Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Crown Tundra, Part 6: Tournament Redux

Okay, so apparently the Ultra Beast stuff isn't actually a scripted, definitive meeting, and it just... adds the Ultra Beasts into the pool of possible final legendaries? Sure. I also find out that I think it doesn't really matter what ball you use against the legendaries, which does admittedly take out a lot of the frustrations that I had with the terrible catch-rates with the Gigantamax max raid battles. So yeah, casual premier ball and poke ball captures for all these legendaries! I also caught a Tapu Koko, a Landorus and a Tornadus. The Landorus was a huge doo-doo asshole with Air Cutter and Heat Wave hitting the entire party. I'm honestly not sure how I actually managed to beat him. These Max Adventures are all right to do when you're not staring at the screen and just have the Switch next to your computer when you're working or something, I suppose. 

Also, Hoenn starters show up! And they can have special abilities! I ended up foregoing the Tapu Koko (who I had to do a second run to get) just to get a Speed Boost Blaziken. I'm not sure how often the hidden abilities show up in these max adventure lair max dungeons, but I'm not going to risk that this is actually a 5% encounter or some shit. 

As usual, the terrible AI does make it hard for me to progress a lot, and I got wiped out by a Tapu Koko a couple of times. I did basically sweep through an entire raid with a Relicanth, though, managing to get a regular Articuno. Generally I feel like the AI is just programmed to use whatever support moves they have first, even though it doesn't really matter (i.e. using Reflect against a special-attacking Pokemon) and they tend to always want to keep a support Pokemon in the quartet. So... yeah, sometimes it's a bit of an interesting effort trying to make sure they don't go for terrible Pokemon by taking them on my own and leaving the sort of "I have all offensive moves" pokemon for the AI mooks to take. 

I also find out that I can only keep up to three legendary locations written down by the doorkeeper scientist. There's also a doctor that lets me go off on an endless max adventure to spam for Dynite Ore. No thank you to that, though I suppose anyone who wants to spam for Ability Capsules and the like would see this as a godsend. 

I also did a bit more of exploring to level up everything that I can evolve in my box, and in the process I ended up with all the clues for the Cavern Pokemon, Terrakion. He's hanging out in the Lakeside Cave, and he sure is a cow. He's my favourite out of the Swords of Justice, but he's also a Pokemon I'm mostly indifferent to. That's two out of three, I suppose. 

Oh, and I got a random 'Futuristic Monocle' from Nia, a.k.a. that bizarre thing that Ghetsis has, so I guess she just she just gives me random items the more max adventures I go through? Sure. 

Peony's rare league card has him carrying a young, like, three-year-old Nia on his shoulders! He's basically confirmed to be the younger brother of Chairman Rose, but was a bit of a delinquent that was always compared to his shining star of his older brother, and actually became a Steel-type gym leader and a champion, but was swiftly beaten up by his brother. What an asshole, that Rose. Actually it kind of sort of explains why he dotes on his own daughter so much; he's had a rough childhood of being the unfavourite child! I like Peony more and more, actually. 

But then before I did too much max raid lair adventure dungeon, Leon gives me a call, and apparently there's something in the Wyndon stadium, and everyone is invited. This is the Galar All-Stars Tournament or whatever (I'm bad with terminology in this game, if you can't tell), and I do like the cutscene leading up to it, with the nice shots of all the gym leaders and rivals gathering in the court. We get a couple of cool shots, a couple of neat bits of dialogue between me, Hop and Klara. Klara is apparently a gym leader in the minor division (we'll never see said minor division, I guess) and she calls Hop 'Hoppykins'. Sure. 

The Galar Star Tournament is basically a huge tournament where you enter with an ally and fight three matches, which is pretty cool! I can pick from a selection of allies, but in my first run it's only Hop or Marnie. There's a bit of a tease when Ball Guy seems to be available to be your buddy in this run, but apparently he's not someone who battles. Boo, I say. BOO! Piers has a very delightful line of dialogue here where he refuses to be my partner because I keep dragging him into disasters. Considering the post-game of Sword/Shield... I can't blame him, actually. 

I pick Marnie as my partner, and set up my team with a mixture of the teams I've brought around throughout the run. I've been told that the enemies in the tournament are in the ballpark of level 70, so I picked all of my Pokemon that's around that level. So... I've got Inteleon, Hatterene, Shiny Drifblim, Galarian Slowbro, Runerigus and Appletun. Everyone else only brings 3 Pokemon, so I'm going to also respect that rule by only allowing myself to exchange between three pokemon in every battle. 

The first battle is against Milo and Nessa, and... yeah, I guess I can talk a bit about the battles here, since I actually mostly did max lair battles so there's not a whole ton to write here. It's my first battle impression anyways, so. The first battle begins with Morpeko and (Galarian) Slowbro versus Golisopod and Shiftry! I don't actually think Milo and Nessa have those two specifically in their usual championship battles? Milo and Nessa also have a fair bit of banter in this fight, which I do definitely appreciate. 

Poor, poor Morpeko gets absolutely wasted by First Impression, and Marnie has to send in a Scrafty. Meanwhile, my Slowbro also gets bamboozled by Fake Out. These first-turn moves, okay. The Shiftry and Golisopod then gang up and murder my poor Slowbro in the second turn with a Throat Chop and a Shadow Claw. I toss out my poor, underused Inteleon, who begins spamming Icy Wind to take out the Shiftry. The Golisopod Swords Dances (scary!), Scrafty does a Drain Punch on Golisopod, and Milo swaps in a Cherrim. 

Inteleon continues to spam Icy Wind, while Marnie's Scrafty thunder-punches the Golisopod and brings him low enough to activate Emergency Exit. Meanwhile, the Cherrim charges up a Solarbeam, doubtless aimed at my Inteleon. I swap it out immediately for an Appletun, who double-resists the Solarbeam, while Nessa gets a Toxapex on the field. The Solarbeam does like, ten damage total. The Toxapex does a Baneful Bunker, Scrafty Thunder-punches the bunker, but proceeds to shed the poison off immediately. That was actually very cool. 

Unfortunately for the Appletun and Scrafty combo on the field, turns out that Cherrim can do Dazzling Gleam! Somehow the fucking Scrafty survives that 4x effective move, Ice-Punches Cherrim to death, while Appletun apple acids the Toxapex, who returns with a Venoshock. Milo sends out Flapple, and we both Gigantamax in the next turn, leading to a hilarious dual giant Applin fight. I will always think it's kinda lame that they didn't have any differences between Giga Flapple and Giga Appletun, but it's still funny to see the two giant apple worms stare each other down. For whatever reason, despite my Appletun being in the yellow, Milo's Flapple takes out Marnie's Scrafty, while I one-shot the Giga Flapple with a Max Wyrmwind. 

It's a 2v1 with Nessa now, and Marnie's third Pokemon is a big scary Grimmsnarl. I take down the Toxapex (who spams Baneful Bunker) with G-Max Sweetness, which, I think, cures Grimmsnarl's poisoning? I never remember any of the effects of these special G-Max moves. The final Pokemon Nessa has is a Drednaw, who gets beaten half to death by Grimmsnarl's play rough, and my Appletun bullet seeds the Drednaw for extra disrespect. 

Second round! Versus Gordie and Bea, the Sword-exclusive gym leaders. I absolutely love that Marnie gets a little line of dialogue that has her go "oh, Fighting-types, I'm screwed" and tells me to take on the Fighting-types while she deals with Bea's Pokemon. That's kinda cool, actually. First round! Slowbro and Morpeko versus... Hawlucha and Shuckle! Poor Morpeko gets one-shot-murdered by the Hawlucha's High Jump Kick. Meanwhile, my Slowbro one-shots the Hawlucha immediately after with Psychic. Lost of one-shots going on here. 

Bea sends out Falinks; Marnie sends out Scrafty, and the two tussle immediately. Falinks leaves Scrafty at 10 HP after a Close Combat, while all Scrafty keeps doing is spam Crunch on Shuckle. That's all right, though, because my Slowbro just keeps one-shotting the Falinks with Psychic. Like Marnie said, I'm dealing with the Fighting-types here! Gordie's Shuckle is... he's kind of terrible, doing Rock Tombs and failing to kill a 10-HP Scrafty. 

Then there is a double dynamax between my Slowbro and Bea's Machamp... or, at least, I thought that was going to happen. Bea doesn't G-Max her Machamp, and the poor wrestler man gets absolutely massacred by my gigamega psymindstorm attack thing. Scrafty, meanwhile, somehow still survives on 4 HP, spamming Drain Punch to trickle-heal itself. Slowbro max geysers the Shuckle, and Gordie sends out a Tyranitar, who proceeds to body press the Scrafty to death, tanks a max geyser, nearly kill Slowbro with a Crunch, but gets killed off by Marnie's Grimmsnarl. Marnie's Pokemon are actually putting a lot more weight than I thought they would. Guess I was just used to the terrible AI of the Max Lair. 

