Let's Play Pokemon Violet - The Indigo Disk, Part 12: Peach Devil

We pick up where we left off after last part where we fight a bunch of mochi-possessed villagers, and... somehow, despite his possessed sister being the whole reason I'm here in the first place, Kieran doesn't connect two and two and realize that the dance that the two farmers were doing is the same thing that Carmine is doing. Whether it's a curse or something done by a Pokemon or whatever, you'd think that Kieran is smart enough to realize what's going on? 

Nemona is wandering around in the background, though, so we chase after her, passing a whole bunch of brainwashed nameless NPC's going mochi-mochi in the town. 

I go to the Festival Hall, and Kieran's grandparents are there, seemingly still normal. They left Carmine sleeping at home, though I do think that it's not the wisest thing to do when your granddaughter is possessed. At least leave someone to take care of her! Grandpa (who we got the name of, it's Yukito) talks a bit about how they're here to buy some festival noodles with the hopes that they will make Carmine better. 

Grandma Hideko? She's already possessed, holding a plate filled with donut-shaped mochi. She is very insistent, telling grandpa to have some mochi. Eat it. Eat the mochi. 

Despite all the creepiness going on with Carmine, Grandpa just shrugs and eats the mochi after maybe two lines of arguments. Even if Grandpa hasn't seen what's going on in town, his insane granddaughter is literally yelling 'mochi mochi'. You'd think he'd be suspicious or at least uncomfortable. I guess he just really listens to Grandma? 

Neither Kieran nor my character do anything to stop this, and, of course, Grandpa's eyes becomes purple as he gets infected with the mochi zombie virus. The purple miasma consumes both old people, and they start yelling MOCHI MOCHIIII and do the dance. 

Grandma Hideko and Grandpa Yukito challenge us to a double battle, and it's actually quite interesting. Grandpa uses Arbok and Weezing, the two original Pokemon of the anime's Team Rocket. Grandma, meanwhile, wields a Chandelure and a Mamoswine for some reason. That one was a bit bizarre!

They go down pretty easily, and kind of just stands in place rigidly like the two farmers we beat up. Kieran panics, afraid that he'll end up like the rest of them because of the curse or whatever until we figure out that, yes, all the people yelling 'mochi mochi' has something to do with the mochi that they eat. It's kind of mind-bogglingly simple and I think that's the part of this whole story that irks me the most. 

Arven calls at this point, because he and Penny are kind of besieged in the Community Center. In some typical horror movie trope, they are attacked by folks offscreen and all we can hear is things breaking, people screaming, before the line goes dead. Penny and Arven have fallen to the mochi people, it appears, and there's something ominous as Penny yells about there being "something there" at Peachy's. 

Kieran and I rush back to town, to find that... Arven and Penny are absolutely all right. They gave me the wrong impression! Penny saw something weird, knocks Arven, and the phone being dropped was what caused all the screaming over the phone. But then Pecharunt shows up hovering above Peachy's in his 'sealed' form. I do like the fact that Arven and Penny are bamboozled, thinking that it's a drone.

Pecharunt then attacks, and I get why the mochi are shaped like donuts -- they're supposed to be the segments in his chains! Pecharunt shoots a bunch of mochi-donuts from the halves of his peach-shells. My character manage to dodge it. Kieran, the doofus, gets clonked in the forehead. Arven and Penny swallow them whole, and... I guess they have zero gag reflex, because they just swallow the two mochi whole. 

And, of course, they begin to glow purple and demand a battle. Moche MOCHEEEE! The game has some fun emphasizing just how much Penny is more worked up than Arven, yelling a lot and mixing up her 'Mochi' with 'Eevee'. Which... leads her to yell 'ECHEEEE' a couple of times which, uh, is kind of unfortunate. (Penny would be the one out of the three Paldea buddies to be an ecchi fan). 

Pecharunt just looms in the back of this battle, constantly splitting apart his peach shield and having it open and close. 

