Board 8 > New Pokemon Snap is pretty cool!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Into the postgame (briefly)

I popped back into the Ruins to snap a few photos, and what do I see following the Eldegoss- Jirachi! I suppose I could've missed it the first time round, but I think the more likely explanation is that legendaries/mythicals are now out and about in all the courses. If that's the case this could be a big deal, not sure why they didn't mention it. I hope there's some big boys there too not just the tiny mythicals who wouldn't impact anything!

Also I did Xerneas level 2 and yaaaay Umbreon (and Absol)! Umb has always been my go-to answer for my fav pokemon. I knew all the Eevees were in the game but I thought I'd see Umb in the cave not here! I assume Vaporeon will be in Evening Reef, I think that'd just leave Jolteon for me to find... There hasn't been an electric focused track come to think of it.

Since the course selection defaults to your highest available research level (3 or 2), it's fair to say that most of your play time will be in the max level unless you purposely press extra buttons to select a lower one. And there are a lot of interactions, behaviors, and even Pokemon spawns that only occur on the max level. I'd say that anyone who did like 2 runs through each course just to progress the story and then quit after the credits could almost double their play time just by unlocking and then playing through level 3 on every course. And that's not even considering "completionist" goals like filling the Photodex. Level 1 is practically a barebones tutorial in most cases, and level 2 sometimes feels like story filler if there's a level 3 after.

I must note that even from the high scoring perspective there are still occasional photos that prefer lower research levels for various reasons. So you're not abandoning that older content even if you become a more advanced player.

I still like going back to lower level research, but I'm definitely spending more time in the highest levels.

Speaking of, wow the cave improves drastically with each upgrade. All my worries earlier on were entirely unfounded, this is a terrific track now. Stepping up from level 2 to 3 alone adds Pumpkaboo, Hydreigon, Goodra, Diancie and Jolteon! The interactions are fun, there's more paths than I had thought, it's all very good. I assume Diancie wouldn't have shown up pre-Xerneas but idk. I don't particularly care about it as a pokemon but it unlocks Jolteon of all things so yay! No clue how I'm gonna get good photos of Jolt but this course quickly went from underwhelming to absolutely packed with stuff. Only Vaporeon left now.

I also drop in the upper levels of the ruins, not many new pokemon at all but who cares Chandelure is here!!! They must've been saving it for the very end, knowing how amazing it is. Absol shows up here too now, and we get an award for seeing all the pokemon in the Aurus region. That's handy to know, of course the other regions will take much longer to fill.

I guess there'll be a bunch of mythicals around now (hopefully legendaries too), maybe I should start guessing who will show up where!

OK, guesses for the mythicals/legendaries:
Nature Park- Shaymin in the flower field
Jungle- Celebi, or maybe one of the Tapus as it's more of a tropical climate.
Beach/Reef- Manaphy
Seafloor- Want: Kyogre or Lugia, expect: Volcanion
Desert- Regirock? Trying to think of others that are associated with the desert and coming up blank.
Volcano- I think one of the new missions for this showed a rainbow feather, so Ho-oh.
Forest- Meloetta or one of the pixies.
Snowfields- Articuno
Research camp- Mew or Victini, if any at all.

I came up with this list before giving Evening Reef a spin, and yep there's Manaphy! 1/1 so far lol. I guess this was originally meant to be the post-game reward track, and it's fittingly relaxing and beautiful. Vaporeooooon! I didn't expect Primarina but it looks great against the sunset, I think every gen has a starter in here now except gen 6. Drifblim has much more to do here than on the beach, and the other reef inhabitants are as cool as ever. I knock Squirtle into the whirlpool (OG Snap flashbacks) but I'm not sure how to trigger Blastoise getting up, hm. Still, great course!

Primarina is my favorite Pokemon, and Evening Reef was the very last course I played, so you can imagine how fucking pumped I was

I want to say I unlocked Evening Reef before beating the game, but maybe I'm remembering wrong. It's been a while.

It's my fave course in the game though! I wish other courses went with evening variants instead of night. It's a game about photography, let us play during golden hour!

Maybe you're thinking of Night Beach? Or maybe I missed the requirements to unlock it early, it's very possible!

Paratroopa1 posted...

Primarina is my favorite Pokemon, and Evening Reef was the very last course I played, so you can imagine how fucking pumped I was

Oh that's awesome. Vaporeon is one of my favs and it was a big deal seeing it pop out of the water, but I already knew it'd be in the game and figured it must be this course so it's not on the same level. Pokken has Decidueye, Smash has Incineroar, and Snap has Primarina, at least they're somewhat sharing the love lol.

