Lord Glenn

The entirety of Sky Battles just serves to illustrate Game Freak's lack of common sense. Levitate should be an innate property of things that can fly/hover, not just an ability. Gyarados is a fish and can't learn Fly, but it can magically participate in an aerial battle just because it has the typing? And yet Gengar can't, despite having Levitate. And Beedrill has wings, but posesses neither Flying-type nor Levitate, when it's honestly more suited to a Sky Battle than Gyarados is. Such stupidity.

I get the feeling that this is going to end up being a pretty common set, though after consideration, Energy Ball doesn't seem completely necessary. Psychic and Moonblast will still hit anything 1x (plus STAB) that isn't Steel/Ground, of which there are only two members any way. (Granted, Excadrill probably is enough to warrant keeping the move...) I'll probably still end up running it this way though, if I use Gardevoir. ------------------------------ I'm relatively new-ish to building more focused teams outside of simply having a diverse line-up. I probably won't be doing any ranking matches or anything with the team, just the various Battle facilities in the game. That being said, I'd still like to up my game a bit, have a well-rounded setup, and still mix in some of the Pokemon that I like, too. Right now, I've got Scizor (Swords Dance set) and Houndoom (Mixed/Special, Moves TBD*) that I know I want to use. I've got a handful of ideas for possibilities for the remaining slots, but I don't know which options provide the best synergy. (*I've boiled the possibilties (currently on Gen IV) down to Thunder Fang, Crunch, Dark Pulse, Flamethrower/Overheat/Fire Blast, Sludge Bomb, Will-O-Wisp, and Nasty Plot, and I do want to run Houndoom as Mixed - it's got a perfect or near-perfect (30 or 31) Atk IV, a perfect Special Attack IV, and it's Hasty - but I just don't know which moves to pick outside of having one of the Fire-type moves. Should I take Crunch / Fire Blast / Sludge Bomb / Thunder Fang? Thunder Fang / Dark Pulse / Overheat / Nasty Plot? Crunch / Fire Blast / Sludge Bomb / Nasty Plot? I don't really know enough as to which would be the best - obviously, Houndoom's still got a better Special Attack stat so Dark Pulse would be preferred over Crunch, but Crunch has a higher BP than TFang, 100% Accuracy, and STAB, and, like I said, I do want to run it Mixed...) Here're the other suggested 'Mons I've been thinking of to complement the above two. The list is somewhat long, mainly because I don't know what combination would actually work best - any suggestions you all could pass on would be appreciated: Aerodactyl Cloyster Crobat Dragalge Dragonite Dusknoir Espeon Gardevoir Gengar Gliscor Jellicent Jolteon Swampert Tentacruel

Isn't there an area of space in the middle of the screen that is restricted from having the template go into it? I know that Ryrumeli gave me this image for FE8, and I do believe that he said that the area of black couldn't have anything from the template extend into it. If that is indeed true, making the circles big enough to fully contain the numbers would have resulted in the circles going above that boundary.

It's an updated and finalized design of the old FE4R template, yes. And since FE4R is long since dead, once I was able to fix it up, I offered it to Agro (only really possible thanks to Jubby's discovery of being able to increase the number of tiles for the frame, otherwise it would have needed severe editing.)

I'm glad that there are so many being reported. I would much rather the playerbase have choices to use their favorite Pokemon in Mega form than for Game Freak to only code in a total of 10 and screw over people. (That being said, I would also much rather it be available to like 75% of all of the fully-evolved Pokemon than whatever lower percentage it actually is.)

I haven't been paying large amounts of attention to all of the various leaks and whatnot, but has there been any information about a feature similar to the Unova Link appearing in X/Y? (Mainly the stuff with the different modes and the version-"exclusive" sharing/unlocks.) (I'm assuming not, since, despite the fact that X/Y are almost like Pokémon's version of Awakening, it does seem like some features were just disregarded or only a shadow of what they could (and should) be.)

