Note: Emile said in this video that fighting is weak to 3 types, which is true - however, one of those is Fairy, which was not introduced until XY. So in Unova, Fighting is only weak to 2 types (Flying and Psychic).
Chugga comes back from dealing with bedbugs & the first thing he does in this video is look at Bug Bite. You couldn't possibly make this up if you tried.
Updated Win-Loss Ratios: I'm glad you got those bed bugs sorted out, Chugga! It's also nice to see Jade and Harmony actually contribute to the team! Pignati: Wins - 109 Loss - 7 Ties - 1 94% McFly: Wins - 66 Loss - 10 Ties - 0 87% Aidan: Wins - 67 Loss - 6 Ties - 0 92% Jade: Wins - 23 Loss - 8 Ties - 0 74% Harmony: Wins - 16 Loss - 4 Ties - 0 80% Also, we finally got our first tie! I knew including that section would matter!
Practically everything on tv are "reality" shows, shows with a laugh track because they think the audience is retarded and that they know better what should be funny and advertisements lots of advertisements. Honestly not a high bar to beat
6:50 I really love the little animation touches, like how the small floating crystals start swaying when you run underneath them. A ton of care was put into this game.
"I don't need to be that afraid of Hone Claws, it's kind of underwhelming." Immediately gets McFly crit one-shot by +Atk +Acc Rock Slide and nearly has Jade get one-shot right after.
You could make Pokémon more difficult by taking bad Pokémon and bad moves, sure… but I think some people want to try their best and still get challenged. It would be cool if Pokémon had a hard mode just to appeal to more players and give you the option of replaying the game being a different experience.
I almost think it was on purpose. I just don’t see how anyone could be a part of this fandom as long as he is and also still think that’s how that’s said.
With how good Driftveil music is, I feel like the Mistralton music gets HEAVILY overlooked. Its such a bop and for me is right up there at the same level of Driftveil. Unova just perfected pokemon music.
Emile, I imagine that you’ve heard this quite a bit but you’ve been a consistent presence in my life for over a decade now. Thank you for being you. I hope that life is treating you well (especially with the bed bugs!), and that B2W2 has been as exciting and fulfilling for you as it has been for us. Thank you so much for all these years of hard work entertaining your fans!
19:19 Sometimes the struggle of using a Pokmeon that's not that good is what makes the battle all the more satisfying when they do win. As someone who faithfully uses a Dunsparce every game i can, I've seen just how good it CAN be. I've seen Nuzlockes where people get stuck with Dunsparce, only for it to carry the team for a good long while, and that is what i live for. Moments where "its not that good" becomes "its surprisingly good".
You mentioned difficulty this episode, which reminds me that my favorite part of BW2's difficulty options is that the only difference in pre existing Pokemon are the levels. They genuinely forgot to increase the stats.
@@Terumimi Nope! I figure they just went in and increased the trainers levels without adjusting anything else, they still technically do more damage (as level is calculated in the damage formula) but have the same defenses and speed stats. It's quite strange lol
They have better move sets, held items, new Pokémon and better AI, but you are right that their stats are the same. Which funnily enough makes easy mode arguably harder than normal mode since you gain less exp (the exp gained stays consistent with their level) + since the AI is dumber it's harder to predict
In my experience with hard modes, people really don't like playing suboptimally. They want the game itself to be a bigger challenge so they can throw the full weight of their skill against the problem and still be meaningfully challenged. This is why the toggleable EXP Share was so popular as a difficulty option: all you had to do was change an option in a menu somewhere and go back to playing the game as you normally would. Challenge runs get around the problem by changing the entire way you look at the playthrough, like how in a monotype run you're aware that your team isn't well-balanced but The Rules say you're Not Allowed to make your team more diverse. Even then, though, challenge runs are something you have to go out of your way to actively start, which means most casual players won't ever try one. Proper challenge modes should be accessible to even the casual player who just wants to customize their gaming experience. It's just, if you ever pass up a Pokemon because it's "too good and would make the game too easy", or pass up a move because "the game would be more fun if I'm not too strong", you're forcibly restraining yourself, stopping yourself from picking the right answer, and that feels bad. If the goal is to make the game more enjoyable, it becomes pretty self-defeating. The benefit of a genuine hard mode is that you don't feel like you're holding yourself back, because all you've done is change an option in a menu somewhere. Instead of saying "I'm struggling because I limit myself", you say "I struggle because the game is difficult" and have more fun as a result.
Yeah, that's a huge difference. Our minds almost always tends towards META, (although it is more like METK/Most Effective Tactic KNOWN), as well as we want to not waste too much time. Result: People want to play good, and easily accessible strategies; a path with low resistance in short compared to returns. Why do you think Staraptor is so popular in Sinnoh? Because it's easy to access and is amazing through the adventure. We can go with moderately high resistance but oftentimes we want massive returns, like B2/W2 Volcarona, who is a beast in the lategame but very limited early on with only Signal beam, or Platinum Garchomp who is quite bad up until it evolves but then it becomes broken, again, following the return of investment problem. That's how we work, we tend to choose what works and avoid to use what doesn't. And no, our will isn't so strong we'll always avoid the obvious solution; I remember in my last BIack playthrough that I wanted a Litwick, BUT once i reached Burgh i noticed how weak my team was to grass, so I catched a Darumaka to not needlessly struggle needlessly with Cheren. The problem is that the skill levels vary from mono nuzlockers to kids who still can't read, which indeed demands hard modes. Some games is so easy to implement is ridiculous to think it would ruin anyone's experience. And besides, we saw how forced easy mode ruined BD/SP. Besides, I don't think is a good idea to have a laughably easy game with access to competitive PvP, because the campaign just doesn't teach them to play well.
21:08 for the newer games with the automatic exp share, I like to play through with teams of more than six pokemon. It not only balances the experience you gain, but also lets me experiment and try new pokemon that I wouldn’t otherwise. It also has the added strategy of trying to figure out which six pokemon you want to use for a specific battle or area and figuring out which pokemon your items and TMs should go to. I’ve found that around 18 pokemon on my team works best for me personally, but other people may want to use more or less as they see fit.
BUT that's NOT a natural way of playing, is you going out of your way to make the game enjoyable. That's bad game design when people have to go OUT OF THEIR WAY to enjoy stuff. Btw, now every game is in switch mode instead of set one which also ruins a lot of the challenge and tempts people to avoid difficult events because of the turns spend in switching out. Also, there's something as AI, which can do better or worse things. People want pokémon to use their deeper tools instead of using mons without 4 moves constantly, as simple as that, to actually engage with the system. Also, it's not the same, it's a chain to yourself instead of proving you're good at the game, and sometimes it doesn't even work if the AI isn't good enough.
@@N12015 This. The comparison I make to this kind of self-imposed difficulty is this: you go to a restaurant and ask for a spicy dish, with the option to be spicier. When you ask for the spicier option after trying the first, the restaurant gives you the SAME dish, with the request that you bring your own ingredients to make it spicier yourself. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy Nuzlockes and the like, but if its things like the option to go up against stronger or larger teams, the game should be providing that itself.
hey chugga if you wanna keep crunch on jade, don't remove it after she evolves. we're still at a point in the series where some level up moves can't be remembered if they're forgotten. crunch is one of those moves because it's only part of trapinch's learnset, not vibrava's or flygon's (learned this recently while playing along)
Fighting is my personal favorite type. They tend to be reliable sweepers or at least have fantastic coverage. When technical strategies aren’t working, just smack ‘em! Plus, I love the idea of raw human willpower being put on the same level as the elements of nature, reminding us that we’re indeed part of this world, and not always a bad part.
@@reaganspider200yeah and like… held items, which most trainers also don’t use. To give some credit here, hard mode does give gym leaders/e4 members some actual held items, but most games don’t bother (beyond maybe a sitrus berry lol). The AI in these games can actually be fairly smart too but they rarely use their full capacity. Even the champion doesn’t use all of the optimal settings in most games (there’s many fully functional but unused AI protocols that makes the AI pretty competent, like being more aware of its HP so it doesn’t throw by spamming swords dance at 1hp or instantly explode a full health Pokémon on a type resist). They definitely could make the games more interesting but they choose not to use their own tools lol
@@keebs5780Also hard mode has an additional Pokemon - Elesa can be hard in challenge mode even if you have a ground type because she has Joltik with Energy Ball there.
15:15 - Oooo, I think Dragon Quest 1 did that too, where the caves/dungeon theme got slower and lower pitched the further down you went in a cave or dungeon
Here’s a helpful tip to get the medal reward for using the move struggle, give a Pokémon the move Gyro ball because it only has 5PP go to the move deleter delete all of your moves except Gyro ball go back to the very first route in the game and spam the move until you run out of PP
0:21 And that's why training Volcarona is not a torture, just a bit tedious. You can indeed get signal beam without grinding, and the mon is so strong it can hold itself up until it gets fire blast and psychic.
Pokémon KOs: 289 - 239 Trainer KOs - 50 Wild Encounter KOs Party Pokémon KOs: 37 + 6 Rental Pokémon KO'd Escapes: 48 Implied Murders: 58 (Pokémon KOs started on screen, but finished off screen) Bonus Sodas: 1 Repels Used: 65 Failed Captures: 8 Double Battles: 21 Triple Battles: 2 Switch Battles: 2 Tracker Days Off: 3 Kirby Cameos: 8 We have another new record, with 20 total Trainer KOs, this episode surpasses the last reigning king of Episode 33 by 1 KO! That being put aside I have a personal kinship with this cave, as it was the first cave I ever experienced a blackout playing a Pokémon game. Granted I experienced it in Pokémon BW 1, but regardless this cave has always had a personal space in my heart.
10:07 fun fact: that excadrill knows HORN DRILL, i fought her not long ago and she wound up hitting me with it TWICE (i forget if she honed her claws beforehand)... last time i was sucker-punched this hard by some random trainer in a cave was the one random lady in the kalos mirror cave with the hawlucha
Funny, I fractured my ankle over a month ago, and there have been 2 or 3 situations to where I would have fallen, but there was always a muscle movement, or something that stops me from falling, or getting off-balance while standing on a walker, and I've wondered why. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but especially since the fracture, I've been the soul of caution.
Doubt he will but hope Chugga sees this, we're barely halfway done through the year and it's already one of the harshest years in my life and Chugga's videos have always been the highlight of my day, thankfully I got some really good news the same day vids came back, and this LP has gotten me in the mood to play the entirety of gen 5 again, but first I have to scratch my itch of playing XCX first, and BEFORE THAT I have to finish TOTK
Chugga!!!! Welcome home! Second time I wanna say that you missed a fact about the move synchronoise, Umbreon can learn it and is absolutely pointless since it's a dark type. Please include this very soon cuz I love listening to you explain things
My two cents on the Pokemon "hard mode": give us options for set battle and turning off exp share, give NPCs Pokemon with decent IVs and EV training, and let them hold items (not just the occasional berry). I honestly think that's all that'd be needed.
