My name is “New Leaf Cat Trainer”, I am a Pokémon trainer from the Pardia region. As you can see, I am also a 10-year-old veteran who has been playing in various leagues for more than 20 years, but still looks as gorgeous and lovely as a flying flower.
Since I was a child and can remember things, I have felt a bit inferior because of this name that does not seem to carry my parents’ beautiful expectations and has a strong purpose.
But when I first saw the combination of “Jingxiang, Xiaofu, Panghu” , I have to admit that at least their aesthetics are quite online.
Oh, by the way, these three Pokémon were brought by the principal of our local high school “Orange Academy”, Claver. According to him, every child who enters school can choose one of the three as their initial partner. However, in my more than 20 years of “Pokémon life experience”, this type of Pokémon, which is known as the “Three Royal Families” in other regions, is very rare, and their racial value is only second to the Quasi-God’s 520 +.
I have some doubts that Claver is my biological father.
It’s not without basis that he would say this. Before going out on the adventure , Claver grabbed me and asked me to go upstairs and check my luggage carefully. He also “happened” to have something to say to my mother.
Thanks to “biological dad” for the new leaf cat, it’s so cute
Like many inexperienced trainers, my first opponent was also a rich second generation in the village. But let me tell you, this little girl who lives in the biggest house in the village only paid 300 yuan to buy three ordinary red and white balls after losing to me. She was really stingy.
Shortly after leaving the village, I also spent the price of a sandwich to subdue a god beast that looked very fierce, but unfortunately, no matter how I please him later, this big brother will only act cute and be a mount most of the time.
But Gu Ladun, look at how they can fly
As an adult, these are some of my grumbles about 30 minutes into the Pardea area.
But let’s stop complaining about those child-oriented content here. After all, this is a Pokémon that carries many children’s dreams. Let’s have a good chat about how to play this ambitious ninth generation Pokémon.
The true “open world”
Although my purpose of departure this time was to go to school, school life did not become a constraint. Most of the time, we did not need to go to school. Shortly after the start of the school year, Principal Clavell announced an extracurricular activity with no restrictions on motivation or action process, and only set a simple goal: to find our own “treasure”.
This very abstract treasure fits perfectly with the open and free map of this work.
Compared to the previous movie “Arzeus” which divided the entire Xicui region into 5 major regions, “Zhu/Zi” is undoubtedly the true open world. The entire Pardia region has a complete large map, and there is no need to read the map specifically when traveling between different towns and roads.
After absorbing many successful experiences from “Pokémon Sword and Shield”, “Pokémon Follow Music”, and “Arceus”, GF has created a seamless and vast world of game content with various Pokémon scattered throughout it, just like the classic OP in the “Pokémon” unprinted animation.
Come and conquer Pokémon! Whether it’s a volcano , water, grass, or forest , whether it’s soil, clouds, or that girl’s mini skirt.
Pokémon often live in groups of three or five in every corner of the Padia region, they have their own ecosystem, love to eat dolphins always lazily walk on the grass, even if someone approaches, there will be no very intense reaction, the house bird small arrow sparrow is agile and high-spirited, often far away can be found and rushed towards you, different Pokémon will have corresponding reactions to various actions of the trainer.
In between Pokémon, the stronger Pokémon after evolution will also serve as the leader of the tribe, actively protecting those weaker tribesmen.
According to different versions, new concepts “ancient species” and “future species” have also appeared in this work. Ancient species are mostly more wild in shape, while future species are mostly mechanical (steel-based), and a richer ecosystem is further expanding the worldview.
In addition to the filling of the Pokémon ecosystem, in order to adapt to the open world gameplay, the basic gameplay of “Zhu/Zi” has also undergone significant innovations – without the ancestral air wall, we can climb mountains in a similar way to card bugs by walking on relatively flat planes.
Pokémon lives in the real world, not in the dark thunder in the grass. Dropping a ball from behind Pokémon can trigger a sneak attack.
If we don’t want to be discovered by some sensitive-smelling Pokémon, we still need to bend down and sneak into the grass to approach.
In this work, a let’s go system similar to automatic combat has also been added. By pressing the R key on the map, the first Pokémon in the team can take the initiative to attack and automatically complete the battle.
The route of conquering Pokémon by going up the mountain and down the sea is exceptionally free, which also allows us to no longer strictly follow the process of conquering the game. The process of exploring the world in “Zhu/Zi” is roughly divided into three branches – “Legend Road, Champion Road, and Stardust Road” .
Fight against the treasure master Pokémon in the region, search for the legendary 5 seasonings, and then unlock map abilities such as high jump, gliding, surfing, rock climbing, etc. for your unique designated “transportation pet”, Gulton. This is the legendary road.
