#Pokemon Shield Gameplay

[foxtailskitty]

#gameplay gifs #my gifs #pokemon gifs #galarian ponyta #shiny galarian ponyta #pokemon sword and shield #gameplay edit #video game edit #pokemon

[mokeonn]

Hey quick question, why the fuck was everyone angry at sword and shield for being ugly, rushed pokemon games but was pretty much completely fine with Scarlett and Violet being worse?

#simon says #I'm absolutely ranting right now #I'm trying out pokemon violet (using a friend's copy) and I am still so iffy on it #because this game is... so fucking ugly and poorly optimized #and I still remember the backlack sword and shield got for the fucking trees #this game... is worse #it's worse! #and it didn't get nearly as much backlash #sword and shield still get shit to this day but scarlet and violet get to just... move on?? #I'm honestly so upset #Galar looks so much better compared to sword and shield #people are saying the gameplay is what makes Scarlett and Violet worth it but I'm just... not seeing it so far??? #just #OUGH #sword and shield I just sorta forget about #like they're not awful it's just easy to kinda forget about them and not play them #but Scarlet and Violet so far make me want to just turn off the game and play a 2D pokemon game instead #sword and shield's biggest crime is being forgettable #scarlet and violet are actively infuriating #they can't keep doing this

[moonsbijoutoo]

💃🏾💫 The Star ⭐️ 🌟💃🏾

You might just have an irrational fear of pokemon in fact the only pokemon you ever befriended is the Umbreon you’ve affectionately nicknamed, Nova. You’ve been her trainer since she was an eevee egg. Now put that next to your childhood friend, Leon. The freaking pokemon champion of your region. He asked you of all people to be his date to the grand Galar region ball. You?

“Get ready for the red carpet I guess?!”

“Nessa, please you’re NOT helping.”

🎶 The Playlist 🎶

beautiful soul - jesse mccartney

please don’t say you love me - gabrielle aplin

dancin (krono remix) (feat. luvli) - aaron smith

unstoppable - the score

moment - victoria monét

#pokémon leon #Pokémon leon x reader #pokémon sword and shield #Pokémon leon x oc #all I write is based on the character in my head and leon so this is further on it ig lol #plus inspo from my pokemon sword gameplay a bit lol #Pokémon Leon x reader #leon fic #Leon fic #spoiler: raihan and leon schemed so leon could get his lady hahaha #pokemon leon x reader

[amazinlei]

You know... call me a hater but-

Nintendo really expecting LOZ: Tears of the Kingdom to do SO well, it’s worth the 70 dollars price tag is the same energy as that one year in 2019 when Disney nominated “Wreck-it-Ralph 2: Ralph breaks the internet” for an academy award, when Disney actually LOST TO SPIDER-VERSE...

Like, I’m not calling out the collector’s edition since all the bonus stuff looks really nice for a Pre-order set and the game itself looks quite impressive in the trailers... but not for 70 dollars.  I’ve been burned once already by Pokemon Scarlet that made me swear off ordering ANY game if I haven’t seen proper game play and have more information about.  Sure, I might get it in the next few YEARS when the hype goes down and I’ve watched a few let’s plays?  But currently... this is a pretty big L for Nintendo to me, especially since inflation is rising and it’s hard enough to be a game collector these days.  I mean, FUCK the Switch has gone down, by maybe like.... 25 dollars from it’s original price tag, but the joy-cons are still overpriced?!  Like, a lot of the games market is just not worth it anymore, and it’s genuinely sucks! 

I’m starting to reminisce when games were actually affordable on the Wii and 3DS family.  Am I truly radicalized, or am I just getting older and tired of this overpriced crap?

#like don't get me wrong! BOTW is great and it's a gorgeous game but it's too big and a little boring because of my ADHD #I don't like having to travel to a new area every 2 hours :( #the map is just too big for me to remember where the shrines are #and there's too much backtracking! they are beautiful games but they just aren't for me #open world games are awesome but in terms of gameplay I prefer something like kirby and the forgotten land or mario odyssey #even pokemon sword and shield had a nice grasp on open world locations and I loved the DLC! #it just makes me really sad since I just picture every year I've asked for a new game system for christmas #and these parents have to choose with these pricey wishlists to get their kids that new zelda game that would take the rest of their budget #and not leave anything for their younger siblings #and those little brothers and sisters feel like they weren't good enough for santa #or that the older sibling that got the present they wanted is the favorite #idk maybe I'm overthinking it #Lei stop being silly #Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom #more like tears of my WALLET AHAHAA #I mean the rest of the games look good tho! loved the splatoon 3 DLC trailer #and KRTD DX looks as beautiful as I remember the wii being! #Nintendo Switch #Nintendo Direct

