Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 13: Rivers and Badlands

All good things come to an end, and what a good thing New Pokemon Snap has been. I've honestly been very, very surprised both at the game design of this game and the amount of content in it! When I first wanted to write blog posts for New Snap, I thought the game would take five, maybe six posts, tops. The fact that it's given me so much, and it's even driven me to grind the game a little to unlock specific Pokemon and to level up the areas. At the time of writing this post... not all the areas are maxed out, but they're all level 3 whenever possible.

And honestly, it's been pretty great. Granted, I did go in with no expectations at all, and there were definitely parts of this game that could've been improved, but the game as a whole has been so wholesome and really was what I needed. It really did make me appreciate a lot of Pokemon that I don't necessarily did before, like Sawsbuck and Liepard and Clamperl. A lot of surprisingly deep secrets and interactions that flummoxed me -- in a good way. This particular part of the blog is going to chronicle my reactions as I go through the higher levels of the two DLC locations. As I mentioned in a previous post, I consider myself having 'completed' this game after I completed the Photodex, and that's what I did at the end of this. I just thought I'd open up with a nice little speech about how wholesome and how nice the whole game experience has been. 

And I think the first time around is the River, which I had already been farming a bit even in previous segments. One of the coolest bit was showing Arbok swimming and gliding through the river, poking his head up and down until you Illumina Orb him. We always think of snakes as slithering through trees and shrubs all of the time, but snakes can swim! I don't think we've really ever seen them depict Arbok or Seviper or any of the other snakes like this, though. I mean, I'm sure the anime probably showed one of Jessie's snakes swim in a river at some point...

The Arbok, by the way, is how we 'rescue' Psyduck. I was wondering how I can get the three Aipoms to stop bullying Psyduck, since neither the apples conking the monkeys' heads or using an Illumina Orb on Psyduck did anything, but turns out all I had to do was to get Arbok to move from his starting position and this causes Arbok to hiss and intimidate off all the Aipoms. 

I love this, by the way. I love that a Pokmeon that's most well-known for being utilized as an antagonist's primary Pokemon in the cartoon ends up doing something pretty wholesome and protecting cute little Psyduck. That's why I adored that one episode with the evil psychotic Togepi in one episode of the anime.  

In another run of the river level, Arbok is sleeping coiled up on a branch overlooking a river. And... I can cause a Magikarp to jump up and bonk Arbok right in the nose and cause him to fall into the river. Poor Arbok. I feel bad for him, but he can probably swim. 

There is a massive waterfall that I'm sure is meant to be there to summon Gyarados to climb up the waterfall. I managed to figure out that there's a hidden Crystalbloom at the foot of the waterfall, and I managed in later levels to gather some Magikarps there, but I never managed to get Gyarados to spawn... not in this waterfall, at least. In one of my runs, Gyarados just randomly shows up swimming next to me in the final level as Psyduck floats on by, and I got a shot of him there. 

The night-time river is pretty calming. There's a bunch of fun interactions I can do with Feraligatr as it stalks on top of a cliff and later on jumps down into the river, knocking my vehicle into a shore where a bunch of Ariados-es and Quagsires are hanging out on. Even Pokemon that have shown up in older areas got a fair bit to do! Woopers and Quagsires alternate between sleeping and piddle-paddling in the river, and there's a cliffside where it seems like there's only one Aipom but there's actually a troop of a half-dozen damn dirty apes. 

At level 2 of the night river, I manage to find the little cave behind some hanging plants that I have to scare some Beautiflys away from. In the cave are some unexpected faces... there are Drillbur! And we get to see them go all Transformers and turn into their spinning bullet drill form and dig down into the rock. I'm not sure how wise it is for these Ground-types to be doing it right next to a river, but there you go. Most adorably (and unexpectedly) are a bunch of Cleffa just hanging out in this cave. What... what are you doing in this cave, Cleffa? Your big brothers and sisters are hanging out in the underground cavern like two islands away. 

Unlocking this secret cave in the night also unlocks it in the day... but I think it's only open at level 3, because at level 2 River Day I keep getting knocked to the little island where the Tropius are when Quagsire jumps his fat ass into the river. In the day, the Cleffas are waving their tiny nub-hands and practicing Metronome, that's adorable. 

In level 3 of the rivers, we finally get to see the enigmatic Ursaring that the claw marks on the tree trunks have been foreshadowing all game long... and the Ursaring is the one who shows up and roars to scare off the Aipom from bullying Psyduck. So whether I intervene with Arbok or not, Psyduck will always get saved at some point. It also seems to be an alternating thing whether it's Ursaring or Arbok that sleeps on the log, but whoever sleeps there I can always use an Illumina Orb to summon Magikarp to conk the sleeper into the raging rivers. Another part of the level has Ursaring lurk next to the river, like a bear trying to catch salmon. Except it seems like this particular Ursaring's prey of choice are the poor Magikarps!

A lot of smaller changes happen in level 3 of the river, but the most significant and the most adorable one is... a Tropius flying over the final part of the area... WITH A WOOPER ON HIS HEAD.

I say that again, a Tropius is giving a happy Wooper a ride on his head as he flies around. 

That is so fucking wholesome. 10/10 game. 

Anyway, Ursaring was the last Pokemon I needed for the Belusylva full sticker. And maybe it's a function of being designed as a DLC, and maybe it's because the river actually moves a fair bit fast at some places that it's hard for me to do what I want to, but I felt like the river content is so densely packed with content that I have barely scratched the surface of what's in here.

And... I am sorry to say that I just don't really find the Badlands all that interesting. Tepig, Shinx and Torchic's little adventure is cool (and I finally figured out that they're a Lion King reference... a bit hard to tell when Torchic really doesn't resemble Timon the meerkat) but I felt like it's just not quite as interesting as the river? I am admittedly guilty of not finding desert locations super-duper interesting, so there might be it. 

There are a couple of fun interactions you can do in both the night and day Badlands, including a point where you can goad Tyranitar to beat the shit out of a random Crustle and tip it over. There's a lot of stuff to do with Diglett, too, and I think if you time it right you can get them to knock over the giant boulder? That bit really is a bit puzzling, since my apples can do it in the day, but put like five butterflies on it and suddenly I need help from so many Digletts to tip it over? Hmm? Diglett is pretty fun in this level in general, with them popping up all over the place and basically invading the Onix holes in the canyon at the end of the level... which is very lore-accurate.

I do really like the Gliscors hanging upside-down like the psychotic scorpion-bats that they are, though. One of the Gliscors I can wake up flies right into a part of the area that gets pelted by a ton of Miniors, the poor sod. 

