Pokemon BDSP: Play Like A Designer Episode 6, Onward to Mt. Coronet!

[music] [music]
Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club. I am your Design Club host Will. Joined as always by my pal Jeff. And today this is the only show on the internet named Design Club that has its final episode of 2025 today. I think that's a true statement. Hi everybody. How are you doing? Uh Jeff say hi to the people. How are you?
Hi to the people. Hey everybody. I am Jeffrey Zakin, the studio director of Extra Credits and Extra History. And more importantly for this show, a long-time game designer. And we are here because Will and I a while ago were talking about combat mechanics. And Will started diving into Pokémon combat mechanics. And being a little older than Will, I have never actually played a Pokémon game despite having played hundreds if not more of other games, especially in tactical and RTS and

rogues. And so we decided to do a series where we go through and play like a designer and Will is going to over-explain some aspects of Pokémon to me. Yes. Uh so uh here's a brief caveat. Um today we find ourselves taking on the Team Galactic HQ in Eterna City, which will be fun cuz we've already got the badge. We got the badge last time. It has been a hot second since that last episode. Um so we may repeat some things. So if you're watching these in order on like a a playlist or something, sorry for the repeats. It's been a hot second. Um Speaking of which, if you're watching this on Nebula, hello. I recently put together a playlist for all the Pokémons there. So you now have an easier place to find them. And I think Cat maintains one on or you maintain one on the Extra Credits show, right?
There is one for Design Club, but now that you've said it on YouTube, I will go and make the
[laughter]
the playlist after this episode. So by the time you're watching this episode, there will be a playlist even though when we're recording this episode, there isn't. Right. Because at this point,

since we have an episode zero and this is episode six, Yeah. there is actually enough you can watch through and see what we're doing. Yeah. Um so an important caveat. Um we are I mentioned where we are because if you are an astute player of the Pearl and Diamond games, it is entirely possible you will recognize that we are fast approaching a place that we have long been talking about, the daycare. We are not doing the daycare talk today. When we do the daycare talk, we will tell you in advance that the next episode will be the daycare talk because I will need math and also spreadsheets. And no, I'm not kidding about either of those. So um worry not if you're like
me the 20-second then. What is so involved in daycare that it's going to take an entire episode? So the daycare is how you create baby Pokémon. in a child-friendly
a breeding Daycare implies you're putting No, no, this is a kid-friendly game. It's a kid-friendly game. So what happens is you leave two Pokémon at the

daycare together and then you leave and they get XP and there may magically through means that no one understands and has nor has ever observed an egg appears. Don't ask questions about it. There is simply an egg. Okay, great. Excellent. Um Do they all turn into Togepi? K- kind of. Uh and the um the reason that it's so intense is that what the result is of leaving any two Pokémon there, the parents of that egg, is complicated and messy. Um there are lots [laughter] of lots of
from the sheer size disparity of many Pokémon I can No, that No, stop it. No. No. Bomb. No. No, I'm talking about math. I'm talking about the systems behind it. So, which Pokémon can make eggs with which other Pokémon? What those children inherit and what they can

inherit and what the odds of them inheriting any specific trait are Mhm. all gets wrapped up in that conversation. Um and that gets into talking a little bit about how Pokémon are randomly generated and what the parts of that is. Things like shinies, things like um values that aren't ever disclosed directly to the player about individual Pokémon. All of that sort of gets wrapped up into the big Yeah, daycare talk because it is the it's one of the main building blocks of competitive um and also one of the most mathematically weird and complicated parts of the game. Okay, so we're about to dive into basically deep lore and Arcana or deep deep systems and Arcana for that one.
correct. I will literally put an equation up on screen more than once during that talk. So, uh but that's not what we're doing today.
here for that, too.
Yeah, I know what you
But today as my youngster would say, I think it's time for the battles. That That That seems correct. So, let's Let's uh let's dive on in to our uh to

our thing. So, last time uh on Dragon Ball Z
are we? When we last left our heroes Right, we're in Eterna City and the last thing that we did was we went and got the second badge whose name escapes me. Um but now we can use Cut. And because we can use Cut Oh. we can summon a wild Bidoof. He's going to cut down this tree for us. And that's important because this is the Team Galactic Eterna Building and it says we want your Pokémon. God, I love I love when it's like, "Hey, this is the evil bad guy HQ. Here's our evil bad guy's slogan. Don't Don't Don't you It's the evil bad guy HQ. Dude, they've all got the haircut. Yeah, it's mandatory. It's part of the uniform. Uh so, our team is fully

uh our team is fully killed up.
Yeah, we have our uh Monferno Chimichanga. We have our Intimidate Shinx. We have an Onix. We have a Psyduck. We have a Kadabra. Abra finally evolved into do literally anything um including What did we learn? Yeah, just confusion. So, not a lot, but literally anything. And we have a Staravia um who's not not bad. So. Um
We have the Staravia for a specific reason though. Um that Staravia
Was it a second Intimidate Pokey? I believe has It does. It is incredibly fast and has Intimidate. So, the goal It is It is sort of our uh swap in Intimidate something and then we have like Quick Attack. Oh, it also knows Endeavor, which is really funny um Right? Uh now
And we specifically took out the

legendaries that we picked up last time or the time before because we had decided that they were going to be a little too OP for the run. Correct because it would reduce like having a steel psychic Pokémon is just like What? Mhm.
[clears throat]
Okay. For steel fairies, excuse me. Take it still.
Okay, hold on. What is this wheel? Uh I don't know. Jay apparently did a Team Rocket cosplay. I'm not surprised, but I don't know. Will, did you know that for Halloween my son went as a um Gengar and my wife and I dressed as uh Jessie and James for Team Rocket including wigs. That's very cool. And walked around with him to collect candy. So, maybe one episode I will do my Team Rocket cosplay. Excellent. It is steel psychic. Okay, cool. All right, so let's get started. We're going to beat up these guys and then we're going to go, I assume, up to the top where we're going to beat up their leader. Um Hi. Hello.
They don't seem to be terrible. Welcome to Team Galactic. Are you here

to donate your Poké Ball? What? You're not? Then kindly get off our property. Do we have to bring the pain like we did with the cycle shop manager? Oh, no. I can hear what he's trying to peddle, but I also empty threat, let's kid go. We are gathering Pokémon for an astonishing undertaking. Your meddling won't be tolerated. Sorry, deary. Team Galactic doesn't accept children as members, but we do apparently beat up children and take their Poké Balls. Ooh, double battle. You know, they don't have super cool throw out um animations so far. That is
for the Team Galactics. Okay, so we get Okay, so Zubat has an ability that resists our um uh our thing. That's kind of hilarious.

Okay. Mhm. Wait, what is? You got to Well, so uh we're level 20 and 21 uh and they're level 13 and 14. So, that happens. Does Sphinx's intimidate come out as a deploy move like as our first what? Okay. Yeah, so uh anytime Shinx enters Mhm. combat including when we uh enter combat for the first time Okay. everything gets intimidated. Now, it's not when something switches into it, it's when it switches in. So, there are cases where like I think we talked about this um there's like a world where if we really need to intimidate something, we switch Shinx, Staravia, Shinx because then it gets intimidated and then intimidated. And like it just they don't do damage at that point.

Um Nova says uh this is the generation with the game of 10 of otherwise niche abilities. Uh the secondary effect of intimidate is purely because intimidate was hands down the best ability in competitive. And in some ways I would argue it it's still incredibly good uh from my understanding. I'm going to bite this cat. And it's very fast. Dude, did it just clap your face? Yeah, it used fake out. The the animations are kind of generic for some of these, right? So, like there's there's like normal attack move.
Mhm. Right? Okay, cool. Constantine knows psycho cut. Yeah. Mhm. Um fake out by the way is a move which goes first and only works if we intend to attack and then nullifies that attack and it doesn't do very much damage as a result.

So, it's kind of a counter. Yes, it is a it is a a stop hit essentially, right? It is a you're going to do a thing uh so, I'm going to stop you from doing the thing. Cool. Well, our plan of leaving Constantine in the background learning abilities and having teleport for later is working. That's correct. Oh, and that's partially because of the XP share. That's a thing that a lot of people have sounded off about in the comments and elsewhere is that like the XP all Oh, fake uh what's the one I'm thinking uh Nova that's the stop hit? That's not fake out. But but dear you're just a kid. There is an ability that does that thing sucker punch thank you. Because there are named moves that are very different and that difference is important. Also they all
empty computer can you go hack their network? Well, I don't know Unix on this character so probably not.