I think they also need to add another option that's between Set and Shift where you can switch Pokemon between losing Pokemon but not know which Pokemon is being sent. And maybe I'm one of the few who thinks there should be customization for Exp Share, where you can choose any number of your party to receive Exp, but you don't gain anything more when you select it for a Pokemon, making it balanced for any party size IMO.
I’m just baffled at how people would be against it. He literally says “give us more options” and yet says a fundamental difficulty option would not be beneficial.
@reginlief1 Chugga seems to presume that how we build our teams is the inherent difficulty rather than options...I'd argue the fact that we need to self-impose challenges is a flaw in design as it's unintended.
I’d also want more trainers with more than one Pokémon, and gym leaders and elite four members with full teams. That’s the big stuff that I think a hard mode would be able to improve; letting me fight more than two or three trainers with a full team in the game.
Emile giving a deep dive into how the psychological profile he made up about this Pokémon affects the actions it takes in a battle, basing the psychological profile of the Pokémon off of the actions he told it to take during battle. Me: uhhhhhhhhh
All this gen 5 has got me thinking, would anyone else want to see a Pokemon Conquest LP on the channel? It's a fun spin-off and Chuggaa did say that he wanted to do more pokemon spin-offs in the future
I disagree with the argument against Pokemon having a hard mode. I think the reason a hard mode would work so well is by letting you use the strongest Pokemon with the most optimal movesets, or at the very least creative strategies that end up being pretty strong. Limiting yourself to worse Pokemon doesn't allow that to happen, and while it can force creativity it's a different kind of fun that a plain hard mode could provide. Also, having opposing trainers use more optimal strategies would be pretty cool to see
exactly no one would ever say to melee only in a game like halo 3 if you wanted it to be "harder". difficulty options should just be standard and its silly how gf still cant do it right when many fangames out there have.
@@TKnHappyNess The game's also been out for over a decade. Even if you haven't played it yet, it still wouldn't be a spoiler by most reasonable people's definitions to give out details like that (learned that one from Spacebattles).
20:50 I disagree. While I agree with everything you’re saying about using worse Pokémon or worse moves, or putting on self-imposed challenges, or saying that higher level scaling isn’t the answer… Yes, that’s all true. But me personally, when I agree that this series needs harder difficulty settings, I mean they should make the AI better, give better EV or IV spreads to enemy Trainers, do a better job making battles use the game’s mechanics against you so you can learn how to use them yourself (like weather, certain held items, certain Abilities, certain moves, certain team comps, different types of battle and synergy, different strategies, terrains in later Gens, etc.) The Alola games, especially USUM, did a great job at doing all of the above that I mentioned, through Route Bosses, Totems, and some Boss Trainers (like Guzma’s third fight and Rainbow Rocket.) But then they went back to NOT doing that in SwSh-onward (outside of some exceptions when they went WILD with BDSP’s E4/Cynthia fights and post-game Gym Leader/League rematches.) Even competitive players in Gen 5, some of which got immortalized in the PWT DLC, admit that as much as they enjoy the series, it’s kind of easy because the AI sucks and most of the difficulty comes from figuring out competitive play. I’m not saying the games should be Drayano-level hard from the get-go, I’m saying they should do a better job ramping up the difficulty since outside of cases like USUM and the late-game BDSP fights, most Pokémon games (most, Emerald and Platinum do add some cool aspects to some fights for instance) just rely on their shoddy AI and barebones boss fights to get by. Even you’ve mentioned how bad the AI is sometimes. You pointed it out during Elesa’s fight in this playthrough with how many turns she fumbled! BDSP’s issue for instance was 99% of the main game was baby easy with zero effort needed with no account for the new mechanics like the shared Exp. Share until suddenly the Pokémon League fights at the VERY END make things go from 0 to 100. The Alola games are weird because I think they did a great job gradually ramping up the difficulty of their games while doing a better job helping you learn about many different mechanics through battles in the main game rather than having you figure them out blindly in the post-game, but the general talk about them amongst fans is either “THE ALOLA GAMES ARE BABY EASY OUTSIDE OF ULTRA NECROZMA” or “THE GAMES ARE VERY HARD FOR MAINLINE POKÉMON STANDARDS” where the latter is where I stand, but whenever I talk about it with most people they weirdly don’t relate at all half the time. Anyway, sorry for the long comment. I know it’s very late, and not sure you’ll read it, but I wanted to give my two cents on this topic.
It’s crazy within his little break I finished the story and the post game of black 2 gotta say I appreciate chugga for reigniting my interest for this game and appreciate you for being a part of childhood🗣💯
I do believe the hard mode is still good even with those options you listed Emile. To speak about the reason I love Black 2/White 2 Challenge Mode giving the gym leaders better a new Pokémon with better coverage for their weaknesses is a fantastic plus that makes the fights feel much more strategic. Even in my randomizer nuzlocke runs of the games I sometimes don't randomize the trainers just so I can fight their buffed up teams and have to think a bit more about how to take them on. If they gave us more of that where the gym leaders had odd pokemon, still within their types, that cover the areas where they're weakest better then theirs no need for the challenge mode, but it would be nice to see the challenge mode available for the games where they're not doing that. You could absolutely do exactly what you're saying and just use suboptimal Pokémon and suboptimal moves, but I think giving the option to fight basic type locked fights where you can sweep through with a single Pokémon or the option to fight bosses where they have the out to what you may be using to counter the rest of their team is a wonderful addition especially for the veterans of the series that keep coming back out of a love for the games.
Agreed 100%. If even a _part_ of you knows that you're just holding yourself back instead of doing a challenging task, then you won't receive the same satisfaction. I've played Pokemon mods that are more challenging but fair, and they are _far_ more satisfying and hype than willingly shooting yourself in the foot even if the interface shows you that you have legitimate options. Imagine telling a boxer to try tying a hand behind his back and box a 12 year old instead of going against a boxer of at least his size and experience/intelligence.
@@neo-didact9285 I've done challenge runs where I gimp myself like that and you're right it's not the same satisfaction as having to fight something designed to be more challenging yet fair. It feels well earned, like you've truly accomplished something. Gimping yourself feels like you're just laughing at the game as you hop backwards and blindfolded through it.
Chuggaa is back, and this time he's exploring chargestone cave again, with a lot of ace trainers for more fun. And now the only new names for this episode. I don't remember if I already did Ampharos, so let's do it here. Ampharos=Pharamp, from phare (lighthouse) and ampère (the unit to measure electric intensity) Magmar=No changes here And that's it, Pignaty and Jade are close to evolve, I'm repeating myself but we'll see if next episode will be the one.
I want to start off by saying that I do agree to what you said. Levels alone aren't the solution to making Pokemon challenging or fixing the difficulty issues. However, I do disagree that Pokemon shouldn't have a difficulty mode. Instead, I do think GameFreak has to address the issue and make the games have options for more challenging fights in the game. To explain, there's one primary assumption being made. That difficulty should only be accessible for a 2nd play through. I think a lot of the people complaining want a challenge from the start. Add onto that many people would prefer a 'no spoiler' run or not having to do a ton of research on Pokemon to figure out what's good. I don't know if a lot of players beyond the hardcore base would be willing to sink so much time into that research. It'd especially be difficult for a new game/1st run since most pokemon in a new generation are unknown. I know there's a good example of a highly competitive Pokemon in Violet/Scarlet that you wouldn't identify by looks. However, it quickly became a staple of the competitive Pokemon scene. Looks alone won't guarantee that a Pokemon is bad. Likewise, you don't know if GameFreak has improved or fixed the move pool of a previous Gen's bad batch. Likewise, as some commenters pointed out, gens 8 and 9 have made it so almost any Pokemon know is viable and the pool of 'bad mons' is quickly falling. Plus, there's many people who don't like to do nuzlocks or other complex Pokemon alternative play styles. It isn't exactly a good solution to say "Well just do a nuzlocke" to people who might just want to challenge themselves using their full team and move pool. A restriction only works if it makes the game feel fun and it doesn't necessarily always do that. Especially now that nuzlockes have to find new rules to avoid the issue Violet/Scarlet creates in letting you pick the Pokemon. It's becoming more and more clear that GameFreak not only wants to limit your options, but forcibly make the games easier for people to play. As such, the restrictions will only temporarily fix the issue while the entire situation only gets worse in Gen X. Likewise, I remember watching a video that does point a strong argument against forced handicapping. The video discussed how forcing yourself to not use Sonic Blade in KH Re Chain only took out a tool from your arsenal. The player is just as likely to find a new broken and strategy and use that. Ex. Vapereon using Signal Beam as a Pokemon move. It's got decent power, but you can't ever get a stab using that strategy. However, due to Vapereon's awesome special attack, the move is not hindered either by its type (arguably the worst type in Pokemon) or being on a different type Pokemon. Hence why it did so well in Clay's gym. Granted, Signal Beam is one of the better Bug type moves, but it's a fair starting point to show the issue. The player will innovate, but eventually draw a solid plan around those weaker moves and end up at the same place. Meanwhile, it could cause the player to feel unsatisfied as they're playing sub optimally to make an easy game harder. That's not making it difficult that's the opposite effect. You might have more innovation, but you're still left that feeling of being challenged at your BEST not your worst. I also feel like the level situation is arising because of Scarlet/Violet's pseudo non-linearity. Sure, you can do the game's challenges in any order. However, the game caps all things to a specific level. As such, you're either going to do it as the developer's intended or you'll feel like certain tasks are jokes because you skipped an easy one. Alternatively, you'll do a hard one and then everything feels underwhelming elsewhere. They should have made different teams for these tasks to keep the game from feeling like you have to play as the game wants rather than do what you want. Instead, levels can be more flexible based on story progress to make the player's choices feel more organic and natural. I think a simple solution is to create 4 teams for each gym leader. The first team is standard baby mons of the type. You then up their levels and EVs based on whether it is the 1st or 2nd badge with a minority improvement in moves. 2nd team is the mid-tier of those mons with the same approach for badges 3 and 4. 3rd team are the final forms with decent moves and fill in the same rolls for badges 5 and 6. Final team are now new Pokemon of the same type with better moves. They're designed to be a decent challenge that people can play against. Since GameFreak is moving away from gym trainers to only gym leaders, they could easily do this as they're losing three teams for each team to fill in for the gym leader. As for a harder difficulty mode, alter the EVs, add Held Items, improve the moves, and increase the levels by a few. Don't even need to necessarily change the team compositions if you plan it right. In the end, though, my ramblings are just to showcase that a challenge mode isn't difficult to make. As such, I see no problem implementing it. I especially feel this is important as Gen 6 basically wiped out any sense of difficulty. Gens 8 and 9 also suffer from mixed difficulty as well since you have trainers that are good (Raihan) and ones that are jokes (Bea and Piers). With the joke ones, though, there's a clear solution and it's difficult to ignore that it's something you can and should do to win the game. Sorry if my thoughts though are a little jumbled up.
