General Discussion & Speculation Thread

[Akkipeddi]

So various promotional material and posters have revealed a shiny Silvally for Japan. Now, I'm quite confident it won't be the case, but I really really hope this isn't going to be the main news in this month's CoroCoro.

 

[Wulava]

So various promotional material and posters have revealed a shiny Silvally for Japan. Now, I'm quite confident it won't be the case, but I really really hope this isn't going to be the main news in this month's CoroCoro.

I seriously doubt that would be the only coverage.

Last month, they gave us the second trailer for the games. They've introduced the characters, gave us sneak peeks of the region and some of its returning characters, the Alola Photo Club feature and Kommo-o's Z-Move.

CoroCoro already showcased Lycanroc Dusk Form. So I expect them to repeat previously revealed information but add a few bit of new details.

As for the official site's coverage, it should be something new.

 

[Hasty]

Ugh, Z-Moves are about as trivial and uninteresting a reveal as pretty much everything else we've seen so far, can we please have something else? Couldn't care less about what new moves we can use on the same damn Pokemon.

Yeah, I would rather prefer they reveal something substantial of which we barely have anything. Like if they revealed a new character and said it's a Trial Captain, revealed two new Alola forms, gave us a sneak peek for a new big area to explore which isn't shown on the map, or a hint at Lillie's role in the game if she has one. These things have a lot more impact on the overall game and it would remove a lot of doubt about how much USUM is different from SM.

I think we should get something big soon:
https://twitter.com/Pokeshopper/status/902915755074875392

I'm not too experienced, but this most likely means we will get to see 3 new Pokemon/forms, right? That would be nice.

 

[Ultra Beast Lover]

All I really hope for is that this time the Trial Captains and Kahunas help us fight the bad guys this time, last time events happened in such a way that hardly anyone could help us fight Aether before we stormed the place but maybe this time they can do more to help us.

 

[Everything12]

I'm not too experienced, but this most likely means we will get to see 3 new Pokemon/forms, right? That would be nice.

Two of them are probably Ultra Solgaleo & Lunala, and I personally think the third one could be Necrozma's new form.

 

[mariokj88]

Well that's something Game Freak has intentionally not been focusing on with their recent games. Through the entire 3DS era, Game Freak has constantly mentioned how they've been designing the game for a casual audience and they've been making the game as easy and streamlined as possible. They specifically cited this as the reason for removing the Battle Frontier from ORAS. So regardless of what they do with USUM, that's probably not changing. They probably haven't changed their mind about that yet.

You know this is something that has really bugged me because while yes they have made the games easier( in fact maybe a bit to easy) it doesn't feel like they have streamlined the games.

To me streamlining means taking out the tedious stuff and making it easier to get into the meat of the game, which it doesn't actually feel like they have done that. It feels like they have actually made it more tedious.

Take Hyper training, if I was to streamline it I would first make it so that there would be a guaranteed way to get the bottle caps necessary to use hyper training at all. I would then have a place where you can easily level up to 100. I would make it after you complete the story so that you can't just use it to steam roll everything.

Now take a look at the current hyper training. First you would have to rely on luck to get a bottle cap, or rely on the festival plaza which the less said the better, then you have to grind up to 100, while in my version you still have to grind up to 100 there is a place designated for it to make it as easy as possible, but you don't get that in the current version.

With just those two changes hyper training become much easier since you now have a way to much more easily get to level 100, and a guaranteed way to get the bottle caps necessary for hyper training

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

The shards you can get from Poké Pelago can be exchanged for Bottle Caps. It's not the fastest method, but it is pretty much guaranteed. I've got a stock of like 70 of them now, and 7 gold ones. And you can also get them guaranteed from the Battle Tree if you get I think 40 wins in a row. For the levelling I generally use Rare Kitchens and the last few levels with Rare Candies or the E4 with Lucky Egg.

 

[Frozocrone]

Two of them are probably Ultra Solgaleo & Lunala, and I personally think the third one could be Necrozma's new form.

Ultra Solgaleo, Ultra Lunala and my third guess would be Type: Full.

The shards you can get from Poké Pelago can be exchanged for Bottle Caps. It's not the fastest method, but it is pretty much guaranteed. I've got a stock of like 70 of them now, and 7 gold ones. And you can also get them guaranteed from the Battle Tree if you get I think 40 wins in a row. For the levelling I generally use Rare Kitchens and the last few levels with Rare Candies or the E4 with Lucky Egg.

There's a faster way, which involves switching between 1* and 2* Treasure Hunts in Festival Plaza. Guaranteed the no.2 prize (Bottle Cap) each time you switch. 150 - 200 coins, which is easy enough to farm if you've got enough tents to boost wonder trading (can make close to 2000 in an hour).

 

[Satoshi & Touko]

It really is a good idea to use those 3 Festival tickets you get every day and to run through your Plaza guest requests a couple of times per day. So When you have a project you want to do that requires a lot of Festival coins, you can be sure to have enough of them to get a jump on your project(s). This advice is brought to you from Serebii Forums most active and knowledgeable Festival Plaza goer.