Challenge the Dojo Master who guards each town, collect 8 Dojo Badges, and ultimately defeat the Four Heavenly Kings and Chief Champion of the Pokémon League, reaching the pinnacle of the Pokémon Trainer. This is the path to the championship.
Defeat the dominant villain “Tianxing Team” in this work, eliminate the power of the captains of the five major sub-teams, and find the story behind the establishment of Tianxing Team and the interference with the order of the academy. This is the path of Stardust.
With minimal guidance, we can all successfully complete these three paths and devote ourselves wholeheartedly to the core gameplay of Pokémon, including conquering, cultivating, and battling. Countless generations of Pokémon have ultimately proven that this old gameplay will never go out of style. It is also an open world, where we fight and conquer those Pokémon we have never seen before. Watching the atlas fill up little by little is much happier than the canned game of clearing strongholds and question marks on the map.
Perhaps “Zhu/Zi” still has a taste of experimentation in a strict sense, and I also have many complaints about the shortcomings of open world.
For example, ecology only exists between trainers and Pokémon. Different Pokémon have almost no interaction with each other. For example, it is clearly written in the guidebook that Mililong will parasitize in other fish Pokémon. This ecology is also reflected in the battle with the fake dragon master. Mililong has operated the eating roar to fight, but on the actual map, we can still see that all Mililong live independently.
For example, the popularity of the entire map is actually much lower than that of previous works. There are not many NPCs in the town who can actively communicate, and we can only actively enter functional buildings such as shops and classrooms. This “bare” world did not give me a sense of immersion in Parthia.
In short, GF has realized that its core competitiveness lies in “fighting, conquering, and cultivating”. The gameplay of collecting Pokémon around the world is undoubtedly very interesting, but GF and Pokémon still have a long way to go before building a truly “open world” where trainers and Pokémon can form a bond.
Unexpected joy in the plot (some non-critical spoilers warning)
Unlike the previous Pokémon’s “becoming a trainer, defeating the villain team, defeating the dojo master, and finally becoming the champion”, which drives players with a fixed purpose, I think the story of “Zhu Zi” is a “pleasant surprise”.
For example, when I first met Star Team, I thought this might be the lowest level of Pokémon series villain gang.
They are composed of students from Orange Academy. The worst thing the team members have done is to climb over the wall and skip class, disrupt class order, and even have more pure intentions than Musashi Kojiro. Before every battle, they will make a funny star out of thin air, and after defeat, they will politely say “Today is also a bitter day.”
With the defeat of more and more Tianxing team captains, the past of these bad kids is gradually revealed – more than a year before we embarked on the adventure, Orange Academy had a very serious campus bullying phenomenon. Some people were bullied because of their eccentric personalities, and some were isolated because they stood out from the crowd. Tianxing team was composed of marginalized people in the school.
In order to resist bullying, they drove the modified and exaggerated Tianxing team car (which actually added a Pokémon as a power source), dressed in self-made exaggerated “special attack uniforms”, and honed their Pokémon battle skills like real-life gangsters. They also agreed to a Pokémon battle with the students involved in bullying – the Tianxing Battle.
Those students who participated in bullying dared not fight back and dropped out one after another. The former principal resigned, and the former captain of the Tianxing team was arranged to study in another region. The remaining Tianxing team was entrenched in various parts of Padia, building high walls and building defenses until the new principal, Claver, took office.
The heartwarming thing is that during the process of “destroying” the Star Team team base, the new principal Claver will also disguise himself as the styling punk Nie Kai to provide help, just like when I was in high school A cute homeroom teacher who has a generation gap but tries his best to get close The same. At first, he thought the Star Team was the one involved in bullying. After getting closer to the truth, he also fell in love with being Nie Kai, guiding these naturally good children out of the wrong path.
Finally, the Tianxing team achieved a happy ending – the former captain returned, the punishment of the players was cancelled, and they formed a club to guide the Pokémon battle under the suggestion of the principal.
Also, there is senior Pop, as the son of a local Pokémon professor, he did not inherit his father’s/mother’s mantle to become a league champion or complete a guidebook. Instead, he traveled around the world searching for the five most precious seasonings. I don’t know if he was holding the script for “The Little Master of China”.
As I helped Pap slowly collect the seasoning, this story slowly unfolded.
It turned out that his partner Pokémon was seriously injured before, and even the elf center could not be healed. He found that in an ancient book, it was recorded that as long as he collected five legendary seasonings, he could heal all the pain in the world.
When sharing sandwiches made from legendary seasonings with each other, Pop also talked about his past stories with the Godfather. It was Pokémon’s company that helped him get through the loneliest time. The trivial daily stories did not make me, as a player, want to fast forward. Instead, the very pure bond between people and Pokémon reminded me of a lonely afternoon when I was alone at home. I opened the “XX in One” cartridge on GB and met my first yellow version of Pokémon, Pikachu.
Therefore, this empathy makes me happy as I watch Godfather Ao’s body gradually improve.