It's very often said that BW1 Unova is linear, but even it still has all the hallmarks of classic Pokémon regions (dungeons, field obstacles, secret areas, dowsing, urban facilities, etc.), so I still love exploring it.
I’d take that any day over the completely flattened regions of recent memory. Dungeons reduced to straight lines until they were just outright removed is so frustrating to see.
This was originally gonna be a reply to another comment but I ended up having more to say that I thought I would, lmao. I actually disagree with Chuggaa that we shouldn't have a hard mode in Pokemon. I don't mean just higher levels, though part of it is that, but what about more diverse movesets and teams? Give trainers more unique Pokemon and coverage, especially the gym leaders. Make them less likely to be single-handedly swept by a single type, or give them coverage for their weaknesses. Even though BW2 challenge mode isn't great, it at least does that much right in giving gym leaders more varied teams and moves to make strategy more complex. What about giving trainers actual EVs and IVs? Not maxed out, but enough to make them noticeably stronger. Making the AI more likely to switch out in battle if it detects a bad match-up? Making it so that you aren't still fighting 3-Pokemon teams by the time you're at the 7th gym? Giving the Elite 4 full teams for that matter? I also should be able to use my favorites without the game becoming mind numbingly easy. I love Haxorus but I can never use it because it makes the entire game a joke. I love Archeops but using it also makes the entire game a joke. Where's the line between "use your favorites" and "just don't use strong pokemon"? And for that matter, no amount of self-imposed restrictions will make the average battle any less samey. I'm tired of running into Plasma grunts with the exact same team compositions, movesets, and team sizes. Sometimes it's less about the challenge itself, and more about how so many fights feel identical to each-other, which can make the games... difficult to replay without speedup at times just to get through the more tedious and uninteresting fights. I know not EVERY trainer can be interesting, but words cannot describe how much I loathe the fact that both Hugh and Cheren have extremely similar team compositions in their respective games, and how they could've given Hugh in particular literally anything else but he's screwed out of it because for whatever reason he never catches more than 4 Pokemon in the main story. It feels weird that you're the ONLY trainer besides the Champion to have 6 throughout the main campaign. I don't think Pokemon needs a kaizo difficulty or anything, but giving trainers better EVs and IVs, more Pokemon per team, more varied moves, and smarter Ai (one that switches more often in particular) would be super beneficial towards making the game more engaging for older kids, teens, and adult fans. And then of course, you can have a "simple" mode for young fans who would find the complexity frustrating. Boiling down a challenge mode to just "make the levels higher" is a fundamentally poor idea, but that's not the ONLY thing BW2 challenge mode does for as poorly handled as it is. Though unfortunately, I don't see a challenge mode in Pokemon happening any time soon, if only because the folks over at Game Freak are so rushed and overworked as-is to where the development time to make an actually fleshed out challenge mode just wouldn't be feasible I feel. It still sucks that the concept began and ended at BW2 and it was handled horribly, though. Also: fun fact about BW2 challenge mode! The stats between normal difficulty and challenge mode Pokemon are the exact same. The levels don't matter and if anything, if you play with level caps, you have an ADVANTAGE compared to normal mode. The only thing that challenge mode adds are increased held items, better trainer AI, and some more Pokemon and move variety. If they had done all that while ALSO scaling the stats properly and making the difficulty accessible right out the gate, I think it would've been a fantastic addition to the game, but. Bawomp.
fun fact: In B/W: you would meet the Nugget Brothers, who would give you a Nugget and Big Nugget. However, In B2/W2, you meet the Nugget Man and Nugget Boy! Its a really cool and unique way that B2/W2 shows the passage of time in Unova :)
One other thing to note about Triple & Rotation Battles is that unlike Singles & Doubles, the game's AI doesn't behave predictably; challenge runners routinely discover that the AI moves completely at random, making fights harder to manage.
I feel bad for Jade. She is so close to be a dragon and the game keeps kicking her to prevent it. I hope she evolves in time for the gym leader since it’s gonna be her & Aidens time to shine again.
@@billiezeiszler608 Mcfly is literally taking the spotlight most of the journey after Aiden evolved and stealing the show at this point. Plus Chugga seems to love having him in the front more even though when looking for a team member it backfires on him. But out of the three, I want Jade to evolve so badly.
@@billiezeiszler608 true. But Mcfly is too predictable and likely gonna be saved for the gyms Ace that is quad weak to it. Unless Chugga plans to make it a Mcfly solo the whole gym just to rush through it.
The point about making your own difficulty by your Pokémon choices is definitely something I agree with, and what's great about most Pokémon games is that no matter what team you pick, you can use your items, moves and smarts to get past any obstacle if you land on the right strategy. That's why I don't want the games to be too hard, because then you have challenges like Ultra Necrozma in USUM where some teams just cannot win without infinite PP stall through Revives or a cheesy strategy like Quick Claw + Toxic, which isn't particularly satisfying to pull off.
In UNecrozma’s case, I would suggest they add a way to easily grind around this point in the story for players who invested too much in a team that is hard countered by UNecrozma because they didn’t know what was coming. That way we still have one of the best challenges in the series (disregarding how it can be cheesed) while still not screwing over unlucky players. There. Not too hard to think of a solution. And no, we shouldn’t be avoiding grinding.
In my experience with hard modes, people really don't like playing suboptimally. They want the game itself to be a bigger challenge so they can throw the full weight of their skill against the problem and still be meaningfully challenged. This is why the toggleable EXP Share was so popular as a difficulty option: all you had to do was change an option in a menu somewhere and go back to playing the game as you normally would. Challenge runs get around the problem by changing the entire way you look at the playthrough, like how in a monotype run you're aware that your team isn't well-balanced but The Rules say you're Not Allowed to make your team more diverse. Even then, though, challenge runs are something you have to go out of your way to actively start, which means most casual players won't ever try one. Proper challenge modes should be accessible to even the casual player who just wants to customize their gaming experience. It's just, if you ever pass up a Pokemon because it's "too good and would make the game too easy", or pass up a move because "the game would be more fun if I'm not too strong", you're forcibly restraining yourself, stopping yourself from picking the right answer, and that feels bad. If the goal is to make the game more enjoyable, it becomes pretty self-defeating. The benefit of a genuine hard mode is that you don't feel like you're holding yourself back, because all you've done is change an option in a menu somewhere. Instead of saying "I'm struggling because I limit myself", you say "I struggle because the game is difficult" and have more fun as a result.
@@Blanktester685 A hard mode that finely-tuned in a game with so much customisation as Pokémon is just not going to happen. And if you struggle because you didn't pick the most optimal choice in this hypothetical hard mode, you're not going to swap out your team members (especially late in the game) - you're going to grind. That's less satisfying to me than trying to find a strategy that works with the team I have. But I do think there's room for the kind of challenge a hard mode would offer in post-game battle facilities like the Battle Frontier or this game's PWT. I would love for the Battle Frontier to return to scratch that itch. I also think it's criminal that the developers haven't incorporated an official randomizer mode. There is more that can be done to appeal to a wider variety of Pokémon players, for sure.
While I totally get the sentiment of modern Pokemon games taking away options, I also feel that the argument of "just use worse pokemon/moves" is a band-aid solution at best and a copout at worst. Artificially handicapping yourself is not the same as more challenging game design because of the fact that some Pokemon are in fact objectively superior to others. At that point, you're not really imposing restrictions on yourself; you're just intentionally sucking. If you look at it logically, the game isn't going hard on you; you're going easy on the game. Regardless of what tactics you choose, the game's tactics will remain the same, so it becomes less a question of "how hard do I want the game" and more a question of "how hard do I want to try". Better game design and more complex difficulty options are absolutely what's needed.
Ooooohhhh my god you can't believe how pleased I am to see this video, truly it is a balm for my soul after the viciously hellacious week I have had (that technically hasn't ended). You are genuinely a saint upon Earth, Chugga, and it's good to hear that your bedbug issue has been resolved
Living Dex Day 37 It's a wonder what one can accomplish in a week. I've finished all of Black 1 and am now catching up to this series in Black 2. I literally just got to Driftveil about an hour ago, and my team currently consists of Pignite, Whirlipede, Lilligant, Drilbur, Mincinno, and Mandibuzz. I'd say it's a pretty solid team, but I don't currently have a good counter to dragons which I will need eventually. I haven't looked ahead of where Chuggaa is either, so I guess I'll figure it out as I go. Also, the numbers are back baby lets go 543/649
I've found the best way to change the difficulty of a pokemon game - use more pokemon! More than just 6, and swap them out at the PC when need be. Splitting the exp between more pokemon makes you lower-levelled, even in mandatory exp share games. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to try out even more pokemon!
I get that Bianca mentioning Tynamo is probably supposed to hint that you can catch one here and tell you they are super rare but I took that to mean "Catch one for her and she'dgive you something" so yeah I hunted for a Tynamo and caught it for nothing.
I discovered the Red Shard man on my own time while talking to everyone in Nimbasa City. I was so happy to be able to make my team (at that point) even stronger! I’ve also gotten really close to the seventh gym since the last episode. 🤣 Probably gonna need to backtrack to find all the good stuff I might’ve missed.
There are always people who want challenges. They can impose their own self-restrictions all they want, but that won’t stop them from wanting the game to be harder by itself, be it with inflated stats or tougher restrictions.
I agree that making tougher restrictions (like how TTYD did with Double Pain(?)) is not possible with how Pokemon does it at the moment (although I don't think double damage mechanic is sustainable in Pokemon to be still be fun IMO).
Honestly, Emile. Your mindset about how people treat meta in pokemon is something that the vast majority of genshin players NEED to have drilled into their heads and why that game is definitely something you'd enjoy despite its flaws. Most of the playerbase always feel the need to shame people who use characters that are considered anything below a specific tier. At least in pokemon you don't have an avalanche of people coming at you for saying you like using a pokemon thats not considered "meta" in public.
