Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 10: Twitch Streams For MegaMeganium

After the past batch of plot developments, i did a bit of a hunting on Wild Zone 9. It's a bit more brutal! It's a whole section of the city filled with a bunch of heavy scaffolding that makes it look like I'm exploring a part of the city that's being renovated. A bunch of 'creepier' Pokemon stay here, like Espurr, Sableye and Kadabra. On the rooftops are Mawile and Carbink -- with Carbink rather appropriately hanging around gigantic clumps of the barnacle-like Mega Crystals. We can kinda-sorta guess that the Mega Crystals growing all around Lumiose is most likely tied to Diancie, right? Same colours, same pink crystals? 

But most significant among these is a very aggressive Alpha Meowstic standing on one of the buildings. Aggressive alphas alone aren't particularly new, of course. I've ran away from the Alpha Fletchinder, the Alpha Houndoom, the Alpha Whirlipede, the Alpha Krokorok, the Alpha Hawlucha...

But that Meowstic is a goddamned sniper. It camped up on top of the rooftops because it can snipe. The attack Psyshock apparently has an insane range, and the Meowstic is bloodthirsty, targeting me over my Pokemon. It's honestly both cool and terrifying to see those crystals appear out of thin air, take aim for a fraction of a second, before a dozen psychic lasers just pierce me all over. Insane!

This is, incidentally, the first time I 'blacked out' as a trainer. Or at least the first time I did so while making an honest, genuine effort to run away. 

But all of this chaos and exploration did give my Bayleef and Whirlipede both enough experience points to finally reach their final evolutions... Meganium and Scolipede! Hooray!

I decided to do a couple of exploration before going on with the plot. I find a bunch more Pokemon in some areas... and Wild Zone 10 is quite big. It's got a bunch of canals filled with Slowpokes and very aggressive Carvanhas, which jump up and fight you while floating over land. I can respect that. While in these Legends games they have been quite good at showing aquatic Pokemon as being in the water unless it's contrlled by a trainer, I can respect that dedication to being an angry fish that you would forget that you're a fish and you hover over land. 

This area also has a rooftop filled with Watchogs, and Arboks slithering around giant piles of poison. Quite nasty! I'm not quite sure what the 'flavour' of this, though. Why is this area in particular infested by poisonous snakes? 

But most importantly... a SHINY encounter! Hooray! I found a random shiny Slowpoke in this area, which actually also equally randomly teleported in out of nowhere. I guess it makes sense, since Slowpoke is a Psychic-type, but still! Sorry, Heracross and/or Absol, I guess a shiny Mega Slowbro is going to be my 'previously-released Mega Evolution', then!

Right after finding the shiny Slowbro, I end up stumbling upon the 'Shiny Mareep' quest, which is something I probably should've ran onto a bit earlier in the game. It's similar to the Shiny Ponyta quest in Legends Arceus, and it's not particularly subtle. There's just a very excitable young woman who keeps muttering and making some joke about counting sheep, but she wants to count Mareep, and specifically a shiny Mareep. After running around in Wild Zone 1, I end up finding the shiny purple Mareep on top of a roof. The NPC gets super-excited, but despite being presented with one of the rarest variants of a Pokemon she's clearly in love with, she just leaves. Not... not anywhere as well-done as the Shiny Ponyta quest.

I would, if I hadn't stumbled across the Shiny Slowpoke naturally, use the Shiny Mareep. It's actually a rather good typing that I don't have many options of in this part of the game, and Shiny Ampharos (and Shiny Mega Ampharos) being purple does look nice. But... while I think I'll still train Mareep up slowly, I do really think she's going to stay in the box for a while. I dunno. I just feel it's a bit less 'special' if the shiny is guaranteed, you know?

Anyway, I continue with the main quest, where Taunie and I meet up with Naveen on one of the Noveau coffee trucks. Naveen tries to squirrel away and have some 'post-meal alone time', which... again, sometimes you do need some alone time! But Naveen foregoes any discussion about introversion by asking if I knew 'what I am doing'. Which initially just seems to a follow-up to us accepting Vinnie and Quasartico's deal... but turns out that Naveen has a very different reason for not being too pleased with us climbing up the ranks of the Z-A Battle Royale. 

In that I will be facing the gamer prodigy, the streaming sensation of the keyboard legions... Canari. 

I love that my character's answers are just 'who?' and 'Canari?'. Of course, Canari has been foreshadowed a bit with billboards all around town, as well as the plushies and the fanbase of her grandfather Tarragon. Naveen gives Canari her first proper intro here, but again, I do like that we got some foreshadowing that she exists before this scene. She's a streamer that's snarky but cute, and Naveen particularly likes her streetwear. And Naveen is appalled that I am planning to battle THE Canari. 

