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xyzzysqrlHere's a post that will contain no spoiler content whatsoever. I was asked to elaborate a bit on Pokemon-Amie and Super Training, and once I got over the shock of actually being asked to post more I instantly sat down and played four hours of Marvel Heroes. Then I opened up a notepad++ file to describe these features, because I kinda love them.
I'm real big on this generation, have you noticed?
Let's do Pokemon-Amie first.
In the Pokemon-Amie window, you can feed your Pokemon fancy cakes, rub it on the belly (or ears or you know whatever I AM NOT HERE TO JUDGE YOU, you perv), give it high-fives, talk to it, and so on and so on. There's also some minigames you can play, which will allow you to win more cakes.
Each Pokemon has an affection meter five hearts long. The happier you make it, the longer you play with it, the fuller that meter gets. Why do you want to fill the heart meter?
Okay, if you ever watched the Pokemon anime I can just say that it lets you pull off Ash-grade bullshit. If not...
Once you get a few hearts, your pokemon suddenly start earning more experience. Get another and they start shrugging off crippling status effects to look better to you. They'll start throwing criticals more often. Fill up the heart meter and there's a chance they'll take a blow that SHOULD knock them out... and get back up anyway with one hit point left, struggling back to their feet just so they don't let you down.
That's the power of love.
The power of love involves a LOT of cream filled cakes. Be warned.
(As a side note, I have just discovered Pokemon-Amie lets me rub Aerodactyl on his TONGUE to make him happy. This is the best goddamn game, you guys.)
So what's Super Training then?
Have you heard of EVs? If so you probably hate them. I did. EVs are "Effort Values", little points that your pokemon earn when they defeat other Pokemon in battle. Before X/Y, the only way to keep track of these was manually, and you had to know via guidebooks that THIS kind of pokemon gives Defense EVs and THIS kind gives Special Attack EVs and you had to run all over the goddamn region fighting things and running away and IT WAS BULLSHIT OKAY BORING TEDIOUS BULLSHIT.
The thing is, EV training made your pokemon -better-. Quantifiably so. They tried to alleviate the problem with vitamins that gave you EV points, but those were expensive. So: Super Training.
Super Training lets you see all the "potential" points your Pokemon could earn up to Level 100, and affect them via easy training minigames. If you want to do it the slow way, you can tap a punching bag and earn more punching bags which let you add more points to your pokemon. If you want to do it the fast way, you can do a 3D shooter where you rapid-fire soccer balls at a giant inflatable balloon. You can even reset the points, in case you feel you messed up somewhere and want to get a fresh start. It tells you when you've maxed out a stat, or helps suggest what you -might- work on: Hey, that pokemon has a pretty good speed stat, why not train it up?
Either way, Super Training takes a system that was utterly TERRIBLE and which only the dangerously obsessed were even bothering to learn about, and puts it right up front in an easy accessable fashion. It has some downsides -- you'll want to run a pokemon you don't really care about training through all the modules to unlock more modules -- but it's leaps above what USED to be there.
Y'know, like a lot of OTHER things this generation.
I'm real big on this generation, have you noticed?
Let's do Pokemon-Amie first.
In the Pokemon-Amie window, you can feed your Pokemon fancy cakes, rub it on the belly (or ears or you know whatever I AM NOT HERE TO JUDGE YOU, you perv), give it high-fives, talk to it, and so on and so on. There's also some minigames you can play, which will allow you to win more cakes.
Each Pokemon has an affection meter five hearts long. The happier you make it, the longer you play with it, the fuller that meter gets. Why do you want to fill the heart meter?
Okay, if you ever watched the Pokemon anime I can just say that it lets you pull off Ash-grade bullshit. If not...
Once you get a few hearts, your pokemon suddenly start earning more experience. Get another and they start shrugging off crippling status effects to look better to you. They'll start throwing criticals more often. Fill up the heart meter and there's a chance they'll take a blow that SHOULD knock them out... and get back up anyway with one hit point left, struggling back to their feet just so they don't let you down.
That's the power of love.
The power of love involves a LOT of cream filled cakes. Be warned.
(As a side note, I have just discovered Pokemon-Amie lets me rub Aerodactyl on his TONGUE to make him happy. This is the best goddamn game, you guys.)
So what's Super Training then?
Have you heard of EVs? If so you probably hate them. I did. EVs are "Effort Values", little points that your pokemon earn when they defeat other Pokemon in battle. Before X/Y, the only way to keep track of these was manually, and you had to know via guidebooks that THIS kind of pokemon gives Defense EVs and THIS kind gives Special Attack EVs and you had to run all over the goddamn region fighting things and running away and IT WAS BULLSHIT OKAY BORING TEDIOUS BULLSHIT.
The thing is, EV training made your pokemon -better-. Quantifiably so. They tried to alleviate the problem with vitamins that gave you EV points, but those were expensive. So: Super Training.
Super Training lets you see all the "potential" points your Pokemon could earn up to Level 100, and affect them via easy training minigames. If you want to do it the slow way, you can tap a punching bag and earn more punching bags which let you add more points to your pokemon. If you want to do it the fast way, you can do a 3D shooter where you rapid-fire soccer balls at a giant inflatable balloon. You can even reset the points, in case you feel you messed up somewhere and want to get a fresh start. It tells you when you've maxed out a stat, or helps suggest what you -might- work on: Hey, that pokemon has a pretty good speed stat, why not train it up?
Either way, Super Training takes a system that was utterly TERRIBLE and which only the dangerously obsessed were even bothering to learn about, and puts it right up front in an easy accessable fashion. It has some downsides -- you'll want to run a pokemon you don't really care about training through all the modules to unlock more modules -- but it's leaps above what USED to be there.
Y'know, like a lot of OTHER things this generation.
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-03-01 12:54 am (UTC)bestworst part? The Pokemon dev teams typically run development for two games at once with two seperate, non-communicating teams since like 3rd Gen, so if we get any of these changes to stick, they won't be in the next duology! This is also why a lot of things that really worked in Gen 4, like the underground and pokemon following behind you, never made it into Gen 5 in any capacity, and why the "you can catch these pokemon on this route" feature of the pokedex in B2W2 isn't in XY.no subject
Date: 2014-03-01 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-28 08:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-20 02:25 am (UTC)Anyway, I feel like this generation had a lot of great ideas in the actual things themselves (Pokemon Amie is obviously the greatest thing ever, Super Training is a much more fun way to handle EVs though the punching bag part could have been better/less confusing) but I just never could get the hang of that UI. But I mean we've been over this.