And, we're back. Never had to deal with bedbugs before, but i cant imagine its fun. At least everyones doing alright now. Ah, Chargestone Cave. One of the coolest dungeons in the game. Also the place where i noticed my train every pokemon equally playing had left me a decent bit underleveled. I like that, actually. Makes otherwise trivial battles more interesting, even as it makes the gyms a joke. That talk of B2W2's nonlinearity is one of my favorite parts of these games. Black and White... are a straight line from start to credits. Sure, theres a few areas you can go back to once you get surf, but for the most part it's a fairly straightforward path, a far cry from the looping, interconected designs of the earlier regions. The sequels fixed that, more than we have even seen so far. On the topic of self-imposed challenges, while my current challenge is more grindy than anything, its still fun in its own way. Going through a new area with a team of, for the most part randomly selected pokemon is fun, because you never really know what to expect. I've been training my pokemon up to one level below the local gym leader's weakest team member, which meant that is was going through Chargestone Cave with a team of lv. 30s. That first Ace Trainer was quite the difficult fight, and then I reached the Excadrill trainer and realized my team was the exact wrong composition to take it on. It's a fun and interesting challegne, even if it does mean I spend dozens of hours massacering the local Audino population.
Despite the fact the Feather items aren't as strong as the Vitamins, I think they're still pretty useful -- super cheap and easy to collect, compared to the expensive and usually hard-to-obtain alternatives. Scarlet and Violet has really made me appreciate them the most, since they're also really good for just topping off stats when you want to save money on other items or you're trying for a very specific build.
20:05 I feel like difficulty is only a good thing for the series at this point. My first game was Pearl and I was like 7 and the elite 4 in that game was hard as balls for me. I had to borrow my brother's infernape to get through. So the games used to be hard enough to potentially alienate younger kids and they've just changed it. I don't think we'd lose anything ramping things back up to the gen 3/4 difficulty.
I appreciate you bringing up the self-imposed challenge of Pokémon games. First time I play a new Pokémon game, I like going slow and doing lots of grinding as a way to try out different teams and try out the new Pokémon added in. My second run through is when I start trying to challenge myself with set teams I get my friends to pick for me or only using the Wondertrade feature to randomize every pokemon I catch. 21:24 When I saw those three pokemon I tensed up instantly. Vicki wasn't playing around.
I am getting like, secondhand short-breath from the way Chuggaa talks, every time he runs on and tries to say everything in one breath, I want to just take a huge deep breath
20:51 you know I think I may be one of the few people who don’t care about difficulty things being “too easy” don’t bother me, I mean the stress from things being difficult I hate the feeling, now I CAN do difficult challenges (cough cough “After Alterna” splatoon3 cough cough) but I mean sometimes we play games to unwind after a stressful full day not to come back to even more stress.
One argument against the difficulty settings. You pointed out that "its built in where you can just use worse Pokemon to make it harder" My counterpoint to that is that you are then restricting the Pokemon that a player may want to use in a game. And even if someone does that, the mewer games are such a cakewalk that using "worse Pokemon" doesnt really apply anymore. I will agree that Pokemon games removing the options to use exp share and removing set mode is just insane and hurts the game for no reason
Ooh those pictures of your "thinking spot" look really nice! Lately I've been going on walks at a nearby walking trail and it's pretty relaxing. There's even a small pond there where I can just sit and chill!
*At the entrance to Chargestone Cave* *everyone is sleeping* Blaise: Wake up guys! Pignati: Huh!? What!? McFly: Where are we? What's going on!? Harmony: The Swadloons blocking our path have cleared out now. Aidan: Really? Jade: Hey you're right. They're all gone now. McFly: Wait, hold on. How long did it take for them to leave? Harmony: 8 days exactly. Aidan: Dammit, that was your guess Harmony. Pignati: Looks like you win the bet it seems. Harmony: It would appear so. However, since I have won this challenge, I believe I should be given a reward of some kind. Pignati: Well we never really said what the prize for the winner, so... Harmony: Do not worry. I have come up with a great prize that I wish to impart onto my fellow teammates; by sharing each of one's biggest embarrassing secret. Jade: Oh I like the sound of, wait what!?? Aidan: So your prize for winning is roasting us? Harmony: Precisely. Once we reunite with Shanir and Ontario, I will tell everyone's biggest secret. Pignati: Oh boy.
So there's an upcoming area where you can accomplish the requirements for the struggle medal the easiest way I've found. If you catch a level 29 litwick or above in celestial tower and battle other litwicks in the second floor (litwick has a 100% encounter rate in that one) there is a big chance that they will use imprison, since you'd have the exact same moveset as those litwicks you'd immediately use struggle the next move. Levels may differ, I'm remembering this at the top of my head
Chargestone Cave is one of my favorite spots in this game because not only is it a cool and unique concept for a cave, but there's a lot of tough battles here. It feels like a great way of showing how much you've progressed as a trainer
14:25 I lost my first attempt of a white 2 hardcore nuzlocke to my Crustle missing 2 rock slides in a row on the champion’s ace, allowing it to set up and sweep me. My pain was immeasurable
Weird to talk about pokemon not needing a hard mode in the one game that offers it. I think it's good that they did even if it was only as an NG+ like option. Shame it hasn't made a return since.
Yeah... that's what I was thinking as well. Next thing you know, in a (Ultra) Sun/Moon playthrough, he talks about how we don't have a champion feature where we actually do champion roles lol
NG+ for Pokemon games would be a very strange idea, considering Pokemon games only have *one* save file per cartridge. In fact, that's my problem with every mainline Pokemon game available: why do we have to delete our *one-and-only* save file just to play through the whole game(s) all over again instead of just preserving it on another empty save? Almost every single other RPG series (aside from the Inazuma Eleven series) in the world has more than one save file, so why not Pokemon games? Hell, like, not even Pokemon ROM hacks and fan games can escape this curse.
@@Loner098 never reset my Pokemon saves as you spend too much time on them and you never really finish them - with daily events, Battle Facilities and trying to complete the National Dex using other games of the same generation, it just feels every day there's something new to do. A reason too (even if may be scummy) why I'm fine with multiple versions, because that's the only way you can "replay" the games again without losing progress and still feel they're "necessary" playthroughs.
@@Loner098 That's because I play more on emulators, but I agree that's kinda scummy, and that's why extra save files would be much better, especially since like maybe the DS or 3DS days where there's more space store data in.
19:15 thank you Emile for explaining the best way to explain why Pokémon should be more customizable then just our characters or text boxes, and not get a difficulty setting ironically i was thinking the same thing about how ironic it was considering the game
About the electrical signals, the speed varies anywhere from 1m/s to 120 m/s (2 - 270 mph), but it depends on location, the type of stimulus, where it ends up in the brain (amongst many other things) :)
Dragon Warrior/Quest is the first game I know that has caves/dungeons with the music changing enough you hear it despite being the same sound, just deepened each time as you go deeper down.
Another note for fighting types: Fighting types are the second best type in Gen 5 (behind Dragon types), having a ton of really strong moves and pokemon of their type (many of which shaped the competitive landscape for Gen 5 Smogon and VGC). They are still a solid type from Gen 6 onward... since the addition of fairies didn't nerf them as hard as it did the dragon type (still being a top 5 type as of the current gen imo)
Level scaling isn't the only part of the difficulty changes though. They changed up movesets, gave more pokemon held items, and added new pokemon to gym leaders' and elite four members' teams. Someone did bring up that the stats were not changed, which is true. But that's an easy fix in the coding if they ever decided to do it again (which I guess they won't, but we always have fan games). Making more trainers have pokemon trained in EVs or having teams with 31 IVs would also scale up the difficulty. Not to mention better AI.
![In The Mistralton Sunlight - Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 [38]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/9DTfjWdSZvQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![In The Mistralton Sunlight – Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 [38]](/img/tr.png)
![Enigmatic N-counter - Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 [30]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mS_ksDdndo4/mqdefault.jpg)
Chuggaa passing over getting Bug Bite at the beginning just brings everything together.
Oh my gosh! This was recorded before the incident, so I didn't know!
@@chugga It's always better when its UN-intentional.
@@chugga has there been some kind of incident in the news recently? I don't get it
@@RustoKomuska Chugga had problems with bedbugs
@@_-ItsJustFlame16-_ ah right lol
Our king has returned after besting the bed bugs
There should be a bedbug Pokémon.
Jade eat them
Pignite and Jade kill them all
Ikr? 😂
Our liege has returned from the war of the bed bugs victorious! May his reign be eternal! Long live the king!
Note: Emile said in this video that fighting is weak to 3 types, which is true - however, one of those is Fairy, which was not introduced until XY. So in Unova, Fighting is only weak to 2 types (Flying and Psychic).
I believe fighting is also weak to ghost
@@millerkarageanes1562They’re not
@@millerkarageanes1562 Ghost is just immune to fighting type moves (normal moves too)
@@Jessica_Schweser I checked yep they’re not
So that was most likely an oversight on his part
Now that Mcfly has learned ice punch I guess we can officially say he's one cool guy.
Hearing that is chilling.
Good thing that bugs are weak to ice type moves!
Is anyone else gonna tell him or do I have to?
He's pretty Fly for a McFly.
@@SmolPotato8bugs are not weak to ice moves, you’re thinking of flying & grass types
Chandelure hopes Chugga is doing well
With love, Chugga’s pronunciation of Ampharos took 3 years off my life
LMAO same
That and Ferroseed. I don't mind off pronunciation, but these stab me deep.
Glad to see those pesky insects aren’t “bugging” you anymore. Glad to have you back as well
Get out. 👉🚪
So that’s why he chose not to teach Bug Bite
Bug off
Hopefully nothing will come crawling in any more
Booooooooooooo 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎
Chugga comes back from dealing with bedbugs & the first thing he does in this video is look at Bug Bite. You couldn't possibly make this up if you tried.
Keep in mind that he records these in advance
@@millerkarageanes1562in a way, that makes it better: more cosmic than intentional
Updated Win-Loss Ratios:
I'm glad you got those bed bugs sorted out, Chugga! It's also nice to see Jade and Harmony actually contribute to the team!
Pignati:
Wins - 109
Loss - 7
Ties - 1
94%
McFly:
Wins - 66
Loss - 10
Ties - 0
87%
Aidan:
Wins - 67
Loss - 6
Ties - 0
92%
Jade:
Wins - 23
Loss - 8
Ties - 0
74%
Harmony:
Wins - 16
Loss - 4
Ties - 0
80%
Also, we finally got our first tie! I knew including that section would matter!
I missed this series. It's more interesting than anything on TV right now! Glad that your house is bedbug free, Emile! 🥰
Practically everything on tv are "reality" shows, shows with a laugh track because they think the audience is retarded and that they know better what should be funny and advertisements lots of advertisements.
