Generation IX now!
I feel like they did a rather good job this generation, and, again, considering that this is a 3D game it does mean that they have to manually pick the colours for each shiny. I don't think it's quite as well-done as the two DS generations, but there definitely are more hits than misses here compared to Sword/Shield.
Keep in mind that a lot of the other Pokemon that are tied to another evolutionary line are listed on those generations. At least, they should be -- if I missed any, let me know!
We're definitely not starting off with a good start here, with shiny Sprigatito, Floragato and Meowscarada all looking like they're just washed out. These guys feel like a bad 'oops, the palette switcher accidentally picked a similar shade' that gave us such disappointments as shiny Pikachu and shiny Gengar. Floragato and Meowscarada actually do swap the colours of their little accessories, going from pink to lavender-purple, but it really is hardly noticeable.
Likewise, these guys are honestly quite lame. Shiny Skeledirge gets a pass, becuase having its body be bright pink is actually quite distinctive, but both shiny Fuecoco and Crocalor just look like they're standing in oversaturated lighting. If all three were pink, I'd be okay.
This leaves shiny Quaxly as the only Paldean starter with an actually distinctive shade of shiny. Both shiny Quaxly and Quaxwell's light blue does make them look quite distinct, while shiny Quaquaval's lavender main body is a nice contrast to the light blue feathers. This looks extra-cool when he spreads his peacock feathers, which, again, puts the carnival duck heads and shoulders above his two other Paldean starter brethren.
Okay, that's cute. Lechonk and the two Oinkolonges have the typical pink shades that you would expect from a cartoon pig! I appreciate that Lechonk's face is still covered in mud. Not my favourites from this generation, but they got a nice shiny.
Okay what. Shiny Tarountula looks cool just by dint of making the big ball of yarn into blood-red, but painting the spider body with dark blue and pale red makes the whole package work so well.
The badass colour scheme gets translated faithfully and turned a bit darker with shiny Spidops, giving us a badass neon-90's-toy vibe that really does work with Spidops' design. Besides, being a slightly spookier spider than Pokemon's usual fare, I do think the paint scheme is quite appropriate for Spidops here.
Okay, I guess they legally can't put the original Kamen Rider's dark green paint scheme to Nymble and Lokix withot it being too obvious, but I can't be that made. The gold-ish yellow is a nice scheme for both of them, particularly with how Lokix now has a nice two-tone set of colours. There are many golden 'final forms' for the many different Kamen Riders, but this one in particular reminds me of Kuuga.
The shiny Pawmi line are neat! I like the hot pink colours. Probably wouldn't care for them too much if they were the regular colours, since we do have a lot of these pinkums already, but as an alternate colour scheme it's pretty neat. I like that they keep the cheeks and gloves the same colour as the regular line.
Yeah, I don't think Paldea is anywhere as bad as Galar in terms of shinies, but... these guys exist, y'know? Shiny Tandemaus and Maushold actually does have a difference -- their 'cartoon Mickey Mouse pants' are of a different shade of gray, or they switch the patterns or something. But for that to stand out these patterns need to be standing out in the first place in the regular design. (Another piss-poor example that appeared in this generation is the utterly uninspired shinies for the three Paldean Tauros forms).
Pretty okay, pretty tasty looking. Shiny Fidough just plays around with the contrast and darkness, but it has the nice effect of making the bread dog feel a bit more cooked or baked. It's cute! And shiny Daschbun has a nice "chocolate croissant" vibe to him.
One of my favourites! Only the olive changes on shiny Smoliv into a black olive, but it is thematically fitting, isn't it? And the silhouette and vibe of shiny Smoliv itself changes so much just with that one small change.
It's not quite as noticeable in shiny Dolliv and shiny Arboliva, but the leaves and face change slightly to accommodate. See, this is how you do a shiny line!
Eeh? I forget Squawkabilly exists most of the time. They do look distinct from the normal forms, so that's a plus point to them, but I can't say I like these colours any more than their regular ones.