There's a reason for the lack of announced information - Game Freak/The Pokémon Company/Nintendo purposefully set up a worldwide release to try and allow everyone to have the same experience of going in not knowing much of anything (as opposed to Japan getting the game and everyone else knowing everything by the time the games were localized). So, outside of the few things they might announce over the next 9 days, it's going to be what's out there right now and any stuff that gets leaked that shouldn't be in the meantime. You'll just have to live with that. :/

Prior to reading a statement by Mr. Masuda, I would have said XX and XY (back when we thought the symbols on the Japanese logos were DNA and not... whatever the hell they actually symbolize in relation to Mega Evolutions), since I had hope that Game Freak wasn't so... dull and uninspired when it came to the new games. ...And then I read that X and Y were literally named for the coordinate axes. What little hope I had diminished even further. If there's another game tied to X and Y, I'll now go XZ and YZ instead of just plain Z.

Zubat/Golbat/Crobat - Night Slash (via Breeding: Farfetch'd, Skarmory, or Honchkrow) Scizor - Meteor Mash (Probably by Move Tutor?) (Kinda impractical - no one would use it over Bullet Punch anyway)* Aerodactyl - Brave Bird, Head Smash (Suggested by a thread I read a while back, somewhere) (Seconding) Togepi - Poison Sting (Start) Lugia - Hurricane (Level) Altaria - Blizzard (by TM), Powder Snow (Level), Icy Wind (Move Tutor or via Breeding: Skarmory) Zangoose - Cut (HM) Lunatone - Moonlight (Level), Dark Pulse (Level, TM, or Move Tutor) Solrock - Morning Sun (Level), Flare Blitz / Flame Charge / Flame Wheel (Level) (Pick one of the three - I can't really decide which fits it better) Regice - Icicle Crash (Level) (Natural by its appearance, completely impractical though) Registeel - Meteor Mash (Level) (If you add one to one, have to add one to the others) Regirock - Rock Wrecker (Level) (If you add one to one, have to add one to the others) *EDIT - Though, I really do like Woodshooter's Crabhammer suggestion. I'd almost rather have coverage than a bigger STAB move that wouldn't get used anyway.

I suppose there is a problem with Cross Chop, as stated by its description: "The user delivers a double chop with its forearms crossed. Critical hits land more easily." Serebii says this of Doublade: "It is capable of carrying out intricate attacks by telepathically coordinating its two blades to deliver twice the slice in battle." To me, that sounds like Cross Chop would be an ideal fit for Doublade, if the bolded word was changed. Of course, I also feel that Gallade should have access to the move too, but we all know that Game Freak and common sense are almost antonyms.

I... really wish that Honedge didn't evolve now. Though, I suppose the upside to this is that it will probably learn Cross Chop.

If Cobray shows up, as Cam theorizes (and I believe as well), it'll most likely be the Alpha-universe version of Cobray, who's currently Ingram's replacement as a Time Diver. As such, it's possible that he's outside of the whole universe cycle thing that Euzeth reveals - perhaps he's able to jump between universes across spacetime and thus wasn't "reset" like (most) everyone else. If Cobray shows up in the OGverse, he'll probably arrive with the Dis Astranagant in tow to begin with. (Considering that each new game kinda tames the power of the mechs, it's possible he could even show up at the start of 3rd OG. Though, I could see how plot-wise, they might wait until later in the game to bring him and the Dis into the universe.) That being said, the better question is whether there will be any interaction between Ing and Cobray - not in dialogue, mind you. Ing is a clone (doesn't Euzeth actually say that he's based on Alpha!Ingram *because* of the Time Diver link?) and Cobray is also a clone, one that's already bonded with Ingram as a matter of fact. Is Ing's presense what has been keeping Cobray from entering the OGverse? Will Banpresto allow two pretty "hax" mechs to exist in parallel (Ex-Exbein and Dis)? Or, is it possible that, just like how Ingram and Cobray were merged, something will happen plot-wise and Cobray will show up and merge with Ing to save one or both of their existences? At your last question, I honestly think that Ing is going to be Cobray's OGverse expy (i.e. no Cobray native to the universe). They both have similar origins - they're both originally clones of Ingram, they're both kind of amnesiac / they predominantly go by names that aren't actually their own, their mech progression is relatively similar, etc. That's in part what makes me feel that the speculation above makes a ton of sense and that my latter two questions may end up coming to light.

