Pokemon Day 2023

Predictions

First things first, get the obvious out of the way. There is going to be updates/events for all the free to play games. That’s a given. I don’t play any of them, but its nice for the people that do. Undeniably, we are getting DLC for SV. There is no doubt about it in my mind. DLC for SwSh was successful, and SV had too many loose ends when it came to lore to just leave them hanging. Do I think its going to be something like Kalos DLC? No, this is GameFreak we’re talking about. Its gonna have some new area, probably a few new Pokemon as well, but it probably wont be anything special. I do think we will also hear about a patch for SV to fix some of the performance issues. I know that’s something that was mentioned a while back, but I still think its going to be too little to late. I think we’ll also see something about HOME support. That’s not something I’m personally interested in, but it would be nice to see that sooner than later.

I also think we might see a new spin off game that’s going to release within the year. What its going to be, I can’t say. Initially I was going to rule out any possibility of Mystery Dungeon, thinking that it would be too good to actually have a new game or even just a remake. But, there is some evidence that points to it actually being likely. On the Pokemon Day site there was a copyright for Spike Chunsoft, the creators of the Mystery Dungeon games. It was a bit buried and I believe its now removed at the time of me writing these predictions, but its odd that it would be on there in the first place. I have really only played the first two games, and I know the later ones are disappointing, so I’m not sure how to feel about it. I don’t think they would do another remake considering the last game was one, but I also fear that a new entry might not be the best given that the later entries aren’t that good. But then again, PLA was good enough to (slightly) restore my faith in the main line series, so anything is possible.

Another thing people want to see are re-releases of the GB and GBA games on the newly released Switch Online service for them. I don’t think this is a likely outcome. Pokemon is a cash cow, and the main line series is no exception at all. Putting it on NSO is likely a waste. We’ve seen other companies release compilations of their games instead of getting them put on NSO. I can only imagine this is because it would be more profitable instead of going the route of NSO. So why would GameFreak not take this route as well? The only reason I can think is because they’re too lazy to program their own independent app, as seeing they couldn’t program a finished game as of late. It just doesn’t seem likely to happen to me. But honestly, if it does happen, its probably just going to be Kanto games knowing GameFreak.

I think the last thing to touch on is Pokemon Sleep and Detective Pikachu 2. Both of these games share the fate of being announced and then never really being talked about again. Seeing either of these would be a nice surprise. Its hard to really say anything about either of these as we know nothing about these. I think it would be funny to see Pokemon Sleep just given its premise. How would a game about sleeping work? I’m not sure, but I would like to see.

I think that’s about it from what I expect to see. The presentation is expected to be about 20 mins, so there really isn’t a lot of time for new things. I expect about half of it to be updates and such for mobile games. The relatively unimportant things in my mind. After that, I think its going to cover some sort of spin off game. Mystery Dungeon or not, this is probably the thing I’m most excited to see. To end it off, its likely going a DLC teaser and they’ll talk about that for a moment before ending the stream.

Time to wait and see what the 27th has in store for us.

Reaction

Well, that was one of the presentations of all time. There was a lot of non-main line news presented. Pokemon World Championships, some Pokemon TCG announcement, a Netflix original show, and the typical mobile game updates. Not anything I’m personally interested in, but it was still nice to see. After those, Pokemon Sleep got its time in the spotlight. This is going to be the best Pokemon game since the one about brushing teeth. Its going to be amazing. I cannot wait to enjoy the engaging game play of getting a good nights sleep. I’m just shaking with anticipation. Jokes aside, it looks like a cute little game that might encourage players to get more and better quality sleep, something I think most people can use. I might give it a try when it comes out.

Now, the exciting news. Scarlet and Violet. To me, the most interesting thing was the introduction of the new Paradox Pokemon. If you didn’t know, in the base game there was a bit of a teaser for some future Pokemon. In the Scarlet or Violet book, there was what seemed to be a fusion of the Legendary Beasts or Swords of Justice respectively. We actually got to see these revealed as Walking Wake and Iron Leaves in the trailer. Notably, they had different designs than what was shown in the games. They were much more closely related to Suicune and Virizion than the groups they came from. They both have quite interesting designs, but I always find the future Pokemon to be much more boring as they simply end up looking like robot clones instead of some more interesting ancestor. Sadly, their role is limited to a limited time raid battle. In all honesty, its a bit disappointing to see. Just seeing these Pokemon that were highly speculated until now just shoved into raid battles is just disappointing. Instead of possibly doing something interesting story wise (even in the DLC) with the two would have been much more exciting to see. I’m still glad they didn’t just do nothing with them the entire time.

As expected, DLC is coming to SV. Its coming in two parts, with the overall title of “The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero”. I think its a good premise, Area Zero left a lot of lore related questions, so getting to explore it and go more in depth is nice. But there are some odd choices involved. The first part is titled “The Teal Mask” and is heavily influenced by Japanese festivals and folklore. Four new Pokemon were revealed along side this part, and they fit the theme. This first part I fail to see how it has any relation to Area Zero, especially when both DLC parts are framed as field trips abroad. I don’t know how leaving the region will review secrets relating to the region, but basically all we got was a teaser for the DLC. The second part is more interesting. It was a lot more vague than than the teaser for the first part, with only some structure in the middle of the ocean being shown along side some other characters. However, I think this part will do a lot of heavy lifting because of the new Pokemon it revealed, Terapagos. Looking back at the Scarlet/Violet book, there was some Pokemon teased to be the origin of the terastalization phenomenon. Terapagos really matches up with this, so it might be really interesting to see how this links mack to the base game. I think the last bit worth mentioning is that in the key art for both parts, there are new reoccurring characters. Again, we know nothing, but its interesting to see that they are in both parts. Overall, just an interesting but expected DLC teaser.

And thats about everything that was in the presentation. Of course, I didn’t cover everything, but really the main focus was a teaser for the DLC. It met my (low) expectations, but I think the most interesting thing was the lack of any spin off game. A spin off on the Switch that is. I know there was a lot of expectations surrounding a new Mystery Dungeon game, but I always kinda had a feeling it wouldn’t show. The upcoming year just feels a bit empty for Pokemon considering its pretty much just the DLC that is releasing. And this is considering the incredible pace games have been releasing the past few years. But its probably a good thing, considering the half baked states the games have been releasing in. Speaking of, an update was released today to add in the new Paradox Pokemon that also happened to add a lot of fixes to SV. It probably doesn’t completely fix the sorry state the games were released in, but improvement is improvement, and hopefully they can continue to improve the game state when the DLC releases later this year.

Basically it was just a mid presentation with nothing horribly unexpected announced.