[saline-coelacanth]

What do you hope to be announced in next week's pokemon presents

The only hope I have is Explorers of Sky remake. I know it's not the most likely of things to be revealed, but it's really the only thing from Pokemon that I've been hoping for for a while now

#asks #idk ive been a little burnt out when it comes to new pokemon stuff #i haven't even played indigo disk yet because i dont like playing sv unless im in a specific mood for it #idk scarlet and violet have been pretty meh to me since i first played them #like they're fun but idk i think i genuinely prefer sword and shield #at least when it comes to gameplay i fully admit that sv has a better story #sorry to rant in the tags sometimes it happens

[pochapal]

pokemon b/w kinda flawless games if you really think about it.

#:) #like i started a playthrough of black a week ago to do something during the christmas period and i'm already at the end of the game #b/w are probably the most compact games other than maybe sword/shield #but man if they don't make use of every last minute of their 30 hour campaign #might just be because out of all pokemon games it's b/w i know best but it's such an engaging experience start to end #like i just sit here and think about the pacing of these games and i'm like. it's just so good no complaints #b/w achieved in 2010 what a game in 2019 couldn't do WITH artificial qol changes to speed up your gameplay experience #once again reminded how impossible it is to compare the 2d and 3d eras of pokemon #my literal only complaint about gen 5 is that it's a really terrible starting generation to recommend someone get into pokemon with #so very few people will get to have b/w as their first impression of the series #btw nobody ask how many pokemon games i am playing simultaneously at any given time. that is a fun mystery only i know

[coilheads]

pokemon sc/vi is a lot better than i expected

#LIKE DONT GET ME WRONG 60 dollars is ridiculously overpriced for ANY game imo unless youre getting like 40+ hours of gameplay etc etc #insert carefully nuanced take about game pricing here #HOWEVER #it improves on SO MUCH SHIT #the open worrld stuff the school with accessible BUT OPTIONAL lore and game information #seeing the pokemon interact with the world and just be chillin with people #its hilarious to me that bronzongs are more common companions than some fluffy puppydog type like herdier #plus the drifloon (known child kidnappers) hanging out in flocks around the school full of students is fucking FUNNY #plus the characters and stuff have like. personality. and life #the dialogue is still a bit stilted and clunky in true pokemon fashion but it actually lets you bond with the characters #and care about their shit #plus the sheer number of pokemon you have access to in the first area alone #and how trainer battles are completely optional #all the care and detail that went into the scarlet/violet book lore too #if this game ran better and werent so rushed it would be THE pokemon game #complete recovery after the mid ass sword and shield #just realized i said plus like four tymes thats krazy #ok peace OUT!

[gymleaderjakes]

The moment i have been waiting for..

Knock knock Raihan! Its DRAGON TIME

My team is ridiculous, and i shit you not, I got a hacked shiny dracovish from surprise trade right before I got to hammerlocke.

Obviously it wont replace toast, but the shiny fossils look DOPE.

I digress; wish me luck! Its DARGON TIME

#pokemon #pokemon shield #pokemon swsh #dragon challenger run #jakes yells about pokemon #jakes yells about gameplay #jakes yells at everyone #thus spake jakes #raihan is about to get got #cash me outside dennys at 4 am with your nonsense raihan

[khyleoh]

#youtube #gaming #streaming #anime #pokemon #pokemon cards #pokemon go #pokemon home #pokemon snap #pokemon sword and shield #indie #indie games #casual gameplay #playstation #ps5 #playstation 5 #reaction #walkthrough

[fourhornedsatyr]

I love Cassette Beasts.

As someone who is an avid fan of Monster Collector games, and who most fondly remembers Pokemon B&W and Digimon D&D from the DS era, I only have good things to say about my first four hours of playing Cassette Beasts by Bytten Studio.

So, I'm gonna talk about it.

