Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 5: Haunted Forests & Boss Fights

So the Belusylva Forest ends up giving me a brand-new area, which is neat! I'm not quite sure what unlocks each new area, if it's a cumulative experience thing over the various different areas, or if each area has its own counter or something.

But now I've unlocked another super-cool area, Elsewhere Forest, which is... a haunted forest in the style of Zelda's Lost Woods! It's a spooky, foggy forest with Trevenants lurking within the trees. Lots and lots of Trevenant, and thanks to the way they are animated and the large amount of fog, there's an actually very creepy and unsettling aura around the whole area. it actually is a bit hard to tell sometimes when the gnarly wooden trunks are just the background or if it's just a Trevenant's silhouette, something that is quite obvious when the ghost-tree Pokemon is next to you but not so much when there's a giant layer of fog. 

There's also a bunch of Shiftry jumping and hopping around the top of the trees, and some invisible Kecleon that only light up when you throw Illumina Orbs at them. But the clear star of this creepy area?

Espurr. 

Glorious, glorious Espurr, looking at you with those memetic dead eyes. One of them very vividly uses telekinesis to lift a chunk of rock in the middle of the track. Only Espurr is so gray and blends so well with the foggy background that all you see is the giant blue glowing rock that's hovering menacingly. I love it. There's also another part of the trail where two Espurr basically levitate themselves and fly like Superman from tree to tree. That's awesome!

And... after a short bit, I hit a fog wall and enter... a clearing with sakura trees. I didn't think too much of it other than "oh, this might be the true part of the forest without the Trevenant's fog", but the area is cooler than that! The sakura grove has a bunch of Sawsbuck, Deerlings, Unfezants of both genders and a sleeping Drampa. 

Then I hit a fog-wall, and I get transported back into the foggy forest with Trevenants and Espurrs and Shiftrys, and then boom another non-foggy forest, this time an Endor-style deep forest with loads of huge Bewears just lumbering around, Drampas flying around between large trees, more Unfezants and a couple little Panchams skittering around. There's a small pond with a lone Lotad, and a Bulbasaur, best boy Bulbasaur, just bulbing around. 

The multiple area-transitions was a bit odd, until I replayed the Elsewhere Woods a couple more times and kicked myself for not realizing what's going on... the second part of the route is based on the four seasons! The presence of Sawsbuck really should've been a clue. The second time I go through the Elsewhere Woods drops me in the same sakura spring area, but the third time? I got dropped in a winter location where it's all covered in snow, with the Winter-type Deerlings and Sawsbucks wandering around, a Gardevoir playing with the Deerlings, a hibernating Bewear and a lone Ninetales lurking on the cliff observing it all. 

So yeah, I was just expecting another creepy ghost forest, which we've had around three or four at this point, usually starring Zoroark or Trevenant... but this is much cooler. Some kind of ghostly teleportation or space-time anomaly or whatever, and the second part of this forest teleports me to one of four seasons, giving me a slightly different route every time I go through it. That's so cool, in addition to the generally awesome factor of being a haunted forest. 

The Professor then tells me that I've unlocked an Illumina Spot in the Elsewhere Forest... boss fight time! And after so long of me bitching that this game doesn't have a proper good song, we get some actually nice mood music. The NEO-ONE teleports in atop some kind of a leaf-covered rainforest lake, and as I brace myself for whatever creepy creature that lords over this haunted forest, expecting like a Celebi or something...

A majestic MILOTIC bursts out of the lake. It's a bit of a bait-and-switch because I was expecting something tied to the space-time anomaly, but my confusion and slight disappointment disappeared the moment Milotic starts to move around. It moves in such a cool fashion, like some kind of a river anaconda just slithering through the water and stuff. 

There's some actual nice boss mechanics to this encounter, where I have to keep chucking water into Milotic as it moves around the lake, which would cause it to burst out of the lake and allow me to chuck an Illumina Orb to make it glow and make the photograph one that's legitimate for the Professor.

I mean, it is just a Milotic, but I absolutely love just how majestic it looks as it bursts out of the water and coils in the air, or does these jumps as it breaches the water surface... pretty badass on the animation team. 

After the "boss fight" with the Milotic, the Professor finally lays down some lore about the Lental region. He notes that there are a couple of schools of thought, where a giant meteorite called the Tellur Meteor slammed down onto the planet some 2000 years ago, and according to the legends, the Illumina Pokemon fought against the meteor. The Professor, meanwhile, thinks that the meteor's energy created the Illumina Phenomenon. Considering the plot of Pokemon XY (meteorite creates the shards of the Mega Evolution key items) and Pokemon Sword/Shield (Eternatus comes from space and infects Galar with Gigantamax energy), and even Pokemon Sun/Moon (mystery multiverse portals turn regular Pokemon into giant Totem Pokemon, and also Ultra Beasts arrive from there) we can safely assume that the professor is probably right. 

Which... guys, not everything has to be 'space meteor did it'. It was cool when XY did it the first time around, a nice tie-in to the Clefairy stuff from the first generation, but I'm kinda done if they're just going to use meteors as a handwave instead of an actual plot point. 

