So after the mighty trek all the way to Alfornada, I end up going back to the eastern side of Paldea, specifically Tagtree Thicket, where a lot of the trees are tagged by the evolution of Shroodle, Grafaiai! Which I evolved a while back. It's an aye-aye with graffiti-arms! That's... that's a very clever usage of the species, actually, while also not making it just a one-on-one adaptation of the real-life species. I would probably talk a bit more in my monster reviews, but I really do love it when Pokemon just tosses in an extra mix of something weird to make a Pokemon actually feel like a Pokemon instead of merely a straight-up adaptation of the real-world animal.
Also, in the Tagtree Thicket are Zorua, and they're hiding and pretending to be Shroodles and Oinkolonges and Grafaiais, in the same way that Ditto are. That's very cool, actually -- something that I am genuinely shocked that Pokemon hadn't done before, even in the sprite games.
Clive shows up to talk for a bit, and I have an option to call him out as Director Clavell. Clavell-Clive talks about how he joined Operation Starfall to resolve a certain sticky situation about why Team Star is formed, and in particular trying to figure out why Team Star has skipped school. I really do find it interesting that Clavell doesn't actually know the reason why Team Star is formed, huh? And I think part of it does have to do with me kind of continually forgetting that Team Star is merely formed a year and a half ago.
A young brat called Youssef is arguing with one of the Team Star Grunts, and he demands to see 'Don Atticus', the boss of the Navi Squad. Which... considering what we know of Atticus alter on, it's kind of weird that Youssef is calling him 'don' and 'compadre' instead of more... well, weeaboo terms, for lack of a better term. Youssef is Atticus's compadre, and he tells the Team Star Grunt to wake up the rest of Navi Team. Of course, the rest of Navi Team stayed up all night playing video games. God, these goobers. Youssef owes Don Atticus his life, and he sends out a Gulpin to fight me. Um... good effort, kid. Clive shows up to talk to the brat Youssef, wanting to discuss certain things about Atticus.
Cassiopeia calls me again, of course, and identifies Atticus as the designer of Team Star's outfits, and, again, the pattern is pretty much consistent where all the Team Star leaders are all contributing something 'fun' for the rest of the team.
...and, well, as Alfornada had probably proven, there is a certain level recommendation that I'm supposed to do this in, and ho boy, basically just Rabsca alone is murdering all the Foongus, Grafaiai, Gulpin, Sviper, Grimer and Gastly that Navi Team is siccing at me.
Atticus zips out in his gigantic Revavroom mobile, and... he's a ninja. Which is a cool design! He has some Splatoon-style artwork going on, with his hair-hood thing being modelled after street art paint splotches, and jumping around and making Naruto hand signs and shit. But... but Youssef calls him 'don' and 'compadre', though that last bit might just be Paldean. But then Atticus speaks like... an old-fashioned English knight? Like, 'pray forgive my sudden entry, 'tis I, Atticus'... dude, I don't mind if you're an extreme cosplayer, but at least commit to a theme! I do like his over-the-top dialogue, though.
...at least Atticus uses all Poision-type Pokemon, but what the hell, Nintendo? You had this guy model his whole outfit after fucking graffiti, he is based in the Grafaiai forest, Grafaiai is Poison-type... and he doesn't even use one?
It's like how Brassius didn't use a Sunflora, or Tulip didn't use a Medicham... it's just so freaking weird that they associate the gym leaders and Team Star bosses with certain Pokemon and don't actually show them using said Pokemon in their teams.
Anyway, Atticus leads with Skuntank, and I lead with my newly-evolved Garganacl, who just Hammer Arms Skuntank to death. His next Pokemon is a Revavroom, which means we have a Revavroom floating on top of an even bigger Revavroom connected to a giant-ass car, and I feel very, very sad with this confirmation that, yeah, the pimped-out Starmobiles aren't going to be playable. Clodsire kills the Revavroom with Mud Shots. A Muk shows up, which becomes prey to my Rabsca, and the final Revavroom Starmobile ends up falling to Garganacl and Clodsire's joint efforts.
I really did breeze through this fight -- the only confusion I had was that the final Revavroom was pure-Poison instead of Steel/Poison, hence siccing out Garganacl and his Hammer Arm against it.
