that they spent more time doing some parts of the game and rushed through others.

With that cutscene out of the way, though, I walk out of the restaurant to meet... Hop, who basically tells us to go to the East side and that we have to go to Galar Mine #2 (not to be confused with Galar Mine) and meet Kabu, the next gym leader, who's off training in the mine or something. Basically, your typical "gym leader is off doing something" plot progression thing.

Before that, though, I did make a brief detour to Route 5 to hunt down the elusive Applin, which the Pokedex assures me hangs out there. I murdered a whole lot of Swirlixes, Stuffuls and Minccinos, and eventually captured an Applin! It's... it's adorable. It's an apple with two slug-eyes and a worm tail sticking out of it. It's Grass/Dragon. It's also kinda weak, but I do like it enough to maybe consider swapping out the sixth slot in my party for it to raise it up.


I was genuinely worried that Galar Mine #2 was going to just be a rehash of Galar Mine, which... granted, Galar Mine is a pretty little tunnel, but it's going to be pretty lazy to reuse an area so fast after just getting out of it. Thankfully, though, Galar Mine #2 is a pretty awesome seaside cave, with a whole load of random water-themed creatures in it! Shellos, Drednaw, Shuckle, Wimpod (who scuttles away very quickly), Binacle... I am sorely tempted to actually put a Binacle on my team. Barbaracle's such a weird motherfucker and if I'm not dead-set on using all new creatures, I would probably do so.

The clear star encounter in this mine, though, is the motherfucking Galarian Stunfisk, which... which is such an unexpected and delightful addition into the game. See, there's these little smaller-than-the-actual-item-Pokeballs on the ground, and instead of Foongus or Voltorb... it's Stunfisk! Specifically, Stunfisk's stupid beak, coloured like a Pokeball. And more importantly, the rest of Stunfisk's flounder body is now basically a bear trap with spikes, and his flat body's got footprints like someone walked over him without triggering him. It's such a bizarre, wacky redesign for Stunfisk. I'm not sure how I feel about him just yet, but man it's just such an unexpected creature and such an unexpected theme to play with him that it definitely deserves props. It's at least trying to do something with the theme, y'know? I kinda am curious to see if it has a new evolution or not. I know the regional variants of Linoone and Farfetch'd get evolutions, so I'm curious if Galarian Stunfisk transforms into something more extreme.

Bede is also here, apparently collecting Wishing Stars or some shit, which I think is what he's doing in the first Galar Mine? He's (She? I legit don't know Bede's gender) still his normal condescending prick self, and he keeps yapping about oh how great Chairman Rose is and yadda yadda yadda. He challenges me to a battle, and my baby Sizzlipede bug-bites through his psychic amoeba, his psychic baby goth, his psychic hat creature... and his psychic cotton candy unicorn baby.

And I completely forgot that Galarian Ponyta is even a thing, and thanks to, oh, a couple of decades basically associating "Ponyta" with "fire horse", I did actually like the brief bit of instinct as I just went "oh, it's a Ponyta, better swap out my bug and send out the water creature". And it's not like Galarian Ponyta's a threat to Drizzile, but it's pretty cool that the Galarian form did pull the wool over my eye, as it were.

After the Bede fight, there is a brief double battle against a bunch of Team Yell goons with Hop, and then a brief cutscene with Kabu, the Motostoke gym leader, chasing off a bunch of Team Yell goons that were either harassing or encouraging a Carkol, depending on who you believe. And... and Kabu's all right. He's a pretty cool dude, even if his personality basically boils down to just a generic experienced worthy opponent.

Apparently, I have to go and take a sleep in the Budew Drop Inn again, at which point I finally get formally introduced to Marnie! Who wants a happy practice battle in the hotel lobby. She's very pleasant, and not at all rowdy like her Team Yell goons. Who, by the way, show up in the upper level just to provide the chanting in her battle theme. Marnie's focusing seemingly on 'thug' like Pokemon like Croagunk and Scraggy... and Morpeko. Okay. Morpeko's... neat? I'm not sure what switching back and forth between 'cute mascot' and 'grr grr me angery' mode really does, because as my Sizzlipede launching bug bites at it proves, it's still Electric/Dark in both forms. So I dunno.

Anyway, after the Marnie fight, it's dawn and I head off to challenge the Motostoke Gym... and the puzzle is... it's interesting? It doesn't quite has the same giant visual spectacle as the previous two gyms, and honestly felt kind of a letdown. The concept's neat, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I just sort of have to go into a double-battle with other competitors to either KO or catch random Pokemon to reach 5 points, which means that I just basically ignore everything and chuck great balls at the Pokemon that show up. I get another Sizzlipede, so if I wasn't so hell-bent on getting my little Magtail back in Route 3, this would be the perfect spot to get one.

Kabu himself is a pretty simple boss fight, really. He's got three fire Pokemon, and I started off the game with the water starter. I Dynamax my Drizzile immediately, and unleash the Dynamax water move to OHKO all of his pokemon, and the fact that it looks like some Kamehameha move out of Dragon Ball thanks to Drizzile's attack pose is an added bonus. Ninetales? Washed away. Arcanine? Drowned.

His final Pokemon's definitely a Carkol, right? Like the one we saw in his cutscene in Galar Mine #2? Or Carkol's evolution? That's obvious, right?


Oh. OH!

That's what Sizzlipede turns into? That's bad ass, with the huge tapering centipede body and those flames exploding into an X-shaped beard and those giant centipede fangs and I'm going to see him Dynamax and-


Oh.

OOOOOOHHHH

Okay shit, god damn, Kabu.

I was lukewarm about this whole "Gigantamax" and "Dynamax" and new-fangled knockoff Mega Evolution stuff, but you got me. Like, this came out of absolutely nowhere but holy shit this was certainly an unexpected moment that made me go squee a bit.

Sure, Gigantamax'd Centiskorch got one-hit KO'd by my Drizzile's dynamax water move without getting the chance to do anything, but it's still cool. That's gym number three down, with my giant kaiju emo sad reptile unleashing a water kamehameha on a giant kaiju flaming centipede the size of a small skyscraper. That's awesome.


Oh and by the way the experience point of Drizzile slaying the giant building-sized Giganto-Centiskorch caused my own Sizzlipede to evolve into a regular Centiskorch! And now to figure out how the hell I'm supposed to do this "Gigantomax" thing instead of this "Dynomax" thing. Regardless, Centiskorch is pretty damn cool and has such a huge boost in stats that he's actually contributing to fights later on!