Honestly not a high bar to beat
@@TyroRNG you should watch its always sunny none of the bullshit
6:50 I really love the little animation touches, like how the small floating crystals start swaying when you run underneath them. A ton of care was put into this game.
"I don't need to be that afraid of Hone Claws, it's kind of underwhelming."
Immediately gets McFly crit one-shot by +Atk +Acc Rock Slide and nearly has Jade get one-shot right after.
McFly learning Ice Punch isn't all that surprising, but it's still nonetheless...
🕶
Cool
I could imagine Aidan and Harmony being rivals, especially with how Chugga describes Harmony.
You could make Pokémon more difficult by taking bad Pokémon and bad moves, sure… but I think some people want to try their best and still get challenged. It would be cool if Pokémon had a hard mode just to appeal to more players and give you the option of replaying the game being a different experience.
I got stun locked by how chugga said ampharos
I think I died a little inside upon hearing it.
I literally flinched that was horrible
Same here! I was like ‘Omfaross?’
I almost think it was on purpose. I just don’t see how anyone could be a part of this fandom as long as he is and also still think that’s how that’s said.
Given the many parodies of Xtransceiver I wouldn't be surprised if he was genuinely that evil.
With how good Driftveil music is, I feel like the Mistralton music gets HEAVILY overlooked. Its such a bop and for me is right up there at the same level of Driftveil. Unova just perfected pokemon music.
Emile, I imagine that you’ve heard this quite a bit but you’ve been a consistent presence in my life for over a decade now. Thank you for being you. I hope that life is treating you well (especially with the bed bugs!), and that B2W2 has been as exciting and fulfilling for you as it has been for us. Thank you so much for all these years of hard work entertaining your fans!
Now Emile can sleep tight and not worry about the bed bugs biting.
19:19 Sometimes the struggle of using a Pokmeon that's not that good is what makes the battle all the more satisfying when they do win. As someone who faithfully uses a Dunsparce every game i can, I've seen just how good it CAN be. I've seen Nuzlockes where people get stuck with Dunsparce, only for it to carry the team for a good long while, and that is what i live for. Moments where "its not that good" becomes "its surprisingly good".
You mentioned difficulty this episode, which reminds me that my favorite part of BW2's difficulty options is that the only difference in pre existing Pokemon are the levels. They genuinely forgot to increase the stats.
Wait really? I thought that by proxy of being higher levels they'd have higher stats???
@@Terumimi Nope! I figure they just went in and increased the trainers levels without adjusting anything else, they still technically do more damage (as level is calculated in the damage formula) but have the same defenses and speed stats. It's quite strange lol
actually ellen that's not the case. they also updated movesets (example: Roxie's Koffing getting Venoshock) and also gave them held items.
@@Ylurple Right, that's my bad haha, haven't played Challenge mode in a few years
They have better move sets, held items, new Pokémon and better AI, but you are right that their stats are the same.
Which funnily enough makes easy mode arguably harder than normal mode since you gain less exp (the exp gained stays consistent with their level) + since the AI is dumber it's harder to predict
In my experience with hard modes, people really don't like playing suboptimally. They want the game itself to be a bigger challenge so they can throw the full weight of their skill against the problem and still be meaningfully challenged. This is why the toggleable EXP Share was so popular as a difficulty option: all you had to do was change an option in a menu somewhere and go back to playing the game as you normally would.
Challenge runs get around the problem by changing the entire way you look at the playthrough, like how in a monotype run you're aware that your team isn't well-balanced but The Rules say you're Not Allowed to make your team more diverse. Even then, though, challenge runs are something you have to go out of your way to actively start, which means most casual players won't ever try one. Proper challenge modes should be accessible to even the casual player who just wants to customize their gaming experience.
It's just, if you ever pass up a Pokemon because it's "too good and would make the game too easy", or pass up a move because "the game would be more fun if I'm not too strong", you're forcibly restraining yourself, stopping yourself from picking the right answer, and that feels bad. If the goal is to make the game more enjoyable, it becomes pretty self-defeating. The benefit of a genuine hard mode is that you don't feel like you're holding yourself back, because all you've done is change an option in a menu somewhere. Instead of saying "I'm struggling because I limit myself", you say "I struggle because the game is difficult" and have more fun as a result.
Yeah, that's a huge difference. Our minds almost always tends towards META, (although it is more like METK/Most Effective Tactic KNOWN), as well as we want to not waste too much time. Result: People want to play good, and easily accessible strategies; a path with low resistance in short compared to returns. Why do you think Staraptor is so popular in Sinnoh? Because it's easy to access and is amazing through the adventure. We can go with moderately high resistance but oftentimes we want massive returns, like B2/W2 Volcarona, who is a beast in the lategame but very limited early on with only Signal beam, or Platinum Garchomp who is quite bad up until it evolves but then it becomes broken, again, following the return of investment problem.
That's how we work, we tend to choose what works and avoid to use what doesn't. And no, our will isn't so strong we'll always avoid the obvious solution; I remember in my last BIack playthrough that I wanted a Litwick, BUT once i reached Burgh i noticed how weak my team was to grass, so I catched a Darumaka to not needlessly struggle needlessly with Cheren. The problem is that the skill levels vary from mono nuzlockers to kids who still can't read, which indeed demands hard modes. Some games is so easy to implement is ridiculous to think it would ruin anyone's experience. And besides, we saw how forced easy mode ruined BD/SP. Besides, I don't think is a good idea to have a laughably easy game with access to competitive PvP, because the campaign just doesn't teach them to play well.
21:08 for the newer games with the automatic exp share, I like to play through with teams of more than six pokemon. It not only balances the experience you gain, but also lets me experiment and try new pokemon that I wouldn’t otherwise. It also has the added strategy of trying to figure out which six pokemon you want to use for a specific battle or area and figuring out which pokemon your items and TMs should go to. I’ve found that around 18 pokemon on my team works best for me personally, but other people may want to use more or less as they see fit.
BUT that's NOT a natural way of playing, is you going out of your way to make the game enjoyable. That's bad game design when people have to go OUT OF THEIR WAY to enjoy stuff. Btw, now every game is in switch mode instead of set one which also ruins a lot of the challenge and tempts people to avoid difficult events because of the turns spend in switching out. Also, there's something as AI, which can do better or worse things. People want pokémon to use their deeper tools instead of using mons without 4 moves constantly, as simple as that, to actually engage with the system. Also, it's not the same, it's a chain to yourself instead of proving you're good at the game, and sometimes it doesn't even work if the AI isn't good enough.
@@N12015 This. The comparison I make to this kind of self-imposed difficulty is this: you go to a restaurant and ask for a spicy dish, with the option to be spicier. When you ask for the spicier option after trying the first, the restaurant gives you the SAME dish, with the request that you bring your own ingredients to make it spicier yourself.
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy Nuzlockes and the like, but if its things like the option to go up against stronger or larger teams, the game should be providing that itself.
@@ShasOKais117they have Pokémon in the Tau Empire?
@@reginlief1 yeah
“The idea I had from the PC was someone else’s Idea” *uses Roc and McFly*
He resisted the medal's call, HE"S RECOVERING!
*at the end of the video*...aaaand I spoke too soon.
hey chugga if you wanna keep crunch on jade, don't remove it after she evolves. we're still at a point in the series where some level up moves can't be remembered if they're forgotten. crunch is one of those moves because it's only part of trapinch's learnset, not vibrava's or flygon's (learned this recently while playing along)
Fighting is my personal favorite type. They tend to be reliable sweepers or at least have fantastic coverage. When technical strategies aren’t working, just smack ‘em!
Plus, I love the idea of raw human willpower being put on the same level as the elements of nature, reminding us that we’re indeed part of this world, and not always a bad part.
When I think of a hard mode, I don’t think higher levels I think better AI for the trainers
They also have the whole EV and IV system in the game and barely use it for enemy trainers. They could easily make gym leaders have more buffed stats.
@@reaganspider200yeah and like… held items, which most trainers also don’t use. To give some credit here, hard mode does give gym leaders/e4 members some actual held items, but most games don’t bother (beyond maybe a sitrus berry lol). The AI in these games can actually be fairly smart too but they rarely use their full capacity. Even the champion doesn’t use all of the optimal settings in most games (there’s many fully functional but unused AI protocols that makes the AI pretty competent, like being more aware of its HP so it doesn’t throw by spamming swords dance at 1hp or instantly explode a full health Pokémon on a type resist). They definitely could make the games more interesting but they choose not to use their own tools lol
@@reaganspider200though as Nuzlockes have proven their perfect IV stats are equal to that of their normal mode level not hard mode
@@keebs5780Also hard mode has an additional Pokemon - Elesa can be hard in challenge mode even if you have a ground type because she has Joltik with Energy Ball there.
15:15 - Oooo, I think Dragon Quest 1 did that too, where the caves/dungeon theme got slower and lower pitched the further down you went in a cave or dungeon
It did! And I love it when games do that.
Bro got rid of the joltiks in his house and is back
lp length stats⏰:
total uploaded time 15h 25min 23s
average episode length: 25min 1s
min episode length: 16min 19s
lower quartile episode length: 20min 18s
median episode length: 23min 10s
upper quartile episode length: 28min 47s
max episode length: 47min 28s
Here’s a helpful tip to get the medal reward for using the move struggle, give a Pokémon the move Gyro ball because it only has 5PP go to the move deleter delete all of your moves except Gyro ball go back to the very first route in the game and spam the move until you run out of PP
Preferably on a newly caught Pokemon specifically for this purpose, rather than a team member lol.
Or assault vest and 4 status moves
@@MegaManNetworkOfCourse wrong gen. Assault vest got invented in X/Y.
0:21 And that's why training Volcarona is not a torture, just a bit tedious. You can indeed get signal beam without grinding, and the mon is so strong it can hold itself up until it gets fire blast and psychic.
Pokémon KOs: 289
- 239 Trainer KOs
- 50 Wild Encounter KOs
Party Pokémon KOs: 37
+ 6 Rental Pokémon KO'd
Escapes: 48
Implied Murders: 58
(Pokémon KOs started on screen, but finished off screen)
Bonus Sodas: 1
Repels Used: 65
Failed Captures: 8
Double Battles: 21
Triple Battles: 2
Switch Battles: 2
Tracker Days Off: 3
Kirby Cameos: 8
We have another new record, with 20 total Trainer KOs, this episode surpasses the last reigning king of Episode 33 by 1 KO!
That being put aside I have a personal kinship with this cave, as it was the first cave I ever experienced a blackout playing a Pokémon game. Granted I experienced it in Pokémon BW 1, but regardless this cave has always had a personal space in my heart.