I have one of these! Garganacl at least. I'm not entirely sure what the idea of turning the salt into yellowish-creamy brown is. I guess sand? Sand instead of salt? Making Garganacl a pyramid, I suppose?
The colour scheme looks best on shiny Naclstack, but I do like both shiny Nacli and shint Garganacl as well.
I'm not the biggest fan of the Charcadet line, but WOW, what a terrible set of shinies. Can't tell what's different? The eyes change colour. On an already busy design. I guess it's a bit noticeable on shiny Charcadet, but it's honestly rather terrible.
Many people are baffled that they didn't just go for the obvious and swap the colours. I would agree! Purple Armarouge would be full-on Mega-Man, and Ceruledge would have blazing red fire swords. But instead we get a contact lens switch. Why?
Shiny Tadbulb is honestly terrible. They swapped the orange accents to a darker shade, which honestly probably makes this guy one of the easiest shinies to miss particularly with how small they are in the Paldean overworld.
Shiny Bellibolt being a noxious puke-yellow? It... it works for it, actually. Reduces the amount of colours by making the design other than the belly just yellow and orange. Still not the biggest fan of Bellibolt but I like it.
...what changed? Quite terrible. Shiny Wattrel and Kilowattrel had their black parts turn into... a dark purplish-brown? Especially for a 3D era game, kinda terrible.
Honestly, even doing something lazy and swapping the black and yellow would've made for a much superior shiny.
Shiny Maschiff goes from a 'regular dog' brown to 'Dark-type monster' deep purple. That's cool! Shiny Mabosstiff, on the other hand, doesn't quite have such a noticeable change. It's the same shade of purple as shiny Maschiff, but going from gray to purple-gray isn't the best change.
Both of these are really good. Shiny Shroodle changing its big green eyes into lavender and the ink on the tip of its fang to red is quite striking enough.
But shiny Grafaiai might be one of my favourites from this generation. It's a completely different set of colours that really fits with the 'eclectic paint tossed onto a wall'. The bluish-gray on its tail and lower body are the same with regular Grafaiai, but the upper body, eyes, eyeshadow, hair, fingers and finger-paint are all changed into different colours. Really like the red eye-shadow areas and the neon yellow/purple combo for the fingers.
Shiny Bramblin and Brambleghast are... okay! They change just enough so we still have a 'dead plant' vibe going on with the primarily pale branches. Shiny Brambleghast is clearly the weaker of the two, just looking like the original design but paler, while shiny Bramblin has a nice thing going on with the three-tone white/orange/green thing going on.
Another winner! The pale-white shiny Toedscool is pretty appropriate for a fungal creature. Lots of fungi are pale-white, and it makes absolute sense that one that's just a bit spooky like Toedscool is supposed to be is all white.
But shiny Toedscruel is one of the better shinies here, with the jet-black mushroom cap and 'nozzle', the milky white alien eyeballs, and best of all, the shocking pink hyphae-tentacles. Pretty great colour scheme all around! It's a very cool 'mushroom monster' vibe, and it really does feel like it would be how some fantasy psychedelic cave mushroom would look.
Shiny Klawf is just very pleasant. There is this nice shade of bright blue that some of the nice shinies in this generation likes to use, and on Klawf it both fits the look (there are many blue crabs!) and while also being quite distinct from the original. Neato!
Shiny Capsakid is quite good, going from primarily green to pale yellow with a blue 'collar'. I guess the idea is that he's a bit more unripe?
Not the biggest fan of shiny Scovillain. The body changes to yellow-and-blue, but the two most prominent features, the two-headed bell peppers, are still basically the same colours. Switching the colours around or even using other colours (orange would work, right?) would've gone a long way into making this shiny make sense the way shiny Smoliv up above did.
One of the best shinies in this game is shiny Rellor with its golden ball of dung. I love how it's entirely smooth to contrast the, uh... how shall we say, 'interesting mix' that is regular Rellor's ball of dung! I like this guy so much. I own one in Pokemon Violet rather randomly, and I don't have the heart to evolve him. He looks so good!