Kabu, Milo and Nessa send me and Hop off with the most bizarre encouragement chant (Kabu should take cheerleading lessons from Team Yell), I have to go off through the Wild Area, and go all the way around the segment that was blocked off previously to reach the northern Wild Area. I can catch Pokemon up to level 35 or something now, and that means... I get to explore the Wild Area a bit more!

Oh, and Bede shows up, mocks us again, and goes off to fight Hop. Okay? I kinda am rooting for Bede, honestly. Hop's such a non-entity that I really find it hard to care for him. I did kind of like Bede's brief analysis of Hop, though, how he constantly defines himself as "Leon's brother!" and "[insert character name here]'s rival!" and... I dunno, it's honestly still basically the same thing that Hau went through with Hala, the same sort of living-beneath-someone's-shadow story, and I sincerely hope that this might lead to some character development for Hop.

Which I did. I spent a long time just running around the Wild Area. Which... doesn't really make for much of an interesting text-based Let's Play talk, but it is pretty fun. Despite my reservations about the Wild Area, I am happy to say that for what it is, it's great. I'm barely half through this game so I'll reserve judgment on how I kinda think that it could've been integrated into the actual progression of the story and region a bit better, but I'll save that until I've cleared the game. The Dynamax Raids are... the wi-fi matchmaking is absolute ass and I'm not a fan of it, so I just basically do solo raids with the AI trainers. I still find the raid battles pretty samey, although the animation of the dynamax moves are pretty neat.

Mostly, I'm just genuinely happy to play around in the Wild Area and genuinely look at wonder at some of the Pokemon that appear here and there as I just run around the large area and move from one patch of grass to the next. My inner child is still happy any time I witness like an Onix or a Galvantula or a Pangoro or a Vileplume or whatever just sort of strolling down the wild area like they are the alpha dog of the area. It's not particularly intricate, admittedly, but I definitely appreciate that the game designers at least tried to program each Pokemon's AI to fit with their personalities, y'know? Tyrogues and Machops will chase you down like the little punks that they are, Golurks and Goletts patrol around an abandoned castle, Duskulls and Gastlies are aggressive fuckers that want to eat your soul, Noibats are skittish and run away from you... and I'm a huge fan of camping, too. The curry minigame gets boring after the first time you play it, and I'm sad that you can't pet your Pokemon anymore, but I do like throwing balls at them and getting them to fetch and whatnot, and seeing members of my party actually interact is neat!

Anyway, this was a bit of a shorter one, mostly because I spent most of my time in the Wild Area, eventually, after wandering around, getting all the way to Hammerlocke. Which is where we'll pick up next time, I suppose.

Current party:


Carkol and Farfetch'd are actually being sort of swapped in and out with Dottler (because I'm very curious what this thing will evolve into and it's taking quite a while) and Applin (because I'm also curious if it will evolve by level-up).

Random Notes:

• I wasn't quite sure if we are working off of a reversed clock a la Pokemon Moon or if they did away with real-time-of-the-day altogether, but I guess now day and night will change basically depending on the needs of the story? Or if it cycles through day and night in the Wild Area? 
• Hulbury's greatest export is explicitly noted to be seafood. So, uh... those poor Corpishes and Arrokudas!
• Carkol's head does look like Golem's, huh? It's like someone stuck a Golem head to a mine cart with rock spider-legs. It somehow works. 
• Kabu's eye actually gets set on fire when he yeets Centiskorch to dynamax him. That's pretty cool. 
• I caught the elephant whose name have been eluding me for multiple cities, just sort of hanging out underneath the massive bridges that separated the northern and southern Wild Areas! It's called a Cufant and it's a Steel-type. It's kinda cute I guess but it's not my thing. 
• Corviknight is HUGE. Like, holy shit, the random Wild Area Corviknight that wanders around the Wild Area is just pretty dang huge, particularly compared to everything around him. 
• Steelix apparently can alternate between floating and undulating above the ground, or just crawling on it like a snake, which... which is something that I'm pretty sure Steelix can canonically do in the anime and manga, but it's just so weird seeing it in a 3D game. 

One Piece Chapter 958-963 Catch-up Review: History of Wano

So I've been super-busy and didn't really have a lot of time to catch up to the manga. I really haven't even been reading One Piece or My Hero Academia for a while, and it's not until a couple days ago until I sat down and caught up to One Piece. And... I'm kind of tired, so I'll just basically do a quick reaction-review instead of going too in-depth about it.

Basically the last chapter I reviewed was the end of Act 2 of Wano, and Chapter 958: The Promised Port is the beginning of the third act. And it seems like it's going to be a huge flashback arc! Even the first scenes of 958 is a neat little flashback from Oden's POV of the madness in Gold Roger's crew as we get to see some familiar faces. Crocus, Rayleigh, Buggy, Shanks...and Oden's kept in the shadows for most of this flashback. It's a neat mission statement for how we eventually will reach this Oden, the Oden that keeps getting referred to throughout the present day, this enigmatic legendary figure... and from around 960 onwards, it's going to be Kozuki Oden's origin story.

But we start off with some neat little present-day stuff, and it's initially just a showcase of Shogun Orochi's massive procession and just how assured he was about his victory. Obviously the Straw Hats aren't dead or killed off-screen or whatever, but as far as the Scabbards are concerned, they showed up at the meeting port only to be met with a massive storm, no fleet, no army, no reinforcements, no contact to anyone. The audience knows that someone betrayed the plans to Orochi, and the question of 'who's the traitor' still rings true... but that's a speculation for another day. We get a couple of neat scene changes from Kin'emon's absolutely distraught yelling and desperate description of the area with the happy festival scenes among the civilians. It's a neat little scene-setting, and while One Piece's guilty of this fake-cliffhangers before (particularly during Whole Cake), this time around it's done particularly well, and taking a fair amount of time devoted to telling a flashback is neat.

Chapter 959: Samurai gives us a brief little flashback of a scene that took place in Act 2, about how everyone in the Pirate/Mink/Samurai alliance are all happy and doing their job and how everything is going just as planned and stuff. There's some neat kabuto-style armour for Chopper, Luffy and Brook, and I do like the little argument between Zoro and Sanji (including slicing off part of the cliff that he had already sliced up before). We get a foreshadowing that the Minks will all be going Su-long in the fight, and a brief acknowledgement about how "Jinbe will come", which... I'm still curious about that cliffhanger. Also, apparently Kuri was burnt to the ground for their resistance, as we learn from an O-Tsuru scene and Kin'emon's angry ranting in the present day.