The legendary Pokemon in the Badlands is Zeraora, who's just sleeping in the background near the beginning of the level. I have to pelt it with apples to get it to run around the terrain like he's cosplaying Naruto or something. I really don't have anything noteworthy to say about Zeraora, honestly. He sure runs around the cliffsides and jumps and somersaults and stuff, but it also feels a bit... off? He doesn't feel as integrated into the ecosystem the way some of the other legendaries like Shaymin, Manaphy, Celebi or Lugia are. Then again, I guess it's hard to find a 'proper'place for an edgelord lightning cat-man. 

This is a wholesome game and I feel bad about badmouthing Zeraora, so I do enjoy a lot of the other interactions going on here. Swalot gets a lot of mileage out of the animations that the animators pull with his big mouth, and there's a fair bit more Silicobra than I thought there is in the level... again, I never visualized them hiding under the sand that way, with the tip of its mouth poking upwards. I always thought that they'd hide under the sand like, well, like real desert snakes, where they just burrow under the sand horizontally. 

The Scolipedes lumbering around the poison swamp are obviously very cool, and I love how at one point a Silicobra spits some sand at Scolipede and causes the big centipede monster to chase them down. Stupid, suicidal sand snakes. 

You would think that Zeraora is the last Pokemon for me to take a photo off, and that I could close this Photodex... but no, it's not Zeraora. It's actually... Salazzle! Which is such a random Pokemon to make show up in the final level of the Badlands, but why not? I have to lure it out with the music box from the rock behind Mandibuzz, which has the Salazzle come out and do a little dance. I mean... okay, Salazzle. Sure. 

And with that bit, I have obtained the Voluca island's sticker and completed my Photodex. It's been an absolute blast as I go through this calming and unexpectedly fun journey. I do know that there's probably a lot more that the game still has to offer -- and I'm sure that I could write a lot more posts about this. But it is a nice enough stopping point. See you guys on the next review series!

Random Notes:

• I do plan to put down New Pokemon Snap for a while, but it's going to be a game that, if I'm bored in the next couple of years, I can just pop in and try and figure out how to get the missing star pictures or a side-quest for some Pokemon, y'know? It's a very 'arcade-y' game, so to speak.
• Shout out to the TCG artwork, by the way. Making these blog posts really did end up causing me to go through and appreciate a lot of Pokemon TCG art, and that's always a nice thing. 
  
• Doing a starter count now that the game's over... and it's interesting! Obviously all 3 Kanto starter lines are represented in both their first and final forms, and all 3 Galar starters are represented in their first forms. But it's interesting to see who got left out! We have a representation of all 3 Johto and Sinnoh starters... but we're missing the Treecko line from the Hoenn starters, the Oshawott line from the Unova starters, both the Litten and Rowlet lines from the Alolan starters and surprisingly, no one from Kalos showed up to play. Really? I thought Greninja'd be a shoo-in!
  
• Which actually makes me appreciate this game a bit more, particularly the whole Sawsbuck spiel I did in the previous post. You'd think that some of the rather obvious 'superstar' evergreen Pokemon like Jigglypuff, Lucario, Zoroark, Mewtwo, Dragonite, Togepi, Ditto, and some others would be given prominence... but even some super-classic Pokemon like Snorlax, Psyduck and Gyarados are relegated to DLC! It does really speak to how much the game designers tried to make this a full Pokemon experience instead of just the all-stars that we get a lot of stuff from more obscure Pokemon like Vivillon or Lanturn or Tropius or Shinx! 
• My reflexes are not fast enough to hit the Crystalblooms as we go down the waterfalls. I can hit one of them, but never two of them in quick succession. I assume that's related to how I summon Gyarados.  
• There is, surprisingly, no legendary in the river? The Badlands had Zeraora, and the other DLC area, the secret path, is connected to the nature reserve and Shaymin hangs out there. But with how well-hidden a lot of the legendaries in these other areas are, I'm surprised level 3 didn't unlock a legendary for the River area. I don't know what would work here... Zarude, maybe, swinging through the treetops? That monkey would've been new at the time that this game was released, right? 
• Psyduck eating an apple is adorable.
• Honestly, the highlight of the Badlands is seeing the nonsense that Torchic, Tepig and Shinx get up to as they run around and wander everywhere and poke in and out of the Onix holes. 

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 12: Seasonal Routes

Yeah, turns out that there is way more to New Pokemon Snap than I thought. I really did think that all I have left is to grind up the Badlands and the River, and that's it, but... I just kind of am surprised at the sheer amount of detail and stuff hidden out of the way through hidden interactions and alternate paths. I've been slowly unlocking the alternate paths in addition to grinding for levels, and originally I had intended for what would become this article to be much shorter; just a checklist of the Badlands and River areas and a rapid-fire bullet point at the end of the other areas, but... eh!

The night desert has a bunch of really fun details, particularly when I realized that the Onix romping grounds isn't actually replacing the Trapinch antlion sandpits but that the two are branching pathways. And in higher levels, there is an adorable scene of the Flygon from earlier in the route curled up sleeping next to the Trapinch at the bottom of the hole. 

I also finally figured out how to access the behind-the-waterfall area in the daytime Founja Jungle. I have no problems doing so at night, but turns out that the Liepard needs to be moved out of the way with an illumina orb instead of an apple in the day. It's... it's honestly quite silly, and it really does speak to my one frustration about this game about how it's really not intuitive on what the Illumina Orb does. The apple is easy to understand. Pokemon eat it, and knocking Pokemon with it causes them to get angry. The music box wakes up sleeping Pokemon, and the scan gets some Pokemon to look at me. The Illumina Orb seems to just be 'random bullshit go'. 

Anyway, behind the waterfall in the day aren't Swamperts and Morelulls, but a bunch of Sobbles just pitter-pattering away and playing with their Leafeon friend! And I can be a gigantic asshole and pelt the Sobble with apples, at which it cries. Cry, cry for me, little Sobble! This creates a massive mist that knocks Leafeon out cold. 

Yeah, not so wholesome after all, huh, Pokemon Snap? I do find this just so unexpected, and the mist effect from Sobble was so large that it caught me off-guard. I also don't know if it's just the limitations of the engine or what, but I thought Sobble's tears will cause you to cry along with it (with the power of a thousand onions or whatever the pokedex entry said), but Leafeon just gets knocked out flat. 

One very hard-to-do alternate pathway was the 'ruins path' in the night Founja Jungle. Which I didn't expect was going to be a thing, since the Founja Jungle alerady had the swamp alternate path and the behind-the-waterfall alternate path, and Mew. And this path is completely inaccessible during the day, at least that's what the internet tells me. 

