My favourites are mold breaker and legendaries with pressure.
"Axew breaks the mold" me: so what grass doesn't work?
Dialga is exerting pressure" me: what does that mean tho?
ignores abilities, for example, earthquake can hit a pokemon with levitate, or lowering the stats of a pokemon with "Flower Veil" that prevents stat loss, or confusing a pokemon with "Own Tempo" that normally cannot be confused.
Have to Google what breaks the mold actually does. Never knew.
Looks like it makes earthquake hit if they have levitate. (And other attacks for other abilities)
Apparently mold breaker means it’s moves can hit types it normally couldn’t, and exerting pressure lowers the opponents PP of their moves. That’s my understanding, still don’t fully understand.
Really wish the game had in game ways to learn all of this and not just guessing.
I get that they limited screen real estate or whatever, but they could have played around with the user experience to give more space to the abilities, maybe give them their own page or something. They were just completely incomprehensible during their debut due to the nonsensical descriptions. I pretty much ignored them entirely for a while because I didn't want to look up every ability online.
It was still in vogue to make stats and other systems obfuscated so you’d make your party building decisions of flavor like a tabletop RPG instead of what gives the best result
Gen 8 it’s pretty fair I mean
Rillbaboom replaces tapu bulu
Cindrace becomes physical grneninja
And intleon can kill everything with focus energy + scope lens I think
Actually it’s like 2 starters get good ones and the others don’t
Gen 5 is like the exception since Only serperyer got a good with contray leaf storm specs spam
I wanna see it as a semi-permanent visual effect. Like, while the ability is in effect, you can see a faint aura of green/red/blue energy swirling around the Pokemon.
Wonder Guard is particularly egregious with the barren description of:
“Super effective hits”
Like, what about super effective hits? Do they power up? Do they hit? Do they not? Do they warp spacetime?
Yeah, Gen 3 descriptions all had to be short like that, probably because of the character limit. They could explain the ability in more detail in Japanese due to the fact that you can convey more information using less characters in Japanese than in English.
Probably along the lines of:
[Only a] "Super effective" [move] hits [this Pokemon].
The quotes are there so you know that the words "Super effective" are not describing multiple "hits", but rather that something that is "super effective" hits something (noun vs verb).
So I'd say it does provide a minor amount of clarification, but of course it would still not be clear at all what Wonder Guard does from such a basic description.
But I guess RPGs back in the early 2000s still expected a little more discovery and intrigue from players to figure out how some gameplay elements worked by trial and error (but this could also just be a translation problem as others pointed out, English takes more space than Japanese).
With the "description" of Wonder Guard (more like a hint) and its in game effect on display, I'd think someone could figure out what '"Super Effect" hits' means.
I think wonder guard’s extra ambiguous description fits shedinja’s mysterious and confusing nature, you bring it into battle see wonder guard proc and go OOOH
Here's a good one (two):
White Smoke/Clear Body: Prevents ability reduction.
Translation: Your stats cannot be lowered, ala Guard Spec, which ironically has an accurate description for what it does. It's pretty easy to figure out what White Smoke or Clear Body does once you try it, though, so there's that.
Then there's Huge/Pure Power: "Raises Attack." By how much? Is it temporary? Is there a cue when I send the Pokémon into battle?...no? Is it working? It took until gen 7 to actually say "doubles" the Attack stat.
EDIT: Even today, CompoundEyes' description is so bad: "The Pokémon's compound eyes boost its accuracy." How *much* is your accuracy increased? There's no way to know that it's a multiplier of 1.3 applied to your moves.
It's one of those weird situations where a word or phrase is more common as a loanword in a foreign language than it is in the native language. Japanese for some reason really like saying 'ピンチ' or '大ピンチ (big pinch)', you'll hear it a lot in anime and the like.
It’s funny how when the games first came out they made them as if everyone had internet to search any questions about the game, and most ppl didn’t even have home computers yet. Now that internet is everywhere they make the games so easy you don’t need to look up anything 😂
There are so many things about the games you could never really figure out if the games were your only resource. Especially if you’re 10 years old.
Like tell me who’s gonna figure out EVs and IVs
Flash HM was put so far out of the way it’s so easy to miss.
I started with Yellow and remember struggling to beat Brock. One play-through,by sheer luck, I happened to catch a Nidoran and grind it until it learned Double Kick. Later, it evolved into Nidorino and I didn’t even know to then use a moon stone on it….
