Tag: Galar

My 10 Favourite Generation 8 Pokemon

It’s been just over two weeks now since Pokemon Sword & Shield were released to the world and to put it simply, I had a lot of fun with these games. I want to give it a bit more time before I make any judgement calls on how it fits into my ranking of the generations, but having played through the game twice now I can confidently say that these games were what I wanted them to be and I really like them.

Naturally, when it comes to a new generation of Pokemon, one of the biggest factors that contribute to how much I get out of the game, is the Pokemon themselves. Not counting regional variants, Generation 8 has (so far) given us 81 new Pokemon and there’s a huge variety in all of these new creatures. Naturally, there are going to be a handful of Pokemon that rise to the top and stand out to me as the best of what this generation has to offer, and that’s what I’m discussing today.

SPOILER WARNING

This list will contain story spoilers for Pokemon Sword & Shield and also contains Pokemon that have not been officially revealed or referenced anywhere outside of the games themselves, so if you wish to remain unspoiled then maybe give this one a miss for the time being.

10 – Orbeetle

Maybe it’s because of the altered visual style, but almost every Pokemon Galar has to offer feels very different from that of the previous seven generations. That’s something which isn’t always for the better (see the abominations that are the fossil Pokemon) but Orbeetle is a case where it works to its benefit.

For the longest time, the regional bugs have been lame. Don’t get me wrong, I like Butterfree & Vivilon as much as the next guy, but when it comes to viable team members for the whole game they don’t ever make the cut. Vikavolt from Alola had the chance to turn that around, but it was unfortunately hampered by the fact that it couldn’t evolve until one of the final areas of the game. Orbeetle is a Pokemon that takes the usefulness, strength and cool design of Vikavolt and removes the stupid restriction on its evolution.

The first thing that struck me about Orbeetle is how sleek it looks. Psychic typing isn’t what I would’ve initially guessed for this one, but I think it works with the design. It’s a Pokemon that feels a little off in its design, but kind of in a good way, the fullness of the red is very striking and draws your eyes away from its body, which makes for quite the surprise when you notice it. I personally would’ve liked its body to be a little fuller, but the sharpness of its limbs and intimidation factor on its face is brilliant.

When I first caught Blipbug on Route 2, I wasn’t expecting it to remain in my team for very long, but sure enough, it proved me wrong and Orbeetle stood proudly alongside me when I entered the Hall of Fame.

9 – Runerigious

Sword & Shield played around with the idea of adding evolutions to already existing Pokemon and I love the stuff that came out. Instead of doing what Generation 4 did and adding unnecessary third stages onto Pokemon like Rhydon, it combined the concept of regional variants and new evolutions in fun way that I thought added a new layer to how the world of Pokemon works.

Unlike all of the other Pokemon on this list, I’m yet to have a chance to use Runerigious in any capacity, I just think it’s a really cool looking Pokemon. The way it’s body looks like a series of puzzle pieces is such a cool concept and the simplistic art on its body adds loads to that effect. Something about the red, white & black colour scheme really brings the whole design together to create a creepy feeling Pokemon, which is exactly what you’d expect from any evolution of Yamask.

8 – Dragapult

I mean come on, it fires it’s pre-evolution out of cannons it’s head, how can you not love this thing.

Whenever a new generation of Pokemon comes about, I always worry that the region’s pseudo-legendary is going to be ridiculously over-designed. Hydreigon and Kommo-o are examples of Pokemon that, while cool looking, are a bit much in terms of the elements in their design, so I was very pleased to see that Galar’s pseudo-legendary took a much more minimalist design.

I love the concept of a lizard-like Pokemon with something extra to it and the choice to make it a ghost type and have it hover was probably the best decision the design team could’ve made. Its body seems like that of a normal lizard Pokemon but then you get to the head and realise that it looks more like a glider than a creature, which I know sounds stupid, but it’s something that absolutely works for this design.

The colour choice is perfect too, there aren’t many Pokemon that have a gradient running through its body and there are even fewer that pull it off well, but Dragpult manages it, the darkness of it’s upper-body and head give these creeping feeling of danger and add that important intimidation factor, while the slow lightening of the tone down its tail creates this ghostly presence that makes it an all-round very threatening Pokemon.

7 – Eternatus

When I saw how similar Zacian & Zamazenta were in regards to the basic elements of their design, I was very interested to see what kind of Pokemon would round out the trio, because surely it had to be something wildly different right? Well, I was right, but I didn’t realise just how different it would end up being.