Is that a Jurassic Park reference? Indeed it is Jeff. Indeed it is. Um I thank you. We love it when people come to us to donate their Pokémon. I fear as though you may have misunderstood my purpose in this venture. So basically the purpose of minions here is to theoretically wear you down before you get up to the group leader. Since there's no healing up. Right, but you could just leave. That's the thing, right? I I could simply leave and go to the Pokémon Center and all of the people I defeated on the way up would remain defeated. Oh, okay. So So this goes go back to the this game is as easy as or hard as you kind of want it to be. That's correct and I think the biggest thing is that they are a source of experience points and money, right? That there is a route through the game where defeating all of the mandatory

trainers to advance the plot and get you a certain amount of XP. It's a way to avoid non-story related grinding. Now you may still need some if you're like you're changing, but we haven't done a whole bunch of grinding and we have like a team that is way up is levels [music] above. Yeah. Right. Oh yeah and Nova's right. We don't even have to walk we could just teleport out. You could be like I'm sorry I wrecked your day, but also haha. Kadabra out. Jaga's confused. Doesn't need to be very effective if it goes first. No, ah that's bad. Only hurt ourselves in our [music] confusion. Um, is it stop punching yourself? Yes. There's a flat chance for that to happen, and then the damage that we take is based on our attack stat.

That's fine. Oh. I was going to switch and then it mean looked, whoops. Oh now he's just going to have to punch in the face. If you fight every pebble trainer, you're also guaranteed to fill your Pokedex, which matters cuz the game locks most of the post game behind completing it. Interesting. That's an interesting way to do it. Cuz you you complete it by seeing all of them, not by catching all of them, I think. Hm, okay. Oh look, there's a lab coat guy. Yeah, I remember how this game works. I totally do. Don't at me.

Our mission is to implement our operations without question. It's all for the new world order that our boss will lead. Suddenly this became a wrestling plot. As one Pokémon hates a Kadabra. Ooh. Actually, I can't remember. Are psychic types stronger or weak to fighting? Strong. Okay. So, we're about to probably take a just an absolute metric ton of damage. Or not. Um we can also just swap out Yeah.
because Shinx knows a bite Shinx knows a darkness type move. Uh and that'll be super effective and also we'll get the intimidate not that it matters cuz Kadabra doesn't have a physical attack. The odds of it having a physical attack are like so close to

zero as to be zero. So, we'll bring you out specifically because dark is good against psychic. So, for example, it's this guy as opposed [music] to the Starmie. I mean, they are Staryu or Onix or something else. Yeah. For that. That's fine. And that's uh and we've talked about this a bit, right? That's the substance of most of the main game of Pokémon, right? The non-competitive main game is do you understand the type chart? Great. You win, probably. So, I'm going to go on banished. Have a dollar. Like 10 bucks. Actually, that was 1,020 yen. Quick chat, I need today's conversion between uh 10 bucks. Yeah, it was like
Excuse me. No, hold on. Yeah, 10 bucks. Who are you?
Basically, excuse me. Not as much anymore. It used to be you could just lop two zeros off. But with the exchange rate now, that's

probably more like 7 bucks.
Yeah. Yeah? Did you want something? How silly of me to even ask. You want to free the Pokémon? Yeah, that's going to happen. You get the Team Galactic intro.
Ooh, who's this? Commander Jupiter.
Dude, she has a cool outfit. She does. All of the All of the Galactic uh leaders have like great uh outfits and style and all that. But she's still Oh, it's level 18.
Yeah, this is one of like my suspension of disbelief problems, right? The leader of a part of an uh international worldwide ter like corporation of evil, right? Terrorist organization, like whatever they are, right? Yeah. Has two Pokémon, and one of them is level 18. Unless the other one is like a level 50-plus legendary, it just doesn't make sense to me. This is

one of like the things that damages my suspension of disbelief the most. And it's a Zubat. And it Yeah, and it's a It's not even a cool Pokémon, right? It's a Zubat. Zubat is fun. Zubat might be your favorite Pokémon, but it's not like a special cool Pokémon, right? She's not pulling up anything you're like, "Ooh, she has one of those." Okay, so we crit. We get confused. That's fine. To avoid uh hurting ourselves in our confusion, we will swap out. How insolent. Take a bite of this, child. Oh, okay. What if I just swapped? To protect the world from [music] Zubat nation. Something like that. And dominate all Team Galactic within our nation. Yeah. We're not doing this, of course, for the Intimidate, because Inner Focus is a thing. We're doing this for we're faster

and also uh Electric-type. I like that you no longer escape thing, but as taking up a whole move for it, "You're trapped in here with me doesn't seem particularly good right now. Well, it stays on that Pokémon. I believe mean look stays even if she were to swap. So it's a set up move, right? I'm going to lock it so that you can't do your set up thing which takes multiple Pokémon. Mhm. And I'm not going to be under that restriction. Right, but she only has two. Yeah. I get Ooh, okay, slightly cooler. Skunk with an updo. I believe this is dark poison.
[cough]
Poison gas.

I could try and do this elegantly with like a switch in. What was that? Uh it's a berry. That's the animation for eating a berry. So um Pokémon have uh sort of conditional items. So it's a under this condition you eat this item once per battle. Mhm. And it doesn't take a move. All right, which is what the thing I was most noticing was yeah, it didn't take a move. Right, that's the big deal about berries and other um consumables, right? Can you use a potion in battle? Yes. You could have used one or two. But I'm not saying we should. That was a
Yeah, you you certainly can. It is one of the things that is so powerful that most people avoid it simply because it's not It's It's never needed.

And you could theoretically just have like an infinitely long battle, right? You could just never lose cuz you could heal stall with your potions.
Potions were cheap, too, weren't they?
They are. Yeah, potions do take a turn. Held items don't. Oh, okay. So, using
between a potion and a held item? So, a potion is we use the we choose to use a potion as our turn. That citrus berry that the opposing skunk thing had, it was given before the battle started. Oh, okay. And it automatically
Yeah. So, every Pokémon has a one item inventory, and there are different held items. Some of them provide permanent stat boosts under specific conditions. Some of them change the way that Pokémon function. Some of them are things like berries, which are consumables and can only activate when specific conditions in battle are met.

Okay. That's making more sense now cuz I was like Yeah, if items took zero or were always equivalently a bonus action to use and you still got to do your thing, Yeah. you could take your single Pikachu and go through the entire game. Yeah, that's correct. Losing to some child bearing careless cost me too much. We got Oh, she had actual cash. Yeah. Like double the normal. Yeah. Well, aren't you tough? It's okay, there are official Pokémon statue investigating investigation is finished, and Mars has collected energy for the Valley Windworks. Pretty much finished here. I'll let you in on one little thing. Our boss is researching the myths of ancient Pokémon. The power of mythical Pokémon, he will become the ruler of Sinnoh. I suggest you keep out of Team Galactic's affairs from now on. This is your last warning. I got my Clefairy back, and it's all thanks to you. But that Team Galactic, they said Clefairy came from space. Hand it over. Their logic baffles me still. It's It's

they're from space. Anyway, they're gone now. Thank you very much. I can't thank you enough right now, but cruise by my cycle shop, okay? This is how we get the
Oh, he took the Bidoof, too. Or not the Bidoof, the little bunny with the floppy ear. Uh, bunny-eary? Oh, they all took off. Yeah, they all left. They're done here. They left all of these very valuable laptops. Some of this makes me feel like we're missing RPG elements cuz I see like bookshelves and occasionally things sitting on tables that feel like Right. So, like sometimes they're interactables and sometimes they're just it's chock-full of Pokémon books and collections, right? Like But that's always just unless it's a house, that's always just description, right? Um, you know what normally has stuff? The trash cans. [music] If we're going to look If we're going to look somewhere, it's probably going to be in a trash can. Um This is one of the things I actually very actively dislike is when games

basically put one random item occasionally in a place like that because then you feel like you have to search the whole world. Yeah. And that is sort of the message that always gets sent, right? When you uh
like me feel like you then have to search the whole world.
That's true. Um There's exactly one important bookshelf in this game. It's only important cuz it's a solution to a puzzle in a different Pokémon game. That seems like a pretty deep cut. Yeah. Yeah, the the way to Yes, Myrath is exactly right. The only way to You aren't playing optimally unless you check every trash can. All right. So, we need uh Novus says we have three stops. Um, that's one of them. One of them is this
Obviously, we need to go to the bicycle shop cuz we just helped bicycle man. Rad Rickshaw Cycle Shop. Get on and ride.