And we get a brief montage of bridges linking the sub-islands of Wano being blown up, and the apparent destruction of the Thousand Sunny by a bunch of flying monkeys (again, narrative-wise, of course it's not the case) and generally Orochi fucking up Wano's infrastructure to cripple the Pirate-Samurai-Mink alliance's infrastructure. We get a neat villain monologue from Orochi, noting that whether people (or, indeed, Orochi himself) believes the story of samurai jumping 20 years through time, it doesn't matter if he's in power since whatever the case, he can just order bridges blown up and block every route leading to Port Tokage.

The Scabbards are all crying and we get an emotional scene about how Oden helped them become samurai and how they were a shit ragtag bunch of fools before, ordering Shinobu to make sure Momonosuke survive while they carry out their duty and fight to the bitter end and stuff. Which... is a nice segue to the beginning of the flashback, with Oden giving his Nine Scabbards a speech about opening Wano's borders.

Chapter 960: Kozuki Oden Takes the Stage! And boy howdy does he. We start off with a pretty interesting, fast-paced backstory that basically goes through a lot of the stuff we sort of inferred from previous notes about the Wano characters' backstory, but now with Oden's role in it being basically properly established, we now get to see all of it in context. 960 sort of starts off pretty simply, with sort of a side-story revolving around a bunch of dudes catching a white-skinned boar. We get a fun little sight of young Kin'emon and Tsurujo, and apparently Kin'emon is kind of a punk thief while Tsuru has the absolutely hilarious threat of "I'll harvest your organs and sell them to pay your debt". Long story short, Kin'emon steals the white boar from the randoms, and heads into the city to sell it. Hyogoro's gang is after him, and he ends up befriending Denjiro, a local smooth-talker and swindler with black glasses.

960 sort of builds up Oden a bit, and we get a brief bit of Chuck-Norris-esque listing of just the amount of ridiculous deeds he did as a child. He's ridiculously strong, independent, and really wants to set out to sea. And he's also kind of an ass. 960 really played up his "roguish asshole" tendencies up, and he sort of flits the line between being likable and unlikable... although I suspect that cooking a bowl of soup atop the funeral pyre of his departed friend aside, a lot of the more assholish things he does is exaggerated by the second-hand reports.

The chapter ends with the fact that apparently Kin'emon has wandered straight into the midst of a gang fight by trying to muck around with the white boar, because they've summoned the Mountain God -- the mother boar, and a gigantic beast the size of a mountain. Chapter 961: The Mountain God Incident, of course, has Oden show up, beat the fuck out of a giant boar with his swordsmanship, and impress a bunch of local people with his badassery.

But we get a nice bit of young Kin'emon going on a futile raging attempt to fight the boar to save O-Tsuru. The story behind them is simple but kinda effective, with Kin'emon being the sort of dude that goes "it's fine if I died" while Tsuru's the one person that takes care of him and stuff. And Oden shows up, takes the blame for kidnapping the young boar, and then slices the mother boar in half and rescues all of the people inside, and miraculously no one died.

Of course, Oden ends up getting exiled from the capital after the conversations done in 960, and the narration noting that "Oden caused the Mountain God Incident" easily implies that a lot of the bad rap that Oden gets saddled with is basically distorted from the events that happened because Oden's the sort of dude that tends to claim the blame from other people's fuck-ups. Denjiro and Kin'emon become Oden's followers, and we get him meeting Yasuie after he was exiled from the capital... as well as Yasuie's sycophantic toadie... Orochi!

Chapter 962: The Daimyo and His Retainers basically blitzes through Oden's recruitment of his Scabbards, which... is a bit unfortunate, but I also admit that it's probably redundant compared to the far more exciting scenes we see in subsequent chapters, and, after all, Oden's story is not the full story of Wano. We get to see that even while he was young, Orochi makes use of his meek, unassuming look to profit from himself, stealing from Yasuie and blaming Oden for it. Oden, meanwhile, buggers off to head to Kuri, being interested in the whole crazy town of bandits thing.

And we get a brief montage of Oden recruiting the others. Kikunojo and Izo (of Whitebeard's crew fame) are brothers who danced to earn money, whose father was imprisoned wrongfully. Kanjuro, the "Demon of Kibi", stole hair from people... to make brushes, because Kanjuro's fucking weird. Raizou is a mountain bandit that was apparently an exile from the Oniwabanshuu. And then Oden goes off to head to Kuri to challenge the local boss, Ashura Doji. The narration is pretty neat, with Oden absolutely loathing the "if you enter, you can't leave" rule that Kuri also has. He gets a pretty cool line, too, noting that he's cast out his name and he's just merely a samurai. In a montage, he beat up Ashura and his goons, then apparently revitalized Kuri into a town with dignity, and this caused him to be reinstated as part of the Kozuki family and as Daimyo of Kuri. And, of course, he makes his followers into his retainers-slash-samurai.

We jump six years later, where the narration teases us with the Rocks Pirates apparently becoming active at around this point... but just like Oden and Wano, the story is still secluded from the outer world. Instead 962 ends with little Kawamatsu finding little Inuarashi and little Nekomamushi.

Chapter 963: Becoming Samurai has a brief flashback to even smaller Neko and Inu learning all about Wano, the sworn ancient brethren of the Minks, and setting out to see all the islands in the world ("are there more than five?") before arriving into Wano... and they are about to get cooked by the locals! Oden rescues them, and the little cat and dog dudes are adorale. We get confirmation that Kawamatsu is, in fact, a Fishman, having taken to calling himself a kappa to fit in with local lore.

Of course, Oden's apparently still lending money to Orochi, leading to his other retainers trying to steal money to give it back to Oden. This leads to the scene we saw in a flashback before (was it when Yasuie died?) of Yasuie telling Oden's retainers to take the money they attempted to steal and use it to better themselves with books, clothes, swords and whatnot, learning manners and becoming dignified. It's kind of an expected scene, but the montage was done well enough and I've ended up being quite attached to these silly goons that when the scene of them assembled and the narration notes how badass and regal these samurai look when Oden arrives at the capital to meet Sukiyaki, I totally believe it.

