The Timeless Travels Research Was Okay I Guess

With recent seasons, we’ve had seasonal research to go alongside them, and this season has been no different. Timeless Travels is a 14 stage special research that somewhat follows along with the season, with a handful of gaps in between. Was it worth it? Kinda.

Unfortunately, Timeless Travels didn’t start off well. While catching 15 different species of Pokemon isn’t too hard, and step 1 does reward 3 charge and fast TMs, step two jumps straight into everyone’s favourite sort of task. And by favourite, I mean least favourite. While the “do X 7 days in a row” task these days has been replaced with “do X task on 7 different days”, these tasks are always obvious roadblocks, and literally all you can do is patiently wait a week to do them. There’s also two cases of powering up a Pokemon 10 times, a task that is always a little annoying, but there’s normally something you need to power up anyway.

However, at stage 9, suddenly Timeless Travels turns into a standard Team Rocket research, with all the same steps. While, thankfully, you don’t need to purify any Pokemon, you do need to defeat 9 grunts and each of the Team Rocket Leaders, before fighting Giovanni himself. This is all pretty standard for a Shadow Legendary encounter, but I find it weird that it was made into part of Timeless Travels, rather than being part of a separate special research.

The weirdest thing though is stage 13. After beating Giovanni himself, you get one more task, to defeat three random grunts. This kinda seems pointless, especially since we literally just defeated their boss. You also need to randomly spin some Pokestops and catch a bunch of Pokemon. Seems like a bit of a let down after LITERALLY BEATING GIOVANNI. The whole stage seems pointless, especially since stage 14 just gives you some free rewards without any tasks.

I suppose at least the rewards were better. The biggest reward is the Super Rocket Radar which gives you a chance to get Shadow Kyogre (ir whatever current Legendary Giovanni has, after the season of Timeless Travels ends). But we also got a Poffin, a Super Incubator and a Raid Pass. Okay, those rewards do kinda suck on their own, and they suck even more in this long-winded research, but at least they are actually useful. The weirdest reward though is a Gible right at the end. Considering this season is supposed to be about ancient Sinnoh, the land of Hisui, it seems weird to stick a Gible at the end. One of the unique Hisuian Pokemon would have been more interesting.

Either way though, Timeless Travels was a billion times better than the previous seasonal research, A Paldean Adventure. That whole research was a complete waste of time, and had almost no good rewards either. It was also way, way more difficult than Timeless Travels. All things considered, unless you find fighting Team Rocket bosses hard, the whole special research is actually pretty easy. Outside of the 7-day tasks, you could do the research in about a week without any real effort – more so if you played along with seasonal events. The final parts, the Team Rocket parts, all went alongside a Team Rocket Takeover event, with Rocket balloons every 2 hours, AND the research rewarded you with a Rocket Radar, making the whole section much easier to complete.

Overall, Timeless Travels wasn’t a great special research, but at least it was simple and easy, and it gave you a Super Rocket Radar for an encounter with Shadow Kyogre. Still, its change from normal research into Team Rocket research is confusing to say the least…