Your Turn to Roll

Back near the end of October 2023, my close friend was able to go to the Critical Role live show in London that she had won a ticket for. She was already going to London that same week for the MCM London Comic Con where the cast of Critical Role were also guests, so she pretty much had the ultimate Critter experience that weekend. It was lovely to see how excited she was and how much she enjoyed it.

Though this, hilariously, ended up leading me to fall down the Critter rabbit role soon after.

My friend has been a fan of Critical Role for quite a while and had talked to me about it, but my knowledge only really extended to what she had told me. The only two characters I would've been able to recall by name were 'Caleb' and 'FCG' since those were characters my friend has cosplayed in the past and I knew Caleb was one of her favourite characters.
I knew they had made an animated show called 'The Legend of Vox Machina', I'd heard of the name 'The Mighty Nein' (though had no idea what it actually was), and I was familiar with some of the voice actors within Critical Role through their voicework, but that was about my extent of what I knew about it. I never really delved deeper than that, mainly because I knew the campaign episodes were often around four hours long, so it did put me off watching it myself, feeling I didn't really have the time to commit to it.

That was until my friend came back absolutely buzzing from her awesome Critter weekend.

I admit my curiosity was piqued as she told me and our other friend about the weekend as she experienced it. It was so lovely to see that she was having such an awesome time, but I didn't end up actually delving into anything until the 'Echoes of the Solstice' live show was put up on Critical Role's YouTube channel. I saw the video link pop up on my Twitter feed and I decided I was going to check it out, so I could see and experience what my friend did. I wasn't really sure if I'd get into it or even enjoy it, because I knew so little about everything, but I decided to see what it was like.

The 'Echoes of the Solstice' liveshow in London.

Honestly, I had NO idea what was going on in the story, nor did I really know the characters, but it didn't stop me from actually enjoying watching the show. I absolutely loved watching the cast interacting with each other, which I think was my favourite part and there were so many things that made me laugh. On top of that, it was exciting to watch as the players rolled their dice in a big epic battle and seeing their excitement and reactions to good and bad rolls. You really could just feel the energy, even just watching it in a video.

I was starting to see why people loved this series so much.

After watching this, I was curious about learning more, so I went through the videos on Critical Role's YouTube to find what was the most recent thing they had done that I could check out. I found out their latest campaign was 'Campaign 3' also known as 'Bells Hells' and looking more into it, I realized this was the one that had 'FCG,' the robot my friend had told me about and had previously cosplayed.
I'll admit that it seemed very daunting at first, as that campaign alone was at around 76 episodes at the time and were all four hours long on average, but, despite this, I decided to check out the first episode of Campaign 3 and see what it was like.

I was instantly hooked from that first episode.

The main characters of Campaign 3 - 'Bells Hells'.

Again, I loved the hilarious interactions between the cast. You can tell that they are all really close friends that are just having a good time playing a game, but on top of that, I instantly loved the characters as they were introduced, how they interacted with each other and also just how chaotic they all were. It was fun gradually learning about them and the world of Exandria through these episodes.

I ended up pretty much listening to the episodes almost like it was a podcast, while I did things like drawing on the computer which surprisingly made the episodes go by faster than I thought.

By the time I got to around episode 50-51, and characters like Caleb and Beau turned up, I realized that I was around the timing of when 'Echoes of the Solstice' had taken place. I even re-watched the introduction of that and I suddenly understood everything in it that I hadn't before.

As of mid-January, I had managed to catch up with the campaign 3 episodes (which as of writing this, stands at 82 episodes). It only took around two and a half months for me to get through it all, which was quite surprising! Though it was pretty much the only thing I was watching for those two months, so it's maybe not that surprising. I have a habit of marathoning new shows I get into.

During the time watching this campaign, I also ended up buying two pins from the Critical Role store while they were on sale. One was a pin of Fearne Calloway and the other was a pin of FCG. 

The Chibi Fearne and FCG pins from the Critical Role online shop.

Once I'd caught up with Campaign 3, I decided then to check out the first two seasons of 'The Legend of Vox Machina'. It was kind of weird, but also fun, to be watching things a little out of order, because it meant I could watch the series with some familiarity on the characters and the world setting. Granted, I know the animated series has a lot of differences to the actual campaign, but I think I'm happy to experience Vox Machina and The Mighty Nein through their animated series', rather than the actual campaigns.

