Favourite Super Mechanic?

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Back on the topic of anime battles, it's also worth noting that despite Megas often being used in super mechanic mirror matches in the anime, I think the anime in general also did a very good job at showcasing the more nuanced aspects of Mega Evolution, and how those smaller things that change with Mega Evolving changed the tides of matches.

While Siebold vs Alain in the Mega Specials was a Mega mirror match, Mega Blastoise having Mega Launcher made its Dragon Pulse more powerful, and in addition to being super effective, securely allowed it to KO Alain's Mega Charizard X.
Trevor vs Alain was a Charizard Mega mirror match, and Trevor's Mega Charizard Y has Drought as its ability, which boosts Fire-type moves. This proved to be a double-edged sword as Alain's Mega Charizard X could use this itself to fire extra powerful Flamethrowers, and this ultimately led to Charizard Y's defeat.
Tierno vs. Sawyer was one example in XYZ itself, where Tierno tried to set up Rain Dance with his Blastoise before going down so that his Raichu could fire Thunders that never missed, but Sawyer then Mega Evolved his Sceptile, which changed its ability to Lightning Rod, completely blocking the Thunder (taking no damage) and invalidating Tierno's strategy, then using what was likely STAB Dragon Claw to deliver a stronger blow to Raichu to finish it off.
Another example that comes to mind is Ash vs Drasna, where Drasna Mega Evolved her Altaria, changing its second type to Fairy and granting it an immunity to Dragon, which made Dracovish's Dragon Rush ineffective, whereas it would've been super effective against normal Altaria.

The Masters 8 as a whole did a fantastic job at showcasing Megas, which were consistently in every battle, and how they changed the tides of matches. The infamous Leon vs Alain was a case where it backfired, because Leon had his Charizard learn Dragon Pulse, and while that would've been normally effective against Charizard, it was super effective against Mega Charizard X and thus led to the latter's rapid defeat. Diantha used her Mega Gardevoir as a magnum opus to overpower both Lance's Hydreigon and his Dynamax Dragonite and claim victory. Cynthia needed her Mega Garchomp to gain the edge against Iris's Haxorus, as stated.

But the best example in the Masters 8 imo is Steven's Metagross: Mega Metagross gains a substantial increase in speed and mobility thanks to becoming a levitating monster, and its brain power increases and its superb reaction speed increases as well: this combination of increased movement and reaction speed made Mega Metagross significantly faster, and as a result, Ash's Pikachu could not land a single hit on Mega Metagross who kept dodging its every move while tossing Pikachu around effortlessly, until Pikachu had to resort to a Z-Move (which never misses) to get a hit in and then finish it off with an Iron Tail to claim a narrow victory, and even then Mega Metagross was still able to dodge three of 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt's beams and block one with Flash Cannon, so it only took partial damage from the Z-Move itself.

While the slugfest mirror matches were cool, there have been several instances where the more nuanced parts of Mega Evolution as a transformation came into play in anime battles and turned the tides. I think the general mirror match Mega battles had a bit of an edge to them as well: Ash-Greninja always had the signature giant Water Shuriken that was its trademark, Mega Charizard X had an extra powerful Dragon Claw (that was larger) and blue hellfire Flamethrower, and vice versa.

But the main thing is generally, flavor wise Mega Evolution was distinct in that it was stated to be not only the pinnacle of a Pokemon's power in terms of physically achieving their ultimate form, its masterful use was indicative of a masterful bond between Trainer and Pokemon: Mega Evolution's lore both in the games and the anime was predicated on Trainer and Pokemon having a strong bond, and the anime made it clear that those who lacked a strong bond would not be able to control such a power. I think XY did a great job with this with Ash's arc with Greninja (which had a pseudo-Mega), where they went through a lot of trouble mastering their power, which made their showdowns against Mega Abomasnow, Mega Sceptile, and Mega Charizard X all the more satisfying/compelling narratively speaking, especially the latter two as Sawyer and Alain had narrative buildup.