Basically, in a level positively infested with Liepards, I needed to find one specific sleeping one near a bunch of logs and pelt it with an Illumina Orb. And then, as I am about to approach the log that leads me down towards the waterfall area, I need to look around for one specific Liepard that's sleeping in a tree, and orb that sucker to. Not a different Liepard that is sleeping on a tree, not like five other Liepards walking around or sleeping on the ground. No. Just those two specific Liepards. 

And if I hit the two right cats, just as I'm about to cross the log, another Liepard shows up behind my vessel. BEHIND! Meaning that I might've done some of these before and completely missed out on this interaction. This Liepard, I have to yeet an apple towards, causing it to run off... for a bit, before it comes back and knocks my NEO-ONE down onto the ruins that we've passed so many times before. 

My reward is just a slight detour through the forest floor with a bunch of nice shots of Ledian, but ultimately not much else. But these are the kinds of super-elaborate, minimal-stakes easter eggs in video games that I live for. 

I also finally figure out how to unlock that elusive last area in the bottom-right corner of Elsewhere Woods, because it always felt weird that there's just a weird empty spot there. Turns out that you need to light up all the Crystalblooms in the right order to get the lost Deerling to the end of the second foggy area, and have it reunite with Sawsbuck. (There is one Crystalbloom that you shouldn't light up, but unlike the Liepard there's some logic to this since it brings Deerling to the wrong direction).

I've done this Deerling rescue mission before, but one thing I didn't realize? If I did this, a random scannable branching path opens up, and I can follow the Deerling-Sawsbuck parent and child pair into a completely different part of the Elsewhere Woods, with a bunch of Lotads minding their own business... and a wonderful, wonderful grove where all four seasons are represented and the Sawsbuck and Deerling from all four seasons are there.

Or, well, three, anyway. I might've missed a step or two in the couple of times I triggered this path. But the location still looks amazingly pretty and peaceful, and it's honestly so much respect given to Sawsbuck and Deerling when they've never really gotten any kind of a highlight from the games at all. They were a one-note gimmick in Black/White, and they show up in different forms to show off the open world in Scarlet/Violet... but I'm so glad that there's at least one game, even if it's a side game, where these guys are given some attention. Someone in Bandai-Namco, when developing this game, really liked the idea of Sawsbuck changing with the seasons so much that I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Elsewhere Woods, the mechanically coolest area in the game, was created out of the genesis of a game designer who wanted to incorporate an area with all four Sawsbuck forms. 

Anyway! I also go into the it's a small world secret side path, and... this is also another side path that I missed out despite it being literally just there. There's nothing I have to do to unlock this, no insane Lost Deerling sidequest or figuring out which Carbinks to hit to summon Diancie, or which Liepards will unlock an alternate path... no, there's just a branching path I somehow never really scanned before. It brings me into a giant hollowed-out tree stump where Snorlax is sleeping. Yay, Snorlax! 

I've seen bits of him while traveling through the secret side path previously, but I thought the puzzle was how to get Snorlax to wake up, instead of trying to get to where he's sleeping.

At night, Scorbunny and Pichu take a nap on the Snorlax's belly, apparently tired out after their adventure with Dodrio and Torterra in the day.

Waking up Snorlax is a bit of an ordeal, but a fun one! I have to lob apples... into Snorlax's open mouth! Four times! That's honestly quite adorable, and unlike the Liepard puzzle one that makes absolute sense. After waking Snorlax up as a small shrunken-down cameraman, Snorlax would later show up at the end in the flower field. I even got it to run, completing a request!

And with Snorlax as the final Pokemon, I get the Florio island sticker! That's four out of six stickers done. 

I also go to the level 3 ruins, which has a fair bit of interactions. Jirachi has a couple of different behaviour, the Sigilyphs are sleeping, the Beheeyems are sleeping while floating, which is glorious... but best of all are the pair of Golurk that are flying with their arms and lower body retracted through the sky. It's always one of the most ridiculous things I've seen a Pokemon unexpectedly do that the games don't really do justice to. I like Golurk. 

There's also a fun little interaction where the Noivern from the earlier levels is menacing a small Salandit cave. I can drive off the Noivern, causing the Salandit to scuttle out... and its friend, too, which is Umbreon! And the Umbreon kind of runs through the ruins location, eventually actually having a very adorable 'dog meets dog' moment with Absol. Lookit those tails wag. It's so wholesome. 

And I did also go through the park at level 3... I keep trying to get Heracross and Pinsir to fight. In the midst of doing that I managed to trigger a bunch of new interactions, like getting the Bouffalant to headbutt each other when they get pissed off by the nasty-ass jingle, and witnessing a fight between a Wurmple and a Taillow. Wurmple uses Poison Gas or some kind of attack, which is fine... if he didn't like shoot the purple gas right out of his ass. No, seriously, the Wurmple actually physically spins around to point his bum at the Taillow. 

Another fun interaction in the nighttime beach is getting a Crabrawler to accidentally punch the sleeping Exeggutor, who wakes up and gets pissed and begins chasing the Crabrawler around. It's not the first time a member of this evolutionary line is chased by an angry tree, with the Crabominable and Abomasnow in the snow level! At the end of the level the Exeggutor is somehow chasing two Crabrawlers.

Also in the beach level there's two Pyukumukus arm-wrestling. Glorious. I love Pyukumuku. There's also two Pikachus on a date, and... I'm still trying to get Seviper and Zangoose to fight, but it might be a level 3 thing. 

Anyway, that's more or less what I have from warndering around old areas, but that's a lot of fun new interactions. This is honestly been a pretty fun ride. Next up we'll explore the new levels of the two DLC areas, and we'll be done with New Pokemon Snap!

Random Notes:

• I know there's a huge Teraleak thing that's happening, with a whole ton of concept arts and whatnot that is released for stuff... I haven't read any of them, and frankly probably wouldn't for a while, not until someone compiles stuff that are 'confirmed' to actually be from Gamefreak and whatnot. The Beta Pokemon designs, however, I will absolutely do a review about, though again probably not before December at the absolute earliest just to give everyone a chance to settle down and for people who have the energy to sift through the misinformation to do so. 
• I'm actually not sure why my jungle experience levels are in triple-digits instead of five-digits, or the nighttime reef. It's not because of the score, since I do get a decent amount, and it can't be because of the lack of new behaviours, since I grinded some of the desert levels without photographing any new behaviour. Eh? 
  