And 963 ends... with Whitebeard's crew arriving at Wano! The Mody Dick was fucked by the waterfall, and it's so interesting seeing young Marco as an apprentice, and some of the background characters from the Whitebeard crew show up here like a beardless Vista, Whitey Bay, Jozu and that one dude with the chain chomp.

And Oden... just charges in, congratulating Whitebeard for arriving in Wano and then attacks! Oden is apparently strong enough to match Whitebeard weapon-for-weapon, at least, and for Whitebeard to recognize that he's trouble. And, of course, Oden is all excited... to join Whitebeard's crew. We sort of know hiw this will pan out, how it will happen -- Oden, Izo and the Minks will hang out with Whitebesrd -- but it's still neat to see it all from Oden's POV.

Random Notes:

• Young Inuarashi and Nekomamushi are adorable. 
• The cover story has Bege and Chiffon's family still look for Lola in Dressrosa. I think they're about to fight a bunch of random germ villains or whatever? That vacuum cleaner lady makes a brief cameo. 
• I was wondering why Kin'emon was in his underwear halfway through 960, until I realized Tsuru made good her threat of stripping him of his belongings to pay his debt.
• The description of the "Harem Revolt" is just so out-there and ridiculous.
• I had to double check, but Izo is the crossdressing samurai dude that's part of Whitebeard's division commanders or whatever in the Marineford war. Literally the only notable thing about him is that he's from Wano, so it's neat to see his story interwoven with our Wano cast.
• Everyone has their intricate theories about who the traitor was, from Shinobu to Kanjurou to Kyoushirou to Hiyori to Carrot to whoever. Whoever it is, I hope the resolution's going to be satisfying with the breakneck speed we're going. 
• It's kind of obvious that Denjiro's Kyoshiro, right? I'm not the only one that sees that? Which either makes him the traitor loyal to Orochi, or if he's feigning loyalty to help out the good guys from inside the system. 
• Yasuie's reason for suspecting Orochi? "Oden would've done the stealing in a far more spectacular manner". 
• That super sentai pose that Oden and his retainers make in 962 is just so happy-looking. I love it. 
• Thanks to Kamen Rider Faiz, I know exactly what the term "nekojita" (cat's tongue) means, and I chuckled out loud at that scene. 
• Chapter 963 reveals that apparently after Oden sliced the Mountain Boar God in half, someone stitched the big boar together with literal stitches, and it's still alive serving Oden. More than anyone else in this flashback, I want these giant pigs to show up in present day as backup. 
• The scene with Oden and Sukiyaki note that this is the last time they'll meet, while the panel focuses on Orochi hiding behind a screen door. Is Orochi the one slowly poisoning Sukiyaki or something, or am I just thinking of Phantom Blood?

Kamen Rider Zero-One E12 Review: Don't Fuck With The Dodo

Kamen Rider Zero-One, Episode 12: The Famous Detective is Coming

I am just a wee bit behind on Zero-One, and I thought about making this a dual-episode review where I review both parts of the two-parter, but then I decided that there's enough uniqueness in both parts of the two-parter that I'd rather split it in two.

After the cliffhanger of episode 11, turns out that the police siege of Hiden Intelligence... was resolved off-screen, with the cops finding no evidence. But there's still a Drive style police team investigating Hiden, though, and if nothing else, they're out to hunt down the suspected rogue Humagear, Assassin-chan... and there's no records in any of Hiden's logs of a Humagear resembling Assassin-chan's appearance being manufactured. Yua, of course, being the wild card that she is, shows up and tattles to the police about the secret lab that Aruto has next to his office, which ends up re-starting the police investigation again.

And that's sort of the crux of the episode, which is... still interesting, but not quite delivering on the whole "company under investigation" that was promised last episode. The crisis ends up feeling a bit more small-scale, with Aruto and Izu panicking because they're making a shiny new toy in the laboratory and it'd be hard to explain to the police. Aruto's attempt to delay the police ends up not quite successful... until the famous Humagear detective Wazu Nazotoku shows up, dressed up like a Sherlock Holmes parody, and apparently all the cops know him.


And Wazu is... he's hammy, and the actor does a pretty great job at over-acting and basically being kind of over-the-top. It's not a style of hamminess that I particularly enjoy, but it's also pretty clear that this segment of his hamminess is at least partly an act to distract Vice-President Fukuzoe and the police, because Wazu's silently sending messages to Aruto, telling him to 'trust him' and improvise a distraction. Izu suggests against this, but we all know Aruto's all about trusting Humagears, so he immediately talks some shit about how he forgot the password to his secret lab, and the password is one of his killer jokes. And then Aruto just takes advantage of the audacity of his ecuse, puts on the Zero-One Driver, jump-authorizes and buggers off as he goes off because he's got "work" to do. He also gets an amazing one-liner, claiming that the Zero-One armour is his work uniform.

Over at the Metsubojinraidotnet's base, Horobi's forced Dodo-chan to shut down and has removed the key, much to Jin's confusion. Isn't it good that Dodo-chan's learned so much? And I feel that while it's certainly not out of character for Horobi to do something like this, it's also something that sort of came out of nowhere, and I kinda wished that we actually did see hints of Assassin-chan being angry or afraid of Horobi in previous episodes. There's a bit of it, sure, in Dodo's brief signs of independence in the first half of the movie director two-parter, but it's a bit too little as far as build-ups go, I feel.

Dodo's apparently evolved a bit too much, though, easily reverting back to his humanoid form, scaring poor poor Jin so much that he hides behind Horobi. Dodo claims that he's mastered assassination, and that it's time he "went independent"... and he transforms the two random Trilobite Magia behind Horobi and Jin into the very first form of the Dodo Magia! We get a cool bit of Horobi and Jin doing kung-fu moves to knock back the dodo goons, but this is enoguh time for Dodo-chan to break free of his bindings, steal the Dodo Zetsumerize Key from Horobi, and transform... into his new form, a completely different looking form with a skull-face and a quasi-Aztec bird head. It's awesome. The fact that he's slowly transforming from a generic monster of the week to a recurring minor villain into something with a unique suit? I genuinely didn't expect this to happen, and the ide of a Kamen Rider Dodo somewhere down the line doesn't seem too much like a pipe dream.