Actually I'll note all the starters I've seen to see how the balance shook out:
1: Bulbasaur, Venusaur, Charmander, Charizard, Squirtle, Blastoise (haven't snapped Blast but it's clearly there)
2: Meganium, Typhlosion
3: Torchic, Swampert
4: Torterra, Monferno, Piplup
5: Serperior
6: None
7: Primarina
8: Grookey, Scorbunny, Sobble

There may still be more for me to see but they definitely leaned towards the older games as far as starters are concerned! At least they've split the types evenly.

Minor annoyance: Surely they could've mapped a burst toggle to one of the buttons, and kept the # of shots per burst in the menu or something. It's a bit annoying, can't have burst on constantly as it'd eat away at the camera roll. Not a big deal though, I haven't used burst much.

Is the river supposed to be a throwback to OG Snap? It's been some time since I played it, all I remember from that is the hanging Metapods, the Slowpoke evolution and the Porygon switch. As I probably should've expected, many pokemon from the jungle are here, with the newbies being Feraligatr (my starter notes are already outdated!), Psyduck, and Tropius! Woo Tropius. I feel like I'm being greedy hogging all my fav pokemon in this game where other people probably have a ton of their favs absent lol.

I've just done the first two daytime levels so we'll see how things progress, but it's fun so far. Sobble finally gets to have fun with Grookey (and Wooper), Quagsire is pals with everybody, and it's clear there's plenty of puzzles to solve.

To keep the new stuff paced out, I head back to a couple old courses. Shaymin's in the park (called it!), I don't see any new stuff in Elsewhere Forest, but the seafloor has Lugiaaaaa! I hope I can wake you up somehow >_> I get a sticker for filling the Maricopia islands but I don't know why, I haven't taken a photo of the Blastoise yet... Weird. Maybe it's not Blast at all? But it really looks like it, and there's even a request alluding to it. Maybe the stickers don't mean what I thought.

The badlands give us Diglett, Tepig, Swalot, Koffing, and Crustle! Is it sad that I'm relieved to see Minior here, figuring it'll give me a much easier time getting >4k scores for it >_> The environment is a great choice, poison doesn't usually get much attention so it's nice to see it in the spotlight while also giving us bits of the desert. Only done level 1 daytime so far, but there's a lot of environmental triggers that look promising.

Aside from that I've just been wandering around- the night river gives us Ursaring, Gyarados, Cleffa and a belly-flopping Swampert (how on earth are you supposed to get 3-4* Swamp in the jungle I wonder, haven't figured that one out yet...), and Ho-oh flies by in the background of the volcano. No more legendary/mythicals yet, the others must be pretty secretive.

Re: alternate snowfields

I also had no idea there was one and I had to look it up. I never quite grasped the concept of unlocking stuff just by taking pictures, it always was orbs/fruit/scan/music, so I'm glad I looked it up cause who knows how long it would've taken me to happen upon the method by chance. I generally am not good about taking photos of pokemon if I already know I have a good enough one.

I am very tempted to click those bars, but I'll withhold for now!

I went through the rest of the Badlands- Scolipede and Gliscor were very nice surprises, and I've no idea how I'm gonna get a good shot of Salazzle! I got the sticker for seeing everything on Voluca so I guess not every course has a legendary (or maybe Zeraora is in the desert too),

So I think I've been through every course now, though there's tons for me to do still obviously. I'm past 50 hours and haven't even completed 50% of the requests yet >_> I may be playing this for a while...

Emeraldegg posted...

Re: alternate snowfields

I also had no idea there was one and I had to look it up. I never quite grasped the concept of unlocking stuff just by taking pictures, it always was orbs/fruit/scan/music, so I'm glad I looked it up cause who knows how long it would've taken me to happen upon the method by chance. I generally am not good about taking photos of pokemon if I already know I have a good enough one.

OK I gave up and looked up how to do the snowfields. Same as you, I hadn't been considering taking pictures at all! It makes sense but I swear I hardly ever saw that second Sandslash there >_>

Anyway finally we get the alternate route(s) of the Snowfields- Crabominable, Avalugg, Suicune (!- no idea how I spawned it as I couldn't get it on repeat lol), Polar Vivillon, Dewgong, and today's unexpected highlight is none other than Aurorus! I do kinda like Aurorus anyway but it's really awesome here with its fins changing colour and all that. I forgive them for not making it an Illumina pokemon as it looks great, especially when crashing out of the ice. Plenty of puzzles to solve here, of course.

