@DrFinkelstein

I think it was handmade by someone on Deviant Art. So it might be one of a kind.

Maybe learn to crochet?

Oh here's my FC if anyone wants to add me!

5026-4430-6821

@deathly_hallows Added you!

@Xbob42
Awesome! I'll add you the next time I'm online.

Ugh. Haven't had very much fun battling other players. The battling in the main game is super fucking easy and doesn't teach you SHIT about advanced techniques or break down the weaknesses (aside from one gym at a time, from one NPC, telling you either the weaknesses or strengths of a single type, not both. I could totally go to a wiki but what kind of fucking game doesn't teach you the basics? What the fuck is Fairy weak against? I destroyed the Fairy gym and still have no fucking clue!) and none of the trainers, including gym leaders, seem to have more than 3 Pokemon! Except this one Fisherman, I got all excited when I saw 6 Pokeballs, like "Maybe I'll get a semidecent battle now!" and it was the dude in every game with 6 goddamn Magikarp.

The difficult is like... nonexistent compared to Black 2, which I got right before this. Black 2 was actually pretty goddamn tricky in spots and some of the gym leaders had gimmicks that totally wrecked me at first (Volt Switch... ouch!) and I became a better battler because of it. This game coddles me like I've got an IQ of a jar of mayonnaise and doesn't seem to want to throw even the slightest hint of a challenge my way.

...and then someone randomly challenges me to a battle and I have no fucking clue what to do. And by that I don't mean "Durrr do I hit it??" I mean I have no point of reference for a lot of these Pokemon. I played Red & Blue like mad, then didn't play another Pokemon game until Diamond & Pearl and I've kept relatively up-to-date since then but there are still hundreds of Pokemon I haven't seen, and they seem to be fond of doing this thing lately where a Pokemon will look like one type but in reality be a completely different type.

All this could easily be fixed if I could use my goddamn Pokedex in battle, like in the anime, so I'd at least have a friggin' chance of getting a good hit in! My best battle to date was super close (I still lost, but it was my fault! Not my ignorance's fault!) because I recognized each and every Pokemon and their type by eye! They can't possibly expect the average player to know all this shit by heart? My worst fight was against this guy using a Noivere or whatever, the giant bat thing, I had no fucking clue what type it was (Besides Flying, I assume) and it used like 4 different elements. I couldn't look up what it was called because its name was in fucking Japanese! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIGHT THAT?!

Ugh! And speaking of which, the worst is when I use a STAB attack with 90-120 power against an enemy that is weak against that type (In a battle where all are set to 50.) and it hits them for less than 1/5th of their HP bar, then they use a non-STAB attack that I'm weak against and I get one shot on my big tank-like Pokemon? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

I'd be having so much more fun battling online if the game did ANYTHING AT ALL to help alleviate my ignorance, to try to guide me in the right direction. I haven't beaten a single person! And my Pokemon are all above level 50 naturally and know moves that I thought were pretty decent because I one-shot every-fucking-thing-in-the-universe offline, but I guess all my abilities suck and all my Pokemon suck and my lack of knowledge about 718 goddamn Pokemon makes me suck and ARRRRGH.

The worst possible feeling for a gamer in a competitive match is to lose and have no idea whatsoever what went wrong or how they could've done it better. I should be learning from every loss, not becoming hugely confused by it every time.

Turn Exp Share off and the game gets a lot harder. There is also the fact that almost everyone online EV trains to make themselves stronger in specific stats. Noivern, the one you faced is Dragon/Flying and is it is Dragon type, it has access to a wide movepool. Noivern also has base stats of 97 in SpAtk and 123 in Spd. By adding max EVs to that (252) you get 63 stat ups in both of those stats. This is probably why it's Non STAB boosted Super Effective move did a bunch of damage. Online, while greatly improved since the last games, is still the most frustrating thing to play because the game still doesn't introduce things like EVs well enough.

