Archive
09/30/06 Genius Sonority
So, Pokémon Battle Revolution has been confirmed to be developed by Genius Sonority.
As seen in that thread, a lot of people aren't too happy about that:
this really stinks. v_v
shadow pokemon got boring after the first game.
If it is another shadow pokemon game, i'll be sure to NOT pick it up at the store.
Ah damn it. Genius Sorority cannot make a good game, let alone a good Pokemon game. Nintendo should develop this in house, or let the guys from Stadium do it.
I totally agree the coloseum (sp?) games IMO sucked..... i thought the stadium games were 100 times better.
damnit,i hate genius sonority...they arent exactly genusis. I hope they make the game good,I hate the shadow pokemon plots.
Sigh. I can hear my heart breaking.
Now, while I personally very much enjoyed Colosseum and XD, that is the subject of my Colosseum review, not the Cave of Speculative Theories. The thing I do want to talk about here is just how much like Colosseum and XD we should expect Pokémon Battle Revolution to be.
So what do we know about Pokémon Battle Revolution? Unfortunately, not much. We do, of course, have two videos, but that's very nearly about it. However, we can from the videos (and the commentary in the first one) tell that:
- For the first time, Pokémon actually touch one another when attacking - in fact, for the first time, we see Pokémon from two opposing teams on-screen at the same time doing something. This is what we were all dreaming about for the next 3D game, and we got it.
- It has all the new Pokémon, and is compatible with Diamond and Pearl - both rather obvious.
- The battle environments have been vastly improved, as well as making them destructible.
- The trainers are a little more active - while Pokémon XD added a little animation when a trainer's Pokémon fainted, Pokémon Battle Revolution has the trainers actually commanding them, making the game look much more alive.
- Pokémon have little animations upon entering and winning battle.
- Battles are much more fast-paced - instead of repeatedly cutting back and forth, the scenes run smoothly together, saving a lot of the redundant time it took to battle in Colosseum and XD.
Hmm, it looks like so far they've got, uh, everything right. Come on, give them a chance. The game looks awesome so far, and because it's developed by Genius Sonority doesn't mean that for some reason they'd make the rest of the game suddenly suck.
Honestly, we have no evidence that Pokémon Battle Revolution will be anything like Colosseum and XD even if it's developed by Genius Sonority. We haven't seen any of the supposed RPG mode at all - we have no reason to assume it has shadow Pokémon, or in fact that any of the things people didn't like about Colosseum and XD are still there. The graphics look an awful lot better, the Pokémon touch, the battles aren't slow and boring - so far, anyway, Genius Sonority has been changing everything we ever disliked about their previous games.
I'm thinking Pokémon Battle Revolution de-emphasizes the story mode (which admittedly I'm not particularly happy about, but I have a gut feeling). They just seemed to be wasting so much powder on the battling that it didn't seem like they were focusing on an RPG. If they do have an RPG (which has been suggested by official sources), I highly doubt it will have shadow Pokémon - Pokémon XD was a sequel to Colosseum, but Battle Revolution is giving me the impression they want a fresh start, with all the changes that have been made to the basic battle engine, the completely different look of just about everything, etc. It's not like Genius Sonority has some sort of "obsession with shadow Pokémon" - Trozei doesn't have any, and although it uses the theme of stolen Pokémon, I don't see why stolen Pokémon are necessarily bad in themselves (people's complaints about shadow Pokémon are mostly about how boring it is to purify them or how you're forced to use weak Pokémon, neither of which is a direct consequence of the "stolen" theme). There could very well be real wild Pokémon in it - they took a step in that direction with XD, and while Colosseum and XD were set in Orre, a region generally devoid of wild Pokémon in which it would have been odd to suddenly make them common, Pokémon Battle Revolution's RPG might as well be set in another region where wild Pokémon are plentiful.
Don't lose your faith in the game just because you don't like the previous games of the company that makes it. If it looks promising, it's still promising, okay?
09/29/06 Some Pointers
Eevee has ripped all the D/P item sprites and is still working on the battle sprites, but he says they are in a completely different format he has never seen before unlike the GBA-formatted icons and item sprites. (He is also working on putting the D/P Pokémon into the Pokédex.) The items might give some pointers as to the evolution methods of some of the old Pokémon that have new evolutions; the purple crystal orb that seems to have cloudy mist inside it, for example, makes me think of the Misdreavus evolution. It will also be interesting to find out how Eevee evolves into the Grass and Ice Eeveelutions.
(Iveechan and I were talking and we realized that Game Freak has a conspiracy against spriters. They're jealous of our awesome talent, so they made a 3D overworld with 2D battles, specifically to tempt us with those sprites, and then make it difficult for us to rip them. They're evil.)
PokéJungle has a couple of D/P videos that are fun to watch, especially if you're interested in hearing the Gym leader battle music. I'm already addicted to it. o.o
Also, I was watching the second Pokémon Battle Revolution video before, and suddenly thought I saw blood when Groudon slashes Diaruga with its claws, but on second thought it's probably just using Dragon Claw (rather than Slash, as Serebii.net's Pokémon Battle Revolution screenshots page claims). Oh well. It was kinda "Whoa", though.
Oh, yeah, a couple of things about D/P I found interesting. Firstly, the TM list is pretty unique. We have False Swipe, Will-O-Wisp and Silver Wind as TMs. Unique, but I'm not complaining - Silver Wind is annoying to have to breed onto everything, and the limited number of Pokémon that had False Swipe was outrageous considering just how useful that move is. Secondly... damn, I forgot what the other thing was. We'll have to do without it until I remember, then.
Pokémon Battle Revolution article coming up tomorrow.
09/29/06 Where I Was Right
The fourth generation has given rise to various rumours and theories which were later proven wrong.
I have before said that I seem to be psychic or Satoshi Tajiri in disguise, and this has only gained further evidence in the discussion of Diamond and Pearl.
The first example is probably the famed supposed pure Flying-type of Perappu. I never trusted it; I got a bunch of e-mails "informing" me that there was a pure Flying-type and I needed to update the Fun Facts page, but I always insisted on keeping that Fun Fact there, arguing that until the game was actually out, nobody knew if that was really the case - I liked to point out Volbeat's supposed Bug/Electric type that was later found to be pure Bug. You can imagine how "HAHAHA I TOLD YOU SO" I was when they revealed that in fact it was Normal/Flying.
The starters of Diamond and Pearl turned out not to be Dark/Psychic/Fighting despite the misleading comment in the Pokémon Garden site about that. I never really believed in the editing of such a fundamental thing as the starter trio, but theorized that this might mean, similarly to the case of Perappu, that Dark, Psychic and Fighting were just the final evolutions' additional types, mostly based on the grounds that I really got the feeling from Hikozaru that it would evolve into a part-Fighting-type - and guess what Hikozaru's types turn out to be. I was wrong about the others, sure, but hey.
Lucario, as it turns out, is not a legendary. I had been arguing the non-legendary side of the debate for a while; I always had the feeling from it that it was a little unlegendarylike. It's somehow the wrong size. And the evidence against it just piled up, first with the abilities, then the gender, then the pre-evolution, then the stats... It's actually funny how long people resisted with the "But it was the star of a movie!" argument. From the looks of it (at least the way I understand Serebii's discovery thread), Lucario is a one-off Pokémon, similar to Tyrogue but given to you in egg form and without the split evolution. Rioru (its pre-evolved form) is cute. :3
Now it's just to see if we were all wrong about Manaphy being a legendary or if the weird confusion with its supposed pre-evolved form is just a misunderstanding.