Square's projections also don't necessarlily equate to what they needed to sell to break even. 3.5m might have been a "failure" by not reaching Square's outlandish projections*, but it still might have been enough to break even. *Tomb Raider opens the best out of any game in the series and Square laments that it didn't sell more and complains about lost money from their western projects during financial calls, but conveniently neglects the fact that they've been hemmoraging money from Versus XIII/XV since 2006 with nothing to show for it. I seriously want to know what these executives and projectors are smoking in the games industry with all of these outlandish expectations. I tend to agree with Jim Sterling's opinion on this matter - if Dark Souls can sell a couple million copies and be a financial success that the company is overjoyed about but Tomb Raider is a failure, then something needs to change for the bigger publishers. You know, like controlling your budgets and not expecting that the game conforms to 4k resolution with bloom lighting or pumping out "A" or "AA" titles to fill in inbetween your "AAA" releases (and space them out a bit more than normal). Or, you know, not releasing a "AAA" game in late November when there are 12 other "AAA" games coming out at the same time, possibly even in the same week. EDIT - As for Capcom in particular, I have no sympathy. If they fail, then they fail. I will cry no tears. The same applies to pretty much any studio out there. (Heck, I almost *wish* it upon some of them some days... *glares at SEGA*)

To further this, there's also a few other differences: 1) There's a difference between making something from scratch and taking existing resources and editing them. 2) There's a difference between putting something up for free usage and making something expressly for a project (either yours or for someone else - regardless of whether you volunteered it, were asked nicely if you could make it, or were contracted to make it). In the case of the latter, if Arch (for example), wants an entire set of hand-crafted-from-scratch weapon icons to reskin every single one of FE7's original ones from me and I make them expressly for him, then those aren't exactly fair game for the world to use. If I were to downsize FE10's entire iconset to GBA size so that people making hacks that might want to use them could, then that's different. That's a resource, not a "commission." The problem here is that most of the stuff that they've used falls under the latter and not the former. The works were for personal projects, expressly for creators that requested work, for personal practice, or were posted with the notice that you must expressly get permission to use them since they were from the artist's personal files and were originally posted only for the purposes of critique. This is not to say that I personally feel like anything can be done about this, since they obviously haven't bothered to attempt to contact any of the people who created the works. However, they have to be getting the works *somehow* as in the case of the most recent theft, Origin of Creation has only been officially posted on Cafe, here, and made viewable through its FEE3 video (which probably contained links back to here). Either they're getting it directly from here or someone's downloading it and uploading it without consent to another location where the creator(s) are getting their hands on it.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that alternate evolutions were brought in (outside of Eevee, that is) for Pokemon that already existed in a supposed final stage of evolution. (So, Golbat -> Crobat doesn't count, and neither does Clamperl. Heck, I'll throw out the Hitmons too.) Otherwise, Slowking, Bellossom, Politoed, Gallade, and Froslass wouldn't exist. The precident is there, so it's technically feasible. Realistically? Probably not - you'd probably be more likely to see a Mega Dragonite that changed up how it looked than an entirely different means of evolution from Dragonair.

The full type chart has been uploaded to the official site (which also confirms the CoroCoro scans) (here: http://www.pokemonxy.com/_ui/img/_en/art/Type-Matchup_chart_EN.pdf ) - of note, at the bottom, apparently Electric-type Pokemon are no longer afflicted by Paralysis? (Or was this added in Gen V?) Kinda disappointing that Steel was the only prior type that had its multipliers change for the new chart - there are other types that really could have used it. I mean, Poison is only effective against two types, and there are significantly better options to hit those types with anyway! Heck, if you wanted to nerf Steel, make it weak to Electric-type moves. The only bigger guy that doesn't get hit by it is Excadrill. (And Empoleon gets hit by the nerf bat, unfortunately.) EDIT - #GameFreakWhyCantYouActuallyBalanceAnythingThatNeedsIt

