Getting Closer to Legendary Monsters

I’ve noticed a change in Pokemon Go recently. A change when it comes to Legendary Pokemon. There’s something off about them, and not the fact that many of the recent Legendaries can be taken down with just four accounts. No, the change I’ve noticed comes to how… close they are.

A while back, I wrote a very angry, very scathing article about Latias, the little red Pokemon that’s more of an airplane than it is a dragon. My biggest criticism of it was that the bastard was way too small a target, moved around too much, attacked too much and, worst of all, was really, really far away from where you, the player, ‘stands’.

The problem with Pokemon being far away normally isn’t an issue. You might flub one or two throws while trying to catch a faraway Pokemon but since most people have at least a small pile of normal Pokeballs and Razzberries, you’ll catch a faraway Pokemon eventually. One of the more noticeable ones for me was Scyther, but I originally had trouble with small, far away targets like Shuppet and Gastly. Gastly in particular is very difficult to hit at first because Gastly and its ilk are in fact HUGE Pokemon, so they always appear closer than they are. When you have just done a raid though and only have a limited number of Pokeballs, you can’t afford to waste throws while trying to judge distances.

I’d seen this before, where a Pokemon seems to stand really far away from the screen and your Pokeball. Sometimes a Pokemon seems much closer than it is, but is just in fact very large. Some Pokemon though were both large and far away. The first time I’d encountered this was with Moltres and Zapdos, who seemed to be further away than they appeared and would awkwardly move up and down as well. The worst one though, for a while at least, was Giratina in its Altered Forme. The stumpy elephant-dragon version of Giratina when it first appeared sat at the same distance Pokemon like Gengar and Gastly did. But Giratina was also a massive dick because he had an insanely fast attack animation, attacked relentlessly and a high chance to attack twice in a row, meaning you’d have a much smaller window to try and catch the bugger.

Latias, as mentioned above, took this to extremes. The little bitch would fly all over the place and was insanely far away, while also being much smaller than it looked. That meant that judging distances was much trickier than with other Legendary Pokemon. And since Rayquaza hadn’t been released in a while and Mamoswine wasn’t as good against Latias as it was normal dragon-types, Latias became a pain in the ass to kill. Kyogre had the same problem as well, as did many of the previous Legendaries, such as Palkia.

When Rayquaza finally came around (without a shiny as well), I worried that he would be as bad as Kyogre, Latias and Palkia were. But he wasn’t. In fact, Rayquaza and Dialga were both much, MUCH closer to our Pokeballs. Sure, they both attacked a lot, but it was refreshing not to have to constantly throw longballs.

In late March though, Giratina came back in his Altered Forme for a few days before being replaced with his Origin Forme. I expected that Giratina would be a pain in the ass to catch again, but after the first raid I did, I was met with a pleasant surprise – Altered Forme Giratina was much, much, MUCH closer to us.

Like, really fucking close.

And the trend so far seems to have continued. Origin Forme Giratina is much closer and so is the recently re-released Latios!

Why? Who knows? I think what they’ve done is bring these Legendaries closer to us while also tweaking their catch rates, making them slightly harder to catch. I’ve managed to land 17 great throws in a row (I did you not) on a Giratina and watched it flee, but at least I actually hit the bastard. I assume other players were in my position or something.

I hope this trend remains. I mean, it still really, really fucking sucks, failing to catch a raid boss. But it feels slightly better when you actually hit these bastards…