YMMV / New Pokémon Snap

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Professor Mirror is a nice, if flighty, guy in-game, but it didn't take long for more sinister interpretations to crop up given his apparent obliviousness to predator-prey interactions.
  • Mirror's obsession with size (it giving 2000 points total instead of 1000 points, and the ideal way to take photos being to be as point blank as possible while still having most/all of it be visible) has lead to some suggestions that he's Compensating for Something.
• Game-Breaker: Burst mode, a normally useful feature of cameras for action photos, is only unlocked upon finishing the game proper. Understandable, given that a large majority of photos in the game are action shots.
• Goddamned Bats: Liepard in the Jungle levels. There’s an abundance of them, they often get in the way of your shots and the NEO-ONE, and they infamously cover your way behind the waterfall, requiring incredibly obtuse methods to make them move out of the way. The game does not explain or hint at how this is accomplished.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Undersea level is terrible for those who have a fear of deep water, particularly the latter parts where the player adventures through a dark abyss with creepy stuff like Sharpedo and Tentacruel swimming around (plus, the Frillish that pull other Pokémon down to their apparent deaths). The Illumina Wishiwashi level is the worst case of this. It's deep at the bottom of the ocean, in cloudy water that makes it hard to see. And there's very little warning that it's coming, so as you're moving the camera around, it quite literally comes out of the darkness right at you. And, in at least one possible sequence, swallows you briefly.
  • The Volcano level features a section early on where a Tyrantrum charges into the area chasing a Monferno. All the other Pokémon in the area flee for their lives including other apex predators like Aerodactyl. After the Monferno taunts the gigantic dinosaur and leaps out of the creature's reach, Tyrantrum turns around and notices the Neo-One and quickly starts chasing the player instead. The default captions for any photos taken during this chase will make it clear that the player character is terrified and is begging the Neo-One to move faster. This may double as a subtle Jurassic Park Shout-Out.
  • The game in general seems to delight in depicting a lot of the predatory habits of certain Pokémon that you only ever see being mentioned in the various games' Pokédexes. One notable example is Mareanie, who is known to prey on Corsola, and the Reef level shows a Corsola being chased by a group of them. The Corsola ends up jumping into the water with the Mareanie jumping in after it, at which point they're out of your line of sight, leaving the Corsola's fate unknown. In the same level, it's also possible to knock a Squirtle into the water, after which a Sharpedo will chase after it with its jaws wide open, although the Professor seems to insist they were "just playing tag".
  • This game has a lot more instances of Pokémon getting angry when you mess at them than the first one. More than a few growl or roar at you if you hit them with a Fluffruit, Drampa will give you a death glare with glowing eyes if you mess with Bulbasaur or Pancham, Bewear will gather up its buddies and chase after you if you hit it with enough Fluffruits, Houndoom at one point full on jumpscares you by leaping right in front of the NEO-ONE, and the unlock method for one alternate route in Founja Jungle requires you to provoke some Liepard into knocking you off a cliff. Unlike other Pokémon games, where you at least have your own Pokémon to defend yourself, here you're on your own, with the rather slow moving NEO-ONE being your only source of protection from creatures that could seriously injure you at best, and the way the rating system works, you are encouraged to anger them.
• Older Than They Think: A sequence where a budding photographer gets lost in a mysterious foggy forest, helps save a Deerling he meets within, and is rewarded by being led to a secret alcove where all four seasons of Deerling and Sawsbuck exist together? This was the premise of "The Four Seasons of Sawsbuck", an episode of the anime that first aired in Japan in 2011.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Attracting Pokémon to other Pokémon for special shots is even harder than in the original, requiring gratuitous usage of Illumina orbs and Fluffruits. Even then, it doesn’t always work and will usually necessitate a restart.
  • Scanning. While it has its uses, not every Pokémon will react to a scan, and having to scan just to switch routes is a pain.
  • Like the first game, you're only allowed to show off one photo per Pokémon during a run. Unlike the first game, however, there are multiple tiers of photos you need to get to complete your Photodex, making the limitation an obvious case of forced longevity.
