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Do you miss having to physically catch mythical Pokemon?

HeroLinik

To this day, he still can't beat Air Man...
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    Back in the days of Gen III and Gen IV (and to a lesser extent, Gen V), whenever we got a mythical Pokemon, we would get a special item that allows us to go to a special location such as the Member Card for Darkrai and the Eon Ticket for the opposite coloured eon. There, we would often uncover lore about the mythical in question or even the region before we encounter the Pokemon in question before attempting to catch it in a battle not unlike those against standard legendaries, or in some cases like Deoxys, attempt to solve a puzzle before confronting the Pokemon.

    Now when it comes to Mythical Pokemon, they just feel more like DLC where they give us the Pokemon directly, which in my opinion seems to take out a lot of the fun of Mythical Pokemon because there's this special something about exploring an unexplored location to track it down, which could expose some more lore about the Pokemon as stated earlier. Does anyone miss the old way where they gave us an item and we had to catch the Pokemon? I sure do, because it was a great way for the mythicals to feel connected with the region rather than just be tacked on as DLC.
     
    I do! The Mythical Pokémon's areas weren't all that interesting, but I wish they'd developed them more and kept that up rather than going in the complete opposite direction and just giving us them over mystery gift. I mean, just give us the items over mystery gift instead and let us figure out where the Mythical Pokémon is. Is that so hard?
     
    I was never able to even get event Pokemon until the 3DS, when I was able to connect games to wifi. I had an extreme amount of difficulty doing that with the DS for some reason.

    But I would prefer to have quests instead of just getting it. It would add more playable content, and I feel like those Pokemon deserve them given their status.
     
    I mentioned this is another post in PGC, but the special areas really made the Pokemon even more special. For me, I don't know why, but I always wanted to visit these locked places and exploring them (even though there was hardly anything there) was a part of the reason I wanted to get the mythical Pokemon so much. I guess it's cause I always wanted to discover all the secrets of Pokemon games but I digress, really, the mythical Pokemon distributions ate boring and lazy nowadays imo.
     
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    Can I offer something of a counterpoint to this?

    On older games now you have all these areas that are either inaccessible or just not really worth anything without the event, like the rock where you had to take Oak's Letter in Platinum, all the extra islands in Emerald, or Liberty Garden in Unova. If you either missed the event due to not being able to purchase the games on release, or you're just playing the games again at a later date, suddenly your game feels incomplete.

    So by distributing the mythical pokémon directly rather than having specific locations for them to appear, it makes the game in a sense more egalitarian by not making it feel like you're missing out on something important as much as their just being a nice addition for that one time when they're distributed. I stopped playing at Gen V because I didn't want a 3DS. Now they're releasing a 2DS that doesn't have a weird design I'm interested again - that most of the games won't have all these inaccessible areas is a plus for anyone like me, or just anyone replaying the games I would think.
     
    Can I offer something of a counterpoint to this?

    On older games now you have all these areas that are either inaccessible or just not really worth anything without the event, like the rock where you had to take Oak's Letter in Platinum, all the extra islands in Emerald, or Liberty Garden in Unova. If you either missed the event due to not being able to purchase the games on release, or you're just playing the games again at a later date, suddenly your game feels incomplete.

    So by distributing the mythical pok?mon directly rather than having specific locations for them to appear, it makes the game in a sense more egalitarian by not making it feel like you're missing out on something important as much as their just being a nice addition for that one time when they're distributed. I stopped playing at Gen V because I didn't want a 3DS. Now they're releasing a 2DS that doesn't have a weird design I'm interested again - that most of the games won't have all these inaccessible areas is a plus for anyone like me, or just anyone replaying the games I would think.
    I think you missed the point haha. You can have an item that lets you access these areas where Mythical Pok?mon exist, and distribute that over the Mystery Gift. That's a lot more interesting than just distributing the Pok?mon itself. I agree that having to physically go to an event to get a Pokemon is bad, but there are more interesting ways of doing it than just handing over the Pok?mon itself.
     
    I think you missed the point haha. You can have an item that lets you access these areas where Mythical Pok?mon exist, and distribute that over the Mystery Gift. That's a lot more interesting than just distributing the Pok?mon itself. I agree that having to physically go to an event to get a Pokemon is bad, but there are more interesting ways of doing it than just handing over the Pok?mon itself.

    Na I was still referring to mystery gift rather than the physically going to events thing, which was always and will always be terrible unless you live in the city where the events happen, as only <1% of parents would even consider going out of their way for a Pok?mon.

    I would imagine I'm probably in a minority view anyway, but it just frustrates me that these areas are inaccessible apart from the one time the item is given out. It absolutely makes it more special (Getting Darkrai and Shaymin in Platinum from their respective locations was far cooler than getting the Shiny Pichu or Mew in HgSs) but then after that save is deleted it makes it feel like the game is impossible to complete. I have a Rotom in my current Platinum team and I know that room is just behind a wall in the Galactic Eterna Building, or that the rock way out on Route 224 has a hidden purpose that can't be used ever again.
     
    I think you missed the point haha. You can have an item that lets you access these areas where Mythical Pok?mon exist, and distribute that over the Mystery Gift. That's a lot more interesting than just distributing the Pok?mon itself. I agree that having to physically go to an event to get a Pokemon is bad, but there are more interesting ways of doing it than just handing over the Pok?mon itself.

    When I started doing events this was back in Gen IV when Wi-Fi was a thing, so I had no idea of what the Gen III and previous events were like. What I always think of is massive crowds of people turning up to the venue, and then there's some kind of competition that happens, like trying to find all the Pikachu in the store, and whoever succeeds gets to do the event, somewhat similar to what happened with the PokePark 2 launch event. Now you just go there, wait in the corner, get your event Pokemon, and leave. I'm not sure if that was still the case with the Gen III and previous events, but those events were supposed to get people together to talk about Pokemon, and it's a shame that these things don't happen anymore.
     
    I miss having them in the games, even if they're blocked away by layers of code...which are easily stripped away with code devices like Action Replay. I think one of the reasons I never felt like Sinnoh had "too many Legendaries" is because they were all available in the game in some form or another (barring Manaphy, anyway) and had their own little sidequest/area to go through. Even Manaphy required you to go through an entire game just to get its egg, so it's not like it was totally irrelevant either. Mystery Gifts...eh, they're just so impersonal; they break the immersion in the world. Some random lady standing in the Pokemon Center or Pokemart gives me a Level 100 something or other I can't get anywhere else that could be better than my entire team if I've just started. Because of course that would happen. Hm.

    So yeah, I miss having Legendaries - I am not calling the mythicals, because it's a stupidly banal distinction to make when half the mythicals should be Legendary and half the Legendaries should be mythicals - like that in the game. But I do not miss having to catch them, because I have always had very little patience for cheating Legendaries with abysmally low catch rates and an allergy to anything but the Master Ball I am trying to save for a specific cheating Legendary who cheats even more.
     
    Imo there's too many events, but that's just my 2 cents.
    Legends aren't legends anymore... Not only there's too many events for them, but there is too many legendary Pokemon too. I miss when we had like 3 big legends and a trio.
     
    Imo there's too many events, but that's just my 2 cents.
    Legends aren't legends anymore... Not only there's too many events for them, but there is too many legendary Pokemon too. I miss when we had like 3 big legends and a trio.
    I hadn't really thought about that in the context of this thread but I agree with you on that, haha.
     
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