• Another fun detail that I'm not sure I've mentioned before or not, but if you lob apples at Cacnea, instead of bouncing off of it, the apples actually get stuck to Cacnea's cactus thorns. 
• There are actually a lot of Applin in some of the seasonal pathways in Elsewhere Woods. I definitely should be looking up to the trees a lot more often. 
• There's an online guide on which branching path to take in the first foggy part of Elsewhere Woods, and how you interact with Espeon in order for you to guarantee which of the four seasons you end up in. I just rely on RNG, man. 
• Shaymin shows up a fair bit more than other legendaries in the Nature Park, actually! It's just that I keep mistaking him for Grookey, since he's a little green guy that also runs around with Pichu in the beginning.
• Some of the Beheeyems also dance. It's pretty cute, all things considered.
• There are a lot of Drifblims carrying Clamperl in the night beach at higher levels. I thought it was just an easter egg for the night reef. I'm not sure why these two are paired up specifically in this game, but they sure are. 

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. 

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 10: Deltas, Legendaries & Cowboys

Because the previous post was a bit long, I separated out my explorations of the two post-game DLC areas! First up is the River, which is based on one of the most iconic areas in the original Pokemon Snap, and Todd even makes mention of it. This doesn't mean that we're sticking to the original 151 for the river area, though. There are a lot of Magikarps here, but almost immediately we're accosted with even more Beautifly and a Feraligatr jumps and splooshes into the river behind me. 

Most routes tend to have a little 'story' going on throughout it, like the Grookey and Pichu playing around throughout the first Nature Park level, and our buddy this time around is Psyduck, who gets chased around by evil, vile Aipoms. Man, monkeys are evil! Leave that duck alone! I don't like monkeys. 

The Psyduck just gets chased around until at some point it's in the river and ultimately just rides the rapids next to us, looking upwards. No thoughts, head empty, Psyduck? We could learn from you. That's just such a cute little shot of Psyduck just floating in the river with his dumb empty expression looking up. 

There are also a bunch of other Pokemon, notably showing off Sobble sleeping with a bunch of Tropius. I love Sobble! Grookey and Scorbunny got so much prominence in the early forest and park levels, it's honestly kind of surprising that Nintendo didn't push for all three of the Galar starters at once and Sobble only shows up in the higher-level jungle level in the original game and even then he doesn't follow us across the route like his two fellow starters. 

Obviously this is because Sobble is the most superior and most perfect Galarian starter by a huge mile so I guess they don't need to promote him, hmm hmm. 

Also, speaking of Tropius... man, Tropius is cool. I remembered being so impressed with how Tropius looked in the Pokemon Adventures manga, and being wholly disappointed when the actual Pokemon isn't useful at all. And honestly, Tropius is probably one of those Pokemon that's overdue for some kind of evolution or regional variant. 

There are some moments in the river that are clearly supposed to be some kind of a secret unlocked in later levels, including claws on trees that specifically identify Ursaring (which I thought was a really nice integration of real-life bear behaviour) and a mysterious giant waterfall which rather obviously is going to be where Gyarados shows up. I never played the original Pokemon Snap, but even I know that the iconic scenes from that game includes Gyarados climbing a waterfall; and a Charmeleon falling into lava and evolving into a Charizard. 

I wasn't particularly looking forwards to the Badlands, if we're being honest, since it's another desert level, but with some canyons and a couple extra oasis watering holes. Very cowboyland, I guess? It's really great, surprisingly. We start off at this duo of inactive geysers, and at one point a huge Wile E. Coyote rock falls and splashes into the water. A bunch of Crustle lumber slowly around the holes, while Mandibuzzes perch on dead trees and Diglett make funny noises as they pop in and out. 

Just like the Psyduck in the River, and Pichu-and-friends in the shrunken map, we follow the adventures of a trio of goofballs -- a Shinx, a Tepig and a Torchic. I'm... I'm not sure why these three specifically. Tepig and Torchic, sure, they're starters, and Fire-type starters, but a Shinx instead of someone like... Chimchar? Chimchar's even in the volcano region. But I'm not complaining! They're very cute as they scamper around. 

There's also a bizarre sequence where I see a little... red... plant thing that is near a Tepig, and I was utterly bamboozled at what this is. Turns out it's a Silicobra! That was another Pokemon that I kinda forgot, and definitely would've been much more memorable if my first impression had been like this instead of the rather dull way it was slithering around in Galar's more limited engine. 

And then we get a giant toxic swamp! Insert your own Dark Souls or Shrek joke here, whichever you prefer. The toxic grove is populated by a single Swalot, although a Koffing flies around nearby. There's a lot of stuff to scan here that explains that the toxic fumes come from vents and crystals and whatnot... don't need to try to explain it to me, Pokemon, I have played enough fantasy games to accept that sometimes, swamps just do be toxic. 

The final part of the region is a giant canyon with massive holes drilled into them by Onixes. The Digletts pop in and out, and even a massive Onix lurks out and says hi at one point. Between the Onix swarm doing Dune Sandworm behaviours in the desert, the entire level devoted to Steelix and this... the designers really have a lot of respect to the Onix evolutionary line. I can respect that. It does really make a very memorable location. 

I unlock the Badlands at night, and the Tepig Gang is now joined by a Rockruff and they get into a whole lot of hijinks particularly in the geyser area, and the geyser explodes at one point to everyone's surprise. I love that. The 'story' following them is a bit more apparent at night, and it's just kind of nice to see. This game doesn't have much in terms of a proper 'main' story, but it sure got a lot of nice, wholesome moments. They play a lot in the geyser area, and later do a Scooby-Doo thing as they run into the giant Onix tunnels and keep popping in and out. 

A whole cluster of Vivillons are perched around the massive big rock that falls down into the geyser in the day, with a whole lot of other patterns instead of just the sandstorm one. Interesting. 

And in the toxic swamp, a majestic Scolipede is just slowly walking around, surveying the area around him. Man, I love Scolipede. Such a badass giant fat centipede monster. Throwing a bunch of stuff into the toxic lake gets a surprise, though, as four Swalots suddenly burst out of them -- a pretty damn comical sight considering how the Swalots look. 

And then... I just mostly did a bunch of leveling up for experience points. I will consider myself to have completed this game once I've snapped at least a single picture of all the Pokemon available. Not insane enough to do all the requests and fill all four stars for each single Pokemon, but this, I can do. And first up is to go through some of the older areas and see if any legendaries have popped up, after Manaphy and Shaymin in the previous run. 

One rather obvious one that the quests clue me in is the presence of 'rainbow feathers' in the volcano. So let's go hunting for a giant fenghuang! And... I wasn't really able to find the Ho-Oh through a couple of runs, until in a third reset it just flies by. I'm not sure what I did that was different. Was it illuminating the Altaria or the Talonflame or something with the music box? I'm not quite sure, but the Ho-Oh just flies past the opening area's sky leaving a trail of rainbows just like how Ho-Oh did in the first episode of the Pokemon anime. 