10:07 fun fact: that excadrill knows HORN DRILL, i fought her not long ago and she wound up hitting me with it TWICE (i forget if she honed her claws beforehand)... last time i was sucker-punched this hard by some random trainer in a cave was the one random lady in the kalos mirror cave with the hawlucha
Funny, I fractured my ankle over a month ago, and there have been 2 or 3 situations to where I would have fallen, but there was always a muscle movement, or something that stops me from falling, or getting off-balance while standing on a walker, and I've wondered why. I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but especially since the fracture, I've been the soul of caution.
Doubt he will but hope Chugga sees this, we're barely halfway done through the year and it's already one of the harshest years in my life and Chugga's videos have always been the highlight of my day, thankfully I got some really good news the same day vids came back, and this LP has gotten me in the mood to play the entirety of gen 5 again, but first I have to scratch my itch of playing XCX first, and BEFORE THAT I have to finish TOTK
In this episode, most of Chugga's team went down in Friendship
Chugga!!!! Welcome home! Second time I wanna say that you missed a fact about the move synchronoise, Umbreon can learn it and is absolutely pointless since it's a dark type. Please include this very soon cuz I love listening to you explain things
My two cents on the Pokemon "hard mode": give us options for set battle and turning off exp share, give NPCs Pokemon with decent IVs and EV training, and let them hold items (not just the occasional berry). I honestly think that's all that'd be needed.
I think they also need to add another option that's between Set and Shift where you can switch Pokemon between losing Pokemon but not know which Pokemon is being sent.
And maybe I'm one of the few who thinks there should be customization for Exp Share, where you can choose any number of your party to receive Exp, but you don't gain anything more when you select it for a Pokemon, making it balanced for any party size IMO.
I’m just baffled at how people would be against it. He literally says “give us more options” and yet says a fundamental difficulty option would not be beneficial.
@reginlief1 Chugga seems to presume that how we build our teams is the inherent difficulty rather than options...I'd argue the fact that we need to self-impose challenges is a flaw in design as it's unintended.
I’d also want more trainers with more than one Pokémon, and gym leaders and elite four members with full teams. That’s the big stuff that I think a hard mode would be able to improve; letting me fight more than two or three trainers with a full team in the game.
Emile giving a deep dive into how the psychological profile he made up about this Pokémon affects the actions it takes in a battle, basing the psychological profile of the Pokémon off of the actions he told it to take during battle.
Me: uhhhhhhhhh
All this gen 5 has got me thinking, would anyone else want to see a Pokemon Conquest LP on the channel?
It's a fun spin-off and Chuggaa did say that he wanted to do more pokemon spin-offs in the future
I hope that we at least see more of the Mystery Dungeon series. That is probably the spin-off series that I enjoy the most.
I disagree with the argument against Pokemon having a hard mode. I think the reason a hard mode would work so well is by letting you use the strongest Pokemon with the most optimal movesets, or at the very least creative strategies that end up being pretty strong. Limiting yourself to worse Pokemon doesn't allow that to happen, and while it can force creativity it's a different kind of fun that a plain hard mode could provide. Also, having opposing trainers use more optimal strategies would be pretty cool to see
exactly no one would ever say to melee only in a game like halo 3 if you wanted it to be "harder". difficulty options should just be standard and its silly how gf still cant do it right when many fangames out there have.
Given Iris got promoted to the Champion's chair, Ice Punch is more helpful than you'd think (though that Dragon Dancing Haxorus is brutal).
There are people who haven't played
@@TKnHappyNess The game's also been out for over a decade. Even if you haven't played it yet, it still wouldn't be a spoiler by most reasonable people's definitions to give out details like that (learned that one from Spacebattles).
20:50 I disagree.
While I agree with everything you’re saying about using worse Pokémon or worse moves, or putting on self-imposed challenges, or saying that higher level scaling isn’t the answer… Yes, that’s all true.
But me personally, when I agree that this series needs harder difficulty settings, I mean they should make the AI better, give better EV or IV spreads to enemy Trainers, do a better job making battles use the game’s mechanics against you so you can learn how to use them yourself (like weather, certain held items, certain Abilities, certain moves, certain team comps, different types of battle and synergy, different strategies, terrains in later Gens, etc.)
The Alola games, especially USUM, did a great job at doing all of the above that I mentioned, through Route Bosses, Totems, and some Boss Trainers (like Guzma’s third fight and Rainbow Rocket.) But then they went back to NOT doing that in SwSh-onward (outside of some exceptions when they went WILD with BDSP’s E4/Cynthia fights and post-game Gym Leader/League rematches.)
Even competitive players in Gen 5, some of which got immortalized in the PWT DLC, admit that as much as they enjoy the series, it’s kind of easy because the AI sucks and most of the difficulty comes from figuring out competitive play.
I’m not saying the games should be Drayano-level hard from the get-go, I’m saying they should do a better job ramping up the difficulty since outside of cases like USUM and the late-game BDSP fights, most Pokémon games (most, Emerald and Platinum do add some cool aspects to some fights for instance) just rely on their shoddy AI and barebones boss fights to get by.
Even you’ve mentioned how bad the AI is sometimes. You pointed it out during Elesa’s fight in this playthrough with how many turns she fumbled!
BDSP’s issue for instance was 99% of the main game was baby easy with zero effort needed with no account for the new mechanics like the shared Exp. Share until suddenly the Pokémon League fights at the VERY END make things go from 0 to 100.
The Alola games are weird because I think they did a great job gradually ramping up the difficulty of their games while doing a better job helping you learn about many different mechanics through battles in the main game rather than having you figure them out blindly in the post-game, but the general talk about them amongst fans is either “THE ALOLA GAMES ARE BABY EASY OUTSIDE OF ULTRA NECROZMA” or “THE GAMES ARE VERY HARD FOR MAINLINE POKÉMON STANDARDS” where the latter is where I stand, but whenever I talk about it with most people they weirdly don’t relate at all half the time.
Anyway, sorry for the long comment. I know it’s very late, and not sure you’ll read it, but I wanted to give my two cents on this topic.
It’s crazy within his little break I finished the story and the post game of black 2 gotta say I appreciate chugga for reigniting my interest for this game and appreciate you for being a part of childhood🗣💯
The music in the lower levels of Chargstone cave sounds like some of the music in Dark Moon, I like it
I'm sure Aidan and McFly still have some beef after that tournament 😂
27:10 The Magmar claims more victims
(Every playthrough I've seen of this game, that Magmar has messed someone up)
I do believe the hard mode is still good even with those options you listed Emile. To speak about the reason I love Black 2/White 2 Challenge Mode giving the gym leaders better a new Pokémon with better coverage for their weaknesses is a fantastic plus that makes the fights feel much more strategic. Even in my randomizer nuzlocke runs of the games I sometimes don't randomize the trainers just so I can fight their buffed up teams and have to think a bit more about how to take them on. If they gave us more of that where the gym leaders had odd pokemon, still within their types, that cover the areas where they're weakest better then theirs no need for the challenge mode, but it would be nice to see the challenge mode available for the games where they're not doing that. You could absolutely do exactly what you're saying and just use suboptimal Pokémon and suboptimal moves, but I think giving the option to fight basic type locked fights where you can sweep through with a single Pokémon or the option to fight bosses where they have the out to what you may be using to counter the rest of their team is a wonderful addition especially for the veterans of the series that keep coming back out of a love for the games.
Agreed 100%. If even a _part_ of you knows that you're just holding yourself back instead of doing a challenging task, then you won't receive the same satisfaction. I've played Pokemon mods that are more challenging but fair, and they are _far_ more satisfying and hype than willingly shooting yourself in the foot even if the interface shows you that you have legitimate options. Imagine telling a boxer to try tying a hand behind his back and box a 12 year old instead of going against a boxer of at least his size and experience/intelligence.
@@neo-didact9285 I've done challenge runs where I gimp myself like that and you're right it's not the same satisfaction as having to fight something designed to be more challenging yet fair. It feels well earned, like you've truly accomplished something. Gimping yourself feels like you're just laughing at the game as you hop backwards and blindfolded through it.
The hard mode is fucked in black and white 2, where the mons stats don't go up with their level
Chuggaa is back, and this time he's exploring chargestone cave again, with a lot of ace trainers for more fun. And now the only new names for this episode.
I don't remember if I already did Ampharos, so let's do it here.
Ampharos=Pharamp, from phare (lighthouse) and ampère (the unit to measure electric intensity)
Magmar=No changes here
And that's it, Pignaty and Jade are close to evolve, I'm repeating myself but we'll see if next episode will be the one.
I want to start off by saying that I do agree to what you said. Levels alone aren't the solution to making Pokemon challenging or fixing the difficulty issues. However, I do disagree that Pokemon shouldn't have a difficulty mode. Instead, I do think GameFreak has to address the issue and make the games have options for more challenging fights in the game.
To explain, there's one primary assumption being made. That difficulty should only be accessible for a 2nd play through. I think a lot of the people complaining want a challenge from the start. Add onto that many people would prefer a 'no spoiler' run or not having to do a ton of research on Pokemon to figure out what's good. I don't know if a lot of players beyond the hardcore base would be willing to sink so much time into that research. It'd especially be difficult for a new game/1st run since most pokemon in a new generation are unknown. I know there's a good example of a highly competitive Pokemon in Violet/Scarlet that you wouldn't identify by looks. However, it quickly became a staple of the competitive Pokemon scene. Looks alone won't guarantee that a Pokemon is bad. Likewise, you don't know if GameFreak has improved or fixed the move pool of a previous Gen's bad batch. Likewise, as some commenters pointed out, gens 8 and 9 have made it so almost any Pokemon know is viable and the pool of 'bad mons' is quickly falling.
Plus, there's many people who don't like to do nuzlocks or other complex Pokemon alternative play styles. It isn't exactly a good solution to say "Well just do a nuzlocke" to people who might just want to challenge themselves using their full team and move pool. A restriction only works if it makes the game feel fun and it doesn't necessarily always do that. Especially now that nuzlockes have to find new rules to avoid the issue Violet/Scarlet creates in letting you pick the Pokemon. It's becoming more and more clear that GameFreak not only wants to limit your options, but forcibly make the games easier for people to play. As such, the restrictions will only temporarily fix the issue while the entire situation only gets worse in Gen X.
Likewise, I remember watching a video that does point a strong argument against forced handicapping. The video discussed how forcing yourself to not use Sonic Blade in KH Re Chain only took out a tool from your arsenal. The player is just as likely to find a new broken and strategy and use that. Ex. Vapereon using Signal Beam as a Pokemon move. It's got decent power, but you can't ever get a stab using that strategy. However, due to Vapereon's awesome special attack, the move is not hindered either by its type (arguably the worst type in Pokemon) or being on a different type Pokemon. Hence why it did so well in Clay's gym. Granted, Signal Beam is one of the better Bug type moves, but it's a fair starting point to show the issue. The player will innovate, but eventually draw a solid plan around those weaker moves and end up at the same place. Meanwhile, it could cause the player to feel unsatisfied as they're playing sub optimally to make an easy game harder. That's not making it difficult that's the opposite effect. You might have more innovation, but you're still left that feeling of being challenged at your BEST not your worst.