Ooh. Bikes. Thanks for rescuing me. I can't thank you enough. So, let me give you a bike to show my gratitude. Please come with me for a moment. Clefairy. I'd like you to choose a color for your bike. Which one will it be?
[music]
What do you want, Jeff? Blue, red, or yellow, or green? Blue is fun, but red ones go faster, which is canonical 40K. It's true. Red ones do in fact go faster. You want a red bike?
Okay. That's a pretty sweet ride. Yeah. Yes, I would love a red bike. Marvelous. You've chosen red, the color of passion. It calls to mind images of the flame on Charmander's tail. It's perfect for you. And for it matches Jimmy Chonga, which is of course also important.
You put the bike in your bag's key item pocket. Don't ask questions. You put the bike in your backpack's key items pocket.

This actually is less confusing to me, Will, purely because this world also involves things like an Onix coming out of, you know, somebody something that fits in the size of my hand. Yeah. Like they have some sort of extra dimensional space things like bag of holdings and portable holes that are just common enough technology you can give to 10-year-olds. That's true. It's the latest model, so I'll read the operating manual to you. Press B to shift gears, it says. In third gear, the bike cannot reach full speed, but it will be easy to handle. In fourth gear, it can ride at full speed and climb up slopes. Your bike can take you through all sorts of towns, roads, and routes. Now, get out there and ride. Ride your bike from your bag's key item pocket. Press the B button to speed up or improve control. That was a blue bike. Whoa. You're going fast. Yeah. This is third gear. Oh. Whoops. Oh, wow. You got a bike. You can ride down Cycling Road and end up in Hearthome City. It's a fast and fun ride. You should check it out.

Oh, does it Oh, so it won't let us go that way. That's so weird. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. It's so easy to turn around accidentally because you're on one tile.
get off your bike, can you walk through that area? Uh that's a really great question. I don't know. I also want to go here. Wait, register assigns it to a hot key. Okay. Yeah. It does that hot key also take it off? So, like you push up again to Cool. Okay. Yeah. Um Okay, so no, it What it will still it recognizes that we have a bike and we have to go down Cycling Road. Right? And that's as opposed to What's What's in the map here? Uh as

opposed to going back through the Eterna Forest. That's Oreburgh. And this is Route 211 and this is Mount Coronet. Celestic Town, that's Hearthome City. So, there's like a way south, right? Um And then
What else in town do we have to do? Uh there are two other things that we need to do. I imagine it involves breaking into people's houses and stealing their stuff. Oh, by the way, this is another pet peeve in games. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, the the I will reward you for button checking every different like part of the game. Underground Man's house, digging down for adventure. I assume this is one of them. I am the first one to have started digging out the grand underground. I am,

you can call me the underground man. Everyone else does. I'll make a gift of this to you. You hold up your end of the deal and put it to good use. You obtain the explorer kit. Ooh, what's the explorer kit do?
That's a great question, Jeff. Use the explorer kit from your bag pocket to visit the grand underground. I'll mentor you as you become a full-fledged explorer. Just follow my lead. So, you're now a minor minor? That's right. First, go to the grand underground. Going underground is quite easy. Simply use your explorer kit. It can't be used indoors or in a cave.
[music]
Now, give it a try. So, we got a bike and an explorer's kit.
Right, I'm also not controlling that. It does it that slowly. Hey Jeff, this is your first time here. Welcome to Sinnoh's grand underground. This is a network of tunnels, caves, and caverns lying beneath Sinnoh. Huh? What am I doing down in this expansive a place?

That's kind of hard answer. I mean, you can do pretty much anything you want down here. For instance, you can dig up fossils and treasure, or you can make your own secret base. You should talk to the underground man in the Twinleaf City to learn more. Y is the way to go back to the surface. Remember, Y. I have to go back. Okay, going now. I'll see you around. Woah. Flight. Yes, we can look at that map, which is
pretty significant. We have different rooms and there are shiny things, which I immediately want to go chase. Uh so, I'm going to go do that because Can you use your bike here? That's a really great question. Bronzong echoed, Jeff, there's a time and place for everything, but not now." No, you can't, apparently. So, where are you going? There's a shiny thing. The wall is bulging slightly. Would you like to try digging into it? So, if you look on the on the map there, there's like a little shiny uh sparkle. Oh. There's a note tucked inside the

explorer kit. Digging for fossils.
Mhm. I've put a sledgehammer and pickaxe in your explorer kit. Here, kid. You're wandering to my house. You ever want a sledgehammer? Here you go. Got to love Pokémon. Use them and you'll be able to dig out all sorts of stuff from the walls. Before the wall comes tumbling down, that is. I'm sure you could do it. Good luck, youngster. Something pinged in the wall. Three confirmed. Um I guess we can go like here. I assume this is like Battleship. Nothing. Okay. Is there a limited number of these? I believe it's up at the top. You see how every time we do this, the crack gets a

little longer? Oh, yeah. Okay. I hadn't actually noticed that yet. Yeah, it's uh it's not very prominent. Okay, so there's cracks under cracks. I found a thing. What's the difference on the hammer versus the sledgehammer? I believe the hammer does more takes more durability. Is that something? Looks like it is. Maybe that's not it. Yeah, the hammer is a larger AoE, but increases the bar faster. Oh, there's one. That looks like a thing. Not what I wanted.

The other one didn't glow, did it? I believe it did. Okay. Um all right, Jeff, where are we looking for this last one? Um a little more like mid left like looking at the size of these. These are all 2 by
3 by 3s. Oh, yeah. That's right.
So, some my guess is either bottom like look for areas where you're just going to hit the biggest. Oh, what can you hit your big hammer sledgehammer in the hole you've made one up one left?
This one? Like yeah, will that get Uh in this case, no, because it's a gray block, but
Okay. it would have worked. Okay, not there. Okay. Let's try Yeah. here? There it is. There you go. Oh, too far. Got it. Everything was dug up. Amazing.

You got a blue sphere L. You got a blue sphere L. You obtained a pretty stone box. The stone box started to shine. Oh, a Bronzong statue appeared. Okay, so what again did you see there that I missed? Uh so, no. Not there. In the Grand Underground Map, if you look, it's it's kind of small. Do you see the yellow stars on the right?
They're They're actually not on the path. They're like off on the side of the path. So, I immediately saw one and went, "That's a shiny thing." and went for it because shiny thing.
I'm seeing them like directly above you. So, if you kind of went right up left and then up again. And was that Was that where you mined or was that something sitting on the ground?
That was where I mined. The shiny thing on the ground was something different.

Which is counting up towards 40. If you It's like behind me. There's a bar that's filling every time I run into one of those Digletts. So, what do these actually give you? That's a great question. I am an experienced shiny chaser, it is known. Um Nova can probably fill us in. I imagine that some of it's money, some of it's just like uh self-perpetuating like underground loot that works in the underground system. Uh okay, so the If we check here, method. If we check here, we're guaranteed to get the corner as long as they're always 3x3, but that's also true if we check here because it'll get this one. And if it's anywhere in the corner, this one has to be occupied. And we know it can't be the corner corner because there's something directly below it. Again, assuming they're all 3x3 squares.
Uh they're underneath this layer.

