Lets start off with the starters. This seems like a good place to start.
Not bad overall, I think. The fox is cute, Chespin is kinda odd, but has potential. The frog is a frog. Overall I like the designs on these starters more than the past few gens. But what is on everyone's mind is what their final types will be. That and what they'll look like. The internet is almost full of more fan art for that than normal pictures. So, according to the leak, this is how they'll end up:
- Fennekin: Fire/Psychic. This is an interesting type combination, it's one that only exists in one other place, right now. Darmanitan in Zen mode. Not counting the new type (which I'll get to) it's a combination that has five weaknesses (ground, rock, ghost, water and dark) and six resistances (fighting, steel, fire, grass, psychic, ice). But most of all, people are crying for Fennekin not to become fire/fighting. So this would be a good thing.
- Chespin: Grass/Dark. This is another uncommon combination. Not as rare as the previous, though, it is shared by Nuleaf, Shiftry and Cacturne. All of which are from Hoenn, if that means anything. This is a type combination with six weaknesses (fighting, flying, poison, bug, fire and ice) and six resistances (ground, ghost, water, grass, electric, dark.) On top of that, it's immune to psychic. This is an interesting turn.
- Froakie: Water/Fighting. Here's another type combo we haven't seen much of. Outside of the legendary pokemon, Keldeo, the only other contender is Poliwrath, all the way back from Gen 1. This combo comes across as the most defensive of the starter typings, with only 4 weaknesses (flying, grass, electric and psychic) and 7 resistances (rock, bug, steel, fire, water, ice, and dark.)
Besides the fact that these are all rare type combinations, through Gen 5, lets look at them again. Your in-game rival will usually choose the pokemon that your starter is weak to. Another rumor is that Gen XY will have two rivals, similar to how Gen 5 worked, presumably. Let's look at this, though. Say you choose Fennekin. In a previous generation, your rival would choose Froakie. Water does, in fact, beat fire. But once they are evolved, Fennekin's psychic type will give Fennekin a super effective type against Froakie in return. Comparing Fennekin to Chespin, while Fennekin's fire type gives an early advantage, Chespin again picks up a type that gives it a fighting chance against Fennekin, not only super effective, but immune to the physic attacks.
If this rumor is true, the starters all seem balanced to have both 1 strength and 1 weakness to each other. This is pretty amazing. Why do I say that? Because to me it seems a lot more thought went into this than usual. If the develops are really putting thought into these things, it bodes well for all the games changes in general. But I already explained why I think this game might be the first 'new' Pokemon in a while in a previous post, so moving on.
This is Mewtwo's new form, called 'Awakened forme.' It's hard not to have seen it yet, if you follow pokemon at all. My opinion on it is that the head-tail ruins the whole thing. Looks like that twiggy neck should just snap right off. But I'm here to share rumors! So, here we go. Mewtwo is going to get two new forms. They will be activated by items, presumably similar to changing Shaymin with the Gracidea flower. This form is supposed to lean more heavily towards his 'Mewtwo' design, while the other form is supposed to lean more heavily towards 'Mew'.
I would be happy for this to be true, as I think this form is a tad ugly. Can the world live with a cute Mewtwo? There's no word on just what these forms do, just yet. Mewtwo already has pretty good stats, if they got boosted it would be overkill. They could shuffle them around a bit, perhaps, but that would just make him Deoxys Jr. Perhaps the new forms will let him pick up secondary typings. Is the world ready for Psychic/Fairy Mewtwo?
Now, Fairy type being a thing isn't just a rumor anymore. But it bears mentioning that this information source both mentioned Fairy type being super effective to dragons and some old pokemon gaining the fairy type before the real information hit. So what is the rumor, then? Fairy types full list of strengths. According to the source, they are as follows.
- Super effective to: Dragon, Dark and Fighting
- Weak to: Poison and Steel
- Not very effective to: Fire and Psychic
- Immune to: Dragon
No resistances were listed. But if it is immune to dragon, this is a pretty major deal. The jokes about fairy types being dragon slayers get stronger. Using Outrage could be a death sentence if you are locked into the move while they switch in something immune. Giving poison something else to is nice, as poison only has one super effective as it is. Steel doesn't have too much it's strong against, either. Classically, there are tales of fairies being weak against iron and such, so it makes sense that way as well.
Here's a couple of smaller things that I still find interesting. According to the source, you will be able to train EVs with mini-games. This can remove some of the tedium and guessing game involved in grinding them. Also, HMs are supposed to be less of an impact. I don't like dragging an 'HM slave' pokemon around with me, but I don't wish to mess up the movesets of the ones I use, either.
There are other rumors, of course, I just touched on the ones I found the most interesting, and that I thought others would want to hear about. I shall keep appraised with any interesting things that I come across.
It's rather interesting to see how they balance the types around each other. Some of them are very straightforward or logical- as you mention, water putting out fire, or the standard myths of iron messing with the fae.
ReplyDeleteOther times you just have to remember that fighting is really good against steel.