Gordie's final Pokemon is the Gigantamax Coalossal, who my no-longer-Gigantamaxed Slowbro nearly one-shots by triggering Quick Draw and using Muddy Water. I completely forgot about Coalossal's steam engine, though, but while Slowbro falls, Grimmsnarl takes out the Coalossal. Five out of six Pokemon? Not bad, Slowbro. 

The final round is Piers and Raihan, who is... a bit of a weird duo. I guess if I took Hop instead of Marnie, this would make far more sense as Raihan and Leon? But either way, our 'rival' buddy gets to fight their older brother. Okay! Morpeko and Hatterene, versus Flygon and Skuntank! Piers pulls out a mic stand out of nowhere and keeps singing about how both of them will get absolutely fucked by Fairy-types... no, not really, Piers. I've fought you before, you're as likely to pull out Poison-types as Dark-types. 

I have a Hatterene that immediately goes Gigantamax, though, and I completely forgot that Fringe the Hatterene actually does have her G-Max form unlocked! I always find Giga Hatterene to be surprisingly eerie-looking with the glowing eyes and the suspended body inside the huge bubblegum shroud and the huge tentacle. It's actually one of my low-key favourite Gigantamax forms, due to how much it actually resembles the original Hatterene, but at the same time looks so different when you put them side by side.

I also completely never realized that Giga Hatterene's special move is called "G-Max Smite". SMITE! With the power of the forest, I shall smite thee! Hatterene SMITES the Flygon, and I think it causes confusion to the enemy's side of the field? Flygon does manage to get off a Sandstorm before I kill him, though, because Hatterene is a slow giant towering fairy bubblegum alien witch.  

Raihan's Goodra Sludge Bombs my Hatterene, which... doesn't kill her. She is a strong defensive giant tower, and I SMITE that dumb Goodra. The next creature that Raihan sics out is a Duraludon. Meanwhile, Skuntank and Morpeko has a little rodent slap-fight with Aura Wheel (which has an adorable animation) and Sucker Punch. Raihan's Gigantamax Duraludon uses Iron Head and somehow still doesn't manage to kill my Hatterene, and the giant metal building gets SMITED by my Hatterene. Marnie's Morpeko finally manages to kill the Skuntank, somehow, all the while swapping between its two forms. 

Piers' next Pokemon is a Toxtricity, which finally kills my Hatterene with Sludge Bomb. She tanked like three super-effective moves in addition to Sandstorm and a couple of Sucker Punches from Skuntank, I am impressed with her. Shiny Drifblim goes into the battle and one-shots the Toxtricity with Psychic. Piers' final Pokemon is an Obstagoon, which I completely forgot about. Obstagoon's typing nullifies Drifblim's Psychic and Shadow Ball, so I just Will-o-Wisp him... and Marnie just spams Aura Wheel and somehow manages to kill the Obstagoon. My Drifblim helps out with just one Thunderbolt. Good show, Morpeko, for someone who spends the first two fights getting absolutely one-shot-murdered, it actually held out and outlasted all six of the enemy's Pokemon. 

And that's the victory for the Galar Max Tournament, which is pretty fun. There's an adorable little scene where Leon is waving very, very energetically; Marnie is doing a 'yay.' slow, shy wave... and my character just looks confused and stands still before realizing he has to wave, too. Leon gives this grandiose speech about how this is going to be Galar's signature tournaments or whatever, and, of course, this is repeatable. A neat little announcement, and then he leaves it to the 'Maximizers', which is the name of the Toxtricity/Obstagoon/Rillaboom band. And the credits roll! I can't skip it!

The reward is a sport uniform (it's... it's just my regular one in the stadiums, right? That I can bring outside?) and... one million Poke-Euros! What the hell, and I had to spend so long a while back grinding the championship! Okay, fine. From what I can tell, the All-Stars Tournament basically is very much repeatable, I'm going to assume the tournament is randomized, and you unlock different allies as you progress through the game. 

We will close this off with another Shiny Pokemon! There is a shiny Claydol that I very nearly missed because all Shiny Claydol has different is a paler batch of eyeballs. Holy shit, the Shiny rates for this Max Adventure thing is pretty high, huh? I'm not sure if I'm just absurdly lucky (I still don't have the Shiny Charm) or if it is actually that awesome. I didn't freak out quite as much as I did with Drifblim, who was such a wildly different looking shiny, and it took me a bit of going, "wait, is it shiny?" which does take away from the hype factor. But it is, and I have yet another Shiny creature! My shiny, yellow-eyed Claydol is called "Eyedoll". Not sorry for the pun. I do like Claydol a reasonable amount, so I am excited! I just kinda wished Claydol's appearance was a bit more... over the top, instead of 'his eyes are a bit more washed out'. I think I ditched a Ho-Oh for this. It's baffling, because I haven't really been spamming the runs that much. I'm like, somewhere in the 15-20's when I got the Claydol! 

And... and that's about it for this segment of the let's play! And it'll probably be the final segment for a while because all that's left to do is catch the legendaries. I still have Virizion (and Keldeo, I was spoiled on that) to go through on the Crown Tundra, as well as the Ultra Beasts storyline, but that sort of stuff is nowhere as interesting to talk about as, well, the first impression of a battle or whatever. So until I've done enough in the Crown Tundra to really fit another Let's Play segment, this is it for now... I certainly had so much of a blast playing this, and I really did feel that from every single standpoint, Crown Tundra felt so much more content-packed than Isle of Armor was.

Random Notes:

• 
  Actually, since there's a 'minor division', does that mean that in Sword, Melanie and Alister are in the minor division, which is why our character never meets them? And vice-versa for Gordie and Bea in Shield?
• The first tournament I go through has the rest of the fighters be Klara/Bede (the asshole rivals), Peony/Kabu (...older guys?), Hop/Opal (I guess this is just random) and two mystery competitors that is just ???/???. Wonder if we'll actually ever get to fight the ??? competitors, if it's actually secretly... I dunno who'd make for a good secret enemy, actually. Rose? Honey? Sonia?
• In my first tournament, Peony and Kabu beat up the toxic rivals team, before being beaten by Piers and Raihan. meanwhile, the Sword-exclusives beat up Hop and Opal. The mystery competitors got beaten in the first round. 
• One thing I really do appreciate about the All-Star Tournament? I get to wear my regular clothes instead of the butt-ugly jersey. I never liked the sports jerseys that you're basically forced to wear for the gym and championship battles. 
• Krookodile can do Darkest Lariat. I'm not sure how, with those teeny tiny branch arms. 
• Some dude on Stow-on-Side gives me a bunch of shit relating to the legendaries, like the Adamant Orb and the Reveal Glass. 
• Piers and Marnie has a pretty fun little shit-talking fight between brother and sister, that's pretty fun. 
• Since I've seen most of what Crown Tundra has to offer, I'll be working, finally, on the 'Gotta Review 'Em All' segment for Crown Tundra. Now that I've seen all the NPC humans, too, expect a human characters: Galar segment sooner rather than later! (I tried doing a Gotta Review 'Em All segment for moves, but I just find that I don't have much to talk about)
• I guess I'll talk a bit about what I did in the following days after this part of the playthrough? I mostly just captured legendary Pokemon; again, Max Lair Max Raid Max Adventure is a lot less painful when you don't have animations on. I got an Entei, a Mewtwo, a regular Moltres and a Heatran (I keep forgetting that Heatran has genders). Nia also gives me some futuristic Cyclops shades. 
• Nia then gives me rumours about some long-haired woman in the tundra graveyard, which is supposed to trigger a cutscene Oleanna showing up to look for President Rose, but it didn't trigger on my game. I did watch it on the Youtubes, though. It's neat, I like Oleanna. 
• I did go through the championship a couple of times to farm for Poke-Euros, and I do like that there are some unique dialogue between characters. Basically you get to unlock more and more NPC's as your partners, from Hop and Marnie to Milo and Nessa to Klara. Klara has a Galarian Slowbro and Slowking; I kinda wonder why they didn't give either one of them a Gigantamax form. 
• Leon and Mustard as a team end up being a duo of "we dramatically toss away our outer layer of clothing before an anime fight".

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Crown Tundra, Part 5: Bird Hunt

Okay, this one is going to be a bit shorter mostly beccause I took a pretty long time doing the bird hunt. It was pretty fun, though! Zapdos, turns out, was very much the easiest out of the three to catch. I sort of did a back and forth between the two of them. 

Thanks to the way that the camera functions in some of the Crown Tundra areas it's definitely more than a bit hard to hunt down Articuno. And unlike Zapdos, who just runs around a flat field, Articuno flies around a much larger area and it clearly doesn't care that I can't catch up to it when it flies over ravines and mountains and whatnot. 

And thank goodness for the save button, because after running across the Crown Tundra and slamming my bike to who knows how many Abomasnows, I finally meet Articuno. And then... he does an absolutely unexpected kage bunshin little minigame! Articuno splits up into three and spins around really fast, and I have to guess which one of the three moving birds is actually the real one. Or, y'know, just guess. Again... thank goodness for the saving! If I pick the wrong one, the real Articuno just flies off. If I pick the right one... Articuno also flies off! Only to teleport right behind me. That is so cool. 