Shiny Rabsca is a bit less exciting since like shiny Scovillain the most prominent part (the orb-embryo) is still the same colour, but still pretty solid because the insect portion goes for a very distinct golden-yellow vibe. I like these guys.
This is an evolutionary line that I actually wouldn't care about if not for the shiny. I was honestly quite ready to dismiss the duo of Flittle and Espathra because I didn't care for them, but little Flittle here became my first shiny in Generation IX. The colours for shiny Flittle is quite great, making the yellow a bit more pale, the 'legs' brown and the 'skirt' into a very nice minty green.
And then shiny Espathra becomes a very distinctly different shade of dark chocolatey brown, based on a real ostrich compared to the more stylized regular colours. It's a stark difference from the original design, and I do like it!
A cute one. The entire shiny Tinkatink line don't really change colour (the shade of pink might be a bit different?) but the increasingly-large hammer gets swapped from metallic gray to various shades of rust. That's pretty cool, honestly! I like this one.
Both are pretty great. I feel like I vastly prefer the colourations for both shiny Wiglett and Wugtroi. The bright yellow with blue nose, and deep blue with bright yellow noses, both feel quite suitable for these pipefish/eel-Pokemon.
They went for a bit of a more monochrome colour scheme for shiny Bombirdier. It's... it's not the easiest to notice unless you put the two side by side. I do appreciate the parts they changed, which isn't something I can say about many of the other less-creative shinies in this generation (hi, Tauros!) but I can't say I like him.
Extremely pleasant. I am a huge fan of lavender shiny Finizen, which is just a very pleasant alternate colour scheme all around. I think the idea behind shiny Palafin is that it's a "Superman in black costume" vibe? It's not my favourite shiny, but very distinct. I can't complain!
Very basic and obvious, shiny Varoom and Revavroom turn from silver to gold. Pretty easy change to make for robotic or metallic Pokemon, and and I really like how much the new golden parts stands out so much against the black coal of their anatomy compared to the regular versions.
I'm not sure if there's supposed to be a theme here. A brown body, a bright cream head and bright blue cheek-puffs? It's... it's different all right, and I guess not all lizards have a fetching colour scheme, but I just find this guy's shiny unpleasant. Props for actually being different though.
Another very nice one! Shiny Orthworm goes from red to a very nice bright blue. I honestly wonder if designs like Klwaf or Orthworm would stand out a bit more in my head if they had been been given these less-obvious colouration? Pretty cute all around.
These two are all right! They kind of jump around a bit in the blue/purple spectrum, so there's still a fair bit of similarity with the original Glimmet and Glimmora designs, but they are still different enough to feel like a 'variation'. For a quasi-plant Pokemon, I feel like this makes sense as a variation?
I like the concept here -- being ghost dogs, instead of being ghostly-white, now they are covered by muddy grave-dirt. The execution is... all right, I suppose, although I do admit that in-game they don't look quite as nice as these Pokemon Home artwork. Shiny Greavard is probably the better one of the two, though that shade of yellow is always striking on shinies; while shiny Houndstone is the aforementioned 'fur covered with necrosol' theme. Neat!
Shiny Flamigo becomes very pale. I can tell it's a shiny, at least, but homie here just looks sick. Not a fan.
Shiny Cetoddle is all right. Going from white to gray with orange highlights is distinctive. But shiny Cetitan, on the other hand, is probably one of the best shinies in this generation. Just changing part of the colouration black, with the bright orange highlights around his eyes and fins, makes this thing look so badass. It also fixes one of my problems with the original Cetitan, where the segmentation of his body parts isn't the most obvious thanks to the less-contrasting white and light-gray. There's no such ambiguity now with shiny Cetitana, and I absolutely loved looking up how this guy opens its mouth. Very cool all around.
