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Old 11-06-2010, 05:51 PM   #876
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Just beat the main storyline, now in the "post game". Some thoughts (that I'll try to keep relatively spoiler-free):

Liked
*Why weren't TMs this awesome before?
Turns out finding/receiving a TM feels a lot more meaningful when you can actually freely use the things, instead of having to hoard them like Scrooge McDuck. Who knew?

*The death of HM slaves.
Unless I'm forgetting something, you never have to use an HM move to get through the story. Not once.

I can't find that .gif of Jesus Camp where Raptor Jesus' head is photoshopped onto that one guy, so imagine I posted it where this text is.

That's not to say HMs aren't ever used: most of the side stuff will usually require you to use HMs to progress, so we're not totally free of the bastard gremlins. That said, it's incredibly gratifying to be able to progress through the main game using the six Pokemon you want to use, instead of 4 Pokemon + HM slaves.

Neutral

*Changes to the exp system
For those of you who don't much fancy math, the exp system got changed in Black and White to take into account the differences between two Pokemon. In short: if you're lower leveled than the opponent you KO, you get more exp; higher leveled, less exp. For those of us who have gotten "whore out the game with a small group of high-leveled mans" down to a science, you probably know on which side you fall and are probably not too happy about it.

In practice, it's not that big a deal for the main game: B/W is generally pretty good about giving you trainers/places to get exp, so you almost never have to grind wild Pokemon to progress. You also receive a Lucky Egg at some point during the game, which helps alleviate the penalty with that sweet, sweet, 1.5 multiplier. So really, the only time this system will really annoy you is when you have to grind exp because you're either an idiot who gets outthought by Pokemon games or the level advantage of the enemies you're fighting is too high to be beaten by book-learnins.

Which, unfortunately, you're going to eventually have to do, because...

What the fuck, man

*The post-game leap is bananas
Okay, so you go through the game and beat the main story. The highest Pokemon level you'll face is 54, while your highest-leveled Pokemon will probably be 50-52ish or so (and that will be the outlier: expect the rest of your Pokemon to be in the high 40's or so). Then you step onto one of the postgame routes, where the wild Pokemon are level 47-50 (okay) but the trainers are using level 60+ Pokemon (wut).

"No problem, I'll go wail on the Elite 4 for levels and money," you say? Okay, but their teams are all 70+ once you get the National Pokedex. And one of the first things that happens to you in the postgame is that you get the National Pokedex.

It's not an insurmountable obstacle if you whore typings, but the leap with no readily-apparent way to bridge the gap short of griniding wild Pokemon and the sports teams in Raimon City is weird. Hopefully I've just missed something, because I kind of hope their post-game stuff isn't oriented around "import your level 100 Garchomp from gen IV and rape everything".

*Junichi Masuda's porn folder is probably full of pictures of bridges
In a G4 interview, Junichi Masuda told the interviewer about his interest in bridges, and how he admired how so many small things had to add up to a functional whole to accomplish remarkable feats. Which is great and all, but I don't want to spend my game time doing nothing but running across the fucking things.

So Black and White got a pretty dramatic visual overhaul even from DPPt or HG/SS: the 3D artists and area designers clearly brought their A-game to Isshu and it shows. The dark side of all this is that they're more than happy to demonstrate their handiwork to you, often to the point where you're spending a couple minutes running across bridges (of which Isshu has several) where nothing happens and there is nothing of any real interest. But hey, it's totally alright because look at this totally sweet camera angle dude

That's not to say they haven't done impressive work with the tech of the Nintendo DS, but even if you are one of the people who are awestruck by DS 3D (and I'm too jaded by video games to be all that impressed), it's something that is impressive exactly one time, which then becomes annoying when you have to backtrack across it. This sort of peacock-strutting extends to other areas, including the Elite 4 (because you can't just walk into their room, you have to walk in and then experience the wonders of a 10-15 second unskippable cutscene), which makes the game feel annoyingly slow at times. Yes animators, you've made this room very impressive, can I please punch the Elite 4's token metrosexual in the mouth now?
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Old 12-30-2010, 11:19 PM   #877
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I'd read on Smogon the past couple of days that the Lati's won't be able to bring their Soul Dew over to Black and White. Wondering whether this was a specific item restriction or a side-effect of a more general restriction, I decided to read up on the features of Black and White on Bulbapedia to see what all had been deciphered since last I investigated in September.

Did you guys know about this? Check this out:

Quote:
Pokémon [you send over from a Generation IV gamepak] are not allowed to have hold items, or know any HM moves.
Source: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9Shifter

