Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 8: Giant Space Dragon Out of Nowhere

Last we left off, I completed the gym challenge, and have taken the train up to an icy mountain. And... and this is sort of like a tiny, short version of the Victory Road? It's even more underwhelming than the icy Victory Road we had in Alola. There is a particularly interesting encounter here, though, because the grass is filled with Galarian Mr. Mime, something that I've been spoiled about prior to this... but I didn't realize they moved so... oddly!

No, seriously, they're basically Charlie Chaplin-ing and tap-dancing as they chase after my character, and they have this little flourishing clap when you fight them. They're modeled after tap-dancers, I suppose? Not the biggest fan of them, but it's certainly an interesting take on Mr. Mime.

Anyway, I think I'm pretty happy with my team at this point -- Centiskorch, Inteleon, Corviknight, Sirfetch'd, Boltund and Frosmoth. Sure, the smart thing to do is to take out Boltund and Centiskorch for better type coverage (Toxtricity and Coalossal) but screw that, I'm all about the critters I like more in these playthroughs. I did consider taking out Inteleon, who's been genuinely underwhelming, but he's still my starter and I feel bad. I am still training my B-team, though, having them level up passively as I walk up the small gauntlet of trainers.

And I arrive not at the expected Elite-Four-and-the-Champion battle area, but Wyndon, a straight-up massive town that's supposed to be this region's equivalent to London! And hoo boy, it sure is an impressive cutscene they showed when you arrive at Wyndon! Giant towers, a ferris wheel, Corviknight taxis, monorails... but in another case of how so much of this game feels unpolished, there's surprisingly very little to do in the city.

Hop talks about how the city is split into multiple districts, but the 'shopping district', while having some pretty looking TV screens on the sides of buildings and whatnot, only has the same old hairdresser, clothes store and cafe that Motostoke and Hammerlocke have, and all of the fancy buildings are just window-dressing. The little housing district also had a grand total of a single person who has anything interesting to say -- the dude that fights you with Rotoms. Even the Corviknight taxis and monorails are utterly pointless considering how quick I can move around the city. The visuals are pretty neat, but unlike Hammerlocke and Motostoke (and Castelia, and Lumiose, from previous games), I genuinely feel like this city was padded out and not even with interesting filler. I'm sorry. At least the shop-filled street and the monorail station are nice-looking set pieces? After the genuinely empty-feeling Spikemuth City and routes, though, it's another one that feels like it definitely could've been done a lot better.

Anyway, without much to do in Wyndon, I basically head off to the huge stadium to participate in the Champion Cup. And it's pretty cool, because instead of an Elite Four, this time we're actually fighting in a tournament like the anime and manga. Which is something that fan-made game Pokemon Uranium actually ended up doing (Uranium also has a Bug/Ice moth. Just saying.) and I'm somewhat tickled by it. Kind of disappointed that we don't get the return of the Elite Four, but on the other hand we do still have a gauntlet of trainers we have to fight through. Neat-o beans.

And apparently they're just weeding out the remaining competitors, and first up is a fight with Marnie! And it'd be a far more epic fight if her Pokemon were actually matched in level. I didn't even do that much grinding, and I'm nearly ten levels above her! Her team's mostly the same and my Sirfetch'd beats the shit out of her squadron of mostly-Dark types... and then she pulls out a Grimmsnarl who can gigantamax. And what the hell, that giga Grimmsnarl looks positively menacing, like something out of Attack on Titan with lanky, curled muscular arms, a straight-up demonic face and a towering visage. It's truly badass seeing that thing particularly from the low-angle cam he shows up with as he gigantamaxes...

And looking at his design I'm pretty sure all those black muscles are meant to be Grimmsnarl's hair, which makes it kind of hilarious as well. I didn't get to see what Giga Grimmsnarl can do because my sword dance'd duck knight one-shotted the Grimmsnarl with a single brick break without even gigantamaxing. Which is mighty anti-climactic, but also pretty hilarious.