We get a bit of a cool sequence as Jin and Horobi transforms together and we see the CGI falcon and scorpion fly into the sky and fall back down (that poor scorpion) and while we do a bit of cutting back and forth, I am genuinely surprised that they establish that Dodo-Anstatsu-chan is able to handle both Jin and Horobi at the same time. Sure, he's got help, but still. The Metsuboys manage to destroy the goons, but the real Dodo-chan escapes.

On the good guys' side, Izu and Wazu bugger off into the hidden laboratory while Aruto literally boing-boings away from the police cars, giving a speech about trusting Humagears. And we do get a couple brief scenes where Fuwa tries to stop him in his tracks, and I do like the conversation with Fuwa. Seeing Vulcan fight Freezing Bear is neat, and Aruto definitely gets a couple of good one-liners. Aruto eventually gets into the hidden laboratory through a Batman-style secret elevator... and Wazu reveals that he's Izu's "older brother", i.e. an older prototype. Credit to Izu's actor for that perfect robotic "eeeh" face that she holds for a while. That's also the perfect "bitch don't fuck with me" face when she just glares at Wazu's outstretched hand.

We get a brief mation dump about how Wazu was created by grandpa Korenosuke, and was doing something for him prior to his death, and Aruto, of course, instantly believes in Wazu because he's an honest, earnest boy. We get a bit more of a split-up as Izu and Wazu goes to investigate, while Aruto boing-boings aroud and distracts the policemen... and this time, it's Valkyrie who very briefly tries to stop Aruto, but Aruto ends up shutting Yua down by snidely remaraking about how this is apparently Zaia's method of business.

Izu, meanwhile, is absolutely in full tranquil fury mode, telling Aruto how Wazu is a useless shit who spends the entire day walking aroud random old parts of the city and making Izu hold cotton candy and whirley fans. Aruto manages to tell Izu to sort of calm down for a while, but eventually Izu cracks and asks Wazu what the whole point of his nonsense is. Fuwa also shows up, having apparently followed the Humagear sibling duo, and agrees with Izu that what they've been doing is a waste of time.

Except, of course, Wazu's the sort of bumbling-buffoon-that's-actually-smart, so that brief montage of going aroud being a fool is actually him investigating, and he's found out that the warehouse is the hiding place of a Humagear black market gang, and we get the absolutely badass sequence of Wazu mimicking a police siren noise then calmly telling Fuwa to stop a random escaping truck.

Which Fuwa does with a badass VULCAN PUNCH. No, seriously, he just fucking stops the truck by punching it. Bad. Ass.

Wazu then tells us that he's figured out that the reason Dodo-chan isn't actually listed in any of Hiden's records is that because he was stolen and modified from "Matsurina Zed", a quintet of dancing Humagears, and given new faces by the black market, and it corresponds to the amount of times that the Dodo Magia's been defeated. So each time that Mestubojinrai revives Dodo, it's in a new-but-identical body? That's interesting. There's a bunch of contrived coincidences going on here, but it is a detective themed episode, so yeah, why not. The remaining Zed unit is the goal of our Assassin-chan, and of course, we get our third-act action scene.

Dodo-chan shows up to reclaim his brother, and transforms into his monster form (Dodo Mark III, I guess?), and Fuwa goes Punching Kong to protect the innocent Humagear. Fuwa, working with Humagears to save another Humagear? Character development! Wazu also has contacted Aruto off-screen, and he shows up in Flaming Tiger form. But Dodo-chan is so powerful that he manhandles both Fuwa and Aruto easily, and a combined set of finishes doesn't even phase the Dodo. Don't fuck with the Dodo!

At this point, apparently ZEA has completed the upgrade key, and Izu just speed-dashes away, which I thought it's hilarious. While Izu speed-dashes back and forth from the Hiden building, we get to see Dodo-chan beat the fuck out of Fuwa so hard he de-transforms, while he attacks Aruto before he even has a chance to utilize the Mammoth key. Izu shows up, speed-dashing and delivering the Shining Hopper Key... but interestingly, Wazu tries to stop Aruto, telling him that the Mammoth key should be enough?

It's new toy time, though, and the episode ends as Aruto transforms into his first-quarter upgrade form, Shining Hopper. Which wasn't a suit that impressed me when leaks showed up, but boy oh boy, the henshin sequence is just super-extra, isn't it? From the majestic yelling phrases that the belt makes, the two grasshoppers riding on each other, the random bug net, the abs and the grasshopper legs growing and bending into place, and the perfect delivery of "when I shine, DARKNESS FADES!" Yeah, it's one of the more badass super-form debuts I've seen in a while.

And this is where we end this episode. And... there's a lot of great moments in this episode for sure, but I kinda felt like so much of it was rushed. Things like the police investigation genuinely felt like a distraction and serves as not much but a generic backdrop. Meanwhile, the actual detective stuff focusing on Wazu highlights his relationship and quirkiness, and has the characters questioning his trustworthiness and competence more than actually trying to set up the mystery, and I felt that it was kind of underwheling that the mystery was just given to us through an info-dump. Still, between Shining Hopper and Dodo Mark III, as well as the many neat action scenes, it's still a pretty entertaining episode, and we'll see just how they wrap up this two-parter. 

Random Notes:

• In one of the best brick jokes ever, we do actually get a brief scene of Jun Fukuzoe and the policemen trying to go through Aruto's Youtube playlist and figure out which of his many jokes is the answer. Fukuzoe tries Aruto's catchphrase. It doesn't work. 
• Yamashita continues to be the master of hilariously passive-aggressively undermining Fukuzoe, quickly pushing all responsibilities of the situation to the vice-president according to the chain of command. Shester has exactly one line, but that one line is to lampshade how stupid Fukuzoe was for trying to use Aruto's catchphrase as the password. 
• Notably, Aruto's giant grasshopper buddy doesn't make a gigantic hole in his office. Is Satellite Zea able to actually beam these cyborg animals down without property destruction? If so, then I guess Aruto was just kinda being a dick to that one mangaka whose house he ruined. 
• Gimmick Watch:
• "Shining jump! Authorize. Progrise! The rider kick increases the power by adding to brightness. SHINING HOPPER! When I shine, darkness fades."
• Aruto also points the key to the sky to unlock some large digital key lock. And then instead of a grasshopper buddy, there are two grasshoppers, one riding on each other, which gets captured by a hologram net and shoved into Aruto. And we get the explicit sequence of Shining Hopper's abs growing. 
• The text-to-speech in this one has particularly poor grammar, but makes up for it for the perfect, badass delivery of when I shine, darkness fades. 
• Okay, but Horobi's just barely restraining Assassin-chan with a bunch of literal random wires he probably has lying around. 
• That Charge Rise/Full Charge unfolding of the briefcase weapon really looks like it was initially intended to have some sort of flashy effect, huh? 
• Sanjo Riku, head writer of the very criminal/mystery-genre-driven Kamen Rider W and Kamen Rider Drive, was brought in as a guest writer for this episode. It's neat. 
• It's very fortunate for Wazu's deduction that the black market people gave the five Matsurina Zeds the exact same faces, huh?
• Wazu is noted to, of course, have achieved singularity prior to this episode, which is why he's apparently 'just like a human detective'. By which I assume Fuwa and Izu are referring to the fact that Wazu apparently kept all details of the investigation secret until the exact time where revealing it would've been the most dramatic? 
• Dodo-chan's finisher attacks seem to be launching the missiles from his bandoliers, have them hover in front of him for a while, before hitting them with his swords. Okay?

Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 3: Attack on Eldegoss

Last time we left off in my playthrough of Pokemon Sword, I was about to enter a mine! It's the Galar Mine, and its a pretty mine that we've seen a lot in the trailers. And... and it's a very linear mine for sure, a very simple cave even by the standards of the 3D games. It's one that looks pretty as all hell, though, with gemstones and mine carts rushing through the cave. Or, well, not quite mine carts, but rather a mine cart Pokemon -- Carkoal, the evolved form of Rolycoly! And the first time I saw one of the mine carts pass by, I genuinely didn't think that it was a Pokemon that you could encounter as essentially a random event.

And I'm pretty sure that if I saw a still image of a Carkoal first, I probably wouldn't like it as much, but man it just looks so neat! Zipping around on the mine cart tracks, with its little rock lizard head and spider-like legs, while its pile of coals light up in red... it's another one of those designs that certainly works a lot better in 3D. And it's a creature that I wouldn't call my favourite, I actually did like it enough. Also, my own Rolycoly turned into a Carkoal throughout my journey through the mine. (I later renamed him into "Locomotive", which felt a lot more appropriate)

The cave's otherwise pretty standard. There was a segment where I can look down on an unaccessible lower level with mine tracks and I can whistle for the Woobat that fly around to come over. It's neat. The end-boss of this little cave is the white-haired asshole that keeps shoehorning in the fact that he was sponsored by Chairman Rose, and we learn that his name is bidet Bede. Which I guess is supposed to be pronounced like "bead", but I choose to pronounce it like "bidet". Because that's what he is, he's kind of a shitbag, but oh man it's so refreshing to see some adversary and animosity from the side cast after the blandness that is Hop. Because Bede is such a stuck-up dickwad from the get-go, continuing to claim about how he's the best, how he's only losing because he's letting me and how this little setback's just him scouting my moves so he can beat me, and he's so important neener-neener-neener.

He's neat! And he's actually building his team based on a specific type, I feel, which is Psychic type. He's got a Solosis, a Gothita, and a new creature called a Hatenna. It's a cute little pastel-coloured hat with a smiling mouth and little stubby legs! It looks like, fuck, I dunno, an NPC in a Kirby game or something? I like it. It's apparently a pure Psychic time, considering how my little fire centipede dealt super-effective damage to the wacky walking hat? I would've bet that it's Fairy based on its appearance, but I guess Galarian Ponyta isn't the only Psychic-type-that-looks-like-a-Fairy.

Anyway, with Bede gone, I'm out of the Galar Mine, a pretty short but pretty little area, and straight into Route 4. And Route 4 is pretty huge! I do like that you can just skip a huge chunk of it and go straight into Turffield Gym and fight the gym and move on, but the combination of Route 3, Galar Mine and Route 4 ends up making a pretty neat length of play where I just run around, exploring and capturing things and fighting trainers instead of being interrupted every goddamn five minutes by Hop.


Anyway, Route 4 is a pretty neat area with loads of yellow farmland crops, and a whole load of farmers and little children cosplaying as Pikachu and Eevee. Which, thanks to how the game is framed, actually fooled me into thinking that the Pikachu kids are actually Pikachu. It's a pretty neat farm style area, with a lot of neat encounters. Electrike, Pikachu, Yamper, Wooloo, Pumpkaboo (which makes so much sense), a bunch of Diglett that only pop in and out of a patch of dirt with Diglett holes...

And Galarian Meowth.


No. Seriously. Look at this thing.

Galarian Meowth. Which initially looks stupid until you pan around his back and you realize that it's still regular old Meowth, and that the massive chunk of fur is its dwarf-style beard dangling from his chin. And it's a freaking pure-Steel type for some reason. And... and I don't really like this thing all that much, but man it's a hilarious looking motherfucker in the same vein that Alolan Dugtrio is a hilarious looking motherfucker. Based on its dex entries, it's also Viking-themed? What are they going to do with Persian, then? Have Persian just have a big fuck-off beard? And I thought Alolan Persian was weird! It's so fun playing these games blind.

Also, Galarian Meowth and Electrike are helluva aggressive. I really do like that at least they did something interesting with all of the creatures they kept around in Sword/Shield and actually made the overworld encounters somewhat variable. The Pumpkaboo just don't give a shit and float in place, the Meowths and Electrike run and try to murder you, Digletts just sort of do whatever and pop out of the ground in their area.


Oh and also I met that little blob-like pale white thing from the cafe in Motostoke, which is the rare encounter. It's called Milcery and it's pure Fairy. I like it, but I'm just sort of 'whelmed. It's basically a creature born out of 'sweetness in the air'. It's a Diabetes Elemental. I'm assuming it will evolve into an Alcremie.

The journey Turffield Town ends up with a little encounter with Big Buff Baby Milo, who has a Wooloo -- and I thought Milo was going to use Wooloo in the battle. Or maybe its evolution, like, maybe Wooloo turns into a Normal/Grass creature or something, but nope, Milo just keeps a lot of Wooloo in his gym that he doesn't use to battle. There's also a brief little detour as Sonia's Yamper bow-wark's and got me to go up a hill to see the massive Geoglyph, the giant drawing carved onto the side of a mountain that we saw very prominently in the trailers of this game. Basically we get more foreshadowing of the ancient battle, of the "Darkest Night" or whatever it's called, and based on the Geoglyph's image, it most certainly invovles Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing and some shit.