Journeys tried something similar with Mega Lucario, and Mega Lucario's power was symbolic of Ash and Lucario having a strong bond, and the bond they share allowing them to claim victory, like against Cynthia's Togekiss *and* Garchomp as well as against Leon's Mr. Rime who was clearly a tricky opponent, using their combined aura to read Mr. Rime's rapid movements and fire an extremely powerful Aura Sphere to hit it and KO it. So in a sense Megas always worked there flavor wise because narratively they demanded a strong buildup of a bond that made their masterful use and victory with it feel rewarding. I will admit JN's execution of Ash and Lucario's development was kinda rushed, but the effort was there.

Z-Moves were obviously not a very nuanced mechanic so they were relatively simple in the anime as flashy sequences that were ultimate moves that decided a battle one way or another. Dynamax in a few cases did have some of the non-nuke move aspects come into play, like Cynthia's Max Togekiss spamming Max Airstream getting a substantial speed boost after Dynamax wore off, although this ultimately did not amount to much as Mega Lucario successfully landed a hit and one-shotted it. Some other aspects like debuffs and weather/terrain summoning, however, didn't really get shown off very much. Leon's G-Max Charizard generally only had G-Max Wildfire to show off and tended to straight up KO with it more often, it had Max Rockfall but did not summon weather with it, for instance. Lance tried to use Max Hailstorm to summon hail to whittle down Diantha's Mega Gardevoir, albeit unsuccessfully.

Terastal has only been seen once but I do think there's a lot of room for Horizons to showcase it in interesting ways as it unfolds, and perhaps Liko and Roy will find their own special use of it with their Sprigatito and Fuecoco respectively as their stories unfold, with them being the protagonists and all.

 

[pika pal]

Terastal: I'm not opposed to turnaround mechanics, for the record, I just think Tera feels uniquely cheap - and unlike the past few gimmicks, there are zero unique Teras to work with. Singlehandedly necessitating VGC to require team sheets just to make the format playable strikes me as a very bad sign.

I have heard that the Open Team Sheets had something to do with how Battle Box was implemented compared to previous generations, and more to the point I highly doubt it was a balance decision on TPC's part considering they've never shied away from Hyper-Centralized VGC metas caused by things like Chalk/Incinreroar or the Restricted Metas with the Primals. I'd hesitate to think this gimmick "necessitated" Open Team Sheets for VGC to make it "playable" (especially when other nonsense like Dondozo-Tatsugiri and the usual Prankster Tailwind shenanigans are Tera Agnostic), and if anything their inclinations towards explosive offense for quick matches seems like something they'd welcome as an effect of Tera if that were the case.

 

[DuoM2]

Least favorite to favorite is Dynamax, Megas, Z-Moves, and then Terastal. I haven't read the other posts in this thread so forgive me if I'm repeating things people have said a bunch.

Dynamax I used to like because of how you could only use it a limited amount ingame and how it allowed for raids. Now Terastal exists and does all of those far better than Dynamax, which leaves the rest of the mechanic. This mechanic is a complete mess and I don't think I need to explain why. Competitively it was the most absurdly broken thing Game Freak has put out thus far, bad enough for the entire singles playerbase to re-evaluate what makes a mechanic like this cross the line, and Gigantamax forms are very pointless and kind of a waste of the designs, which kinda leaves you with nothing else to like about them. Dynamax Adventures are something you can still hold to them I guess, those are legitimately very fun, but still. I really wish I had more to say but there's just nothing to like here.

Megas are cool to me for not being actively harmful to competitive play like the rest of these, but I still dislike them. A lot of people say they're a nice boost to Pokemon that really needed some attention, but you cannot argue to me that at minimum half of the Pokemon that got Megas actually needed them, either from popularity, already being good Pokemon, or both in some cases. I get the mechanic being given to popular Pokemon since it's supposed to be a marketing gimmick but the amount of already very popular Pokemon that got them is absurd. Stuff like Houndoom, Glalie, and Medicham getting a mega is cool, give me more of those instead of a Gardevoir or a second Charizard. If the point of this mechanic was to give bad Pokemon a boost then they would have done that instead of this.