The battle against Articuno is also extra hard because it's in the hail, which means that I only have a finite number of turns to try and capture Articuno. Truly, in addition to having the minigame and the hail, Galarian Articuno's sobriquet of the 'cruel Pokemon' makes a whole lot more sense. There's even a bit where Galarian Articuno has the move Psycho Cut, which transfers the paralysis from my Zapdos's thunder wave to whoever my next Pokemon is! That truly caught me off-guard. 

Also, because I was a moron, I went into the Articuno chase and saved right before the shadow clone minigame, and didn't realize that I only had like six Ultra Balls, so I handicapped myself even more. 

Still, Galarian Articuno is pretty damn cool. Its special move is the Freezing Glare, where its eyes and the tips of its wings glow light blue like Kanto Articuno, and we get this gloriously over-the-top anime Cyclops eye beam sequence with glowing twinkling eyes and one of the best-looking beam animations in this game. This glare is Psychic-type, but it might cause the target to be frozen, which is neat. 

Returning to Peony and reporting in my findings, I do like how Peony notes that these aren't exactly the 'Zapdos' or 'Articuno' he had in mind, since they're the wrong typings (ha!) but there are qualities in them that make them 'well, it's Articuno enough, I suppose, even though it has a dodgy mask'. Okay!

I had horrible luck with Moltres, so I decided to do a little exploration around the Crown Tundra for a bit. I finally realized that the Reins of Unity is a key item in my inventory, and that's what I used to separate Calyrex from Spectrier. Mostly because... I really do like Spectrier as a standalone Pokemon. Again, at this point I'm basically just rotating an entire box's worth of Pokemon I like in and out while also getting the fossils and pseudo-legendaries to evolve and fill up Pokedex entries. 

It's the Ballimere lake that I haven't explored the most. They've got Dratini in the moat!

...and probably one of my favourite jokes ever, I attempted to shake the giant Dyna Hill Tree. I thought I was going to get a message like 'bring all three legendary birds here' or something, but it's just that the tree refuses to budge until I do it like seven or eight times... and then surprise Gigantamax battle! ...against a big tough Greedent! That was actually kinda funny, good job, Nintendo! This is a fun Easter Egg. I don't like Greedent, but the fact that they really committed to making this fat squirrel into a joke is commendable. 

And then there is the Moltres hunt in the Isle of Armor. And let's just say... Moltres is a shit to hunt down. He just flies so fast, jukes over rivers and cliffsides so quickly, and I keep running into Drednaws and Bouffalants. It took me quite a while to chase him down. Like, two or three hours of me just trying to trail behind him before realizing that he has a set pattern, so I just parked my ass in the bridge where the Diglett guy hangs out, and waited with bated breath. 

Galarian Moltres is Dark/Flying and is perhaps the most outwardly least different from its original counterpart compared to Articuno and Zapdos. It's like, just a change in colours and a slightly tweaked art style, right? But man, Galarian Moltres's best feature is by far its face! The beak and the eyes are just contorted into this delightful asshole expression, and combine that with the black-and-red flames, as well as the split tail... I've always of the opinion that the video games' 3D model for Moltres is probably one of the few that could've used a revision between generations, too, but man, Galarian Moltres just looks so damn good. He trule looks like a Dark-type without trying too hard (not like my boy Yveltal) and I appreciate that. Peony still thinks he 'looks more like those punks from Spikemuth'. 

Apparently all the flames on Galarian Moltres is like an anime-esque representation of a 'flame-like aura'. It's some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure nonsense, and... I think it's probably the one that makes the least sense compared to Zapdos (whose muscles are so strong it creates the impression of lightning) or Articuno (psychic type attack that 'freeze' the enemy in place) but at the same time Galarian Moltres looks so damn good. I feel like its signature move, Fiery Wrath (a Dark-type move with a chance to flinch) has a pretty great animation but... is kinda disappointing in damage and effect? Especially compared to Zapdos, Articuno and Regieleki?

And with that, I've completed the Calyrex adventure, the Birds adventure and the Golems adventure. Peony's Adven-tour is over, and he gives this long speech about the tour and the feeling that he's forgotten something. Apparently he forgot Nia! Nia shows up and we get this scene where Nia finally wants and deigns to follow Peony's tour, Peony lets it slip that he 'made up' things, and proceeds to be kind of clingy and pushy to Nia with a bright gold version of the expedition outfit. Nia runs back to the Max Lair, with Peony right after her. We then get a The End scene. Ooookay, that wasn't the conclusion I expected, but on the other hand it's hard to really say that I care about Nia at all? She comes off as being a bit too rude to me, but on the other hand it's mostly just played for laughs 

There's a little twinkle on the floor, though, and it's the "Legendary Clue?" which leads to... an Ultra Wormhole? Above the Max Lair? Hell yes!

Okay, this I did not expect, because I thought that all we're getting is the Calyrex stuff and maybe some padding with the Regis and the bird trio until the tournament stuff, but turns out we still have a bit more story to go through!

There's a bit of a commotion in the Max Lair when I go to confront Peony about the clue (he's clueless about it). A bunch of the generic NPCs run out of the max lair, including that asshole gentleman in a suit who I associate the most with terrible A.I. decisions, and apparently there are creatures that don't look like Pokemon, but they are attacking! Ultra Beasts, here we go! Peony announces the name of the next adventure as "they came from ultra beyond", and... y'know what? I'm unreasonably excited for this. I know we just had Ultra Beasts one generation ago, but I really, really like them. So we're going to go beast-hunting next episode!

Peony also offers a rematch, and he has bonus dialogue talking about the three original Kanto birds -- I've only caught Zapdos, though. He sort of refers to the Galarian birds as the 'impostor' birds, which really gets me even more curious on just how the Galarian versions relate to the original. Peony's team is fully Steel-types, although at this point in time my Galarian Zapdos can sweep nearly his entire team with Thunderous Kicks. He's got Aggron, Scizor, Perrserker and Copperajah, plus a Bronzong I had to pull out my SHINY Drifblim to beat up. Did I mention to you guys that I got a SHINY Drifblim? Because I do and I'm still over the moon about that. Anyway, between the shiny and the Ultra Beasts, I guess they found a way to make me voluntarily do Max Lair Adventures after all. 

Nia, by the way, basically shows up with a tip going "hey, I know where to find Tornadus" or whatever, 

A bit of a shorter segment, because after this I sort of flew off to Wyndon to farm for gold. Tips for any one of you who need a lot of money to buy the most important thing in this game -- clothes -- get a Gigantamax Meowth and feed it candies and just spam G-Max Gold Rush. The Meowth will die to anything, because it's a Meowth, but then sweep the rest of the stadium challengers' team with something stronger. I made so much money in probably a third of the time that I would've otherwise done so with a regular team. 

Random Notes:

• I sort of tried to bring a lot of the Pokemon in my box out just to see them walk and see if there's any fun easter eggs like Suicune's whole 'walk on water' thing. Turns out Uxie is tiny. I've never realized how tiny he is, he's like a little fetus. 
  
• The animations for a lot of the moves in this expansion are pretty top-notch. Considering how utterly unimpressed I was with every single new move in Isle of Armor (except Giga-Cinderace and maybe water form Urshifu), it's great to see they put so much effort here. The Galarian birds, Calyrex, Spectrier, Regidrago... I googled Glastrier's signature move and what a badass ice horse he was, too!
  
• I really still think that if they weren't going to do dual-type moves, they could've had all three Galarian legendaries have signature moves that are more aligned to Galarian Articuno, which had the 'Frozen' effect attached to its signature move. Moltres could've burnt, and Zapdos could've paralyzed. Small complaint, though.  
• The Golden Expedition outfit actually has some pretty cool reflective effects on the overworld. I like how my character looks with clothing cobbled mostly from the new DLC offerings in the boutiques, but that's a nice bit of touch.
• In the Max Lair, I've finally realized that there is a dynite ore shop. That guy sells ability capsules!

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Crown Tundra, Part 3: The Lonely King

Well, this got delayed juuuust a bit. Real life got in the way and I simply didn't have the time to play Pokemon, and I wanted to at least progress through a good chunk of Crown Tundra's story! So yeah, it took quite a while before I was able to get through the Crown Tundra's story mode, although I did do a fair bit of exploration through the Crown Tundra here and there, catching Pokemon and evolving them to build up my Pokedex... including Pokemon from the base Sword/Shield Galar area, because I've been really slacking in completing the original Galar dex and I kinda need it for the 1/100 shiny odds Shiny Charm. For the most part what I'm missing the most are trade evolutions (which I need to get a friend to do, since I never actually did it in when I had the online pass) and pseudo-legendary middle evolutions and whatnot. Oh well. 

