I’m a pokémaniac; we’re all clear on that, right? Good.
So I’ve been enjoying Pokémon Y as much and often as I can, having just finished the main story. Now it’s on me to travel across the land of Kalos, searching far and wide for all the little monsters that I haven’t forced into slave labour caught yet. And there are a lot of them this time around. Generation Six was fairly stingy with the new ones, with the total Gen VI pokémon numbering less than 70. That still brings our total to a rather robust 718. Which is, at the same time, too many and not enough.
Now, the thing you need to know is that pokémon design is a very, very small part of the game. Not even something I think about often. However, I recently read an article that highlighted a few of the “best” designs of this generation. This article, in fact! It’s a pretty good read, and very funny. I also agree with most of his points (Tyrunt/Tyrantrum are amazing), he forgot something, so I stole this DeviantArt picture from a Google Image Search to illustrate the point I have to make.
Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist are my absolute favourite new pokémon of this generation. Combination grass- and ghost-types, they fill a niche in my team that I’ve never really bothered with. I don’t think I’ve ever used a ghost-type pokémon regularly before, and only during the last generation did I start to warm up to any grass-types (Abomasnow and Simisage).
Design-wise, they’re beautiful. Little Pumpkaboo is the most adorable little guy you’ve seen; some sort of ghosty-bat-thing riding around on a jack-o-lantern. Or mabye the jack-o-lantern is its body? Who knows for sure? And who cares? Just look at that cute little frown! You’ve gotta love that! I just wanna give him a big ol’ hug <3 <3 <3
Pumpkaboo, also, has the best name ever. It’s fun to say and write!
Usually when pokémon grows up, they get pretty ugly. Gourgeist, luckily, does not suffer that fate. Gourgeist is pretty darn cute too! A ghost with pants made out of a lack-o-lantern and hands made out of hair. It doesn’t look quite as huggable as Pumpkaboo, but at least Gourgeist can hug back.
The very special trait that Pumpkaboo and Gourgeist have that no other pokémon species have is that they can come in four different sizes: small, average, large, and super. The larger sizes are stronger and have more HP, but the smaller ones have the benefit of a higher speed stat.
The only big drawback to Pumpkaboo is that you have to trade it to make it evolve into Gourgeist. Which means that you have to have a friend who plays Pokémon to get the more powerful monster. Fortunately, all you need to do is trade it. No fancy items or experience levels necessary.
As far as battle goes, my Gourgeist (who hasn’t left my team since I caught him) rocks Leech Seed, Trick-or-Treat, Seed Bomb, and Shadow Ball. Leech Seed is a move that drains an opponents health each turn and then heals Gourgeist. Seed Bomb and Shadow Ball are pretty standard attack moves, of the grass- and ghost-type respectively.
Trick-or-Treat is my favourite move of the bunch though, What it does is give the opposing pokémon the ghost type. This is great because ghost-type pokémon are weak against ghost-type attacks (don’t ask). So using Trick-or-Treat and then Shadow Ball enables Gourgeist to do a huge amount of damage to pretty much any other pokémon. The best part of it all is that Trick-or-Treat’s attack animation is a bunch of ghosts swarming the enemy. It’s pretty great!
Now all I have to do is go back out into the wilds and catch me a lady Pumpkaboo. Then, I’ll be able to start breeding ’em and create my invincible Gourgeist army! Hooray!