Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 11: EX Hidden Legends

So... yeah, some of the legendary Pokemon are really, really hidden. And I needed to use some hints and guides to actually see what side paths that I can unlock. Some of which are... not... the most intuitive, actually. 

The first one I unlocked was the sidepath in the underwater area, which is actually something I partially unlocked before, when I saw the Lanturn being lynched by the two Frillish. It's just that I didn't even realize that I needed to trigger something in order to make it happen... I have to Illumina-orb the Lanturn before the massive scripted scene of the Wailord rising up from the depths of the ocean, which would make the Lanturn actually turn around and dive down instead. 

This leads to the encounter where the Lanturn is attacked by the Frillish, and I needed to Illumina Orb the Lanturn to give it enough strength to blast aside the two murderous Frillishes... and then as a reward, the Lanturn brings me down through an alternate pathway in the depths of the ocean that leads me to a little underwater cavern... which contains the mighty Lugia!

...who's asleep. I guess Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres ain't causing havoc on top, huh?

But it is quite a nice little moment. I do feel a bit smart with this one, because I figured out that the Lanturn/Frillish interaction I took note of before was something unusual, but I didn't realize that it was something I needed to trigger, and I didn't realize that was something I needed to trigger in the first place. 

With Lugia done, I get the Maricopa sticker on my Photodex that indicates that I've photographed all Pokemon on this island. Neat! Honestly, a lot of the areas that I haven't completed are the ones with higher levels of post-game/DLC content, and I'm still farming for experience points to get those ranked up. All the while, I'm just doing a bunch of these levels while slowly taking note of what's changing in the level 2 and level 3's of each area. 

Some notable newcomers are in the Outaway Cave, which at level 3 has a Hydreigon show up rather randomly in the huge yawning cavern and flies around throughout the course of the level up to the end. On one of the two pathways in this cave (the one that goes past a bunch of Sableyes) is a Goodra, who's just... hanging there? Is there like a pseudo-legendary quota in this game? Goodra feels a bit off because this part of the cave doesn't even feel particularly humid or moist that a snail dragon would be happy to be around. Eh. 

There's also a random group of Pumpkaboos hanging out which I felt was pretty weird to find in a cave, but... why not, I guess? It is a ghost. Pumpkaboos can go wherever they want to. One of them hangs out in the hidden grove at the end of the level, which I guess is where the rest of the pumpkers in the cave come from. 

Interestingly, the nighttime Badlands at level 2 has the Tepig squadron disappear almost entirely. And I'm not sure what's going on, but in the opening area with the geysers there's just a half-dozen Magikarps karp-karp-karping pathetically. Poor Magikarps! Did they get blasted out of wherever they're swimming? Poor Magikarps, they never get a break. A newcomer in the Badlands is Gliscor, who's just a Pokemon I find pretty pleasant and a Pokemon that the anime had a pretty great field day with. Gliscor can be found not just flying but also hanging upside-down in a glorious mix of its scorpion and bat inspirations. 

And... well, the hardest and most confusing part that I had to really look up a guide to unlock? The Snowfields' alternate path. It's not just an alternate path that I had no idea how to unlock, it's even double-layered and the way to unlock it was pretty... confusing. So good job on the game designers, honestly, on making this a pretty fun little easter egg that I needed to work through. At each point of this, I actually didn't want to see the whole guide on how to get past it, thinking that I could do it with just the first clue to the first segment... and I constantly have no idea what to do next. 

So basically, I have to look for one of the Alolan Sandslashes in the very first stage of the daytime Snowfields, and this Sandslash is different from the other Sandslashes because... it's outside the snow, I guess? I take a photo of it and it's so camera shy that it burrows in and out throughout the cliffsides of this first area, up to three times. And then it burrows through a random snow mound on the side right before the steep uphill incline that leads to the Mamoswine herd. This unlocks the side-path... which is completely useless in the day, because it's covered by a blizzard. 

(I do like that it deposits me from the ranadom skylight hole where there's a bunch of Snom, though. Somehow, it never crossed my mind that this was a location connected to a side path).

No, I have to load the night Snowfields. Thankfully, the broken-down path is now just accessible as an alternate path, so I don't have to do it every time I want to access this side path. Anyway, going through the night Snowfields leads me to see what the area is supposed to look like without a deathly blizzard... it's a bunch of pine trees covered with snow, with a bunch of abominable Crabominables lumbering around. I figure out the little interaction there, which isn't the hardest -- illumina orb-ing one of the Crabominable causes it to punch a tree, which causes snow to fall on a sleeping Abomasnow, and the Abomasnow gets super pissed off and starts chasing the Crabominable around. 

Also, in this little evergreen tree grove is a tree absolutely infested with almost a dozen Snoms, who peek out if you use the radar. Now these are Snoms, and Snoms are perfect and cute and adorable, but I've seen trees utterly infested with caterpillars. I don't get queasy or creeped out with bugs, but those caterpillar-infested trees made me shiver to my core. 

Um, where were we? Right, two snow-Pokemon coincidentally named after 'abomination' in their English names chasing after each other. That funny interaction wasn't the whole point of this sequence. No, the important sequence was the massive ice blizzard that Abomasnow unleashed when it wakes up, becuase it causes a Froslass to appear and fly away from the conflict... 

