Let's Play Pokemon Shining Pearl, Part 3 - Shining Changes!

 So yeah, after clearing out most of the post-Eterna City stuff, I go around trying to build up my team. I ended up training up a pink Shellos and... you know what? I'm getting attached to the little guy. I don't mind if he's a bit lumpier and pinkier than my normally preferred blue variant. But most importantly, I had to wait for a Friday for a Drifloon to spawn on Valley Windworks! Look at him. He's here to kidnap little children but he's too weak to carry them away! I've always had a bit of an affinity to Drifloon. I've never disliked the balloon ghosts, but I've never really loved them. Not before I did this blog, and one of my very first Pokemon articles was a 'Pokemon of the Week' where I rolled on a random number generator and talked about Drifblim. Since then, I've grown to see Drifblim as a bit of a mascot for this little slice of my life that I spend talking about video game monsters -- one of my first shinies in Sword and Shield was also a beautiful neon-yellow Drifblim. Having a Drifloon in a full playthrough is awesome, though!

Anyway, I enter Hearthome City, which... is a bit different than what I remember! Back in Platinum, Fantina is just able to be challenged as the third gym leader. Here, she shows up in front of the contest hall, acts a bit extra, and for no real reason other than Fantina being eccentric she just buggers off and refuses to do her job as a gym leader. Now, I don't mind having gyms that we meet and can't engage with immediately -- the very first gym you encounter in the very first Pokemon game did that! But this just feels rather bizarrely done and narratively not the most satisfying... maybe a couple of extra dialogue lines here would've given us a better reason, y'know? That was why I really liked HeartGold/SoulSilver and OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire. They added some extra lines of dialogue to a lot of the NPCs that don't exactly change the story or how you progress, but really does help to tighten up the script a lot. 

(That also applies to the artificial roadblocks. One of the roadblocks in Hearthome City is just a pair of reporters that happen to stand in front of a door. Couldn't it have hurt them to give us something less lazy? Like the sick Psyducks, or have the reporters talking about how they're going to cover a concert, thereby making it a sensible plot progression for them to move after I did the plot-mandated concert? Boo.)

Anyway, Hearthome is big. I get a Shell Bell, which is very cool. There is also a church in Hearthome City, which I completely forgot about. It's a really nice church! It's a bit random since it has no significant NPCs there or any kind of item given, but it also feels like a nice, authentic bit of world-building. I like it! My character's mom, Johanna, turns out to be a contest extraordinaire and gives my character some additional show clothes to wear on stage. Regrettably, it's not something I can use in the overworld. Boo, I say. Boo! 

The concert is a bit different, and unlike the annoyingly and terribly slavish replication of the Poketch, the concert is probably the first non-graphical change they did to the game. Which is just as well, I don't think they could really replicate the whole 'put 2D image decorations around the 2D sprite of your Pokemon' with the 3D models. It's way too much effort for a part of the game that... really isn't all that fun.

I don't remember the Generation IV concerts all that much (Gen III is where I engaged with this minigame a lot) but they've basically simplified almost everything to just two 'instant' judging moments with the poffin appearance, then the Pokeball stickers... and then you get a rhythm game. Which could have been fun, but it's so bland and the animations are so genuinely uninteresting that I don't think it's quite a substitute to the 'each attack has a weird effect on the crowd and the judges' old-school Gen III concerts. 

Poffin-making is also still utterly miserable. That's the most that I have to say about that. 

Anyway, I'm not going to knock on this game for trying its best to adapt a minigame that was originally designed for a completely different interface. 

Much more interesting is how they did Amity Square! It's still the same old 'you can walk with your Pokemon out in this area... but there's not much you can do but have the Pokemon do a variation of Pickup'. It tickles me that in addition to my starter, Grotle, good ol' Drifloon is counted among the handful of non-starters to be able to walk around! It's just the Pikachu-esque mascot Pokemon... and the balloon! God, I love it. Instead of the contest accessories, your Pokemon now picks up pokeball stickers. Either way I don't really care...

Until I walk out of Amity Square, and the staff member tells me that I can have my Pokemon out of the ball anytime. And with any Pokemon, too, not just the dozen or so that is legal in Amity Square. Woo! BD/SP finally did a cool change for once! So yeah, I walk around a bit, and I think that is it for Hearthome. I go down, and I meet Barry for another speedy rival battle, and... it honestly barely registered in my head. Barry's just a ball of hyperactive energy, sugar and caffeine, isn't he? 

With that long detour in the huge city, it's time to set off to... Veilstone. And... and I wish I had something more interesting to say, but it's just basically a long gauntlet of trainers, roads and grassy terrain from Hearthome to the little sleepy town of Solcaeon and then to Veilstone. I did remember this as being one of the weaker parts of Sinnoh, with a lot of trainers and wild Pokemon with very samey rosters and honestly, right after a long stretch of more interesting 'grassy corridor' terrain on pre-Hearthome. 