Elsewhere Woods, meanwhile, has a rather obvious Pokemon that I think I speculated about but didn't have it confirmed until playing through this -- Celebi! Celebi flitters by very quickly in the last part of the run, and now it makes sense why the forest trail keeps teleporting me to different moments in the season. Good show, Celebi. Honestly, as much as I love the volcano and the undersea areas, Elsewhere Woods might take the cake for being my favourite. 

In the Ruins of Remembrance, Jirachi is perhaps one of the easiest legendaries to take a photo of. It just flies out of the temple and plays with the Eldegoss in the beginning of the level, and then keeps showing up as I travel deeper into the ruins. At one point it's even sleeping on top of one of the totems! Apparently, Jirachi's crystalized form shows up in the first level of the Ruins of Remembrance, which I confirmed by replaying the first level... I guess I just thought it's a weird rock among all the weird totem stuff going on around here?

Interestingly, photographing Jirachi earns me an Aurus Island sticker, showing that I've photographed every Pokemon in this island. Okay! That's going to be my 'badges'. The other areas really don't have their photo-dexes completed because I haven't really touched the DLC areas all that much yet, so I'm going to assume that I haven't unlocked their respective final areas' full complement of Pokemon. 

And the final Pokemon that I found... was actually kind of spoiled to me by a friend, but to be honest I don't think I would've been able to figure this one out without a guide. At night in the Founja Jungle, I need to turn around and play the lullaby, and a pink ball of light shows up. Lobbing an apple at it causes Mew to appear, who continues to plague you until the end of the route. 

And this is kind of a twofold reference, and one that honestly shows that despite being made by a third party, Bandai Namco did give a shit when making this game. Mew flying around in a pink bubble was how the original Pokemon Snap handled Mew, with the boss fight against Mew having Mew transform into a pink bubble that we have to keep hitting with apples. But the fact that they picked this area is a huge, huge nod to how in the original Generation I games and the anime's movie prequels, Mew was explicitly noted to have been found in the deep jungles.

I also did the Nature Park, looking for a legendary, but it's just Shaymin from the Meganium level, hiding very expertly in the midst of so many flowers. Man, what New Pokemon Snap has been teaching me is that the camouflage employed by these Pokemon really do work with the right background. 

And... that's it for this post. I know I have a fair bit to play around. I'm not sure if every area has its own legendary... I haven't found one in the desert, or the undersea region either; and maybe Ho-Oh and Manaphy just reoccurs there just like Shaymin. But I'm pretty sure that the snowy areas and the underground cave is likely to have its own unique legendary. There are also some additional secrets that I'm dying to at least explore... what's in that whirlpool? How do I get Zangoose and Seviper to fight (because that's definitely going to be an interaction)? Where is that Jolteon? How do I summon Gyarados? 

Random Notes:

• See the pun I make above with "DLC"? Heh heh heh heh. If I actually considered the three actual DLC areas -- the shrinking area was originally released as DLC -- then it'd be Deltas, Littles and Cowboys. 
  
• I was confused why there are so much Beautiflies in the river since they've shown up quite a bit in this game already, until I realized that it's because the River is technically located in the same area as the places that the Beautifly hung out in the areas before it. Neat! 
• In Elsewhere Woods, I also finally unlock that little side-story where I can keep lighting up a bunch of crystalblooms to guide a confused Deerling all the way to the end of the foggy path, where its Sawsbuck parent (and an Espeon for some reason, is that his other parent?) is waiting for them. That's honestly one of the most wholesome stuff in the game, and probably the only time in my life that Deerling and Sawsbuck have been memorable to me. 
• Honestly, for a Pokemon themed around seasons, Deerling and Sawsbuck should have been much more memorable. But the only difference between the various Sawsbucks are just the designs! They don't even have like a specific move or specific abilities between the different forms.
• Giving the Midnight Lycanroc an apple has it pick it up, look at it... and then toss it away with the most jackass expression on its face. God bless Midnight Lycanroc. 
• Be honest, how many of you guys looked at Ho-Oh in the first episode of Pokemon and thought it was just a weirdly-drawn Moltres? 
• Jirachi's cool. I always thought Wish Maker is one of the better Pokemon movies, but that might just be my bias for the giant Cthulhu Groudon that gets summoned at the end. 
• I also got a Kecleon hanging upside-down with his tail in Elsewhere Woods. It's part of a request, but I stumbled upon it by accident. He's just so chill, I actually think he's just sleeping while hanging upside down like a goddamn lunatic. 
• For some reason, while I was going through some of the older areas, apparently I missed a fair amount of Pokemon, like Cubchoo! I really do think that's a Pokemon I've seen before!

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 9: Final Illumination

So last where we left off, we get teleported from a mysterious ruin with the five totems of the Illumina Pokemon we've been meeting throughout all this time.

And I emerge... in front of a dilapidated, desiccated tree in the middle of a grove. Which... I immediately recognize as Xerneas. Hey, Xerneas! Old buddy, old pal!

Now, out of the Kalos games, I played Pokemon Y... but Pokemon XY was when I really got back into Pokemon after a multi-generation hiatus. That year was extremely insane as I caught up on Generation IV and V (and those two had a lot of content), caught up on the Pokemon Adventures manga, and went full-on geek as I tried to figure out what was going on with these Mega Evolutions and a new type and the new drip-feeding of new Pokemon... man, I miss Xerneas and Yveltal. Their little Legends game is coming out soon and I'm super excited about that. 

And the Xerneas 'boss' fight, if you can even call it that, is actually a tad less stressful than the preceding Steelix boss fight. Xerneas transforms into a ball, and zips around and I just have to conk it with an Illumina orb to get it to turn into a deer, and then conk it again to get it illuminated. The thing is, Xerneas is kind enough to do a huge roar every time he's knocked out of his orb form, making it rather easy for me to do that. 

The encounter with Xerneas just takes me through the abandoned ruin, which is pretty chill and a fair bit brighter than the longer Houndoom-infested ruin elsewhere in Aurus Island. We eventually find the full version of the mural where it shows Xerneas in the middle of the other five Illumina Pokemon, being the source of the power... and the blast of energy that Xerneas is exuding is a big honking green "X". That was actually rather obvious in hindsight, and very visible in the ruined mural we saw earlier in the ruins area, and it's one of those things that gets super-duper obvious when you realize what it is!

