Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire (Hoenn Remakes for the 3DS)

I think the reason fire types have trouble with rarity is that GF keeps trying to find places where they logically fit in. "Fire" doesn't naturally fit in in too many places, so they end up being rare when there isn't a volcano or steel mill around, or some place where the player would naturally make the jump in logic that "this place is associated with fire, so fire mons will be here". XY took a step towards breaking that up with Fletchling being available in the first friendly meadow areas. Fire types are one of those types where they'll have to break logic in some places for the sake of balance. They did it in gen 1, so they can do it again.

"There is no story. It's all drugs."

I always thought Fire types were plenty abundant in Hoenn. In addition to the Torchic line, you've got the Numel line, Torkoal, the Vulpix line, and the Slugma line.

Now granted, they're not available early game, but that's still pretty good.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

And by the time you get to the point you can catch fire types, you're hit with tons of water and ground types, and won't get much use from them anyway.

If everyone were normal, the world would be a dull place. Like reality television.

Frishman:Nothing's been said yet, but I assume that mons like Primeape would be more likely to get a Mega than a Primal form. Rayquaza's the only other mon that I could see getting one with the info we have now, especially with that Delta Emerald trademark.

Though, if it's expanded to include regular mons, I think it'd just be fossil mons, and maybe the Regis and Relicanth.

Kind of makes the lack of Fire types a bit more sense actually.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

Hoenn did the best job with having multiple fire types outside of the starter. I'm hoping future gens will diversify the fire type pokemon concepts introduced so that they can be found without having to put a volcano somewhere on the map.

I'm expecting Primal Reversion to be reserved for box legends of remade games in order to generate buying incentive. The Sinnoh trio already have their stones set up if the Red and Blue orb turn out to be the activators of Primal Reversion. Giratina would be the only problem, though, because his stone already changes his form.

"There is no story. It's all drugs."

My bad, I guess Hoenn had more Fire types available than I remember. It's probably because I didn't like most of them, that I thought the choices were very limited.

@Fennekin's evolution: I like it's evolution line as is but Fennekin is my favourite. In fact, it's my favourite pokemon right now because foxes are my favourite animals (Vulpix just doesn't work for me, Ninetails is great but not quite #1).

I love foxes too. Main reason why I chose Fennekin.

Give the God Eater game thread some love!

On Fire-types being rarer because of there being no natural seeming habitat for them, Ice-types are kind of same aren't they? Ice-types are almost non-existent outside late-game ice/snow areas (Seafoam Islands, Ice Path, Shoal Cave, Routes 216 and 217, and Frost Cavern and Route 17). Or in Unova's case, they can only be easily found in winter, and still mostly towards the end.

Electric-types don't really seem to have this problem though, even though they're kind of similar.

It's because electric types are generally near Power Plants and other electrical places which tend to come fairly early on.

Pikachu, Mareep, Elecktrike, Shinx, and Blitzle are all examples.

edited 24th Jul '14 8:01:25 AM by BlackYakuzu94

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

All of that begs the question: Just what the heck is "Primal Reversion?"

I can see Fire-types living in the desert as prey species and the forest as predator species. Numel and Slugma make for tasty meals for a Krokorok, and Beedrill and Paras make for a delicious buffet for a Charmeleon.

Heck, the Heatmor/Durant opposition is actually a perfect pairing to justify why there are some fire-types in "odd" places.

Electric types also tend to find themselves in forests a lot. Blitzle can be found in grasslands and Pikachu could be caught in Viridian Forest. And all of that makes sense because they're a horse and a rat, respectively. Of course they'd live in those places. Voltorb and Magnemite are more urban, certainly, but I can also see them popping up where scientific research happens or lots of Trainers die with Pokemon still stuck in their Pokeballs (which is my preferred head-canon for how Voltorb happened).

edited 24th Jul '14 8:05:37 AM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

The only Electric types that need to be by electric areas are really only Pokemon like Voltorb and Magnemite. Others like Shinx, Blitzle, Mareep, and Pikachu can be found in the wild pretty easily, since they're more animal-like. Vulpix is similar.

The only power plants that have wild Pokemon are the ones in Kanto and Hoenn, and both are late-game and optional.

All the Electric-types listed are found on early-game routes and forests. I guess you could kind of argue how one of Elektrike's places is near New Mauville, and Pachirisu is near the Vally Windworks, but that's about it.

I just hope aerodactyl get retconned into a primal reversion, since primal reversion is devolving into a more primal, powerful state.