There's two layers.
Oh, you're right. Okay. There's a gray layer and a um and a sort of like tan beige layer. Okay, so we found one.
Mhm. Uh the statues are for the underground and you can't use them. Cool. Okay, so we know that there's a grey [clears throat] thing here Can you hit your big hammer in the hole that's kind of up to the right? Right here?
Right there. That way we could see if there's anything under that one.
There is. Here. Oh, oh. And it's a 2 by 2. Which complicates things ever so slightly. So that's two of four. Mhm. Um I think we should check and see if I can blow up these rocks. I think I can.
I one to the left? Here? Because that would still get a 2 by 2 if you did that. Yeah, and we'll get the

corner. Okay, so we can and it's one. There's something. Okay, so we got three. And I imagine the last one feels like it's going to be over here. Yeah. Like that that seems like a weird it would be a weird choice for it not to. But what I also don't know. Okay, so it's not here unless it's under this uh tile here.
check up to the left. All right. Do that. Yeah, I wonder that's actually interesting. Is it better to do like little hammer depth charges or It could also be like under this somewhere. Which might mean that we're just out of luck. All right. Or down below down below the pink. Also true, but I

feel like that's less likely because of this stuff. Yeah, it's hard Nope. All right, Jeff. Are you right? So it's like up here and we're out of time. Uh we're out of hits, I think. Oh, we got three. Oh, good. Ball collapsed. You got a pale sphere L, a green sphere S, and a box. Pretty stone box. That has a different symbol on top of the previous one. A Bidoof statue, my boy. It's interesting that we're doing [music] this, but we don't yet know that what it's good for. So, this kind of goes back to the game thing of oh, there's a system for it and you're getting a treasure, it must be good. Right, yeah. It's a This is shiny

chasing writ large, right? We are just being given an opportunity to explore. So, instead of exploring this shiny thing, I want to check out this question mark room. Right? Cuz there's a room with a question mark on it and that must be something. We actually passed a close by one. Oh, okay. Oh, we're Okay, so there are Pokémon wild Poké? Are Well, yeah. I don't Okay. So, it just it just like ran in a circle at me for a hot second and then
Oh, we're going to capture a thing, aren't we? Yeah. This is a Buizel. Um we already have a Buizel, actually. Uh also, it is level 28. So, So, I think you wandered to a Since you wandered to a faraway question mark instead of the nearby one, Correct. Also, just as a note, so that we're all on the same page,

this Pokémon is more powerful [music] than the Pokémon that is being used by a leader in Team Galactic. Roughly 50% more powerful. Yeah. Oh, I should have You know, I should have swapped cuz we're just going to get faded. I'm going to do that. I'm going to swap. The level of variety of Pokémon in a hideaway scales with your badge count. Interesting. Level 25 to 20. Okay. By the way, interestingly, how many people in chat really like this system? Like this whole Oh, oh. That was a little more effective, right? We missed our chance. We already have one. It's fine. Oh, do

we? Yeah, we did. There's a little Pokémon The little Pokéball icon to the right of a wild Pokémon's health bar means we caught one. Oh, okay. Are Pokémon in hideaways you cannot find? The underground was nice. Okay, cool. Uh, yeah, we should we should learn rock slide. That seems good. Um, I will tell you
uh dose. Yeah. Um, accuracy's 90, power 75. Oh, yeah, we'll we'll do this instead of rock throw. Every Pokémon That's right. Yeah, the level is in the um is in the formula for catch chance. Okay. So, that's what's here. Let's see. Did it take the question mark off the map? Okay. Well, we think that we've solved that Well, we know what's

there. We could have probably go back there. Also worth noting that when we went in and out, new fossils appeared in the walls.
Oh, you're right. I'm curious actually. Go back in that room one sec for me. Oh. Do we want to talk to her first? Sure. Let me do that. And Hello. I'm Emmy. Did you know that statues of the same Pokémon species can come in different colors? I hear placing different colored statues in your secret base has better than normal effects. Okay, so minor Yeah, minor
home dec- Yeah, like
home decoration tip. I'm curious if they've respawned. Oh, so yeah, there is Yes, they're different they're different Pokémon.
is new ones, okay. I'm just going to go through and go out the other side. Um okay, cuz like my emotional reaction to this is to immediately check out, which is very interesting. Um It's it's sort of a

This is basically this is a this is just a dungeon. This is Right. It's it's a it's a big thing, right? And my immediate reaction I want to go check out the question mark near where we started, by the way. Um cuz you were right, we went kind of far afield cuz I went shiny chasing. Right? So like the um There's a reason to talk to every NPC in the underground even if they don't give you anything. Okay. Cuz yeah, we passed another blonde girl. I passed this hiker. Got any small spheres? If you do, I'll trade you something. Oh wow, those are okay, so those are very expensive. And these give TMs and other things. Okay. This is what spheres are for, okay. Cuz like it's so fascinating to me. It should be a welcome change of pace,

right? Because it's it's a variety in the in the Pokémon world. Mhm. There are a few different types of stone boxes. The prettier the box, the rarer the statue you'll find inside. Okay. So, Emmy's going to be offering advice about what we find, and we've also found a merchant where we can swap in We can swap goods and items, yeah. Yeah.
So, So, they have a secondary They have an alternate form of currency going for the mines. Correct. So, there's it's a self-contained currency as well. You get it down here, you spend it down here. So, that's cool because it means that we could, I'm not saying we will, I'm saying we could ignore it, right? Which is useful because there will be players like me whose first reaction is, "No, absolutely not." Okay, so this is just another hideout. Okay, he said. At some point, well, actually, when we leave this, Yeah. I want to try Kadabra's teleport [music] since we haven't tried it yet. What does it do? That's a great question.

Like, we've been leveling up Constantine for a while specifically
You can't use that here. Interesting.
Oh. So, what we can use the go up. Would you like to return to the surface from where you entered? We can fly. [screaming] Aha, I see you've gone underground. Well done. Take these as a reward. You obtained a red sphere S and a blue sphere S. I'm guessing S means small in this case. Yes. There apparently some Pokémon in the Grand Underground that you can't normally find around here. Meeting a new Pokémon is 100 times more fun when it's a rare one. The road to being a spelunker has barely begun. If you want them more, just come visit me. Yes. Yeah, it's a different game mode, Tac. I agree. So, it's a um it's a different game mode that gives us a different set of things to interact with and play if we want to. Mhm. Right? But I am
lunch money from random kids. Right. [music] Well, we're not taking lunch money from random kids. I am pretty glad that it's optional because

I find like forcing like big complicated alternate game modes to be usually kind of ham-fisted, right? Like it's difficult to engage with a different game loop organically. Like without doing like a small bridge, right? So like if we have game loop A and game loop B and they say, "All right, we want you to take a break from game loop A and go do game loop B for a while." That's either like a hard stop or a very specific bridge that's like you can engage in this more, but in order to progress to a different area, you need to do game loop B. It usually feels unsatisfying, right? It's very rarely like if very rarely feels player-directed, right? You know, what's actually interesting to me was the respawning um points of entry like where you can do um

archaeology because beforehand I'd been thinking like, "Oh, this is kind of like a Minesweeper or Battleship-y kind of thing." But once I realized they reset, I think the optimal play for me would be I'd just go hit a couple places with my big hammer. I don't care if I find all four, you're going to find a couple. And rather than taking the time to do precise [music] things, you get a couple, you reset it by walking into a room and re-walking back out. Yep. All right, I assume we need to check this out just to see what's up. We talk to people. I'm the official name rater. Want me to name rate the nicknames of your Pokémon? Yes, absolutely. Uh I would like I would like to know what you think of Chimichanga. That's a decent nickname. Would you like to give it an even better name? So this is how we would rename Pokémon. Ah. If we want. Now So we could rename man two if we wanted or somebody who doesn't have a name. That's correct. Actually, while we're here, was there anybody that didn't have a name that we want?

Uh maybe. I hadn't I had not honestly thought about
going to be keeping our Star Lee for a while? Probably. Cuz that one doesn't have a name. Right. This This is another thing, too. Excuse me, do you got that Pokémon named Weasel? Want to trade it for my Chatot.
Oh. If you change your mind, let's totally trade some Pokémon. So, if we go here and we go to Pokémon, Mhm. uh and we go to our boxes, I believe we have a level eight Weasel. So, we could Now, I'm kind of interested. I want to poke this with a stick. I think we're okay making the Weasel trade cuz we don't need a Weasel right now. But, I also want to see if it'll let us trade out of the box because I think that that is like an interesting idea. What do you mean out of the box? Oh, got you. Putting our storage as opposed to our actives. And you can. Oh, very nice.