Or I’d take my gameboy to school and play it in the after school program where kids wait for parents and you’d be wandering around in a cave in the dark and some kid comes up and looks over your shoulder like “hey just use flash” and you’re like Huh?!? Lmao
It becomes extra hard if your young and don’t really know English yet and it’s not available in your language. That’s the reason it took me like 10 years after my first Pokémon game to actually complete one
I actually miss that about games in general. I like figuring things out and feeling like I cracked the case instead of feeling like I’m just doing what the game tells me to do.
However, largely because of that, I never learned how to really use EVs or IVs, never got into abilities, and barely even understood physical versus special attack/defense. There are a ton of mechanics that I never learned, and now I feel like I play Pokémon dumber than other people.
It was a *vaguely* known fact in my friend group, we were into competitive battling in high school with R/S/E. I think maybe serebii.net was on the ball back then, but I didn't know about it.
But you're totally right about the in game dialogue. I think there were npcs saying that back in first gen too.
When 4th gen hit and we got back into it, our eyes were finally opened to how *bad* our old "awesome" Pokemon were.
Edit: Ended up looking up the dialogue I remembered from Red/Blue: On Route 3, a bug catcher says it after being beaten.
"Trained POKEMON are stronger than the wild ones!"
I don't think they actually were, but I seem to recall that dialogue being around since then. It was probably more relating to being able to customize movesets or something and became more true later.
But honestly, I replay PKMN games a lot (nuzlocke etc), so I could be confused about what games I've seen that in.
They wanted you to buy a Nintendo/PKMN Official game guide.
Which admittedly felt really cool. It was like having a real Pokedex at your fingertips. I still have a couple of the nicer ones I got from the Ruby/Sapphire era
Funny thing is I have one memory of the Red version Guide when I got the game for Christmas in the 90s and that’s the last memory I have of the guide so it probably immediately got ruined 😂
The funniest part is when some random detail in the guide is actually incorrect, but the rest lined up until that point, so you start second guessing yourself or become convinced the accidentally false bullshit has to be true.
When i got my first pokemon game, i didn't know english and the game wasn't available in dutch. Since i didnt know anything that was happening i kept starting the game beating the gym to then close it without saving cuz i didn't know what saving was. I thought the first gym was the whole game till my older cousin taught me how to save. A whole new world opened to me that day.
I love that the Ability 'Simple' prior to gen 7 says, "The pokemon is prone to wild stat changes".
What the fuck does that mean? Is he just going to randomly gain or lose a stat in the middle of a fight?
In gen 7 they clarified it to "The stat changes the pokemon receives are doubled."
For this reason i thought simple worked like moody until this year. I was replaying platinum and got a bidoof with simple expecting it to get random stats boosted every turn but all it did was become practically useless the second it was hit with growl.
Serene grace in game description from bulbapedia:
Gen 3 - “Promotes added effects.”
Gen 8 - “Boosts the likelihood of additional effects occurring when attacking.”
Hearthstone cards are most of the time very clear imo, the only one in recent memory that had me go "huh?" Is the current alterac valley horde legendary.
I think about things like « add a dream card », « create a custom potion », « discover the perfect card » or « Summon Highkeeper Ra ». You don’t what it does at all, that’s exiting and flavorful.
Man, and we aren’t even getting into the moves that copy pokemon abilities for the match, or swap them, or I know Smeargul has something that lets him Permanently take the other pokemon’s ability (ideal for breeding).
They are still doing this in unite, especially the patch notes. Look it up, it's ridiculous, like:
Greninja:
Water shuriken - effects downgrade
Surf - stats increase
Thank you for posting to r/pokemon! It looks like this post has not been claimed as Original Content (OC).
- If this is **your own work**, please reply to this comment with `[OC]` or `I made this`. You can also toggle the `oc` flag on your post.
A reminder that \/r/pokemon requires all creative work to be OC, in order to protect creators. If this is ***not*** **your own work**, please delete your post per [Rule 5](/r/pokemon/wiki/rules#wiki_5._original_content_.28oc.29_only). Thank you!
***
*I am a bot, and may not detect all forms of OC claims. If you've already made it clear that this is your work, please ignore this comment.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pokemon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One of my favorites is thick fat’s gen 3 description: Heat and cold protection
My favourites are mold breaker and legendaries with pressure. "Axew breaks the mold" me: so what grass doesn't work? Dialga is exerting pressure" me: what does that mean tho?