  • Also like the first game, photo scoring is heavily determined by subject size and centering. Thankfully, photos will no longer be automatically rejected if they don't meet those criteria, but it's still frustrating for people trying to get good scores while also taking interesting photos. This can be even more aggravating for people with knowledge or experience in actual professional photography, since centering subjects is generally frowned upon as it makes for boring, lifeless photos. Mitigated by the "reshoot" option, which allows you to retake specific photos while repositioning, zooming and refocusing the camera for more aesthetic shots, though not for points.
  • Crystablooms are counted as photo targets, as you need to take pictures of them while they're glowing in order to advance the plot and unlock the ability to use Illumina orbs in each region. Consequently, this means that the game will sometimes register a Crystabloom as being the main subject of a photo instead of whatever you were actually trying to take a picture of. While unintentional photos of other Pokémon can still be useful for getting points and filling out the Photodex, photos of Crystablooms are completely worthless.
  • The fact that some alternate paths, like the one to Lugia’s den on the sea floor and the one to Sunny Plain in the forest have to be unlocked every single time by repeating Pokémon interactions rather than just scanning them.
  • The focus issue with photos registering as different Pokémon than intended, even if the registered Pokémon is only a small part of the photo compared to the one taking up most of it. It’s similar to the crystabloom focus issue.
• That One Boss:
  • Steelix. If you aren’t able to nail it with an Illumina Orb when it sticks its head out of the hole, you’ll have to try hard to get a hit as it shoots between holes.
  • Wishiwashi is the most unnerving Illumina Pokémon of them all, taking place in an underwater, dark abyss that requires good aiming (and compensating for the water) to hit the smaller Wishiwashi until you’re able to get it to show up.
  • Volcarona simply won’t sit still in their level. It requires multiple Fluffruit throws to get it to drop its flame armor. Then you have to throw Illumina orbs until the Illumina effect is shown. It’s probably the second most difficult, if not the most difficult Illumina Pokémon of the lot, with Steelix providing tough competition.
  • Volcarona does have two aspects that mitigate their level just a bit. First, they do tend to sit still for a second or two (though not always in places that are exactly convenient for you to throw something). Second is that they, unlike many of the other bosses, tend to need only ONE Illumina orb to get the effect... but getting some of the better photos do require you getting both active to compensate.
• That One Level:
  • Lighting all five flowers in the ruins stage to unlock the Illumina Spot featuring Xerneas. One has to be hit while you’re still high up. Two are behind rocks that can be hard to hit. One requires shooing a flock of Eldegoss out of the way and the fifth requires hitting Golurk with an orb or fruit and waiting til it moves. If you get impatient and keep hitting it though, it’ll get stunned and just stand there for a few seconds, taking up more time.
  • Elsewhere Forest has a confusing gimmick and Pokémon that are very difficult to spot in the foggy areas. Its alternative paths also require maximum research levels and a lot of work to access, especially the Winter Path one, since the player will always need to activate it whenever they want to return there, and at least one Pokémon (Gardevoir) is exclusive to that path.
  • Lental Seafloor alters the physics and trajectory of how you throw fruits and orbs, since it takes place underwater. The result is that the throws here are much slower and floatier, making it more difficult to aim at exact spots and trigger certain interactions.
• That One Sidequest: Certain Pokémon poses and interactions follow rather obtuse steps in order to trigger them, to the point that even knowing how to perform the steps won't guarantee a shot if you lack enough skill. A few of them are hinted by your friends' requests, but they're often so vaguely worded that figuring them out is a puzzle in itself. Some examples include:
  • Waking up Swampert in the Night Jungle level, as it requires you to manipulate the behavior of at least three different Pokémon.
  • Taking a four-star shot of Yanmega requires a lot of contrived setup and good aiming with Illumina Orbs, so you can make a trio of Illumina-boosted Ariados attack it.
  • Getting all the Vivillon patterns, as there are a few rare ones that require very specific actions in order to spawn, making it feel almost like a Luck-Based Mission.
  • Forcing Liepard to move out of the way so you can get behind the waterfall in the Jungle level. The game doesn't offer any hints as to how to move them out of the way, and will require near-exact timing to fulfill the requirements in time for the scan icon to appear. It’s easier to do at night than in daytime! On the bright side, mashing scan and taking a photo when you hear the cries has a surprisingly high success rate.
