Galarian Zigzagoon Community Day

August’s Community Day this year was Galarian Zigzagoon, an utterly adorable Pokemon. I mean, look at it. It’s like a little punk racoon thing.

How can you not love something like that? It’s so adorable, and it’s a pretty nice choice for a Community Day. Even if, like Deino, getting a shiny one used to be rare and now everyone has one.

A great shiny with some use.

While Obstagoon may not be as useful as Deino was from this year’s previous Community Day, it’s still a dark type that has a nice niche. It’s also a really nice shiny, with red stripes and teal body parts, particularly the tongue. Obstagoon is a pretty strong Pokemon in the Go Batle League, namely in Great League. It can also have a place in Ultra League, but you need a lot of XL candy for that.

What’s also somewhat similar compared to Deino Day is the special move. Obstagoon learns the move Obstruct, which is somewhat similar to Brutal Swing. At least, at a glance. Brutal Swing is a basic damaging move. Meanwhile, Obstruct is a very defensive move. It charges quickly but only does 20 damage. However, it’s also a guaranteed defense boost for Obstagoon, and lowers your opponent’s defense by one level. Obstruct seems like it’s great for roughing up bulky opponents, so they take more damage from other charged attacks.

That double weakness to fighting though is very tough. And fighting types are pretty common, because Counter is such a good fast move.

We got all the stuff though.

This Community Day had way more bonuses. Normally you just get one or two, like half distance hatching for eggs and 3-hour incense and lure modules. However, for Zigzagoon day, we also got double experience, double candy, double the chance for XL candy, bonus candy on transferring Pokemon and two extra Special Trades.

Just like Deino Day, we also got the weird level 4 raid thing. Once the Community Day is over, we get a sort of after party thing. Linoone start spawning in level 4 raids, but these raids can’t be done remotely. Defeating the Linoone boss will spawn Zigzagoons around the gym. However these extra spawns don’t have the same shiny chances as the ones from the extra Community Day. Honestly, the whole idea around these in-person-only raids after a Community is a bit… weird. After all, a Linoone can’t be shiny, the shiny chances go back to normal and everyone’s generally tuckered out after catching Zigzagoons in the wild. Plus, these raids are level 4 raids, meaning you’ll probably need a friend.

The event also had a timed research to go along with it. By catching 100 Zigzagoons, you could unlock an entire Obstagoon costume! Not even Deino Day had that. Sure, it meant catching 100 Zigzagoons, but doing so in 3 hours isn’t that tricky. I wasn’t playing particularly hard and managed to catch 100 Zigzagoons in about an hour and a half.

This doesn’t make up from taking away our 6-hour Community Days.

Honestly, it feels like Niantic are throwing in all this stuff to make us like 3-hour Community Days more. Yeah, sure, the bonuses are all lovely. But the extra hours are even more lovely. They make a Community Day actually feel like a Community Day, and there’s more time to meet up with people. More hours also means more players. After all, not everyone is available at 11am on a weekend.

Unfortunately though, this is a fight that can only be won via wallet power. But this is tricky to convince people to do, so voting with our wallets will only be done by the most dedicated of players. In the mean time, I’d recommend not buying anything.

Still, at least Zigzagoon is cute.