Anyway, Atticus does have his backstory, too, and we get to see him without his hoodie! he's a pretty boy! We get to see that he's the man behind Mela's ginormously large fire boots, and apparently he designed those boots after the move Flame Charge. He then created the, uh... KISS-groupie outfit for Eri, which I must say is pretty creative if nothing else. Hey, Team Star certainly can rock that look! I really love how the rest of Team Star are very supportive of how Atticus geek out over 'old-fashioned stuff', which I am going to assume is his ninja otaku-love. Which I can definitely relate to!
Atticus talks about how the way of the ninja is fraught and riddled with thorns and all that, and his buddies all support him. "Don't listen to haters, Atticus! You're really cool!"
That's nice. Atticus and I bow towards each other, and he gives me the TM for Gunk Shot. Youssef and Clive show up, and Youssef talks about how if Atticus keeps playing truant, he will get expelled from the academy. And Youssef talks about how Team Star have been helping him and other students that got bullied... well, basically 'saved' them, which I am going to assume that Atticus sicced his Skuntank on the bullies and got the Skuntank to Gunk Shot them. As Youssef pointed out, if Team Star got expelled for being the good guys, it'd be the worst thing ever.
Atticus admits that their mysterious 'Big Boss' has been MIA for a while, but the five of them haven't really met the real Big Boss since he/she is a recluse and also a victim of bullying. Clive finally realizes the full reason and the truth behind Team Star's truancy and the bullying at school... and he is actually legitimately shocked to see how deep the problem is, and the issues that the students are struggling with.
And... well, it got a bit heavy with the bullying topic, and I do really wonder if we're actually going to confront the true bullies that are bullying Team Star and their compadres like Youssef or whatever.
Penny, meanwhile, walks up, gets licked by Miraidon again, and talks about how Team Star's Founder needs to be taken down, or else Penny will lose her treasure. Okay? I'm assuming she's trying to take down Team Star in order to get them all to get back to school.
Anyway, I did explore a bit of the Western side leading up to the Casseroya Lake. There are a lot of icy Pokemon near the mountains like Snom (SNOM!) and Sneasel. On my way, my Tinkatink evolved into a Tinkatuff, whose hammer sure grows larger! I also finally meet one of the goodest boys out there, Greavard, which is... an adorable Pokemon. It's a pure-Ghost, a ghost dog, and it's a friendly Pokemon that doesn't like being alone. It will follow you forever if you give it the slightest bit of attention, which would be creepy if this was anything but an adorable dog.
I almost really want to bring Greavard with me, but I am planning to play Pokemon Scarlet and I am saving some of these species that I really like for that playthrough. I can tell you that Greavard is definitely coming along for that second playthrough, essentially taking the place of Skeledirge and Brambleghast in my party.
I also go to a place called Colonnade Hollow, which is one of the Ten Sights of Paldea. I'm not sure how this geological formation got created, but it sure is a... a hollow carved into the top of a mountain or something? So far I've found like, three? The olive orchard, a secluded beach and the skyline of Iono's city?
I head off to Casseroya Lake, and... there's a titan there that I haven't done yet, but I can hazard a guess that it's one of these two species. Very impressively and actually jump-scaring me are the gigantic catfishes known as Dondozo, which are pretty huge and dwarf even the Gyaradoses that swim there. It looks like a stereotypical sushi chef or something, and... and it treats Tatsugiri as its boss, and is the dumb brute that follows those guys.
What are Tatsugiri? Well, they're... tiny fish? Which look like sushi, even with a fake (undersized) rice under it? I kinda get it, the sushi chef and the sushi they make. And they have a Nappa/Vegeta thing going on where the little guy is secretly more powerful than the big guy, since Tatsugiri is a... Water/Dragon type! It's one of the most intelligent dragon Pokemon, apparently, and I find three different colours. Orange, yellow and red. Man, I thought I found a shiny, too, when the yellow Tatsugiri showed up. Everyone's been saying that shinies are easier to get in Scarlet/Violet but I sure haven't found a single one!
Anyway, I could go after the False Dragon Titan in the lake or whatever, but... I return to the school to hit the books and study!
