Hey, it's been a while.
I have no excuse and shall not attempt to make one. In the end I still have more posts this year than last year so I think I did pretty okay with my goal even if I didn't post every month. The previous blog entry ended well too, so I think if that was the last post here that would have been enough. And yet here I am now ruining it. Haha.
These past few months have just been me trying to be low key in my internal panic. See, I am an anxious person. Even the smallest things can send me into a downward spiral and it's as tiring as it is annoying to be set off by something seemingly inconsequential at the most random of moments. I don't want to taint the small spaces I inhabit on the world wide web with my poison but I already feel stupid for feeling this way, so when I say it out loud only to be told that it's because "you don't pray!" I feel even more stupid. On the internet, the deep dark void doesn't reply but it also doesn't scoff a my dumb concerns.
Unfortunately, I haven't been anywhere or done anything interesting since my last post, fandom-wise or in real life. Perhaps the most interesting thing I've done recently is get back into Pokemon GO. Considering that I don't even go out much and I live in the middle of nowhere, and yet this is the "most interesting" thing, it should be pretty obvious that the level of excitement in my life is abysmally low. That's fine by me, but it isn't good if I want to keep this blog updated.
I did end up going somewhere "new" because of PokeGO. And by that I meant I chose to go out of the house and somehow ended up in Magsaysay Park. It's a public park that has seen better days. It's a lot different now from what I remember from my childhood so I don't know if I just hallucinated all of that or if things just radically changed. Since I haven't been there in a long time, I didn't know what to expect. However, I was pleased to find that it has a PokeGO Gym, two Pokestops, and a decent view of the Davao Gulf.
We stayed there long enough for me to be able to take the gym and circle the park for the Pokestops several times. Apparently I didn't keep any screenshots of the gym with my Pokemon in it, but please take my word for it!
A lot of updates have been implemented since I last played. The main thing that got me to play again was the friends feature. There's not really much I can do with friends since you have to be near each other to trade, but I like how you can send each other gifts! You get the gifts from Pokestops when you spin them, and you can carry only ten in your bag at a time. The gifts can contain any number of random items. I have received a few eggs and evolution items from others before.
There's also a weather thing now too, which can affect the difficulty of catching certain Pokemon or amplify the effectiveness of certain moves when you're battling a gym. While it's not 100% accurate where I live, I still think it's pretty cool.
Inaka life is not for aspiring Pokemon Masters. Pokestops are very few and far between. Several places are pretty good, though, including the memorial park which has one gym and a Pokestop, with a decent amount of Pokemon spawning around the area.
It's easier to defeat gyms now, but the new system also makes it harder to hold on to gyms. Pokemon you leave in gyms gradually lose motivation, which lowers their CP and makes them easier to take down. You can feed them berries to fill them back up, but you can only feed them ten berries at a time. Even if there's no limit, I'm not sure how people have a constant supply of berries! As far as I know you only get them from Pokestops or gifts, and more often than not I get pokeballs from those places instead of berries...
It took me a while to figure out how gyms work. It turns out that you can "visit" a Pokemon you've left at a gym even if you aren't physically near the area! You can feed them berries that way, and you can feed the other Pokemon in the gym too.
What really surprised me the most when I picked up the game again was finding out that there are still a lot of active players. After the initial hype died down, I thought people would have stopped playing as I did. But I guess I'm just not as dedicated to becoming a Pokemon Master and I have greatly underestimated everybody else's determination.
Overall I think the game is a lot more enjoyable in its current state compared to what it was when it first launched, though it's still sadly not great for inaka dwellers such as I. If I'm not mistaken, there's also some sort of functionality that will be useful for those who will get the new Pokemon game on the Switch, but there's no way I can ever get that so I'll have to content myself with this. Even if becoming a Pokemon Master is not your destiny, just catching what you like and taking it easy with your monster friends is also fine!
By the way, if you find yourself in Yokohama next summer, the Pikachu Outbreak over there is an annual thing! This year the Pikachu squad was joined by the very adorable Eevees! I think the Minato Mirai area is already interesting on its own. Adding cute Pikachus and Eevees into the mix makes it even more amazing! The event runs only until today so this blog entry is a little too late for writing about it, but since I'm already talking about Pokemon, I might as well mention it too, right?
Some of the events were sadly cancelled this year because of the bad weather, but it seems the Eevee parade went pretty well. I saw some nice videos on Twitter recently. Hopefully the weather will be much better next year. I wonder what they'll have in store for everyone then!
We stayed there long enough for me to be able to take the gym and circle the park for the Pokestops several times. Apparently I didn't keep any screenshots of the gym with my Pokemon in it, but please take my word for it!
A lot of updates have been implemented since I last played. The main thing that got me to play again was the friends feature. There's not really much I can do with friends since you have to be near each other to trade, but I like how you can send each other gifts! You get the gifts from Pokestops when you spin them, and you can carry only ten in your bag at a time. The gifts can contain any number of random items. I have received a few eggs and evolution items from others before.
There's also a weather thing now too, which can affect the difficulty of catching certain Pokemon or amplify the effectiveness of certain moves when you're battling a gym. While it's not 100% accurate where I live, I still think it's pretty cool.
Inaka life is not for aspiring Pokemon Masters. Pokestops are very few and far between. Several places are pretty good, though, including the memorial park which has one gym and a Pokestop, with a decent amount of Pokemon spawning around the area.
It's easier to defeat gyms now, but the new system also makes it harder to hold on to gyms. Pokemon you leave in gyms gradually lose motivation, which lowers their CP and makes them easier to take down. You can feed them berries to fill them back up, but you can only feed them ten berries at a time. Even if there's no limit, I'm not sure how people have a constant supply of berries! As far as I know you only get them from Pokestops or gifts, and more often than not I get pokeballs from those places instead of berries...
It took me a while to figure out how gyms work. It turns out that you can "visit" a Pokemon you've left at a gym even if you aren't physically near the area! You can feed them berries that way, and you can feed the other Pokemon in the gym too.
What really surprised me the most when I picked up the game again was finding out that there are still a lot of active players. After the initial hype died down, I thought people would have stopped playing as I did. But I guess I'm just not as dedicated to becoming a Pokemon Master and I have greatly underestimated everybody else's determination.
Overall I think the game is a lot more enjoyable in its current state compared to what it was when it first launched, though it's still sadly not great for inaka dwellers such as I. If I'm not mistaken, there's also some sort of functionality that will be useful for those who will get the new Pokemon game on the Switch, but there's no way I can ever get that so I'll have to content myself with this. Even if becoming a Pokemon Master is not your destiny, just catching what you like and taking it easy with your monster friends is also fine!
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| What should I name this one? |
By the way, if you find yourself in Yokohama next summer, the Pikachu Outbreak over there is an annual thing! This year the Pikachu squad was joined by the very adorable Eevees! I think the Minato Mirai area is already interesting on its own. Adding cute Pikachus and Eevees into the mix makes it even more amazing! The event runs only until today so this blog entry is a little too late for writing about it, but since I'm already talking about Pokemon, I might as well mention it too, right?
Some of the events were sadly cancelled this year because of the bad weather, but it seems the Eevee parade went pretty well. I saw some nice videos on Twitter recently. Hopefully the weather will be much better next year. I wonder what they'll have in store for everyone then!
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