Last time:

But weren’t you supposed to meet with the professor in Malie Garden?

noooooooooo lillie not you too when will the roadblocks end

I swap my team around yet again to include slipper pokemon, who has no attacking moves because of course. I am also disappointed to find it eats with the standard munch-munch of any other pokemon.

Oh! At last (and at L25) my cute if silly rattata has evolved into beestung poofface.

This gourmet Pokemon is particular about the taste of freshness of its food. Restaurants where Raticate live have a good reputation.

That’s hilarious. And it has a point – people are always all upset about rats being found in a restaurant, but do you really want the place so full of moldy gunk the rats avoid it?

My guess is that this guy evolves only at night, as the other one was so very diurnal. Which just underlines how weird the time gimmick is – I’m playing mostly at night, including at such good life choices times as the “AM but still dark” block, but that means I’m mostly playing during the “day”. And when I am playing at sane times, the woman at the pokecenter says I’m up late! Also, there’s just something very irritating about seeing a bright blue sky when it’s night. Hssssssssssssss.

Ah, and my L25 eevee is also finally evolving. I have really earned this umbreon.

With its black fur, it blends into the darkness. It bides its time, and when prey appears, this Pokemon goes for its throat, and then eats it.

Last bit is kinda redundant.

Also I know everyone’s all OMG POKEMON GRIMDARK but I feel it’s reducing the amount of information we actually get. I mean, just the first sentence is enough to extrapolate “ambush predator” from.

Anyway, I finally stop running around the park and talk to Prof. Labsafetyfail.

Prof. Labsafetyfail: Did someething big happen?

It sure did!/Only something AMAZING!

I feel there should really be more protagonist characterization if they want these sorts of personalized choices. If you establish at the start that Bonnibel is a happy-go-lucky kid, I’d be willing to go along with it, but when she’s mostly blank slate, I go my own way and then this stuff comes off as OOC. Meanwhile, Yes/No have no problem with them and it doesn’t derail the conversation because you just know Hau is going to start hopping up and down and shouting about what happened regardless.

Hau: Professor! Professor, you gotta hear this!

See?

Disappointingly, Hau only babbles about the wormhole and not the rest of the technological marvel, and then Prof. Labsafetyfail says hey maybe we’ll go through a wormhole ourselves… which would sound a lot more intriguing if the bit about ultra beasts suffering didn’t suggest that this different dimension is different all the way down and existing there would be painful or outright fatal.

He then tells me to get on a bus and leaves.

Hau: Hey, Bonnibel, did you know?

Of course/Know what?

It saddens me that the first option is default, because it suggests there’s no meta fun here where you could play the game once, then come back and be all “yeah Hau I know what your random line is about because you already told me!” Anyway it’s just that there’s an observatory, which he goes on to explain is a thing he doesn’t know anything about. Thanks for that waste of time, Hau.

Outside, the event flag has moved to roadblock Lillie.

Lillie: Bonnibel? Would you mind if I asked you something?

You want to go to the ruins?/Is it about Nebby?

Lillie: Yes. I want to take Nebby to visit Ula’ula’s ruins, but they are located deep in a large desert. I don’t want to ask that much of you. Right now, I’m planning to visit Malie Library. There’s a book that I want to look for there. Maybe you’d even be willing to help me? I know that Malie Library is here within the city of Malie somewhere… Even I should be able to find it. I can do this!

Lillie, for god’s sake just take the rotomdex.

I move a few steps further and another fucking cutscene. Some dude Rotom knows, who is apparently another professor.

???: Are you feeling nice and comfy there in that Pokedex of yours?

Rotom: Never better! Zz-zz-zz!

And…it’s Alolan Oak, who I’m pretty sure covered himself in a spray-on tan because regardless what that Aether grunt said, people do not actually totally change color when tanned. And Oak especially wouldn’t – unless the pokeworld has some sort of weird planetary slant such that Kanto never gets UV at all, Oak spends his days outside caring for all the pokemon and is already about as tan as he could get.

He chats with Rotom, telling it to take care of me and then asking me to take care of Rotom, followed by,

That young fellow from Kalos who helped invent that Pokedex put a lot of work into it. And as much love and care as any parent!

So he means the object. He’s chatting with it like it’s a person but he’s actually only concerned with the unliving technology it’s in.

I’ll be in the Malie Library if you ever need me. Feel free to stop by and chat anytime!

You’re an awful person, why would I?

If you’re having trouble finding the library, just follow the black-brick road!

I really hope Lillie knew that.

He then explains something about patterned bricks telling you where to go that is honestly kind of cute but also totally unnecessary because I couldn’t get lost if I tried.

I decide to skip the library and head downward. A woman at the start heals my pokemon, and thankfully the game does it this time without sticking her in a nurse uniform.

I then get into a double battle, which my pokemon win by the skin of their teeth. Afterward, the boy wonders if he lost because he didn’t spend enough time in Pokemon Refresh…illustrating how making that super overpowered undermines the idea it’s proof of legitimately caring for pokemon.