Meanwhile, back to the story of the Crown Tundra! We need to get a bunch of plot devices, and the way we're going to do it is by talking to the unnamed mayor of Freezington. I do like this little scene, where the mayor gets super-duper invigorated at bringing back the traditions of his village... and promptly utterly fails to create the Reins of Unity. And, of course, it's Peony that randomly shows up, has no idea what's going on, but apparently he's great at making cords and sewing, combining the lock of hair and the flower petal. We get the revelation that apparently he sews his rebellious daughter's clothes and... yeah, again, he's kind of embarrassing as a dad but you can't help but really feel sorry for him. He just wants to be the bestest, most energetic dad ever to his kid! I also kinda feel bad for the mayor, where his attempt to revitalize the traditions of his failure ended in utter failure, but at least I don't actually know the mayor as a character. 

Calyrex (who, of course, immediately takes over Peony, the bastard) tells me to go up to the Crown Shrine, his former castle, and notes that his steed Spectrier has made its home there. And the game actually keeps it utterly ambiguous -- Calyrex assumes that Spectrier is disloyal and is doing so out of spite, but we don't actually really learn whether Spectrier is actually doing it out of disrespect to Calyrex, or if there's some sort of nostalgia or longing for Calyrex. After all, Calyrex himself admits that during his hundreds (?) of years of powerlessness, he's never returned there once. 

I haven't actually explored the entirety of the Snowslide Slope, or, more importantly, the network of caves known as the 'Tunnel to the Top'. A mouthful of a name, and it's filled with Carbinks, Snorunts, Bagons, and... ZUBAT ZUBAT ZUBAT ZUBAT.

Unfortunately, the Zubats are nowhere as populous or annoying as I really wished they'd be. Like, jeez. I am actually one of the few people in the world who really like Zubat, and I'm kind of sad that they didn't actually go all the way and cash in on Zubat's reputation as annoying and have them either be numerous, or just divebomb you aggressively like the Araquanids and Tyrogues. Instead, Zubat just... exists, and I did really wish that they went a bit more with it, you know? NOT ENOUGH ZOOBAT

Let's just say that the Tunnel to the Top is... it really disoriented me. There's a lot of levels, side tunnels, openings that lead to small dead-end clearings, and even a little snowy side-path whose only purpose seems to bring me face-to-face with a wild Salamence (yay). Deinos and Hydreigons are also a rare spawn here, too, which is neat. I spent quite a bit of time in the Tunnel to the Top, and I do like it. Again, it's just a bit repetitive, but on the other hand I did complain about how much the base Galar game's very straightforward areas were terrible game design, so having me really get to explore this tunnel is pretty fun. 

The actual pathway to the summit really does give me some nice Skyrim vibes, what with the ancient staircases and whatnot, and at one particular point is just this clearing with dead trees filled with nothing but Frosmoths, Snoms and the odd Altaria or two. Have I stumbled upon the elusive breeding grounds of the Frosmoths? This is such a freaking cool little area -- again, it really doesn't mean anything to me because I already have a fully-evolved Frosmoth in my party, but on the other hand these sort of little things are the parts of these open-world areas that I will really remember. 

The Crown Summit itself has a nice model, a huge abandoned castle, even if it's technically just two rooms with no wild encounters. There's also a giant dead tree at the center of the courtyard, and Calyrex is already there. Calyrex gives a bit of a monologue and motivation exposition about Spectrier and whatnot, and he basically wants to prove his strength. After putting the Shaderoot Carrot on a little basket on the stable, we get the majestic full-pan of Spectrier and what a cool looking horse, huh? The asymmetric head, the detached ghostly hooves, the hair... again, it's not like the most groundbreaking legendary Pokemon design ever, but so many recent legendaries (including Zacian and Zamazenta from this very game!) I felt went just a bit over-the-top at trying to fit in so many details. Spectrier and its opposite number Glastrier actually do a decent job at actually having a lot of details, but none of it clutter up the sleek design of either a nightmare ghost horse or a haunting icicle horse. 

And then we get a cutscene! Calyrex tames Spectrier by using the reins in some fun Breath of the Wild style horse-taming sequence, and even Peony is impressed as he goes :O after awakening for the first time since this whole Calyrex debacle began. And now we know why Calyrex's legs are so dang long, he needs it to ride his horse friend! Calyrex then gains his... 'true' form? He gets a cape and he rides Spectrier, and I'm going to assume that this is a White/Black Kyurem or Light/Dark Necrozma style of Pokemon fusion. This one is a nice little variant on the fusion concept, though, and I actually do like it. 

Obviously, at this point Calyrex believes in me and is thankful that I'm the only one that believes in him, so he will deign to follow me if I can catch him at his full power. Sure! I do like the little interaction with Peony, who's just confused about noggins and whatnot before Calyrex uses him to talk one last time and then psychic-puppeteers the poor dude back to the village. Honestly, the rather black comedy of Calyrex's constant possession of the clueless Peony is kind of one of the neater parts of this story. 

The battle of Calyrex takes place beneath the giant tree, and it's a pretty cool sequence. The music here, too, is an absolute banger. Calyrex fights me while mounted on Spectrier, and their ability is "As One", which means that... Calyrex, in this Shadow-Rider form, has two abilities! Unfortunately, one of them is the rather underwhelming Unnerve, but then we wouldn't want some silly Mega Rayquaza shenanigans, do we? Calyrex is at level 80, whereas my team are all around 60-70's. Calyrex one-shot kills my Altaria with a Psychic, and turns out that his second (third?) ability is Grim Neigh. Which is like Moxie, but for Special Attack; something that I see get brought up a lot in fan games or fan concepts. We finally have it! 

...and my Cursola one-shots the big bad scary king of horses and harvests with a single Shadow Ball. That's a strong ghost coral. 

Calyrex doesn't disappear like old-school legendary Pokemon, though, but is merely 'testing' me. Okay, sure. My second try involves me actually doing the smart thing and stocking up on Ultra Balls and Timer Balls (I had like, maybe 10 because of my attempt to catch that crab bastard Metagross) because nothing in the original Sword/Shield or Isle of Armor had been really all that hard to catch. And Calyrex? He's... I wouldn't say he's super-duper frustrating, but it's been a while since I felt like I've gotten a challenge like this! 

The fact that I am kind of crippling my team by having half of my team weak to Ghost-type attacks (Runerigus, Cursola and G-Slowbro) is probably also not the smartest thing for me to do, but at this point I'm kind of committed to making this team work. It took a while, and I actually do really like the animation for Shadow Rider Calyrex's signature Astral Barrage attack. Ultimately I manage to catch this dude after two retries with a Timer Ball. A fun, fun little challenge; it's been a long while since I've actually felt the pressure in catching a legendary Pokemon. I feel like since XY so many Legendaries have been remarkably easy and anticlimactic to catch, either by having them just follow you immediately, or having such a high catch rate that it was near-guaranteed. 

So yeah, I've captured Calyrex in what the Pokedex calls the Shadow Rider form, and he's Psychic/Ghost. I'm sure there's like, an item or a shrine somewhere to split him into his two component parts, but for now I'm happy having Calyrex just gallop behind me in the overworld. 

But that's the first part of Peony's Adven-Tour done! Peony calls me up after my Calyrex encounter, and then I report back to him and show him Calyrex and he's all surprised that the Legendary Pokemon actually exists, in a setting where Legendary Pokemon always exist. Sure! Peony doesn't remember jack-all about Calyrex, although he thinks that it looks familiar. 

And... and that's it for the 'main' Calyrex story, because I'm pretty sure that part two and part three of the Adven-Tour will just mainly involve me hunting legendaries and solving puzzles. 

First up... the giant of metal, Registeel, with his temple in the Giant's Foot. Apparently I was an absolute moron who didn't get what everyone has been calling the easiest clue of the three Regis. I jingled my bicycle bell, I even brought out a freaking Bronzong, but turns out that the way to unlock him is to whistle. WHOOPS. The ancients didn't have bicycles when they sealed the golems, after all! There's a very, very simple light-up-the-dots puzzle on the ground before the little Wakanda-forever golem activates and allows you to summon Registeel. Not much to say here, it sure is a legendary battle. I've caught Registeel a fair amount of times in the past, mostly because I've played through multiple copies of Hoenn, and he's always the one that gives me the most trouble. Generation VIII proves to be no exception because Registeel is, how shall we say, a bit of a shit to catch. Note to self, I need to bring someone with Sleep Powder or Thunder Wave for the next half-dozen legendaries I will find in the wild. 

I used to say that he's my least favourite of the three Regis, but now... I dunno, I have developed a neat amount of love for the utterly neat looking shape of the dome-head, and those little sausage fingers. Plus, as this game shows, seeing Registeel's little stumpy legs try to run is... it's funny. 