Next up is Hop, who... has basically the same team as before that I bulldoze through. Hop gets significantly more dialogue and also can dynamax his Cinderace, but once more, my Inteleon one-shots the Cinderace with a single Snipe Shot. Y'know, these battles would be significantly more threatening if the levels are a bit higher, y'know? I am so genuinely underwhelmed by this particular Hop fight. And apparently this qualifies my character into the actual tournament or something? Okay.

Anyway, after that there's a buildup for the eventual champion fight with Leon... which will take place the next day. We do get the obligatory scenes of Leon congratulating us, and Hop talking about worthy rivals and whatnot and being a graceful loser... and there's a news reporter interviewing me and stuff. I kind of find a bit of an amusement from this scene, actually, where the reporter was clearly being an absolutely rude piece of shit to Hop, asking me questions about "how did you feel about defeating your so-called rival, who the champion also endorsed at the same time" without even taking notice of said rival next to me? That's kinda funny.

But before I get to fight in the final tournament to reach Leon, though, I get stuck in plot at last! Or, well, some semblance of a plot. And said plot? Leon's late for dinner. Oh noes! The subversion that it's something so trivial that kick-starts the final part of the story (which, make no mistake, they just hastily crammed into this leg of the game) is Leon being late for dinner is... it's neat, but on the other hand it just feels so out-of-character considering the fact that Leon has like three character traits and one of said traits is that he's got Roronoa Zoro levels of direction-sense, so him being late for dinner really shouldn't be much of an issue. Really, the writing for this game really is a massive step-back from Alola.

Hop panics and he ends up enlisting the aid of Piers to hunt down Leon because if Leon is late for dinner... tomorrow's tournament might be delayed? Or something? That's a bit of a logic leap going on, but any chance for the game to have Piers make hilarious slasher-smile faces is a-okay by me. Piers ropes Marnie and Team Yell into helping out and to cause a ruckus, which... okay?

And then Oleanna shows up. Turns out that this background character that's been following Chairman Rose aroud but has a unique character model actually is relevant to the main storyline, and she basically taunts us about how Rose and Leon can't be disturbed right now, and that we can't access the monorail to Rose Tower... but apparently because Chairman Rose "likes his games", he's told Oleanna to give the card key to one of the random league officials who wears sunglasses. Y'know what? I'm not going to complain about this part of the game. It's actually the sort of over-the-top mustache-twirling self-sabotaging silliness that Pokemon villains are allowed to do.

And this dude, "Macro Cosmos Eric", is sort of hiding in the plaza in very obvious places, and I sort of have to hunt him down and challenge him. Okay then. That's really my only response to this. I find him looking at a wall, beat his Meowth up, then he runs away, then he tries to pretend to be talking to a bunch of people, and then he hides in a phone booth. That last one is actually kinda clever, but ultimately Macro Cosmos Eric is kind of a pushover. I do like that he uses steel-type pokemon, but ultimately he's still just kind of there.

Also in the Macro Cosmos Eric fights Marnie keeps cheering us on and we can choose between the responses to get a stat boost? And I really kinda wish that Macro Cosmos Eric was genuinely a bit tougher for this to really mean anything because my Sirfetch'd is already outclassing his Ferroseeds and Mawiles even without the cheer-boost.

(I was ranting a bit about what the fuck Macro Cosmos is and why they never mentioned it before, but apparently they did -- way back in like, route 4 or something when Sonia talks about the name of President Rose's company. But Macro Cosmos has had such a non-existent presence on Galar -- compare it to Aether Foudation in Alola, y'know? Where their outposts are sort of everywhere even when they're not integral to the plot yet. Or, hell, any given evil team in any given Pokemon game. Macro Cosmos being the true villains is less of a surprise than if the Miror B. from Colosseum suddenly showed up, because there's so little buildup to Macro Cosmos even being a thing.)