I liked how it kept the red & blue colour scheme of the main duo, but instead cranked the saturation all the way up on the colours, as it’s colour scheme feels very fully. I also really like the very jagged design, the way it looks almost like a skeleton or fossil goes along with its theme of being a creature that’s lived on the earth for 10’s of thousands of years and potentially even longer out in space.

It has this incredible sense of presence about it, despite not actually being all that big and even though it is a little on-the-nose, I enjoy the concept of it being the mighty dragon for the sword and shield to slay. It’s not the perfect legendary by any means, but I think it works as the third member of this trio.

6 – Boltund

Look at that face, that is the face of a good boy.

When Yamper was first revealed, I liked it, but I had no intention to ever put it on my team and for my first playthrough, I didn’t, but when I realised it had an evolution, and that’s evolution look like THIS, I knew I had to have it with me for my second go-round and sure enough, Boltund is best boy.

Yellow and Dark Green aren’t colours that I would’ve thought could work well together, but the placement of them on Boltund’s body makes the yellow more of a framing device for the green that covers the majority of its body, so I think it works.

The design of its face is the exact traditional representation of dogs when it comes to animation and the wideness of its eyes makes it seem like such a happy Pokemon all the time. I can imagine it running around happily, doing all the things you’d expect any other dog to do, only with lightning powers, which is an instant improvement.

5 – Zacian

Ok, I know that screenshot doesn’t have it’s “crowned” stuff, but that’s Pokemon Camp for you.

Even though I’ve ragged on Zacian & Zamazenta for being very similar before, when it came to putting this list together, I realised there were a whole bunch fo key reasons I preferred Zacian over its counterpart.

Firstly, I’m a sucker for swords, especially ones that look like ancient artefacts like the one Zacian holds in its mouth during battle, then you look at the other crowned features like that around its head,  and the “wings” sticking out of it’s back and it creates an extremely regal-looking Pokemon, aided by its general expression & posture. On top of that, I think Zacian’s body as a whole looks nice and sleek compared to its counterpart, the ribbons and tail add a nice sense of flow to the design, and the light blue & light red pairs up better than the fuller blue & red on Zamazenta.

As a whole, I would say Zacian fits in more with a trio like the legendary beasts than as a cover legendary, but that doesn’t stop it from being a design that I love the look of.

4 – Thievul

Wow, the Route 1 Pokemon really were something else in this generation.

Before anyone says it, I’m well aware that one of the reasons I probably like this Pokemon so much is how it’s design elements resemble that of Absol’s, but let’s put that to one side. When I found out that this generation was going to be based on the UK, I was sure there would be some sort of urban fox design for a Pokemon, but I didn’t know they’d do this great of a job with it.

What I love most about this design is the colours, the shade of orangy brown is just right to keep the feeling of a fox, without having to go with a brighter orange while the white of it’s chest makes everything around it stand out, all framed nicely by the sparing use of black. I also love the idea of it being a thief, since urban foxes in the UK are known to go rummaging through bins and steal just about anything left out on the streets at night. The “mask” around its eyes is a great indication of this. I would argue the little “cartoon thief” moustache was a bit much, but I still find it cute in a way.

3 – Grookey

One of the things that I was most disappointed about in this generation was the evolutions of the starter Pokemon. I like all three of the basic forms, but when it comes to the 1st and 2nd stages, I can only honestly say that I like one of them and even that one I’m not a massive fan of. I get what they were going for, but I think keeping the final evolutions restricted to a single type was a bad call and put unnecessary restrictions on their designs.

That said, I love Grookey.

It’s just an adorable little monkey that likes to hit things with sticks and in a way, deep down, I think we can all relate to that. Its body is just the right shade of green to give the impression of a cheerful Pokemon, while the brown and yellow are there to break up what is a fairly basic colour scheme and highlight aspects like the tail and ears.

I don’t really have much more to articulate as to why I love this Pokemon, I just think it’s adorable, I can imagine sitting around, playing with it as it cheerfully jumps about the place.

2 – Corviknight

If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written on Pokemon then you’ll know I love the regional birds of each generation (except Pidove, which knows what it did) and I generally hold these Pokemon up to a pretty high standard. So, when this generation’s regional bird was revealed to be a jet-black armoured raven of death with glowing red eyes, it’s safe to say I was pretty satisfied.

This thing looks like an absolute killer and I love it. The armour covers most of the body, but it’s still applied in a way that makes sense, still allowing it’s limbs to be shown, revealing they’re the exact same colour as the armour itself. It was a tad worrying when these games were initially revealed as it seemed like the entire region was going to be based very heavily on Arthurian legend, however it turned out that this was pretty much the only Pokemon that conforms to it, which makes it awesome; even if I did nickname mine “Gisborne” which is the wrong English myth entirely.