The Durice Island sticker is ours, now all that's left on that front is the forest island. I've snapped Celebi so I don't know what I'm missing there, but I'll find out eventually!

OK I think I have one pokemon left to snap, and it's in the jungle. But I have absolutely no idea where or when or what it is lol. There's lots of requests there still, usually the legendaries have been part of one of those, but jeez I'm bad at this. How can kids do this >_>

The puzzles in this game are borderline impossible lol

If you're missing the Pokemon I think you are, you need to turn around right at the start of Jungle Night and play the melody.

I will resist the temptation to read that for now, but thanks, I'm glad I'm not the only one who struggled >_> Every time I feel proud of myself for solving a puzzle I remember there's like 100 more to go lol.

Yeah, I'm sure that you're missing that one if you haven't read about it yet.

What's your total number of snapped Pokemon in your Photodex?

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

What's your total number of snapped Pokemon in your Photodex?

233! I have the stickers for every island except Belusyva and the Jungle is the only level that gives the 'hm I think you missed something here' trigger when I go to it on the map.

Mew get! That took far too long, I'm sure I had been playing the music from the beginning of the level at night before, I guess you have to literally turn around and look at those Morelull before they trigger which kinda sucks lol.

That was indeed my last pokemon! The legendary/mythical breakdown is odd:

Gen 1- Mew
Gen 2- Suicune, Lugia, Ho-oh, Celebi
Gen 3- Jirachi
Gen 4- Manaphy, Shaymin
Gen 5- None
Gen 6- Xerneas
Gen 7- Diancie
Gen 8- Zeraora

It's mostly the lil pixie mythicals, but gen 2 gets a bunch of legendaries and gen 5 gets nothing! Poor Victini. I wonder if it's so gen 2 heavy as a sort of nod to what this game would've been if it had released 20 years ago or something.

So now I can focus on the requests and on getting all 4* for each pokemon. Hm, this might be beyond me but I'll keep going for a while. Also I was a fool before and completely forgot that I'd already snapped Blastoise on the beach >_>

andylt posted...

Also I was a fool before and completely forgot that I'd already snapped Blastoise on the beach >_>

I was wondering about this but didn't want to "spoil" it just in case!

I agree that the legendary breakdown is a bit weird. I like most of their choices though (with Xerneas and Zeraora being the exceptions...)

Much like the natural wild Pokemon, the legendaries are better this way that they chose "fitting" ones for every area rather than forcing some arbitrary split based on origin.

-hotdogturtle-- posted...

Much like the natural wild Pokemon, the legendaries are better this way that they chose "fitting" ones for every area rather than forcing some arbitrary split based on origin.

Yeah I agree with your point. I do think there was a big lean to gen 2 legendaries for a reason though, like Lugia could've been Kyogre or something (not complaining that it wasn't!). I think overall it looks like they just picked small ones that wouldn't intrude with the existing courses too much lol.

Mew is the only one that I don't think really 'fits' its area and they probably chose it just as a throwback, personally I would've chosen one of the Tapus there!

I think it makes a lot more sense to use Lugia than Kyogre just because like, in the logic of the Pokemon world Kyogre is this ridiculous, cataclysmic force of nature, whereas Lugia is not really on that level, so it feels less out of place to see them hanging out

True, I forget how varied all the legendary power levels/lore/rarity stuff is.

I think I'm winding down with this game now. There's still many requests and images left but I've accepted that I'm not going to 100% this without a guide, and I'm hitting my head against the wall more often than not now. There's less motivation now that I know there's no more secret pokemon or areas to find, and I don't want to sour myself on this game just because I can't figure out a bunch of the puzzles, particularly the more complex/seemingly obtuse ones!

...That said, I'm still finding new stuff and occasionally I get something that makes me really want to keep going. Today I looked out at the beach and happened to notice Primarina out there for the first time! I tossed an orb at it and this somehow triggered the Zangoose on the beach to walk over to Seviper and instigate their fight. Not only that, but it turns out the later Zangoose/Corsola/Mareanie/Bellossom/Pyukumuku set had been waiting all this time for Primarina to put on a concert! That was a pretty wonderful thing to see, especially this many hours in, and I'm sure there's more stuff like that still but idk if I'll see it all. We'll see!

andylt posted...

Mew is the only one that I don't think really 'fits' its area and they probably chose it just as a throwback, personally I would've chosen one of the Tapus there!

In the movie (and I think RBY too) researchers found Mew/its DNA in the jungle and cloned Mewtwo from it. This one actually fits the lore perfectly! It is a little weird none of the Tapus made it in though.