And then we get a cutscene where Macro Cosmos Eric runs into the monorail station and, uh... disguises himself with four doppelgangers? And this causes Hop and Marnie to... despair or something? The cutscene leading up to this is kinda weird, actually, but Piers just shows up, belts out a rock-metal solo in the middle of the station, causing a crowd of people (and Zigzagoons) to run down the stairs and, uh, trample the Macro Cosmos clones or something? And as she sort of rotates in place, Marnie "gets the key"? As I said before, any chance for Piers to do silly faces is a-okay by me but this cutscene doesn't really communicate what's going on particularly well. Is that what we've came to? I really don't want to be that dick that complains about every facet about the game, but we either have unfinished areas and abrupt off-screen battles, or confusing cutscenes. Damn it, Nintendo, let your game designers have another couple of months to polish their games!

And then we bugger off to Rose Tower, which... I guess is what passes for as the bad guy base in this game? Piers and Marnie stay back, while Hop and I ascend a huge elevator and fight like, three battles. Which is, holy shit, pretty disappointing, that's less battles than the fucking Nugget Bridge. Even if they didn't have the resources to render a full dungeon-base, at least make it something of a challenge, y'know? An actual gauntlet of grunts or something? Shit, Hop even heals my pokemon after every fight, as if this needed to be any easier. Like, Hop talks about how the tower has 100 floors and while I wouldn't want 100 non-stop battles, I really expected something more, y'know?

At least we get a boss fight with Oleana, who's all "I will do anything for my boss' visions!" and stuff. She strikes some hilariously angry faces.

Anyway, Chairman Rose... isn't actually "keeping Leon locked up". They are quite literally just having a civil conversation, and it's presumably one that took place for a couple of hours or whatever. Oleana's Pokemon is pretty neat, being themed after 'pretty' Pokemon, and I always do like trainers who have pokemon teams that are themed around something other than types.

Oleana starts off with a Froslass and Tsareena that get taken out by my Centiskorch, a Salazzle that gets snipe-shotted by Inteleon and a Milotic that gets zapped by my Boltund. Boltund, apparently, learns Play Rough, which is going to be great for elemental coverage! Oleana's final Pokemon, instead of being something traditionally elegant... is a Garbodor! Who she proceeds to Gigantamax! Into GIGAGARBODOR HOLY SHIT THAT THING IS AN ABSOLUTE UNIT.

And Gigantamax Garbodor fixes everything I disliked about Garbodor while also making him a gigantic trash-themed kaiju. Like, I never had any problem with the concept of a monster that's literally a walking junkpile, but Garbodor is just a formless blob with non-descript pieces of garbage stuck onto him. Gigantamax Garbodor has recognizable things like planes and boats and buildings and random substitute and poke dolls stuck onto him, and he really looks like he could be a tokusatsu monster that could fight Ultraman as a monster of the week. Anyway, my Frosmoth takes out the Garbodor (Mothra v.s. Hedorah!), and Oleana reluctantly lets me pass.

Turns out that Rose and Leon... are just having a civil, but long, conversation. And in an interesting change of style, this cutscene is rendered with drawings instead of the 3D models talking? It... uh... it sure is dramatic I guess? Basically the crux of the problem is that chairman Rose wants to do something for the betterment of the future, and screw the people now, what's important is the future thousands of years later because Galar, too, will fade, and Rose has some huge plan brewing that's going to be vaguely harmful but also vaguely beneficial to humanity in the long run. Mostly, he's being vague. Leon, on the other hand... is actually willing to compromise, but he tells Rose to wait a day because you can't sacrifice the happiness of people in the present for some vague far-reaching dream of fucking common sense, just wait another day Rose, what the fuck.

It's not that much of a complaint, I guess? I mean, we've had a villain in the past literally wanting to plunge the entire universe into nothingness because "heart makes emotions and emotions leads to evil so I'm making a space-themed supervillain squad to capture space-time-dimension warping dragon gods". But Generation IV never pretended that Cyrus and his goons were anything other than lunatics, whereas Rose and Leon are framed in such a way that it sounds like they're having a hugely philosophical debate. Maybe if there was a set time that Rose's ambiguous plan has to happen and it coincides with the tournament, maybe if we had any sort of actual idea what's going on and what the stakes are... all I'm saying, there are ways to make Rose not sound like a complete nitwit who watched an episode of Captain Planet and now needs to fix the world for the good of the future of humanity or whatever.