Gameplay

The Transformation Mechanic & Record (capture) mechanic

Unlike most games of the genre, you do not summon/control the monsters you use to fight, but rathee you become them -- digimon frontier style. Your avatar & a companion fight using cassettes that have copied the essence of the monsters you encountered (captures work like an alternate of the data copy mechanic of the digimon turn based rpgs).

You effectively have two health bars, that of your monster form & that of your human self, and once your monster form takes enough damage the cassette will break. Upon breaking you will revert to your human form and take on any overflow damage. If you are attacked before it is your turn to select another cassette, then you will receive damage and hence have to worry about your own health. There is no way to replenish the health of human characters in combat, at least none that I have accessed.

Furthermore, many of your status effects, buffs, & debuffs carry over from one transformation to another. This leads to a lot of stacking possibilities, but also means that one much be cautious, think wisely, and manage their defence and type matchups.

When recording/capturing monsters as well, you have to leave your monster form and are vulnerable. Despite having a good chunk of hp it is still wise to protect your human characters via walls & taunts to improve your chances of successfully copying a beast & sustaining minimal damage. This adds an enjoyable complexity to the capture stystem.

Type Matchups & Dynamic Interactions.

Speaking of type matchups, the type interactions are marvelously impressive & complex!

There are 14 types that are inspired by both naturally occuring aspects/materials/elements of the world and anthropogenic ones. Many of these typings can be thought of with a twisted pokemon logic (ground beats lightning, fire consumes poison, water & air put out fire), but we also have the celestial type, which draws from the natural typings and is weak to anthropogenic typings such as metal, plastic, & poison (it thematically (& vaguely mechanically) reminds me of holy & dark digimon types).

Furthermore, many type interactions include buffs & debuffs. Earth slows down plastic types, poison fuels fire types, lightning electrifies the air, and celestial absorbs the energies of natural typings.

BUT THERE'S MORE! Metal types can be coated in poison after interacting with poison type moves and can then deal poison contact damage! When fire types attack air types an updraft is formed that gives the air types a shield! I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED TRANSMUTATIONS! When fire types attack ice types, the latter will gain the water coating effect and will become water types! Likewise, electric attacks can turn ground types into glass!

The dynamics of type interactions is amazing, and makes gamplay so enjoyable.

(Type matchup chart, wiki.CassetteBeast.com/wiki/types)

Fusion

As far as I am aware all cassette beasts are monotype unless they are fused. This is a major mechanic in the game that serves to create a new monster during a fight that shares most of the moves of you and your companion's monster forms.

Yet, while you can do this after filling up a meter that takes, usually, multiple fights to fill, the wild monsters can also do this. These Rogue Fusions pose a unique threat as once defeated they will defuse with full hp and you will then have to fight the two that were fused -- just as what happens when you defuse.

Though there are unique fusions that do have interesting and enjoyable dynamics I have not yet acquainted myself with too many and will not delve too heavily into this topic.

One aspect of the fuse that I will discuss further is the music.

Atmosphere & World Elements

The Music

The music in this game is amazing. The music for the basecamp village of Harbour Town is amazing and nails the theme of the town and the initial emotions of the game wonderfully. Much of the music in combat is dynamic and will change depending on the state of the battle, often playing wonderful vocal pieces after drawing first blood post-fusion (the music changes depending on the fusion too). I fucking love it.

The Land Keepers

There are vampire landlords called landkeepers that you fight in the game to keep them from gentrifying the island.

(Wiki.CassetteBeasts.com/wiki/Landkeeper)

Look at that freak! They are capitalist estate agents whose only goal is to setup an exploitative economic system on the island of New Wirral. One of your companion's whole quest line is shutting them down!

●●●

I love this game.

#cassette beasts #monster collector #video games #gaymer #trans gamer

[foxtailskitty]

#espeon #shiny espeon #pokemon #pokemon camp #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon gifs #gameplay gifs #my gifs #video game edit

[dnallohleoj]

After clearing Indigo Disk and getting the Blueberry Academy diploma, I'm... really, really, disappointed.

Crown Tundra is the best comparison for scale, and it breathed new life into the fairly stale Sword/Shield games. Not only did they include several hours of story content, add a massive open-world map (in comparison to the original Wild Area at least), they added a new way to do Raid battles, with great rewards for participating. I played Sword for a frankly ridiculous amount of time, and it was almost all spent on Dynamax Adventure.