 

[Zaide]

Ultra Solgaleo, Ultra Lunala and my third guess would be Type: Full.

I thought that Syvally was Type:Full (renamed by Gladion), but after re-reading the page on Bulba, it seems not, as they were given the helmet after being deemed a failure. So, it seems like Sylvally is one of those failure that somehow managed to work?

Would be interesting for sure if Type:Full was indeed a thing different from Sylvally. But I would doubt it, and think Type:Null "evolved" (got fixed - so became Type:full) after being shown high friendship basically.

 

[Thure]

I really seem to be the only guy who things SM is not that easy? It wasn't as hard as the third editions or BW2... but it was harder than the most main games (excluding third editions).

 

[Satoshi & Touko]

I really seem to be the only guy who things SM is not that easy? It wasn't as hard as the third editions or BW2... but it was harder than the most main games (excluding third editions).

Nope. I feel the same way. But since so many others claim the game is too easy, that must be a testament to how suckish of a player I actually am. XD

 

[Dragalge]

I really seem to be the only guy who things SM is not that easy? It wasn't as hard as the third editions or BW2... but it was harder than the most main games (excluding third editions).

SM blows XY/ORAS out of the water in terms of difficulty imo. The Akala trials were pretty tough for me as well as Olivia's Grand Trial (admittedly that was because I was underleveled lol). Especially Lurantis due to quick Solar Blade activation.

 

[Darthlord7]

Nope. I feel the same way. But since so many others claim the game is too easy, that must be a testament to how suckish of a player I actually am. XD

I would say it is the most difficult Pokemon core game on 3DS thus far. Still it was no challenge for me.

 

[scorpio moon]

Nintendo is putting out a 45 minute long Nintendo Direct on Wednesday, September 13, 3 p.m. Pacific Time on the upcoming games for the 3DS and Nintendo Switch. Hopefully that means we will get a good chunk of info for USUM. Yay!

 

[Sceptile Leaf Blade]

I really seem to be the only guy who things SM is not that easy? It wasn't as hard as the third editions or BW2... but it was harder than the most main games (excluding third editions).

I'm not sure. There haven't been many pokémon games that I actually struggled with. I remember struggling with Whitney and her Miltank in the Johto games, and with Morty's Gengar. And back in the days I got stuck in Goldenrod City for ages because I couldn't figure out how to get past the Sudowoodo, although I wasn't as fluent in English back then as I am now. As for Sun-Moon, it's probably easier for me because I'm older now. I still struggled a bit at the Mimikyu trial where I actually wiped twice, but I didn't really struggle anywhere else. One thing that is beneficial to me is that the Sun-Moon exp system rewards being underlevelled. I use like 20 pokémon in my main playthrough before the Elite Four, rotating them in the party in various compositions. In the old system you get underlevelled very fast and need a lot of grinding to keep up, but in this system I don't really have to grind at all when I stay around 4 levels below what the trainers on the routes have, you get so much exp.

 

[DJStarstryker]

I'm not sure if the shiny Silvally means anything. They've definitely released shinies at other events before. I do agree the release of it being so close to USUM feels a little suspicious though.

It would be interesting if they did more with Gladion's Type:Null. Type:Null was pretty much Gladion's version of Lillie's Nebby, and I didn't feel like we quite saw it enough.

 

[Ultra Beast Lover]

The only parts I really had a hard time on was Hala's Grand Trial (I was using Ash Greninja, he wouldn't stop ignoring my orders.) and Lusamine's first fight, the second one I grinded for and had to plan but thankfully I had Mimikyu by then. Other than that it was pretty easy, in the league I easily curbstomped everything except Kukui who I knew I had to plan for. Honestly it wasn't until Black and White that I had an easy time with the League when I decided to instead go with Samurott and in the next game I actually started putting together teams to fight with so I guess I'm improving.

 

[Thure]

I'm not sure. There haven't been many pokémon games that I actually struggled with. I remember struggling with Whitney and her Miltank in the Johto games, and with Morty's Gengar. And back in the days I got stuck in Goldenrod City for ages because I couldn't figure out how to get past the Sudowoodo, although I wasn't as fluent in English back then as I am now. As for Sun-Moon, it's probably easier for me because I'm older now. I still struggled a bit at the Mimikyu trial where I actually wiped twice, but I didn't really struggle anywhere else. One thing that is beneficial to me is that the Sun-Moon exp system rewards being underlevelled. I use like 20 pokémon in my main playthrough before the Elite Four, rotating them in the party in various compositions. In the old system you get underlevelled very fast and need a lot of grinding to keep up, but in this system I don't really have to grind at all when I stay around 4 levels below what the trainers on the routes have, you get so much exp.

I hated that Miltank on Route 8 in SM... it basically killed my team. Miltank is allways a nightmear in early game.

 

[Zoruagible]

I really seem to be the only guy who things SM is not that easy? It wasn't as hard as the third editions or BW2... but it was harder than the most main games (excluding third editions).

It was definitely harder than XY, the easiest game ever to beat.
Olivia is a pain in the *** every time considering I only ever use Litten as my starter.