And Leon sort of rounds up everyone and brings them to the hotel. Let it be known that this whole assault, rounding up Team Yell grunts, causing a ruckus at a train station, assaulting a tower and having a giant ice moth do battle against a walking junkheap... is all because these two gentlemen were just having a conversation and neglected to say anything. Okay.

Anyway... it's the next day and it's the Elite Four champion's cup! The gym leaders and my character go off to fight in the championship. But we get interrupted by... Bede! Who's now dressed up in the Fairy gym outfit just like Opal, talking about how he's trained and how he's calling me out to battle him, staking his career as a pokemon trainer on the fight and wanting to retire if he loses. I really do like just how much Bede seems to be hamming things up based on the animations he's doing, like, he might hate his current job, but by jove he's going to commit to it. I can respect that.

Okay? Apparently he's now a fairy-type trainer, and is also classified as a gym leader. Three of his pokemon are Psychic/Fairy, though, so it's not that huge of a change. He did swap out his Reuniclus and Gothitelle for Gardevoir and Mawile. My Centiskorch and Corviknight make very quick work of his first three pokemon... and then his Hatterene... gigantamaxes!

Hold the fuck up. Isn't Gigantamax only possible if you catch a special gigantamax pokemon in a max raid battle? And didn't Bede evolve this Hatterene from a Hatenna? Although I suppose he could replace his Hatterena with a different one. He seems like the sort of heartless bastard to do that. Gigantamax Hatterena looks... it looks neat. It's got two tentacles instead of one and stuff. It takes two hits from my dynamax'd Corviknight, so at least it's an actual challenge?

Anyway turns out that Bede didn't want to quit and was just trying to use it as an excuse to escape Opal, but the crowd starts cheering him on and telling him to not give up, and he's all tsundere about it. That's kind of a neat resolution to his story. It's messy and oddly paced, for sure, and there's kind of a Stockholm Syndrome aspect to it I'm not comfortable with, but I'll take my story if I can get them.

With the Bede side-story out of the way, it's time for a tournament! Seven gym leaders, one protagonist... of course, it's a tournament so I only get to fight three out of the seven, and I wonder if it's actually scripted, or if the fights could truly be random? And is it one of those things that Sword and Shield might have different leaders? My first opponent is Nessa, who, as we remember, was one of the gym leaders that didn't get to gigantamax, and I know for certain Drednaw has a gigantamax form.

The rest of her team is... not that much of a threat, really. Her first pokemon is surprisingly the fantastic Golisopod, but I had the fortune to lead with Corviknight who one-shots the giant isopod samurai with drill peck. The rest of her team up to Drednaw are pushovers (Pelipper, Seaking and Barraskewda? Pfft) and Boltund zaps them all out, and it's Gigantamax Drednaw versus Dynamax Boltund. My Boltund one-shots the Drednaw with a single G-max thunderbolt or whatever.

My second match is against Bea! Who's swapped out her team a bit, but I kept Corviknight in front and it just swept her team. It's, uh, Hawlucha, Grapploct, Falinks, Sirfetch'd and Giga-Machamp. I couldn't resist the opportunity to have a Sirfetch'd-vs-Sirfetch'd fight, though. Mine is stronger. It's an exchange of brick break against brick break. My duck's giant leek sword is more powerful than hers.

There's a little bit of cutscene where Piers and Marnie walk up to me, and apparently Piers lost to Raihan... talking about how he explicitly refuses to dynamax even when he could, just to show off the fighting style of Spikemuth. That's... that's respectable, man. That's such a stupid thing to do but also one of those romantic, stupid-manly things. Y'know what, Piers? Because every single fight thus far has been a pushover, I'll carry your torch for you.