By comparison, Indigo Disk is pretty bland. Don't get me wrong, there's still a massive new open-world area with 4 new gym challenges, as well as an even bigger legendary Pokemon hunt than the one you did in Crown Tundra (ignoring Dynamax Adventure) added to the Paldea map, but that's... really it. The only new activity that's worth anything after completing the story mode is doing the Blueberry Quests (BBQs) which are essentially an eternal cycle of daily missions that you're gonna want to do with your friends for a few days before you run out of new rewards to unlock and then it sets in just how simple, repetitive, and tedious they are, and then that loses its charm.

Tera Raids not getting some equivalent of Dynamax Adventure is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that the core gameplay is still incredibly busted, possibly never to be fully fixed, and we didn't need an even longer unpolished mess. But also a curse in that Dynamax Adventure was literally the most fun thing to do in Sword/Shield. And back before Shinies were easier to obtain in common encounters, the rewards for completion INCLUDING shiny Pokemon was wild.

All around Blueberry Academy I see wasted potential.

The Synchronize feature is fun for a few minutes, but there's nothing special to find by playing that way. It's just Auto Battle with more control, except it's actually possible to knockout a shiny Pokemon while doing it.

The massive map is populated by only a handful of Pokemon per area. Despite there being 240 Pokedex entries, the amount of Pokemon available to catch in each individual biome quickly feels repetitive. For instance, the Polar biome has Seel, Solosis, Lapras, Vulpix, and Milcery. Wherever you go in the Polar Biome, that's what you'll find. Even when you climb the one and only mountain in the biome where Steel-types like Duraludon and Metang hang out, you're gonna find those Pokemon there. Go to a lake, you'll likely find some Qwilfish. Once you have enough BP, you can get most of the fire-type Starter pokemon to spawn there as well, but that is really and truly the extent of it. It's a large space for such a small yield. Kitakami was a smaller map with fewer new Pokemon and it feels more biodiverse.

But nothing had more wasted potential than this expansion's namesake, the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero. So far, every Expansion has had one new Pokemon at its core, and Terapagos is the only one of these pokemon we spend no time with before we battle and capture it. And I'd be okay with that, except there's just too much of the Scarlet Book that is just... untouched now, and we're likely not going to see come into play. Why mention the cave with the strange floor markings where Roaring Moon and Iron Valiant can be found if that's not gonna come up? Why mention the unbreakable steel plates?

And narratively, it just feels wrong for Arven, Penny, and Nemona to not be part of this at all. There is so much more exploration of Area Zero's mysteries I'd like to do - mentions from the Scarlet Book, actually answering the question of how Paradox Pokemon appeared hundreds of years before the existence of a supposedly functional time machine, avenging Arven's Mabosstif, but it's all pointless without them anyway.

And FINALLY.

DESPITE HAVING A CLUB DEDICATED TO POKEMON BATTLES

DESPITE INDIGO DISK'S STORY REVOLVING AROUND SAID CLUB

DESPITE THE SCHOOL ENTRANCE BEING THE PERFECT VENUE

DESPITE HAVING AN INCREDIBLE ROTATING CAST OF POTENTIAL BOSS TRAINERS INTRODUCED IN JUST THIS PART OF THE EXPANSION

AND DESPITE THEM WORKING ON DOUBLE BATTLE STRATEGIES FOR TERRARIUM TRAINERS ANYWAY

THERE IS STILL NO BATTLE TOWER!

I could have forgiven everything this game was lacking, if only they added that.

#pokemon #gen 9 #pokemon scarlet violet #scarlet #violet #gaming #indigo disk #the indigo disk #hidden treasure of area zero

[shuttershocky]

Any thoughts or comments on what happened in chapter 5 of Samurai Remnant, aside from the thing you already posted about?

I've already written down my thoughts on the duel, but I will also say something that happened in Chapter 5 and Chapter 2 that I really like is Masters and Servants having team attacks.

It's not just Iori and Saber! Lancer and Chiemon have a dual flag attack, while Rider uses their floating shields to act as walls for Yui Shousetsu to walljump from in order to attack. That shit is so cool.

One of the first reactions I got from a friend watching Fate/Zero for the first time was "Oh so it's like Pokemon but with people?" which made me cringe in a way I haven't felt since the time I accidentally walked too close to Leptospirosis Man (this guy who would walk in flood water and try to splash it on nearby people while saying "Magkakaleptospirosis ka diyan! [translation: This will give you Leptospirosis!])