I wonder if he'll have a different um trade if we go back later. That's a very good Yeah, we could check back cuz we've we've addressed that the game does have a concept of like time. All right, so this is a parrot that is also a musical note. And this is Okay, so this is more of a reason to just catch extra Pokémon than I'd initially been thinking, too. Yes.
[snorts]
The new Poké. They're normal flying. I'd say, how good is this guy? Yeah, so awesome, a Weasel. Promise I'll be good to it. Please take good care of the Chatot I gave you, too. Talk to him again real quick. I want to When you get it I want to see if he um Yeah. We asked We asked two questions. I can do one question at a time. I want to look at this. It's lonely. Uh so it's attack is up and it's defense is down and it knows chatter, sing,

uh which puts things to sleep, peck, and growl. And it is level 15. So it's not
peck with an acorn. It does have chatter, which is a uh 65 power perfectly accurate special attack that is flying. So that's kind of cool. Uh I will be right back if you want to check and see if he'll do another trade as well. Yeah. We traded Pokémon, so we're friends now. Please take care of that good chat I good care of that chat I I gave you. Uh Novo Here is one. Underground is one. Where else am I going in town? I'm the building superintendent. I maintain a vigil on 24-hour watch. Okay, guy. Are there stuff up here? Second floor.

Giant nerd glasses. I'm just scouting so when Jeff comes back we can do things, but I imagine that this is the person we need to talk to when Jeff comes back. Aha! Perfect. All right. Uh we are not able to
or We are not able to trade again. Um and
Okay, good to know. We have arrived at the second floor and there's this mysteri- mysterious little old blue-haired lady. Oh, she must be Team Rocket Galactic. I've had these move these TMs for the move recycle for such a long time now. They're not anything that I have much use for these days. I do hope you'll put them to good use, young trainer. You obtained TM67. All right. So, we haven't messed with anything of the TM variety yet. That is correct.

Virginia, our gym leader, goes out to Eterna Forest every so often. I always wonder what she does there. We're at the third floor, which I haven't fully checked yet.
Wait, did we fight her already? Yes, we fought Gardenia. We have the badge. I got a lot of stickers, so I'll place them on my ball capsules. I'm this close to being ready for the Super Contest Show in Hearthome City. There are some sparkling stones lying around in the Grand Underground. Okay. Badges from gyms or wins in Super Contest Shows, there's more than just one way to be a winner, it seems. Here's hoping you'll find something in which you can be the victor. Hooray, my secret base just got another great We don't have a secret base yet. We don't have a secret base yet, and maybe we'll work on that. But, they've been hinting I'm I'm appreciating the foreshadowing here. Yeah, there's like good foreshadowing stuff. All right, so now we need to go to the herb shop, which is apparently to the right of the statue.

Statue is up to the others, the There you go, statue. Uh and there's a thing over there. The red lights are popular. Yes. Eterna came to be a long ago in honor of an ancient Pokémon, but many things have changed, but its importance has not. I hope it remains that way forevermore. Not you. Left of the statue. [music] Someday we'll know right from left. You're good. I often don't know right from left. Have you seen the Pokémon statue? When I was a wee child, it used to be the centerpiece of many festivals. Yes. You could have put a sign on a herb shop so you'd know what to shop from the outside.
That's true.

Uh welcome to the herb shop, home of effective yet inexpensive medicine. Okay, these are So these are significantly more expensive than like the potions and other things we were seeing. Correct, but I believe because they're not man-made, I believe there's a chance that we can give these to a Pokémon and have them use them themselves.
Oh, so these are like the slottable items that don't take a turn.
believe that may be the case. Either that or it's just more effective. Cuz this is less money than a full heal, I believe. Yeah, these are cheaper than equivalent potions. Yeah, that is what I thought. Oh, okay. For some reason I was thinking I guess it's been a while since I saw the shop. Yeah. Not held, only just cheaper.
By the way, Nova, I appreciate you uh sharing your knowledge with us as Nova is very helpful about
it in it's been a bit for Will, so. Yeah. What is energy powder? That's a like a

super potion. And this is like a Oh, there go Okay, I can see the tooltips now. Using them makes your Pokémon like you less. Yeah. That's like a whole So so that is it's kind of interesting, too, that that is a another angle to the game that like you can opt in or out of, right? The idea that you do or don't care about a specific like um subsystem, right? Like you can care about whether or not your Pokémon like you. There are benefits to doing it, but you also don't have to care at all, right? I didn't even realize there was a friendship meter for Pokémon. Yep. Oh, uh, I need to I don't know if we have it yet. Yeah, we

don't I don't think we have it yet. I think eventually we'll get to see it, but uh Okay. So it is currently a hidden system. Yeah, it's a hidden value, which is one of my biggest beefs in an ongoing way with Pokémon. I agree with that. They're they keep I think they had a really weird problem where they wanted it to be a game for young kids, yeah, so they didn't want to do like stat overload, but they still wanted to build the complexity in. And so they're just like, oh, we'll just hide it or bury it deep in interface. Right. [music] And in this case, there's an NPC that gives you an approximation of the range, and that's it. And that is one of the reasons I find it very difficult, honestly, to take the game seriously. Um, it's a combination of that with uh the Pokémon Company and Game Freak's like stance on

um generated Pokémon. It just really makes it hard to care for me about it in like any sort of serious way aside from the occasional itch I get like once a year to like play 10 minutes of a Pokémon game and remember why I don't like Pokémon games. Um There are things which you could choose to engage in that are hidden from you entirely and like
Bidoof, good boy. Let's see, what level is he now? Let's go ahead and check. Oh, the Bidoof. Okay, so this one [music] is still low, but the underground ones were much higher. Right, so that tells us that if we want to go catch wild Pokémon for any reason, we're better off going to the underground. We've got two things. [music] One, we

get to fight this guy. And then we get to smash that boulder and go down that path. So see how Mount Coronet towers above us? I want to be big like that one day. Okay? Tyke, or Lewis. Geodude. Let's see, is he a higher level? 15. That's cute. Part of me is also as I look at this kind of a designer is realizing that this game doesn't make sense

when you're fighting people that only have like one or two Pokémon. Like that guy doing defensive curl there is always going to be worse
[music]
than just hitting you from like an efficiency perspective because you have six Pokémon and he has two. Correct. And
Like he's not setting himself up for a big later thing. He's taking the time he could have done damage to you and not doing the damage. Right. In fact, it's particularly funny in this case because Geodude can learn self-destruct. Which is the most like if you assume that a Pokémon this much higher than you is going to knock you out, there's a very reasonable chance that self-destruct is the only way you're going to get any progress for it, right? And so, there is sort of this um layer in the fiction that um no one is actually trying to beat you

that like you're a 12-year-old kid, all right? That this is all part of like the narrative of the journey and that like the gym leaders definitely not trying to beat you. Canonically, all of the gym leaders have much more powerful teams because they all hang out and fight against one another. Um and they all like actually compete against one another. Not like the first gym leader has like really weak Pokémon and the last gym leader has like really strong ones. They all have really strong teams. You're being tested, right? So, like that is part of the fiction already. And so, it is weird though that the NPCs simply don't follow the same rules that we do for like team generation or power levels [music] or anything. It's kind of weird. Yeah. Look at these beautiful wings. I hope she has a flying Pokémon. Okay.

