Poké-Month: Pokémon X (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Today: The end of the game, the postgame, and my final words. It’s a big program, so strap in.

The road to victory

Sir, that's not how you wear a winter coat.

Unfortunately for Wulfric, Ice has a ton of
weaknesses that can be taken advantage of.

We return from the Pokémon Village into the snowy Snowbelle City. It’s time to challenge the Ice-type Gym. This is another Gym that uses the game’s new 3D for a very special effect, which is great! I’m still annoyed at how, this time around, no Trainers are skippable in Gyms. You have to fight them all to move forward, a departure from earlier Gens where, by solving puzzles correctly, you could avoid some (usually not all) of the other trainers in the Gym. At least Wulfric is as tough as his position commands, using a team made of Abomasnow, Cryogonal and Avalugg.

With eight badges in hand, we’re ready to tackle the final challenge of the story, Victory Road and the Elite 4. Going West, Route 21 leads right back to the gate that leads to Route 22, which also leads to Victory Road. If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game before, you know the deal: A grotto filled with high-level wild Pokémon, Ace Trainers and Veterans are everywhere, and the place is designed like a puzzle where the HMs collected along the way will be necessary to proceed (Surf, Strength, Rock Smash and Waterfall). Notably, some areas are outside of the cave, and it seems like this final challenge was created over the remains of an ancient fortress.

A friendly battle? In this world? Finally!

Midway into the challenge, we meet our rival Serena again and battle. There’s been a build-up to this, and her team is a strong one. And although she loses again, this renews her desire to fight and improve, so she can best the player someday. We come out of Victory Road and reach a gorgeous castle… home to the Elite 4.

Facing the Elite

Holy crap, the size of that castle.

Repeating the formula that began in Gen 5, you can challenge the Elite 4 in any order before facing the Champion. As a result, once you know the four trainers you’re going up against, you can strategize the order in which you fight them. Kalos’ four great trainers are:

-Malva, a Fire-type specialist who’s also a… Holo Caster star and an ex-Team… Flare…

Sorry, Flare, you'll never top "Ghetsis Takes
Over the E4 before you challenge the Champion"
from Pokémon Black & White.

Ah, for fuck’s sake! Are these morons ever gonna stop tormenting me? It’s been my headcanon for a while that the reason why no authorities do anything against Team Flare is because she, as a news caster, diminishes their threat to make them not seem worth bothering with, and as an Elite Four member, also convinces Gym Leaders and her fellows from the E4 not to bother. Would make sense… and I hate her even more for that theory. Don’t worry, she also hates the player with a "burning" passion for ending Flare. Anyhow, there's also…

-Siebold, a Water-type user as well as an artist and chef;

-Wikstrom, a Steel-type user dressed in a knight’s armor and who speaks in antiquated terms, like he just walked out of a portal from the Medieval Ages;

-and Drasna, a woman who uses Dragon-types and wears what looks like tusks as part of her attire.

It is an honor to fight you, Champion.

Once all four have been vanquished, the door opens to the Champion. And much like Lysandre being the villain, guessing the Champion of Kalos is easy; it’s the character all dressed in white, different from everybody else. Here she is: Diantha. She is the only Trainer in the game who uses six Pokémon: Hawlucha, Tyrantrum, Aurorus, Gourgeist, Goodra and a Gardevoir… which she Mega Evolves. Despite her status, Diantha can turn out to be really easy to defeat; most of her team is weak to either Steel or Ice, and her Mega Gardevoir is the only Pokémon that’s really difficult to deal with.

Mega versus Mega. That's gonna be epic.

As a side-note, the E4 is available for defeat again after finishing the story once. Unfortunately, whereas E4s of other games would own stronger Pokémon, here… they don’t. The E4 doesn’t even get an upgrade to be more of a challenge. This genuinely disappointed me.

Fun fact: Eternal Floette exists in the code, but
she can only be found through hacking.

After defeating Diantha, she congratulates the player and adds them to the Hall of Fame… oh, and we get a big damn parade in Lumiose as congratulations a few days later. Nice! However, someone shows up: AZ, who requests a battle against us. When he is defeated, it’s like his part of darkness dissipates, like the man finds inner peace after his long quest of 3,000 years. And when he does, his friend – his unique Floette – reappears for him! The feels, man, the feels!