I hate it when the Masters don't do anything and kind of just sit around and watch so it really does just become Pokemon with people (like FGO gameplay vs FGO story where Gudako is an active participant lul) . Samurai Remnant having both be involved and having Master and Servant pairs fight against each other and use cooperative moves is so much fucking cooler.

#Fate Samurai Remnant

[kaibutsushidousha]

How would you rank the Pokemon champions and villain bosses?

1) N: The most written character in all of Pokémon.

2) Guzma: Nothing in Pokémon made me feel things as much as first visiting Po Town did. That plus his background tidbits form a very sympathetic loser I care for a lot.

3) Lusamine: The tragedy of her family is delightful on all of its members, but Lusamine is certainly the weakest link to it due to being more of a perpetrator than a victim. I also love both of her designs, with her Nihilego form being easily the second-best-looking Pokémon woman, behind on Valerie.

4) Maxie and Archie: Accidental comedy duo. Their goals are stupid in the most endearing and memeable ways, and their reactions to the consequences of their actions somehow still manage to be a resonating moment. Ranking them separately is silly, but if I had to, Maxie is the best for his general pretentiousness, inside jokes, and being the Jouji voice in Master Sex.

5) Blue: The rival becoming the Champion for 5 minutes is a perfect endpoint of a rival arc and every one of Blue's successors, even the ones that are better characters than him, suffer from not being the one who pulled this off. Raticate-based content is also often good.

6) Alder: A cool design can carry you a long way. Seriously, he nails the wandering monk aesthetic so neatly. Volcarona, Reuniclus, and Chandelure are also sublime picks. And I love how his contributions to the plot are meaningful advice rather than the more distant and professional company that Wallace and Cynthia offer.

7) Rose: Funny anxiety man, arguably cuter and more memeable than the Hoenn villains, only lower than them because of how messily the Galar finale is delivered. Immense bonus points for his part as an accessory to Bede's character.

8) Wallace: Like with Alder, a cool design can carry you a long way. Milotic as an ace is also an immense plus. I suppose Emerald also makes him useful, but if that was a major factor, Cynthia would have been a lot higher.

10) Lance: Having the second-to-last boss become a sequel final boss always has a big feeling of downgrade, but that's offset well enough by making him cool in the Red Gyarados arc and his relationship with Clair.

11) Cynthia: Infodump character for Sinnoh mythology, which is not nearly as interesting as it should have been. Gets some points for the generally great choices of Pokémon and for actually feeling powerful in gameplay.

12) Kukui: Funny professor with a lot of presence but none very memorable. Being the Champion fight, and a surprisingly challenging one, is a big shock, but nothing really amazing on further thought.

13) Archer: Pathetic underling, therefore immediately more interesting than his nothingburger boss.

14) Leon: Dude that game insistently tries to sell as cool but never actually gets to be cool. Only above Steven because he's the one who gets to make the poignant commentaries on Sword/Shield's themes and because he's genuinely good as an accessory to Hop's arc.

15) Steven: Generic champion that never gets to be interesting, but gets points for only having cool Pokémon in his team.

16) Cyrus: Gets points for being memeable but not enough to compensate for how unfun his actual character is. Being soulless by design doesn't make it meaningful when the Sinnoh games are not saying anything about emotion.

17) Ghetsis: Plot device to make N innocent. Only above Giovanni because I like some Pokémon in his team.

18) Giovanni: Just a yakuza boss without any fun projects. The Gym Leader twist was a wow thing on the first run but never amounts to anything, like with Kukui being the Champion fight. Did he ever interact with Silver? Not in anything I played, I think.

19) Diantha: Has the bare minimum story presence and doesn't even use it well.

20) Lysandre: Has one of the stupidest villain plans, made even more ridiculous by the version differences between X and Y, but his aesthetic and delivery are so bad that it manages to make it not funny.

#pokemon

[4ragon]

Can I convince you to play Octopath Traveler 2?

Hello my lovely followers! I have recently run into a problem where I have fallen in love with another video game and do not have enough people to talk about it with. I have therefore decided I’m going to do what I do best and talk WAY too much about the subject for an unreasonable amount of time. 