A complete whitewash and balance fix is about the only viable solution I can see... which automatically means that Game Freak won't have the stones to do it. They've continually been contradictory when it comes to balancing things. They realize that Psychic is too dominant, so they bring in Dark and Steel as counters (even though it was limited in scope in Gen II). But, they then continually inflate ridiculously strong legendaries and pseudo-legendaries, give some Pokemon amazing abilities while giving others abilities that make them unusable, continue to keep Stealth Rock as broken as it is, but only now are offering a "counter" for the overpowering Dragons (which, as I am predicting, isn't going to be as dominant of a counter as they're thinking it will be - Dragons have a wide array of moves at their disposal, not just STAB, meaning that Fairy's immunity to it is heavily diminished - another type with SE against it will help somewhat, though), etc. Honestly, I'd just rather Game Freak make the changes that would improve the game as a whole (not just the competitive meta) and tell everyone to just "DEAL WITH IT" to fix what's broken. I've about lost my faith in their ability to improve the series on multiple levels. At this point, it just feels like they're flying by the seat of their pants just doing whatever they feel like instead of legitimately moving the series forward. If you want something more concrete than that... I honestly don't know where I'd start outside of posting any of the documents that I've typed up over the years or some of the posts I've previously made in the board here. They're basically an amalgamation of all of the stuff I'd personally change were I in charge of the series (and hopefully, the majority of the changes would make sense and be in a positive direction). EDIT - Oh, and it would certainly help people get more into the metagame if it didn't require either "cheating" or massive sinks of time to breed for IVs and moves and EV grinding; my suggested solution to that is simply to normalize all IVs at 31 during competitive battles (including things like the Battle Tower), as I mentioned here.

The music's wonderful (though I've not heard the original, so to me, it just sounds like a great composition), but what really caught my eye was Elfire's icon. Is it another one of Solum's? (Actually, that last question goes for Praesidia too.)

I'm fine with 90% of today's Pokémon Direct news. An online, cloud box, under perfect conditions, is a great idea. (Well, unless you have multiple siblings and you're all sharing one bank of boxes - that's just asking for headaches.) More Mega Evolutions is good - the more that have them, the less of a waste of time the mechanic will seem like. (There's just no point in introducing the mechanic if only a small fraction of Pokémon can even make use of it.) Though, I would have honestly preferred that it wasn't for starters. The new consoles are meh to me, but I'm sure that younger kids will clamor for them. I'm kinda annoyed that Game Freak brought the Gen I starters in, especially since they get Mega Evolutions too. Right now, it seems like they're drawing the focus away from the new starters. However, it's a decent marketing tactic, since it can draw on the nostalgia factor to try and draw more of the old diehards back into the fold. The thing that really grinds my gears (though, it was still expected) is that you can only transfer from Gen V, despite all of the Gen IV games being developed on the same hardware as Gen V. It's not like Gen V removed mechanics from IV, so I fail to see why they couldn't have just let it go the whole way back to Diamond and Pearl outside of the fact that Game Freak has continually shown that they're simply inept half of the time.

I think that the bigger reason why remakes of Ruby and Sapphire (/Emerald) won't be made is because the window of opportunity to time it to meet their tenth anniversary has come and gone. (FireRed and LeafGreen can be excused as not coinciding on an anniversary since they're remakes of the very first titles - I would think that any other remake would be better timed to its anniversary.) Of course, that might not be the be all and end all to the situation - maybe it just happened to be a coincidence that HG/SS came out ten years after the originals. The other issue would be one of timelines. The games' lore expressly states that FR/LG (as they retcon R/B/Y) and R/S/E take place at the same time, with HG/SS (as they retcon G/S/C) and D/P/Pt taking place 3 years later, B/W taking place a few years after that, and B2/W2 taking place 2 more years after that. Remakes of R/S/E, if made today and featuring connectivity to the most recent games, would cause a huge time paradox problem. There would be at least a 7 year gap between the times depected in the games. You would almost HAVE to make sequels akin to the new 3DS Zelda where the region is mostly the same, but updated and with tweaks all over the place for it to fit in the modern era. (And this is only counting the main games, too.) The other, slightly off-topic point I have is based on the linked article. I personally think that the Swords of Justice are going to factor in to X/Y somehow (even just as a mini-event) and shatter the whole "unique to Unova" thing. X/Y are based on France, and the Swords of Justice are based on the primary characters from Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, a novel obviously heavily related to France. It really only seems natural for the two to intertwine at some point. (Maybe it would only end up being a minor cutscene where if Transfer ends up being implemented and you send over all four and have them in your party at a certain location, you get to see it.)