And... the fight is a double battle between Penny and Arven against Kieran and me. Arven has Greedent, Mabosstiff and Cloyster. Penny has Umbreon, Leafeon and Sylveon. It's... it's not super duper exciting, honestly, since I've fought Penny and Arven so many times and they didn't even give them new Pokemon this time around. 

After they get beaten down, little Pecharunt actually tries to slink away and act all innocent, which is actually adorable! 

Kieran tries to stop Pecharunt, but Pecharunt just cha-cha-cha slides away in his sealed peach form. For something that's basically a ball on a point, Pecharunt can move. This time, we chase down Pecharunt down the west side of town all the way to Loyalty Plaza, which is still ruined and will remain forever ruined because I don't want to give the greedy caretaker money to fix up the shrine to assholes. 

Ahem! 

The possessed Arven, Penny and Carmine are following us, as is basically the population of the entire town. Nemona is waiting with Pecharunt at the destroyed shrine, and of course she is also possessed. Where Penny was just mixing up Mochi and Eevee, Nemona is actually saying some words like 'match' into her possessed insanity, and Kieran even lampshades this. 

And... throughout all this the music just jumps back and forth between the very calming Kitakami background OST, or the ridiculous circus chicken dance music. And I know I sound a bit like a broken record at this point, but damn, it is distracting that none of the music actually match the mood. 

I fight Nemona with her full party. Lycanroc, Goodra, Pawmot, Kommo-o, Milotic and Meowscarada. At this point Blueberry Academy has kind of leveled up my Pokemon so much that I kinda steamroll Nemona without trying too much. I had Ogerpon, the shiny Camerupt, plus a bunch of Paradox Pokemon in my party, and they just absolutely steamroll the opposition.

And finally, Pecharunt himself comes down to play. 

And... I gotta do it. I gotta have Ogerpon show up and fight the shit out of Pecharunt. It seems only fair! Ogerpon even gets a "GRAH! Pon PON!!!" angry reaction when she sees Pecharunt in the battle. Pecharunt also has some special interactions with the Lousy Trio, but honestly, winning this entire battle with just Ogerpon is kind of appropriate. 

Because, well, if you forget in the midst of all the chicken-dancing silliness, Pecharunt corrupted the Loyal Trio and mutated them into monsters, and is implied to be the actual mastermind behind everything terrible that has happened to Ogerpon. Sending the Loyal Trio to attack Ogerpon, attempting to steal the mask, and indirectly involved in the death of Ogerpon's old trainer. By the way, I love that short video in the official Pokemon site detailing Pecharunt's backstory, which is implied to be framed in such a way to garner the audience's sympathy towards Pecharunt. Manipulative little devil, isn't he? 

Anyway, I tend to not give a shit about terastalization in this game, but I think in this case it's appropriate narratively that Ogerpon activates the full power of the masks that represent her old trainer, goes full-on giant oni mask mode, and I let Ogerpon just Throat CHOP THROAT CHOP THROAT CHOP Pecharunt in his non-existent throat until Ogerpon wins. 

Now this music, by the way, fits the battle. It's a bit more tense with some background taiko drums. Thank goodness. Pecharunt's signature ability is that any Pokemon he poisons gets confused as well, which represents the whole 'mind control poison aspect of his powers, but... despite me not using any berries to heal Ogerpon, she just keeps breaking through confusion. That's the power of VENGEANCE for you! It actually was pretty fun. 

And eventually I catch Pecharunt in a Love Ball, because the heart on it looks like an upside-down peach. Pecharunt is defeated, and Ogerpon's revenge is satiated. 

And... I do like this storyline. Pecharunt doesn't have much to say or do, but the context gives us enough to close the book on Ogerpon's story. I kind of wish Ogerpon actually had some cutscene closure with either Kieran or Pecharunt, and that's what I feel is kind of missing from the DLC. Neither Ogerpon, Terapagos or Pecharunt have much of a closure beyond the boss fighting, and I thought they all could've done with some. But oh well.

The miasma is gone, and Kieran (who's been holding back the zombie crowd) recaps everything to Nemona, Carmine, Arven and Penny, all of whom have amnesia of the time they spent doing the chicken dance. We have some brief gags between Penny's sarcastic comments and Nemona jumpscaring the party by acting out the chicken dance one last time, but otherwise I really don't think there's much to say in the wrap-up.