New Mauville is about halfway through the game, but yea, it is optional and only yields Thunderbolt.

Chargestone Cave though is mandatory and has Joltik and Tynamo.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

Otherwise known as "the cutest Electric-type ever" and "the one that has no weaknesses."

So pretty solid pairing, as Galvantula's pretty awesome by himself as well.

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

It pretty much makes Skyla a cake walk.

In any case, I don't think they'll add anywhere near as much Pokemon to the Hoenn Dex as they did with Kalos, barring a few Pokemon in the old Hoenn dex that gained new evolutions(I.e. Dusclops).

I think the reason Kalos had such a diversity of Pokemon, because it was severely lacking in it's own native species. Hoenn had plenty of species for it's region, so there's no reason to add as much.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

That's true. Maybe they also wanted to include lots of older Pokemon in XY just because...seeing as there are quite a lot of references to older games/regions and Santalune Forest is basically Viridian Forest in 3D.

Also, I like that headcanon on how Voltrob came into existence.

Okay umm..on-topic...I'm curious to see how Sootopolis will look in 3D. The city was designed based on the island I lived on for years before moving away for college. It's special to me.

edited 24th Jul '14 9:49:31 AM by KrisiChiki

That's really cool! I hope it holds up to expectations!

Kalos in many ways seemed like a reversion to form, in the same way as Black/White did. I can see them including not just the Sinnoh-introduced evolutions of Hoenn Mons but also a few of the more popular Kalos ones, since it's still Gen 6 and all. I wouldn't go through all the trouble of making up new Mons only to have them be in just two games, personally.

edited 24th Jul '14 9:52:26 AM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Well HGSS didn't give all of the Pokemon in it's regional dex their evolutions(Togetic, Magmar ,and Electebuzz for starters).

I just went through the old Hoenn dex; Nosepass, Magneton, Roselia, Dusclops, Chimecho, and Snorunt are the only ones with new evolutions(Pre evos or new ones otherwise), and Dusknoir is already confirmed.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.

A lot of the locations have the potential to be really lovely. I really hope they make the most of that potential.

As for variety... actually, too much variety also bothers me for flavor reasons. To me, Kalos in particularly feels like it's lacking in personality because it seems like the mons are strewn about so randomly. A lot of that has to do with mixing mons from different generations together, too. It just feels more... artificial to me. Draws attention to the fact that encountering a mon just means you triggered an event in a video game, you know? Like, that random, short path after, uh, Snow City in Kalos and Victory Road. It looks the size of a football field and like it has about as much geographic variety, but for some reason, there's bears now. In that one, non-descript area. Also Altaria! Why there?

It's kind of like all those items they have to cram in there somewhere, like HMs. First generation had you pretty much earn every important key item I can think of, while at this point you just get a lot of NPCs going "hi, I like you, please take this invaluable object" because there's just too many now to make separate quests for all of them.

Well gosh. Now I feel bad for judging you so quickly. Even aside from that apology you actually ended up seeming like a pretty alright dude. So, uh. My sincere apologies right back.

Its okay to judge me as a dick if i'm acting like a dick.

And everyone has my permission to call me out on it, because I don't really want to be a dick. Sometimes it just happens.

I didn't get that feel from Kalos, though admittedly I'm only just now starting to immerse myself into Pokemon Worldbuilding due to creating a custom region for a group of tabletop players.

It's... Been an interesting exercise.

But also bears can be put pretty much everywhere so long as there's something to eat. Like other, smaller bears.

edited 24th Jul '14 11:15:36 AM by Frishman

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Fun fact: In German, "bears" and "berries" are homophones.

(You weren't even acting like a dick, though! And the bear thing made me laugh.)

edited 24th Jul '14 11:25:14 AM by Fawriel

I think they were trying to front-end all the missing pokemon in X and Y so that all of the remaining gen 6 games, and possibly future gens due to Pokemon Bank, wouldn't have to add tools like the Hoenn Sounds from HGSS or the Safari Zone partition from Emerald. It made it hard to find Kalos pokemon and killed the immersion, but I think they might have been biting the bullet to make sure later games had a cleaner feel to them and wouldn't have to add so many other gen pokemon to their regional dexes.

I hope that's what they were doing, at least. If it turns out the pokemon distribution of X and Y was due to the (undeserved, IMO) backlash against Black and White's distribution (all new mons during story, older mons during postgame), we might be looking at a future trend.

"There is no story. It's all drugs."

Posting this here because it happens to be a Hoenn song.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.