They also feel very egregiously shoehorned into Pokemon X and Y as games. If I recall correctly literally four trainers in those games have one at all and most obtainable Megas are locked behind postgame for some ungodly reason. For what it's worth though they mostly don't impact competitive play outside of some Pokemon not caring about Knock Off, not being able to have two at once which is kinda annoying for teambuilding sometimes, and the occasional "which Mega are they" deal which almost never comes into play because it's always obvious what Mega (or sometimes even which Charizard form) they have. Mostly net neutral there to me. I think this mechanic gets way too much praise, probably for the designs that in my opinion are almost always downgrades from the base forms.

Z-Moves I think are sometimes pretty fun from an ingame standpoint, but that's about it. When I said that Megas were shoehorned into XY, this is basically the opposite - it's cool that they're prizes for the games' Gym Leader equivalent, the whole dance thing is fun, and I'm not gonna make as big of a deal as I'm sure others will about it but I like the jump from X and Y where now any Pokemon can use them. It's really whatever to me outside of being able to use them from any point in the game now. It is annoying having to go through the whole animation of a Z-Move every battle in order to play optimally but it's not the worst thing in the world.

From a competitive standpoint though, awful mechanic. I sure do love not knowing which of my opponent's Pokemon is going to have a Z-Move and then not knowing which Z-Move they have. I sure do love losing the game because the right Pokemon on their team had a Z-Move to blow past the one answer I had to it. You can predict when your opponent is going to use a Z-Move or what Pokemon has it but there's so many layers to it that always just felt obnoxious to me and made so many Pokemon completely unfun to fight. For what it's worth, some status Z-Moves are cool like Z-Conversion and Z-Haze, but those were never the best way to use them so it's not as big of a positive as it could've been. Either way, the ingame thing is at least a solid reason for me to like the mechanic, which the two before it haven't really had much of for me, so here we are.

And then there's Terastal. I'll say again that I like the finite ingame use thing and the fact that any Pokemon can use it. Raids in this game are also leagues better than anything Dynamax's ever did. Those were just kinda something to do, these are something you can actively build Pokemon around and devise deeper strategy for, which is pretty cool even if it does make them pretty easy. It would be absolutely perfect ingame if it were less of a grind to change a Pokemon's Tera type. The DLC will probably fix this but it shouldn't have to be that way. I don't care about Pokemon games enough to spend that much money on them, but it still is nice to hop onto a seven star raid every once in a while, and I think that's a kind of lame thing to limit behind a paywall.

Competitively, it's...not the worst thing out there? It could be leagues better but I prefer it to Dynamax and Z-Moves. It's still extremely uncompetitive to have random 50/50s where "does the Kingambit tera or do they not." It's also significantly more annoying dealing with more experimental tera types, but otherwise it usually is very feasible to predict when someone is going to tera and much easier to punish when misused. I'd rather it not be here and am certain it could be implemented better, there's a Pet Mod that's actually done this and from watching replays it looks fun to mess around with there, but it's still not great.

That's the best compliment I can give any of these - likeable, but not great. I kinda hate the way video games are to some people nowadays where everything needs some big, flashy gimmick in order to have any purpose. If the deciding factor for whether or not you buy a game in the first place is some new big game-defining feature then you'd definitely not know enough about the game to say if that big flashy gimmick actually makes the game more or less fun to play. They kind of need to impact gameplay in some noticeable way, but it's difficult to do that in a way that doesn't completely tear the game into being unhealthy. Megas did this but I don't have confidence the developers will have any ideas like that again, and I don't have any confidence they'll make something more along the lines of Z-Moves or Terastal that doesn't also end up being pretty unhealthy since they (understandably) don't understand anything beyond surface level competitive play and seem to be focusing on doubles anyways. So here we are now, stuck with them for an indefinite amount of time, with the one mechanic most people enjoy probably being locked away forever and with the rest having more and more shared traits that imply we'll never get something truly good out of it.