The little gaggle of Psyducks are still there, being the most adorable, headache-having roadblock in Pokemon history. There is also the rather bland Lost Tower, which I remembered used to be a little bit more interesting in Platinum with a foggy upper level.

At this point, some evolutions did happen. My Grotle evolved into Torterra, my Drifloon into Drifblim, and my Golbat evolved into Crobat. I decided to bring a Crobat along for old times' sake, though I'll try to keep the rest of my party different from my original Sinnoh playthrough. Right now, in addition to those three, I've also got a little pink Shellos, Jirachi and a sixth slot I'm rotating. The rapid rate of evolutions does make me realize just how much the Experience Share is making this game way too easy, although I suppose it will help me play through this game a bit quicker. 

Veilstone City is mostly the same with the old games... with one critical change! As with many other remakes, the gambling den has been gutted. Let me gamble, Nintendo! Let me play slots! But instead of a bad handwave like what they did with some of the other remakes, they just changed it to... a Uniqlo? Well, the 'Metronome Style Shop', allowing me to change into predetermined clothes. Which is nice! I like my character customization, and giving it in a somewhat limited manner is a nice, cheeky way to keep Dawn/Lucas's appearance 'default' for a chunk of the game before opening the selection. I'll be changing the looks as I run around the game -- the designs aren't super spectacular but it's always nice to see it back, especially after Scarlet/Violet did such a non-optimal job with character customization.

And afterwards, I just... fought Maylene. There really wasn't much to her to be honest. I found the design of the gym and pushing the wooden frames to be quite banal -- and I could see why they revamped it to a more interesting (and martial arts inspired) puzzle in Platinum with the punching bags. With a Crobat and a Drifblim leading the charge, I demolished the small horde of Meditites, Machops and Machokes to reach Maylene, whose only real threat was her ace, the Lucario. Which might be a bit of a problem if I don't have a fully-evolved starter Pokemon on the third gym that can Earthquake the heck out of the hadoken doggy.

Maylene really also doesn't care that her city's been apparently taken over by the gangster-like Team Galactic, who has the 'Galactic Building' masquerading as a cosmic energy company. Which honestly is something that I thought that the fourth-generation games did rather poorly -- Team Galactic's goons are so incompetent at even trying to sell the illusion that I didn't even realize that the big spiky HQ was supposed to be a cover story until I talked specifically to the NPC receptionist. I don't think it's until Aether Foundation or even arguably Team Flare that an evil Pokemon team gave a somewhat convincing cover story. 

Anyway, Lucas has his Pokedex stolen by two Galactic grunts guarding a warehouse. We whup the grunts into shape, which is such a short little detour that I don't remember this at all from the original game. This is just a short, random roadblock to getting the HM for Fly (or rather, it's a TM now), which I really felt could've been a lot more interesting on either the enemy or on Lucas's side. 

Oh well. With that done, I'm free to explore what's south of Veilstone, which I believe is going to be Pastoria! I think I've yapped on enough for this to be a full article. I have been having a fair bit of fun playing through Shining Pearl than I thought I would, which is nice. 

Random Notes:

• Jirachi doesn't really learn a lot of moves at this point in time, meaning he has to rely on Confusion and Swift which aren't the best moves out there. I thought that was a nice little balance for using a mythical in my party, though it's also likely that Jirachi will keep getting swapped out as well. 
• One of my favourite fun facts is that Fantina adds random French words in the English localization... but she actually peppers her original Japanese dialogue with random English terms instead. 
• I particularly like how the Hearthome church just has... almost no music. It's a stark contrast to the bright, bubbly music of essentially the rest of the game, making it surprisingly memorable for such a one-note, otherwise throwaway area. 
  
• No, seriously, looking at the original Amity Square list of Pokemon, it's just a bunch of starters, and a bunch of cute Pikachu-esque Pokemon. Jigglypuff, Buneary, Pachirisu, Clefairy... Torchic because of the anime makes sense... and then we've got Shroomish and Drifloon. I absolutely love it. I absolutely love that someone in the Gamefreak team has a wider definition of 'cute Pokemon'. 
• Other nice loot in Hearthome City: I got an Amulet Coin, and some hiker gave me an egg. Oh, and the Pokemon Fan Club is in this city, too. 
• The roughneck with a Cleffa mourning a dead Pokemon killed by Team Galactic -- the one bit of random violence in Diamond/Pearl where Team Galactic is portrayed to be menacing -- is retained here. 
• I am quite disappointed that the 'Winter Style' isn't a continuity nod to the Platinum designs.