Shiny Veluza is... pleasant. A simple swap from pink to a nice, minty green. Not much to really be excited about, but a nice alternate colour scheme nonetheless.
Shiny Dondozo is pretty cool! He goes from being predominantly blue with some white highlights to being predominantly white with a couple of bright-yellow parts. I also do like that the proportions of his body is changed a bit differently -- original flavour Dondozo has two layers of blue, but the shiny version changes the top layer to yellow while the bottom layer changes to white. Very pleasant, and reminds me of tamago sushi. Speaking of sushi...
Yeah, I get the idea behind Tatsugiri's shiny forms. Only... two of them really end up looking like regular 'curly form' orange Tatsugiri at a glance, yeah? The white shiny 'droopy form' is nicely different-looking than its original pink colours, and is meant to reference whitefish or squid or something.
But the shiny 'curly form' just slathers the orane with soya sauce, which is fine... if the shiny 'stretchy form' doesn't change yellow to also orange, making shiny stretchy Tatsugiri look like both versions of the curly one. There's a lot of different sushi varitions out there, I really think they could've done a lot better here.
And so we enter the realm of the paradox Pokemon! Shiny Great Tusk here draws a bit frm shiny Donphan, with a pale-green body and a bronze carapace... but unlike regular Donphan, Great Tusk's got a bunch of extra bits of anatomy like those now-yellow spikes and foot growths. Having a third additional colours actually does make shiny Great Tusk look a fair bit nicer than regular shiny Donphan.
Of course, copying the old shinies doesn't always work. Shiny Scream Tail also copies shiny Jigglypuff's eye changes. The red eyes admittedly work better in the marginally more sinister Scream Tail, and they also make the tip of her hair a bit different, but it's still as underwhelming as the original shiny.
Shiny Brute Bonnet is... okay? Again, this is borrowed from shiny Amoonguss being coloured like a Great Ball instead of a Poke Ball. I like how the blue and the neon-green draping moss contrasts each other, I suppose.
Shiny Flutter Mane takes shiny Misdreavus's rather 'eh' puke-green shiny and tries to do something extra with it. The tips of the wing-hair becomes bright orange, contrasting against the hot-pink eyes, horns and necklace a lot more. The end result isn't my favourite shiny, but it's a nice one regardless.
Oh, this is nice. Like shiny Volcarona, shiny Slither Wing goes for a golden-yellow colouration for the wings and antennae. Also rather nicely, the previously green dinosaur tail is now purple, making Slither Wing's non-furry body parts actually a bit more coherent colour-wise. I actually much prefer this colour scheme compared to the original!
Shiny Sandy Shocks also copies, in a fashion, shiny Magneton's colours... but only to a point. The core eyeballs are monochrome with gold eyeballs, but all the magnets and iron fillings turn black. This change actually ends up subtracting the many amounts of visual noise from the original Sandy Shocks design, making this whole package a lot easier to 'digest', so to speak, since your eyes are drawn straight to the three brightly-coloured 'face' of the entity. Again, I significantly like this change!
Now here's the thing for all of the future Paradox Pokemon... they're all chrome. Which is cute for a set of three or four Pokemon, perhaps, but there's a lot of them, and all the future Paradoxes tend to start on an already metallic colour scheme already. And... a design like Iron Treads here would've worked better if the neon lights had changed into a different colour, but he just looks so washed-out since a lot of the details that used to be picked up by the balck secondary colouration are just gone now.
Shiny Iron Bundle is one of the few shiny future paradoxes that actually looks okay in that he changes colours quite significantly from his original Delibird-inspired look. I still don't like it any more than the original, I must say.
Yes, shiny Iron Hands is terrible -- I can't really tell if this is a shiny if I don't have the regular Iron Hands side-by-side.
And shiny Iron Jugulis... is obviously shiny, but this just makes the clumps of bright pink and blue look terrible due to how much they stand out from the haphazard chrome. Honestly they were kind of close to making this one an okay one like Iron Bundle was, maybe if they made both the head and frill into the same colour, but... nah.