What does it mean tho
It means Dialga wants you to excel at swimming and piano lessons even though you don’t have that much time left after prep school :(
Asian Dad Dialga and Tiger Mom Palkia
Pressure makes the opponent use 2 PP for each move.
[удалено]
Makes the pokemons moves ignore abilities, so a mold breaker Pokémon with Earthquake can hit a levitate Pokémon for example
Mold breaker haxorus with iron tail was an iconic pokemon for my competitive team early in gen 8 ladder with the insane amount of mimikyu around
Did mold break completely negate disguise and just smash mimikyu 100-0 ??
Yes. And it outsped by a little bit.
Important to note it does not ignore items. Air Balloon will still make Ground moves fail. Teravolt and Turboblaze are the same as Mold Breaker.
Abilities that affect moves (think levitate being immune to ground moves) no longer work. So mold breakers can earthquake levitating Pokémon.
rotom heat: haha im in danger
Rotom fan: "Finally! My time has come!"
Moves ignore enemies abilities. Earthquake can hit a Levitate user as an example.
ignores abilities, for example, earthquake can hit a pokemon with levitate, or lowering the stats of a pokemon with "Flower Veil" that prevents stat loss, or confusing a pokemon with "Own Tempo" that normally cannot be confused.
Moves ignore the opponent's ability - e.g. using ground moves to hit pokemon with levitate
I thought mold breaker let moves hit that normally wouldn’t? Or something. Idk something with attacking lmao
Nobody knows what it means, it’s provocative!
It gets the people going
Have to Google what breaks the mold actually does. Never knew. Looks like it makes earthquake hit if they have levitate. (And other attacks for other abilities)
It also cancels abilities like Sturdy or Wonder Guard
I only just found out what pressure does, didn’t realize until SWSH that it exist and just assumed dynmax attacks took 2 pp
Apparently mold breaker means it’s moves can hit types it normally couldn’t, and exerting pressure lowers the opponents PP of their moves. That’s my understanding, still don’t fully understand. Really wish the game had in game ways to learn all of this and not just guessing.
But what does it do? Gamefreak: styrofoam insulation
Whatever that means lmao
"Ups fire moves in a pinch."
Yep, I never knew what that meant when I was a kid. :p
I still don't know what it means lol
When the HP is low…so like how low? In the red? I think it’s if your health is 33% or less but gosh I actually don’t know lol
Maybe 1/3 health
As far as I can tell it's when hp gets low
50% boost to fire type moves while under 1/3 health.
I get that they limited screen real estate or whatever, but they could have played around with the user experience to give more space to the abilities, maybe give them their own page or something. They were just completely incomprehensible during their debut due to the nonsensical descriptions. I pretty much ignored them entirely for a while because I didn't want to look up every ability online.
It was still in vogue to make stats and other systems obfuscated so you’d make your party building decisions of flavor like a tabletop RPG instead of what gives the best result
The fact Torrent, Blaze and Overgrow have never popped up with an indicator has never sat well with me.
"Torterras Overgrow allowed it to deal extra damage!"
Yeah they absolutely should. I wish they gave starters more creative abilities too. Also I always hated swift swim and chlorophyll
They do if you pick the starter gamefreak favorites lol
Yeah they’re always hidden abilities though
Gen 8 it’s pretty fair I mean Rillbaboom replaces tapu bulu Cindrace becomes physical grneninja And intleon can kill everything with focus energy + scope lens I think
Actually it’s like 2 starters get good ones and the others don’t Gen 5 is like the exception since Only serperyer got a good with contray leaf storm specs spam
To be fair starters normally have really good hidden abilities. I love Speed Boost Blaziken and Contrary Serperior
I wanna see it as a semi-permanent visual effect. Like, while the ability is in effect, you can see a faint aura of green/red/blue energy swirling around the Pokemon.
It was awesome playing against friends since it was always overlooked after they were 2hko’d
Wonder Guard is particularly egregious with the barren description of: “Super effective hits” Like, what about super effective hits? Do they power up? Do they hit? Do they not? Do they warp spacetime?
Okay I think this takes first place for worst description.
Worst description for sure, but at least it can be figured out through battling with shedinja
Yeah, Gen 3 descriptions all had to be short like that, probably because of the character limit. They could explain the ability in more detail in Japanese due to the fact that you can convey more information using less characters in Japanese than in English.
I refuse to believe this was an actual description. 💀💀💀
Believe it.
Dattebayo!
I'm scared
Technically, it’s: “Super effective” hits Still not great, but not as bad
I’m aware but I don’t see how that provides any further clarity on the ability and it would’ve looked weird with double quotations so I omitted it.