And we cut to 'several days later', where the Paldean students prepare to return to Paldea from the Community Center. Carmine and Kieran come to see us off, and apparently Nemona has battled the Kitakami siblings 'dozens of times', causing Arven and Penny to snark that they can form a 'Nemona Survivors Club'. 

The events of this whole epilogue basically has closed off Kieran's story, and he finally gets his confidence back to go back to Blueberry Academy, wanting to give it another shot. Carmine has also apparently taken a sabbatical from school throughout all of this, and is jubilant that they can go back. Kieran acknowledges that Carmine cares for him in her own wacky 'big personality' way, and... and that's the end. 

It's a nice bit of storytelling, poor mood music notwithstanding. I do think that while it's not a perfect storyline, they put in a fair bit of effort in trying to draw some thoroughline with Kieran's story, and to wrap up the Kitakami mythology. I do feel that ultimately, this does reinforce my belief that the Blueberry Academy, despite being a great overworld area, ends up being a gigantic distraction from the stories that the game developers wanted to tell -- making the Indigo Disk segment of the DLC feel fragmented and awkward. It's ultimately a small complaint, though!

And... now I'm back to hunting. I did detail some of what I did off-screen in the 'random notes' section, including starter-hunting and doing a lot of upgrades to the Blueberry Academy. I feel like the game lends itself well to 'grinding', but the BP missions do get so repetitive and I'm kinda miffed that I can't do it in greater Paldea or in Kitakami since there are some Pokemon drops that I would like to farm. I'm going to be playing Pokemon Violet a lot less intensely now (and real life caused me to extend this playthrough maybe two months longer than I would've otherwise) but I do plan to unlock all the gym leader rematches in Blueberry Academy -- which wouldn't be hard; it'll just be time-consuming. This BP grinding stuff is admittedly a fun, brainless way to play the game while I watch TV. 

I'll maybe do one more post later on if I have enough stuff to say about the post-post-game stuff in Blueberry Academy, with all the legendary hunting and the rematches and whatnot, but right now I'm going to focus on finally writing up the final "Gotta Review 'Em All" for Generation IX!

Once again, thank you guys for reading through my ramblings as I play through this Pokemon game. It's frankly surprising just how well these Pokemon articles do compared to a lot of the other articles I do on this blog. 

Random Notes:

• Again, I really wished that we had creepier music. Save the funky-dance music for the chicken dance reveals, sure, but I really wished that the atmosphere actually was a bit creepier than it is. The visuals are good enough, and the blank expressions of the people dancing to mochi-mochi is honestly creepy enough, but I feel like this whole DLC would've worked much better with a different set of music. 
  
• Honestly, the music when we get the buildup to the orchard workers or when Pecharunt attacks Arven and Penny are quite suitable. It's just that they really like the goofy theme. 
• I do like that there's a laughter track in the background of the annoying theme, which I assume is Pecharunt himself. 
• Penny got herself a Veevee Mask from the festival grounds offscreen. That's adorable. 
• There's nothing super exciting about it, but I've finally unlocked the Canyon Biome's upgrade, which puts in the rest of the starters. Squirtle, Litten, a bunch of others. 
• I caught a Shiny Drillbur! I didn't even realize she was shiny until my Pokemon refused to attack it. They really ramped up the shiny rate in this game, huh?
• Also, I've finally gone and tried to complete my Blueberry dex as best as I can with only a copy of Violet. A couple of the starters were a bit hidden! Torchic and Cyndaquil only spawn in specific caves in the Polar Biome, and I missed Totodiles in the swampy waters in the Savanna Biome entirely! I actually had to look up a guide for those. 
• I also upgraded a lot of the stuff that I could in the Club Room. There's an item printer, a bunch of new poses and new music... and I finally invited a trainer. I invited Katy, the Bug gym trainer. From Katy's arrival I don't think we're going to get a whole ton of new content for me to talk about. I don't think we get any real new context the way that the original post-game rematches do. Or maybe Katy's just boring? She adds a sixth Pokemon, an Araquanid, to her party, but that's basically it. 
• I also did some rematches with Crispin and Amarys, and I guess this progression will depend on who shows up in the League Club Room. I'm not sure what changes this, but I guess I'll just fight whoever's around. Not a whole ton to say about their rematches, but they don't give me new clothes like Drayton. Boo. 
• Amarys gives me a brand-new pose, the 'finger heart' pose. I ignore poses almost entirely in this game, but I love the dialogue where Amarys is apparently taught this pose by Carmine, who somehow got her to believe that this is an 'invincible' pose. That's why she did it!
• Crispin gave me a bunch of sandwich picks. Man, you're lame, Crispin.
• I actually want to do a playthrough of New Pokemon Snap, but I'm not sure if there's going to be enough content in it for me to do a let's play series. We'll see. 

