Ultra Time was Great, Ultra Space was not

After GO Fest, there’s always some sort of Ultra event. The U-shaped Unown appears in raids and there’s an unusual theme surrounding the event. This year, after GO Fest 2021, players ‘unlocked’ three Ultra events. The first was Time, the second was Space and the third was randomly Gen 8 stuff.

As events go, the Ultra Time and Space events were rather similar. But it’s clear as day that one event was better than the other.

The big difference are in the wild spawns

Time Week’s wild spawns were great. We had a mixture of actually useful wild Pokemon. Fossil types mingled with more future-like types of Pokemon. So we got spawns like Cranidos and Anorith alongside Beldum and Magnemite spawns, alongside normal spawns. Space Week on the other hand, well, it only really had Gastly and Clefairy. Elgyem reappeared in the wild for the first time in ages, but we didn’t get a shiny form for it. The most interesting wild spawns for Space Week were Heatmor and Durant, with both colours of Shellos in raids.

We also got more new shinies. Time Week introduced Cranidos and Shieldon as new shinies alongside Dialga. For Space Week, we only got Palkia and Heracross as new shinies. However, both were exclusive to raids only. No eggs, no wild spawns, nothing for poor Heracross. In fact, wild Heracross spawns were TURNED OFF in the US, so your only way to get them was via raids.

The raids are annoying too.

What makes matters even worse is that level 3 raids are all over the place, and have an extra, useless Pokemon in them. Heracross and the damn kangaroo are in level 3 raids, but so is Alakazam. Why? I have no damn clue. No one wants to raid for an Alakazam that can’t be shiny. It’s literally just filler, to make the other two raid bosses rarer.

The same also applies to level 1 raids. In Time Week, we had things like Cranidos and Shieldon. But Shellos and Elgyem are acting as filler, and none of the level 1 Pokemon aren’t particularly enticing.

As a random aside, I always felt like Dialga and Palkia made little sense.

Dialga can control and manipulate time. Palkia controls and manipulates space. However, their typings are Dragon/Steel for Dialga and Dragon/Water for Palkia. I don’t know why, but I find this really weird. What does water have to do with space, and what does steel have to do with time? If anything, I feel like water is actually more closely related to time. Time is a river in which you can only traverse it in one direction. On the other hand, space is literally everything around us. I’d say that ground or grass or maybe even hard might be better options. I mean, water works for both time and space, but it just seems at odds with Dialga being a steel type, and other water/dragon Pokemon already existing.

Anyway, Space Week is still not nearly as good as Time Week

Honestly, thematically, Time Week just all-round worked better. We had better spawns and better raids, but also more Pokemon that kinda fir the theme. Space Week just included a bunch of hemisphere-based switches, but even then most of them couldn’t be shiny, and the desirable ones were locked to raids.

It’s a shame, really, because both Ultra weeks had so much potential. But, on the flip side, the Alolan/Galar event coming afterwards will probably blow both weeks out of the water. Why? Because we’re getting the armoured doggos from Sword and Shield. And that WILL be interesting…