And I did a bunch of the classes that aren't super interesting. Like... okay, Mr. Saguaro, you've got a neat design, but your class is just literally talking about healing items and PP -- very basic shit! Dendra's second battle class is still her being overly excited, and she tells me about cheering in raid battles, and the third class is about tera-shields. Tyme's second math class has a fun trick question that only people aware of the Premier Ball bonus would answer correctly; and her third class is about critical hits.
Raifort's class gives some history about how the ancient Paldean King kind of utilized so many of his subjects and forced them to explore Area Zero, which is a bit more fun. Her third class continues the story, how the Paldean Empire fell into decline thanks to so many Area Zero expeditions, and eventually had to merge with the surrounding people to form modern-day Paldea. I also like that her blackboard showcases the development of history, featuring a little cameo of the Hisui-era Pokeballs with the latches and shit!
Jacq's second biology class is him telling me about the fact that the picnicking is the place to breed, because that's how eggs show up randomly in my party. Interesting! Always liked the idea of a day care center, and I'm a bit iffy about having everything available to me at any time instead of going to specific cities, but it's definitely a neat quality-of-life change in this case. (Jacq's third class is about status conditions helping to boost catch rates.)
The first new class I have is Languages with Mr. Salvatore, who tries to drop a bunch of non-English languages on us. He's apparently aware of Iono and her fun little catchphrase. In the three classes, he says 'thank you', 'delicious' and 'I love you' in different languages. I like him! Or, well, I like languages in general, I suppose. Salvatore also gives a very good life-advice in always apologizing to your wife.
Hassel of the Elite Four opens up an art class, and his class has him talk about how art is often forgotten by so many people once they graduate high school. Which... is kind of sobering, yeah, because so many jobs really never care if you can do art or not but then randomly spring 'hey can anyone do graphic design for free' at you in the midst of a meeting. Ahem. Anyway, some fun decorations in his class with a bunch of sketchy Pokemon artwork that probably was doodled by a developer's child or something.
In his second class, Hasel brings in an assistant professor to teach us about recognizing Terastralized Pokemon by seeing the giant tacky thing glued to their head, and it's... a fully minted professor, Professor Gible! ...who is a Gible! Hahaha! That's funny! He shows off the Ice Tera Type, too, and talks about how I can change Tera types in a character in Medali. That's not going to be a service I ever use, but it's definitely nice that it's an option. You needed a whole damn DLC to get your Dynamax turned into a Gigantamax in Sword and Shield!
There are apparently mid-terms after I do three classes of each (and I finished three classes of the available classes), but I'm saving that for now. I think I'll really do have to keep going back to the school and knock off a little bit of these classes because doing a giant batch in one go is admittedly a bit boring since the teachers really have near-zero personality other than maybe Dendra. They apparently do get a bit more interesting if you visit them off-class, which... I feel is true with a lot of my high school teachers too.
Random Notes:
- I also explored the little Southern inlet that's slightly off the beaten path on the east side of the cave that the Miraidon prologue happened in, but beyond some older Pokemon like Shroomish, Vigoroth and Mankey there really isn't much there. Nice swamp area, though!
- Kinda brushed over it, but I really love it when a Pokemon becomes the focus of a certain area in the overworld, like Grafaiai and its Tagtree Thicket.
- I'm really not sure how I feel about Team Star using actual slang like 'rando'. It's kind of fitting, I suppose, but I am kind of older now and it does make me 'cringe', to use another one of the modern-day youth slang.
- Meanwhile, Clive struggles to say "my man", and I would think that is a bit too old to be modern-day youth slang but it works for how out-of-touch Clive is.
- I see wild Spidops cling to the trunks of trees when they are 'sleeping'. That's cute!
- Jacq is apparently part of the Pokedex development team. Which means that if I'm trying to force this on canon, he's probably one of the nameless NPC researchers in one of the previous professors' laboratories.
- Right, they decreased the chances of a critical hit from 6% to 4% in the Alola games. I completely forgot, and I was looking for the 6% answer...
- Yeah, Raifort talks a bit about wanting to see a 'time machine'. That's not foreshadowing or anything...
- Salvatore means 'saviour', and Salvatore will save us from our lack of knowledge of other languages!
- Arven cameos in at least the third Hassel art class. I wonder if Nemona or Penny have cameos in some of the other classes that I didn't pay attention to?
- "Naught but punishment awaits thee, wretch! A plague on your houses!"
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