My first time filling out a pokedex
Pokemon violet
400 pokemon.
18 version exclusives.
So. I'm a big pokemon fan. Always have been! My introduction to the series was White 2, which I remember enjoying quite a bit when i played it, even putting a bit of extra effort to find the Regis, finding Regirock at a school assembly being my only real memory of the game. I have a degree of nostalgia for generation V, sure, but…
After playing White 2, the seed of pokemon passion was not planted in me. I thought it was a fine game, I had fun with it, I formed bonds with my virtual babies, but not enough to sink more time than necessary into it. Hell, my Samurott (which i was able to rescue from ds jail) is currently level 44. Either I boxed him pretty quickly in favor of some really high level pokemon i got from random trades (Which I'll get into soon), or i just… didn't care enough to keep playing this game and making Samurott stronger.
I truly began to love Pokemon in the next generation released. That's right, boys.
My true love is Gen VI.
Now, the current social landscape surrounding the franchise is: ‘Gen V Best gen', which, yeah! There's a lot to love in gen V! I think the story is really cool, it's the last pixel-styled game in the series, the music is fantastic, and a lot of other stuff. You probably know it all by now.
But… Pokemon Y impacted me. Pokemon Y dazzled me. I saw that big red and black dragon on the box, and the little edgy part of my brain went: I NEED THAT. And I was still a little child and it was still socially acceptable for me to play videogames like a madman. So. I got that. And. I. Was. Crazy. About it.
Character customization
Cool grafix
Mega Evolution.
Mega evolutions of some of my favourite pokemon.
Diancie.
So many new cute and interesting pokemon.
I really liked Pokemon Y. That's kind of an understatement. It's my favourite game in the franchise, I think.
Ever since then, Pokemon earned a spot as one of my favourite video game franchises.
However, the dark ages began soon after.
Pokemon sun and moon? Awesome! I'm a nerd about space, and that theme was incredibly intriguing!
Pokemon in a tropical island setting with more cute designs? Amazing!!
Removing Mega Evolution… Hip.
Replacing it with a worse mechanic… Happening!
Oh yeah… thats definitely the coolest pokemon game i ever saw…
Anyway, I wasn't in a rush to play Pokemon moon. So it helped that my cousins got it! I could at least see how the game played and experience a little of it.
…They did not play it very much. So the copy ended up in my posession. Lol. And i never really bothered with it.
Anyway again! Point is, XY seeded a passion for pokemon in me, but no game after that really spoke to me, so i got ORAS immediately after, and promptly stopped playing entirely. Sword and Shield certainly LOOKED interesting, and there were plenty of cute pokemon in that game that i wanted to add to my collection (collection sounds wrong when you're talking about ‘living' creatures, but you know what i mean.), in fact, i'd call gen 8 my second favourite in terms of the pokemon that it added to the ‘Dex! Gen 7 probably would be third honestly. I might make a genuine ranking someday. That's a good idea. These blogposts are very ‘train of thought' because otherwise i'll take forever to edit and post them. This one's already a week late. :'-)
I continued my pokemon journey with Pokemon Violet. Why? I'm not entirely sure! I thought the reveal trailer was a little strange, the starters didn't wow me, the art style change pissed me off, and the game itself had many, many obvious flaws.
But i just couldn't stay away any longer. I wanted to go back. I wanted to have fun again. I wanted to save my children from 3ds Hell and finally bring them with me into pokemon Home and my newest journey. I certainly wasn't going to wait for Gamefreak to get their shit together and release an actually polished product… because what if my 3ds hits the shitter in that time? I needed to save my children and i needed to snort a pikachu whole to make me happy again. Because uni was kicking my ass. Also i wanted it to be a physical copy because i already have Splatoon 3 digitally and the digital media apocalypse is among us.
So! In 2022 i said fuck it on the family thanksgiving trip to NY and grabbed a copy of Pokemon violet from nintendo NY and.
I kind of did not love it. Sure! I was having fun! But with how the game /looked/ and all the criticism surrounding it i had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth during my whole playthrough. Especially in area zero. Ohh my god. It's such a gorgeous area in concept, and the soundtrack is incredible, but if you look at it too hard it kind of falls flat IMO. Which sucks!
Anyway i had the hots for AI Turo for a sec. And he kicked my ass like twice but it's fine lol.
While I played the game I was consciously thinking of filling ny pokedex. It wasn't a priority, but i'd never done it before! So now was as good a time as ever. Especially now in these open world games where it's easier to spot pokemon you're missing in the wild except for just running through tall grass and hoping for the best. So usually, when I saw a pokemon i didn't have, i'd catch it!
But i never found that to be very fun, i'm a ‘KILL KILL KILL!!!' Kind of player, prioritizing making my pokemon as strong as possible as quickly as possible and absolutely razing the competition. The only problem with that strategy is that usually my starter (Quaquaval in this case) ends up carrying the whole party, so sometimes i have to kick him to the back so he can think about his actions LOL.
Point being, I completed the story without having a complete ‘dex. And I wanted to find some sort of purpose in the game other than starting to really train and work on my mons' stats. So the dex it was!
It wasn't too bad? At some points i was close to calling it utter agony because it was consuming my life and some mons were really hard to find. But the real agony were the version exclusives and…
Palafin.
See, I have no friends to play pokemon with. So a big part of getting the version exclusives was hopping onto Pokemon Home and GTS trading for them, which was surprisingly more successful than I thought it would be!! I also managed to find some mons on GO and send them over to my game. And breed for a bunch of baby stages that I couldn't find in the wild. All in all, I really enjoyed it! I got to enjoy some mechanics (breeding and sandwiches) that I never used before! Running around the map and picking up items absentmindedly during my search was also super fun. I love exploration and collectathon games, I think lol. I was struggling with not having anything to do in the game anymore, so the quest was successful.
But what is the other major reason I completed my dex?
…I want to shiny hunt Iron Valiant.
Gallade is i think one of my favourite pokemon ever, and… I've never done a shiny hunt before! So why not start now? I was watching so many shiny hunt videos. Like I was consuming pokemon content through my eyes ears nose and mouth at that point. Like, full week-ish long hyperfixation style. I can't remember the last time something gripped me so violently.
I only ended up shiny hunting for a little while, and didn't even do it super well. I forgot to save before making my sandwich, and didn't find anything. It was fun, though! I definitely will be going for it again, just not super soon. For now, I think I'll start playing through Pokemon Moon and catching what i can, so I can send it all to Home :)
That's all for now. This was a really long blog post, and it took forever to write up and post, which I'm a little disappointed about, but I hope it's interesting nonetheless!