Gotta Review 'Em All - Shinies, Generation II Families

Generation II, now!

 

I reasonably like the pale colours on Bayleef, but Chikorita just looks kinda washed-out. The brown leaf at least makes him look explicitly shiny, though. Meanwhile, shiny Meganium is just disappointing.

A huge m'eh for all three of the original shinies of the Cyndaquil line, which just look slightly paler. Shiny Hisuian Typhlosion doesn't even look that different, and being a shiny from a Generation VIII game he has even less of an excuse. Honestly, just disappointing all around.

 

 

Kinda okay. The teal is different enough from the base blue that the three members of the Totodile line normally have, but it's the addition of blue fins that really make them stand out.

 

Both are pretty great! How different shiny Sentret kind of depends on the specific game, but being yellow with slightly purplish rings is a nice look. Shiny Furret is the clear winner here, with adorable link highlights that makes hom so much cuter compared to his regular counterpart.

 

Again, yellow/golden shinies are always cool, and Hoothoot is one that makes it work. Shiny Noctowl is featured prominently in the anime, although I personally think it's not the best shiny in this generation. It's all right, though.

 

They're just anemic and barely different. Poor Ledyba, you really can't catch a break in anything, huh?

 

 

While I do like shiny Ariados's pinker shade and the nice baby blue highlights on the legs, I do really find shiny Spinarak kinda cute, with its muted blue and somewhat pink legs. It actually calls to mind Spinarak's original colour from Gold/Silver which is dark blue/purple, before Crystal changes it to match the anime and Sugimori artwork!

 

 

I feel shiny Chinchou having green light organs is sonehow more "shiny" than shiny Lanturn becoming a bit purpler? I felt like mixing the colour alterations of both -- purple body, green lights -- would've made for a properly good shiny.

 

It's a bit not-so-obvious, but the joke is that the red and blue triangles of the Togepi line all switch their colours in the translation from normal to shiny. It's very much difficult to tell unless you put the sprites side by side.

They sure are paler, and it's these kinds of shinies that are really frustrating where it's hard to tell if it's just the art style or the monitor saturation, or if Xatu here is really shiny. 

 

 

Flaaffy is barely changed, but it's worth it to get the gloriously pink Mareep and Ampharos-es. The pink works very well particularly on Ampharos, and the additional blue accents on the orbs work well too!

Very great colours for all of them. Neon green works very well on shiny Azurill and Marill, but yellow Azumarill is equally as refreshing. I honestly actually like yellow Azumarill more than the official blue.

 

Serviceable, I guess? The wooden parts becoming a slightly greener shade doesn't flatter Sudowoodo, but the fake leaves being pink and red respectively kind of makes thematic sense for them. It's like they're pretending to be sakura trees or some such. 

 

I like all three of these! Entirely-green shiny Hoppip is fun and honestly looks somewhat more adorably mundane or natural. I find it cute that the helicopter vines remain green.

Pink Skiploom and Jumpluff are both great as well, again, reminding me of sakura flowers and generally being a pretty great usage of pink.

 ...less of a good usage of pink. Sorry, Aipom, you chose a rather sickly shade or pink. Ambipom's a bit better, but then it's a bit too close to the official purple colours?

