The Johto Tour – A Mild Opinion

Back on Saturday, we got our second ever Pokemon Tour event, this time visiting the Johto region. During this tour, we saw Pokemon from different areas of Johto spawning in particular biomes, with the spawns changing every hour. Alongside the event, we had tons of raids and shinies to grab, and a massive collect-a-thon, in which we could catch the entirety of the Johto Pokedex.

However, was the Johto tour as good as the Kanto tour in 2021? Well, I guess…

The Johto Tour was mostly just like the Kanto Tour.

The biomes were the same, as were the Pokemon. Although, because Johto has Pokemon that evolve from Kanto Pokemon, we had a bunch of those spawning as well. Poliwhirl and Crobat were the noticeable ones but we also got Eevee, Onix and Scyther in there too. Since we had some evolving tasks to do, the inclusion of those Kanto Pokemon was a necessary evil.

However, a new feature was actually having the Legendary Beasts spawning in the wild. Only the luckiest trainers could catch them, but if you took a photo of the wild Legendary, you could guarantee a chance to catch them for real. Sounds good in theory but the Legendary Beasts spawned insanely rarely, and I never even saw a Raikou, the one I wanted.

The big prize however was the Johto research that came alongside the event. Loosely following the happenings in Johto in Gold and Silver, this research was actually just a teaser for the new ‘Apex’ shadow legendaries and their special research. That being said, the Johto research was pretty damn neat, and everyone got a shiny Gyarados out of it, among other things.

Go Gym Leaders? What Go Gym Leaders?

Alongside our usual Team Rocket shenanigans, we also had a battling event. The NPCs-based-off-actual-players gimmick came back this year, and in a way that didn’t cause lag spikes. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about it because I didn’t fight any of them. For some reason, the Gym Leaders just seemed like super rare spawns in general. While I was mostly home-bound for this event, I could see plenty of Pokestops in the distance, and I saw very, very few of these gym leaders even spawning.

Apparently not doing the battling research meant that I missed out on a Legendary Beast, but eh, it probably would have had bad IVs anyway.

The Apex research is a long one, just like the shiny Mew quest.

If you completed the special research involving Celebi and shiny Gyarados, then, as a ticket holder, you gain access to Masterwork: Apex, a special research that rewards better shadow Legendaries. However, just like Shiny Mew, there’s a lot that needs doing. The first step alone requires 100 unique species of Pokemon, 100,000 experience earned and 100 research tasks! That’s a huge amount of work. And most likely the next tasks will be just as hard. Well, not hard. Just tedious and time-consuming.

It was nice.

At the end of the day, I had fun. Sure, I was mostly playing at home with incense, but it was still a nice day. Was the ticket worth €11? Kinda not really, but it was a bit of fun, just like the Kanto Tour.

Was somehow worth it though for the shiny Ho-Oh and the neat wings for our avatars. But I think that’s just me being easily amused.