The Sinnoh Tour Was Okay

So the Sinnoh Tour is here and it’s basically the same both days. But, honestly, they tried to cram a lot in and kinda only did it okay. Thankfully, there were no collection challenges, but there was a desperate attempt to have both Sinnoh and Hisui in equal amounts, which kinda sucks because there are way more Sinnoh Pokemon than there are Hisui Pokemon, but at the same time, the only good raids were during the Hisui hours. The spawns in particular varied wildly – one hour consisted of crap like Bidoof and Shellos, while another hour contained awesome stuff like Gible, Cranidos and Shieldon. We also had a LOT of non-Sinnoh Pokemon spawning – Pikachu appeared in every hour, Eevee appeared in half the hours and Pokemon with Sinnoh evolutions were also spawning.

However, it was good eating for my Mega Garchomp. Being both Ground and Dragon, that meant it could take on both Palkia and Dialga, and you’d only need a fast TM to swap between moves. That being said, when it came to the Origin Pokemon raids, they… were not as plentiful as they should have been. The first Distortion World hour, we saw a grand total of 2 raids, despite there being 9 gyms visible from where we were. However, during the Sinnoh hours, pretty much every gym had a normal Dialga or Palkia on it. At the same time, we had the Sinnoh and Hisuian starter Pokemon and their evolutions fighting for attention on raids, and a fucking Shadow Articuno popped up, rendering one gym useless for an hour. We should have ONLY had the Origin forms in raids, especially since the normal forms are now technically completely useless.

We also didn’t get any free raid passes for this event. In fact, we didn’t get any free premium items at all. There was a single redeemable code for one silver pinap and a rare candy, but that’s it. If you wanted stuff, you had to buy it. Although, that being said, they DID give us a lot of free Legendary Pokemon. The Spirits of the Lake were spawning in the wild, with an additional encounter available if you took a snapshot of them. You could also get TWO Regigigas, one from a Party Play timed research (do 3 Party Play researches for an encounter and some Regirock/ice/steel candy), and a shadow Regigigas from the Sinnoh Tour research.

And damn did my luck suck. Out of 12 raids, I got 10 2-star Legendaries. If it wasn’t for the fact that I abused the 20 guaranteed lucky trades from Pokemon pre-2018, I would have only had one good Legendary to show for it. Of course, I did a trade with my brother and he OF FUCKING COURSE got a hundo off me. He’s managed to get at least 20 100% Pokemon off me from trades, including 2 shundos. I did get a Shadow Regigigas with Fighting Type Hidden Power, but it was a 1-star and that still isn’t really very useful.

The research also wasn’t great. Most of it was “Power up X or Y type Pokemon 5 times”. I actually finished this event with way less stardust than I started with – I had 1.4m when I started and ended with 1.2m stardust. Although part of that did go towards powering up a Dialga and Palkia to 3000 CP. Actually, speaking of stardust, there didn’t seem to be ANY extra bonuses apart from half hatch distance. No bonus stardust, no extra XP, no bonus candy, no extra chance of XL candy, nothing.

The biggest letdown though was the shiny count. In the 5 hours I played, I managed 5 shinies, and all five of those were in the first 2 hours. In fact, the shiny chances were so bad that, out of the five of us who played in those five hours, we got 16 shinies total, 7 of which belonged to my brother. While I did get a shiny Unown and a shiny Hisuian Growlithe (one I did want), a lot of the shinies were repeats or ones we already had, like Pikachu and Gible. Gible in particular is perma-boosted with a 1/64 chance, so getting one was almost to be expected. However, we did 72 Origin Palkia/Dialga in-person raids between 6 accounts and didn’t get a single shiny. No one we invited got a shiny either, and we had 10 accounts per raid, and one raid, we had a full lobby of 20 people, and, according to our local raid group, NO ONE in that raid got a shiny. I don’t know what the chances are, but they did not feel right.

I do wish though that the Distortion World effect would stick around. It looked fucking awesome. The sky effects for these events are always cool, but always temporary. But what annoys me is that Giratina was mostly absent for this event, only appearing briefly on Friday in its Origin Form, and appearing briefly in raids after the Sinnoh Tour ended in its Altered Form. It should have been appearing in its Origin Form alongside its Origin Form siblings, doubly because the Distortion World is Giratina’s gimmick!

It was also cool having the Team Rocket Leaders replacing the normal Team Leaders when it came to appraising Pokemon and appearing in the Special Research for the event. Made for a nice change of pace, and I just like how angry they all are. They’re just putting up with us and it’s hilarious. I regret not getting a screenshot of Sierra appraising the shadow Turtwig she hands me, while she gives me a look of utter disdain. The Special Research was actually pretty easy, although I had hoped it would have given me an encounter with Palkia, like the text on the Pearl and Diamond badges suggested. An encounter with even a normal Palkia or Dialga would have been better than a shadow Regigigas. I do appreciate the shadow Gible though.

Look, for the grand price of free, I can’t complain too much. But they tried to cram too much stuff into two days, rather than doing what they did for the Kanto and Johto events and spreading it out over two days. We had a huge chunk of Legendary Pokemon left out and dumped in the week prior, and we STILL don’t have every single Pokemon from the Sinnoh and Hisui regions – the Basculin evolutions from Hisui aren’t here, and Arceus, Manaphy and Phione are all still missing too.

And, honestly, a few free orange raid passes would have been nice. Especially since the special research requires you to do at least one raid – one to catch a Dialga/Palkia, and a second one to get enough candy to use their special moves.