Roll credits.

But that’s not all!

Most Pokémon games contain a ton of content to do after you’ve finished the story a first time. Pokémon X and Y are said to be lacking in that regard, though I’ve still found plenty of stuff to take part in.

Dragon versus Legendary Dragon!

Legendary Pokémon: You can find Mewtwo in the Pokémon Village, within a cave that you were previously barred from entering. The third Legendary of Gen 6, Zygarde, can be found in Terminus Cave, on Route 18. Your first wild encounter after seeing the credits the first time will be either Articuno, Zapdos or Moltres (depending on your starter – for my Chespin, I encountered Articuno). It will flee, and you then have to encounter the Legendary bird another 10 times, after which they’ll retreat to the Sea Spirit’s Den, a cave north of Azure Bay, accessible from Route 12.

Abracadabra, an Alakazite for ya!

The Mega Stones: Prof. Sycamore will upgrade the player’s Mega Ring to detect Mega Stones… solely between 8 and 9 PM. Those will appear as sparkles on the ground, not as solid items – but the player will bump into them as if they were. Good hunting!

Gift Pokémon: Obviously there’s far more than these two to find around Kalos, but some of the postgame handouts will be a Ralts from Diantha (she will take any Pokémon in exchange), and an egg from Shauna’s starter.

Just take the train out of Kiloude, there's an
entire Region full of adventures to be had.

Kiloude City and the Battle Maison: We obtain a train pass from Sycamore that will get us sent to Kiloude City, inaccessible by any other means. You can challenge the rival here again, and can do so once every day – it will always feel more like friendly sparring than a test of skill. The stat judge in the Pokémon Center will check your Pokémon’s stats and best IVs. This is also where you find the Battle Maison, the battle facility in this game, where you can challenge trainers one after the other in most of the available battle types: Single, Double, Triple, Rotation and Multi/Tag Battle. There are restrictions to the Pokémon that can be used here, and as with any facilities in other games, the AI will get progressively unfair as you progress. Have fun!

Friend Safari: Another interesting part of Kiloude City is the Friend Safari, in which every person in your 3DS friend list has its associated Safari, which will contain two or three Pokémon, all of the same type, with both the type and Pokémon selected at random. Only two at first, then a third if that friend has Pokémon recorded in the Kalos Hall of Fame (if they've beaten the story). All of the Pokémon found here will be Level 30, and despite “Safari” in the name, you battle the Pokémon before catching them. Most are from outside of the Regional Kalos Dex. A fun idea, but yet another one that lost a lot of interest when X and Y were no longer the reigning Pokémon games.

Of note: You can also have a picture of
yourself taken in key places.

Battle Chateau: Located on Route 7, the Chateau is a place where you can battle trainers and climb up in rank, fighting opponents with stronger Pokémon. It’s a fantastic place for leveling up as some trainers have Pokémon that give out high amounts of EXP. More importantly, this is where you can re-challenge the Gym Leaders, Elite 4 and Champion in battles fitted for the place. You can eventually buy and use Writs of Challenge to increase the difficulty (mostly by increasing the levels of opposing Pokémon by 5, 10 or even 20). It’s probably the postgame element where I’ve had the most fun.

The most important one, though, might just be…

Flare Bonus Chapter: Xer-Oh God damn it AGAIN??

Yes, again! Are these guys going to stay dead for once?

Meet franchise regular Looker, who has just landed in Kalos and is investigating the remains of Team Flare. The trail has led him to Xerosic (none of the other Scientists can be found anywhere – aw, and yet they were so memorable! /s) and some bizarre operation. Through a number of tasks, Looker soon appoints us second-in-command to his operation.

Every time I think Flare isn't bad enough...

We meet Emma, a homeless girl, in the back alleys. She’s embroiled in a plot led by Xerosic in which the mad scientists is testing out new technology on mind control, from the comfort of a secret floor of Lysandre Labs. She gets fitted, while asleep, into a morphing suit that changes her appearance and he forces her unconscious body to commit all sorts of crimes under different guises. Looker and the player investigate, find Xerosic, and have to fight the creation, nicknamed Essentia. Looker’s pleas to Emma however give Xerosic a change of heart, just enough to let the girl go free – but she keeps the suit, without its remote controls. Considering all he’s done, I have a hard time buying it. Sorry this part is short, but this article is way too long already.