Generation III all over again? Not exactly. You'll still be able to import every creature released to date (with one exception -- the spiky-eared Pichu in HGSS) and with the help of breeding you should be able to reproduce most of Smogon's competitive battlers even in the absence of particular TMs in Unova. But this strikes me as a major flaw in PR management -- just another reason to be majorly bummed out about Gen5.
  • After getting so excited to finally get my hands on a Surfing Pikachu -- something which until 2009 hadn't been available since the generation shift between II and III in 2003 six years earlier! -- I'm told that it'll have to stay behind in Gen4. WTF. Why can't you guys code around this? LAZY. Why can't you allow HMs to come over since they're all battle-legal moves preserved in Gen5's game code anyway!?!? MIND-BOGGLING.
  • Did you manage to collect all of the berries? Pretty impressive if you did. I was happy just to land the Enigma Berry which came with Darkrai! But it looks like none of our berries are coming over. No Salac, no Liechi, no nothing. Some will surely be provided in-game fresh out of the box with the others to come in due time, but this is a major slap in the face to people who worked hard to collect all of the berries for legacy purposes.
  • So, you spent 100 hours racking up points in the Battle Frontier just so you'd never have to ever worry about grinding for the Choice Items again, huh? TOO BAD! Four Choice Bands? Three Choice Specs? Four Choice Scarves? Three Focus Sashes? Five Leftovers? Say good-bye to all of them: they're being left behind. Again, it's not quite the end of the world since the items are (to the best of my knowledge and expectations alike) re-provided for you in Gen5. It's just that this is a major no-no on GameFreak's part, a wretched kick to the nuts for anybody who slaved away in the Battle Frontier trying to save themselves time in future generations from having to scrounge around for must-have metagame items.
These are just three of the things I can think of. You can probably come up with a few more yourselves. No matter how you try to spin it, GameFreak goofed. If their goal was to prevent players from exporting TMs from 4th Gen to 5th Gen, they sure succeeded: but at what cost? Couldn't they have just coded a simple item check in Gen5's Pal Park? "If held item is a TM, deny. If held item is any other item, allow." Is this so hard?
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Old 12-31-2010, 05:28 AM   #878
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I agree on the TM item check, but the reason you can't send over poke's with HM moves is simple. Send over the wrong one, and you're stuck. Sure VERY unlikely and you probably have to try for it, but possible.
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Shouldn’t the Hoff be doing something if he’s still around? I have strict rules about leaving the pool, and I’m sure vanishing the pool out of existence breaks those rules in some way :P
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:07 AM   #879
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How are you "stuck"? All of the HM moves are as present in the game as are all of the exotic TMs (e.g. Avalanche), are they not? If I don't need to delete Avalanche, why should I have to delete Surf?

Even more absurd is the blanket ban on HMs as opposed to only banning exotic HMs. Suppose they wanted to ban Rock Climb like a bad memory. Suppose they wanted to pretend it had never even existed. (Which is even going one farther than 3rd Gen's treatment of Whirlpool -- de-HMed but left as a level-up for a few Pokémon.) Then they could have a tiny bit of Pal Park code which looks for Rock Climb and just Rock Climb. Not that hard. Meanwhile, they leave all of the in-game HMs alone. Surf? Surf!? As long as HMs exist, Surf will always be one of them. Banning it only to immediately re-allow it does nothing other than to block event Pokémon (incl. Pokéwalker Pokémon) from coming over.
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:09 AM   #880
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Let's say that you save on an island and you've got only one Water (who knows Surf) and he's the only Water you have. No Fly either. You're out of Pokeballs too. You transfer over that Pokemon with Surf, and suddenly, POOF, you're stuck on the island. Your game is fucked and you'll have to restart if you want to un-strand yourself.

That's why they code it that way. Though they probably should do it like they do the release deal when you release a Pokemon who is the only one with the HM, it'll come back.
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:30 AM   #881
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Logical explanation: but so unlikely that I don't think it's the real reason. The real reason, I suspect, is a combination of laziness and the desire to re-market popular event-only Pokémon.

Think about it this way: who would you rather screw over -- the kid who Pal Parks from an uncivilized island with NO Pokéballs, NO escape, NO common sense? or the kid whose Lvl 100 EV trained Raichu knows Surf? Why punish the smarter player for his dedication? It's bad PR management, that's what it is.

And there's an easy fix for your stranded-on-a-desert-island hypothesis, one which I thought was already in place but I guess not: and that's to ban the player from Pal Parking outside of Pokémon Centers. Force the player to do that and you address all but the most ridiculous of scenarios.
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:42 AM   #882
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I don't know about fourth gen, but in third gen you could still get stuck that way. There is a pokecenter in that log town. It was way easier to get stuck there, so I think they made it so because of that, and didn't bother to change it now.
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Originally Posted by empoleon dynamite View Post
Shouldn’t the Hoff be doing something if he’s still around? I have strict rules about leaving the pool, and I’m sure vanishing the pool out of existence breaks those rules in some way :P
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:46 AM   #883
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I find it hard to believe they can't scan your team to see if any other pokemon knows that HM.
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Old 12-31-2010, 10:52 AM   #884
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Guys... Talon has a point. You can't migrate from your party, so if you need Surf to get to, (and/or away from) somewhere, you'll have it. There ARE three places you could get trapped (HG/SS Cinnabar, Pacifidilog and Sootopolis). But if you have REALLY rare stuff, you can just migrate it, maybe even slapping extremely rare items to derp mon and sending them.
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Old 12-31-2010, 12:29 PM   #885
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Or you can have someone just trade you back a Pokemon that knows surf/fly/etc. Or you can just be screwed forever, penalizing idiots for getting rid of important Pokemon.
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Old 01-01-2011, 09:01 AM   #886
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Here's a good idea for Gen 6: If you get trapped in a location, free emergency transport.
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