1 – Nickit

Take everything I’ve said I love about Thievul and turn the cuteness up to eleven.

When I encountered Nickit on Route 1 during the first few moments of proper gameplay, my heart melted at the sight of this thing and I knew it was staying with me until the end. Everything from its expression to its shape, to its colours, is brilliant and it makes this Pokemon a real work of art as far as I’m concerned.

The more I look at this more detail I notice, like the little tear marks around its eyes and an adorable timid smile that it likely uses to trick the victims of its theft. Then there’s the way that the black highlights on its feet look like little boots to make sure its prints can’t be tracked, alongside the smokelike imprint on the base of its tail from where it’s been dragging it along the ground; not to mention that the tail itself looks like a lovely little pillow.

It’s a Pokemon that ticks pretty much all my boxes of what I love from a Pokemon design: Quadruped; Mostly dark colours with light contrasts; Perfectly fits its theme and just the right mixture of cute and cool, this Pokemon was always going to end up topping this list.

So there you have it! Those are my favourite Pokemon from Generation 8 so far. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this list, please let me know what your favourite new Pokemon are, either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back next week as we’re going to be looking back at the best and worst parts of WWE from the past decade!

Pokemon Sword & Shield: Predictions & Wishlist

So, the cat is officially out of the bag, and the next entries in the main series Pokemon franchise have been revealed. Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield will launch in the latter quarter of 2019 and are officially the first games in the 8th generation of Pokemon.

With it, we had some key reveals, such as the brand new Galar Region, which is essentially mainland Britain (sans Wales) flipped upside down, with various style of cute English towns. We also were introduced to the brand new starter Pokemon: Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble.

So the information we have right now is very exciting, but also quite basic, which means it’s open to wild speculation, which is always one of the most exciting times for the Pokemon community. As those of you who read my wrestling articles will know, I love to make grand predictions for what to come, only to point and laugh at just how wrong I was when I look back on them.

With that in mind, I’ve come up with a whole bunch of predictions/wishes that I have for the new Pokemon games. They’re all over the spectrum, covering large aspects of the game and some smaller ones that only I will care about, in addition, some of these are things I actually think will happen, and others are just things I want.

So let’s not waste any more time get right into it.

Prediction: Starter Pokemon Evolutions & Types

So let’s look at the obvious first, what will these adorable new starter Pokemon transform into as you take them on your journey?

Let’s start with the one I’m most confident about: Sobble.

In the trailer, it showed Sobble camouflaged as it peaks its head out of the water. Combining that fact with the look of its tail and out it walks, I think it’s roughly based off of a Chameleon, with the head of something like an Axolotl. I think its evolutions will keep going down this route, keeping the lizard vibe, with the final evolution resembling something similar to a Komodo Dragon, with a chameleon’s tail.

As such, a Water/Poison type seems to make the most sense to me, you could perhaps even give it’s later evolutions fangs so it can learn a lot of the biting moves.

Moving onto Scorbunny, I’m not too sure about this one, but I have a lot of cool ideas.

It’s a little harder to tell where Scorbunny’s going to go, the most obvious one seems like it would take the form of a Fire/Fighting route, but I doubt that’s what we’ll actually get. The Pokemon Company are self-aware enough to not go down that route again though since many fans would be at best, disappointed and at worst, angry about it. So looking at some alternatives, the two that I keep going back and forth between are Fire/Electric or Fire/Fairy.

Electric is a bit of a stretch, but I can see it’s fur getting a bit more jagged and the small amount of yellow on its ear becoming more prominent. I could also see it going the exact opposite way, and its fur gets light and fluffier, as some of the red fades into pink and we get an adorable Fire/Fairy type instead.

I also have a couple more slightly out there theories, for example, perhaps it’s wings could grow out to be massive and it uses them as propellers to become Fire/Flying? Or what if it’s white fur is actually meant to be more snowy, as it’s flame starts to burn cold and we get a Fire/Ice type instead?

There’s a huge number of ways I can see this one going and as long as it’s not Fire/Fighting, I think it’ll be really cool.

Finally, we have Grookey, and I can really only see this one going one way.

The trailer here showed us Grookey hitting a rock with a stick in order scare off Sobble, which makes me thinks that when it evolves, it will start to use sticks or logs as weapons, similar to Delphox’s wand or Gurdr’s Gurder. This would naturally end up with it being a Grass/Fighting type.