Raihan's swapped his team around, although he still has four out of five members of his team be dragon-types, and all of them sort of still has a weather theme. First up is a drought Torkoal against my Inteleon. Oh ha ha Torkoal you non-evolving Generation III pure-Fire type reject, I'm surprised you even made it into this generation and you think you can stand up against my starter pokemon HOLY SHIT IT KNOWS SOLAR BEAM

...it instantly charges thanks to the drought, it's level 60 unlike Marnie and Hop's pansy team, the Torkoal tanks the snipe shot and hung on with like a sliver of health, critical hits on the solar beam and takes out my Inteleon.

Respect to you, you silly ol' steam tortoise.

Yyyeeeeep. Okay, that's actually kinda awesome. I toss out Sirfetch'd out there to brick break Torkoal. That's neat, actually. It's an actual challenge! Next up is Goodra against my Boltund, and Goodra... uses rain dance? Okay, so Raihan's using all the weather conditions. Kind of weird that he doesn't get Pokemon that has drizzle or sand stream show up, because the Goodra wastes a turn to rain dance, allowing Boltund a free Play Rough in... but Goodra is kinda defensive. It took two Play Roughs to bring Goodra down, but it manages to bring Boltund to the red with sludge bombs.

Raihan is missing a hail user, and instead his third Pokemon is a Turtonator, which also uses Sunny Day. Wasting a turn to sunny day means that my Sirfetch'd is able to swords dance and then one-shot it with a powered-up brick break. Flygon's up next, and then Flygon is fly gone when Frosmoth unleashes a blast of 4x effective icy wind.

And then come the meat of the fight, Raihan's Duraludon, the dumb-looking asthma inhaler Mecha-Godzilla, who Raihan of course gigantamaxes into the giant skyscraper. And I still patently refuse to dynamax. This one's for Piers, y'know? I will take out that Duraludon while it's still gigantamaxed with a normal Pokemon. My Frosmoth's icy wind barely does any damage before the Duraludon unleashes the gigantamax rock move, dealing 4x damage and taking out my moth. Then I toss out Sirfetch'd. Leek-knight duck versus a 30-storey dinosaur building.

And, uh, a critical brick break one-shots the gigantamax Duraludon.

Fear the power of a Sirfetch'd leek.

And... and holy shit, that's the end of the fight! I actually beat the big scary gigantamax pokemon without dynamaxing. I defended Piers' honour, and my duck is also a pretty badass duck.

Anyway, it's the finals. Leon and I sort of circle each other and do a badass walk in the stadium... until Chairman Rose suddenly interrupts the fight, talking on the monitor about some crisis or whatever, that he literally couldn't wait a single day to enact his plan, and apparently his machines overloaded as he's trying to bring about the Darkest Day and now gigantic dynamax pillars just like the wild zone is appearing all over Galar, including the Wyndon stadium!

Okay, main plot time! Dynamax pillars are exploding all over Galar, so it's, like, all hands on deck time, right? Except... nope. Leon tells me to, again, explicitly avoid the huge crisis battles, none of the Dynamax pillars are anything I can visit, and instead Hop just sort of teleports me back to Postwick Town because we have to investigate the mysterious wolf we saw in the mist in the prologue of the game. Which, of course, is the mascot legendary and something that's definitely going to fix whatever's going on, but it just feels like such a lack of tension and buildup, y'know? Even in games like Emerald or Sun/Moon where our main character's going away from the main threat to get a plot device legendary or whatever, there's a sense of tension, a sense of "we need to do this ASAP" or whatever.

Anyway, this time around, after a brief chin-wag (see, I'm picking up on that Galarian slang) with Sonia and my character's mom, Hop and I charge into the Slumbering Weald, and apparently slightly beyond the level 2 Rookidees and Skwovets is an area filled with higher-level Corviknights, Orbeetles and Weezings, which I actually appreciate!

Eventually this leads to a bit of a cutscene as Hop, Sonia and I meet not just Zacian, but Zamazenta as well, and... the two wolves just sort of disappear into the mists again because, uh, we're not worthy or something, I guess. Instead, Hop and I walk up to a neat Legend of Zelda shrine where we take the Master Sword a random rusted sword and shield. Okay, sure, why not. It's neat.

