We continue with the Kleavor stuff, and all it took is basically a trip back to Laventon's laboratory, a long montage of him poring over scientific textbooks and research notes, and... and he realizes that, eureka, why not roll up bait into balls and lob them at Kleavor? I mean, sure? That's not quite the type of answer I expected from a Pokemon Professor who makes a career out of researching wildlife. But okay, yeah, let's just chuck these 'Teatime Balls' or whatever at the giant alpha rock axe mantis bug monster souped-up on otherworldly energy that came from a lightning bolt from a space-time rift. Yep. Throw some balls of food-paste at it. That's your expert professor opinion. After intensive 'research' of looking at piles of books. Okay.
Oh, at some point, the Arc Phone tells me that it has granted me the power of teleportation from camp to camp, but... but I can already do that already. So I guess Arceus just wanted us to really know that he's giving us the powers of fast travel.
Speaking of fast travel, a quick pit-stop in the Deertrack Heights camp has Mai, Adaman and Wyrdeer show up. They demonstrate and give me an ancient Celestica Flute, which plays the opening screen jingle -- it's haunting! It's my method of fast travel, and I can summon Wyrdeer to me so that I can run around riding on Gandalf deer. Wyrdeer also allows me to scale up cliffs with less effort than I would otherwise have, though -- and I experimented -- does not protect me from fall damage if I jump from way too high. That was my first trainer black-out, by the way.
Wyrdeer also gives me the Mind Plate, the Psychic-type plate associated with Arceus. It's kind of been a bit of an eye-rolling collectible in the main-series games that just really takes up giant chunks of your inventory, but I guess since they actually show my player character holding said plate, these are probably going to be important.
Deer-riding from Deertrack Heights all the way back to the Kleavor shrine, and expertly dodging the Alpha Bibarel guarding the damn dam, I tell Professor Laventon's plan to Irida and Lian. Irida challenges me! She has a Glaceon in order to test my resolve and basically gets a bit pissy about how the rest of the Galaxy Team keep Pokemon inside balls. As with all Pokemon conflict resolution, beating her in a battle is enough to make her respect me, and all her lack of trust and distaste for Pokeballs go away almost immediately because my Kricketune can use Aerial Ace a couple of times. Anyway, we proceed to make a fuck-ton of balm. A fuck-ton of balm that I will use as ammunition to lob at Noble Kleavor or Lord Kleavor or whatever the hell Lian calls him, and calm him down.
...and then we have a boss fight.
And then Kleavor just stalks around the giant tree located there, charging and trying to murder me. As I suspected, he looks so much cooler in action, and I'll definitely go back and revise my score for him in "Gotta Review 'Em All". There's an interesting aspect to this boss fight, too, where I can just keep dodging and lob balms at Kleavor... or I can try to fight him. His health bar is divided into four, and every time I trick him into knocking himself onto the tree, he's susceptible to battle...
Except getting his HP to 0 doesn't kill him, it just stuns him and allows the human to chuck balms at him.
And hoo boy, Noble Kleavor, Lord of the Woods (he even gets a Zelda-style boss title!), is mighty. With the stat boosts and the ability to utilize rock-type moves (Stealth Rock deals damage in this game!) Kleavor hard-counters half of my party -- Dartrix, Kricketune and Scyther. The former two can deal decent damage with their Aerial Aces, but they can't survive more than a turn. Luxio can tank a couple of hits and deal decent damage with Thunder Fang, but the MVP of this fight ended up being Buizel, whose Agile-style Aqua Jets just keeps spamming Kleavor with super-effective moves, and my Buizel is just strong enough to not die in a single hit.
I actually had to craft some Revives and revive half my party, because I basically had to take down Kleavor four times -- I didn't actually realize what I was supposed to do with the balm initially.
Anyway, can I just say how cool it was that I had a whole goddamn boss battle in a Pokemon game? With unique mechanics with me running around and shit?
Irida and Lian thank me, and they also mention that there are engravings within the plates. Indeed, I can read them in my inventory! "The Original One breathed alone before the universe came", reads the Mind Plate. "Where all creation was born, that is the being's place of origin", reads the Insect Plate. Spooky!
I also do like the brief moment of religious panic on Lian's part. When he surmises that the lightning that affected Kleavor came from the space-time rift and therefore 'Almighty Sinnoh', he was a bit shocked and outraged at the idea that he might have had gone against what 'Sinnoh' was planning.
Anyway, with the Kleavor storyline concluded, I go around exploring a bit more, and end up finding an "Oreburrow" Tunnel. Oh, like Oreburgh City, Roark's city in Diamond/Pearl! This version of the cave is filled with Machops and Zubats. What is this, Kanto's Rock Tunnel?
Returning to Jubilife City, I reach the rank of three stars and all the NPC's congratulate me for calming down Kleavor. Volo also shows up and points out the significance of the type plates, in case I didn't realize that the plates have some writing on it, and... we're going to basically collect these from various Alpha Pokemon, aren't we?
At this point, I wake up and I meet another new character -- Arezu, who's definitely meant to resemble Mars! I like her leggings, the colour gradient looks pretty cool! She's all excited about brand-new hairstyles, and she represents the Diamond Clan and wants to ask Galaxy Team to investigate a rampaging Ursaluna. New Pokemon! I also unlock the Crimson Mirelands, which is a whole brand-new area of the overworld. Arezu is apparently going behind the Diamond Clan leader Adaman to meet with Kamado, to try and get the third party of Jubilife City to intercede with the rampaging Pokemon. Particularly because the warden for Ursaluna is "narrow minded -- ahem! bound by tradition". I really like how the dialogue in this game feels a lot more informal, a lot less 'safe', so to speak.
