Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 2: Accidental Fungicide

We're back again with some of my playthrough of New Pokemon Snap. I did a couple of extra runs of the Florio Natural Park just to kind of familiarize myself with the controls and try to get some extra experience points. I do really like that the Bidoof dam has actually been completed as the area progresses, damming up the river and causing one particularly unfortunate Magikarp to get stranded on a piece of rock.

Also, more importantly, I found the part of the settings that allows me to actually adjust the speed of turning the cursors and the camera, which was a huge problem for me in trying to properly catch up with some of the Pokemon. Particularly in the next region, which is the Founja Jungle of the Belusylva island. 

I actually really like how the Belusylva Island is introduced to us. The way that the world map was initially displayed made it look like we're just going to explore all over the Florio Island, with the different biomes and beaches and stuff located there, when this much larger landmass appears on the map! I mean, it ultimately isn't going to matter since it's not an open-world game and these are just levels that I enter through a menu... but it's the presentation that really matters. 

Anyway, Founja Jungle! It's a bit more of a deeper forest compared to the Florio Natural Park, with denser trees and abandoned ruins dotting the location. 

It's filled with a bunch of new Pokemon. We've got Bounsweet and Aipom running around the branches, a Slaking sleeping with its ass pointed towards me, a bunch of Beautiflys flying around... there's a spiderweb that clearly belongs to an Ariados that I really can't do anything about. After passing a bunch of ruins, I end up going to a beautiful-looking waterfall and lake filled with Magikarps and Quagsires. 

Oh, and there's a lot of Liepards, and I think it's perhaps a function of it being an early-route Pokemon, but I've never quite realized just how cool Liepard is in motion. Really like that giant whip-scythe tail! I mean, it's just a slender, deadly-looking leopard, but those are cool, and I think Liepard kind of gets lost in the shuffle of the Unovan dex. I have a new appreciation of Liepard now, honestly, which isn't a sentence I expected to write. 

I actually thought that the Founja Jungle was a bit of a letdown... at least in the day. I didn't get to see much that isn't just more jungle, and there's a lot of repeating Pokemon throughout the trek, I feel.

I almost immediately unlock the night time version of the jungle, which has a lot of Liepards lurking around... but also Yanmega just buzzing around menacingly like tiny helicopter dragonflies of doom. But the coolest thing is the fact that the jungle comes alive at night, with so many Morelulls just pitter-pattering about in their tiny little mycellium legs, lighting up the forest and making it look so surreal. It's not quite the creepy Fairy-type forest from Galar, but it's still so beautiful! There was this one grove with like 15 Morelulls hanging on top of branches in rows, and that looks pretty. 

There are also a bunch of Pokemon that are sleeping, which is interesting. An Arbok just sleeps like a lazy man on a hammock and I can knock it out of the branches it's coiled on. Clusters of sleeping Ledian hug trees, and I wonder how to get them up. 

Ariadoses scuttle around and patrol their territory. Toucannons and Pikipeks sleep in the night, where they fill the trees in the day. 

And... as the title of this sequence might clue you in, my most memorable encounter of the game revolves around a trio of Morelulls near the end of the track. I was just chucking apples and spamming the photograph button, trying to see if I could trigger some of the specific behaviours that the Pokemon would do. 

So I chuck the apple towards the Morelull. 

The apple, which is as big as the main body of these tiny sentient fungus friends. 

Which, according to Rita and Professor Mirror, apples that should weigh less and not injure a Pokemon.

The Morelull just keels over and drops to the ground with its eyes closed, expelling a bunch of spores. And it's just... still. Its friend stands next to it, just looking with those blank eyes, those blank dot eyes, so emotionless yet so full of sorrow. 

Yeah, did I just accidentally kill a Morelull? Or severely injure it enough to give the fungus-monster equivalent of a severe brain concussion. 

Oh well, at least I got some points?

Anyway, I had to repeat this night course like three times because I completely missed the fact that Professor Mirror was constantly telling me to take a photograph of the Crystalbloom flower from the Founja Jungle... but it has to be glowing. I kept getting ones that are not glowing, and I wasn't sure why it wasn't working. 

It did let me see a bunch of brand-new interactions, though, like Yanmega asleep perching on a tree, the Ariados above the web finally dropping down and standing on its web menacingly, and I get to finally realize that there are Metapods and Leafeons around. Or maybe they spawned after enough level-ups. 

At this point, Professor Mirror gives me another tutorial of the Illumina Orbs, giving me two kinds of these to fill in my Y-button. These things can make the Crystalblooms or specific Pokemon glow. It's definitely not as intuitive a mechanic as getting a Pokemon to look at me, or chucking an apple to either disturb them or get them to it. I apparently have to unlock them by scanning a glowing Crystalbloom in every new area that I enter into. 