And... and that's it for the "main story" of New Pokemon Snap. After the end of the route, Xerneas has the five glowing orbs representing the other five Illumina Pokemon spin around himself, then around me, then he reverts back into becoming a tree. I return to the LENS base, where the Professor gives his big explanation to the mystery he's been researching, which is the fact that... well, we kinda figured out in the previous level, where Xerneas and the Illumina Pokemon were the ones that created the barrier to protect Lental from the meteor. 

And... and I'm actually half-expecting a fight between the Illumina Pokemon and whatever threat comes from that meteor, like Deoxys or the Ultra Beasts or something. The meteor actually turned out to be completely irrelevant! Which... which is honestly fine, I suppose. This is a photography game, I suppose I can't really complain that it doesn't have an epic action-adventure ending. 

I really could've done without the final cheesy cutscene, though, where the Professor is actually confused why all this Illumina phenomenon is happening immediately at the same time and stuff, and Todd, Rita and the other kid all say in unison that it's essentially the power of friendship, and that my character is so beloved by Pokemon that it stimulates the Illumina Pokemon to come out. Hmm, okay? I kinda wished that there was something a bit more concrete I do in the boss fights, actually, like saving a Pokemon with my apples or whatnot. But... small complaint. 

The credits roll, rather cutely with some of the great (and not so great) photographs I've taken throughout my adventure, and closes with a picture of the group with the LENS base Pokemon. That's neat. 

The game then reboots and I get like three cutscenes that trigger at the same time. First up, I get 'burst mode', which is like a regular camera but I assume it'll make it a lot easier to capture fast-moving behaviours. That's going to be useful if I enter a stage with the singular focus to catch, like, a super-specific behaviour like that shot of Stunfisk zapping Octillery in the beach. I don't plan to go out of my way to do too much of the sidequests, otherwise we'll be in this game the whole year... but it's nice. 

The Professor also tells me that I'm getting scores at the end of each trek, which is not something I look forward to. The post-trek button-mashing exercise is long enough as it is, I don't need two or three more A-button presses. Honestly, I almost wished that they gave me a 'skip the evaluation' or 'evaluation summary' option. 

Then I unlock like three different new levels. I got a bit confused, and apparently this is a function of the DLC. The original 'post-game' level is the Evening Reef level, which was a conspicuously missing area considering the regular reef is listed as Reef (Day). The other two -- the a Badlands area in the volcano island and the River area in Belusylva Island. The little shrinking adventure we have was also originally released as a DLC, but it gets unlocked without having to beat the game's main story. I'll be saving these two areas for later on, because I actually did a couple of extra explorations in older areas instead. 

The evening reef is still pretty calming, and the sunset just looks fucking majestic. Honestly, I think we can safely say that New Pokemon Snap is the absolute prettiest Pokemon game in the franchise without exception, right? I don't think any of the mainline series games comes close to this. I'm still confused a bit with the massive whirlpool, and I might actually look up a guide on how to get it to cough up its secrets. 

But there are also a lot of very nice moments. There's an Alolan Raichu actually surfing on top of the ocean waves with his tail, which isn't something that I think you can do in the games. It's something I've seen Alolan Raichu do in the clips of the anime, but it looks so majestic with the better water particle effects of this game. I think this is also a cheeky nod do the original Surfing Pikachu, which was in the original Pokemon Snap. 

There are Squirtles happily blowing bubbles, and a majestic Primarina is perched on top of a rockside also blowing bubbles and singing. Backdropped by the sunset, she looks pretty majestic! Drifblims also float around the skies and it's honestly never going to be something that I would think about doing but it makes total sense. Oh, and at night the Clamperls rise up from the abyssal level of the ocean and have an adorable little assemble on the reef. At a second run, I also get a Vaporeon to rise up from the blue hole. That's neat.

The little side-branch that used to have the Pelippers now contain a family of Lapras, and with the power of the Illumina orbs I can get a baby Lapras and a mama Lapras to sing together. Is that a reference to Ash's Lapras from the anime? It feels like it is. 

I return to the night reef in the second level, and there's also the 'rising sun' pattern of Vivillon fluttering around, which I thought was neat... but the most surprising behaviour is... among the five or so Drifblims that hover around, one of them is holding a Clamperl! OH NO! Poor Clamperl! It's being kidnapped by a ghostly child-napping ghost balloon from the underworld! And this is a game where we've seen so many predator/prey pairs chasing each other on-screen! What is it going to do with the Clamperl! 

...nothing harmful, actually, and it's a bit of a surprise considering this game! Following the Drifblim to the end actually shows the Drifblim dropping the Clamperl back into a part of the ocean where other Clamperls are. That's... that's surprisingly wholesome. I love it. 

I also do the Lapras interaction again, but this time a nearly-missable little blue blob flits in and out and joins the singing... it's... the Prince of the Oceans, Manaphy! 

I shouldn't be so surprised, but I went "WTF!" and got quite surprised... and I don't know if this is just the post-game or whatever, but I looked it up and apparently legendary Pokemon will start appearing in other areas now. Hmm, interesting! 

I did a bunch more experience farming while watching some anime just to get my area levels up to 3, then I go to the six boss-fight levels to see what's new. I do know that new Pokemon pop up in the Meganium level, like Combee and Eevee... but repeating that level now has Meganium randomly have SHAYMIN ride on top of her head if you get Meganium to investigate a nearby cliff. Yeah, I did this level before at level 2, and Shaymin most definitely isn't there, so there's a nice little incentive to go back for sure. 

A lot of the other levels don't have too much in them. The Wishiwashi level is neat in that the two jerk Wailmers from the underwater level show up, and some Finneon and Luvdiscs hang out with the giant Wishiwashi horde. The Volcarona lair has some Monferno and Archeops. Milotic's level is a lot nicer to travel with more Pokemon on the lake, with Serperior, Trevenant, Lotad and Magikarp. Man, Milotic's really majestic, huh? 

The Steelix level takes me through a slightly different route, I think, and throughout it there is a little side-story of Crobats and Noibats like chasing each other, until the giant Steelix comes and drives off the Crobat and I guess it likes the Noibats a bit better. 

The Xerneas level has... a completely different bat! Woobat! Oh, so that's the source of the random heart markings on the totem temple level? That's so weird and random and I love it. I was wondering if it was connected to the legendary or something. Nope, it's just a bunch of bats. Some other Pokemon like Sigilyph, Houndoom and Absol also hang out here, and I do like that the Absol lurks near the giant meteor mural, as if going "see, I warned you guys about this". And at the end, we see Xerneas curled up next to an Umbreon and Natu. That's surprisingly wholesome and rather unexpected for the Dark-type Eevelution! I think I'm only one Jolteon left from completing the set. 