Next up is Regice, whose temple I passed before while on the way climbing up the mountain to reach Calyrex's castle. Nice touch of them leaving thematic TR's at the front of each temple! I got lost again in the Zubat cave, that was not very fun. I also already read the puzzle to Regice's temple, too, but I didn't bother to do it before since I was focusing on finishing the Calyrex story. It's basically to bring a Pokemon that is a 'living crystal made out of snow'. That was what I thought I needed to do with Bronzong and Registeel, and Nintendo thought the same! I guess I still have that old-school WTF-ery involving Wailord/Relicanth back from the Hoenn games. Obviously this temple needs me to capture a Cryogonal and have it walk with me. And if you've been following these text let's plays, I went through hell trying to catch one of these dumb floating snowflakes, so at least the Cryogonal in my box is going to be useful for something. 

I'm also slowly swapping out my Crown Tundra team with the legendaries I capture, with Registeel and Calyrex doing most of the brunt in fighting Regice. Regice has always been nice to me over the years, and I caught him rather painlessly with a premier ball. 

Anyway, next up I'll try to get the other four Regi golems (or three, I'm going to assume I can only choose one between the split-down temple) and the birds. I hope it'll be quick!

Random Notes:

• Trying something different with the pictures on this page; I'm using TCG cards instead of just using the same-old-same-old Sugimori artwork. 
• It's a small thing, but SUICUNE RUNS ON WATER when it follows you. Such a small thing, but I love it so. 
• 
  I don't want to be the dick that goes 'hurr durr the old games are better', but comparing the Regi puzzle to the ones in the Hoenn games... I wished we had at least one or two extra steps in getting to the golems, you know? An extra temple to first 'activate' the individual temples, or something? Or simply having a bit of a weirder puzzle inside the temple itself? It's no "First comes Wailord last comes Relicanth" levels of weirdness, that's for sure. 
• I really, really love the Avaluggs just chilling in the ocean. That might actually turn Avalugg up a couple of notches in just how cool they are compared to how I basically went "yep, forgettable" back in Generation VI. Seeing them just actually be flat icebergs in the frigid ocean actually just made them look extra cool.
  
• I'm actually almost done with collecting the footprints for the Iron Will Pokemon, which I think is Cobalion. The musketeers are probably one of the legendary Pokemon I'm the most indifferent towards (they're marginally better than the Sinnoh pixies and the storm kami trio) so it's not like I'm like super-duper excited to get them... but I do appreciate just how they are integrated here. 
• In addition to the nice mechanic that a lot of the footprints are (logically) clustered together, the footprints are also apparently random. It's a smart move by the developers because this is going to get rid of one of the biggest problems that the Alolan Diglett thing ended up causing, which is "which one did I miss and why can't I find it?"
• I could bring out Lulu the Butterfree (imported from Let's Go Pikachu!) for my Sleep Powder user, but I am going to try and use all Crown Tundra Pokemon, so I'm going to take my old-school Zapdos from the Max Raid and teach him Thunder Wave for my paralyzer. 
• Other random returning Pokemon that I'm not sure I've mentioned before include Spheal and Tirtouga, both of whom can show up on the shores or in the ocean, which is pretty cool! Magmar and Electabuzz also show up in raid battles, although I haven't been in the mood to do either one of them. In addition to the psuedo-legendaries, Lucario also shows up in one of the seaside caves. I am mostly neutral about ol' aura-boy, but I know a lot of people's going to be excited about him.
• Looking at Mimikyu, Copperajah, Snom, Dragapult, Morpeko and Stonjurner, there's actually a neat and concerted effort of making those 1% spawns from the original Sword and Shield more accessible for anyone who bought the DLC. Neat!

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Crown Tundra, Part 2: Gods Need Prayers

I'm a bit slow with this, huh? Oh well. I am playing the game at my own pace, and I'm certainly not in a hurry to rush and blitz through the whole story in under 4 hours or whatever. Sometimes I really just love to just wander around and relax, you know?

Anyway, after talking to Peony and going back to Freezington, I get directed to a bunch of heavy, unsubtle clues about Calyrex, the weirdo star legendary of the expansion. He's known as the King of Bountiful Harvests, and apparently his legends are a Mothman-style tourist attraction for the Crown Tundra. The mayor gives me a free shirt and shows me the statue of a very bizarre-looking horse... it's just literally a real-ass horse, not a Ponyta or a Rapidash or a Mudsdale or a Mudbray. Just a real-ass horse with real-ass eyes.

Speaking of which, I absolutely know nothing about the creature that the statue is based on, so I really thought nothing of it. 

We get a pretty little cinematic showcase of some of the nice views in the Crown Tundra... and maybe it's because I'm such a sucker for fantasy-themed dungeons or whatever, but the sights of the ruins for the Regis or the giant Yggdrassil tree is just so, so much cooler than 'look at this tropical island' vibe of the Isle of Armor. Not dunking on the Isle of Armor here, because I did enjoy that expansion, but I like this so much more. 

The next story beat has Peony basically shack up in the empty Inn I entered before, and he appoints me the expedition chief of his 'adven-tour', while he's the 'hold-down-the-fort chief'. He's pretty energetic about it, and acts so over-the-top, but at the same time it's pretty clear just how disappointed he is that his actual daughter isn't doing these things with him, yeah? I actually do feel bad about him. 

Just like the Isle of Armor, Peony also gives me the expedition uniform. Which is exactly like him, and is certainly some neat winter-themed clothes that makes my character look like he's not freezing his butt off in the cold like Platinum!Dawn. But I don't like the frumpy look of the expedition clothing, and it certainly doesn't look as cool as the dojo outfits from Mustard. If you can't look stylish while hunting down legendary Pokemon, what's the point? Also I can change the colour of the armband, which is like, such a miniscule and not entirely necessary little bit of customization. 

Peony gives me three items, which are three legendary clues, and I absolutely adore these things. There are three missions, relating to Calyrex, the Regis and the Galar Birds respectively... but particularly the latter two had these glorious crayon drawings that I could totally believe someone at Nintendo called in their five-year-old kid, handed them crayons and a picture of the concept art and went "could you draw this for daddy's game?" Those are glorious. Apparently Peony even got the information from 'dedicated telly watching', and man, how can you not hate this stupidly enthusiastic dad? I mean, I kinda do get that the daughter's just exhausted of his energy, but still. 

After a random hilarious giant anime episode title about the Calyrex stuff, Peony casually gave me a Master Ball. What! I apparently used up the Master Ball I got from the base Sword storyline and I'm not sure who I used it on. Probably Eternatus? Maybe? I'm not such a huge fan of the sequence that came next, though, where it's revealed that Peony found the head of the Calyrex statue outside and used it as a pillow and plonked it on the table. After being relatively good at not being hand-hold-y, this sequence of 'hey, put the statue head on the statue' ends up giving me very heavy Sun/Moon vibes. 

What is done well, of course, is Calyrex himself. I'm still not a huge fan of the design, but like Kubfu, this weird fucker works so much better in motion as a 3D model. And while the bizarre giant bulb-tumour crown head will forever creep me out, the combination of the deer face, the utterly creepy long legs and the necklace of orbs with Zelda Triforce symbols all contribute to selling that this is an utterly bizarre forest deity spirit. The cutscene introducing him is great, too, with our character's POV focused on the statue, to slowly pan around and revealing that Calyrex is just hovering in the distance behind the statue. 

Calyrex challenges me to a battle as a "??? Lv. ???", but I can't throw a Pokeball at it. I've always liked this system where you get to fight the legendary Pokemon in a plot-mandated battle but don't have to worry about capturing him. So I have my Antivenom the Galarian Slowbro against Calyrex, and I find out that he's got Giga Drain and Heal Pulse. Two Shell Side Arm attacks from Slowbro, though, and the Calyrex falls easily. Does... does the Calyrex not have psychic-type moves? I know from promotional material that he's a Grass/Psychic creature. Odd. 

Calyrex's entire dialogue is just variations of 'crown crown crooown carawn rown', and my character can't speak in poke-speech. It's not until Peony comes, makes a remark at Calyrex's "massive noggin", and we get an utterly creepy yet hilarious sequence where Calyrex takes over Peony's body and uses him as a mouthpiece, complete with Peony going into a rigid pose and his hat floating backwards. It's not something new -- even a Tentacruel did it at one point in the anime -- but it's certainly shocking to see a Pokemon actually have dialogue in the video games! I don't think... I may be mistaken, but I'm almost 99% sure no other legendary Pokemon have done this before, right? Like straight-up speak telepathically to the character? 

Calyrex just gives a long, long speech that feels like it's lifted straight from a D&D NPC, and that's certainly not a slight at the writing. Calyrex, as it turns out, is the ancient Pokemon king of the region, and the humans had given him loyalty and respect, but as humans started to forget about him and not give him offerings, Calyrex began to lose his powers more and more until my character's kindness in restoring his statue has restored enough of Calyrex's strength to telepathically speak to me. There are a lot of holes to poke in the story if you want to, but I actually really approve of any part of the games that really world-builds and tries to craft something truly 'legendary' revolving around a legendary Pokemon. I feel like that's one of the things I found to be the most bored about in the Generation Four to Five era, where so many of the supposed 'legendary' Pokemon don't even have a story attached to them. 