And then it's sort of back to Hammerlocke with a bunch of rusted weapons, and both Raihan and Oleana sort of implore me to actually participate in the main plot for once instead of staying off-screen. What madness! Oleana talks about how even her own Pokemon are dynamaxing and running out of control in the stadium and gee whiz it'd be such a treat to actually see this, huh? Oleana also gives the genuinely random bombshell about how Chairman Rose has a mighty Pokemon called Eternatus in his secret basement lab, and that it's the source of the Dynamax energy in all of Galar, and Rose is trying to drain energy from Eternatus to, uh, give us go-green energy or some shit, I dunno.

My point is, they really could've had this Eternatus being really be foreshadowed at some point, any point, earlier in the game. Instead, we get Eternatus quite literally dropped on us within like two lines of Oleana's dialogue and it's now suddenly our final boss. I don't care enough to look up how each game specifically handled their legendaries, but basically after we left the GBC era, any plotline that sufficiently involves a villain trying to manipulate a legendary Pokemon always has some sort of buildup, even the rather spottily-written Hoenn games.


We take the elevator in Hammerlocke Stadium that used to be out-of-bounds and enter... the Energy Plant! It's just a single large room that leads immediately to the pretty set-piece of bizarre empty canisters and a platform with a smashed-open sphere or whatever. Rose has some prissy dialogue about how we are short-sighted and can't understand his master plan for the betterment of the world and whatnot, and how "from your perspective I must've done something terrible" or whatever... but he's clearly just an idiot who literally only had to wait a single day. Rose's a Steel-type trainer like his mooks, but I have a fire centipede. He's got two Pokemon (Escavalier and Ferrothorn) that is 4x weak to fire and three pokemon that's 2x weak to fire (Copperajah, Perrserker and Klinklang). Oh, sure, his Copperajah gigantamaxes into, uh, Nosepass Mark II or whatever. It's ridiculous, the nose takes up the entire screen, but my Centiskorch takes it out without even needing to Dynamax.

Because, y'know, I guess Piers was right all along and that Dynamax is actually secretly evil. Piers is likely refusing to dynamax becuase he's a contrarian, but turns out that dynamaxing is maybe evil?

Anyway, after beating Rose, apparently Rose's backup plan in case of Eternatus running amuck is "hope Leon catches it", and he's so confident that Leon can do so. So Hop and I take an elevator up to the top of the Hammerlocke stadium tower or whatever... and we see Leon facing off against Eternatus, which is... it does look like a crazy demonic elder being that you would find buried deep beneath the earth, I suppose. I like it.

And for all my complaints about poorly-executed cutscenes in this game, the scene where Leon faces off against Eternatus is pretty cool. He lobs a Pokeball at Eternatus, and as it wiggles a bit, he immediately realizes that something's wrong, and orders Charizard to shield me and Hop, and the way the movements were animated were pretty dang fluid.

Anyway, Leon's down, Charizard's down, and so is his title of "undefeated champion". It's up to me to fight a giant skeleon dragon made out of glowing crystals. Apparently Eternatus can use Cross Poison, and it's to my delight later on to realize that this giant thing is a legendary Poison/Dragon creature. If you don't count the Ultra Beasts as legendaries (which I do, but I understand the argument against it), this means that we have our very first Poison-type legendary and not only is it the big bad world-ending threat, it's also a pretty badass looking one.

It also got its ass thoroughly kicked by my snow moth, but hey, it's the thought that counts.

We get another cool cutscene of Eternatus falling down after I beat it in battle, and then it coils up and the rubble around the area rises up to the sky as Eternatus itself morphs and (presumably) gigantamaxes into a really bizarre form where it's... uh... how can I describe it? It's a spinning spiral of worm-like body coiled up in the sky, and it's tail-claw (head?) snakes down like a giant claw and roars at us. Is it a Necrozma ituation where the creature's body parts can be arranged in different forms? Either way, it sure is a final boss!

