Happy new year! Things are still proceeding very slowly for me, I'm afraid, and a lot of the articles in January would still be pre-written ones. Basically the only exception would be the Violet playthrough and any One Piece chapter reviews, but I'll have to delay anything super recent. I'll try to slowly go through the second What If season, but the payoff to that season is so underwhelming compared to the first season that I really don't have much of a motivation to write too much about it.
Anyway, Pokeymans! Last we left off, we're about to go on a not-date with Drayton in the cafeteria.
Drayton starts off the conversation with another talk that's probably meant to make me let my guard down and be distracted a bit, talking about which food is the nicest and giving a ridiculous answer as well. But then he gets right down to business, telling me that since I'm strong, I can challenge Kieran as top dog of the academy. He spins it as something wild, seeing an outsider join and win the BB league... but with the context that Carmine just gave me, it's clear that he's not trying to be encouraging so much as he's looking for someone to help him take down Kieran for him. School politics!
And then the rest of the BB Elite Four show up. Lacey's pretty prominent in the opening scenes, and we've had a brief cameo of the Steel-type Amarys who has as much of a personality as a robot. But rounding up the group is a guy carrying a frying pan called Crispin. He walks with huge strides. I like him.
Apparently, Drayton has oh-so-innocently arranged a meeting with the rest of the Elite Four, and oh what a coincidence that the brand-new transfer student that's a threat to the power structure of the school just happens to be there. I love, though, how Kieran initially gets super-condescending towards Drayton, mocking him for goofing off and noting that it's probably the reason he always loses to him.
Kieran actually gets a bit shocked when he realizes I'm sitting there with Drayton, and apparently Kieran's just completely out of the loop -- neither Lacey nor Drayton's informed him. What follows next is something I do like, as Drayton sets up a little voting session on whether to allow an outsider like me to join the BB League. Amarys and Lacey are a bit more rule-oriented and doesn't want to disrupt rules, Crispin just seems chill, and Drayton gives a whole, very insincere sounding speech about 'excluding fun and friendship or some such'. They put it into a vote, and the tiebreaker ends up being Kieran... who coldly notes that "I don't lose". Them's fighting words, neck-mole.
Kieran storms off, not willing to let any more of his previous personality leak through. The other three also leave, though Lacey points out that Drayton's just manipulated people to get what he wants. Which I assume is just Kieran's defeat.
There's a brief short scene afterwards as I go to the lobby of the Blueberry Academy, all the way in the surface level, and there's a brief sequence as the lobby receptionist is very much unsure about Drayton's claim that the Elite Four and Champion has okay'd my signing up to the BB League. Kieran and Carmine show up, with Kieran confirming my enrollment before proceeding to tell me that he's going to kick my ass and that I'm not allowed to lose until I face him.
...you know what? Them's fighting words, and I actually find it rather refreshing. He just really wants to pound my face to the ground for a combination of the Ogerpon thing and the 'lying' thing, and we get a particularly insane grin from him. They do a rather good job, relatively speaking to other anime and anime-games, at making Kieran both come off as insane but not too insane, if you get what I mean.
He also then proceeds to be extremely rude to Carmine, telling her to 'shut up, sis', before buggering off. Carmine and Drayton goes into a bit of an argument about whether Drayton manipulated everything (he did) but it's not like my character's got anything urgent to do at this moment until someone realizes that the giant disco ball is probably a jail for Terapagos or something. Carmine heads off and she's honestly just kinda here, while Drayton explains that each area has its own Elite Four member, and because I'm a special student I get to skip all of the battles that lead to fighting the Elite Four, and I just get to do fun wacky puzzle trials.
...yay? To be honest, I'd rather have the battles. It'd actually make the whole 'Blueberry Academy is focused on battling' deal actually mean something. Anyway, Dragon-type Drayton hangs out in the Polar Biome; Fairy-type Lacey is in the Coastal Biome; Steel-type Amarys is in the Canyon Biome; and Fire-type Crispin is in the Savannah Biome. Neato.
And, of course, while Drayton tells me to get on with the whole BB League challenge, I instead just go around and explore all the areas. I've ran around in the savannah and the coastal areas the most, where they seem to be nods to the Kanto Safari Zone and the Alolan region in general, but I also finally run around in the Canyon Area and its massive mountains, cliffs and lakes. Lots of fun faces. Seadra, Chinchou, Hitmontop... but we've been to a lot of generic mountain areas in Paldea.
No, what does feel special is the polar biome. It's as neat as the Snowpoint Mountains in Legends: Arceus, and I feel an extra sense of nostalgia hearing that Black/White wild Pokemon battle theme as I fight Unovan-originating Pokemon like Cubchoo, Minccino and Solosis. Not sure why the two latter ones are in the polar biome, but sure! I actually have half a mind to raise up a Solosis and use it in the team, honestly. Solosis is one of those Pokemon that I've always liked, but I've never actually properly used in a playthrough.
