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A battle against Hau seemed to be obvious, what I’m wondering is how Ash’s Rowlet will for god sake best Decidueye, if he even uses Rowlet, but seeing how they established the rivalry between Rowlet and Decidueye, he will.
Rowlet beating Decidueye makes just as much sense as Greninja losing to Charizard. Regardless, it's an outcome I consider to be etched in stone. There's no way Ash is losing this early without a match against Guzma, or at least Gladion.
That (mostly) lines up with some promotional art from a few days ago:
Just to prepare you in case you get too hyped for a Lycanroc vs Lycanroc finale, remember that it's not atypical for the Pokemon anime to randomly introduce a strong rival toward the end of the series that'll serve as Ash's final league battle, There was Tobias, then Cameron, then (technically) Alain, and now there's a huge possibility that Guzma could continue the trend.There we go, back to life again! Thread was quiet for a few days.
A couple pieces of news have dropped in the time since. The first is regarding Pokémon Masters, as the game's website just went up earlier today. And one of the pages talks about the sync pairs we know of so far. And with it came news that apparently your first recruits are actually Brock, Misty, and Rosa, which means the Rockruff guy is not.
So...what role does he have, then? He's still important somehow, odds are, or else it'd be weird to give him such a prominent spot in the trainer montage. Could he be a rival figure of some kind? The obligatory friendly rival to contrast with the antagonists?
Secondly...well, y'all have beat me to the anime news already.
That (mostly) lines up with some promotional art from a few days ago:
It seems like Guzma and Gladion are, in some order, going to be Ash's final two opponents for the Alola League. The question now is who he'll fight when. I've seen arguments that he'll face Guzma in the finals, mainly since he and Team Skull got a focus in last week's episode, but I still believe Gladion would be a better fit despite that.
Gladion's had a continuous presence for almost all of the Alola saga as a rival figure for Ash to overcome, while Guzma's only popped up one other time before now. Gladion's consistently been shown as a skilled trainer (the episode before last started with him clearing his fourth Grand Trial and ended with his father's old Zoroark companion joining his party), and Ash is actually 0-3 versus him so far, getting closer to winning each time. He even has the most 'mons of any secondary character now with 4 (Midnight Lycanroc, Silvally, Umbreon, and now Zoroark), and all of them have had prior screen time, while we've only seen Guzma use two (Golisopod and Scizor), meaning a battle against him would either be shorter or require introducing new 'mons with less buildup than Gladion's team has had.
That, and Gladion being the other finalist would actually work better in context. If Ash loses, then Alola's first champion would still be someone who would give a damn about the title instead of someone who has outright said he'd use his newfound clout to abolish the League to spite his former colleague (the Masked Royal match is just an exhibition and wouldn't have any impact on who the champion is, from what it sounds like). If Ash wins, he'll still be leaving Alola once something happens to necessitate him heading to Galar, meaning he'd probably need to relinquish the title, and it'd work better if it could just be passed on to the runner-up.
Either way, should be interesting to see how this plays out. Would be nice for Ash's first championship to come from winning a Lycanroc mirror match!
Given the end of yesterday's episode, i think the order the matches were given will be the order of the brackets, which means Ash would end up fighting Guzma in quarter finals and Gladion in finals. Definitely interested to see Gladion fight Lillie.
🚨 Galar Research Update 🚨
— Pokémon (@Pokemon) July 8, 2019
✅ Gigantamaxing
✅ New Pokémon
✅ Galar Pokémon League
✅ New Gym Leaders
Time to learn more about #PokemonSwordShield!
⚔️🛡️ https://t.co/v3lqiYNYtK pic.twitter.com/rImNTcgMKt
We already know Ash is fighting Hau in the Quarterfinals, so I don't think the order of the current matches has anything to do with the future match-ups.
Well, not quite. While we know of every first round match thanks to this segment near the episode's end...
For what it's worth, while Alain didn't directly meet Ash until halfway into the Kalos saga, he'd been established as a major player much earlier through the Mega Evolution Specials.
Yeah, that one came out of nowhere, eh? More interesting stuff so far, even if it doesn't directly pertain to Lycanroc's chances.