...and I have to photograph this Froslass, and realize that it's flying towards a snowbank to point it out to us. Honestly, I don't think it ever crossed my mind that the act of photographing a Pokemon can cause it to run and point things out, since all other times (or all other times that I've noticed, more likely) I've needed to use an apple, an orb, the radar or the melody. 

Anyway, this leads me to a cave completely encased in ice, with a bunch of Jynx and a poor Aurorus frozen in the ice walls. Man, not all the dinosaurs survived in Lental, I guess. The ice cave opens up to the frozen ocean, with a Dewgong, a bunch of Beartric (including one that jumps out of the ocean, which is cool), a regular non-frozen Aurorus and a Delibird that leads a group of Piplup and Snom on a little march. 

The most adorable part of this whole scene? A Jynx that rides a swimming Avalugg around, like some kind of a mount. That's just so hilarious, so out of nowhere, but also honestly such a nice little display of Avalugg being somewhat more memorable. These past couple of games that I've played really did a great job at making Avalugg a bit more memorable than 'iceberg with legs'. 

Anyway, throwing an Illumina Orb at the Jynx riding the Avalugg causes it to sing. Which is what all the other Jynxes do, but this Jynx summons SUICUNE. Out of nowhere. Again, I'm frustrated at how confusing this all is, but also so happy to have this ridiculous set of 'guide dang it' moments happen. It's so much fun trying to go by each step and trying to see what I missed on each step. 

Ohm, and speaking of elusive Pokemon, I eventually got the daytime snowfields ranked all the way up to level 3, which unlocks a couple new Pokemon... most notably Glaceon. But this isn't enough for me to get my sticker for the Durice island, and I thought I was done with legendaries because I thought that we had a legendary per island... but no, apparently not, because I forgot that Mew and Celebi technically share the same island. So Durice has two, with another one in Outaway Cave! Which I found completely by accident as I was trying to figure out how to get the one last eeveelution, which is Jolteon. 

Going through the Outaway Cave again, I was just lobbing Illumina Orbs left and right when a group of Mawiles and Carbinks get lighted up and... Diancie just nonchalantly pops in out of the side of the cave. I almost missed Diancie even showing up at all until I was almost out of that area! This one was pretty cute, and after the amount of stress I went through trying to figure out how to get Suicune and Lugia to spawn, Diancie was pretty chill. 

What's rather hilarious is that the legendary isn't even the final part of this little chain -- I have to summon Diancie, then use the Illumina Orb to get her to create a huge pink diamond-dust explosion... and then this allows a random Mawile standing on the rock-crystal pillars to be 'less wary of me' after seeing me play with Diancie. Which... I'm really not sure a Mawile is going to block the NEO-ONE from going past anywhere, but I guess the protagonist isn't fond of honking his horn to get metal venus flytrap cave-dwelling elf-people to get out of the way. This open up another branching pathway that leads to another part of the underground overgrown caverns... where Jolteon is. 

That's right, somehow Jolteon ends up being a bit more elusive than the mythical diamond Pokemon. Okay! Well, with Jolteon I end up completing the Durice region's dex, which earns me another sticker. 

Random Notes:

• There are also a bunch of branching paths I haven't really been aware of in older areas, like the Bidoof Dam in the Nature Park or a ruins on night Founja Jungle.
• Okay, one of the Outaway Caves side-paths is quite cool. It requires me to wake up two sleeping Crobats, which somehow unblocks a slight detour near the end of the route, but it lets me go through some rimstone lakes that have a bunch of Goodra, Noibat and inflated Drifloons hanging around. It's pretty!
• I also really like this TCG art of Goodra. it's just using its head-goo-tendrils like whips, which doesn't feel like the most practical usage of that bit of anatomy, but it looks cool regardless. 
• Dude, what the hell are these "Legend" cards, and why do the artwork go so hard? 
• Also, haha, even the TCG game makers think of Lugia as a Water-type instead of a Psychic/Flying. 
• I would like to reiterate that Frillish and Jellicent are pretty hauntingly creepy once you get past their whimsical design, with their dex entries noting how they cause shipwrecks and haunt shipwrecks. And being jellyfishes they're pretty nasty predators, and this game just establishes that they attack fish Pokemon! Poor Lanturn would've been absolutely fucked if we didn't help it. Or if this was a bloodier genre of a game. 
• I see a Snom hanging upside-down and lowering itself with a silk from its butt, which a Froslass investigates curiously. I thought that was super-cool! It looks like something that real caterpillars (or at least those cave glow-worms) would do, and it's a nice reminder that for how cute Snom is, it's still a caterpillar! 
• While the christmas tree grove is still blizzard-ed, the side path that leads to the icy ocean part is also accessible in the day, with more Mightyenas nd Mamoswines hanging around there. Some of the more elusive Pokemon like Glalie, Dewgong and Vanniluxe get to do other behaviours there, though. 
• I'm half-convinced that Pumpkaboo is only in this game because it's very visually distinctive with the glowing jack-o-lantern eyes. In fact, you kind of get the sense that they went and picked a lot of Pokemon with glowing features like Aurorus, Beheyeem, Chandelure, Chinchou, Lanturn and Morelull, among others.