At the time of writing I've obviously also done the new River and Badlands areas, but I'll save it for next time! This has been a really fun ride as I complete the main story. I think there's enough secrets and new areas in this game to keep the Snap train going for a couple more posts, but it's definitely been one of the most unexpectedly charming and wholesome games I've played for a long while. 

Random Notes:

• I'll definitely be doing a lot of the post-game (and originally DLC) areas, but this has been extremely therapeutic to play. I've actually been trying to play a couple of other games and watching other series that... hasn't been working out that well? I guess I kinda missed the point where these games and shows are supposed to be entertainment first and foremost, and I just need to play what makes me comfortable, even if it does mean that it's another Pokemon game. 
• So, what next? I'll probably play Legends ZA if it comes at any point of time later this year, but I do have a copy of Detective Pikachu Returns. I might do a speedrun of the remakes of Diamond/Pearl or Mystery Dungeon, but that will probably be a two or three part blog post similar to how I handled Let's Go Pikachu. We'll see. 
  
• I also purchased The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and will probably be playing it after this. I'm not sure if I want to do a proper Let's Play of it, though. 
• I am a bit disappointed that Xerneas doesn't go from flying orb to depowered Xerneas form to rainbow-horn Xerneas form. It was always a bit of a point of confusion for me when playing through the Kalos games that Xerneas had an additional 'off-power' form when he's sitting in our party that Yveltal never had. 
• Man, Todd and Phil really don't have a personality at the end of the day, huh? Rita at least has some bit of sassiness going on for her and Professor Mirror has this whole bit about him trying to confirm his hypotheses, but the other two might as well not be there. 
• I reached the level 3 versions of the daytime Belusylva Forest, and I get a bunch of new interactions. I can knock away an Arbok menacing a Wooper, and the Wooper's expressions after being rescued is adorable. Sobble and Venusaur also start spawning in the level 3 day jungle, which... yay! Venusaur is expected since Blastoise and Charizard were unlocked in level 3 locations, but Sobble has been very conspicuously absent whereas his two Galar starter buddies Scorbunny and Grookey were very prominent in the first couple of areas.
• I was trying to do some of the easy-looking requests just for the heck of it, but some of them are really kind of confusing on what, exactly, counts for these specific behaviours. And sometimes (like the Vespiquen one) I just complete it without even knowing what specific behaviour that the Pokemon is doing. 
• Rather interestingly, Professor Mirror has no comment about Manaphy and Shaymin. Does he not know these guys are legendaries? 

Let's Play New Pokemon Snap, Part 8: League of Explorers

And now... Outaway Cave! It's not quite as impressive, admittedly, compared to the Area Zero Descent from Pokemon Scarlet/Violet; not in the way that I genuinely feel like the snow or beach or volcano areas blow the mainline games out of the water. But I guess I might just be spoiled by how the 'underwater depths' level is basically this, but the ocean is inherently a lot more exciting than a cave.

And the cave has a bunch of interesting Pokemon, too. The Carbinks and the tiny Joltiks scuttling around are pretty expected, and so do the massive Crobats that move around patrolling their territory. But having some Braviaries hanging out in the cave is a bit unexpected. 

And most interesting are these random black portals of shadow that surprised me. My first thought is like 'oh cool, we'll have a ghost-type side-path', perhaps similar to the Elsewhere Woods. But chucking apples at it just makes everyone's best buddy Gengar peek out his head in confusion. Bless you, Gengar. 

As I go deeper and deeper there are some disturbing noises that I hear, and turns out that it's Croagunk ribbiting. Okay! There's a cool area where a bunch of Sableyes are scuttling around digging for stuff. More Crobats hovering around two Rampardos who are just roaring on top of a little island... I guess Lental just has all the fossil Pokemon alive and well, huh? This truly is some kind of a 'lost world' where these prehistoric Pokemon have survived to the present day. 

Level two of Outaway Cave adds some extra Pokemon, like Noibat fluttering around in many parts of the cave. In contrast, a bunch of the Crobats are sleeping upside-down, which I find is adorable. Do they have, like, specific niches of time that they fly around hunting for prey? Like, when the Crobats are sleeping, the Noibats are out, and vice-versa?

In another display of predator-prey relationship, a group of Sableyes are chasing around a Carbink, which makes total sense. I didn't really think it would be the case, but Carbinks would absolutely be food for the Sableye, huh? There are also Clefairy hanging out near the crystalbloom flowers, but also, interestingly, Drifloon -- being balloons, I don't think that they would find a cave disconnected from all the empty air, particularly one filled with spiky rock points, to be a particularly good habitat. But hey. 

 

I then pass through a bunch of giant steel formations that the game tells me are made up of solidified magma. A Mawile hangs out there. Now that's more like it, that's a more interesting-looking cave structure. The cave then splits off rather unexpectedly to like a hidden grove deep in the depths of the cave, with a bunch of plant-covered ruins deep in the depths. It's pretty nice-looking, and, of course, this unlocks our fifth and next Illumina Pokemon...

Who is located deep, deep in the depths of the subterranean network. It turns out to be a massive Steelix, and just like Wishiwashi beforehand the game really does make Steelix feel super-duper impressive as it flits and swoops and drills through giant holes in the tunnel walls, moving in and out far more swiftly than its bulk would make you believe. I really do like this -- again, it's such a great usage of a Pokemon that honestly is a bit underappreciated. 

And Steelix actually moves so fast between holes and the murky depths of the subterranean caves that I actually failed to get him to light up properly. Steelix needs two or three Illumina orbs to be chucked at him for him to properly glow and be registered as an Illumina Pokemon and to complete the boss fight, and I had to repeat the mission twice to properly do it. It's switching between the apple to trigger Steelix into bursting out, the rapid-fire Illumina Orb chucking, and subsequently the photography that gets me. 

After finishing the Steelix mission, Professor Mirror tells me to take a quick detour past a 'broken wall'. There is a large open area that is human-made and not at all natural, and there is a giant painting of the Illumina symbol on the ground and a giant mural of the five Illumina Pokemon we've met previously -- Meganium, Milotic, Volcarona, Wishiwashi and Steelix -- with a sixth Pokemon scratched out in the center of the mural. How (in)convenient! But the mural also shows what the NPC quickly conclude is the Illumina Pokemon defending Lental from the meteors falling, and the professor is a bit flustered to realize that his theory is actually wrong -- Illumina Pokemon appear to have existed before the meteorite, instead of deriving the power from them. Okay, sure. 

And apparently meeting all five Illumina Pokemon triggers some kind of weirdness on the professor's holographic map, where a bunch of laser light energy, for some reason, began to pool and converge upon a single area. I'm not entirely sure why this is going on other than some handwave of the Illumina energy, but I suppose the power of being photographed caused some of the Illumina energy to... surge... or... something? Whatever. I'm not supposed to really think about this too much, I suppose. 