Komala! At a sliver of health, it breaks out of all my greatballs only to go into the first pokeball thrown.

The log it holds was given to it by its parents at birth. It has also been known to cling to the arm of a friendly Trainer.

…so is this like how if a joey is lost you stick it in a bag so it feels safe because you’re a good person, or is it like how if you sneak up on a joey you can make it do the funny trick of going into a bag because you’re a bad person.

Its ability of comatose is pretty much a pokedex entry in itself: It’s always drowsing and will never wake up. It can attack without waking up. And also, apparently, gather and distribute logs to its offspring. From the battle, this apparently prevents status effects.

It really confuses me why a koala. They sleep a lot, but not more than many animals their size, and when they’re awake they can move at a decent speed.

I make it to the end only to be turned aside for not having enough crystals to face the more deadly pokemon beyond the barrier. Listen lady, the fact I nearly died getting this far is no reason not to let me through.

I try out the other path but my team is all weak to birds. I decide to swap some pokemon around again for a more birdproof team, and also train a bit in the park area.

Masquerain!

Its wings and antennae don’t cope well with moisture. After a rain, it faces sunward to dry off.

Seriously? It evolves from a water type and it knows rainy moves and it’s found in wet areas.

Then I check the pokemon islands and lots of my eggs have hatched. I trade them for version exclusives.

Cottonee:

Pillows and beds stuffed with cotton exhaled by Cottonee are soft and puffy, light and airy–altogether top quality.

Huh, I wonder if this is sort of like civet coffee where it starts out a natural thing and then pretty soon people have farms where they’re cramming cotton into the pokemon’s faces.

Rufflet:

With its sharp claws, this Pokemon pierces its prey, and then it pecks at them. Although it also consumes berries, it’s a carnivore at heart.

Now to make another stab at the route of angry birds. I catch a fearow!

Drawings of a Pokemon resembling Fearow can be seen in murals from deep in ancient history.

So either fearow’s pokedex entry was coopted to be about ho-oh or this is the most no shit sherlock pokedex entry ever.

I mean…I guess, at a stretch, there’s the implication some pokemon in fact are rather new, so it’s semi-meaningful to get it confirmed fearow isn’t…except all of those pokemon share the common trait of being obviously unnatural, so there’s only a point in mentioning if an unnatural pokemon happens to have records going back into ancient times and no one ever doubted fearow wasn’t on murals somewhat.

Does Sun’s entry suck this much? I have to know.

It’s tough and has excellent stamina. It has no problem flying continuously for a whole day carrying a heavy load.

Oh for christ’s sake, was the original plan “hey, let’s release just one game this time, shake up the whole pattern!” and then they got like 99% done and then everyone in charge realized obviously two games and then the lowest ranked intern had to write another set of pokedex entries in the middle of final crunch period?

That would also explain the fact they obviously weren’t proofread. Does Sun have fewer bizarre sentences with random commas as if it got written earlier back when there was time to fine-tune things?

Anyway also some lady let her stufful out for a walk and they won’t come back so I have to get them. I’m honestly just glad to hear people let their pokemon out to run around. That event in Unova where the lady wants you to exercise her pokemon by running in circles around the house it’s never allowed to leave was so depressing.

And now my diglett’s evolving!

These Pokemon are cherished in the Alola region, where they are thought to be feminine deities of the land incarnate.

Okay. It’s always a bit awkward when some pokemon are symbolically linked or believed to be some godly power when also literal god pokemon are running about. One of the many things that made more sense at the start when legendaries were just legendaries.

Followed by my trumbeak! Into…basically a regular animal…? Toucannon. Or just straight up a giant toucan I am using in pokebattles.

Within its beak, its internal gas ignites, explosively launching seeds with enough power to pulverize boulders.

That sounds super cool but there’s still the fact this is just a toucan.

It’s not even as cool as some real toucans are.

It then learns beak blast, which is 100 power but takes two turns, but if touched on the first turn the opponent is burned. There really seems to be a lot of fiddly metagame stuff in Moon.

Then a skarmory shows up! My adorable salandit crithits it, but it’s okay because it’s got the sturdy trait. Of course, then it summons a friend and gets taken out by splash damage.

Its metal body is sturdy, but it does rust rather easily. So on rainy days, this Pokemon prefers to stay put in its nest.

Really don’t think this was well thought out. Rust forms from any moisture in the air. Even if somehow its nest is wholly waterproof, the humidity in the air on even a dry day let alone a wet one should be too much over time (and we’re not even getting into the salt spray of an island…), unless it’s constantly growing fresh metal underneath the rust and it really doesn’t seem like it is given the outside looks pretty shiny.

I then get to nearly the end, where there are two Skull kids trying to steal a bus stop that’s too heavy for them. Somehow, interacting with them just triggers a cutscene where they explain it and then I’m bumped backward, instead of functioning like normal dialogue.

And that’s apparently as far as I can get without progressing the story, so tomorrow, the library and Lillie!