Perigee of Alexandria sent out Doduo. Ow. Ooh. That I'm happy to report that the cat [music] has now done cat yoga and is now like has his back leg over his head and is sleeping curled up like that. I know you all are very excited by this idea. But this one's a little higher level, too. Mhm. And now it's just interesting to me like we just went from like a 12 to a 15 to a 19 almost within the [music] same screen. Correct. I think who did fainted. Um I will attempt to give you routine cat updates. Uh normally they don't hang out in here. Um they're actually not my cats, they're my roommate's cats, but I'm the one that's home all day, so I am their human during the day, if that makes sense. Uh and I think it makes sense to the cat owners. Oh, I'm going to peck you for that. Got

a dollar. We got taunt. That's very nice. So where are all these TMs that you're finding? Are these like you can teach a Pokémon taunt? Mhm. So the way it works is in our uh we have the TMs pocket. Okay. And it's behind you. Hold on. Uh You can just make us disappear for a minute.
Yep, I'm doing it. Um I shrunk. Yeah. Uh so these, you can see on the bottom right, are the are the stats. And on the left we can see who could learn this move, right? And so these are all different moves that different Pokémon could learn, and we can hang on to them. They are single use, that's why the number of them matters, right? So we only have one use of taunt. Um So hold on a second. Actually, go back cuz Okay, so like the one you're on, TM 12. Okay, I see it's called taunt, it's

dark. Go up one for me. Mhm. Oh, okay, recycle. I was missing the name for a minute. Yeah. So um this is like a big part of move customization later on, essentially.
Um they're They've gone back and forth on this. Now, I believe in the current games where all the TMs can just be used forever. train. Gotcha. So, once you have taunt, you can just you know how to teach any Pokémon that can learn taunt, taunt. Yes, once. It's It's a one-time use in this game.
Oh, no, so you were saying the current one. Right, the in the in the in the more like um in the ones that aren't remakes of older games. So, like Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet and ZA. I believe so.
what I meant. So, like in that it's more like a D&D spell book, which is Correct. as opposed to a scroll. Yes. This is a scroll. The other ones are spell books. That is a good way to put it. Um Also, yes.

I like the spell book idea cuz that lets them kind of hand out a reward. Actually, I could see the merits on both. Never mind. I'm
Yeah. Like it is complicated. This is the old way to do it. I think that I think most players prefer the spell book method. Um It's a lot less bookkeeping at the end of the day. Like you know you've learned, you know, when to tell or you know, you know you've learned speed attack. Yeah.
And therefore, speed attack is now in your arsenal or your spell book. Hey, so we have a new thing blocking our way. It's a big boulder, but you may be able to push it aside with a hidden move, which we don't have yet. At least it's a different colored rock. Uh that is true. Uh I have
Can you chop those other rocks? Oh, you can ride your bike in here. That's good. We can also get invites in here because it's dark. Ooh, what are you? It's a Chingling. We don't have one of those. We do not. I'm going to try.

Oh, this may be hard.
just eat. Do we have a quick ball? I don't remember here. Yeah, Yeah, crafting of spell books in Scarlet and Violet should have people prefer the spellbook pattern. Yeah. It's also just honestly less player data that needs to be tracked. Because now instead of having like a an inventory of them, you can just have a checklist. Yeah, that that's kind of what I meant by it's easier to re-parse or remember. All right. This is a psychic type. It's a bell Pokémon. Each time it hops, it makes a ringing sound. It detects foes by emitting high-frequency cries. Uh and now that we know the move renamer, I'm going to say that to save time, we're not going to do these until like
until a Poké goes into our party. Yeah. It Only only Pokés that go into the party get named.
No, not for now. Unless there's some other characteristic we need to know.

Yeah. Uh we can't buy quick balls yet. Dang it. Quick balls are great because they work on the first turn. Uh okay, so yes, we can smash all of these, but I don't think that's the way forward. Oh no, I was just curious if they were all Cuz again, that's another thing that if you don't know much about it, you might tend to spend time smashing all of them to see if you got a reward. Yes. Uh What am I missing? I know we go south and we go into Mount Coronet. But I don't I don't I think I'm missing something. What am I missing, chat? I'm sorry, chat. I'm also having a day where my brain is just like not cooperating [music] uh at all. Uh it's doing that thing where I'm like, I know the answer to this. Dude, I did that this morning dropping off my kid at school, walking back with another dad who's I've met for a while and not remembering their kid's name. Like Yeah. Oh, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Names are hard. They are. So we can't break the the red ones. We can break these. We can go on the cycling road to Wayward Cave, which is not here. So, I've gone I have I have led us astray in the wrong direction. Imagine remembering I'll I'll go one further than that, Damon works. Imagine remembering.
[screaming]
We have a Geodude? I have A I believe we got them in the same cave that we caught Onix in. We do. Mhm. Okay, so that was the little Pokéball next to its health bar was showing we have one? Correct. Okay.

It's supposed to go on the cycling road. Oh, this way with the flag well. Flag well? There's a flag on the place that we're supposed to go that I didn't notice. Yeah. People often let you see what's on other paths but won't let you go there. There we go. Oh, okay. It just put you on the bike. Now, we have bike battles. Yeah, there it is. Woah. Oh, cool. At least they're on a Oh, everybody's on a bike. Okay, I feel good about this. Axel. I know. You're very excited that the the trainer names are now even more puns.

I say wolf bait.
this motorcycles? Exactly. Exactly. You also cannot get off the bike. You try the game tells you off. Okay. What an interesting mechanic. It does virtually nothing because we intimidated it and now we're going to spark it because it can't swap. Like this is another great example, right? There's a Pokémon with intimidate. But it's their only Pokémon. So they can't switch. So they're
That's what I'm saying. This it This is just showing you it's not made for you know, people with one or two or even I would say even three ball. Like until you get a team. Psyduck.

As I was saying. And I think the other obstacle, right, is that it is it is This is downhill, by the way. I'm not touching up. Mhm. Um As if you know how to ride a properly with a battle. Yeah. Screech not only doesn't do damage, but can miss, right? Correct. Um So here here's a great example, right? So I love absolutely love um the concepts and battle system presented in um Temtem. Which was a uh which was a game that was trying to do a very similar story in a very similar um style, right? Uh

but which did attempt [music] to go up a reasonable distance away. Um a lot of people think that Temtem didn't go at all away from the Pokémon model. The second you look at the combat system, that completely falls apart. Um the the combat is very different um and the stats are very different in that it tells you up front what a lot of the stats that are hidden in Pokémon are. Right? They have equivalents for what your EVs and IVs are, both of which are usually hidden [music] in Pokémon. Um and uh they they're just like, "Yeah, these are what the values are. This is how you change it and this is what it does." Right? It was it's very up front about that and I feel like as a result, it made it less accessible and more honest because I feel like the there's sort of a beautiful lie in Pokémon, which is that it's all actually

this simple, right? But it's not, but it might as well be for the majority of players, right? So, it could be this simple, but isn't. And that's sort of the beautiful lie that Pokémon tells, [music] which I think is not a bad thing, but a thing that we have to acknowledge when we're talking about it from a design perspective. That like
Do you think the game would be better, Will, if they got rid of a whole bunch of that under layer? Ooh, that's a great question. No, uh because they would lose a huge chunk of their player base immediately and then would immediately revert, right? But like if they could sell that on the to the player base, no. I think that
I'm thinking kind of like D&D fifth edition, where they're like, "We're going to streamline all this so it's easier to get in and just play and you spend less [music] time looking stuff up." I think the difference Mhm. is
that why people actually play Pokémon? There is um there are overtures to learning that

depth. Mhm. Right? And they are interesting enough in different parts to different people. Right? So, kind of like 3.5, some people do like looking things up in tables, and some people do like figuring out like weird combinations of stats and things and like skill points, right? Oh god, skill points. Right. Um And synergies. Right. Yes. I think Yes, I think the real solution would be a way to I think the real solution would be to have two modes. Mhm. Pikachu. Right? Oh, steal her Pikachu. I'm not can't steal her Pikachu. Jeff, I'm not evil in that way. But you could be. Yeah, I think that's correct. Yeah, this

this is accurate, right? The competitive community is firmly a minority, but it's a minority that injects a huge amount of enthusiasm into the broader community. That's why the Pokémon company supports them with things like official tournaments. Yes, I I don't think you're ready for a smackdown. There are two other game Yes, there are two games where you can steal other Pokémon and this isn't one of them. That's correct. Dude. You dropped a rock on Pikachu. That's right. Yeah, and that's that is the big thing, right? Is that it it feels so weird, right? It It does feel very much like they went too hard on a game that was aimed at 8 to 10-year-olds and accidentally made serious overtures to people who really care about the deeper layer and then steadfastly ignore that those people exist for the purposes of