Since watching all this, it has really increased my interest in Tabletop RPG's and I hope to one day be able to experience playing one with my friends. We've talked about it and have some ideas, but what's against us is the time to be able to do them. We're all very busy and sadly we all work completely different shifts at our jobs, so even meeting up regularly just to play board games is a challenge for us, but hopefully, one day we'll find the time to be able to experience doing a TTRPG.

Until then, I'll just continue experiencing it through Critical Roll.

The main cast of 'The Legend of Vox Machina'.

Read More

A New Horizon

I've been loosely following the new Pokémon anime, Pokémon Horizons, since it began airing in Japan, but I decided to wait for the English version before properly watching it. I was really happy when I learned that we'd be getting Pokémon Horizons here in the UK on BBC iPlayer at the beginning of December.

The other day, I sat down and watched the first six episodes of the show that are currently available as of writing and decided to write up my thoughts on it as I watched.

(Warning: This may have spoilers for the first 6 episodes and maybe some minor spoilers for episodes beyond that.)

-----------------------------

Read More

Rest Your Very Best!

For the past four days or so, I've been trying out the cute, and rather long-awaited, sleep tracking game, Pokémon Sleep.

Developed for iOS and Andriod devices by SELECT BUTTON inc. (who also gave us the rather charming and fun 'Magikarp Jump' game), Pokémon Sleep is a game that helps to encourage you to get a good nights sleep, with the aim of helping to research different sleep styles of Pokémon and raise a Snorlax each week. The app allows you to track your sleep during the night. 

The game was originally announced back in 2019, for a 2020 release, but no more information came about until 2023. Why there was such a huge delay isn't clear, but I wouldn't be surprised if the pandemic played a part in it.

Still, it was a really pleasant surprise when it was finally announced during the Pokémon Presents on Pokémon Day 2023!

Read More

Adventures in Paldea

 

Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are the newest additions to the main line Pokémon games, introducing the 9th generation of Pokémon. As an avid fan, I have been playing Scarlet pretty much daily since its release on the 18th November, 2022. Since it's now two months after the release, I wanted to write a blog about my opinions on the game.

There will be some minor spoilers in this blog, so be aware of that before continuing.

Firstly, I did actually do a liveblog of my playthrough of the game on my Tumblr, so feel free to see what my experience was as I played through the game!

--------------------------

STORYLINE AND CHARACTERS

Firstly, I want to say that GameFreak has really upped their game in the story department recently. The main stories of a lot of the previous generations haven't felt like anything special and I will admit the storyline for Sword and Shield didn't exactly blow me away, but the stories for both Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet have felt like incredibly vast improvements on how they do story telling.

For Scarlet and Violet, You play the role as a new student at an Academy in the Paldea region. You have three main storylines you can follow, each one focusing on one of the rival characters;

- Victory Road focuses on the usual Pokémon Gym format. You are encouraged by your battle obsessed friend, and rival, Nemona, to take on the gym challenge and work your way up to being champion rank like she is. As usual, there are eight gyms scattered throughout the region and you collect badges for each one you defeat, working your way up to Paldea's Elite Four and Top Champion.

- Path of Legends focuses on you helping out an upperclassman, named Arven, who is searching for rare ingredients to make healthy recipes for Pokémon. These ingredients are called 'Herba Mystica' and are said to hold a lot of amazing health benefits. Each Herba Mystica appears to be guarded by giant Pokémon, known as Titan Pokémon, which you need to help Arven deal with. Through this story, you learn a lot about Arven and why he's seeking the Herba Mystica.

- ★ Starfall Street ★ focuses on you being recruited by a mysterious person, only known as Cassiopeia, to help take down Team Star, a group of rebellious Academy students. There are five main 'bosses' of Team Star, each with their own base. You have to storm the bases in order to reach the boss at the head of the base. Through this story, you learn a lot about the reasons behind Team Star and how they came to be.

Each story allows you to get to know each of the rival characters and go through something with them, which is especially potent when you reach the fourth and final story in the game, where you work together with all three of the characters together. I won't spoil anything about the final storyline, but I will say that it really surprised me! It did not go in the direction I thought it would and it felt really impactful.

I will say that at the end of everything, I really felt like I'd made three new best friends out of Nemona, Penny and Arven. 

I hope the game lets me have more adventures with them.