Also, Turffield Town and Route four has a whole lot of random standing stones that have either fallen over or be overgrown, while some are kept around as tourist attractions. I like it! There's this bizarre puzzle about a hidden treasure in Turffield that only the standing stones will point you to, and I am ashamed that it took me way too long to figure the riddle out. It takes a bit of a while to talk about the riddle, but suffice to say that it's surprisingly not as simple as you'd think would be from this franchise.

Other than that... it's the gym! And as far as I can tell, the concept of these Galarian gyms are essentially like a sports event, where the competitors sort of go through some American Ninja style obstacle course (that take the place of the traditional gym puzzles) before going through a huge gym battle in the center of the stadium. Also, you have to wear your silly football jersey throughout it all... which I'm not a big fan of. Also, despite having a bunch of type jerseys on sale, you can't actually wear them in the gym challenge -- I had the fancy neon poison jersey and apparently you just wear that in the overworld. Kind of an odd limitation if you ask me.

Milo's gym is pretty neat! It's basically a version of the opening sequence to the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess with the goat herding, and my character has to herd 20 Wooloos through multiple mini-areas as they roll around and move away from both my character and the random Yampers that wander around. Oh, and there are gym trainres, too, because it's still a Pokemon gym, after all. It's... it's a bit hard to describe, but it's easily one of my favourite gym puzzles in a long, long while.

The fight against Milo is... it's got pretty visuals and cutscenes to set up the fight and set up Milo's eventual Dynamax. But it's ultimately just two level 20 pure-Grass types in Gossifleur and Eldegoss. And sure, the Eldegoss can Dynamax, but it's genuinely a pushover. I did give myself a handicap by adamantly not dynamaxing in this battle to make this feel a bit more like the Totem Pokemon battles in Alola, making it feel like a challenge, but even then my Corvisquire swept through both the Gossifleur and Dynamax'd Eldegoss pretty quickly. It's the first gym, I guess.

With Milo done, though, that's badge number one out of eight, and apparently this time we're like, filling in like a jigsaw puzzle ring or some such? It's neat.

That's all to Turffield City, though, because other than the gym and the Geoglyph, there really isn't much to the city, and off to the East we go, to the pretty long Route 5. And it's pretty neat! Lots of trainers, lots of grass with lots of neat wild encounters... including the reason I picked Sword over Shield -- Galarian Farfetch'd! Or, well, Sirfetch'd. I wasn't even aware Farfetch'd himself is getting a Galarian form, but he now looks like a super serious anime protagonist with those eyes, that sheer attitude and sass he has, and the fact that he's got a massive Cloud Strife style giant leek slung over his back. I caught one and added him to my team immediately, calling him Sir Duckvos. Because, y'know, Onion Knight.

Also, even Galarian Farfetch'd himself is pure Fighting, which... okay? I guess it's a flightless duck now. Sure. It's still weird, but I do think that this one at least kinda made some sense.

The Pokemon Day Care Center is also here! Renamed the Pokemon Nursery, which sort of is a name that fits the function of the Day Care Centers a lot better. And I get a free new Pokemon, which is the bizarre Poison/Electric creature Toxel, apparently newly hatched and it has absolutely baby-like animations. It's, uh... it's cute for sure. I'm not sure what it's meant to be, like some sort of... shit, I genuinely have no idea. Some sort of baby creature. It's certainly not what I expected from our very first Poison/Electric combination for sure!

Also, speaking of wacky-ass new creatures, a random cook has Applin. Which is like, a fucking apple with a pair of worm eyes jutting out of it with a worm tail on its back. It's a worm wearing an apple, which is a lot neater than "just an apple with eyes", which I legitimately would complain about. And... and it's not pure Grass or Grass/Bug as I would expect, becuase my Corvisquire's Flying-type attacks do neutral damage to it. So I don't know. It does look adorable, though! It's a babbu.

There's a bit of an event where a pair of Team Yell Grunts are harassing a random doctor dude in scrubs, demanding his bike, and I have to beat them up. Which I do. The Team Yell Grunt has a Thievul, Nickit's evolved form, and... and it's a pretty fox with a hilarious bandit mustache. It seems to just still be a pure-Dark type, though, and it's still kinda weak (it's basically the Liepard/Mightyena of the region) and gets KO'd without a problem, but it still looks pretty neat! I like it a lot.

And now I have the bicycle, and... and it's neat to have the bicycle, but I'm not a huge fan that we're once more shoehorned into a shitty-looking 'riding outfit' in the same way that the Sun/Moon games did whenever we ride our ride Pokemon. They clearly spent a fair amount of time allowing you to customize your trainer's appearance a lot, but then you don't get that visual neatness whenever you ride the otherwise very convenient bike? Boo, I say. It's moments like this that really kind of make it clear that the game isn't quite as finished as it probably would've been if they didn't rush it to release this year. And I am still having fun, but the National Dex isn't the only casualty of the rush. I just hope that if one good thing came out of the hideous online response towards Nintendo and Gamefreak is that they'll take their time and actually let the game developers take their time to make the game that they want to make instead of having to rush it to meet a deadline.

Anyway, the bridge that I have to go through after getting the bike is conveniently very long with minimal encouters, with a nice, pretty view of a huge-ass gym in the distance that we'll presumably be visiting in the future. There's a Hop battle here, and he's still only got three shitty Pokemon, although he's evolved his bird and his starter. Scorbunny is adorable, but he evolves into Raboot, which is, uh... it's... it's something I guess. And while I was kinda lukewarm the first time I saw Drizzile and only warmed up to him after seeing his animations, Raboot is just... it's just a gangly, angry bunny with an emo jacket. Okay. Hop's still just kinda there. Am I being too harsh on Hop? I dunno. Now that he's not as omni-present he's a bit less of an irritant, but I really do wish they gave him any sort of personality at all.

Next up is Hulbury Town, which is a coastal town, and I'm immediately greeted with President Rose in his... hilarious civilian outfit. A very hot-looking white sweater and shorts that kinda look like boxers? Yeaaah. Also, Rose has his own sharply-dressed secretary called Oleanna, who basically is just there to keep Rose from making too much of a fool out of himself. Oh, and Bede shows up and despite all of his high talk, the chairman clearly doesn't remember him a whole ton. It's... it's going to be interesting to see how Bede progresses in the future. He's clearly an asshat full of himself, but his supposedly high-and-mighty friends-in-high-places don't really think of him as someone super-special. Judging by Rose's dialogue to Bede and my character, it's clear that Rose's a bit more interested in whatever the champion's endorsed challenger is all about.