So! Why should you, dear followers of mine, play this hip new rpg called Octopath Traveler 2?

Well, to put it simply, this game was the most genuine fun I’ve had playing a video game in a very long time!

What is Octopath Traveler 2?

Octopath Traveler 2 is a new turn based action rpg by Square Enix, combining the charm of old school pixel art with modern graphical capabilities to create one of the most beautiful-looking 2D games out there. Like. It’s so pretty! Look at this shit!

It’s so good! Look at that presentation! Great graphics, full voice acting, orchestrated music, just. The presentation, guys!

The Gameplay

Now. Here’s the deal. I am not the most crazy about turn-based rpgs. I like them fine, but they can get very repetitive! Pokemon is a prime example. Rival sends out a Charizard? Well, better go get my Vaporeon and wreck his shit! And yes, I know there’s more strategy behind it, but like. I have never once bothered. At a certain point, the game is just “water beats fire, grind levels until you win” and that’s kind of as much as you need to bother with.

BUT

BUT BUT BUT

Here’s the deal. Octopath (both 1 and 2) is SO much fun. It is the greatest turn based rpg I have ever played. Because it’s no longer about elemental damage and sending out the right Pokemon that a lot of other turn based games use.

In each fight, the enemy has an unknown list of weaknesses, which you can discover as you fight. Each successful attack chips away at their “shield points,” until you can knock the enemy out for one round, weakening their defenses and stopping them from mercilessly beating your ass. (At least until they wake up in the next round and get to attack first.)

There are also boost points which build up each turn, just as long as you don’t use them up. Those either boost the damage on your single attack OR, and here’s the kicker, allows you do use a regular melee attack up to four times.

These two things in tandem open up a HUGE amount of strategizing! Suddenly, it’s not “will my Vaporeon be able to use hydro pump before Charizard uses fly,” it’s “do I use my turn to heal, or do I boost my attacks so I can knock this boss out before he kills me? Do I knock him out now, or do I save my boost points to do one massive attack once he’s weaker? Do I knock all of the enemies out at the same time, or should I stagger it so they don’t all Kick My Teeth In next round?”

It’s about timing! It’s about strategy! It’s like one huge puzzle combined with all of the terror of a normal action rpg! And it’s!!! So fucking fun!!!!

Just. I know most of the people following me are following me for my love of murder mystery visual novels like Ace Attorney, so this may be a bit of a harder sell than if I was trying to convince you all to play Murder By Numbers or Return of the Obra Dinn, but still! It’s not too terribly difficult to get into the game, and hey, it’s turn based! Reaction speed not required.

(Important note: Octopath Traveler OG is also just as fun to play. They added some cool mechanics in 2, and tweaked certain characters’ movesets, but overall, both are just as much fun. Try 8path 1 too! I highly recommend it.)

The Music

I have a running list of games with the greatest soundtracks of all time. We got Zelda of course, we got Kingdom Hearts, Ace Attorney, but Octopath is quickly clobbering its way into my favorites. Every single track in both games slaps so hard. Boss fights? Town music? CHARACTER MUSIC? I mean. Come on.

Come on.

Every song is gorgeous. Fully orchestrated, incredibly well done. I don't know shit about music theory, but 8-Bit Music Theory did a cool video on game one that I think holds up pretty well.

AND, because this game added a Day/Night cycle, most of the songs have multiple arrangements. Even the character themes have multiple arrangements. And I won’t spoil any of them here, but I swear, when Agnea’s final battle track started playing, I had the biggest, goofiest grin on my face. It’s just. It’s so good you guys.

The Story and Characters

Okay. Alright. Here’s where Octopath Traveler 2 goes from good to great. And here’s also where Octopath 2 edges out the first Octopath game. Now, this is not a dig at the original game. Play the original game! I love it so much! The characters are so much fun! The story is wonderful! But Octopath Traveler 2 does everything I wanted the original Octopath to do and more! More character interactions! More story! An endgame that isn’t deeply anticlimactic and actually involves the characters I care about! It’s so good.

Octopath Traveler 2, of course, stars 8 wildly different characters, each with completely different motivations and completely different skillsets, both in and out of battles. Different weapons, different spells, and different ways to interact with the NPCs around you.

And man, I love every single one of these characters so much. I feel like there’s a character for everybody, I’ve seen so much art of basically all of the main cast because every one of them is so different and interesting.