But in the final battle, Pop’s Pokémon level was higher than the Four Heavenly Kings, which still made me suffer
As a Pokémon work for all ages, even for children, the story of “Zhu/Zi” does not have many heavy and profound parts. It’s like reading a fairy tale book. No one will abandon their partners, and justice will eventually triumph over evil.
Thanks to the progress of the plot, the cutscenes in “Zhu/Zi” have complete actions and rich micro-expressions, making almost all characters come alive. It is these people who make people laugh or feel warm that make this adventure story more human.
Why do I find too much crystallization more interesting than maximization and MEGA evolution?
The CTB-like system in Arzeus was not adopted in the orthodox ninth generation, and the combat system in Zhu/Zi is still the same as all generations since X/Y, with some balance adjustments (such as the weakening of the characteristics of the eighth generation leader Cang Xiang), plus a system with regional characteristics – too crystalline .
At the beginning of the announcement, due to the overly cost-effective special effects and the “hat” with no design sense, the too-crystalline system was once called the most perfunctory special system by many Pokémon players.
However, based on my more than 20 hours of NPC battle experience in the first playthrough, I believe that Tai Jing Hua is a regional characteristic system that balances balance and fun, and will bring richer battle strategies for future battle environments.
Tai Jing Hua is a special system that “can only be used once by a Pokémon in a battle”. The maximum bonus brought by this system is that the attributes of the Pokémon will also change accordingly, and the power of the moves corresponding to the Tai Jing attribute will become stronger. This is a subjective effect.
For example, I have a trembling salamander with a too-crystalline attribute of “insect”. Its dual attributes of “poison + electricity” cause it to be countered twice by superpower moves, and the most deadly thing is that it is countered four times by the popular ground-based Pokémon in the battle. After being too crystalline and becoming a bug attribute, the power of the largest blind spot ground-based move will be halved, which can instantly reverse the situation when participating in joint defense.
This is just a roadside pet I grabbed casually. It’s best for players to wash away the bugs that are everywhere in the streets
However, for a dual-attribute Pokémon like the Steel Armor Raven, which has full resistance to “flight + steel”, a single attribute after too much crystallization will weaken certain defensive abilities.
Of course, the essence of the Tai Crystal System lies in the offensive end – every Pokémon can learn the move “Tai Crystal Burst”.
The effect of this move is somewhat similar to “Awakening Power”, which can change the attributes of the move under certain conditions to achieve blind spots on the attacking end of the battle. Compared to the Awakening Power, which is classified as a special attack move and has a troublesome attribute judgment (based on specific individual values), Taijing Burst is simple and easy to understand. It can also convert the damage type of the move with the highest value of one’s own physical attack/special attack, that is, whether it is a special attack or a physical attack, one can improve the attack range by learning Taijing Burst.
Compared to Maximization, there is no three-round time limit for Ultra-Crystallization. Unlike the MEGA evolution system that only a few Pokémon can enjoy, all Pokémon can undergo Ultra-Crystallization. Unlike MEGA evolution or Maximization, which violently increase the racial value of Pokémon, this system is integrated into the lowest level of logical attribute restraint of Pokémon.
It can be imagined that appropriate crystallization will bring spring to many weak attributes. In the battle, more variables and possibilities bring richer playability and fun.
If we look at “Zhu/Zi” from the perspective of an IP that has sold over ten million copies of each work, there is no doubt that it has many minor flaws.
For example, the visuals and performances have come to the 3D era, but “Zhu/Zi” still doesn’t have even a little bit of tone and sound. Watching the characters on the screen lip-synching from afar is still very out of place.
For example, the design of Pokémon has lost its fantasy flavor and is becoming more soulless. The new Pokémon in “Zhu/Zi” is unlikely to leave a deep impression on me.
There are also poor game graphics brought by weak technical strength, a large number of Mosaic in the distance, a blurry texture in the close-up, and complex scenes will often encounter frame number problems, even if they value gameplay and story more and ignore game graphics, such as me. After watching Mosaic and dropped frames for a long time, I still feel dizzy.
However, the above shortcomings seem insignificant before the huge progress of “Zhu/Zi”. As an ordinary “Pokémon trainer” rather than a GF shareowner, I am glad to see that this IP has some “enterprising” qualities in the ninth generation of “Pokémon”.
Whether it is the Padia region that finally provides a complete and fulfilling open world, it gives me a quite immersive experience in this adventure, and every interaction with Pokémon is like experiencing it firsthand.
It was GF’s breakthrough in storytelling that moved me with this somewhat different “middle school life”.
Or it may not be a violent increase or decrease in values, but a too-crystalline gameplay designed from the bottom-up attribute conflict system.
I can finally say that sentence from the bottom of my heart – “Zhu/Zi” is not far from the real “Pokémon” in my heart.
