Last we left off, I was going through the Underdepths of Area Zero and... I kind of took a while to properly finish it. One thing that I would have to complain is that the Underdepths just isn't that interesting. It's just the subterranean parts of Area Zero, but with a bit more crystals, which... after the year-long wait, just is nowhere as interesting or impactful as the first time I descended into Area Zero, or even the lake on top of Mt. Kitakami.
The gameplay is also rather stale, with us going and hunting down more Stellar-type Pokemon to unlock the blockades. There's an Iron Thorns to defeat, and then a Garganacl. The Garganacl actually guards an almost Zelda or Dark Souls-like giant crystal tree in the middle of a watery lake, and... and you'd think this would be the location of the final boss fight, right? But nope. It's just a place for a very bland Garganacl fight.
The Stellar type also apparently isn't a proper 'all the types', since I've figured out that these Pokemon still retain their original elemental weaknesses, so they get... STAB for all types, I guess? I appreciate not making every Pokemon into a mini-Arceus, but I also feel like it kind of defeats the purpose of having all the types. Of course, I still really don't like the whole Terastralization gimmick and find it rather tacky, so no huge loss that it isn't executed that well, I suppose.
Carmine, meanwhile, has settled back to her previous personality of being kind of a jackass, telling me to go and swim in the underground lake because she doesn't want to get her clothes wet, and yells at Kieran at one point and orders him around to call me back. Kieran's reverted back a bit into his Kitakami-era personality, though he mumbles how the group is relying on me a bit too much. There is a bit of a lampshade about what the two siblings are doing, since they've been apparently fending off wild Pokemon while I'm off hunting the Stellar-types.
But... this would hold water if there are a bit more wild Pokemon running around, y'know? There's like, maybe two Carbinks and a Glimmora running around in these very empty caverns. Certainly not enough to cut down Carmine's entire part to just a Sinistcha. Even cutscenes of them fighting subterranean Pokemon would've gone a long way at selling that there is some effort being put by my partners.
Actually, why are they not fighting Paradox Pokemon? Feels kind of bizarre to have an expansion set in Area Zero and have little to do with the whole gimmick Pokemon of the location. Bah.
(Because I ran out of pictures to put here, I'm just going to put random TCG art of the Paradox Pokemon)
Anyway, at the end of the whole dungeon is a big-ass crystal cave, which Kieran identifies as the 'finish line'. He runs in, and Briar, who's at this point kind of devolved into a one-note 'TERAPAGOS!!! RESEARCH!!!' lunatic fangirl, also charges in. Remember when Briar had some aura of mystique, almost like a mad scientist (whether well-intentioned or not)? Where did all of that disappear to? Anyway, we run into the big central room... which is just even more crystals.
Everyone's hunting for the Hidden Treasure, and Kieran gets a bit crazy as he pulls on the small green gem in the center of the altar. He gets a bit crazy, raving about how he can finally beat me if he can get to the hidden treasure. He tells Carmine to shut up, and starts ranting about how apparently I took everything he ever wanted. I can be friends with everyone, Ogerpon chose me instead of him, and even Carmine became friends with me immediately. There's that very slight acknowledgement of Carmine's well-meaning but ultimately toxic personality, I guess, but it's brushed away so quickly.
As Kieran rants about how he worked so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn't even matter... Briar is just reading. That crystal is what we're looking for, but despite the clear mental instability, Carmine and I just stand there like total dorks. Briar encourages Kieran to pull the treasure...
And turns out that crystal is Terapagos. Kieran got it out of the crystal, it glows, and turns into a baby turtle. The green gem is Terapagos's shell.
And, of course, as if I'm the protagonist of this game or something, the very first thing that baby Terapagos looks at is me, and it even starts to toddle towards me. Kieran is angry, yells "No, you're MINE!" and fucking pulls out a Master Ball and chucks it at Terapagos, capturing it immediately.
This... this is such a random but completely fun and understandable reaction from Kieran that I can't even be mad. It's pretty cool, actually, and it makes sense since I've already kind of 'stolen' a legendary Pokemon from him in his perspective. So... yeah. That cutscene ends with Kieran and Terapagos. Briar is just happy that she can study Terapagos, and notes that since Kieran has a Master Ball with him, it means that he is very much prepared.
And obviously the next thing we do is a battle. I put Ogerpon in the party, and then we fight. With "Tera Shift", Terapagos transforms into its much, much cooler turtle form seen in all the propotional artwork, with the beard and the three flowing feather-tails and stuff. It's a lot smaller than I expected, but it does make it kind of cute.
The actual fight isn't super interesting, though, despite the ominous showing that "it distorts type matchups". It's immune to Shadow Ball, which surprised me when I had Darkrai use it, but otherwise Darkrai and Ogerpon just kind of knock its health down. The fight's structured a bit like a Tera Raid battle, but other than Terapagos's massive HP pool, there's not really much to say about this.
