In Hindsight, the Johto Tour wasn’t worth it.
So it’s been a while since the Johto Tour ended, but something about it seems off. Something I couldn’t quite place.
Too much to do in one day.
Here’s what we had to do:
- Catch the entire Johto Pokedex
- Evolve everything in the Johto Pokedex
- Do a mini research quest and get another Celebi
- Complete various collection challenges
- Take snap shots of legendary dogs
- Do a Team-Rocket-like battling challenge
And all of that is joined by looking for shiny Pokemon and doing normal Pokemon things. Pokeballs were still in short supply, despite the ball prep event a few days prior. Last year’s Pokemon buddies that gave out plenty of Pokeballs was way, way better than that prep event.
Having too much to do though could have been very easily solved by having two days of the Johto Tour. Sure, we had 12 hours to complete most of these tasks, but that’s actually not a very long time. Especially if you want to take breaks, like a normal, reasonable person should.
Despite having a lot to do, it all seemed kinda boring.
I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t particularly happy doing all these tasks. I kinda just wanted to catch Pokemon and get some shinies for my rather empty shiny Johto Pokedex, but all the tasks that needed doing constantly piled up. Worse, it also got in the way of using Incense, since we were juggling multiple things at once.
I ended up not even bothering with the battling challenge. Mostly because I couldn’t even see them. Apparently, there were ‘gym leaders’ spawning on Pokestops, wanting to battle you. They were supposed to look like Team Rocket-controlled stops, but not in the normal blue-black colour scheme. Somehow, despite spending 12 hours on my damn phone, I saw a grand title of 2. Neither of which seemed to match the gym leader I needed to fight for the mini research.
Now, I thought I was alone in that, but apparently my brother, who was out and about, he didn’t see any either. The same applied to the legendary dogs – I didn’t see a single wild Raikou, which was the one I wanted. Brother only saw a handful of wild Raikous, which, well, all fled. I’m actually surprised though how many people on r/thesilphroad seemed to enjoy the wild legendaries. Well, I did like seeing them, but they all instantly fled for me, and most likely the majority of players.
The post-event special research is annoyingly long and tedious.
Completing the special research with Celebi in the Johto Tour gave us with a ‘masterwork’ research. This special research is very similar to the one that gave us Shiny Mew, but with more concentrated tasks. The Shiny Mew quest was long but had different stages, while the Apex Ho-Oh task has two somewhat easy-ish tasks, and one long, long, tedious task. Doing 100 research tasks is, ironically, quite a long task. On the other hand, catching 100 separate Pokemon was surprisingly easy. So easy in fact that its reward was literally our new Apex Shadow Ho-Oh.
Honestly, the thing that really made me realize I’d wasted my money is actually pretty petty. I was hoping to get a good Shadow Ho-Oh, since the Shadow Ho-Oh I had was somewhat mediocre. But nope, somehow my Apex Shadow Ho-Oh actually came out WORSE than the Shadow Ho-Oh with random IVs.
Actually, I didn’t get any good IV Pokemon at all during or after the Johto Tour. Aside from a few shinies, I didn’t get much of, well, anything at all.
I wouldn’t do it again.
The Johto event seemed more hyped up than it actually was at the end of the day. I was kinda concerned about it, since Johto actually has a very small Pokedex. But in the case of this tour, the Johto Pokedex didn’t hold anyone back, it was just filled up with extra fluff and padding that wasn’t as enjoyable. If they’d cut out a few things and moved them to other dates, it would have been a much better event…