Anyway, I go back to the volcano, and this time the volcano's changed a bit. There are Shinxes hanging around the Luxray, Talonflames fly in the sky... and I take a slightly different route that leads me to a bizarre blue fountain populated by Charmanders and Torkoals. I thought this was just the hot springs water,  but it looks a bit different and the game's achievements later identify this as 'blue lava'. I mean, okay, if you say so? The lava route leads me somewhere completely different, ending right before a giant ancient ruin doors where a bunch of Typhlosions hang out around. 

This discovery leads to the Professor noting that he has found some more Illumina energy deep within the volcano, and he starts talking about a network of subterranean caves that connects these volcanoes with other volcanoes, and some Pokemon seem to be using these volcanic systems to go around. Which leads to our next Illumina boss fight against... 

VOLCARONA!

Okay, yeah, someone on the writing team really likes the kaiju franchise. It's been some time since I watched Godzilla vs. Kong, but that movie featured a bunch of underground network of caves that the kaijus use to move around, right? And a Mothra expy is the one we fight within? Sure. 

Actually, there isn't just a single Volcarona, but TWO Volcaronas, and they screech and fly around and I actually really, really liked the music in this boss fight with all the ominous chanting. With how atmospheric and low-key a lot of the music for the regular stages are, at least the boss fights get something. 

The Volcarona duo boss fight is... interesting. Both Volcaronas surround themselves with a spinning fire shield and I was initially confused on how I'm supposed to deal with them. I tried the music, the scanner, the Illumina Orb, and the almighty apple... but it's not an apple that gets the fire shield down, it's apples. Emphasis on the 's'. Multiple apples. I wasn't very sure on whether my apple chucks were actually doing anything to the Volcarona at all. 

And... again, it's not the most difficult thing to do just to clear and finish this level. I just have to bring down the fire shield on one of the Volcaronas, and then lob an Illumina Orb and snap a photograph. I think trying to get a proper high score and to get the Volcarona to do certain behaviours would be a bit harder, but... I do like that there's an option for me to just breeze through this encounter.  

We get another bit of lore, where the Professor talks about the ancient explorer-photographer Captain Vince... who looks like a Goron from The Legend of Zelda. Appropriate, since we just had a volcanic boss fight. Interestingly, Vince only recorded two Illumina Pokemon, but somehow he also knew that there were four of them? Okay. 

I did a bunch more runs through the new areas... the underwater area is presumably where I need to farm a bunch more levels to unlock whatever Illumina Pokemon resides there, since I've already got three Illumina Pokemon. But I also did a couple more Elsewhere Woods -- I rolled the autumn level and saw the Serperiors just slithering around all majestic-like, and in a cute little sequence, in the Bewear forest now has a pile of apples... but I didn't throw those apples! No, they are just there, and an APPLIN is hiding among them. 

Genius! I mean, the original Pokemon Snap revolves so much on throwing apples that of course they needed to get the apple Pokemon in this game. 

Anyway, that was quite a sizable chunk of stuff that I did. We're very slowly inching towards doing more of the main story!

Random Notes:

• I'm not sure if it's a bug on my end or not, but some of the quests seem to disappear and reappear? I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but on the other hand I'm not the most invested about quests. 
• I didn't realize that the starting point of the laboratory rides actually depends on the actual position of the home screen, which rotates from various parts of the LENS base. I thought that was pretty cute. 
• It's a bit cynical to think of it this way, but it is quite clever that Elsewhere Woods essentially allows the team to reuse the assets for the foggy and Bewear deep woods parts of the area while making it feel like it's four areas. It's like taking the day/night map variations to a higher limit, which I appreciate. 
• I kept forgetting that New Pokemon Snap is kind of old and predates Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet! That's why Grookey and Scorbunny get so much focus in the early areas...
• Which makes me very angry because clearly Sobble is the best Galar starter and how dare they not actually show off Sobble more in these early areas. 
• I am a bit surprised to see Drampa fly, and... it looks a lot cooler when it's flying, with its awkward cloud-wing-hands and long neck actually looking like it's some kind of flying serpent instead of its 'default' pose in the game which just looks like a bad plastic toy. I'm not the biggest fan of Drampa, and I still don't, but I'm just being quite happy that this game is making me at least like and remember these Pokemon. 
  
• The description of a Pokemon that scuttles around lava subterranean tunnels does bring to mind the lava-gecko-dinosaur that is Heatran, and if I didn't do the Milotic boss fight immediately before I probably would think that Heatran's my boss fight. I do wonder if we're going to get legendaries involved? I know the original Snap has Mew. 
• I re-did the Meganium level and now a bunch more new Pokemon spawn around Meganium, though they're kinda blend into the background. There's an Eevee that plays with Meganium at the beginning, a very hidden Comfey and a bunch of Combee that I can disturb and force out of a tree. 
• Not sure why the Maricopa region's Illumina Pokemon hasn't shown up yet. All the levels of my areas are still around level 2, so I guess there might be some prereqisite that I did in Elsewhere Woods and the Volcano that I did unknowingly?
• There's a part of the underwater area where a Clawitzer tries to blow up a rock, but I couldn't figure out how to get it to do that. It's definitely going to lead to some secret path, and I wonder if this is the puzzle that I need to do to unlock the Illumina boss for the Maricopa region?