...oh, I get it. Ares and Mars! They are the same god in different cultures! I get that!
Instead, though, I go around and collect like around a half-dozen requests. Hell, I haven't even explored all of the Obsidian Fieldlands properly! Some of them I can complete immediately -- the photograph studio guy wants to see a Buneary, a lady wants a Geodude to become like a weight in her kitchen, the Gardenia-looking farmer wants a Ground-type Pokemon to till the fields (I can plant Apricorns there!), one of the random kids wants 5 Pokeballs...
There's also a brief bit where Akari wants me to battle her again. She adds a Mime Jr. to her roster, and I accidentally said 'no' to her battle and she gave me the most sad face ever, but otherwise I really don't have much to add to this encounter. It's nice to see her constantly trying to improve, I guess.
I also see the Bidoofs employed by Sanqua are just hanging around in the construction sites. Cool! And also, Beauregard's Wurmple has evolved into a Cascoon, as predicted, and this actually spawns another quest where he is basically in denial that his Pokemon is a Cascoon. Even though it says "Caaaaas". Okay, guy...
There were a couple of fun side-quests that I did, and I do really like that some of them are time-gated. One quest that only appears at night is Sanqua, the Karen-lookalike that leads the Construction Corps... and she's panicking outside of her room because she hears some shuffling noises in her room. Lots of ghosts and spooky things going on in Jubilife, it seems! It took me longer than I care to admit to solve this request, mostly because I have to investigate the whole room and look for clues. Instead of a hostile Pokemon or a stalker or whatever, though, it's a cute little Pichu that snuck in and wanted to give Sanqua the gift of burnt berries. That's kind of an adorable and extremely wholesome little sidequest.
Another seemingly-spooky sidequest is a lady who claims to have seen a will'o'wisp at some location in the Obsidian Fieldlands, and her younger brother says she's full of shit. Turns out that the 'wisp' she saw was... the butt of a Chimchar on a tree! That kind of confirms that the Sinnoh starters are actually running around in Hisui, and I guess we can encounter them through side-quests like these? There's a cute little sequence where the cynical little brother ends up freaking out over the 'wisp' more than the sister when we demonstrated Chimchar on a tree. Pretty cute stuff. Not sure if I'll use Chimchar just yet, though.
I have also captured my first Alpha Pokemon, which is a Staravia... they sure are bigger than normal, but I assume it's the same with Totem Pokemon in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon where they just have slightly higher stats? And a couple of special moves? Eh.
I also find Abras! A whole bunch of them, and they are liable to teleport away if they see me coming from a mile away. I manage to sneak up and catch one, but I can imagine that catching Abras to properly complete the Pokedex will be a fair bit harder compared to Starly.
...and that's without the Alpha Alakazam spawning out of nowhere and trying to murder me with his two giant spoons and his terrifying glowing red eyes.
Also, another mechanic that is very much a welcome from... from Generation II and IV at the very least, is Mass Outbreaks. One of my hands-down favourite mechanic to introduce additional Pokemon without diluting the encounter pools is Mass Outbreaks... and I guess it's very much appropriate for a gigantic swarm of Paras to appear. I bet when the adult Parasects unleash their spores and whatnot, suddenly a whole lot of Paras-es are born. Or something along those lines.
Anyway, I did a lot of running around. I think next part I'll try to wrap up all the side-quests that I can finish, before I finally continue to the Crimson Mirelands!
Current Party: Hootle (Dartrix), Chopin (Kricketune), Jet (Buizel), Sparky (Luxio), Manterror (Scyther), Loonatic (Drifloon)
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I don't particularly have too much to say about the new Pokemon. Lechonk is cute, that one lightning mole-creature Pawmi is funny-looking, the green grass blob guy Smoliv looks super simple in a good way... the legendaries... at least they look over-the-top in a good way? The scarlet one has a big fuck-off wheel lodged in his dragon sternum and I'm not too big on that, although I'm always going to be a guy that buys the purple version.
There's a bit of a past-vs-future thing, I feel, from the comparison between the two professors and the two legendaries, and.. yeah, I can kinda see that! There's also a lot of buzz over the fact that for the first time ever, a main series game is finally letting us do the gyms in literally any order. We had that with the Elite Four in Black/White onwards, but this is pretty great! I'm not trying to be super-duper hyped up about it, because I expected a bit too much for Sword/Shield's Wild Area and got wholly disappointed (at least until the DLC and Legends delivered what the base game promised) but it's neat regardless.
Other than that, though... my gut reaction is mostly positive. Yes, a lot of the visual elements look different, but it's kind of... good different, y'know? I am tentatively excited about this, though... I do hope I manage to complete Legends Arceus and New Snap before Scarlet/Violet show up. Unless the final evolutions really change my mind, though, I'm definitely going for the grass kitty-fox.
Also, finally finally, I actually have a unique Pokemon-related article (or pair of articles, I suppose) that I'm proud to present. It's actually already supposed to be published last month, but working on this Let's Play did end up causing me to push it just a bit later.
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