...which makes me wonder if either Rose or Leon will end up becoming the main villain. Becuase one of them surely is, right? That's been kind of the obvious pattern since XY, that one of the influential characters we meet end up being the secret sponsor of the evil team. (Although I highly doubt that Team Yell's actually going to actually amount to much more than just rowdy sports hooligans)

Anyway, Hulbury City's a lot more expansive than Turffield. Granted there's not much to actually do, but as someone who loves exploring every house in any new Pokemon city I did enjoy the vibe of this coastal town. There's a lighthouse where the gym leader, Nessa, is hanging out. There's the restaurant that President Rose is hanging out in and his fans are waiting outside. There's a little bit of docks that I can fish in. There's a little neat local-marketplace thing where they sell the nasty tasting herbs and the breeding incenses. The layout of the town is also nice. Again, not a whole ton to talk about, but I did enjoy exploring the town.

And fishing. Also fishing. A lot of the encounters from fishing are kind of the same old Chewtles and Magikarps I've been getting, but this is the first time I got an Arrokuda, which is the regional fish, I think? It's a brown barracuda, that's also vaguely arrow-themed. It's all right. I'm not too crazy about it, but I don't hate it. I'm not sure if it evolves, though -- you'd think it's one of those early-game fishies that evolves, but the game also just reminded me that Basculin exists. So.

Also, Yamper evolved! Into... a generic lightning hound dog. Which is cool and all, but I will miss just how adowable Yamper looks. Boltund has an insanely large increase in damage and speed, though, making her inclusion in the party actually a pretty useful one instead of just me really liking the good dog corgi Pokemon.

And then... the gym! The gym is a pretty standard water puzzle/lever thing that we've seen a fair bit of in many Nintendo games before, and even a couple of times in previous water-themed Pokemon gyms. You have to figure out the right order to switch on different sets of giant hoses that unleash a torrent that block your way. It's a pretty stadium, but otherwise the gym challenge feels surprisingly mundane compared to the surprisingly refreshing Wooloo herder minigame.

The battle against Nessa is... also pretty trivial. I actually did use Dynamax in this one, just to see how easily I can sweep Nessa's team. She's got, what, a Goldeen, an Arrokuda and a Drednaw that she Dynamaxes? My Boltund one-shotted the Goldeen, went Dynamax and then unleashes the Max Thundermurderofdoom move to one-shot Arrokuda and two-shot the Dyna-Drednaw.

...wasn't Drednaw supposed to be one of the lucky few to have the Neo-Mega Evolution Gigantamax Form? I guess that's a wholly different thing from Dynamax, then?

Anyway, that's two badges down. Six more to go! Having a pretty grand ol' time so far.

My current team:

It was kind of a bit of a toss-up, but I really wanted Galarian Farfetch'd on the team, so it came down between the overlapping types in the team -- Sizzlipede isn't going anywhere, so it's either Carkol or Dottler, and I feel like Dottler's... such a defensive creature and it's both evolving a lot later than I thought and also not really doing much, while Carkol's a pretty powerful asset in the team.

Sometime along the line, I guess I'll start rotating in and out some of the other newer Pokemon to level them up and see what they evolve into. I certainly do want to get Nickit, Dottler and Toxel up! Probably when I do a bigger excursion through the Wild Zone.


Random Notes:

• I got the event Pikachu and the wonder-gift Meowth! I can get Big Chonky Pikachu and Longcat Meowth in Gigantamax battles, I think. I haven't tried it out.
• The gyms still have the silly Zelda-Dreadrock sprite statues all the way back in generation 1. I approve. 
• It's honestly kinda neat that despite all of the outcry about Nintendo being slaves to Generation I nostalgia that we're getting genuine random dudes from other generations like Remoraid or Corpish or Basculin or Swirlix or Drillbur or Woobat or Timburr make the cut. Like, I'm not like the biggest fan of some of these critters, but I do like that they seem to actually be cherry-picking through all seven previous generations instead of just the first. 
• Apparently, sending your Pokemon to the box back and forth through the R button without going to the Pokemon Center does not heal your Pokemon, which is actually pretty great, and makes the feature actually be a convenience that doesn't make an already-easy game too easy. Like, you can still swap out your party members with a B-team ready to go, but it at least requires you to have a B-team trained up instead of quite literally having a portable Pokemon Center everywhere you go. 
• The Sword/Shield localization team doesn't quite put in too many british slangs outside of Team Yell's "oi, mate" dialogue, but one phrase they like to shove into every other line of dialogue that I felt showed up a fair bit in the Turffield area is 'chin-wag'. 
• The Geoglyph viewing spot has a little 'stick your head into a picture' bit, and while one of them is clearly a Skwovet, it's posing next to an absolutely bizarre thing that I could only assume is a Pokemon based on Stonehenge, and a body proportion that's like 80% rock-legs. Okay. I think it kinda looks silly, but I'll reserve judgment until I actually see what it looks like in the flesh. Or, er, the granite. 
• Making the fourth Rotom variant that we can't capture is the camera Rotom that shows up in the gym leader challenge zipping around the stadium. Some of the POV's are even from these Rotom-cams! Pretty neat stuff, honestly, and I do really like that we get these little extra forms. 
• My favourite bit of the Milo fight is the little affectionate pat that Milo gives his Dynamax pokeball before he yeets it into the back of the stadium. 
• Route 5 has a pair of interviewers, but unlike the interviewers from the Generation III and IV games, they don't actually try and get a funny comment from you or anything. Boo!
• Out of all the wild Pokemon in the game, I think the Stufful's running animation is easily my favourite. 
• The huge bridge in Route 5 has a chance to have a random hapless Eldegoss just spawn and float on by and you can fight it and catch it. I thought it's adorable. 
• When you whistle on your bike, you ring the bicycle bell instead. That's also adorable. 
• I would make the obligatory Fire/Fighting joke for Scorbunny, but I actually already got spoiled that all three starters are mono-typed until their final evolution. So. 
• Chairman Rose's weird orange green elephant Pokemon shows up as a random NPC creature in Hulbury Town but I still don't know what the hell it's all about. 

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.