A Weird Halloween Two-Parter

Every game right now is having its Halloween event. Halloween is a massive holiday in gaming, even if you don’t live in the US, Canada or Europe. Which is nice because, where I live, we don’t really celebrate Halloween. However, Pokemon GO is having a weird two-part event for Halloween. Halloween part 1 and Halloween part 2.

So far, we’ve just been given Halloween part 1. However, there’s not really much in it. It’s mostly just a bunch of ghost type Pokemon, and the return of the Halloween map from last year. Although I noticed that, during the day, the piles of leaves kinda just look like brown stains. We do get a new background while catching Pokemon, which IS actually quite nice, but it’s still pretty basic. Oh and the Lavender Town music is back. That’s always good.

The best part of, well, part 1 is the appearance of shiny Phantump. It’s a cute Pokemon with a pretty nice shiny, but it’s kinda uncommon. Apparently it will be more common in part 2. There’s a Halloween 7km egg that contains Galarian Yamask, Munchlax and Riolu, which isn’t spooky at all, and all the spawns for this part are just your basic ghost types.

What we did get is some timed research, one for the new Pokemon Greavard, and one for Spiritomb. The Greavard timed research just requires that you catch more and more ghost types. It’s simple enough, and it gives you three Greavard encounters. The Spiritomb research only gives you one encounter, and requires 108 berries fed to Pokemon, as well as 108 Nice throws. This research is a bit more tedious, but Spiritomb research always has to be tedious because it was tedious to get in the main games. Still, one encounter is kinda cheap, especially when we had more encounters in previous years.

Part 2 on the other hand is going to be huge. We’re getting a bunch more ghost types, we’re getting Gengar with a new hat, there are hatted Pokemon from previous years AND there’s going to be a Rocket Takeover event surrounding it. The Team Rocket part alone is insane, as we are getting some AMAZING shadow Pokemon. Cranidos, Gastly, Bastiodon and my absolute favourite, Rhyhorn. These are all amazing shadow Pokemon that will shake up both PvP AND PvE. I can’t wait for that.

And the part 2 spawns are also pretty hot. We’re getting shiny Zorua, and pretty much every wild spawn can be shiny, which is rare in an event. Normally there are a handful of non-shiny Pokemon, but for Halloween part 2, everything can be shiny. There’s also an odd bonus that catching costumed Pokemon will also have a chance to drop rare candy and rare XL candy.

What I don’t get though is why this event has been split into two parts. If both parts were equally interesting and actually different in a good way, I’d understand it. But part 1 is so basic and uninteresting that I wonder why they even bothered. Especially when the part 1 spawns will also be in the part 2 spawns. Either way, I can’t wait for both part 2 and the Rocket Takeover event. Lots of stuff to catch!