Dependant on the design, I’d be happy with this, although it would be fairly similar to other fighting monkeys in the past like Infernape and Passimian, and we did get a Grass/Fighting type just two generations ago with Chespin, although that’s never stopped them before. You could also theorise that we would have a Grass/Rock type coming, which I’d be down for, as it grows to be fast and uses small rocks as weapons perhaps.

Wishlist: Doctor Who reference

This is one that’s almost definitely not going to happen, but I’d be so damn happy if it did. Just imagine it, you’re wandering around the back alleys in the big London-esque town when you come across a mysterious blue box, and when you interact with it, it says something like “You can hear noises coming from inside…”

It doesn’t actually have to do anything, (although giving Looker some sort of interaction with it would be amazing) I just think it would be a really cool Easter egg for Whovians such as myself.

Why stop there? You could potentially have references to loads of UK based elements of pop-culture, like a castle reminiscent of Hogwarts, or a house labelled “221B” where Looker lives, just something small like that to make us British Pokemon fans squeal with excitement.

Prediction: The cover legendaries will be based on the UK coat of arms

This one is a little bit of leap admittedly since Game Freak seldom themes the legendaries based on the region that it draws its inspiration from, but I like this idea.

As you can see pictured above the UK coat of arms features a shield in the middle, with a Lion (England’s national animal) on one side, and a Unicorn (Scotland’s national animal) on the other, so what better to base you cover legendaries off of?

The Lion is admittedly a bit problematic since we had Solgaleo in generation 7 which was also based off of a Lion, but we had two sets of Dragons in a row from gens 4 to 5, so it’s not like they haven’t done something similar before. In addition to this, if you were a bit creative with the typing and made it something like Electric/Poison, you’d be able to create something pretty unique looking so it wouldn’t be too much of a worry.

As for the Unicorn, I like the idea of upgrading it isn’t a Pegasus, to give it a secondary type of flying, however, I’m a little stumped for the primary type. Fairy seems like the obvious choice, but I’m looking for something a little bit more creative like that. The next one I jumped to was Water since we haven’t had a Water-type cover legendary in quite a while and you could quite easily explain it in law why it’s a water type (Maybe it’s responsible for it raining in the UK 99% of the time?).

That would create the issue that one of the legendaries is 4x effective against the other, which could be an issue, so maybe Fairy/Flying is the more likely type, I think Water/Flying would be cooler.

Wishlist: Gyms based on various English landmarks

Since we now know that Gyms are coming back (and at least one is going to be based on a football stadium), why not throw in other English landmarks to theme your gyms around.

The London Eye would be a great place to have a gym, with teleport pads going between each of the cabins until you fight the gym leader in the very top pod. It’ll probably have to be a normal type gym for it to make sense, but what a setting for a gym battle.

You want a steel type gym? Easy, just look to the abandoned steel mills in places like Sheffield, you could quite easily create a multilayered building where you’re walking over the metal walkways in a maze in order to reach the gym leader.

The one that I desperately want to see the most though, is one based on the London Underground. I don’t really know what type it would be (perhaps ground?), but I love the idea of a gym puzzle where you have to navigate a train network like the London Underground. Imagine Elesa’s Gym from Black and White but bigger. Making people read a simplified version of the tube map and navigate their way to the gym leader, battling trainers on the platforms, or maybe even on the trains would be a really fun time, and I hope we get something like it.

Prediction: The evil team will be based on cockney Victorian gangsters

Not really sure how likely this one is since there’s a whole bunch of things that the evil team could be based on, but I like this idea the best.

The evil team grunts are often presented to be bumbling idiots the whole time, and imagine how much funnier that will be if everyone involved has cockney accents while looking like they’re supposed to be somewhat high class. I’m imagining a design fairly similar to that of The Rooks in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate or the Peaky Blinders,  with flat caps and thick jackets who just go around roughing people up and causing trouble for the local Bobbys.

The admins and leaders could then be based on notable British criminals (real & fictional) with visual designs reminiscent of Moriarty, The Kray Twins or Jack the Ripper (without the chainsaw) being personal favourites of mine. As for what their goal would be, revolution seems like the easiest one. If we make the Elite Four themed like a monarchy then the evil team’s goal could ultimately be to overthrow them using the powers of the legendary Pokemon and establish their own government.

So there you have it! There are my predictions and wishes for Pokemon Sword and Shield. Let me know what you thought, and give me your own suggestions @10ryawoo on Twitter since like I said, this is always a very exciting time to be a Pokemon fan. I’ll see you next time.