 

Disappointing. Sunkern looks sunburnt, and Sunflora looks like it didn't get enough sunlight.

Ooooooh shit. Shiny Yanma is a gloriously 90's shade of bright blue with neon green as the goggles, and that's already cool... but shiny Yanmega tops it by having an even more pleasant baby blue and a nice shade of magenta. I 100% prefer this colouration to the regular Yanmega! See? This is how cool a shiny palette can be, compared to the rather minimum efforts we had before!

LOVE! Shiny Quagsire rocks that pink pretty well, but the lighter, whiter pink on shiny Wooper is even better. Whether it's coincidental or intentional, it makes shiny Wooper actually look like a real axolotl!

Shiny Paldean Wooper and Clodsire have a serviceable and very distinct shiny palette with that purple-gray shade, and are pretty cool, too, just not to the degree of the pink Wooper.

 

 

Mmm... not a fan of these pink shinies. I feel likr it's okay on Murkrow, but I kinda felt like Honchkrow's red accents should've been more distinct.

 

The green is okay on Misdreavus, but shiny Mismagius looks like piss.

 

 

Blue Unown. They sure are blue. Are they blue ink Unown?

 

Pretty adorable! Pink works on both Wynaut and Wobbuffet. I think I prefer the slightly brighter shade Wynaut has.

 

 

Girafarig is disappointing, you'd think they would just go for the obvious and swapped the black and orange parts? Or, heck, anything more special than just giving him a blue nose and spikes? This isn't even a reindeer!

Farigiraf, a Generation IX Pokemon, has even less of an excuse. At least they changed the yellow legs and head ridges to white, but... eh.

Huh! Shiny Pineco being yellow/gold is actually pretty damn nice-looking. I kind of wish Forretress was a bit more bling-y, or at least had more contrast between his 'shell' and his 'inner armour'. A golden Forretress is actually pretty damn badass looking, but the actual shades of yellow they used is a bit lacking. 

A fun pink shiny! Mostly because they only swapped out the blue for pink, which makes for a pretty adorable colour scheme next to the yellow and white. Dunsparce and Dudunsparce are both pretty funny-looking, too, which adds to the effect. 

A very nice variant. Pale blue on both Gligar and Gliscor look good, and it's particularly interesting with Gligar since regular Gligar normally has the highly-contrasting blue wings with pinkish-purple body. Now with the purple parts becoming pale blue, the colours blend together a bit better and it's not a bad alternate look! Pale blue and yellow accents on shiny Gliscor is also not a bad look!

Shiny Granbull is a rather safe metallic yellow, which is actually a slightly more naturalistic colouration for this bulldog-man. Shiny Snubbull is... uhh... how best to describe him? He's like a photo negative, I think that's the most accurate way to describe him. I'm not sure if I'd like him better or worse if the feet aren't randomly orange instead of following the different shades of purple-blue that the rest of his body is. 

Shiny Qwilfish is a very distinct but very washed-out looking shade of pink. Not a fan. Shiny Hisuian Qwilfish and Overqwil make for a much nicer alternating shade of gray and creamy-white, with bluish-purple lips and spine-tips. Not the best shiny, but a neat one. 

A simple change of the shell from red to blue, but shiny Shuckle's pretty neat. It's a nice shade of blue, too. 

Both Heracross and Mega Heracross sure are bright pink! I dunno, being almost solid pink isn't the best look, but it's at least very vivid? Comparing him to his rival Pinsir, though, I much prefer Pinsir's more subdued lavender. 

Shiny Sneasel and Weavile, on the other hand, are much better usages of the pink shiny than Heracross had, and I think that's mostly because of the fact that it's contrasted very nicely against the yellow accents. Both Sneasel and Weavile are pretty fancy-looking!

Shiny Hisuian Sneasel kind of inverts the shades of gray, but replaces the dark-purple accents with the yellow of shiny Johtonian Sneasel. Pretty interesting look! Sneasler doesn't share any of the yellow that its shiny cousins have other than the tip of its ear, but the ghostly-white main body is an interesting enough alternate palette, and fits a mountain-dwelling yokai. 