And... and the final boss finally sort of plays out like a max raid battle. Sort of! Neither my Frosmoth or Hop's Dubwool are able to use our moves while Eternatus "stores energy", and it's like oh no what a hopeless moment what do we do now until Hop remembers the plot devices we recovered ten minutes ago. Taking out the rusty sword and the rusty shield apparently is enough to transform two rocks in the Slumbering Weald into Zacian and Zamazenta (what we've been seeing are illusions or something?) and then they teleport in, fuse with the rusted weapons and assume the forms of how they look like on the game covers. Player 3 and Player 4 have joined!

And basically it's an interesting quasi-scripted battle where Hop and my Pokemon are barely doing any damage, and it's Zacian and Zamazenta that's beating the fuck out of Gigantamax Eternatus until its HP reaches zero and I lob a Pokeball on him and I catch this eldritch abomination in a Pokeball. Not the most exciting battle, but a neat way to incorporate the cover legendaries in the climactic fight. I don't mind this, it's actually kinda neat.

Which... that sure is a main plot? Leon and Hop congratulate me, Zacian and Zamazenta zip off into the sky, and I have Eternatus in a ball. Next up is the fight with Leon, I suppose, but I'll be saving that for another segment in my let's play.

Overall... the basic story behind Rose, Eternatus, the doggos and Leon is a solid one. It's nothing to be ashamed of or to mock, really, as much as I did rib it a bit earlier -- it's no more sillier than some of the plotlines you find in Pokemon games. If, and I reiterate, if it's paced properly. You don't even have to have deep lore revelations or an intricate backstory, but I really would appreciate it if the main plot actually progresses alongside my character's adventure, that I actually learn about the plot of Macro Cosmos trying to siphon dynamax energy (which turns out to be a legendary pokemon) or actually give context to Zacian and Zamazenta beyond just "hey these legendaries with these two-kings-and-also-weapons" vague backstory to the region that feels like it's a completely different story compared to the Macro Cosmos/Rose/Eternatus storyline. I dunno. This all feels haphazard and unpolished, which is honestly a criticism that applies to a huge chunk of the game. I dunno. I really don't want to sound negative because despite everything, I still enjoyed the time that I poured into the game. I really do! It's just that it's so obvious at so many parts of the game just how rushed the development of this game is.

Anyway, next up is finally the Leon match and we're going to kick him and his Gigantamax Charizard's ass... because I don't think we're getting much plot after said fight? And if we do, this segment's ran on for long enough as it is. Next LP session, I'll probably cover the Leon boss fight and a bit of the post-game, if there's any?

Random Notes:

• We don't know much about Oleana, but just seeing her pretty team but also seeing her use Garbodor as her ace Pokemon and even having a loving tap before she lobs the gigantamax ball? That actually tells me a fair bit about Oleana if that's intentional, y'know? 
• Chairman Rose's battle theme song is AMAZING. Like I'm weak for any soundtrack with choir chanting or whatever, but Rose's got easily one of my favourite themes ever, which is kind of a shame considering how underwhelming the battle actually ended up being. 
• The kid with the Mr. Mime in the town square in Wyndon explicitly notes that the Mr. Mime he has is called "Marcel", which, of course, is the nickname given to the only Mr. Mime you can get via an in-game trade in the original Pokemon Red/Blue. I understood that reference!
• Hop talks about the 'battle in the garden', which I don't remember? Unless he's talking about Magnolia's backyard?
• It's actually surprising that the Wyndon plaza square doesn't have a unique battle background and it's just the generic white meshwork.
• One of the best random lines of dialogue is one of the Macro Cosmos grunts who instead of trying to drive off the interloping kids or to praise Chairman Rose... just tries to sell a life insurance policy. That's hilarious. 
• So there's supposed to be eight gym leaders and a challenger battling in a tournament? The problem is that Bede, representing Opal, challenged me before any official matches and lost... so how's the tournament going to be structured normally, since 9 people won't really fit on a tournament tree?
• Raihan's animations are still just as awesome and lively as ever. 
• There is a neat bit of random flashes to other parts in Galar during the Giga Eternatus fight. It's neat.