I also found I enjoyed a lot of the other characters through the game. I especially liked how you could actually get to know a little bit about each of the teachers at the Academy after completing their classes. I didn't do the classes until I finished the main part of the game, but it was nice to get to know a little bit more about them. Even the gym leaders seem to have a little more character to them. Each of them generally has another job outside of their role of gym leader and some even have small backstories. Grusha and Brassius both come to mind as gym leaders who have small backstories.

-------------------------

TRAINER CUSTOMIZATION

Trainer customization in this game has taken both a big step forward... and a big step back.

At the very beginning of the game, you have access to an amazing array of custom features. You can change your hairstyle, hair colour, eye colour and even eye shape right from the beginning when first creating your character. Although you do begin the base choosing from the 'male' or 'female' player character, both genders have exactly the same options for customization, so thankfully, nothing is locked behind a specific gender.

The Trainer customization screen at the beginning of the game.

Clothing is also not locked behind gender, but the clothing options is where the customization falls a little flat. 

It's always been fun to be able to come up with an outfit from what's available, but in Scarlet and Violet, you are actually forced to wear the school uniform of the school you attend. There are four different versions, based on season, but overall, you have to wear the uniform and can only change specific things, such as hats, bags, shoes, glasses and socks/tights. This makes customising your character's clothing more restricted than usual.

I'm not a huge fan of the Academy uniforms, and would prefer to be able to change all my clothing, but I feel I made it work and came up with a fairly cute style for my trainer regardless.

"If the game's gonna force me to wear this dorky uniform, then I'll use the accessories to make it as cute as possible." - Me.

OPEN WORLD

Scarlet and Violet are considered the first truly open world Pokémon games in the series. It's something that they've been playing with the idea of and building up to for some time, what with the vast wild areas in Sword/Shield, and the massive map areas you could explore in Legends Arceus, but Scarlet/Violet is the first where the entire map is accessible.

Well, sort of, anyway.

There are SOME restrictions in that your ride Pokémon, Koraidon/Miradon, needs to acquire power-ups through the Path of Legends storyline in order for it to be able to cover more terrain, like swimming, gliding and climbing, but it never really felt TOO restrictive as the areas you can cover are quite vast. That said, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who found myself wandering into areas where I felt I shouldn't be yet due to the level jump in wild Pokémon.

Levels are another restriction. Despite the theme of the game being exploration, where you're encouraged to go where you want and do what you want, the games do not have any kind of level scaling, meaning that the gyms, Team Star Bases and Titans, as well as wild Pokémon, all have set levels and in fact, there is a 'recommended' order in which you should do things based on level.

In my playthrough, I did the Stony Cliff Titan, Artazon Gym, the Team Star Fire Crew base and the Levincia gym in that order, but when I went to do the gym in Cortondo, I found I was quite over-levelled for it. I didn't know that technically, the gym in Cortondo should be the first thing you do. I also somehow managed to wander into the town of Alfornada, after navigating a cave system which was difficult without the climbing ability, to find that the Pokémon in that area were about ten or so levels above my own.

An easy win AND free cupcakes?? I'm living the dream! 

I feel like to really give a sense of being free to go anywhere, the levels of these Pokémon and areas scaling with your own team would have been beneficial and would avoid the issue of being over, or under-levelled.

Overall though, there are a lot of areas to explore on the vast map and I also felt the choice of Pokémon available was really good. Not only did we have the new Pokémon to discover, but there is a vast amount of returning Pokémon to come across too, so I found I was quite excited even finding those, as I hadn't looked into exactly what Pokémon were available.

--------------------------

GRAPHICS AND GLITCHES

Playing through my copy of Scarlet, I will say that nothing took anything away from my game experience and I did thoroughly enjoy the game itself, but Scarlet and Violet are plagued with a number of issues.

There are a lot of graphical glitches in the game. Pokémon can sometimes clip through the floor, or spawn in things like rocks, things such as that. I find what's more scary for me is that the game experiences a lot of slow down and momentary freezing sometimes and there are times where it freezes for a moment and I wonder if the game has crashed. Most of the time it doesn't, but I have had the game crash on me about four times now in the space of the last two months, which is way more than Shield did in the entire three years of it's run. I will always recommend keeping autosave on most of the time with this game and even with that, I recommend saving often.

Florges in mass outbreaks tend to have a glitch where they spawn on top of each other.

