Thoughts on Ultra Beasts in Pokemon GO

I’ve always found the Ultra Beasts to be quite odd. They aren’t legendary Pokemon but they’re not normal Pokemon either. Ultra Beasts sort of sit between pseudo-legendaries and normal legendaries. They’re also… not quite Pokemon. The designs of the Ultra Beasts are definitely quite alien, which makes sense when they’re supposed to be from other dimensions. There’s also a whole business behind tracking and taking down Ultra Beasts, and the guardian deities, the Tapu Pokemon, all fight fiercely against Ultra Beasts, should they threaten Alola.

Ultra Beasts are also quite strange in Pokemon GO, where they’ve been slowly released during the Season of Light. During GO Fest 2022, Nihilego debuted, appearing in raids briefly. Several of the Ultra Beasts were GO Fest quests, but now they’re getting a big push for the end of the Season of Light.

The biggest problem though is that they seem to be regional. During the Ultra Beast event at the end of the Season of Light, we had a raid battle event with 5 free raid passes (just like old times), where we could fight and catch Ultra Beasts. However, while everyone got Nihilego and Guzzlord raids, the third Pokemon depends on where you are on earth. Being in Europe, my third Ultra Beast raid will be Pheromosa. There are plans to be able to catch the others during the raid event, but it’s time-limited. Which doesn’t help anyone.

Really, regional Pokemon are fucking stupid. Yeah, sure, we have remote passes, but unless you happen to have a ton of active friends across the planet, all of whom play Pokemon GO, there’s not much the average player can do. There are third party apps you can use. For example, PokeGenie allows you to set up raid parties, but there are long waiting times between raids. And most average players are probably completely unaware that these apps exist.

It’s also stupid artificial scarcity. They cost too much stardust to trade, so it’s do raids or do nothing.

That being said, for the Ultra Beast raid day event, you could easily get one of each Ultra Beast by completing 7 raids.

I suppose, on the plus side, while these Ultra Beasts are cool, they’re not entirely best in class. Kartana is a great grass type, Xurkitree is a great electric type, but the others fall behind a little. Pheromosa is said to be alright as a best bug type and an okay fighting type, but still, there are plenty of alternatives. It’ll be a shame to miss them, and the FOMO (fear of missing out) is intended to be quite high. But I think patience here is a virtue. They’ll be back at some point.

I at least hope that Poiple and Naganadel aren’t too difficult to obtain, because I do like those Ultra Beasts. But more importantly, I hope we can get more Cosmog soon, because it fucking sucks having to evolve a 2-star Cosmeom into a Lunala or Solgaleo for the Cosmog quest. It’s already been confirmed on r/TheSilphRoad though that the rest of the Cosmog quest doesn’t give you a second Cosmog. Most likely, we’ll probably end up seeing Lunala and Solgaleo in level 5 raids, rather than via research.