I also feel like the level situation is arising because of Scarlet/Violet's pseudo non-linearity. Sure, you can do the game's challenges in any order. However, the game caps all things to a specific level. As such, you're either going to do it as the developer's intended or you'll feel like certain tasks are jokes because you skipped an easy one. Alternatively, you'll do a hard one and then everything feels underwhelming elsewhere. They should have made different teams for these tasks to keep the game from feeling like you have to play as the game wants rather than do what you want. Instead, levels can be more flexible based on story progress to make the player's choices feel more organic and natural.
I think a simple solution is to create 4 teams for each gym leader. The first team is standard baby mons of the type. You then up their levels and EVs based on whether it is the 1st or 2nd badge with a minority improvement in moves. 2nd team is the mid-tier of those mons with the same approach for badges 3 and 4. 3rd team are the final forms with decent moves and fill in the same rolls for badges 5 and 6. Final team are now new Pokemon of the same type with better moves. They're designed to be a decent challenge that people can play against. Since GameFreak is moving away from gym trainers to only gym leaders, they could easily do this as they're losing three teams for each team to fill in for the gym leader. As for a harder difficulty mode, alter the EVs, add Held Items, improve the moves, and increase the levels by a few. Don't even need to necessarily change the team compositions if you plan it right.
In the end, though, my ramblings are just to showcase that a challenge mode isn't difficult to make. As such, I see no problem implementing it. I especially feel this is important as Gen 6 basically wiped out any sense of difficulty. Gens 8 and 9 also suffer from mixed difficulty as well since you have trainers that are good (Raihan) and ones that are jokes (Bea and Piers). With the joke ones, though, there's a clear solution and it's difficult to ignore that it's something you can and should do to win the game. Sorry if my thoughts though are a little jumbled up.
A slightly longer episode today! We must be getting some good stuff done today! Always welcome to see a new chugga video!
It's very often said that BW1 Unova is linear, but even it still has all the hallmarks of classic Pokémon regions (dungeons, field obstacles, secret areas, dowsing, urban facilities, etc.), so I still love exploring it.
I’d take that any day over the completely flattened regions of recent memory. Dungeons reduced to straight lines until they were just outright removed is so frustrating to see.
Chargestone Cave was always pretty nice with you had big open views of the floors below.
This was originally gonna be a reply to another comment but I ended up having more to say that I thought I would, lmao.
I actually disagree with Chuggaa that we shouldn't have a hard mode in Pokemon. I don't mean just higher levels, though part of it is that, but what about more diverse movesets and teams? Give trainers more unique Pokemon and coverage, especially the gym leaders. Make them less likely to be single-handedly swept by a single type, or give them coverage for their weaknesses. Even though BW2 challenge mode isn't great, it at least does that much right in giving gym leaders more varied teams and moves to make strategy more complex. What about giving trainers actual EVs and IVs? Not maxed out, but enough to make them noticeably stronger. Making the AI more likely to switch out in battle if it detects a bad match-up? Making it so that you aren't still fighting 3-Pokemon teams by the time you're at the 7th gym? Giving the Elite 4 full teams for that matter?
I also should be able to use my favorites without the game becoming mind numbingly easy. I love Haxorus but I can never use it because it makes the entire game a joke. I love Archeops but using it also makes the entire game a joke. Where's the line between "use your favorites" and "just don't use strong pokemon"? And for that matter, no amount of self-imposed restrictions will make the average battle any less samey. I'm tired of running into Plasma grunts with the exact same team compositions, movesets, and team sizes. Sometimes it's less about the challenge itself, and more about how so many fights feel identical to each-other, which can make the games... difficult to replay without speedup at times just to get through the more tedious and uninteresting fights. I know not EVERY trainer can be interesting, but words cannot describe how much I loathe the fact that both Hugh and Cheren have extremely similar team compositions in their respective games, and how they could've given Hugh in particular literally anything else but he's screwed out of it because for whatever reason he never catches more than 4 Pokemon in the main story. It feels weird that you're the ONLY trainer besides the Champion to have 6 throughout the main campaign.
I don't think Pokemon needs a kaizo difficulty or anything, but giving trainers better EVs and IVs, more Pokemon per team, more varied moves, and smarter Ai (one that switches more often in particular) would be super beneficial towards making the game more engaging for older kids, teens, and adult fans. And then of course, you can have a "simple" mode for young fans who would find the complexity frustrating. Boiling down a challenge mode to just "make the levels higher" is a fundamentally poor idea, but that's not the ONLY thing BW2 challenge mode does for as poorly handled as it is.
Though unfortunately, I don't see a challenge mode in Pokemon happening any time soon, if only because the folks over at Game Freak are so rushed and overworked as-is to where the development time to make an actually fleshed out challenge mode just wouldn't be feasible I feel. It still sucks that the concept began and ended at BW2 and it was handled horribly, though.
Also: fun fact about BW2 challenge mode! The stats between normal difficulty and challenge mode Pokemon are the exact same. The levels don't matter and if anything, if you play with level caps, you have an ADVANTAGE compared to normal mode. The only thing that challenge mode adds are increased held items, better trainer AI, and some more Pokemon and move variety. If they had done all that while ALSO scaling the stats properly and making the difficulty accessible right out the gate, I think it would've been a fantastic addition to the game, but. Bawomp.
Good to see you back after getting your bedbug problem taken care of.
fun fact: In B/W: you would meet the Nugget Brothers, who would give you a Nugget and Big Nugget. However, In B2/W2, you meet the Nugget Man and Nugget Boy! Its a really cool and unique way that B2/W2 shows the passage of time in Unova :)
Nope, it was 2 regular nuggets.
Glad to see you went back for those shards, kinda surprised you didn't get them before lol
One other thing to note about Triple & Rotation Battles is that unlike Singles & Doubles, the game's AI doesn't behave predictably; challenge runners routinely discover that the AI moves completely at random, making fights harder to manage.
I feel bad for Jade. She is so close to be a dragon and the game keeps kicking her to prevent it. I hope she evolves in time for the gym leader since it’s gonna be her & Aidens time to shine again.
Jade and Aiden? What about Mcfly?
@@billiezeiszler608 Mcfly is literally taking the spotlight most of the journey after Aiden evolved and stealing the show at this point. Plus Chugga seems to love having him in the front more even though when looking for a team member it backfires on him. But out of the three, I want Jade to evolve so badly.
@@Benicthehedgehog I was saying that because Mcfly has an advantage against the next gym.
@@billiezeiszler608 true. But Mcfly is too predictable and likely gonna be saved for the gyms Ace that is quad weak to it. Unless Chugga plans to make it a Mcfly solo the whole gym just to rush through it.
Aiden is the epitome of "The boss after he joins your team"
The point about making your own difficulty by your Pokémon choices is definitely something I agree with, and what's great about most Pokémon games is that no matter what team you pick, you can use your items, moves and smarts to get past any obstacle if you land on the right strategy. That's why I don't want the games to be too hard, because then you have challenges like Ultra Necrozma in USUM where some teams just cannot win without infinite PP stall through Revives or a cheesy strategy like Quick Claw + Toxic, which isn't particularly satisfying to pull off.
In UNecrozma’s case, I would suggest they add a way to easily grind around this point in the story for players who invested too much in a team that is hard countered by UNecrozma because they didn’t know what was coming.
That way we still have one of the best challenges in the series (disregarding how it can be cheesed) while still not screwing over unlucky players.
There. Not too hard to think of a solution. And no, we shouldn’t be avoiding grinding.
In my experience with hard modes, people really don't like playing suboptimally. They want the game itself to be a bigger challenge so they can throw the full weight of their skill against the problem and still be meaningfully challenged. This is why the toggleable EXP Share was so popular as a difficulty option: all you had to do was change an option in a menu somewhere and go back to playing the game as you normally would.
Challenge runs get around the problem by changing the entire way you look at the playthrough, like how in a monotype run you're aware that your team isn't well-balanced but The Rules say you're Not Allowed to make your team more diverse. Even then, though, challenge runs are something you have to go out of your way to actively start, which means most casual players won't ever try one. Proper challenge modes should be accessible to even the casual player who just wants to customize their gaming experience.
It's just, if you ever pass up a Pokemon because it's "too good and would make the game too easy", or pass up a move because "the game would be more fun if I'm not too strong", you're forcibly restraining yourself, stopping yourself from picking the right answer, and that feels bad. If the goal is to make the game more enjoyable, it becomes pretty self-defeating. The benefit of a genuine hard mode is that you don't feel like you're holding yourself back, because all you've done is change an option in a menu somewhere. Instead of saying "I'm struggling because I limit myself", you say "I struggle because the game is difficult" and have more fun as a result.
@@Blanktester685 A hard mode that finely-tuned in a game with so much customisation as Pokémon is just not going to happen. And if you struggle because you didn't pick the most optimal choice in this hypothetical hard mode, you're not going to swap out your team members (especially late in the game) - you're going to grind. That's less satisfying to me than trying to find a strategy that works with the team I have.
But I do think there's room for the kind of challenge a hard mode would offer in post-game battle facilities like the Battle Frontier or this game's PWT. I would love for the Battle Frontier to return to scratch that itch. I also think it's criminal that the developers haven't incorporated an official randomizer mode. There is more that can be done to appeal to a wider variety of Pokémon players, for sure.
While I totally get the sentiment of modern Pokemon games taking away options, I also feel that the argument of "just use worse pokemon/moves" is a band-aid solution at best and a copout at worst. Artificially handicapping yourself is not the same as more challenging game design because of the fact that some Pokemon are in fact objectively superior to others. At that point, you're not really imposing restrictions on yourself; you're just intentionally sucking. If you look at it logically, the game isn't going hard on you; you're going easy on the game. Regardless of what tactics you choose, the game's tactics will remain the same, so it becomes less a question of "how hard do I want the game" and more a question of "how hard do I want to try".
Better game design and more complex difficulty options are absolutely what's needed.
Chugga’s tempting the artists with the in depth description of Harmony’s personality like a set of keys
Technically, Fighting-type Pokemon in this game are only weak to TWO types because Fairy-type isn't introduced until Kalos in Gen 6
Ooooohhhh my god you can't believe how pleased I am to see this video, truly it is a balm for my soul after the viciously hellacious week I have had (that technically hasn't ended). You are genuinely a saint upon Earth, Chugga, and it's good to hear that your bedbug issue has been resolved
I always love that each of your team members get a personality in the Pokemon LP's. It's really charming and gets us all invested in them!