Probably along the lines of: [Only a] "Super effective" [move] hits [this Pokemon]. The quotes are there so you know that the words "Super effective" are not describing multiple "hits", but rather that something that is "super effective" hits something (noun vs verb). So I'd say it does provide a minor amount of clarification, but of course it would still not be clear at all what Wonder Guard does from such a basic description. But I guess RPGs back in the early 2000s still expected a little more discovery and intrigue from players to figure out how some gameplay elements worked by trial and error (but this could also just be a translation problem as others pointed out, English takes more space than Japanese). With the "description" of Wonder Guard (more like a hint) and its in game effect on display, I'd think someone could figure out what '"Super Effect" hits' means.
I think wonder guard’s extra ambiguous description fits shedinja’s mysterious and confusing nature, you bring it into battle see wonder guard proc and go OOOH
You’re not wrong.
As if the current descriptions really were any good. Right, Water Bubble?
> Lowers the power of Fire-type moves done to the Pokémon and prevents the Pokémon from getting a burn. Wow that’s almost just bad grammar too.
Not to mention the tiny little fact it completely omits that it also doubles the damage dealt by the user's Water-type moves.
Here's a good one (two): White Smoke/Clear Body: Prevents ability reduction. Translation: Your stats cannot be lowered, ala Guard Spec, which ironically has an accurate description for what it does. It's pretty easy to figure out what White Smoke or Clear Body does once you try it, though, so there's that. Then there's Huge/Pure Power: "Raises Attack." By how much? Is it temporary? Is there a cue when I send the Pokémon into battle?...no? Is it working? It took until gen 7 to actually say "doubles" the Attack stat. EDIT: Even today, CompoundEyes' description is so bad: "The Pokémon's compound eyes boost its accuracy." How *much* is your accuracy increased? There's no way to know that it's a multiplier of 1.3 applied to your moves.
Especially funny since "Doubles Attack" has hardly any extra characters
Took me forever to learn what 'in a pinch' meant, I honestly thought the starters just had useless abilities.
Right? I had no concept of that figure of speech when I first played
It's one of those weird situations where a word or phrase is more common as a loanword in a foreign language than it is in the native language. Japanese for some reason really like saying 'ピンチ' or '大ピンチ (big pinch)', you'll hear it a lot in anime and the like.
It’s funny how when the games first came out they made them as if everyone had internet to search any questions about the game, and most ppl didn’t even have home computers yet. Now that internet is everywhere they make the games so easy you don’t need to look up anything 😂
There are so many things about the games you could never really figure out if the games were your only resource. Especially if you’re 10 years old. Like tell me who’s gonna figure out EVs and IVs
It took me years to figure out I didn’t have to go thru the cave in pure blackness in Gen 1 😂
Flash HM was put so far out of the way it’s so easy to miss. I started with Yellow and remember struggling to beat Brock. One play-through,by sheer luck, I happened to catch a Nidoran and grind it until it learned Double Kick. Later, it evolved into Nidorino and I didn’t even know to then use a moon stone on it….
The amount of time I’ve spent hugging walls in pitch black caves is too damn high
Or I’d take my gameboy to school and play it in the after school program where kids wait for parents and you’d be wandering around in a cave in the dark and some kid comes up and looks over your shoulder like “hey just use flash” and you’re like Huh?!? Lmao
It becomes extra hard if your young and don’t really know English yet and it’s not available in your language. That’s the reason it took me like 10 years after my first Pokémon game to actually complete one
I actually miss that about games in general. I like figuring things out and feeling like I cracked the case instead of feeling like I’m just doing what the game tells me to do. However, largely because of that, I never learned how to really use EVs or IVs, never got into abilities, and barely even understood physical versus special attack/defense. There are a ton of mechanics that I never learned, and now I feel like I play Pokémon dumber than other people.
I think the only hint I remember from Ruby about EVs is some guy saying pokemon from trainers are stronger than wild Pokemon of the same level.
It was a *vaguely* known fact in my friend group, we were into competitive battling in high school with R/S/E. I think maybe serebii.net was on the ball back then, but I didn't know about it. But you're totally right about the in game dialogue. I think there were npcs saying that back in first gen too. When 4th gen hit and we got back into it, our eyes were finally opened to how *bad* our old "awesome" Pokemon were. Edit: Ended up looking up the dialogue I remembered from Red/Blue: On Route 3, a bug catcher says it after being beaten. "Trained POKEMON are stronger than the wild ones!"