Not a big fan of all of these. Shiny Teddiursa probably has the nicest one out of them, being a nice metallic green, but the darker neon green is not a good look on Ursaring. Shiny Ursaluna is at least not green, but going from brown to maroon isn't a particularly easily-noticeable change. 

(At the time of writing, Bloodmoon Ursaluna's shiny colouration hasn't yet been revealed.)

Shiny Magcargo would be an okay pink shiny... but silver shiny Slugma is just so damn good that putting it side-by-side with Magcargo just puts the evolved form to shame. No, seriously, a silvery goop-monster just looks pretty damn cool. 

Green Swinub looks like it's overgrown by moss, and I think it's a nice look for it. Yellow Piloswine is pleasant. Darker-green shiny Mamoswine is... okay? I like shiny Mamoswine the least. 

Shiny Corsola with the baby-blue coral just looks so pretty! It's a very adorable shade of blue, and it fits Corsola very well. 

Shiny Galarian Corsola and Cursola are still intent on keeping the ghostly part... but interestingly, only the 'coral' bodies are changed into a darker shade of gray, while the 'ectoplasm' ghostly coral are still milky-white. It's different, even if it's not my favourite shiny out of Generation VIII. I do feel like it's neat that they took the 'we must keep it looking serious and tragic' mentality going on here. 

Purple Remoraid is... okay, but dull brown Octillery is kind of disappointing. 

M'eh. It's purple, not red, I know, but it's not the best-looking colour alteration. 

Mantyke is a nice teal, but Mantine just looks washed out. 

It's all right. Changing the red blade-wings to green for Skarmory isn't the worst thing out there, though I wished they changed the metallic body a bit more drastically. 

Oh, yeah, no. It's obvious that they're not the regular colours, with the snouts being so pale, but I really wished they gave Houndour, Houndoom and Mega Houndoom better shinies. Going from black to dark blue isn't that interesting. 

Shiny Phanpy is barely different. Shiny Donphan's green-gray body is icky, but the muddy tire tread is interesting. 

Shiny Stantler is neon green, not very flattering. Shiny Wyrdeer is still neon green, but a more subdued shade that looks... I won't say great, but at least it's not terrible.

An interesting move, changing Smeargle's normal green paint on the tip of his tail to red? THe rest of Smeargle gets a bit paler. I personally would've gone a bit more drastic, but I can respect this.

Blue Miltank! This particular art makes the blue be a bit more better. Shiny Yanma and shiny Corsola above wears it better, but it looks okay on Miltank. 

I really like the change done to the shiny legendary beasts, where they become a bit more subtle and make the contrast with the colours a bit less. It makes the designs a bit less cluttered and busy, even though the amount of details are still the same. Raikou, I think, changes the most with not just his face-greebles but also his cape-cloud going a bit more subdued. Honestly, I vastly prefer shiny Raikou to regular Raikou.

Shiny Entei also reduces a lot of the colour, changing a lot of the details to gray and vastly reducing the colours in the face. This one is the least changed, though. 

And finally, shiny Suicune, which still looks pretty classy even with its minimalist palette. I also think he looks better than the regular-flavour Suicune?

It's kind of weird that it's just the 'striped' belly that changes colour the most, with Larvitar and the two Tyranitar's armoured belly going pink and purple. Pupitar, being entirely made of that belly, is bright purple. I think it's not interesting enough or different enough, particularly on Larvitar. 

Pink-highlights Lugia is... it's certainly a thing? It's at least different, though I have the same feeling that I have with shiny Mewtwo that it's not the best look. 

Shiny Ho-Oh is pretty majestic, going for a palette of orange and silver, with red wing-tips. I like the colour scheme, and the fact that this might be a joke on 'Gold and Silver', the Johto games, is also pretty great. Easily the stronger shiny out of the two Johto birds.

And we cap Generation II off with my favourite shiny 'pixie', shiny Celebi. Pink is a great colour on Celebi already, but the fact that they kept the green eyes and the green antenna-tips really is what makes shiny Celebi work particularly well for me. A huge fan.