I had almost forgotten!

Right, I was about to skip some of the important elements of X and Y that only got a few mentions but need a deeper dive: Pokémon-Amie and Super Training!

Happy 'Vee makes me happy too.

Pokémon-Amie was a revolutionary addition to the franchise, allowing you to care for your Pokémon like never before – and much more directly, as well. You can feed them treats, and you can pet them – in the latter case, there is an area of their body that they love to have petted, and another that they dislike. Some Pokémon are able to high-five your cursor, as well, and they also often can trigger a mini-game where they make a face and, if you make the same face, they’ll be happy. There’s something really cute to seeing them react to what you do. It’s also a good indicator of size, as the larger Pokémon will take both screens to be seen in their entirety.

It's not a berry complex game.

Mini-games are included this time around: Berry Picker, Head It, and Tile Around. It’s mainly through these mini-games that you earn the Poké-Puffs that you feed to your creatures. Not a very interesting part of the Amie, to be honest – there isn’t a lot of depth to these mini-games and they feel like a chore the more you have to do them, since they’re the only reliable way to get Puffs. You can be visited by the Pokémon of your 3DS friends and they can leave some gifts behind, but mostly decoration for the space in the bottom screen that leads to Pokémon-Amie. At least, the feature has combat advantages: Pokémon with more hearts earned in Amie can survive tough hits, heal themselves from status conditions or inflict more critical hits.

Still, the Amie has shown its weaknesses over time. It was very awesome when the games came out, but since then it seems like we’ve seen even more interesting ways to interact with Pokémon. Even Pokémon Refresh, the Gen 7 version of Amie, had improvements as the treats were easier to obtain and there were no mini-games.

Smash that training bag, Pikachu!

Super Training is another important mini-game allowing you to more easily train some of your Pokémon’s stats. Your Pokémon can smash a training bag to gain Effort Values in one stat. You’ll find bags for each main stat as well as a few that give bonuses in the Challenges. The second part of this feature is a series of challenges against balloons of particular Pokémon; these are a more involved way to gain EVs, usually by shooting at targets on the balloon. It’s a mini-game that made specialized stat training easier than ever before, further helping players join the competitive Pokémon scene. It’s not a mini-game I played all that much, but I think it was a really cool feature and wished it would make a return.

Final words

Okay, there’s a lot to cover, so I’ll have to be quick. In short, I’ve seen what the fan base thinks of the game and can confirm, it’s accurate: Excellent gameplay, but not a very good story.

No thanks, my Pokédollar account is a bit dry, I bought
every piece of clothing you were selling today.

Let’s start by the unequivocally good points: First, the inclusion of character customization, your starting traits and then your set of clothing. The games take full advantage of the new 3D look as well, with the Pokémon models, the Amie, and a ton of setpieces, especially Gyms and, of course, the breathtaking Lumiose City.

Mr. Mime has beecome Fairy funny as of late.

Gameplay-wise, the Regional Dex is humongous and makes collecting one of the best parts of these two entries. The Fairy typing shakes up the formula, rebalancing the type matchup chart in significant ways, and a lot of new Pokémon have it to show it off, on top of older ones gaining the type and becoming more viable as a result. There's even a Gym and a Legendary dedicated to it. There’s a lot of very cool ideas among the new Pokémon, with several highlights such as Vivillon, Flabébé or Pumpkaboo. Mega Evolutions are mostly well-implemented and an excellent addition to gameplay – they don’t overtake the story, appearing in the teams of only three trainers, and most of the Megas really do improve the Pokémon on top of giving them a cool bonus design. Battle-wise, I love the idea of horde encounters.

Pokémon-Amie and the Super Training are excellent additions to the game. This is also a great game on the competitive side of things, in part thanks to these two new elements. The Player Search System is also pretty neat. And before we get to the negative (which covers several issues with the story), I will at least say that I think the lore around AZ and Kalos is very interesting.