Yeah I had to look up Super Training to find out what the hell it actually did, apparently it's linked to EV training somehow? In what way? What are the calculations? Do I miss out tremendously if I wait until later to EV train my Pokemon? I never did EV training before because it always seemed like something for insane people in previous games, if I EV train improperly (i.e. I just trained my starter Pokemon with whatever because the super training appeared to have no noticeable affect on my stats at the time so I figured it was just some weird minigame.) is that Pokemon screwed?

There's so much depth, and they tell you NONE of it, they explain absolutely NOTHING and it is incredibly infuriating. Why can't I look up a Pokemon with my Pokedex mid battle? That's the ENTIRE point of the Pokedex! Knowledge at your fingertips! Instead I have to use my phone's Pokedex, which is absurd!

By the way, does EV training add stats immediately or does it reallocate stats as the Pokemon levels up? Or does it generate stats out of thin air? Or something else? Why do I have to ask all this on a forum?! I can't even ask the people I'm playing with/against in-game because apparently the only type of chat added is some voice chat with the worst voice codec known to mankind. I'm pretty sure the packets carrying your voice are routed through Hell first, where the devil shits on them and then shoots them back up to this mortal coil to be sprayed all over your chat partners' face.

If I seem angry at all this, it's only because I'm UTTERLY ENRAGED.

You get different EV points for battling Pokemon. For example, Gulpin give HP EV points. The only way to get rid of your EVs is to use a Reset Bag or a certain juice which allows you to relevel them from scratch. 4 EV points = 1 stat up and a Pokemon can have a max of 510 Effort Values. These Stat Ups are used immediately as far as I am aware. You can use Super Training, or the classic wild Pokemon method. Both ways are quick and easy with the right knowledge but I only ever use Super Training.

It made me quite sad to max out my Sigilyph's speed on Super Training (as well as SP def so it can hopefully survive at least one attack) and it's still slower than like every single Pokemon I've fought online. And it has always been my go-to speed demon since Black! I like to combo use it to slap Thunder Wave on people and then get those great Fly shots in as well as some synchronoise when the time is right. But it never gets to move and can't take a hit! Its speed was like its main stat even before Super Training, so what the hell is the point of it if it's slower than other Pokemon and weaker in virtually every other regard? I guess it hits kinda hard, but it never gets the chance to! I love Sigilyph, but it seems so worthless online thus far.

Also disabling Exp. Share wouldn't make it one iota harder, since I just use my starter Pokemon to one-shot literally every Pokemon I've fought throughout the entire game so far (Going to the city after the Fairy Badge now.) so that wouldn't really make a difference except to make the game more grindy. I like that I don't have to spend time swapping out Pokemon just to level them. That was never very fun for me in previous titles.

That said, I nixed some redundancy in my party, had a Blazekin and a Charizard, ditched the Blazekin for now and replaced it with an Abra. Not sure if I'm gonna keep it or Sigilyph, but I really wanted to get an Allakazam, if I go for one, does it still need to be traded to evolve? If so, anyone here mind givin' me a hand with that when the time comes?

Also, has anyone figured out the REAL reason the battles chug so awfully in 3D yet? I played the Fire Emblem demo and that game has 10x more impressive battle scenes and they play at very fast framerates in 3D in much more complex scenes, X and Y is basically a low-res .jpg background that occasionally has some horribly 3-frame animated gif leaves blowing by and the second you hit that 3D switch the action slows to a crawl. And it makes no sense that it's because it "doubles," everything, because even with that being the case you can still fight up to 6 Pokemon on-screen at once in either a triple, rotation or horde battle with no slowdown in 2D, which is 2 more Pokemon than with 3D on (1v1 = 2 (x2 for 3D) = 4) so those must be some REALLY intense low-res .jpgs in the background.

Seriously, it makes no sense whatsoever. Is Game Freak just that inexperienced with 3D games?!

Xbob42 said:

Seriously, it makes no sense whatsoever. Is Game Freak just that inexperienced with 3D games?!

Yes.

LOL - 30 hours into the game and they finally throw some plot into the mix!