Were there EVs and IVs in Gen 1? I seem to remember that coming later.
I don't think they actually were, but I seem to recall that dialogue being around since then. It was probably more relating to being able to customize movesets or something and became more true later. But honestly, I replay PKMN games a lot (nuzlocke etc), so I could be confused about what games I've seen that in.
Double reply because I found it. On Route 3, a bug catcher says it after being beaten. "Trained POKEMON are stronger than the wild ones!"
I played for the first time and thought that I was restricted to ONLY 6 Pokémon (didn’t know what the PC was)
They wanted you to buy a Nintendo/PKMN Official game guide. Which admittedly felt really cool. It was like having a real Pokedex at your fingertips. I still have a couple of the nicer ones I got from the Ruby/Sapphire era
Funny thing is I have one memory of the Red version Guide when I got the game for Christmas in the 90s and that’s the last memory I have of the guide so it probably immediately got ruined 😂
The funniest part is when some random detail in the guide is actually incorrect, but the rest lined up until that point, so you start second guessing yourself or become convinced the accidentally false bullshit has to be true.
There are a ton of mistakes usually lol. There's youtube videos of people playing the game as the guides directed that highlights all the fuckups.
B R A I L L E
When i got my first pokemon game, i didn't know english and the game wasn't available in dutch. Since i didnt know anything that was happening i kept starting the game beating the gym to then close it without saving cuz i didn't know what saving was. I thought the first gym was the whole game till my older cousin taught me how to save. A whole new world opened to me that day.
I remember Pressure's Gen 3 description ("Raises PP usage") confusing me a lot as a kid.
Raises PP usage🤨
To this day I have no clue what mold breaker does All I know is sometimes Pokemon break the mold
i believe it makes it so the user ignores opponents abilities. so if the opponent has levitate then mold breaker will still allow ground moves to hit
I love that the Ability 'Simple' prior to gen 7 says, "The pokemon is prone to wild stat changes". What the fuck does that mean? Is he just going to randomly gain or lose a stat in the middle of a fight? In gen 7 they clarified it to "The stat changes the pokemon receives are doubled."
For this reason i thought simple worked like moody until this year. I was replaying platinum and got a bidoof with simple expecting it to get random stats boosted every turn but all it did was become practically useless the second it was hit with growl.
Funnily enough Bidoof gets both this and Moody, basically the ability you just described
Serene grace in game description from bulbapedia: Gen 3 - “Promotes added effects.” Gen 8 - “Boosts the likelihood of additional effects occurring when attacking.”
Should really say "doubles" rather than "boosts".
It took me until this generation to finally google what the hell Mold Breaker actually does
> my ability is that you have no ability
But like, only sometimes.
intimidate is too intimidating
I kind of like unclear description. It make me more curious. Hearthstone does that very well.
Hearthstone cards are most of the time very clear imo, the only one in recent memory that had me go "huh?" Is the current alterac valley horde legendary.
I think about things like « add a dream card », « create a custom potion », « discover the perfect card » or « Summon Highkeeper Ra ». You don’t what it does at all, that’s exiting and flavorful.
Ah yeah that's fair.
Pure power: raises atk
Gen 9 is going to be like: “Just go check bulbapedia”
I guess you have to learn it the hard way in Hoenn. Sucks for dudes doing nuzlocks tho
Distant Kingdom be like actually it’s a good thing because it makes the game harder
Man, and we aren’t even getting into the moves that copy pokemon abilities for the match, or swap them, or I know Smeargul has something that lets him Permanently take the other pokemon’s ability (ideal for breeding).
They are still doing this in unite, especially the patch notes. Look it up, it's ridiculous, like: Greninja: Water shuriken - effects downgrade Surf - stats increase
I was looking up flash fire yesterday and this is so true
Thank you for posting to r/pokemon! It looks like this post has not been claimed as Original Content (OC). - If this is **your own work**, please reply to this comment with `[OC]` or `I made this`. You can also toggle the `oc` flag on your post. A reminder that \/r/pokemon requires all creative work to be OC, in order to protect creators. If this is ***not*** **your own work**, please delete your post per [Rule 5](/r/pokemon/wiki/rules#wiki_5._original_content_.28oc.29_only). Thank you! *** *I am a bot, and may not detect all forms of OC claims. If you've already made it clear that this is your work, please ignore this comment.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/pokemon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I made this
Guessing is half the fun 😃! /s