designing all future games, right? Because we've seen, for example, from the CCG that you can put together a Pokémon thing that people love and spend huge amounts of time on that doesn't involve you know, EVs and IVs and all or all sorts of other hidden stats. Correct. One of the diff hm Okay, this is going to be kind of weird. The But again, this computer game is a very different experience than a CCG.
Correct. And the complexity in the CCG is of a very different kind than assembling a Pokémon team. I guess part of the depth given to a character, which I agree with, is whoops um
[music]
is that they've gone to such lengths to hide the depth that like, you know, if you weren't sitting here explaining this to me,

there'd be huge amounts of things that I would just be missing with my first Pokémon game. Yeah. Absolutely. And that's why, like, the daycare center looks really simple until you realize that it isn't. Yeah, Pokémon Go made their IVs visible. Yeah. Ow. Okay. Mhm. Rude. I think Pokémon Go has to. Like, Pokémon Go is trying to be a mainstream game and it's already complex enough and here they they still obfuscated enough that people get annoyed. Like, my nephew started playing Pokémon Go 6 months ago. And we are looking at things and he had this cool Gyarados he'd been leveling up. And was very disappointed a couple weeks ago when like we hung out for the first time talking about it and he realized it was only a two star not a three star Gyarados. And that therefore he'd been investing a whole bunch of time and Stardust into leveling up a thing that

would never be as good as a random one I'd caught because I inspect all of mine. Yeah. Like he realized his would never be as good as mine even though he'd named it and been investing time into it. And it was a very disappointing moment for him. Yeah. Also, uh I don't know what's this way, but something's this way. Sorry, a lot of this today chat is also just me just chasing shiny things. Like I noticed that there's a cuttable tree. So where are we going? Behind the cuttable tree. And a Poké Ball. A wild Geodude appears. I could use a repel, but that involves using an item.
[music]

Ooh. You know, I think we've seen a Pon- Ponyta. How do you say Pony- Ponyta? Yeah. Ponyta. Oh, like a ponytail. Ponyta. Let's catch a Ponyta. Yeah. There's a hidden cave here. Right. Well, we're not getting to where I thought we were getting, but that's okay. We knew that this was going to be like a weird in between variety episode cuz we knew that we weren't going to get to like the next major anything when we immediately start with the fight against Jupiter and that lasts 10 minutes. Ounce. It's a normal cave and you're normal about it. I now have a new fear. Oh my god, the cat is swarming. We got a pony. He's not actually swarming, he's whiffing. That's so cute. It's loud enough that I can hear it over my headphones, by the way.

Third best horse Pokémon. That's such a narrow category and it's third best. Oh, you started me well. We may as well battle. No, we were trying to get to Coronet. Um that was the goal was to get to Coronet and uh it wasn't even get to get through it and I got distracted enough that like even that's [music] not going to happen. So. You kind of got to wonder how good of a gym leader Brock actually was. For using

an Onix? Well, again, that's like and that sort of place I mean, that's his best Pokémon cuz he then travels with Ash for the next couple of years and it's not like he's pulling out Yeah. Also, here we see the rare repeat. Oh, yeah. I like that your Onix leveled up because you saw [music] two other Onyxes get defeated. Yeah. That seems right. Yeah. Is it Is it what Is what Is one of the ways that I'm dissatisfied and maybe Chuck can help me with this? Is it that um Ooh. Do we know Flash? I don't think we do. Nope.

What were you looking for? Flash. The spell it's the move that lights up. This boat is and is not the hidden cave. You're so unhelpful, Nova. Thank you. Um I think we're going to remember that this is here and we're going to come back when we have an obvious light source cuz I feel like the correct move is there's a light Yeah, there's a light source thing later. Um kind of like Sly's lantern. Can you put on the map a your own marker? That's a great question. Let's answer that question. No. Okay. That's another thing I really like in games now is the ability to to like just to put a note on a map for the I'd like to come back here later. Like in Elden Ring, I made extensive use of that. Yeah, I have too. I I've used it for a bunch of like the and we'll come back to this later kind of thing. Which is useful especially because I'm

playing it once a week. That's the other thing that like does suck about this just ever so slightly, which is we do this like once a month. So, keeping up with where we are and what we're doing both in terms of the conversation that we're having about the design of Pokémon and like the actual like play through is difficult, right? Because there's and we're streamer debuffed, right? Um All right. Fine.
to have to smack him once. Yeah, I'm Actually, is there a Pokémon that does like how we have we should have a Pokémon that does a low damage attack we can bring [music] out specifically for catching? Correct. That is a concept that we have in many other places. I'm trying to think of how we're going to do this. It's bug type. Psychic is weak to bug. We need something that's actually kind of resistant to the one we're doing. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying, psychic. Bug is strong against psychic. Um Could do water pulse. Yeah, that's probably fine. Yeah, there is a move called false swipe that cannot knock out a Pokémon. So your goal is to get something incredibly fast and incredibly strong that knows false swipe and you just knock it down to one HP and then you do the whole thing. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, that's right. Absorb is super effective. That's funny. There we go. No, less good. I forgot about the confusion part. Oh. Or maybe it'll hit itself for a little damage. That would be, yeah. I like how the Pokéball almost matches it. All right, I need you to absorb again so I can do another water pulse cuz it's in

orange health, which means it's least HP.
you go. It hit itself a little. Nope. All right, he just not you're not doing it, are you? Ow. It's so [music] low. There we go. This better be a good cricket after all that. Probably. Oh my god.

I'm going to just use that repel, I think, just to get us to where we want to be. We could head back to town and refuel and then basically start over. Next box, we have a little bit of time to finish. Yeah. Let's we're just going to teleport. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like now that we have
Oh, cuz I can just take the I mean, you got to see him. Yeah, I can just We can teleport back and then I can just take the route straight down the right-hand side not getting into any fights on the road. Hey, we successfully teleported. You probably can go grab another 10 Poké Balls. That was also on my to-do list. Nova, I have this, too. Like you want it in your collection. Cuz you got to catch them all even if they're going to be a crappy Pokémon.

Yeah. Where's this Oh, god.
[gasps]
I hate that usage of of interrupt cutscenes. I hate it so much. It's so annoying. The All right, I know you're walking here because it looks open, but you can't actually do it because um there's like a trigger that you haven't hit, so I'm going to stop you and walk up and then you get to have a conversation. And then you have to go back and if you run into the trigger again, it happens again. And that just drives me clean up a wall. Do you want a cool down where the invisible wall stays, but you're just bouncing
want there to be clearer telegraphs about where invisible walls are and what they're doing. Mhm.

Okay, that was nice and fast at least. Okay, now we're not going to get sidetracked by the other thing. Hey Don. How's your Pokémon How's your Pokédex coming along? Hey, I'm somewhere between fantastic and somewhere between fantastic and hopeless. But this isn't about me. I've got something nice for you. Jeff, choose which hand you want. Left or right, Jeff? Right. I see, you want the Versus Seeker. I'm impressed, Jeff. You know what's important. You obtained the Versus Seeker. The Versus Seeker in your bag is carried in your pocket. Using that Versus Seeker, you can find trainers who want to rematch with you. Oh Jeff, do you also have a Poké Edge? Yep, you do. You can have this too then. You deserve it for all your hard work. You obtained the Dowsing Machine. It's all the app on the Poké Edge. Dowsing Machine app can locate unseeable items. Oh no. Dowsing Machine is something
dowsing, we have fossil hunting. Yes, it'll tell you if there's
items that look like they're part of the geo- the world, but can be moved aside.

Mhm. That's correct. I'm glad we're doing this together well. I don't know that I will ever do a And I think that that's like a very like this uh So, let's get into this battle and we can talk about what I'm fighting. Um Yeah, it doesn't matter which hand you pick, it's a false choice, right? So, I played Hades II. I played Hades II on stream for 2 days a couple weeks ago. I started off by saying that I don't like Hades II. And I think there's a thing that like that is important for us to get in the practice and me specifically cuz I'm not great at this, to get the practice of doing and by we I don't mean me and Jeff, I mean you and me chat cuz Jeff does this pretty well already, which is play games that you have access to.

