5 New features I want to see within the Pokemon GO Buddy system

I very much enjoy the buddy system in Pokemon GO. One of my favourite things to do is to take Pokemon I like and walk them until they are best buddies, earning various candies along the way. But there are some new features that I’d like to see with the buddy system. After all, it makes a change having a companion rather than just using Pokemon to beat other Pokemon up.

A faster Quick Treat

You can hit the quick feeding button whenever you open the buddy screen. But it doesn’t really do much, it mostly just automatically has the berry selection automatically open. Depending on your buddy, the time it takes for them to appear on-screen still varies by quite a lot. I briefly walked a Gigalith a while back and it took forever for it to get into a feeding position. In fact, it took so long that I ended up swapping it for another buddy. Using Quick Treat should just shove the Pokemon on-screen right away, rather than making us have to sit through the walking animation.

More food to feed them

While berries are generally pretty healthy, I don’t think it’s wise to only eat berries. They’re also full of sugar, which can be bad with some Pokemon. Worse than that, plenty of Pokemon are omnivores or carnivores, and they shouldn’t just eat berries. After all, you need a nice, balanced diet. Poffins are nice, but they’re also full of sugar and look like weird cakes. It’d be nice to have some different food to feed Pokemon.

Sure, you might need more backpack space, but these food items could just be berries, reskinned into other types of food. Heck, we could probably make curry, like you do in Pokemon Sword and Shield, as an alternate food item.

Better animations for flying Pokemon

Flying Pokemon are always a bit off when it comes to buddies. Some flying Pokemon sore above you and knock Team Rocket balloons around. Others just sort of hover just above the ground. Neither really have good animations for flying and taking off. It looks awkward watching these Pokemon jankily going from pose to pose. There needs to be some sort of in-between animation for changing from being on the ground and being in the air.

As an addition, it would be nice to choose where flying Pokemon fly: whether they float in the sky or roam on the ground.

Guaranteed XL Candy

Frankly, getting XL Candy from your buddy should be guaranteed. You’re already putting effort into walking a buddy, so you should be rewarded for that effort. It absolutely sucks walking the 20km (10km with a Poffin or excitement), finally getting a candy for a Legendary and then not getting an XL Candy as well. Sure, if your Pokemon is level 40+, it’s almost guaranteed, but it should be guaranteed no matter a Pokemon’s level.

Multiple Buddies at once

Okay, sure, you can technically have multiple buddies at once. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, switching to and from various Pokemon and having to constantly re-feed them. But it’d be nice to have more buddies to play with without that hassle. That being said, it might be a bit too much, so maybe having multiple Pokemon as buddies should be a Best Buddy perk.

These are all nice features I’d like to see, but I doubt any of them would be implemented.