Pokemon: The Legendary Quandary

Every time a pair of Pokemon games come out I choose which one to buy using a simple metric: which Legendary do I want more? Funny thing is, by the time I get to catching the thing I no longer want it. Sometimes I put it on my team, sometimes I don't but I never actually want to.

Take Pokemon Sun. I just got to the point where I get to catch Solgaleo and... I just don't want him. I beat him down, slap the Master Ball on him and then the 3DS asks me whether I want to add him to my party. I choose yes, mainly because the whole narrative of the last half hour has been guilting me into it and I look at my team as it asks me to choose which one will get boxed to make room.

And I just don't want to. “What kind of roleplaying is this?” I ask myself as I look at these six creatures I've dragged through hell in my quest to be the best that ever was.

There's Harvey, the Decidueye I raised from a little Rowlet who's been with me all the way across the Alola Region; Moira the Jolteon who joined me soon afterwards; my ultimate Flying-type tag team Scarlet the Talonflame and Knifeblock the Skarmory; Innsmouth the Mimkyu who took me hours to catch and has taken so many hits for the team; and, Bubbles the Araquanid who crunched his way through endless Fire, Dark and Psychic types.

I mean, in the cold light of day I'll admit Bubbles is my least favourite child of the crew but the little Water-Bug fellow's got type advantage all over the shop.

So, feeling like a monster because for once the Legendary is just a nice fellow who wants to travel, I press B and box the poor creature. An option, by the way, that dialogue indicates no one at Game Freak thought anyone would be heartless enough to choose.

At the end of the day, though, I value that the series basically allows you to play the team you want to play. Either by type advantage or over-levelling the opposition I don't think there are many bad combinations of teams. I still need to do my Sky Trainer roleplay run some day, probably as a rerun on Pokemon X since that's still, in my view, the most varied and interesting game in the series.