Also worth mentioning are the Tera Raid Battles, which also feel they're plagued by numerous issues. The move 'Play Rough' for some reason, has a graphical glitch where it registers more damage than it actually does. It rights itself quickly, but it does get annoying thinking you've done big damage when you really haven't done as much as you first thought.

There have also been times where, during online play, my menu has completely frozen and doesn't let me choose or select anything for several turns. There are also times where the raid boss doesn't seem to do anything, yet Pokémon seem to get knocked out anyway.

The fast pace idea of the Tera Battles not having a turn order seems good on paper and I'm all for things being a bit faster, but it does feel a bit chaotic and all over the place, especially with these glitches. It also feels like the menu lags at little times, because there's so much going on, and I feel I miss getting an attack in because of it.

My only other gripe, in terms of the graphics, isn't a glitch, but I do feel that some Pokémon are a bit too small to see and would benefit from being scaled up a bit more. I find myself constantly running into Pokémon that I didn't see and, as a shiny hunter, it is incredibly difficult seeing colour differences on these tiny Pokémon models. I feel like the Pokémon in Sword/Shield and in Legends Arceus, where there are also overworld Pokémon, were never this tiny.

Here's hoping they never put Joltik in these games. We'd never see it at all!

I will say though, the cut scenes that play in some of the storylines are really nice and seem quite clean and well animated. I really enjoyed seeing those.

I absolutely loved this cut scene!

--------------------------

BREEDING MECHANICS

I've seen quite a few people say they aren't keen on the new breeding mechanic, but honestly, I absolutely love it!

Breeding in this gen isn't done through daycares, but through the picnic system. You can have a picnic with two compatible Pokémon and you can find eggs in the picnic basket. You can increase the number of eggs you get by making sandwiches that give you egg power and the best thing is that you don't have to move around for the eggs to show up. They actually just collect in the basket (up to a total of 10 at a time), so you can actually just leave the game running while you do something else and just check in now and then to collect the eggs. No more riding a bike up and down just to make eggs show up.

I also love that giving Pokémon egg moves in this gen is amazingly easy. Breeding on egg moves was one of the more tedious parts of breeding, but not anymore. If you have a Pokémon you want an egg move on, all you need to do is make sure it has an empty move slot and give it the 'Mirror Herb' item. Then all you need to do is get a Pokémon with the move you want to pass on and then go into a picnic with both Pokémon. Once you come out of the picnic, the move will have passed over as easy as that. The Pokémon don't even need to be compatible! 

I wanted the move 'Belly Drum' on my Azumarill, which is an egg move for that line, so all I had to do was delete one move from the Azumarill, place the Mirror Herb on it, then put it in a picnic with my Iron Hands which knew the move and the move passed over!

Hatching eggs goes pretty fast too. Egg Powers from sandwiches can make eggs hatch faster, but even without that, just running around on Koraidon/Miraidon seems to hatch them pretty fast. You can also, as usual, have a Pokémon in your party that helps to hatch eggs, such as a Pokémon with the 'Flame Body' ability.

I'm currently trying to hatch for a shiny Sprigatito.

---------------------------

MUSIC

Honestly, one of my favourite parts of Pokémon games is the music. I absolutely enjoy seeing what new tracks we get with each game and the OST for Scarlet/Violet doesn't disappoint! I love a lot of the music for Team Star, as well as the music through the Area Zero final storyline. My favourites are definitely the Area Zero theme, which has a very haunting feel to it, as well as the battle music for one of the final storyline battles which is named 'Battle! Zero Lab'. Cassiopeia's battle theme is also amazing, as is the Team Star boss battle theme.

I also really liked the music that played during emotional storyline scenes.

Of course, an addition to Pokémon's amazing composers this time around has been Undertale's Toby Fox, who got to work on some of the tracks in the game. He previously did a theme for Sword/Shield for the Battle Tower, but he confirmed that he made the tracks: 'Tera Raid Battles', 'Academy Ace Tournament' and 'Battle! Zero Lab' for Scarlet/Violet. He composed the 'Area Zero' theme too, which was then re-arranged by Go Ichinose. I really do hope he gets to work on more tracks for Pokémon in the future.

But overall, I'm very impressed with the soundtrack to this game and all the composers involved did an amazing job.