Taunie, by the way, just doesn't have time for this, just shrugging Canari off as another opponent we'll have to face anyway, and Naveen gets angry. The nerve! The closest that mere fans could get to THE Canari is perhaps claiming a plush, and it wouldn't be proper for us to enter her orbit. Well, you're one of those fans, huh. I respect anyone who is a huge, all-consuming fan of a streamer or pop band or whatever. But there is a distinction between being a fan and being... this. 

Taunie also notes that Canari has a fanbase called DYN4MO, because Canari is associated with the Tynamo line and the 4 is, and I quote, to 'gamerify' the name. Okay! Canari has good taste in Pokemon, Eelektross is cool. Naveen's response? Joining DYN4MO would make him look as if he's jumping on the bandwagon, not a die-hard fan. I mean... sure, I kind of get this. The biggest groups in any given fandom tends to be annoying echo chambers. But again, there's being a fan and there's being so obsessed that you're pissed that your friends are going to compete against her.

Anyway, this goes on for a bit, and Taunie at one point lampshades that Naveen's desire to design clothes for her kind of clashes with Canari's deal of being a streamer that wears regular clothes. 

At this point, Vinnie calls in and cuts through Naveen's fanboying, and tells us that there are three new Rogue Mega Evolutions. We run back to Hotel Z. The team gathers outside the dining room, and we get a short scene where Naveen shows off a brand-new addition... a team flag! Yay? For a fashion designer, I actually feel like the MZ flag feels very bland. the logo's cool, but the background just seems haphazard. 

Lida leads the strategy meeting, and identifies three Mega Evolutions. A Slowbro in Aymlis Park, a Camerupt in Jaune Sector, and one of the new species, a Victreebel in Magenta Sector. Yay, Mega Victreebel! That's a new thing!

During the briefing, Taunie points out that Mega Slowbro is rampaging near the Stone Emporium, and that store is another place where I can buy Mega Stones. So there are two separate stores that sells Mega Stones, the Stone Emporium and Quasartico HQ! My response, to Lida's amusement, is "Does the emporium have insurance?"

Naveen goes OH NO and kind of interrupts the meeting because he almost missed the start of Canari's daily stream. Lida gets angry because Naveen could watch the archived stream, but the Naveen goes into a bit of a passionate rant about how watching streams live is completely different experience and at one point Canari apparently even reacted to one of his comments. Again, you do you -- it's not something that really appeals to me, but I get how it can be appealing. The problem, of course, Naveen, is that we're doing a whole Justice League meeting and you're watching a gaming stream. Maybe this is why your grandmother threw out your sewing set, man. 

I do find Naveen to be a fair bit more memorable with this... uh... quirk. It's a bit of an annoying meta-joke, but at least this will make him a bit more memorable. I hope they do something somewhat more distinctive for Lida too.

Anyway, because I'm a protagonist, Taunie decides to send all three of team to each of the Megas, and just... stand by and hope the Megas won't rampage (they won't, because they Mega Evolve at the speed of plot convenience) until I arrive and beat them up one by one. It is admittedly a bit silly since Taunie is proven to also be able to use Mega Evolution, but oh well. Taunie's going to take Slowbro, Lida gets Camerupt, and Naveen gets Victreebel. 

As the meeting is over, Lida offers to watch the rest of Canari's stream together with Naveen, but Naveen being a bit of a troll, actually shuts off the stream and notes that he prefers to watch the streams on his own. Again, if he wasn't so insufferable during the meeting, I would actually be a bit more supportive of Naveen's desires for his introverted tendencies to be respected! He just comes off a bit assholish here. 

AZ also walks up and thanks me for agreeing to help the suffering Rogue Mega Evolutions... and gives me the Meganiumnite, which will allow me to evolve my Meganium into Meganium. Or, well, Mega Meganium. Because the starters all mega evolve! 

And, well, I end up going towards the new stuff. The Victreebel is just located in some alley, and Naveen is there facing the Victreebel. Naveen points out how at least there won't be witnesses or collateral damage, and the Mega Victreebel evolves... into... uh... it's... it's interesting? I've always found Victreebel to be a rather cool, if slightly weird, design. I like the big leaf on its head. But they leaned on full into making Mega Victreebel comical, making it a giant bulbous pitcher whose top is tied-up with Victreebel's regular vine. Which would be fine, the idea is that it's creating so much poison that it's all clogged up. But then the lips being puffy at the top like one of those fat Zelda fishes is just... I dunno. The general look diverges quite a bit from the sharper vibe of regular Victreebel that despite being a huge fan of the base form, I'm just not the biggest fan of this one. I don't think I hate it, but I just felt like they could've gone in a different direction. 