Yep, shiny Iron Moth is shiny. I can't tell until, again, I have both pictures side-by-side. They really should've made the neon lights either a different colour or also chromed. Really not the best.
Maybe one of the future paradoxes that looks actually great! Regular Iron Thorns is a nice shade of metallic green, but that washes out the neon-green lighting. Here, the neon-green lighting stand out amazingly well against the silver-chrome body, and the two colours compliment each other pretty nicely too. A nice standout in an otherwise unremarkable sea of chrome.
Not a huge fan. Shiny Arctibax is probably the coolest out of the three, and the pink highlights do prominently mark them out as being shinies... but they're so miniscule compared to the rest of the design. Shiny Baxcalibur just looks kind of washed-out, and shiny Frigibax just looks like a booger. Shiny Arctibax is... okay.
You can kinda tell that roaming-form Gimmighoul is a shiny because he's white instead of silver, which is probably not going to be easy to tell in-game since the Gimmighoul model is quite small. It's especially hard to see on chest-form Gimmighoul, since they didn't change any aspect of the chest or coins.
Shiny Gholdengo is even worse, since the only difference is changing the (hard to see) eye-lines and body lines from red to green. I really do think that they should've changed the chest, then, if they want to keep the 'gold coins' vibe intact, the way they designed shiny Komala or shiny Tinkatink above.
Oh! This one is pretty cool! Shiny Wo-Chien changes mostly the leaf-mass that makes up his snail body, but changes it to such a nice autumn-themed combination of reds and pale greens. It's a bit of a subtler change but the eyestalks being pale white also gives this shiny variant of Wo-Chien a bit of a more 'different' face, more of an 'old man face made out of leaves' vibe compared to the 'slug dude' of the original, if that makes sense? He is almost my favourite of the four Ruin Artifact guys.
Yeah, shiny Chien-Pao is... it's all right? We're leaning more towards the 'panther' or 'leopard' vibe with the dark brown fur, and this does have the nice effect of making the ice crystals and claws get highlighted a bit more. I kind of wished they went for a proper black instead of dark brown, though, since it ends up looking kind of like someone took a dookie in the snow that Chien-Pao manifests in.
I kinda like shiny Ting-Lu. The jade bowl doesn't necessarily change much, but the rest of him changes a fair bit, particularly the dorsal parts of his anatomy that become more white and gray, implying more stones and whatnot. Coupled with the jade-like highlights on the tips of the legs, I find shiny Ting-Lu to be much more menacing compared to the original.
I said Wo-Chien is my second-favourite shiny, and that's because my favourite is good ol' Chi-Yu here. Our favourite molten lava goldfish always looked cool to me, being a goldfish made out of fire... but an orangey-red goldfish is rather mundane, yeah? Swapping it into a nice, light blue flame makes shiny Chi-Yu feel so much more ephemeral and even a bit more ghostly, and I like this brief little change.
Shiny Roaring Moon also imports shiny Salamence's colours, with the pale green body and bright red wings... bt the addition of yellow for the wing-tips and all the additional growths on Roaring Moon's head and arms all do a great job at making this design look cohesive. Not my favourite paradox shiny, but okay.
Shiny Iron Valiant is... all right. There's just enough 'bright neon' detail to make the design work, even if I really do think that it's a bit of a missed opportunity not to give the shiny future-paradoxes differently-coloured neon lights.
Okay what. You know, there is always a saying about how every single Pokemon looks great if you give them a black-coloured shiny. While that's not exactly true (and if everyone is a black shiny it'd rob the colour scheme of its specialness) it worked well for some specific Pokemon in the past, most famously the likes of shiny Charizard, Rayquaza, Gardevoir and Pallosand.
But shiny Koraidon here just blows most of them just out of the water by keeping some of his bright red accents on his feathers and sholder armour stuff. I've gone on record on not being the biggest Koraidon fan, but god damn, this Koraidon? This Koraidon, I like.