--------------------------

POST GAME, EVENTS AND DLC HOPES

After the main story, there is a little bit of post game stuff, such as re-challenging the gym leaders, taking part in the Academy Ace Tournament, unlocking 6 star Tera Raid Battles, as well as getting to learn a little bit more about Nemona, Penny and Arven. For some reason you can't re-challenge the Elite Four and top Champion like you could in other games and instead, you can get the Paldea champion ribbon for your Pokémon by doing the Academy tournament.

After all this, I've been spending a lot of my time actually building Pokémon to use in Tera Raid battles, as well as farming Tera Raids for items, mainly for Herba Mystica and items I can sell.

I've stockpiled a lot of Herba Mystica actually, which you can use in sandwiches for shiny hunting, so I've been doing a bit of that too, as well as breeding Pokémon with good natures and in rare Pokéballs.

I've really enjoyed a lot of the events and mystery gifts they've done since the game's release. I love that the 7 star Tera Raids they have done so far have been for Pokémon that aren't part of the Paldea Pokédex (Charizard, Cinderace and the up-coming Greninja) which has been really welcome while we don't have Pokémon HOME connectivity. These raids are also quite difficult and actually require some strategy.
I'm also really thankful of the frequent mystery gifts they have been doing for items, such as sandwich items, tera shards and other helpful stuff.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what DLC updates the game will get, as there are some unanswered questions about the Paradox Pokémon, Area Zero and the references to a being that is the base cause of the terastallizing phenomenon. There is also a chunk of land at the top-right of the map of Paldea that is currently inaccessible which is obviously going to be a DLC area at some point.

I do hope that the DLC also introduces some more Paldean forms of Pokémon. So far we only have Wooper and Tauros that have Paldean forms and I've always loved the idea of the regional forms, though the convergent species, such as Wiglett and Todescool have been interesting too.

I also have my eye on the history teacher, Ms. Raifort. After doing her classes and her request afterwards about the four sealed legendries, I kind of feel a little suspicious of her.
ESPECIALLY after she gave me the TM for 'Nasty Plot'.

I honestly feel like she's planning something.

It has been announced that in late February (more than likely for Pokémon Day), the game will be getting an update to fix bugs in the game, and also 'added functionality'. What that means is anyone's guess, but it would be nice to get a small little free update like Legends Arceus did with the Daybreak update, which gave an additional small story and unlocked 'massive mass outbreaks'.

I imagine that any other DLC planned for the game will be announced during Pokémon Day as well, so it'll be fun to see what's planned for Scarlet and Violet in the near future. Overall, I hope there are some more fun storylines to come in the Paldea Region, as well as more fun events in the future too!

Taking selfies with the Titan Pokémon was definitely a thing in my playthrough.

Read More

The Heart of the Cards

Last year, during Yu-Gi-Oh's 25th anniversary, I had planned to write a blog about the franchise and what it meant to me. Although I never got round to it, I did do a small drawing project for the first 14 days of September to celebrate, drawing pictures of some of the characters from the first seven anime series', from Yu-Gi-Oh! DM to Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS.

Though sadly, the franchise had a sudden and tragic loss back in July, when the creator and mangaka of Yu-Gi-Oh, Kazuki Takahashi, was found deceased off the coast of Nago City, in Okinawa. He was found wearing snorkelling equipment at the time and it has recently been confirmed that he died by drowning while attempting to aide in the rescue of people who were caught in a dangerous riptide.

When his death was first announced, there was an amazing outpour of condolences from people all over the world, who thanked Mr. Takahashi for his amazing work and who fondly remembered how much Yu-Gi-Oh has influenced and even changed their lives in a positive way. Ultimately, he wanted Yu-Gi-Oh to be something that brought people together, and I think he would have been happy seeing that.

Takahashi really loved games and something that has been very consistent in the theme of Yu-Gi-Oh, even through it's numerous spin-off series', is the card game being used by the characters to understand others and connect with them. They use the game to solve conflicts and differences within the stories and convey what they are feeling, which I think is one of my favourite things about it.

I can safely say that, without Yu-Gi-Oh, there would be many people who are in my life now, that wouldn't be. People I've met, both online and offline, who I wouldn't have met otherwise if it wasn't for Mr. Takahashi's creation. I also feel the series has been one of the things that has really helped in developing and improving my own artwork over time. I've been drawing the characters since as early as 2003 and have continued to enjoy illustrating the characters since, which I feel has really helped in developing drawing people... and those crazy hairstyles!