I'm not complaining, this Pokenoob has had a fun ride so far. At least now there will be some dramatic tension for the final sections.

Finally beat the 2nd Gym, something like 17 hrs in now, damn this is a long game!

@Xbob42
Yeah I get frustrated how the game tells you nothing too. If I'm lying on my couch playing some battles I don't want to get up and go to my computer and get some FAQ out and read a wall of text to learn what the hell I'm doing. I just ignore everything I don't understand, which is about 75% of the game. They don't even let you read the descriptions of the moves during a battle, you just have to pick one assuming you memorized every move and what it's strong/weak against etc. during countless hours of conversation with your friends on the playground back in grade school. This whole game seems all about that, enough information to fill several textbooks but all of it lives outside the game, they assume every player has already played countless pokemon games and are walking encyclopedias of knowlege, either that or love doing google searches and reading FAQs instead of playing games. Even the manual is no help. I give up playing the game well or being good, I just brute force my way through battles by grinding to high levels.

@deathly_hallows If you hold L as you select a move, it'll go to its description, which is super useful. But still no in-combat Pokedex. So I literally have to keep two pages open so I can fucking figure out what the weakness chart is after finding out what two obscure-don't-match-their-character-design types a Pokemon is, assuming its goddamn name is in English or I recognize it!

http://pokemondb.net/type

Invaluable for doing quick type matchups, just gotta Google the Pokemon first. The Pokedex should at LEAST show you the types, that's all I need to know.

(For all my bitching I obviously really love the game, beat the Elite Four + Champion earlier, now to get a good online battle team built and hope I can memorize the flavor-of-the-month Pokemon some people use. Almost had a match where I won earlier! Some Japanese lady (or ladyish type) challenged me and it was a super close match, I came out strong and clobbered her team, but at one point I made an extremely poor choice (I used fly instead of psychic when I knew better, I thought she was gonna switch out) and it led to that Pokemon dying and she beat me with 1 Pokemon left... one that had both types weak against the one she killed. Arrgh! But it was super fun and then she watched my creepy PR video after, at least everyone's polite and tosses out a "nice" and an O-Power after battle!)

@Xbob42
OMG that is sooooo helpful, I was just thinking to myself how it was a waste that they didn't use the triggers except for switch between bottom screens. Why doesn't it tell you you can do that from the get go?!!!

Yeah I have the chart I printed out so I keep that around, but I don't know why said chart is no where in the game and can't just be pulled up during battle!? I swear it's because they want to the game to be difficult to understand so kids will ask their friends questions and it will start conversations on the playground. The lack of a comprehensive map is also frustrating!

I played this game for a bit today, actually! Think I'm just gonna slowly chip away at it over the course of the next few months.

Finally got to the second gym city...

@deathly_hallows Some random NPC tells you, somewhere. I forget where. Probably in a Pokecenter or something.

Also is there like a Pokedex for mobile phones kinda like a QR Code scanner where I can Ash-in-Anime-style hold it up to my 3DS and have it identify the Pokemon? That would be fucking LEGENDARY.

@Xbob42

No image scanner, but Wolfram Alpha has a Pokedex!

@deathly_hallows

It does tell you that. Somewhere, don't remember where, someone says that when you talk to them. Very useful.

This Pokemon is an awesome Pokemon. Though I could do without the weird bottom screen mini game things and odd player-meeting what is going on? I have no idea what all these buttons and abilities and weird things are FOR.

@Xbob42@-JKR-
So you have to chance running into some random NPC and then just remember? Why not have it on the bottom screen when you're battling? It's not like there isn't room with 4 massive buttons. Is this something from previous games? They probably assume you know.

Like EVs, what the hell are EVs? I've been through every menu in the game and the manual and haven't seen the term EV, yet supposedly if I don't want my Pokemon to suck I have to know all about them.

PS: Don't actually tell me, I don't care, I don't want to have to refer to some website full of charts and math equations while I'm playing the game, I'm trying to enjoy myself!