Meanwhile, shiny Miraidon follows the rest of the future paradox guys by being chrome and it's... it's okay. Keeping a lot of Miraidon's original neon blue and yellows does help in making the design a bit nicer, but it's still just 'okay'. I still think it's one of the better chrome shinies (though I'd still rate Iron Thorns, Iron Leaves and Iron Valiant above Miraidon) but it's still not quite as epic as Koraidon is.
Shiny Walking Wake exports shiny Suicune's colours, and the bright blue body and dark blue mane works quite well on this guy. Shame about the random red horns, which just kind of feel out of place.
Speaking of out of place, fuck I hate how the Paldean Pokedex splits up all the paradox Pokemon in the national Pokedex numbering.
Another future Paradox. I think I'm okay with the chromes when the original design isn't a shade of silver or black? Regular Iron Leaves is bright green with pink highlights, so changing that to chrome-silver with pink highlights is okay!
Yeah, kinda bad. Shiny Poltchageist anad Sinistcha's 'ghost' bodies are a bit paler, and the black markings on the porcelain cups are a bit greener. Not good.
Oh! Okay, shiny Okidogi swaps his black fur for a bright, eye-searing orange-y cream. Not my favourite, but a bold shiny choice. Perhaps his brethren-
Nope. Shiny Munkidori just looks like he's standing under a lamp. Terrible.
And I can't really even tell that shiny Fezandipiti is a shiny unless you put this picture side-by-side with its original. Quite disappointing.
All the shiny Ogerpons switch the 'orange' head into green. I guess she's a lime instead of a mandarin? It does give her more of an intercontinuity with her body, but at the same time it also makes her face 'blend in' with the additional yellow buttons and details on her body. On any other Pokemon I'd complain, but Ogerpon does like hiding her face under that mask, so I suppose it's thematically appropriate?
Shiny Gouging Fire just looks cool, doesn't it? It pretty much takes what worked for the original Gouging Fire, but because we import some of the colour streamlining that shiny Entei had (particularly for the red and light-ceram beats, the base 'Entei' body ends up looking more uniform, drawing much more attention to the giant Triceratops horn-set... which gets a makeover into being orange with neon-blue highlights. It all works amazingly well, combining the old shiny colours with the new details. Probably my favourite shiny paradox?
Shiny Raikou's colours on shiny Raging Bolt looks badass. I mean, the giraffe joke is still there, and even moreso now that he's orange, but just like the original Raikou, the colour distribution is a lot nicer with a lot of the silvery-gray details and the yellow cloud not standing out a bit too obnoxiously, and the only 'neon' highlights being the bright blue highlights. With Raging Bolt's 'cloud' being moved on the top of the neck instead of splayed out on his back, it's a particularly noticeable change.
Yeeeeah, where Iron Leaves and Iron Crown get away by being bright primary colours, regular Iron Boulder's primary colours are silver and black. Changing all the black to silver just makes him look washed-out and under-detailed. Shiny Iron Boulder is still better-looking than Iron Treads, but I think he's the weakest of all the Robocop Musketeers.
Shiny Iron Crown is... okay. He looks significantly different and I do think the silver and baby blue play off each other okay. I don't particularly like it, but I've been bitching about the shiny future paradoxes enough, I feel, that I need to acknowledge the ones that look nice.
Baby blue Terapagos looks nice. Again, the bright blue blends Terapagos's tortoise parts with the gemstone shell. It looks a lot better on the normal form as opposed to the terastal form, since that form tends to be glowing most of the time anyway. This is an okay shiny. Not my favourite.
And shiny Pecharunt closes us off by having the little seed-core be partially gold. Not the worst, but... also kind of eh, y'know? I almost kinda wished they changed the outer layers of the peach armour to also be gold.
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With that, I believe I've reviewed all the shinies. Some really good ones, some really bad ones. I found some nice appreciation for some of them for sure. At some point in the future, if I feel like it, I might actually do a list of all the worst shinies and rant a bit on how I would improve them!