Which means... new areas! The giant deathworld-looking long island of volcanic doom on the top right is revealed to me as Voluca, while the small batch of islands on the bottom right is called Maricopia. 

Also, the NPC's -- and I genuinely don't remember which -- give me another item that now fits on the R-button. The Poke-Flute... or rather, a melody to wake up sleeping Pokemon, or to make them dance if they're already awake. I refuse to call it a poke-flute because the jingle that this thing makes is actually kind of annoying instead of soothing like the flute. What's wrong with using the classic jingle? It's a bit annoying. 

Phil also yaks about yet another brand-new feature, because apparently the Neo-One pod has the capability to... shrink? Ant-Man style? He tries to get me to go and test it out. Rita overhears us, and basically threatens to tattle unless she joins in... and... uh... I apparently have to scan a specific spot in the Nature Park. 

So I repeat the nature park a couple of times and... I can't find the specific spot. Maybe I'm just blind. But the Combees have summoned their big queen, Vespiquen, to hang out with them. I also complete a quest showing Tangrowth jumping like 50 feet into the air before landing on a cliff, which is fucking ridiculous but also glorious. I also chuck enough apples at a Hoothoot to force it to show off its second foot.

Not... not the most ecologically friendly methods of getting pictures, I must say. 

I try out the beach area of Maricopa first, which is... just very pleasant! Again, the animation of the clear seawater and the coral reefs is just absolutely sublime and beautiful, and I can just say that unless the game pulls out the stops, the watery areas are going to be my favourites without any question. 

We start off in a beach with Crabrawlers scuttling around, Wingulls cawing in the sky and Exeggutor -- Kantonian, not Alolan, surprisingly -- just lumbering around. The Crabrawlers have a hilarious reaction where they will try to box every single apple you throw near them. 

I got really distracted by the sea, to be honest, that I forgot to take pictures for a bit. There are a bunch of marine-pattern Vivillons and I thought it was quite clever to have different Vivillon forms in different parts of the map. There's a moment where a sleeping Exeggutor needs to be lobbed with apples before he stands his fat ass up and lumbers away. 

Then there's a bunch of Stunfisk and Pyukumuku just hanging out on the beach, there's an Octillery just lurking beneath the (very clear, very beautiful) ocean surface, and on the beach there's a Machamp that will do a little bit of a flexing motion as I pass by. And as I am about to close off the beach, there's a Sandygast shovel randomly on the edge of the water, but there's nothing I could do about it. 

And... you know what? I just feel happy. That beach level really did make me have fun. And while not as impressive as the beach, the Morelulls in the jungle also were pretty impressive. I'm having fun with this game, guys!

 

Random Notes:

• Oh, there are Woopers with the Quagsires too in the Founja Jungle! I thought I should mention that. Wooper and Quagsire are the sources of some of the most fun expressions in the game. God bless these two dorky axolotls. 
• I didn't realize Bounsweets can fly and helicopter around on their little leaf hats. I thought they could only hop-hop bounce around. 
  
• There's also a Swampert half-submerged in the Founja Swamp which I'm not sure how to get out of the swamp. 
• On the same token, it's a bit surprising that there are a lot of sleeping Ledians when none of them actually show up in the day version of this track. 
• For being the previous main character... man, Todd Snap really doesn't have a personality, huh? Him and Mirror really do blend together as just talking heads of exposition. As poorly written as they are, Rita and Phil at least embody two common anime archetypes, making them at least something. 
• Okay, shrinking really feels like a gimmick that you think Pokemon would've done at least once? Like, I'm surprised we don't have like a quasi-microscopic bacteria or plankton or tiny bug Pokemon that we can interact with by shrinking down to an almost-microscopic level. 
• In the "beach or mountain" debate, I am team beach, all day, every day. You get the sun, the sea, a nice coconut or beer to drink, and the sea water will lull you to sleep. Why people find getting sweat-drenched, mud-caked as they walk through mosquito-infested hiking trails likely to conceal snakes and rabid monkeys is beyond me. 
• The Wingull sounds they recorded for this game really does resemble real seagulls. It's both annoying and immersive at the same time, because seagulls are one of the few things that might make a beach experience less enjoyable. 
• I am seriously surprised that they resisted using the long-necked, coconut-tree-themed Alolan Exeggutor instead of the Kantonian versions... and the Alolan ones would be more in-brand. I guess the long neck would make having their pictures taken a bit difficult? 
• The beach randomly has a bunch of Pikachu. I'm going to assume that just like the original Snap, there's going to be a way to get a Surfing Pikachu on a photo. 
• I mean, I don't think any of the games ever showcased Unovan Stunfisk hang out in the beaches or the sea, and it's more of a marshlands type of creature, but I guess just like Tynamo in Scarlet/Violet, we're just assuming that since they're all based on fishies, they can also survive in the sea?