At some point while running around and catching Pokemon, Cyrano upgrades my BBQ's... though if I'm being honest I don't see much of a difference.
The coolest sub-area is the Chargestone Cavern, a gigantic reference to Unova's Chargestone Cave, which lies smack-dab in the underground regions of one of the mountains in the polar biome. It's just very nostalgic! I don't have the biggest nostalgia for Unova, but it's Castelia City, Nimbasa City and Chargestone Cave that I really associate with Unova. And to see Chargestone Cave kinda recreated here, with giant electric crystals, spiderwebs all around... and even a whole bunch of returning Pokemon from Unova... I think we're just missing Klink from the original population of Chargestone Cave, though a bunch of appropriate Pokemon like Electabuzz, Minior, Magneton and Porygon show up here. It's neat!
Also love, again, seeing a lot of these older Pokemon in a more 'open-world' environment. Games like Snap, Sword/Shield and Legends Arceus all have variations of this, of course, but there's just a really awesome feeling seeing Pokemon like Araquanid actually walk around and be cool badass spiders that move on top of water surfaces. The other Pokemon have their own AI, but it's moments like these that really feel special.
There are also Duraludon wandering around, too. I know he gets a brand-new evolution, Archaludon, and I'm going to assume that either Drayton or Amarys has it as their ace Pokemon. At this point I've been spoiled at the appearances of some of the newer Pokemon, but I'm not sure if I've seen all of them.
Anyway, at this point I decide to finally do the Elite Four challenge... which will be in the next episode because that'd be episode four and it'd be super-appropriate for me to start doing those there. Instead, I finally end up meeting the one scientist in the Central Plaza who teaches me about a brand-new gimmick that I was completely unaware of until this playthrough... Synchronization!
And after a couple of tutorials, the scientist gives the device to me. And for those of you who, like me, are not aware of what this Synchronization is (it's everywhere in social media, I've just been avoiding Pokemon-related posts) is, basically it allows you to run around as the lead Pokemon in your party. Including the walk/run animation cycle and attacking and gathering items. It's a very simple mechanism, but considering just how long it took for them to re-implement Pokemon walking alongside us again (it took all the way from HG/SS to the DLC's of Sword/Shield!) it's such a triumph to be able to walk around as anyone you want. I especially had fun picking out my party and walking around with them, though some Pokemon like Clodsire and Garganacl are obviously much slower than others.
It's also glorious to see the walk/run animations of some Pokemon. I mean, I've seen some of these in the datamined animations from Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield, but seeing Slaking run around like a gorilla, or the comatose Komala just run around like a doofus is glorious. I don't think I had as much fun with synchronization with a lot of people out there, but it really is very fun to just run around as a Pokemon!
Random Notes:
- New food in the cafeteria! The pizza looks filling as hell, and the fries look like one of those overpriced crap that cafes like to sell, but the Academy Shake looks gloriously calory-ridden, one of those super-awesome desserts that will make you regret eating it for the week. Drayton, meanwhile, likes the 'Academy Special', which is an udon set... because he doesn't have to chew anything.
- "Chew your food, Drayton."
- I muck around in the school classrooms and there's really not much of interest to really talk about. There is a funny NPC who asks me if I can 'hear the call' of the darkness or whatever, which I thought was going to be a sidequest for a legendary Pokemon like Darkrai or something... but he's just teaching me how to do the emo chuunibyou Gladion pose. "My left hand! It trembles!"
- Damn, that Paradox Rift TCG artwork for Joltik is adorable as all hell. The Lokix art is also very badass.
- Tera Raid Battles are a lot more bearable when I just have to do the 3-star ones to clear a BBQ mission or two.
- I keep mis-typing 'Drayton' as 'Drayden', and I really wouldn't be surprised if they both are related in some way. If you showed me a picture of Drayton, I'd guess that he's a Ghost-type trainer, though. His hair reminds me of Hisuian Zorua.
- I don't think it comes off in the main body of the let's play, but let me state just how much I enjoy Drayton's smug-ass 'who, me?' manipulation of everybody.
- I think I said it before when I was reviewing the Teal Mask, but I'll eventually do a full 'all DLC Pokemon in this generation' Review-Em-All. I actually do have a writeup done for all of the Pokemon released in Teal Mask and slightly before that, but with this DLC finally giving us the dex entries (and presumably some context) for Iron Leaves and Walking Wake; and having something extra with Dipplin, it's definitely a very good move that I delayed doing a review for the Pokemon in that DLC!
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