I mega evolve my Meganium, of course, and Meganium now has four layers of flowers on its neck. Its antennae is also a bit different. I... I like this a lot more than Mega Victreebel, in that it's an adorable 'let's make it a bit fluffier' mentality that Mega Venusaur and Mega Altaria worked with, and the end result doesn't look too silly, but I also felt like Mega Meganium's main body could've had a bit more added to it. More importantly, though, Mega Meganium is Grass/FAIRY, which I thought is awesome. It's a nice addition that I felt is appropriate to Meganium!

The raid against the Rogue Mega Victreebel has Naveen and his Ariados join in, and halfway through the battle Mega Victreebel begins to shoot out giant globs of sludge that create pools of hazard in the battlefield. This gets a bit more insane in the 'phase two' of the battle. It is a bit regrettable that Mega Meganium isn't the best against Mega Victreebel's Poison-type attacks, and I ended up having to switch to Mega Heracross to deal consistent damage to the big pitcher plant.

Still, Mega Victreebel falls, and the mega energy condenses into a Victreebelite. I don't get to catch the Victreebel, but I do have a Bellsprout that would be easy to raise up. I don't think I quite like Mega Victreebel enough to use him, though -- and while I'm still trying to collect my thoughts on how I feel about it, I'm running a Grass-type starter anyway so there's going to be an overlap. 

Anyway, that's a fair bit of cutscenes and plot here. A surprise shiny party member, Naveen's silly streamer obsession, and two of the new Megas in this game!

Random Notes:

• It does appear that the Z-A Battle Royale has been essentially truncated in favour of the Rogue Mega Evolution storyline. And... you know what? I think I much like the Rogue Mega Evolution story. I do think that maybe the Battle Royale could've gone on for a couple more extra levels while we're doing the Rogue Mega Evolution, and we didn't need to jump from V all the way to H, but hunting down the mystery of evolving Mega Pokemon is admittedly a lot more appealing. 
• If you haven't watched the official trailer to Mega Victreebel, it's actually quite cool. It's set up as a couple of trainers investigating a haunted house. The actual reveal of Mega Victreebel is actually shown to be just kind of comical at the end, but I really appreciate the haunted house setting. 
• I don't think it quite registered in my mind, but just like Legends Arceus, Abilities don't exist in this game. Which is supremely odd, considering the whole point of Mega Evolutions in the mainline games is for them to have some really game-breaking abilities. I guess we'll have to wait for Home compatibility or something to find out what abilities guys like Mega Meganium and Mega Victreebel have? 
  
• Which, by the way, brings back the rant I've been having since 2019 about how utterly and insanely daft and bullshit the 'national dex ban' is. I get it from a design perspective -- oversaturating an entire region with 1000+ Pokemon is way too overkill, and that was one of my complaints about Pokemon XY. I get it! You don't want to dilute the new species you are introducing. But don't lie to me that Nintendo decided to just... not program entire chunks of the franchise into the game, pre-existing code, by the way, just for 'competitive balance'? Which, by the way, is an insanely small number of the fandom, and bans in the competitive spaces exist anyway. 
• Other generations have always had the data programmed in, like how the first couple of generational changes had data for Pokemon you can't get in that game... and it's just a matter of transferring them. Even when Ruby/Sapphire didn't have backwards compatibility for the Generation I/II machines, they programmed in all the previous 251 Pokemon, just in case -- and they did -- another game in the same generation makes them obtainable. 
• Like, shit, I know I don't care about the Pan-monkeys or Patrat, but someone out there definitely cares about them -- in the same way that I squee over some unconventional guys like Scolipede! Do you know this is the first time they've been properly able to enter a mainline game since the 3DS era? 
• So yeah. I don't know. I really do want to get into the joy and speculate what abilities these Mega Evolutions have, and I'm reminded of the National Dex culling and that makes me so mad again, so you guys have a rant. 
• But honestly, if hardware is the limitation... fine, they rode that stupid excuse for two generations with a console, the Nintendo Switch. I don't think the get that excuse for the Switch 2.
• Honestly... that's probably what grinds my gears the most. Throw the graphical excuses on top of that, yeah, sure. I'll also note that while people are overly negative about it, and while it doesn't bother me, I will also say that once we move to stronger hardwares, anything else is really going to be an excuse.  
• TL;DR, this was my regularly scheduled national pokedex rant. Go on. 
• Hex Maniacs start to appear in the overworld and the Battle Royale. I know they're one of the most popular trainers from XY, so it's nice to see them back! One of them gives me the Curse TM. 
  
• I know that there apparently is some way to use a rubber-band and the Switch to continually soft-reset for a shiny in one of the first wild areas? Not keen on damaging my Switch, though. 
• Actually, does insurance even exist in the Pokemon world? Where the random rats can potentially have fangs of fire, and the butterflies can shoot psychic beams, how would property insurance even be a viable business? 
• Mega Meganium having Leech Seed as one of her four moves effectively makes one of her moves completely useless against Mega Victreebel as well, since Leech Seed doesn't affect Grass-types.