Briar lampshades around halfway through the fight that Terapagos should be a bit stronger than this, and basically the game forces me to Terastralize, and break Terapagos's shield with Terastralized attacks. It doesn't so much beat Terapagos as beat Kieran, though, as he goes immediately into depression as he thought that the super-powerful legendary turtle would allow him to beat me.
Briar, meanwhile, notes that Terapagos isn't in its full power, and its appearance is different from the 'disk Pokemon' seen in the Violet Book. Terapagos is made out of Terastal energy, though, so Briar yells at Kieran to terastralize Terapagos to form the real Hidden Treasure. And Kieran does, turning Terapagos into something more similar to the being from the Violet Book... though nowhere as eldritch looking.
In fact, it looks like a giant dome with Terapagos on top, and a tiny little baby-form Terapagos standing on top of it. With a bunch of crystalized symbols of the types rotating around the little totem tower. It's... it's honestly more goofy looking than anything. Stellar Terapagos's transformation is super powerful, but Miraidon jumps out of his ball to protect Kieran. Kieran tries to recall Terapagos back, but random forcefield shields appear and breaks the Master Ball in half.
Breaking Pokeballs? What is this, Pokemon Adventures? Having broken free of its forced servitude, the Terapagos just goes wild and rampages, and Carmine and I double-team him with Sinistcha and Chandelure. And... it would've been more impressive if it has got more powerful moves than just Zen Headbutt, y'know?
The Stellar-form Terapagos has multiple Terastralization barriers, and I think I had to go three times of terastralizing, breaking Terapagos's barrier, and then it absorbing the Terastralization and forcing my Pokemon out of its Terastralized state. I really wanted to beat Terapagos without the aid of Terastralization, but the game basically forces me to do it.
Also, at some point Carmine's Sinistcha gets knocked out. I fight Terapagos alone for a bit while Kieran acts a bit like a pussy, before he finally clenches his fist and joins in with his Hydrapple and later on his Dragonite. Terapagos also shows off a fancier move, the Tera Starstorm, which... kinda looks a bit like Swift? I keep just hammering onto Terapagos. Eventually, Terapagos falls to Ogerpon, and it reverts from its big monstrous Stellar-form Terastralized whatever back into a small baby Terapagos.
Kieran tells me to catch it, and I catch the baby Terapagos with some epic throwing in a regular-ass Pokeball.
And... and that's it. That's it for ol' Terapagos.
If I sound a bit underwhelmed, that is because I am. The story and buildup for Terapagos from the lore about Area Zero and the Violet/Scarlet Book was actually pretty well done. I wasn't expecting something super-uber mature that wouldn't fit in a Pokemon game, but even something around the level of the Ultra Beasts or even the A.I. Professors from the base game would've worked.
But Briar gets reduced into a very simple one-note fanatic. Terapagos itself is a gigantic step down from how Miraidon/Koraidon and Ogerpon have been handled as legendary Pokemon that actually have personality and agency -- Terapagos just goes from baby turtle to Kieran's partner to a giant threat that we capture with very minimal buildup.
Kieran's personality change and character growth is a bit better, by a certain metric of better, but even then I really don't think it's the best they could've done with him. Carmine, meanwhile, gets called out for maybe two sentences by Kieran before the story proceeded to forget all about her.
Sigh. This was kind of disappointing. And I didn't really have high hopes, honestly.
Kieran apologizes for trying to emulate me. Wait, so all that emo act is supposed to be me? That's kind of insulting! He has apparently let it go, and ugly-cries after I say that he can be quite cool too. Carmine joins in the ugly-crying because finally all of this is over.
And we return to Blueberry Academy for the ending cutscene. Briar toodles off to publish her book, but Kieran apologizes to me on the bridge. A proper apology, since he wants to make things right, and there's a nice angle of a cutscene of a sunrise. Starting from zero and be friends again, and all that jazz. The camera pans up towards the sunrise, credits roll and Ed Sheeran sings.
And... yeah. It really did feel like they had an outline for the story after Kitakami, but that's what I felt we got -- an outline. The character writing both in Blueberry Academy and the Area Zero expedition all feel underbaked, the emo-ness of Kieran is way too in-my-face and nowhere as subtle and interesting as how the same character was written in Kitakami, and by trying to highlight two areas, we instead got the Terarium where it's clear the bulk of the budget went to, and a very muted and boring extension to Area Zero.
Sigh.
There is still some post-game, but considering how long it took me just to complete the main story for the Indigo Disk, it'll be a while, maybe until March, until I properly wade through all that the Indigo Disk has to offer.
