INTMD — The Book of Wobbuffet

Pokemon Sword — The Third Session

This FarFetch’d is judging you. As all birds do.

Last time, I lamented how I’ve been in this Pokemon Sword game for 4 and a half gosh darn hours and haven’t entered the first Pokemon Gym in the Galar region. That finally gets rectified in this third session.

I played a quick session off-stream just to find some more Pokemon and defeat a few trainers I skipped, aaaand brought a few more Pokemon that I caught in Pokemon Go! over the last few days. The gyms in this game are different from the older games but borrow ever-so-slightly from them as well as the Sun/Moon generation.

Before taking on the Gym Leader, you have to complete a Gym Challenge, which in my case involved herding Wooloo’s into a area where they’d be counted. It reminded me of the goat herding minigame at the start of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. As you herd the Wooloo, some Yampers (aka the cutest got-dang Pokemon of all time) scare the Wooloo around so you have to work around them, and also battle a few trainers.

Compared to the “every gym has a puzzle” system of the majority of this franchise, and the absolutely rock-stupid “Hey bro let’s make a soup with some ingredients bro” challenges in Sun/Moon, this is a welcome compromise of expanding beyond just walking in, battling, and leaving.

The Galar Region is a representation of England. I have yet to see a sign like this in-game. Photo by Ian Stannard via Wikimedia Commons.

I also encountered my first Galarian variant of Farfetch’d, and some kind of chinchilla Pokemon that put me through the absolute ringer when it comes to catch rates. This game is ruthless. You have to not only work to get wild Pokemon into a catchable state, you will burn through Pokeballs at a rate that decimates your willpower. Trainers give you much more money when you win battles, so I’m guessing this is how the developers at Game Freak decided to “balance” this. That’s a bad idea.

All the same, atrinette, FieryFangBanger, zergoholic, and newcomer ilikeundertale123 all stopped by to say hi, gave me my 150th follow on my channel, and I’ve made it to the next town over with Gym Leader Nessa awaiting me.

Check out the third session below. If you enjoyed it, do me a solid and subscribe to my YouTube channel, and give me a follow on Twitch. And if you really enjoy my content, feel free to subscribe to me on Twitch as well. If you have Amazon Prime, you can make Jeff Bezos pay for your subscription every month instead of spending your own money.

Calling it now — there WILL be a Pokemon episode of the anime with this title. I’m beating them to it.