Hoopa in Pokemon GO and Hope for Transformations

November was a pretty interesting month in Pokemon GO. While we’ve had various themed seasons so far, November ended with a pretty cool bit of special research. Rather than rewarding you with a Legendary or Mythical at the end, we got Hoopa early on. This was then followed by a secondary quest, in which we unlocked something awesome. The ability to change Hoopa’s form, from its normal version to its unbound version.

Hoopa Unbound, within Reach

The ability to change a Pokemon’s form in Pokemon GO is actually a pretty new feature. We first saw it with Furfrou, a weird dog Pokemon with weird hair styles. However, for Furfrou, the changes were cosmetic only. And were made regional for some reason. In Hoopa’s case, we got the normal Hoopa and pretended we were its buddy for a bit, until we completed the first special research. Doing so unlocked the ability to change Hoopa’s form. 50 Hoopa Candy and some stardust to go from normal to unbound, 10 candies to change Hoopa back.

Gonna be honest though, it’s fucked up that, if you didn’t complete the first special research, you have to buy the second research. Normally, any new content does get recycled and brought back later on, and Hoopa isn’t that amazing, but it’s still unfair. Not everyone can play regularly.

Better than Megas?

The big question is, are transformations and form changes better than Mega Evolution? While Megas generally are more powerful, they do tend to require a bit of extra work. Generally, you need to raid a Mega Pokemon 3-6 times to get enough Mega Candy for your initial Mega Evolution. After the first Mega Evolution, it’s cheap to make them Mega Evolve again. But Mega Pokemon are temporary and change back to normal as their 8 hour timer runs out.

For form changes though? They are permanent, until you want to change them back to their original form. That being said, unlocking a different form is a tad more expensive in the normal sense. Stardust is easy to come by. But for rare and legendary Pokemon, you can easily run out of candy for them. Hoopa Unbound costs 10,000 stardust and a massive 50 candies to change, but only costs 10 candy and 2000 stardust to change back. You can do this whenever you please, unlike Megas which we can only have one at a time. And form-changing is permanent until you change your mind, there’s no 8-hour timers here.

Hopefully this isn’t a one-off

We currently have two Pokemon that can change forms now. But there are a lot more Pokemon that can also change forms, all waiting to be unlocked. Included in this list are the already-existing Giratina and Deoxys. Hopefully, maybe Groudon and Kyogre will also get this, as they have primal forms. However, there will still probably be separate spawns for different sizes and textures. Pumpkaboo has four different sizes which all spawn in the wild, and the Castform family are similar, so I don’t think there will be much change here.

The big one though is Arceus. A Pokemon with 18 unique forms. Is this how the Pokemon God will play out? Potentially. But it looks like we won’t be seeing Arceus any time soon…