Gentleman Jaggi

I don't know what's to come, so naturally. All I can do is extrapolate from what little we're given and what we already have. Frankly, I don't think the character writing of Reborn's antagonists is a particularly strong aspect of the game. There are already many underutilised characters which makes the decision to add another one into already existing parts of the game seem questionable to me. "We've taken old files into consideration, so if you are starting e19 from a completed e18 file, rest assured you will not be confused by missing their prior context!" There's only two interpretations I can pull out of this at the moment: First "Ace's presence will leave no significant impact on the events of Ep19. Their role will be wrapped up as of Ep18's content without significant changes to key events involving them." Second "The game will go out of its way to fill in the player on any events that Ace's introduction has had sufficient impact enough to be important to be aware of." The first leads to doubt regarding what siginifance Ace will be carrying in the larger plot, the second just seems clunky. I don't even feel that strong about this situation, I'm perfectly ready to wait it out, see what we get and then make my conclusion. The thing that irks me is specifically the way you brushed of someone's concerns as, well, this: The thing I'm taking issue with here is 80% your attitude.

I'm gonna disagree with your last bit here, you're being a jerk. Eagle brought up a perfectly valid point here - there's already a lot of characters running around, to the point that many of them are reduced to just "the one you fight at the end of a Meteor dungeon" for most of their appearances. What is this Ace person going to bring to the table that couldn't have been offered by one of the existing characters? It's been mentioned that the early-game has a lot of fighting Taka and ZEL (which, honestly, I don't even really agree with) but it's not like that's not due to there being any other characters present. Meteor has, frankly, a buttload of agents running about everywhere so the perception of Taka and ZEL being too prominent early on shouldn't be seen as a symptom of there being not enough characters but rather of the characters we already have being too inactive. Sirius is the very first Meteor admin we run into but he just dips out of the game until his stint as sorta main antagonist for the Orphans arc. He could take a more active role. Or even Corey; Ame mentioned him as getting an optional appearance earlier but why couldn't he take an active role in the early plot? I obviously don't know what kind of early appearance he's going to have but with it being optional I have my doubts about it doing much for him in terms of the player building some sort of connection to him. Best case I see players' reaction to him going from "Oh, a new guy - and he's dead" to "Oh, it's that guy - and he's dead." Two more characters that could show up are Blake and Cal. Blake currently mostly just exists to be an ass to Cal and Shelly up in Ametrine, as well as being an inconsequential flunky during the mansion gauntlet. Cal meanwhile could benefit from players actually seeing him being involved with Team Meteor so his eventual desertion amounts to more than the current "actually none of this needed to happen" up on Pyrous Mountain. This is a whole lot of words for "Why did you decide introducing a new character was the best choice?" but I'm not trying to say that I think Ace is going to be totally terrible, I just have to question what even led to this decision. Particularly since, by Ame's own words, people continuing from Ep18 aren't going to miss anything not having had any interactions with Ace. From this I'd assume that their role is going to be over and done with by Ep19 and that they aren't going to leave a notable impact on the events thereon. So, again, why was it decided that adding this new character was the best course of action? If I'm allowed to drop any sort of goodwill for a moment here my suspicion would be that Ame (or someone else with sufficient input) simply wanted to add this lost element of the original Team Meteor but felt the need to justify themselves beyond a simple "I felt like it".

Ah man, I was looking forward to the "Fix Aelita" Arc (Aelita not included) I like how Souta rushes everyone along to go touch the timey-wimey rock and then turns around and says you've got all the time in the world only once everyone else is already gone. Peak Rejuv writing, characters always have their priorities sorted. Also as someone whose only exposure to Sonic was in Smash bros I can confirm that Live and Learn is indeed the best Sonic song.

Hmm, I guess. I never played the most recent version so I mostly only remember that I always expected them to have some sort of twist to them. But maybe they really are just as straightforward as they are presented. "Get High Bear" fucking shoot me I do not wish to exist in the same universe as that abomination.

Lookin' good, Decibel is my new fave of the bunch. Will there be a way to change which character you're using for old saves?

Sounds like Lin is going to be a totally fair and balanced™ fight Now I really want to know what team that random victory road trainer is running that they managed to perform that well. Can you make the AI fight the Glass Factory gauntlet? Personally I found that one to be by far the hardest bit of the game so far so it'd be interesting to see how each trainer does when faced with what we players have to go through.

"SeanXDyingalone" fun fact: from what I recall the only time you didn't die alone was when you got blown up alongside Melia and Veronica. So which one do you consider preferable? Real talk about this game tho for a bit The "noone ever explains shit" thing is the number one thing that pissed me off about it back when I played it. Last time I played was when you got thrown into the desert area and at that point you don't actually know what anyone else is trying to accomplish. Team Xen, Madame X, Crescent, Time and Space, even fucking Bladestar keep pretending like they've got some greater purpose for what they're doing but none of their plans ever actually progress anywhere, nothing ever actually sets them back and you never get so much as an insight on what they are planning. For contrast in Reborn you find out what Team Meteor's purpose is about a fourth into the game and it mostly doesn't change as the game goes on. Sure Lin obviously has separate intentions but she's still going after the same things as the rest of Team Meteor.

Protagonist sprite updates is good, honestly they are kinda needed. Will their overworld sprites be updated as well or only the battle sprites? Will the early game update change any of the actual plot beats or is it only gonna slightly order around some things to result in less running around? Honestly I always found the first half of the game to be the more enjoyable one so I'm a bit anxious about any major changes to that.