There's a favorite for everyone! We’ve got the dark, broody character, the pure-of-heart character, the character struggling with a dark curse. We’ve got revenge, chosen ones, amnesia, cowboys, one asshole detective who I am a little bit in love with. (Murder mysteries, guys! Come on! That’s my jam!) Often times, there’s usually one character that falls a little flat to me, but I just find all of them so much fun, even the ones with less going on in their backstories. They're fun! They're charming! I love it!

None of these stories are particularly complicated, of course. It’s no Tales game, where the stories twist and turn and build on each other constantly. In fact, by the very nature of this conceit, where no player character is the true main character, they can’t really build the sort of story other RPGs would usually have. Each character’s story is simple, even if they branch into different routes and do slowly start to tie into each other in subtle ways. Sure, there were surprises (and like holy shit to a few of these surprises) but overall, the stories are simple and straightforward.

And yet, even with 8 relatively simple stories, the characters absolutely shine. Sure, I took one look at the character who secretly did that murder in chapter one and went, “Ah. It was absolutely you.” And sure, we had an evil king who was so cartoonishly evil to the point of becoming farcical. But still, these stories didn’t have to be these huge, sprawling, mindblowing paths. They’re about the leads growing and meeting new people and bettering themselves. Each route has its own eclectic bunch of NPCs that bring so much life and color to the world, from the put-upon knight being dragged around by the world’s shittiest cleric to the happy-go-lucky scrivener looking for her big scoop to whatever the FUCK is happening with the Blacksnakes holy shit jesus christ what the actual fu

These stories made me laugh. They’ve made me cheer. They made me sob like a baby. They made me rage so fucking hard that I had to put down the computer for several hours and lay on the ground, which to be fair was absolutely the intended effect but I’m also still so fucking mad about it I swear to god.

PLUS

PLUS PLUS PLUS

Okay, I always say a jrpg with a huge cast rides or dies on their character interaction. Love is found in the found family y’all. And, again, it’s certainly no Tales game, in part because the game isn’t quite as scripted, but there’s still so much. Each chapter has a set number of side conversations between whoever is in your party (which if you miss them you can go back to that chapter in your menu and watch them anyway thank god). Several pairs of characters get to go on fun little side quests together throughout the story. Characters talk to each other during battles, which doesn’t feel like a ton but it really does add so much charm. They feel like friends, and even if they don’t tend to interact during story cutscenes, it feels like their relationships grow and develop over the course of oh holy shit I played 90 hours? Oops. Well. Whatever. That’s fine.

Anyway. That’s my pitch. Play this game. Join me in hell. Come on. You know you want to.

#octopath #octopath traveler #octopath traveler 2 #whoops why did i spend an hour writing this

[skippygiraffee]

I can't speak on the gameplay elements of the game itself (since I'm someone who decided to purposefully beat my GBA Sapphire game with a team of 6 Skitty because they were my fav Pokemon at the time), but I think SWSH excels in one specific element: the characters

my enjoyment of Pokemon games comes mainly from the story and characters, which is why I actually tend to enjoy the newer games, and I think SWSH does a fantastic job of just letting the characters tell the story of the region. each gym leader and their ties to the town they're in (looking at Piers mainly, but also Milo, Nessa, Opal, even Raihan's job in Hammerlocke), the way Sonia uncovers the mysteries of Galar with the character while also going on her own personal journey, and Leon trying his best to shield kids from falling into the same pitfalls he did and ultimately failing because he can't save everything like he was built up to believe he could. Hop is one of the best rival characters, and I adore his own development as a person after losing to the player. same with Bede and Marnie. the League Cards were also an amazing touch, giving more insight into who these people are, and I just enjoy seeing all of them interact together in the Star Tournament (though I know that's DLC exclusive, but still)

the characters just make it for me, and I'm happy to have seen them and experienced their stories

#pokemon swsh #mostly putting what's been consuming my brain into proper thoughts and words rather than thought soup #but it really blew me away playing it because I didn't expect to love it so much #honk honk I suppose #though my sister (who played it on release) did tell me I'd like it and I should have listened since she is usually right #also guessed within a margin of error that I'd love Piers (because I really do) but she never saw the Leon adoration coming #anyway this is mostly just me holding up each character like “I just think they're neat” and going back to being me :3c