Also can we just talk about how Calyrex just basically holds Peony hostage suspended in the air? His dialogue isn't malicious, but god dang, man, consent. 

Calyrex sends me off to talk to all the villagers, and for the most part they all think he's a fun fairy tale or a cautionary tale. Again, very melancholic. There was one villager who had the hilarious line of "if he's real, why doesn't he made my crops grow?" And poor, poor Calyrex is just so tsundere about the whole thing, clearly hurt about being basically forgotten (although not really) and his dialogue is basically "well, I know better than to count on humans to remember me, hmph!" He thanks me, flies off to find his 'royal steed', and flies off. Peony, like any anime character in his position would, just brushes it off as sleepwalking. 

After going through the Giant's Bed area (the location in the minimap does look vaguely like a horizontal giant figure sleeping) I just sort of had fun wandering around. Araquanids are vicious, terrifying and very, very willing to hunt you down, as I found out. As with the Isle of Armor, I am happy that it's not all just 'new' Pokemon (or, well, old-and-reintroduced Pokemon) at this area and there's a nice mixture of Pokemon that had shown up in mainland Galar and new faces. There's an interesting focus of fossil Pokemon showing up a fair bit, huh? I've so far seen Amaura a lot, but also Aerodactyl, Omanyte and Lileep? 

Registeel's nice-looking temple is in the Giant's Foot area, and there's a fun clue about a noise or a ringing sound or something or other. Remembering the old Hoenn ways to break the Regis' seals, I know it's going to be something daft. My bicycle bell does nothing (although the ancients that sealed Registeel wouldn't have bicycles, okay, fair point) and there was a Bronzong hovering nearby that I thought was a clue. Dipping in and out of my box to bring out a Bronzong to walk with me, I tried talking to it, but turns out a Bronzong's bell isn't what I need. Oh well, Calyrex first, Registeel later. 

There's also a fun little area called the Old Cemetery with a plaque talking about how the King had tamed some hideous monster that ravaged the land, which is actually the first indication to me that there might be something new that I never saw in the trailers. And, again, despite everything, I actually remained blissfully unspoiled about anything new in the Crown Tundra beyond Calyrex and the two new Regis. 

The plot directs me to talk to the unnamed Mayor of Freezington, who's looking at a bunch of barren fields. After some dialogue I fly back to Freezington to talk to him, and apparently he never realized that the statue was supposed to have a crown, and the 'exaggerated' artwork they used to make the Freezington shirt is actually accurate. The mayor then leads me to his own small bookshelf with five books, and I love these sort of exposition sequences in old-school games via books. 

Basically, what I find from the five books is that the King of Bountiful Harvests has a proud steed, which he tamed with a plot device called the 'Reins of Unity', which is created by humans and Calyrex together. There's another book about crops and planting carrots (the highlighted words tell me this is important), and two hilarious books about the Snow Samba and tourism initiatives. 

The plot-relevant book, at least, marks the steed as an Ice and Ghost-type Pokemon that the King had fought and tamed in the past, which got me excited because none of the horse Pokemon I've known and seen are Ice/Ghost, and the only one of two types that I can think of is Froslass, who probably wouldn't make for a good steed. But at the same time, apparently records are so muddled between whether the King had an ice-type steed who liked to eat white Iceroot Carrots or a ghost-type who liked to eat black Shaderoot Carrots... and it took a while after this to realize that they're basically doing a Schrödinger's Choice thing here. The information is so muddled and it's basically giving the player a choice on which steed is 'canon' for their copy of Sword/Shield. That's cool. 

So basically I have to get carrot seeds, from that one strange vendor who offered to exchange carrots for dynite ore. And here I thought this was just some annoying berry mini-game or something! After a couple of very on-the-nose monologues by Calyrex (and the possessed peony), a psychic vision, and the cute grandma sitting on a box, the game drills into your head that you need to plant the carrot seeds in one of two different patches. 

What I really love, though? Calyrex's 'by the stars' utter fascination with 'the strange bag that contains the seeds of carrots'. I didn't think of it, but I guess the idea of putting seeds in a bag would look like something bizarre to a nature god, huh? 

Now I love ghost-types and I cannot lie, so I'm pretty much sure that it's going to be my choice. So I saved my game and headed off to the ice horse path just to see my two choices. I haven't been up to the Northeast part of the map to see the Snowslide Slope, and it's basically a slope filled with Wooloo, Snorunt, Beldum (!) and Druddigon. Oh, Absol's here, too. And Mimikyu, if you haven't gotten one from the base game. I know Mimikyu's one of the hardest ones to get in the original Wild Area, so...

And, man, I spent way longer than I would admit trying to catch a Beldum or a Metang. 1 remembered how utterly painful it was back in Black & White to catch one (in Beldum's original debut games, Steven just leaves one for you to take). 1.6% catch rate, baby! At least these guys don't have Take Down anymore, and have Tackle, so they don't kill themselves. 

After planting the seed in a little abandoned field, Calyrex... does a hilarious silly jig. The possessed Peony does it too, and we summon a beautiful white horse with a head, tail and legs made entirely out of ice spikes. It's pretty, if admittedly a bit simple for my tastes. I do like that the entire left side of its face is covered with ice spikes, though. That's cool! It's an ice Rapidash!. And this dude is called Glastrier, and it sure is a pretty white horse... but I love the more dark and creepy looking ghosts, so I reset the game to see the other option. 

The cutscene for the ghost option plays exactly the same, except of course I plant the seeds in the Old Graveyard. The first time I saw Spectrier I was like "oh, okay, basically what I expected". It's a jet-black horse with flowing purple mane, looking all emo and angsty. It's a D&D Nightmare, it's Skyrim's Shadowmere... basically the sort of emo-goth horse that my 90's teenager sensibilities would love. 

Also, note that I had absolutely no idea these things existed, so there was a great sense of anticipation as I went off to trigger both events. That feels very, very awesome. 

The more I see Spectrier in cutscenes, the cooler she becomes. It has got eyelashes, but only on one side of its head! The other side is just covered entirely with mane! And its hooves are disconnected from its legs, because it's a ghost horse!

This is such a cool choice. Sure, the fact that I had no idea this was in the game adds so much, but the fact that both Glastrier and Spectrier are actually pretty awesome designs (and they didn't go over the top either, which is definitely appreciated) actually makes this a hard choice, unlike the nigh-identical Urshifu forms that I honestly didn't give a rat's ass about. 

Spectrier can't sense that I'm holding the carrot, despite being summoned by the scent of it, which... yeah, plot convenience. But it's gone off to attack the village and Calyrex panics, buggering off to the village. It's pretty cool, to see this spectral, deadly-looking monster horse in the middle of the town, and all the villagers (except for Spheal Grandma, bless her soul) panicking. Even Calyrex has no idea what to do, so it's up to me, main character fellow, to fight Spectrier. It's another 'fight and knock it out' sequence, and my beautiful Cursola just two-shot-murders the ghost horse. Spectrier... doesn't have a ghost type move to use against Cursola, and just tries to use Thrash? Or maybe it just gets confused about Galarian typings? I know I do sometimes.

Also, I haven't mentioned it before, but Crown Tundra has some absolute bangers with the theme songs. Calyrex and Spectrier's battle themes are both amazing, and Peony's battle theme from his first encounter is pretty great to.

Spectrier gallops towards a grandma after her defeat, but Calyrex uses his powers to send Spectrier galloping off elsewhere. From where I battled Spectrier, I loot a lock of his black hair, which is pretty obvious what's going to come next. We're going to have to craft the Reins of Unity. A quick talk to Calyrex and he tries his best to make his special flower bloom, but all his power could manage is a radiant petal. It's at this point that Calyrex realizes that maybe the humans forgetting him isn't all the humans' fault, they had the traditions passed down but there's literally no way for them to realize that Calyrex is actually real. That's a nice story. 

Oh, and saving the grandma finally allows her to let me take Fwoofy the Cosmog with me! Clearly, Fwoofy is the wrong name. All Cosmogs must be named Nebby, and Nebby's habitat is in a bag. I mean, a box. 

This is where we will leave off today because the post has gotten a bit long, but I am enjoying myself a lot more. Granted, a good chunk of why I liked this so much is just how awesome the Glastrier/Spectrier reveal was, but I am having a good ol' time here. I did spend a good chunk of time re-exploring the areas around Giant's Foot and the Snowslide Slope, although I haven't ventured too far yet. See you guys in the next one!

Random Notes:

• Calyrex's pupils becoming smaller when he's surprised adds just so much character to the cutscenes that involve what's otherwise a pretty static 3D model. 
• Until the name of the item is identified as a 'wooden crown', the part of Calyrex's statue on Peony's table really looks like it's made out of rock, yeah? 
• You can answer 'Snow Samba' to Calyrex's request for clues and he just looks so perplexed at that. The fact that Calyrex actually does a little jig later in the story is just so perfect. 
  