Living Dex Day 37
It's a wonder what one can accomplish in a week. I've finished all of Black 1 and am now catching up to this series in Black 2. I literally just got to Driftveil about an hour ago, and my team currently consists of Pignite, Whirlipede, Lilligant, Drilbur, Mincinno, and Mandibuzz. I'd say it's a pretty solid team, but I don't currently have a good counter to dragons which I will need eventually. I haven't looked ahead of where Chuggaa is either, so I guess I'll figure it out as I go.
Also, the numbers are back baby lets go
543/649
I've found the best way to change the difficulty of a pokemon game - use more pokemon! More than just 6, and swap them out at the PC when need be. Splitting the exp between more pokemon makes you lower-levelled, even in mandatory exp share games. Plus, it gives you the opportunity to try out even more pokemon!
Its great listening to chuggaa's enthusiastic energy again ❤
I get that Bianca mentioning Tynamo is probably supposed to hint that you can catch one here and tell you they are super rare but I took that to mean "Catch one for her and she'dgive you something" so yeah I hunted for a Tynamo and caught it for nothing.
I discovered the Red Shard man on my own time while talking to everyone in Nimbasa City. I was so happy to be able to make my team (at that point) even stronger!
I’ve also gotten really close to the seventh gym since the last episode. 🤣 Probably gonna need to backtrack to find all the good stuff I might’ve missed.
Speking of missed things I believe you missed the Zinc in the trash on the right side of the PWT building
There are always people who want challenges. They can impose their own self-restrictions all they want, but that won’t stop them from wanting the game to be harder by itself, be it with inflated stats or tougher restrictions.
I agree that making tougher restrictions (like how TTYD did with Double Pain(?)) is not possible with how Pokemon does it at the moment (although I don't think double damage mechanic is sustainable in Pokemon to be still be fun IMO).
Honestly, Emile. Your mindset about how people treat meta in pokemon is something that the vast majority of genshin players NEED to have drilled into their heads and why that game is definitely something you'd enjoy despite its flaws. Most of the playerbase always feel the need to shame people who use characters that are considered anything below a specific tier.
At least in pokemon you don't have an avalanche of people coming at you for saying you like using a pokemon thats not considered "meta" in public.
And, we're back. Never had to deal with bedbugs before, but i cant imagine its fun. At least everyones doing alright now.
Ah, Chargestone Cave. One of the coolest dungeons in the game. Also the place where i noticed my train every pokemon equally playing had left me a decent bit underleveled. I like that, actually. Makes otherwise trivial battles more interesting, even as it makes the gyms a joke.
That talk of B2W2's nonlinearity is one of my favorite parts of these games. Black and White... are a straight line from start to credits. Sure, theres a few areas you can go back to once you get surf, but for the most part it's a fairly straightforward path, a far cry from the looping, interconected designs of the earlier regions. The sequels fixed that, more than we have even seen so far.
On the topic of self-imposed challenges, while my current challenge is more grindy than anything, its still fun in its own way. Going through a new area with a team of, for the most part randomly selected pokemon is fun, because you never really know what to expect. I've been training my pokemon up to one level below the local gym leader's weakest team member, which meant that is was going through Chargestone Cave with a team of lv. 30s. That first Ace Trainer was quite the difficult fight, and then I reached the Excadrill trainer and realized my team was the exact wrong composition to take it on. It's a fun and interesting challegne, even if it does mean I spend dozens of hours massacering the local Audino population.
Good thing you got your bed bug problem taken care of
Despite the fact the Feather items aren't as strong as the Vitamins, I think they're still pretty useful -- super cheap and easy to collect, compared to the expensive and usually hard-to-obtain alternatives. Scarlet and Violet has really made me appreciate them the most, since they're also really good for just topping off stats when you want to save money on other items or you're trying for a very specific build.
20:05 I feel like difficulty is only a good thing for the series at this point. My first game was Pearl and I was like 7 and the elite 4 in that game was hard as balls for me. I had to borrow my brother's infernape to get through. So the games used to be hard enough to potentially alienate younger kids and they've just changed it. I don't think we'd lose anything ramping things back up to the gen 3/4 difficulty.
I appreciate you bringing up the self-imposed challenge of Pokémon games. First time I play a new Pokémon game, I like going slow and doing lots of grinding as a way to try out different teams and try out the new Pokémon added in. My second run through is when I start trying to challenge myself with set teams I get my friends to pick for me or only using the Wondertrade feature to randomize every pokemon I catch.
21:24 When I saw those three pokemon I tensed up instantly. Vicki wasn't playing around.
Fun fact: by odd coincidence, this episode is the exact same length as episode 34 (31:52).
You’re back! And hopefully with no more bugs!!
I am getting like, secondhand short-breath from the way Chuggaa talks, every time he runs on and tries to say everything in one breath, I want to just take a huge deep breath
20:51 you know I think I may be one of the few people who don’t care about difficulty things being “too easy” don’t bother me, I mean the stress from things being difficult I hate the feeling, now I CAN do difficult challenges (cough cough “After Alterna” splatoon3 cough cough) but I mean sometimes we play games to unwind after a stressful full day not to come back to even more stress.
I’m glad to hear those bugs are going to bed….. *FOREVER* AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
One argument against the difficulty settings. You pointed out that "its built in where you can just use worse Pokemon to make it harder"
My counterpoint to that is that you are then restricting the Pokemon that a player may want to use in a game. And even if someone does that, the mewer games are such a cakewalk that using "worse Pokemon" doesnt really apply anymore.
I will agree that Pokemon games removing the options to use exp share and removing set mode is just insane and hurts the game for no reason
Ooh those pictures of your "thinking spot" look really nice! Lately I've been going on walks at a nearby walking trail and it's pretty relaxing. There's even a small pond there where I can just sit and chill!
*At the entrance to Chargestone Cave*
*everyone is sleeping*
Blaise: Wake up guys!
Pignati: Huh!? What!?
McFly: Where are we? What's going on!?
Harmony: The Swadloons blocking our path have cleared out now.
Aidan: Really?
Jade: Hey you're right. They're all gone now.
McFly: Wait, hold on. How long did it take for them to leave?
Harmony: 8 days exactly.
Aidan: Dammit, that was your guess Harmony.
Pignati: Looks like you win the bet it seems.
Harmony: It would appear so. However, since I have won this challenge, I believe I should be given a reward of some kind.
Pignati: Well we never really said what the prize for the winner, so...
Harmony: Do not worry. I have come up with a great prize that I wish to impart onto my fellow teammates; by sharing each of one's biggest embarrassing secret.
Jade: Oh I like the sound of, wait what!??
Aidan: So your prize for winning is roasting us?
Harmony: Precisely. Once we reunite with Shanir and Ontario, I will tell everyone's biggest secret.
Pignati: Oh boy.
So there's an upcoming area where you can accomplish the requirements for the struggle medal the easiest way I've found. If you catch a level 29 litwick or above in celestial tower and battle other litwicks in the second floor (litwick has a 100% encounter rate in that one) there is a big chance that they will use imprison, since you'd have the exact same moveset as those litwicks you'd immediately use struggle the next move. Levels may differ, I'm remembering this at the top of my head
Chargestone Cave is one of my favorite spots in this game because not only is it a cool and unique concept for a cave, but there's a lot of tough battles here. It feels like a great way of showing how much you've progressed as a trainer
14:25 I lost my first attempt of a white 2 hardcore nuzlocke to my Crustle missing 2 rock slides in a row on the champion’s ace, allowing it to set up and sweep me. My pain was immeasurable
Weird to talk about pokemon not needing a hard mode in the one game that offers it. I think it's good that they did even if it was only as an NG+ like option. Shame it hasn't made a return since.
Yeah... that's what I was thinking as well.
Next thing you know, in a (Ultra) Sun/Moon playthrough, he talks about how we don't have a champion feature where we actually do champion roles lol
NG+ for Pokemon games would be a very strange idea, considering Pokemon games only have *one* save file per cartridge. In fact, that's my problem with every mainline Pokemon game available: why do we have to delete our *one-and-only* save file just to play through the whole game(s) all over again instead of just preserving it on another empty save? Almost every single other RPG series (aside from the Inazuma Eleven series) in the world has more than one save file, so why not Pokemon games? Hell, like, not even Pokemon ROM hacks and fan games can escape this curse.
@@Loner098 never reset my Pokemon saves as you spend too much time on them and you never really finish them - with daily events, Battle Facilities and trying to complete the National Dex using other games of the same generation, it just feels every day there's something new to do. A reason too (even if may be scummy) why I'm fine with multiple versions, because that's the only way you can "replay" the games again without losing progress and still feel they're "necessary" playthroughs.
@@zjzr08But don't you have to *pay* up more money just to "make" another save file?
@@Loner098 That's because I play more on emulators, but I agree that's kinda scummy, and that's why extra save files would be much better, especially since like maybe the DS or 3DS days where there's more space store data in.
>Says Trapinch attack stat is going to be downgraded
I thought the strat for Trapinch was NOT evolve it to Vibrava until it learns Earthquake 🤨
19:15 thank you Emile for explaining the best way to explain why Pokémon should be more customizable then just our characters or text boxes, and not get a difficulty setting
ironically i was thinking the same thing about how ironic it was considering the game
About the electrical signals, the speed varies anywhere from 1m/s to 120 m/s (2 - 270 mph), but it depends on location, the type of stimulus, where it ends up in the brain (amongst many other things) :)
Dragon Warrior/Quest is the first game I know that has caves/dungeons with the music changing enough you hear it despite being the same sound, just deepened each time as you go deeper down.
Another note for fighting types: Fighting types are the second best type in Gen 5 (behind Dragon types), having a ton of really strong moves and pokemon of their type (many of which shaped the competitive landscape for Gen 5 Smogon and VGC). They are still a solid type from Gen 6 onward... since the addition of fairies didn't nerf them as hard as it did the dragon type (still being a top 5 type as of the current gen imo)
20:05 I caught that TF2 reference you big mean mother hubbard.
Level scaling isn't the only part of the difficulty changes though. They changed up movesets, gave more pokemon held items, and added new pokemon to gym leaders' and elite four members' teams. Someone did bring up that the stats were not changed, which is true. But that's an easy fix in the coding if they ever decided to do it again (which I guess they won't, but we always have fan games). Making more trainers have pokemon trained in EVs or having teams with 31 IVs would also scale up the difficulty. Not to mention better AI.