I started downloading the game at 12:30am, since I woke up in the middle of the night anyway. Thanks, insomnia. Here we go…

First Impressions

The game only took about five minutes to load. Considering the likely to be heavy load on the servers later today, it was the perfect time to download. The tutorial is pretty quick. Right away I noticed that it tells you the difference bereeen super effective and extra effective, vice versa. There are a few other little things that convey extra information in battles. The old man Cordy gives you the gym a bit too quickly but okay. kitt the Roster rancher is adorable. 

The first options you get are Charizard, Tyranitar, Armarouge, Palafin, Pikachu, Lucario, Gardevoor, Absol, Altria, and Snorlax. What an assortment. I took charizard as my first permanent recruit! You are lended the other five for now: in this case, Azumarill, steelix, whimscott, Gengar, and Drampa. After the game auto builds your team with items and what not it throws you right in. I think the first battle is AI. I crushed it with Azumarill and Steelix. After that first beginner tier battle You’re in poke ball tier 4!

caraway the battle arena owner and Lajima the mayor of frontier show up to meet you, and caraway gives you an Omni ring. I’m assuming this is for Tera and mega evolving. You also get 10k VP to start. I also made sure to grab my free dragonite from the mailbox. Notably the dragonite is already trained to be a special attacker with Draco meteor, fire blast, ice beam, and extreme speed, with the multi scale ability. Im a bit surprised to learn how much higher Deampa’s special attack is than dragonite’s. So for now let’s see what I can do to recruit!

Just like I thought there are missions to earn VP. So, this should be interesting. Now, every 22 hours you get to pick a new Pokemon from a selection of ten options. I chose Gallade with the sharpness ability, with a moveset of sacred sword, drain punch, aqua cutter, and thunder punch. So, permanent recruitment seems to be 2500. Therefore for now, I’ll just rent for 7 days. Also you can collect a pokemon from home for the first time and get 3000 VP! I have just the one. Or three. My Delphox, Greninja, and Chestnaught! Those three make the most sense. 

A couple important things I learned. It doesn’t allow not-fully-evolved pokemon to visit Champions. This kind of makes sense. Also I found out that Cinderace and Creaselia apparently aren’t in the game either. Importantly, any pokemon that visit from home are technically still in home as long as they are visiting. Apparently when you collect a pokemon visiting from home for the first time, whatever that Pokémon’s strength is at that time is factored in right away. That means if you take them back and train them up again, NONE of those changes won’t carry over. Anyway, this was my test to see how my preexisting pokemon do, and the three mega stones were a nice bonus.

Right away I see some very interesting issues. My Greninja isn’t allowed to have nasty plot or psyshock. My Delphox can’t have psybeam or ember. Since I’m not going to pay VP for these mons to get new moves, I’m just going to send them back. My Chestnaught is apparently good to go, though. And just as I thought, the EVs DO carry over! May as well send back Greninja and Delphox then. Also good news. As long as the pokemon is in the same form, the training done on Champions IS saved on Champions. So that’s a relief! When I went to send the two back though, I had a communication error. It seems they got sent back, but I had to double check. First sign of server instability. The two made it back okay, at least. What this tells me is what goes over to visit actually matters. I need to figure out what move sets are allowed and now that I know that the EVs are translated that makes my life easier. 

Before I jumped into ranked battle, you do get a reward for causal battles. Cool to see Runerigis. And he forfeited after some nice maneuvering from me. Easy 2k VP for me. Before my first ranked battle, I did the battle tutorials. The double battle one gives you 10k VP! The mega evolution one gives you a Ton of mega stones! Other ones give you quick coupons and teammate tickets!

The way quick coupons work, there’s a 22 hour cooldown to recruit Pokemon again from the ranch. So each coupon eats an hour of cooldown. Interesting. I think I’m happy running with what I’ve got for now. First ranked battle on the singles ladder! It was a sweep! Go gengar! Got 300 vp for winning. Also I unlocked the dragonite mega stone, which means I can use it as my mega! Steelix and mega dragonite carried. Finally lost a super close battle. So when you lose, you do get VP. Especially in a close one. 

The next thing I’ll be doing after I get some sleep (it’s 2am) is the warm up challenge. Win or lose after three battles you get a Gardevoir and 100 quick coupons. And I discovered achievements. So you know what that means. 

Adjustments

After getting a bit of sleep, I decided that it’s probably not necessary to focus on Pokemon HOME at the moment. It seems to me that the game, as I was hoping, gives you plenty to work with in the beginning. As I’m still dealing with some health issues (a chest cold I can’t shake), I’m going to be a bit light on diving too deep. But I am going to do the warm up challenge and grind a bit with the pokemon I have so far. I’ve been particularly impressed with the Gengar, Steelix, and Mega Dragonite. The one battle I lost was because I was tired and forgot that Draco meteor drops your special attack. That was a winnable match. But it’s good to see that while you lose some ranking points, you still get VP and can jump right back in anytime you want. The game is a bit more forgiving than I expected.  

My first experiment is with my Greninja I sent over. It had two moves that Champions didn’t allow it to have. So, I wanted to find out, will the new moves translate, or is Champions only going to remember how it came over the first time? This is going to determine how I use my preexisting Pokemon, since I now know that EVs translate into the new stats. And as I suspected, the Greninja still has the moves it doesn’t like. So I’d need to spend 500 VP to fix the moves in the game. Therefore, I won’t be bringing in new Pokemon until I verify what moves they can have in this game. No point wasting VP frivolously!

Also I didn’t realize that your initial team of six is yours forever! So I don’t have to pay for the Gengar and Steelix I’m definitely keeping. I wanted to keep Azumarill (one of my all time favorites) and Whimsicott too, so they are mine!

The storage limit on the game is 30 pokemon. This means that the Starter Pack would give you 80. I frankly don’t know if I’ll need more storage for a bit, especially knowing that once you import Pokemon they can just sit on their original game until you need them again. You can also return Pokemon to the ranch, but you get absolutely nothing refunded. So it’s possible that I may have to buy the starter pack to not get squeezed. We just have to be very intentional about the mons we keep.

Interestingly enough, the subscription ($5 a month or $50 a year) gives you ONE THOUSAND box spaces. That’s actually pretty nuts. I didn’t want to spend any money on this game, but I think the starter pack may be worth it. I’m going to cough up the $7 just to have the breathing room. But I don’t think it’s 100% necessary. I did have to go back to the eshop (the starter pack isn’t available in game). It also gives me all those tickets that I’ll keep in my back pocket; you can’t buy them otherwise. 50 training tickets and 30 teammate tickets will be a huge help as I progress. So much for entirely F2P, but seven bucks to not deal with a storage headache in a couple weeks is worth my money,

Onto the warm-up challenge! I’m going with Mega Gallade here, trying it out, along with my Sitrus Azumarill, Leftovers Steelix, White Herb Whimsicott, Focus Sash Gengar, and Lum Berry Dragonite. I do want to give Charizard and Drampa more play, too, since I have them for good.

These will be my last single battles for a bit, as I’m going to see how this team performs in doubles afterward. Oh wait… it doesn’t actually start until tomorrow. Anyway, I entered the competition, so I’ll do that tomorrow I guess.