Okay, so, its ya boy, you already know, back again with some more Pokemon Info Bombs to drop without warning. I’m going to talk about some supplementary parts of Pokemon that can enrich your experience with X and Y in various ways. I’ll start with two big in-game features: Pokemon-Amie and Super Training.

Pokemon-Amie:

One of the more heavily advertised features of X and Y was the ability to play with your Pokemon more directly. Pokemon-Amie lets you pet your Pokemon, play some mini-games, and feed them these little Poke-cupcakes. Its all very cute and gives players a chance to bond further with their little bros.

The great news is that there is real incentive to use this feature and to build up your Pokemon’s affections. When you get a Pokemon’s affections (the little pink hearts on the Pokemon-aime switch menu), they gain boosted experience, increased critical hit chance, increased ability to completely dodge attacks, the chance to survive attacks that would KO them, and the chance to shake off status effects like burn or paralysis. Cosmetically, your Pokemon also has a few in battle emotes and at the end of each battle, you can pet your Pokemon by rubbing the bottom screen.

The boost to experience is awesome for grinding your Pokemon to high enough levels for gym challenges or helping that recent capture get up to speed with the rest of your Pokemon. Now, the in-battle benefits don’t apply to online battles unfortunately, but it can still be that little bit of edge to carry you into your place as the Champion of Kalos.

Also note that raising affection in Pokemon-Amie does not affect the happiness needed to evolve Pokemon like Golbat or Riolu. They are two different values.

Super Training:

Super Training is all about Effort Values. I’ll go into much more detail about Effort Values at a later time, but, briefly, Effort Values affect your Pokemon’s stats. For every 4 EVs you get a +1 to a stat. Super Training is a shooting mini-game where you face-off against giant Pokemon balloons. There are three levels for each stat (HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed). If you complete one of the games, your Pokemon will gain EVs (4, 8, or 12 depending on mini-game level). Why is all this noise important? Okay, yeah it is mathy and sort of try-hard, BUT Super Training can help net your Pokemon some extra credit in their stats to help your Gym or Elite 4 runs. Maybe a few Defense and Special Defense training rounds are all you need to survive those attacks. Maybe a few Attack or Special Attack training rounds will get you enough damage to KO. On top of that little bonuses to stats, when you fully effort train your Pokemon (don’t worry, the game will tell you), you can do the secret training.

The Secret Training won’t net you stat gains, but these mini-games are important to obtaining special evolutionary stones as well as the rare PP Max item. Now, when it comes to competitive Pokemon training, there are faster ways to get your new level 1 Pokemon to their full effort potential, however, casual Pokemon for your in-game run will get plenty of gains from their Super Training. Also it is the only way to obtain more Dusk, Shiny, and Dawn Stones. I’ll go more into the optimization of Effort Values later on in a more competitive gaming focused piece.

Okay with those being in-game features, I want to mention two out of game features: Pokemon Bank and Pokemon Global Link.

Pokemon Bank is a storage system where you keep Pokemon on the internet. You get something insane like 3,000 boxes and it only costs $5 a year. Further, Pokemon Bank will be how future generations of Pokemon will be able to receive Pokemon from previous generations. Depositing and Withdrawing Pokemon from the Bank will score your BP for Items and TMS at the Battle Maison or PokeMiles which I’ll explain later. You can also store your Pokemon on it, restart your game, and withdraw your Pokemon back into your game. All you have to do is obtain the Pokedex. With the soon to be 10,000 eggs I’ve hatched, Pokemon Bank has been a blessing.

The Global Link is a gateway for trainers to see their achievements, spend PokeMiles, and register for WiFi Competitions. You can also see the pictures that you take with Phil the Photographer throughout the game and get information about Event Pokemon. PokeMiles are a type of currency you build from walking around Kalos, WiFi trading (including Wonder Trade), and WiFi battling. I think at one point I had scored around 60,000 PokeMiles in a day. In the PokeMile shop, you can buy things like soda and lemonade, but more importantly you can purchase Heart Scales you can use to have Pokemon relearn attacks, Rare Candies to quickly level up Pokemon, and PP Ups to increase the amount of times you can use attacks. There is an in-game PokeMiles shop, but the prices are halved online. Once you set up a Global Link account and sync it to your game, start playing online all the time. When you save while connected to WiFi, you’ll send any PokeMiles to your online account as well as receive any items you had purchased (a woman in the Pokemon Center will appear and give them too you). WiFi Competitions are great, too, because even if you aren’t competitive, if you just play against one opponent, you will be given the prize for competing.

All of these features can help make your team an unstoppable force for your casual playthrough of the game or they can help speed up your construction of a competitive team. They are awesome resources. I recommend looking into them while you play through X and Y and the upcoming Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire games. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet at me (@josketh). Also, I tend to retweet any information I come across regarding Event Pokemon or WiFi Competitions as I see it.