"Is this loss?" Nah, it' just Veronica

There's a certain Pokėmon hidden by the lake in Keneph Jungle that should be very helpful against Aipom. Training a Butterfree to lv 13 for Stun Spore (or any other 'mon that can paralyze early) could also help since iirc Aipom tends to becfaster than most things you have access to at this point. Do note that Desolation's earlygame generally tends to be considered quite tough with difficulty evening out a lot after the third Gym Leader or so. Rockruff is probably the best starter for this part of the game however so that should help quite a bit.

The weather schedule changes once per week, you can check the forecast at any TV. If that doesn't help you the SWM modpack includes a mod that lets you change the weather at any point to whatever you want.

Since you're so concerned about Rose retaining her youthful innocence - you've been making sure she doesn't spend too much time with Sazzle, yes? Don't want her getting any sort of bad influence 'n all. Besides yourself, anyway. R.I.P. Bluster, died to a duo of probably the second-worst Pikaclones. So shortly after Gustav too, these kinds of senseless out-of-nowhere deaths are the worst, not even any antagonist involved to swear bloody revenge on. Looking at some of the V13 talk in the replies here I'm starting to feel pretty out of the loop. Last version I played was 11 I think, the one where you get dumped in the desert in a super idiotic way. By the time the next version released I was so done with the plot's shenanigan that I couldn't be arsed to go on. Honestly impressed that you've been going on with this forever considering that you're also intentionally ripping into everything extra good for enterteainment value.

Oh boy, the plot huh? Time for more inexplicable magic powers for everyone but you! That fav Pokémon thing there is just more proof that you're weak to cuteness. Maybe Melia should replace all her friends with cute 'mons to manipulate you into helping her more. Gotta say tho you've got more Pokémon fromt he second half of the series than I'd have expected since iirc you didn't play them as much? Or did I imagine that? I might've been projecting because you look a lot like me in some photos. The really out there one is Hypno though, it usually really only gets attention for the child abduction memes. I've been meaning to do one of those charts myself for ages so I guess might as well take this as an opportunity.

@barath1989 You can't set the Field on fire as long as Rain Dance is active, you'll have to prevent it from setting up by using Fake Out on Illumise on the first turn and having your other Pokémon KO it. There's an NPC in Lapis that can teach your Blaziken Fire Pledge so you don't have to use a Numel for that. The wild Espurr in the Aqua Gang alleyway usually know Fake Out when you catch them, they might also have Light Screen to protect your team. However Shelly has a second Pokémon that can set up Rain Dance and unlike Illumise it's very bulky. You'll want a strong physical attacker to quickly get rid of it before it douses your fire. Otherwise you could also consider using Water Types in the later half of the fight to make use of the rain yourself instead. Wild Poochyena anywhere can have their Hidden ability like any other mon in Reborn and a number of ability Capsules are available as well at that point. However since Mightyena is weak againt Bug it's unlikely that it'll be able to gain much from Moxie in this fight, especially if it doesn't Sucker Punch yet. Rock Types won't do so well against Shelly since her team has a lot of Water and Grass coverage, although Sturdy Graveler can at least stick around for one turn. Physical Flying Types like Fearow or Dodrio should do well against most of her team. Electric types with Nuzzle or Thunder Wave can help with one of Shelly's biggest threats - Emolga can use the Nuzzle+Electro Ball combo and also has Acrobatics to hit hard or Light Screen to protect your team. If you joined Magma gang Swift Swim Floatzel should be a good option to use Shelly's Rain Dance against her. Swift Swim Seaking might work as well, but it's not as fast.

Greninja, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the anime's special snowflake treatment of it.

I feel like you're undercutting Scolipede a little bit. It can't properly sweep teams with its movepool right now, but the fact that it can delete fast threats and then Batton Pass out to boost the next Mon is worth a lot. Using it only for either half of that is imo a waste. Scolipede is the only natural Baton Passer that gets something to pass to the next mon just from staying on the field and with natural access to Protect it gets a lot to give real fast. Earlygame also isn't quite as bad if you use Rollout at the right time, although the rather late first evolution hurts and Aderyn is gonna make you suffer.

I played Sun entirely without Exp Share and it definitely wasn't hard. There's a bit of a spike in enemy levels once you get to Poni Island and after winning the league but calling that game hard is definitely pushing it.

@DethJackal There are a few Bug Types available you could train up with the standout one being Escavalier. It can abuse Radomus's Trick Room and afaik isn't weak to anything he has on his team. If you don't want to train up something new you could change Mightyena's Ability to Moxie and try sweeping with that one. You'd probably need to use items to keep it alive and strategically take out enemies threatening it. You can grab Sucker Punch from the Move Relearner to ignore Trick Room. You could also teach your Delphox Shadow Ball while you're there.

@Earnest The caves on Route 3 have wild Graveler and Rhydon up to Lv 60 which should be high enough that they can be helpful. If you have the Protector from Iolia Valley and some Link Stones you can evolve them, otherwise stick with Rhydon. The outside area of Route 3 also wild Bronzong, grab one with Heat Proof to set up Trick Room and you should be good with Earthquake/Rockslide spam. Alternatively grabbing a Rockruff from Route 2 and evolving it to Midday Lycanroc can probably Rock Slide through that fight with some support.

Last save was in Arlen, right at the village entrance

Yeah that's what I did

Getting this error message after updating from 1.2 to 2.7 Save location was somewhere in the middle of Arlen

According to Caz's original announcement post the changed stats are Attack - 90 -> 125 Sp. Defense - 60 -> 70 Speed - 70 -> 125

I'd use Tailwind on a support mon rather than an attacker, but fair point that Drifblim's damage would also be affected. Magcargo also has Weak Armor to gain additional Speed when taking physical hits and the Defense loss can be countered with a White Herb. It's true that Magcargo doesn't have much to work with stat-wise but I got quite a lot of mileage out of the one I used on my Fire Monotype.