Seems the reason for removing Mega Evolutions was because Gigantamaxing essentially functions as that, giving Pokémon more powerful looking designs. I wonder if rather than give some Pokémon new Gigantamax designs, they use their Mega Evolutions instead, or are at least inspired from it.
If they're gonna do away with Mega Evolution, and a new mechanic seems very similar to it, they might as well retcon the megas into Gigantamax.
The only ones I really like so far is Corvinknight, Duraludon and Zacian. So far, Gen 8 is looking a bit lackluster for me in that department, but we haven’t seen many Pokémon yet. The leak is vague at best when it comes to potential new Pokémon and evolutions.
A Niheligo hat would be a smart move, but I don’t really see Pokémon getting any costumes, not that I know of.
You know, I haven't actually thought of this as much as I probably should've. We've never actually had Pokémon-themed Mii costumes before, but hey, who's to say we couldn't? I could see something like a Gallade ensemble for Swordfighters, or a Blaziken outfit + mask for Brawlers. But there's surely more potential here...
That...would also work really well, actually. Especially if you picked a loadout of more defensive specials!
Exactly that one and i'm also hoping for that to be true.
I could see a scenario where they wrap up the Fighters Pass without explicitly saying "that's all we're doing", then keep quiet for several months while they develop the first batch of characters for a second season. Something we should consider, at least.
Actually, if we're talking Three Houses, we're probably better off looking at Byleth. As the character you directly play as in the game, he/she would likely have higher priority than any of the three lord characters. Not that it's a bad thing, considering Byleth's repertoire includes the potential for multiple weapon types, summoning allied soldiers, the ability to rewind time with Divine Pulse (for stuff like moving yourself back to where you were a few seconds prior, etc.), and with a whipsword as a signature weapon!
I would love an outright "expansion" type of thing where multiple characters release at once for a potential "Season 2". It seems the popular thing to think is that characters in the Fighters Pass MUST be mind blowing third parties... If that's what ultimately ends up happening, maybe "lower-key" first parties can be introduced in this "expansion"?
Byleth would be more likely just because Sakurai tends to put the main character/avatar on a higher pedestal than the rest of the cast.
This can happen, there are fighting games that wait a while after the release of a season's final character to reveal the new pass.
I'm personally looking foward to it. And the mindblowing news usually comes between August-October so there's still a ways to go.
I still believe we could see Torracat evolve, but I'm starting to doubt that it'll face off against Kukui again. Seems like each of Ash's Pokémon are getting a round dedicated to them.
Like LukeRNG said, there's still a ton of stuff left to see. It's way too early for people to be judging these games as harshly as they are.
I rarely use my old Pokémon until after I've completed the main game, so the National Dex isn't really a huge issue to me. I'll be sad if some of my favorites like Zoroark and Lycanroc miss out, but it's not the end of the world if they do. Graphics aren't really something I'm picky toward either, so I don't mind having a few crappy trees and bushes as long as the character models look smooth and clean. I mean, those are the things I'll be paying the most attention to, not the flora and hills in the background.
The animation looks weird because they're using rounder edges and a lighter color scheme. It's still really smooth, just different.
If anything, I think the most likely scenario is Fighter #4 being revealed during the obligatory autumn Nintendo Direct, kind of like how Cloud was handled.
But wouldn’t it be contradictory (sorry for the lack of a better word) to have Lycanroc be potentially released after Sword and Shield go into full force? I get that if Lycanroc was revealed prior that may work, but I’ve always been wary of having a Gen 7 Pokémon be shown off/released when the more recent and more pushed Gen 8 games are already out... Unless Lycanroc still becomes a big deal going into Gen 8.
Paulo is a rival Trainer who also aims to make it to the Pokémon Masters League (PML). An exceptional student with a strong sense of justice, he’s collecting badges just one step ahead of the main character. #PokemonMasters pic.twitter.com/gv0fLQXvtd
— BulbaNewsNOW (@BulbaNewsNOW) July 18, 2019
The quarterfinals are confirmed to be 2on2 battles, so at worst, the semifinals would be 2on2 as well.