• I did three more Max Raid battles since the first part of this let's play I wrote -- once for a Tapu Bulu, and twice to get a Zapdos. Playing alone it kinda really depends on RNG whether your teammates are smart enough to swap out their injured Pokemon when offered the chance to, huh?
• I actually really like the idea of rental Pokemon even more, which keeps me from just pulling my high-leveled original teams from the box and just using the same ten Pokemon over and over again in the lair. 
• I'm not sure if the catch-rate for the legendaries are 100%? Feels odd, because every single one I encountered had the legendary be captured instantly. I know it was frustrating that the G-Max battles had you randomly encounter one, but can fail after putting a lot of effort fighting them, so maybe they scaled down the difficulty in catching them? 
  
• A small nitpicking detail, but I kinda wish that the little grove where Calyrex and the possessed Peony is hanging out is a bit more secluded, Pokemon Colosseum style. 
• Magikarps now jump very high into the air in the overworld. I'm pretty sure they did not do that in the base game. Magikarp Jump reference, maybe? 
• Speaking of random new items, I found 'Room Service', which is... uh... a room service tray? And it's a gimmicky item for Trick Room? Iiiiinteresting. I never care for these sort of items, and I wager that Choice Bands and Life Orbs and Leftovers and the like are going to always be better in competitive, but I love that these dumb held items exist.
• I have no idea where all my money went, what the heck, at this point I really need to level up Gigantamax Meowth for money farming Oh, clothes shopping. One of the surprisingly most awesome parts of the Isle of Armor is the addition of so many random clothing pieces all over Galar. 
• I love the animation of Peony's hat floating behind his bag when Calyrex takes him over. 

Let's Play Pokemon Sword: Crown Tundra, Part 1: The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

Nia buggers off to go to a Max Raid or whatever, and Peony goes off to rush after her, but, me being me, I end up exploring at least the surrounding areas of the Crown Tundra. 

So I was just a wee bit late in getting to play this. No real reason, it's just that I wasn't paying attention to dates and the like so I didn't quite manage to get to the whole "Day 1 Release Hype!" like the rest of the fandom. 

Anyway, DLC number 2, Crown Tundra! I did have fun with Isle of Armor, as much as I still do think that the overall experience is kind of... lacking? I dunno. Sword and Shield as a whole is such a weird beast as a game, and its very staggered release date is kind of a weird one. Still, Crown Tundra! I am excite! Technically the final part of the region of Galar. 

So after the DLC works its magic and the game directs me to go to Wedgehurst Station, I stocked up on Ultra and Quick Balls, and swap around my party for a bunch of new faces -- mostly Pokemon that I kind of want to play around with because they look cool, with my current party that I bring around to the Crown Tundra consisting of the high-level Frosmoth from my original playthrough (because Crown Tundra), plus three new faces -- a Runerigus, a Cursola, a Galarian Slowbro and a G-Max-able Appletun. (Oh, and feed them full of candies to get them to level 60) Cursola's a fun one since I really wanted to use one but it's not available on Sword. Mine is a wonder-traded German one, so it's called by its badass German name of Gorgasonn. I left a slot in the party empty for whatever new Pokemon I might be happy to add to my party from the Tundra, as well as the undoubtedly plot-mandatory Calyrex. 

And turns out that the Crown Tundra is on the south side of Galar, which is kind of weird to me. I've always assumed that it would take place on the far north, since the north side of Galar is also pretty ice-covered, but... okay, sure. As usual, I really enjoy the train animation. 

And I'm immediately greeted by a dad and her daughter, Peony and Nia (Peonia, technically, but I don't have enough energy in me to try and figure out two similar-sounding names). And... these sure act like energetic anime characters! I don't hate them, but I do find them pretty indifferent. I would rather have the side characters be a bit goofy and over-the-top than just generic and serious, though, so just like Klara and Mustard from the previous expansion, I definitely would prefer them to be silly. 

The plot's pretty paper-thin, but it is a nice little excuse plot. Peony and Nia are apparently here on vacation, and Peony is one of those overly-excited irritating parents that just wants to be a bit too excited in being a cool dad (or, borrowing the man's catchphrase, ultra-mega-cool) and is utterly overbearing while also actually being very nice and silly about it. Meanwhile, Nia is the sort of overly-angry independent teenagers who refuse to have anything to do with their parents' plans and just wants to fuck off on her own. Both are kinda-sorta irritating characters in their own way, and I've met people in real life that behave identically to them and need a good talking to. Let's see if these two get some character development to make them less irritating!

In a neat bit of freedom, the game actually allows me to say no to Nia's random requesting of a stranger for help (which is what I would do IRL, what they do is their business and it's like, just an argument over vacation plans) but then Nia just asks me to fight her dad and apparently Peony's an ex-gym-leader. An ex-Steel type gym leader, one of the few types not otherwise represented among the Galar gym leaders. He's got a Copperajah and Aggron, at which point... yeah, I need to get my team up to the 60's and 70's, huh. Somehow, my Frostmoth manages to beat two Steel types, and I'm not entirely sure how that happened. I think I used most of my party as a sacrificial lamb in switching in and switching out. 

I just sort of run around and this part of the Crown Tundra is just a huge exercise an 'hey, we have all the Ice-type Pokemon!' We've got Abomasnow, Piloswine, Cryogonal, Jynx and Amaura... turns out Amaura aren't extinct anymore and they just waddle around like the cuties they are. I guess Kalos's fossil-restoration professors might've gone a bit overboard? Also making sense in the Tundra area are Swablu (I bet they're warm in their cute floofy feathers) and Audino... which I've never thought about it, but Audino does look like someone who'd be fine in the cold.

Out of these, Swablu (who almost immediately evolves into an Altaria) gets to be the sixth member of my party. I've always adored Swablu. I've used an Altaria in my many, many Hoenn playthroughs, but I do like it enough that I wouldn't mind using one again. 

I get to see that they do have a small town in Crown Tundra, called Freezington. A very descriptive name. They've got old people! I think these are actually brand-new human models, so they actually made some new assets instead of just the two or three new Pokemon and the environments. Apparently all the young people buggered off to live in the city, leaving these grandmas and grandpas behind. One of them tried to sell me Carrot Seeds, and, uh, asks me for Dynite Ore, which I'm going to assume is the annoying farmable resource like Armorite Ore. Okay, sure. It's a charming small town. 

Utterly randomly in Freezington is a fucking Cosmog, just casually chilling with an old lady. This isn't Nebby, it's Fwoofy, and she just appeared out of nowhere with a bunch of random Pokemon. What? Obviously, something that I'll be able to claim later on, but still. What? A random Cosmog? And it's not in the bag??!?!

Nearby is the less-snowy area called the "Giant's Bed", with Nidorans, Eevee and... Aerodactyls? The Crown Tundra does have a bunch of fossil Pokemon just casually no longer extinct. I am glad that the entire expansion isn't just going to be a snowy wild area. In addition to the hail being annoying, one of the biggest charming parts of the Isle of Armor is how many different terrains it manages to fit into its map. There's a lot of ruins in the Giant's Bed, but I didn't really venture too far out. 

Oh, and there are random footprints in the snow! These are the Crown Tundra's equivalent for the Alolan Digletts, I suppose. Except there's actually more of a motivation to get these ones! Sonia shows up, and I'm glad that she does! She's researching legendary Pokemon but isn't happy to be working in this weather. If I dressed up like she did, I'd be frostbitten, too. So apparently these footprints are clues, and if I have enough, I can hand them over to Sonia to get the way to track down certain legendary Pokemon that live in the area. Judging by the species names, I actually know that these are the three ungulate musketeers... which actually feel like a trio that would totally live in the tundra. 

That was most of what I did, really, just run around and explore the icy lands and whatnot, before continuing on with the Max Lair nonsense. At this point Peony's all overly-excited and being a moron (he is sort of worried about his daughter, though, so I'll give him a pass) and some generic NPC gives us exposition. Sure. 

And... and you know what? The concept of it is nice. But the execution... not so much. Or, at least, not so much if you don't have a fucking Nintendo Online Services subscription, which runs out after a month and I have to keep paying to access it. Oh man, yeah, I absolutely hate these sort of model of... well, it's basically monetization, yeah? And, sure, I get it, they need money for the servers and everything, but it makes playing this Max Lair thing on single-player utterly aggravating. 

So the idea is that these Max Lairs is an adventure with four people, and at the end is a legendary Pokemon. That's cool, that's like, a dungeon raid and stuff, right? Unlike most, I actually even like the fact that we can't enter with our own Pokemon but have to essentially bring a 'rental' Pokemon to make things challenging. It's giving me very strong Generation III Battle Frontier vibes, especially the Battle Factory, when I realize you're allowed to 'switch' the Pokemon with the Pokemon you encounter in the cave and defeat in the string of battles. 

Unfortunately it's all just fucking Dynamax battles.