    • Speaking of Liepard, there's an insanely obtuse request involving it called A Figure of Beauty. First of all, it can only be done on Research Level 1, meaning if you've already unlocked Level 2, you have to manually roll it back. To actually get the photo, you'll need to hit several Liepard seen around the area with Illumina Orbs while playing the Melody; two are pretty much right in front of you at the start of the stage, but the others are further off the path. The third is far off the path through tall grass to the right, the fifth is sleeping on top of a cliff on the left side later in the stage, and the fourth requires an extra step. It's sleeping behind the tree in the tall grass near the third one, but nothing you can do normally can wake it up; it can only be woken up by knocking Arbok out of the tree on top of it to scare it away. The rest is pretty easy, just hitting one of them with an Illumina Orb when you find them gathered in the field and taking a photo of them standing on their hind legs, but not one step of this is ever hinted at, so getting to that point pretty much requires either a guide or tons of trial-and-error.
  • The Best Frenemies request where the player must manipulate Heracross and Pinsir to fight each other (and by association, getting Sylveon to show up and stop the fight).
  • The Three in a Row request can be a lot tougher than it sounds. It involves luring a pair of Exeggutor towards a sleeping one in the Blushing Beach stage. If you can't keep the Exeggutor distracted with a series of well-aimed Fluffruits, they'll simply wander off. Luckily, since this is right at the beginning of the stage, you can restart and reattempt the request very quickly.
  • Milotic’s Mighty Jump. You go through a series of steps of hitting the illumina Milotic with fruit and orbs to get it to jump and perform the move Twister. It moves fast and is a pain to hit in the later part of the level. The real challenge though is nailing it mid-jump with an orb so it performs a second move for the four star pose and quest. Suffice to say it requires precise timing and heavy orb spam and when you play handheld mode, if you don’t disable motion controls,you’ll end up holding the Switch high above your head as you try to hit it.
  • Four star Joltik. The picture is of it jumping on Jolteon. Joltik is so small that the camera focuses on Jolteon. And good luck getting it to Diamond level with all those ferns obscuring things.
  • Then there’s Gem Royalty at another cave exit. Three Carbink are easy to get out but the fourth can be a pain. And then you have to get Diancie to do its action before you run out of time and the course ends. The same problem as with the Joltik quest exists with ferns covering the area and half your photos will be thrown out due to subject not clearly visible and the rest will be poor quality.
  • Ready, Aim, Fire! requires very strict and precise timing to get a shot of a Clawitzer shooting a giant water cannonball at another Clawitzer (both of them need to be in the photo for it to count). It doesn't help that a Magikarp could possibly swim by and ruin your shot.
  • Minior Shower is a pain because you have to use orbs to get seven Minior out of the night desert level. They’re all at the very beginning, with five right around your starting point. You have to move fast and know where to aim in regards to the location the scanner shows you if you are going to get them all in time. Even more annoyingly, players who didn't scan the opening area may notice a light spot on an early hillside that turns out to be a buried Minior, two Minior that can fall from the sky near the trio of Crystablooms, and a number of Minior on the right-side path near the end. None of these have anything to do with the request.
  • Getting a 4-star photo of Manaphy in Maricopia Reef not only requires you to perform a series of otherwise completely unrelated actions that the game never even vaguely implies will result in anything unusual, but also requires you to take a photo of a specific reaction from it; not only is it completely random whether or not it does the animation at all, but also has an unreasonably tiny chance on top of it.
  • Lugia's 4-star photo is a real pain to get. Lugia's lair is one of those pesky paths that you need to unlock every time you play through the stage rather than just once, so it takes some setup just to get to the mon in the first place. Then getting it to do the 4-star action requires some precisely timed Fluffruit throws, which isn't easy with the floaty underwater physics. The most frustrating part though is that this all takes place towards the end of the level, and if you mess up any part of the convoluted setup, you'll have to restart the entire course over from the beginning to try again.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Desert stage is the only environment in the game that doesn't have a Legendary/Mythical Pokémon associated to it, even though it could've been the perfect spot for something like Victini or Hoopa. This was addressed in the August update, where the Badlands area by the Desert contains Zeroara.
  • The player cannot make Pokémon evolve, unlike in the first game.
• Unexpected Character: Todd from the original Pokémon Snap. During press release of the game, Todd was given zero mention of returning, and while he appears in the February 26, 2021 trailer, it's for a very short time near the end and he isn't even focused on, not even given a name, causing fans to wonder if that really was him. His return is nonetheless welcomed among fans of the first game.

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