A Yu-Gi-Oh ARC-V illustration I did as part of my 25th anniversary illustration project in Sep 2021.

Although I've read the manga, including the manga's of the spin-offs up to Arc-V, I was first introduced to Yu-Gi-Oh through the anime. I remember first reading about it in a magazine (Sky One Magazine), citing it as the next big thing after Pokémon, so I decided to check it out when it first started airing on Sky One here in the UK. I only watched it occasionally at the time and I did find the duels, which could last for 5 or more episodes, dragged a bit, but I liked the story and the Ancient Egyptian theme to the show.

I started getting into the show more around the last arc, the Memory arc, and by this time I had also discovered the Japanese version of the show. I actually became intrigued by the Japanese version after hearing some of the Japanese soundtracks and this actually became something I've enjoyed through the various spin-offs which came after. Each series has it's own real distinct 'sound' within the background music of the show and from the first spin-off, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, I started collecting the Japanese soundtracks and I haven't missed a single one since.

I started getting more heavily into Yu-Gi-Oh from GX onwards. Thankfully, the biggest issue I had with the original, duels dragging on and spanning multiple episodes, was fixed for the spin-offs which most of the time had the same duel only lasting one or two episodes at a time, maybe occasionally 3 at the most.

I highly recommend the spin-offs if you've never really indulged in them. Each one has it's own story, theme and casts of incredibly entertaining characters.

Takeru (Theodore), Flame, Ai, Kusanagi (Kolter) and Yusaku from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS

I have a lot of favourite memories from the franchise, but I think, for me, one of my stand-out memories was going to see 'The Dark Side of Dimensions' movie in the cinema. It was a real far cry from when I went to see one of the previous movies 'The Pyramid of Light'.

For the 'Pyramid of Light', I was actually one of the few adults who had gone to see it on my own, with most of the crowd being mainly adults with children, but when I went to see 'The Dark Side of Dimensions' which came around 16 or so years later, it was mainly young adults and older that were attending the screening. It made me realize that these were people who had grown up and continued to love Yu-Gi-Oh, or were maybe even revisiting it for nostalgia. 

The atmosphere in the screening was like none I'd ever seen. Every single person there were getting really into the movie and even before the movie, I saw people on their phones playing 'Duel Links' or chatting in excitement.

I also attended a few Yu-Gi-Oh cosplay meets at MCM Comic Con a few times. The first time I did was so fun, myself and a friend decided to cosplay for the meet the following year. We went as Yuya and Yuto from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V. It was so much fun getting to attend the meet and do the photoshoot with other fans and cosplayers.

Myself as Yuya at the 2017 May London MCM Comic Con.

To this day, I am still following Yu-Gi-Oh, especially through the anime. I'm currently watching 'Yu-Gi-Oh! GO RUSH!!' which is the most recent series that is airing. This series, which focuses more on the 'Rush Duel' version of the card game, follows the story of an alien named Yuudias Velgear, who is hoping Rush Duels will bring a peaceful end to conflict at his home, the Velgear Star Cluster.

I want to end this blog by saying thank you to Mr. Takahashi for his wonderful creation which really has brought many people together, made a lot of people happy and will hopefully continue to do so in the years ahead.

RIP.

Read More

Revisiting Reading

 

When I was younger, I used to love reading.

As a child, I was always picking books at school to read. Whether it was from the little selection we had in one of my classes in junior school, or picking things from the school library to read in secondary school.

Most of the time, I found I was mainly drawn to stories about animals. My favourite book series as a child was actually 'The Animals of Farthing Wood', which I got into through the BBC animated series based on the books. Though, as a teenager I also loved reading books based on my favourite show at that age, which was the X Files. I remember how much I loved picking up new stories based on the series when I saw them.

Though as I've gotten older, I've found that I fell out of the habit of reading. I feel it was probably a combination of adult life and other hobbies that took more priority that made me fall out from the habit.

Lately though, I've really been wanting to get back into it.

Read More

The Journey Starts Today!

When I first got into Pokémon, it was the anime that gave me my very first experience of the franchise, rather than the games. I quickly became hooked on the adventures of Ash, Pikachu and friends as they travelled around the Pokémon world, while being tailed by Team Rocket. I'd watch every new episode on the Sky One channel in the UK back then and found them incredibly fun and entertaining.

Read More