I wake up in my dorm room. Briar summons me to give her the book she wrote. She apologizes for behaving recklessly, and... yeah, there's just that to her. Maybe it's just me expecting a bit much after the Scarlet/Violet main game gave us characters that aren't just one-dimensional caricatures, but you were kinda lame, Briar. I didn't even expect you to be a full antagonist, but even highlighting the part of her where she put children in danger would've done a fair bit to make her a bit more interesting as a character.
As a final insult, I can't even read the book.
As exposure to Terapagos, I can now use my Tera Orb without having to run back to the Pokemon Center to recharge. It's something that I personally never really use unless the Terarium sidequest asks me to terastralize to beat an enemy or something. So it's going to be convenient for that specific purpose, at least.
Briar also tells me that the enigmatic Terarium Core on top of the Terarium is a mixture of Paldean soil and water from Kitakami. So... yeah, I kind of suspected that Briar had already caught Terapagos and placed it there, or something, but turns out that the writers went for the most boring route with all of this. She's placed some crystals from the Area Zero Underdepths and now Stellar Pokemon in all their underwhelming gimmickry will show up in the Terarium.
...can you tell the excitement I have about this development? /s
A little bit more exciting is a meeting with Amarys. With her limited emotional affect, she tells me just how happy she is that Kieran is back to normal. She's got a crush on Kieran, doesn't she? Apparently, Kieran withdrew completely from the rankings, meaning the Elite Four stay as they are. She has prepared copious amounts of flight stimulating food for Miraidon Agias, which means... I've unlocked flying!
If nothing else, the 'flying' and 'walking around as Pokemon' gimmicky are done relatively well in this game... I'm just not the most impressed with either the story or the battle gimmickry.
Principal Cyrano meets me up in the League Club Room, and... he's also kind of pointless, isn't he? He tells me that he wants strong people to come, and tells me to bring all my buddies, whether gym leaders or friends, to show up. So it's like the Battle Maison in XY, or that clubhouse in Platinum. Unfortunately, this is another thing I need BP for, and while I would probably do the fights just to see the updated parties, I'm... I'm not even done with farming BP for upgrading the Terarium!
The other Elite Four members are also hanging around. Crispin kind of seems to have a crush on Lacey, while Drayton is just lazing around the table. "No attitude, just gratitude". He apologizes to me for basically manipulating me to solve all this schoolyard nonsense for him. In a nice bit of realism, his relationship with Kieran is still fraught with friction.
Oh, I also finally upgraded the clubhouse into the 'Monochrome Clubroom', which is based on Pokemon Black/White. If the whole damn region isn't already cluing us in that a Unova project is on the horizon. There are hexagons from the DSscreen, manga-style artwork of the three Unovan starters, a little Nimbasa Ferris Wheel, artwork of the version-exclusive Black City and White forest, and a huge painting of Skyarrow Bridge with the glorious flying Golurk above it.
But... yeah. I am aware that there is some additional post-game cutscenes but to be honest I'm really not feeling like going through it right now. I do plan to go around and farm some BP to unlock everything in this stupid club room, which at least isn't going to take too much effort, just time. I do want to catch the two new Paradox Pokemon -- the metal Cobalion and Terrakion -- but otherwise the super-long cutscenes and thef rankly uninteresting story for Indigo Disk has kind of made me feel a bit disappointed, especially after Teal Mask was pretty damn fun.
Random Notes:
- Damn, these full-art Paradox Pokemon TCG cards are so fucking cool.
- In the midst of it all, I've been slowly upgrading things in the club room. I've gotten a jukebox (which is one of those fancy new pill-shaped things), some new throwing styles (it is a pain to keep going back and forth to change styles) and unlocked the biodiversity of the Savannah Dome. It costs 3K a pop to unlock the biodiversity of the Terarium, and for this one specifically I get Charmanders to spawn.
- There's a point in the journey to the Underdepths where Ms. Briar talks about how if I fall into the deep, misty cavern, I would be unable to find a way out. This, obviously, is a lie.
- There is, of course, absolutely no reason why Carmine can't just borrow some of my potions and revives.
- Man, that 'Indigo Disk' thing really just came in, got used as a plot coupon and absolutely no one mentions what the fuck it is. Did they just wanted to find a cool name, like the 'Teal Mask', and couldn't figure out what to do with the Indigo Disk? You could've just called Terapagos the Indigo Disk, you know...
- At one point I recall my terastralized Pokemon just to see what the AI would do if there is no terastralized Pokemon on the field, but it just recreates the barrier anyway. Foiled by developer foresight!
- Briar does give me some explanation about the Stellar-type terastralization in the postgame. The stellar type teratralizartion grants a boost to moves, but only once per move type. No other moves of that type will gain that boost, but other types will...
- So if you have a Pokemon with Flamethrower and Fire Blast, you can only benefit from the damage bonus to Fire-type once. But using, say, Dark Pulse afterwards would still give you the damage bonus for a Dark-type move. Eh.
- There really isn't a whole ton to say about Terapagos after I've captured it. It sure does exist.
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