Don't like go out and buy games you don't like if it's [music] not your bag, right? But like play games you don't think you're going to like specifically to learn about them and figure out like what you don't like about them, right? That is like a part of learning about games in general. So, I learned a lot of the things I learned a lot about Hades II and there are some things that I do like about Hades II. I my opinion hasn't changed but my understanding has and that understanding is important, right? So, like I'm learning a lot more about Pokémon by being a tour guide here in a lot of ways. Um And that's good, right? Even though I probably will be good on playing a Pokémon game for several years after this. Oh, yeah. But like if I'm playing something like honestly

in a weird way and don't get me wrong, morbid, this reminds me a bit of Elden Ring. Like if I want to wander around environment searching for things, getting into battles, kind of collecting loot and treasure, and summons as opposed to Pokémon, like that's more my style of game than this is by presentation. [music] Yeah. And I want to I think I would rather hunt down some ashes and you know, pull those out and figure out which is the best one than have four separate collection mini-games going. And yeah. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in learning. Like I'm looking at this makes me think of things for the games I will design in the future. [music] Right. And I think that that's a big part of it, too. Um Ooh, who's learning to roar? Oh, Sphinx.
Man too. So, this forces an immediate switch.

Uh and I think we want it more than tackle. Mhm. It's kind of a weird, very specific move. Um and I do think we want it. All right. So, like Pokémon is also Mhm. and I think we're seeing it with a lot of like the as we have these conversations and in particular this one because of its weird trying to strike a middle ground between being faithful to the original and having some amount of polish as a new game that's offered at almost full price. That's like a big middle ground thing that they're trying to do. Um that it is still like doing things I was still finding Oh, go ahead. that like feels time locked, right? That like Pokémon has not in any way been forced to seriously innovate in generations because who is competing with Pokémon?

I'm actually looking forward to groups like Palworld actually trying a thing just to see if that makes the, you know, design team for Pokemon like I could very easily see that there's like senior game design management and whatever, you know, at the Game Freak is like this is what works. This is what people want and rejecting innovation from their designers and other groups purely because they're kind of on the this product does well enough. They're not forced to say but sure it does well enough but could it be better? Right. By the way, what I was going to come in on before, leveling up in the middle of a fight still [music] baffles me. Mhm. Like I'm trying to think of any other game that kind of has the turn-based thing that makes you actually equivalently level up and spend your points like learn a move. When you're playing Final Fantasy Tactics, you know, you'll see the little

[music] level up um or you know, kind of you're getting the XP enough to level up but that's an end-of-fight thing. Correct.
XP is almost always an end-of-fight thing in an RPG. Yes. Or an out-of-combat thing at a minimum.
Yeah. Right? That it is
be part of the you know, on the on the loop of the thing it's the battle, reward, spend reward. So it's like battle, find your magic sword, get your XP, equip sword, do level up stuff, then going back to battle, find your reward, you know, do the results [music] of reward. Yes. And that's such an integrated loop that it just as I said, it it continually throws me seeing the level up in the middle of a loop where it's where it I won't say where it's not supposed to be but where every other game has decided not to put it.
It feels unintuitive because it is not a convention that other games adhere to.

Well, the one to me, too, is if you're trying to build the drama up of a turn-based battle battle battle, breaking that with a three of your Pokémon leveled up and two need to choose moves, like that's honestly a point you might stop and be checking the internet to see which of these moves do better, what should I be equipping, and you're having to like strategize on the future of your Pokémon, and that breaks the flow of the middle of the battle battle battle battle. Is that a problem of audience? Is that a problem of us wanting to make a the correct choice versus their target audience who goes, "Whoa, my Charizard gets to learn Flamethrower and use it right now? That sounds really cool." And so
I actually think this is one of the few ones where I'll say I think they made the wrong design decision. I I think they're doing their audience

and their gameplay disservice by breaking up the action. Interesting. Okay, so here's here I and I'll tell you why I think it exists from a from a like is ongoing. It's because it's got ludonarrative harmony with a moment that happens all of the time in the anime. Mhm. Any time some Pokémon is in a fight where it needs to do its best for Ash and all of a sudden digs deep and evolves, does a new move, whatever,
Mhm. they want to encapsulate that experience, I think, in gameplay. And while I agree that it has some unintended and not great side effects, I think the priority of these games is in many ways to have the player go on a journey
the
the experience of the anime and the manga. Right, to have them go on their own hero's journey. Yeah, and I can see that. It's just

what they're getting is brief moments of fiero. All right, but they're sacrificing for 98% of the rest of the battle for the 2% of the payoff. The other 98% of the time they're making the battles all to say less interesting. Yeah, I think that's fair. I also think it's more
I won't say less interesting. They're slowing down the pace of the battles. Yeah, I really dislike the additional menuing part of it, like the baggage that comes with it. Like you have to mash through each of the They all get the experience points and this happens and this happens and this happens and this happens and then I have to if I'm not on set, if I'm on switch, and to by the way, if you're still playing on switch, try playing on set. It's more difficult and more rewarding. Um in so far as it defaults
on switch what's the difference switch and set? Switch is anytime you knock out an opponent's Pokémon, it will tell you

what they're going to send in and then you get a free switch. Ah, okay. That's right. I remember this now from
because you always get to have the correct matching match up Yeah.
for whatever they send in next. If you play on set, you don't get to do that because they send it out and then you have to use your next turn to react. Makes the game much more interesting. Um Mhm. Yeah. I just think it's I don't know. It's very interesting and I do love our conversations about it, but I do think that we are now in Mount Coronet. This This was our goal was to reach this place today. We know we're not going to get any further cuz we are unfortunately out of time, but next time we will trek through Mount Coronet and get all of the way hopefully to Hearthome City. Um that that'll be our goal for next time. Jeff. Yeah. Any closing thoughts for this our sixth/seventh actual episode of of Pokémon? I feel like it's fun to continue to

learn systems. I think in a different world, it would have probably been more informative for me to do like three 8-hour days in a row Yeah. where I didn't have to get a kind of refresher every three to four weeks of what happened last time. We'd remember where we picked up. Yeah.
We could actually spend a little time doing weird silly things because that would still be continuing the conversation. Yeah. Um And I think that's something we've learned for next time. Like if we if if that's something that um
But I'm not saying we should. I don't know that that makes for the best Well, watching experience. There's been a request, Jeff, and I'll tell you about it here and we'll we'll see what the comments say. Okay. Matt and I have been talking a lot about the new World of Warcraft expansion, Midnight. Because they are making the choice to remove add-on support from World of Warcraft. Oh, I heard briefly about this.
Which is wild. They're going And they're building it into the game though, right?

Where you can put similar what Baldur's Gate 3 did where they basically move the mods into the game to make it easier for people to work with third-party mods.
Correct. And they're changing a bunch of stuff um and they're they're bringing a bunch in. And uh as a result, fights are changing because they're no longer going to have weak auras. Weak auras are going away. You won't be able to have a uh an add-on or overlay that solves the fight for you as part of the design of fights. So, we've been talking about that. So, there's a possibility that we might convince everybody uh in the team who's interested and maybe some some folks in in the community uh if we need help um to uh do like a fast run at midnight and look and see what it is. And of course we absolutely want Jeff along so that he can point out all the MMO design stuff that Matt and I have only ever seen from the player side. Matt used to raid in wow. I currently raid in 14. But neither of us have ever designed an MMO. So I designed raids. Yeah, correct.

So Yeah. The other one Matt was mentioning by the way this is going to be like eight or nine months from now. Um is total war Warhammer K. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are those are things that we might do something more like what Jeff's describing the the longer days with more gameplay and more room to like have concrete ongoing discussions. Rather than something spread out like that. So if that's something that you'd like to see and you've made it all the way to the end of this episode leave something in the comments. Tell us what you think about that. Is that something you'd like to see? Otherwise we won't be back the first week of January. But we should be back the second week of January which means that our next show will Will will be back. Yeah, I'll be back. I will not. Correct. I will be returning to streaming on the fifth of January. Um but our next design club will be January the 15th. Right. Is our next design club. So don't be looking Topic TBD. There's a chance

it will be another Pokemon play because it will at that point have been a month. Right. But there's also a good chance that something with some game will have come out with an interesting thing or there'll be a new story that we're like This is what we want to talk about. Yeah. Absolutely. Cool. Well, until next year. Everybody take care of yourselves. Take care of each other and all that remains is for Jeff Say bye to the people. Bye to the people. Thanks everybody.
[music]