And let me tell you, if the original game's mostly-optional Wild Area Dynamax battles didn't already tire me out, Isle of Armor's extreme-grinding fiesta certainly did. These ones, at least, doesn't have the stupid 'I will put up a shield at the halfway point of my health regardless of the damage you are doing' crap feature, which thank fucking god, but at the same time it's all just Dynamax battles. You fight and fight and see the same old boring recycled 18 G-Max animations and the slow panning shots over the Dynamax stuff over and over again. 

It's kind of frustrating, really, which kind of sucked a lot of the fun out of this because... I actually do like the idea of most of this. Choosing the pathway? Managing the health of your Pokemon since it doesn't get restored between battles? Having to use rental Pokemon? Even as much as I'm indifferent about the multiplayer aspect, the idea that the four party members must synergize to decide whose Pokemon is best to swap out is an interesting one. 

But a combination of it just being the same old Dynamax battles and the whole I-must-pay-for-multiplayer thing... yeah, it really soured me off the Max Lairs. 

-sigh-

The biggest saving grace, again, is that they removed the goddamn shields from the base game's Dynamax Battles, and if they quietly removed all of the shields from the Dynamax battles in the original and the Isle of Armor's Wild Area, I would be 100% okay with it. That's an utterly stupid gimmick that just artificially prolongs the battle without adding any sort of actual difficulty anyway. 

And at least if I can't go online I can turn animations off, because otherwise my first run through the Max Lair took so long and it's so repetitive. I did enjoy the swapping-Pokemon aspect and the fun simplistic dungeon-pathway stuff, so it's not all bad. 

Anyway, because I'm a total moron, I didn't realize that Peony was supposed to look like Chairman Rose until random NPC scientist lady points it out. I guess that's why he's using Steel-types? He's probably Rose's brother or some shit. Oh, and I do like the brief nod to the original main story about how there's a bit too much Galar particles in the Max Lair, so I have to bring their special, Galar-particle-resistant Pokemon as an excuse for the whole rental Pokemon system. 

Anyway, my first Max Adventure Lair Max Dynamax stuff had me fight against a Gigantamax Sandaconda, a Gastrodon, a Scolipede, and finally a Suicune. It's actually a fun bit of having to actually manage my resource and plan ahead, because turns out facing off Suicune with a Scolipede that has absolutely nothing in its arsenal that can really damage Suicune? Kind of a stupid thing to do. More stupid than that, though, are my three AI companions, all of which kept doing stupid defensive moves (the goddamn Dynamax creatures can remove your buffs) or, in the case of my stupid AI companion with an Oranguru, refuses to do anything but Instruct. 

So yeah, I lost to the Suicune, because all my allies kept dying. I do find it an... interesting choice that I can only keep one of the Pokemon I caught. But I keep throwing pokeballs at them? I'm not sure why that's necessary? But okay, I do get to keep the Gigantamax Sandaconda, which is one of the ones I don't actually own, because I never encountered one in the Wild Area, because a rotating population of available Gigantamax encounters is another feature that I just dislike. 

After my utter failure in the Max Lair, I met Peonia. She's got great hair! She's just totally obsessed with the Max Lair Dynamax Battles of Max Adventures of Max, and she just wants to stay in the Max Lair forever and ever. You do you, kid. She basically pawns off her dad on me, though, because her dad has cooked up this elaborate 'adven-tour' (if you didn't already get heavy dad energy from Peony, the puns will do it), and she's at least not that shit of a daughter to leave her dad dejected and alone. So I've got to be Peony's surrogate kid. Okay, sure. 

Peony, on the other hand, is ultra-mega-hurt, because he tripped trying to look for his daughter behind some rocks. As the tired scientist lady asks, 'is your daughter a Rolycoly sir?' She doesn't have a name, but she is low-key one of my favourite NPC's in this game. Peony's a weirdo, and he's overly enthusiastic to bring me along in his adven-tour for hunting legends. Okay, sure! Overworld exploring,  I'd be up for that so much more than Max Lair Adventure Raid nonsense!

One good thing that I can say about the Max Lair stuff? The scientists actually will remember what legendary Pokemon you encounter last, and allow you to 'retrace' your steps to fight it so that if you get a fucked-up team (whether you're playing with A.I. or just random humans on the internet, it's bound to happen) you won't lose anything if you encountered like a rare legendary Pokemon. So, yeah, thank goodness for that. 

So after picking a Nidoking with all three elemental punches, I blazed through my next batch of dynamax battles (which, this time around, was a lot easier) and meet Suicune and just Thunderpunch it the fuck to death. So yeah, I have a Suicune now. I'm not sure if all the legendaries will be as easy to capture with the Dynamax Pokeball or whatever, but I bet I won't have a fun time having to fight like, a Dynamaxed Giratina or Reshiram or Xerneas or something with a bunch of A.I. dumbasses.

With only four lives and the A.I. trainers not knowing when not to use Wide Guard or Rain Dance, it's very aggravating. Also another point of contention? The A.I. trainers won't ever dynamax, but the cooldown still applies as it does if you play with other trainers, so anyone playing alone is basically handicapped for half the run. 

My second, animation-off run was a bit less painless, and by a bit I mean my A.I. teammates managed to pick the right Pokemon and didn't hang on to Pokemon in red (which they did in both Suicune runs) before I reached the Tapu Bulu, where they are at least consistent in clicking the moves that do damage. 

Anyway... yeah. Part of it is I guess my fault for playing this without multiplayer on, but if I do the Dynamax animations annoy the heck out of me and if I don't, the game's a gigantic festering ball of irritation thanks to the dumb A.I., so... yeah. I really, really wished they had done something that's a bit less shoehorned in our face for the next generation's gimmick or multiplayer gimmick, please. Like, okay, things like Gen IV's Underground or Gen VII's weird (and stupid) four-way battle are kinda half-assed, but at least they aren't something I minded if you play with them in single-player, and they're not necessary for me to play through the game or catch legendaries or whatever, y'know?

I dunno. Sorry to end the first segment of Crown Tundra in such a bummer, but I was already all bummed out about dynamax raids being so utterly prevalent in Isle of Armor, and even though I was pretty excited about exploring this new land and the Nia/Peony story and meeting Calyrex and all that jazz, I just got so exhausted just fucking with the max raid battles. So... yeah. Like, Crown Tundra and Sword/Shield in general does a lot of things right, but as far as a repeatable, possibly-social feature goes, this just is something that I went from being apathetic about to full-blown irritation. Got to get that off my chest, sorry, because those are my honest opinions about it. 100% more power to you if you have a fun group of friends that can play Max Lair Max Adventure Raid with, and that's great... but I don't, and I don't have the internet services subscription, and the experience I had with it just feels 'a great concept that I just can't enjoy'.

Next up, more story, and hopefully I'll be a lot less salty. 

Random Notes:

• 
  The larger amount of NPC's that are spread out a bit more in the Crown Tundra, compared to the Isle of Armor where all the NPC's are in the dojo, does make this feel a bit more like a lived-in area. Except that it's still mostly just Wild Area, and by god I do miss trainers.
• Some fun Pokedex entries here. I've only caught a handful, but apparently Jynx used to be worshipped by the people of Galar as the 'Queen of Ice', and Aerodactyl has never been perfectly restored -- a fun little nod to something that the fandom have always suspected, the 'Rock' side of fossil Pokemon reflects on how the resurrection process isn't perfect. I bet the real Aerodactyl had feathers. Or maybe the real Aerodactyl is just Mega Aerodactyl.
• "EXCUSE ME SIR, IS YOUR DAUGHTER A ROLYCOLY?"
• I was about to raise a stink about the lack of Pokemon following me, but turns out that they do. Boy, I would've looked like a complete moron (a complete tosser, since we're in the British lands) if I said that, huh?
• Speaking of British, I feel like the Crown Tundra is a lot better in using random British slang like 'kip' or 'noggin', and at one point you get the option to say 'wotcher, my name's X' which I appreciate a lot. 
• Not so well done is the bit in the story where Peony says 'can you imagine if I actually talked like that', and I'm not quite sure what he was referring to. 
• I found a held item called an 'Utility Umbrella', which shields the Pokemon from weather conditions. It's got such a fun and flavourful effect, even though being able to avoid rain and sun effects seems to be pretty pointless to sacrifice your held item slot for. 
• Cryogonal had a catch rate of 7.7%. I have to note this, because this isn't actually terribly bad. But for the amount of trouble I had with that one single Cryogonal I met and tried to catch, it sure feels like it had a much, much smaller catch rate!
• The Pokemon in the Max Lair Adventure or whatever actually have a nice touch where their movesets are very likely to have one of the weird new moves from Isle of Armor. Which is not only a way for the moves to show up outside of your own party members, but also a way to get them without spending in-game resources!
• I've used Suicune in playthroughs of Johto games before, so I'm not in a hurry to use one, but I've replaced the Altaria with Tapu Bulu, a Pokemon I've never really used. There's not really going to be a whole ton of battle it seems. If the max raid battle is a bit more appealing I'd actually do a full-legendary team with the first six Pokemon I caught there.