Oh hey, I recognize Pascal! I always did enjoy watching that you put up a long time ago.@Eric - Maybe they've applied the Status Weapon patch and given it Sleep? Consider me interested, by the way. Too many interesting hacks to watch for and not enough time to play any of them @_@

The thing that really grinds my gears about the 2nd OG DLC (which I forgot to mention above) isn't that it's Shu's Route and should have been in the game to begin with - honestly, I'm fine with it being DLC. (And, heck, I'd love to see some DLC that just adds some mechs to the available pool (make it 2nd Playthrough+ or something if you're worried about balance), for that matter. I want my Wildschwein back, nao!) It bugs me that, after seeing the preview with Granworm Sword and it's new animation, I now can easily feel that the development team hit a deadline with 2nd OG and were forced to tone down how involved the later mechs' animations were (to the point that a fair number became simple up-res images from their OGs sprites), especially in regards to the amount of dynamic angles as the attacks progressed.

PV1: I'm honestly unimpressed by what I'm seeing. The combat seems clunky, the animations are often choppy, and it has one of my biggest complaints from almost every Gundam game ever: a quick Boost Overheat (maybe not to such a quick extent that said Gundam games have, but still there nonetheless - it completely goes against the fact that they routinely depict the mechs doing it for much longer in animation). Of the footage in the video, I honestly think that the Gespenst Mk-II M seems the most fluid and natural, complete with a relatively brisk speed and good boost duration. The game's 80% complete, so I'm honestly not expecting that it'll look or play any better between now and when it releases. The game's concept has promise (enough so that I've honestly thought about how great a Gundam Extreme Vs. meets SRW meets ACE game would play (I even typed up a fantasy idea document almost a year ago covering the concept)), but this just screams "failed execution" to me. IMHO, the game's only saving grace (seen at the end of the PV) is the fact that the limited edition will come bundled with the first downloadable episode for The 2nd Super Robot Wars OG titled the "Dark Prison DLC", which, as you can guess, covers Shu's Route from EX which Terada and co. weren't able to include in the regular game (for whatever their reasoning was); or, you could save yourself the import and just wait for the DLC to become available online in 2014.

I think that outside of Mew (probably leans Female, given how Pokemon breeding works, but could go either way - maybe 1/8 Male?), the Regi trio (probably Genderless, but if a Beldum can breed with a Ditto, I don't see why other Genderless Pokemon can't either (for that matter, why can Beldum only breed with Ditto? Ditto is basically a mirror, so why can't it breed with at least itself too?)), Latias, Latios, Deoxys (also probably Genderless), Regigigas (Genderless like the other Regis), Cresselia, the "Swords of Justice" (probably Male, as they're based on the Three Musketeers and d'Artagnan - though I'm sure that since they're just an homage to the classic novel, they could easily be changed), Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus, the rest of the legendaries should be 50/50 or remain Genderless.

My response is going to harken back to 2006, so bear with me. Way back on FESS, our own wonderful and loveable webmaster, VincentASM, was running a map-and-stat-based RP titled 'Miracle of the Sky Dagger'. In it, weapons were relatively scarce, and I honestly don't remember shops ever even showing up - most of the gear was characters' default equipment, dropped from enemies, obtained from chests, or gained via event. In a way, it was kinda FE4-like when it came to item distribution. Unlike FE4 though, I don't recall weapon repair being feasible; to compensate, however, 99% of the E and D rank weapons had infinite uses (the only exception being the RP's version of the Wo Dao/Shamshir). Anything C and above (with exception to some personal weapons) had uses and also weren't given out in droves either, meaning that players had to ration out the usage of the stronger weapons that each player had divvied out to them. (So, if the group had a Fire Mage and a regular Mage and you got the B rank Fire spell, Arrow, via a drop, they'd have to determine who out of the two of them got to add it to their inventory. I totally don't have the RP's files saved to my computer. Nope, not at all.) If we were to apply this type of system to a modern Fire Emblem title that did feature shops and less scarce means of upgrading, I think it would be fine to give E and D rank weapons infinite uses (maybe less so for D rank spells unless Intelligent Systems decides to flush them out more and beef up their numbers to be more like the lists of physical weapons - in an environment where higher tier weapons are much harder to find though, infinite D rank spells is fine) so long as C rank and above weapons increase a jump in costs. Alternatively, you could have Bronze and Iron weapons still have durability, but have them be automatically repaired between chapters - that way it would discourage the player from sending one unit with an infinite weapon from killing everyone on the map with no repurcussions. (That is, if you have them have only a Bronze Sword and use up the entirety of its, say, 60 uses, then they'd be out of luck until the next chapter unless you traded them something from another unit.)