We unlock the central island on the map, Aurus Island... which I thought was just going to be the boss fight arena for whatever legendary is going to be the final boss of this game... but nope, we actually do get another whole-ass map, which I absolutely love!

Aurus Island gives us some ruins with a bunch of new Pokemon! There are a lot of Houndoom lurking around and acting as the Liepard/Mightyena equivalent of this level, being numerous and growling and moving a lot. A bunch of Eldegoss (a rather underappreciated bugger!) hover around happily above the Houndooms, as the NEO-ONE approaches the giant temple. I then dive down through a hole in the ruins, brushing path some Houndooms and seeing a massive Noivern flapping around. A bunch of Salandit scuttle past and these are really hard to catch on camera!

These ruins are connected to a subterranean cave, with a surprisingly elaborate setup that would've really screamed "this is an ancient altar to summon a dread evil god". No, seriously, if this was Zelda or Elder Scrolls or Witcher or something, you can bet that this is going to be a boss fight room. A massive... pillar? Tree trunk? A massive thing with glowing multicoloured circuitry-like veins run up it, and the veins are connected to like, these rivers that are themselves connected to a bunch of totem-like statues which are guarded by really spooky Unovan Pokemon. There are also a bunch more ruins and relics and enigmatic creepy background murals that I can't read, but I am sure contains a whole lot of information about the ancient culture that worshipped whatever legendary Pokemon that they constructed this whole temple around. 

It is a legendary Pokemon, I hope. As much as I appreciated the Illumina boss fights, it would be bizarre if all this buildup was them worshipping like a Magnezone or Aggron or something. 

And the Pokemon here are really appropriate. Two Unovan Pokemon introduced guarding 'ruins' show up here, with Golurk and Sigilyph apparently hanging around and presumably the ancient Lentals had some kind of contact with the ancient Unovans (and whatever other games afterwards that had these Pokemon guard their ruins). The Sigilyph in particular are insane. Throw a single apple at them, and they go absolutely haywire like an ancient alarm system, literally shooting lasers in a dozen different directions. It's harmless, but it does a great job at showcasing how cool that this otherwise kinda forgettable Pokemon can be. 

Golurks, meanwhile, are interesting in that a lot of them just stand stoic and still (and block some stuff) until I activate and power them up with Illumina Orbs. They're not exactly artificial and more alien, but Beheeyem hover around being creepy with their glowing fingertips. Pretty cool stuff, all around. 

And, of course, ever bizarrely associated with creepy ruins ever since they showed up in the Ruins of Alph several consoles ago, Natu are just hanging around with these unnatural Pokemon. Bless you, Natu. Pretty cool statues all around, with the five statues around the pools clearly being based around the five Illumina bosses, but done in a very neat Aztec-Mayan statue style. 

Now equipped with the region's Illumina Orbs (is the underwater one the only hard one to find? The rest of them didn't really have a puzzle to do), I go back for the level 2. A lot more of the Golurks are moving, and a couple of Chandelures now hover around the central totem. And... it's kind of obvious that I need to light up all the crystalblooms next to each Illumina Pokemon's totem, and thankfully the Aurus Island Illumina Orb functions for every single one. 

The first couple are easy enough, but the third one has its flower hidden in a crevice located right after the pond. Then the fourth one has a trio of Eldegoss just clustering around it, and the fifth one has a Golurk that I need to activate to hit the Crystalbloom. I missed that fourth one in my first run and had to repeat it, but it's not too hard. With that, the quintet of flowers at the end of the level lights up, and it creates a massive pillar of light that looks pretty ominous. 

The Professor tells me that this will lead to the final final area, with the ultimate Illumina Pokemon and everything, and that this is the location where all the power in Lental converge together. Time for a climactic showdown... except not, because he needs to teleport me back to base and evaluate my photos, before apparently sending me back into the teleportation stream. 

I mean... okay, sure.

Anyway, both the ruins and the subterranean cave have been very delightful to go through. I am saving the final boss for the next part, and I understand there's a fair bit of post-game areas that were originally released as DLC, so we have quite a ways to play!

Random Notes:

• I'm going to assume that the final Pokemon at the end of the Aurus Island is going to be a legendary Pokemon. I actually am kind of impressed with the restraint of the game designers in not making the five Illumina Pokemon all more minor legendaries, since I really do appreciate that it gave Pokemon like Steelix and Milotic a fair amount of prominence in this game. Honestly, this game has been really good at making a lot of the normally more forgettable Pokemon feel so much more in-tune with the world around them. 
  
• If the legendary Pokemon's going to be connected to the meteor in some way, I guess Deoxys, Jirachi, Kyurem or one of the Alolan cover legendaries might take the spot? 
• Were the Illumina Pokemon protecting Lental from a meteor the whole reason why there are so many prehistoric Pokemon in Lental? Did the barrier protect the Lental region from the dinosaur extinction?
• I love that at the end of the Outaway Cave level, there's a Gengar who actually looks at the giant glowing video game marker that marks the end of the road and just grins at it while inspecting it. At least someone is aware enough about the weird teleporting stuff humans have been putting in their habitats.
• Sleeping Croagunks blow huge snot bubbles, as it turns out. 
• Wait, Rampardos only had five cards ever printed for it? Like, jeez, I don't really care about Rampardos, but for a Generation IV Pokemon that's honestly quite bad, isn't it? Like, I looked up some ranadom fourth-gen Pokemon and the likes of Roserade's got 14, Abomasnow's got 11, Bibarel's got 10, and even Rampardos's fellow fossil had seven! 
• There is a random wall in the Aurus Island temple with a bunch of hearts. I don't know if it's actually going to lead to something or if it's a clue about the identity of the guardian of Lental (it can't be Manaphy, right? And Enamorus wouldn't exist yet at the time of this game's release) or if it's maybe just an eye-rolling nod to the fake-Instagram social media aspect of this game that I haven't interacted with even once. 
• The original vehicle in the original Pokemon Snap is called 'Zero-One'. A jump to the sky turns into a rider kick.
• I leveled up some of the other areas, but I don't think there's anything that really deserves a full paragraph. There's a Blastoise sleeping at the night beach, and a Heracross that now drops from one of the trees in the Nature Park. It always is nice to find new Pokemon in these older areas, that's for sure. 
• I did a couple of the sidequests in some of the areas like the nature park, the jungle, the beach and the research station. There's not a whole ton that's particularly noteworthy for me to go 'oh, that's a really cute/cool behaviour', though.