It doesn't matter what you like to do the most
in Pokémon; you can be the BEST at it!

The stuff that’s both good and bad: O-Powers are a really neat concept, but although still useful, they lose a lot of their appeal now that X and Y aren’t the most-played Pokémon games anymore. I love that these two games also attempt to reconcile all the ways to play Pokémon saying that they’re all valid – breeding/caring, collecting, battling, playing the story or getting derailed by side-activities, it’s all good! And it’s a nice thought to follow five kids that each represent one of these aspects. Alas, the five kids tend to drag the player around and cause a ton of detours that often feel unnecessary, so while their inclusion is nice, the execution is flawed. The post-game Friend Safari is also nice, but so much of it relies on having many friends and random luck regarding which friend has which Pokémon of which type in their Safari that it felt disappointing in the end.

We're railroaded in the middle of a town now?
With an excuse as lame as a guy "looking for
something" at the bottom of a staircase?

On the bad: Roller skates are fun to use, but tend to be unwieldy to control. Compared to earlier games, there are so many story events here that the player is constantly railroaded. You don’t really feel free to explore until the very end of the game, with a very rare few moments of free exploration while the story is ongoing. While I love horde encounters, I am really not a fan of Sky Battles due to how restrictive they are Pokémon-wise, and the other new kind of fight introduced here, Inverse Battles, never gets enough time to shine to really stand out. Also a tad annoyed at how you ccouldn't skip trainers in Gyms anymore.

See that Mega tear through everything.

I’m annoyed that so many challenge elements feel lacking – I mean, they don’t even make the E4 harder after beating the game once? Come on now. Hell, the entire game can feel incredibly easy due to the combination of being given a lot of Pokémon and items for free (and never anything useless! Lapras, Lucario, a Kanto starter…), the mechanic of Mega Evolution (which you can use anytime as soon as you unlock it, making several “tough” opponents easy to defeat), O-Powers, and the Exp. Share that’s turned on by default (though if you turn it off early on, the game is said to be much tougher). Oh, and balance-wise, the final boss of the Flare storyline, Lysandre, is stupidly easy to defeat in X due to the mascot Legendary of that version, Xerneas, being a Fairy-type.

One second it's that mysterious thing that
nobody's sure about, the next literally
everybody knows about it.

Story-wise, this is where we started seeing just how formulaic the regular Pokémon games tend to be. The cracks were showing in the structure. The storyline on discovering Mega Evolution is hyped up considerably, but is almost entirely forgotten after you do figure it out, with the only final tie to it being the involvement of the version’s mascot Legendary. The overall plot feels very lacking, with characters that are frequently basic and underdeveloped. Character reveals are friggin’ obvious; you can tell as soon as you see him that Lysandre is the villain, and Diantha sticks out from regular NPCs so much that you know she’s gonna be important as well. Most of the Gym Leaders are utterly forgettable, with only two leaving an impression – Korrina due to her ties with Mega Evolution, and Wulfric because you at least have some interactions with him before fighting him at his Gym. Even Sina and Dexio don’t do much, all things considered.

You mean to tell me that the impassionate
man dressed all in black and calling people
filth was the villain all along?
Surely, you jest! /s

The version mascot Legendary is introduced in a very awkward manner, close to where the Flare storyline really kicks in; you’re basically told, without being told, that you’re gonna catch the damn thing before the story is over. And augh, Team Flare… props to the story, if the point was to hate them, then that worked! However, they remain vague for the longest time, with unclear goals, and then suddenly everything picks up in a mad rush as though the game realized it was going to run out of time to finish that arc; that’s some terrible pacing. On top of that, aside from Lysandre (and maybe Xerosic and Malva), there’s nary a memorable character in that group, with the female Scientists being incredibly forgettable and even the admins remaining nameless. More annoying is how nobody except the protagonists do anything against them! Has nobody learned from other Teams? Augh!

Okay, that’s all. Sorry this was so long, but at least, I covered pretty much everything. In other news, we literally just had the announcement of Gen 9 with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet versions. Happy 25th anniversary to the franchise, and may it run for another 25 years at least! Though, this was long, so I need a break. See you later for more reviews.