Training Pokemon - A Brief Treatise on EVs

Hey everyone! I realize I haven't posted in quite a while, but things have been a bit busy for me lately, and it's been tough to stick to a regular schedule.

That being said, I'd like to talk a bit today about Pokemon. And, specifically, how Pokemon level up in the main-series games (especially the more recent ones, such as Black/White, X/Y, and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire.

Yep, the games with this little guy. Who I don't like very much.

I won't get into it now.

Now, if you're familiar with Pokemon, you might know that each Pokemon has several stats that determine their general effectiveness in a battle. If you're more familiar with Pokemon, you might know that these stats are HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. (In the original games - Red, Blue, and Yellow - Special Attack and Special Defense were lumped together into a "Special" stat, which... doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not exactly sure how it worked.) They're pretty self-explanatory - HP determines a Pokemon's health total, Attack determines damage dealt with physical moves, Defense determines damage taken from opponents' physical moves, Special Attack determines damage dealt with special moves, Special Defense determines damage taken from opponents' special moves, and Speed determines which Pokemon goes first in a battle.

In earlier games, whether a move was physical or special depended 

on its type - Normal was physical, Fire was special, and so on.

More recently, it's determined on a move-by-move basis, and is

denoted by the above symbols (left being physical, right being special).

If you're just a casual Pokemon player, you probably won't need to pay too much attention to your Pokemon's stats. So maybe your Dodrio isn't dealing much damage with Tri Attack. But what's the difference? You'll be able to play through the game, and likely beat the Elite Four, possibly without recognizing that the reason your Dodrio isn't dealing damage is because it has a higher Attack than Special Attack, and Tri Attack is a special move. But it's not a huge deal, in the grand scheme of things.

But if you intend to play Pokemon competitively, or even if you're just a sucker for number crunching, it becomes more important to look at stats, and how the stats of different Pokemon compare. Each species of Pokemon has certain base stats that determine its relative effectiveness with each stat. For instance, Scyther has very high base Attack and Speed stats, but relatively low base HP, Defense, and Special Defense, meaning that it'll hit hard and fast with physical moves, but it generally can't take as much of a hit. Meanwhile, Shuckle has extraordinarily high Defense and Special Defense, but poor totals in each other stat, so it is more suited to taking the brunt of an opponent's attacks and using debilitating status moves rather than offensive attacks.

Scyther (pictured left) is my all-time favorite Pokemon.

Shuckle (pictured right)... well, not so much.

That's a whole lot of background on the subject. I know. So how do you actually train Pokemon to be good in the stats that you want? Even if you pick a Scyther, there's no guarantee that it will end up being a particularly fast or strong Scyther. So how can you guide that process?

There are four main things that influence a Pokemon's stats (not their base stat totals - those are based on the species of Pokemon. I'm talking about the actual numerical stat of a given Pokemon). The first is their base stats, which I already touched on briefly. The second and third are the specific Pokemon's nature and Individual Values, or IVs. Those are specific to a given individual of a Pokemon species (that is to say, the Exeggutor you caught and named Benedict will likely have a different nature and set of IVs than the Exeggutor your friend caught and named Egghead. Keep in mind, though, that both Exeggutors will have the same base stats). I won't get into nature or IVs now, mostly because those can't be changed or influenced - I may make a later post going into more detail there.

The fourth, and arguably most important, thing that influences an individual Pokemon's stats is something called Effort Values, or EVs. Your Pokemon gains these by defeating another Pokemon in battle (or by gaining experience for defeating that Pokemon, whether through an EXP Share or some other means). Essentially, there are EVs for every stat, and each species of Pokemon gives a certain number of EVs - up to a total of 3 - to your Pokemon when it defeats them. As an example, Magikarp gives 1 Speed EV, while Gyarados gives 2 Attack EVs. 

Whenever your Pokemon gains 4 EVs in a given stat, that translates to 1 additional point in that stat when your Pokemon reaches level 100. Any Pokemon can have up to 510 EVs, and no more than 252 in a given stat. So EVs can potentially give a swing of 60 or more points in a stat at level 100, assuming you put the maximum possible number of EVs into that stat. Of course, the effects of this can be felt at earlier levels, too - it's a gradual increase. But that's still a pretty big difference! So, if you're training up your Charizard to be a fast special attacker, you may consider making sure it gains 252 Special Attack EVs and 252 Speed EVs, putting the remaining 6 EVs into something like HP.

Giving your Pokemon 252 EVs doesn't necessarily mean defeating

252 Magikarps. The most recent games have introduced a minigame

to give Pokemon EVs. There are also medicines that grant EVs.

So that's the gist of it. If you want to pay attention to your Pokemon's stats, make sure you're wary of which Pokemon they're defeating in battle - or, if you like to be precise about it, you can specifically defeat only Pokemon that grant certain EVs until your Pokemon's EVs are capped out the way you want them to be.

One last point - I've heard that using Rare Candies to level up your Pokemon is a poor idea. In reality, it's not a huge deal - the only issue with using Rare Candies is that if you're leveling up with Rare Candies, you're not defeating Pokemon in battle. Which means you're not getting EVs. Which means your Pokemon's stats will be lower than a Pokemon who did level up by defeating opponents. So unless you've already fully capped out your Pokemon's EVs, or intend to do so soon by grinding for experience and EVs against a particular species of Pokemon, I would avoid using Rare Candy.

That's all, folks! Until next time!

Opinions on Text-Based Tabletop RPGs

Hey everyone! Today, I'd like to talk about something I've tried out a few times in the recent past, that being text-based tabletop RPGs, such as D&D. Through the use of websites like roll20.net, it's super easy to run an entirely text-based game - you, as the GM, simply write out whatever you would normally say in the chat window, and your players can respond at their leisure. Plus, any die rolls would go right into the chat window along with the descriptions and dialogue, so it's easy to see everything all in one place.

The question is, how well does it work?

Obviously, there are going to be some pros and cons to a purely text-based game, when compared to the usual group-of-friends-sitting-around-a-table sort of game (or, to bring it into the digital age, group-of-friends-on-Skype).

Con number 1: fewer snacks during gameplay.

Well, I guess not, if you play in your kitchen.

I think the first upside to a text-based game should be obvious - people can respond whenever they choose. It's like texting versus a phone call. With a phone call, you need to devote a block of time - you can't just talk on the phone for 30 seconds, wait twenty minutes, then talk for another two minutes. No, a phone call is a time commitment, just like your usual D&D session. But with a text-based game, you can run it so that players can answer at their leisure.  As a side bonus, this gives players (and the GM!) the opportunity to really think out what their character would do or say in a given situation, so in some ways, it makes roleplaying as your character much easier. For me, I like to leave the game open in a separate tab, so I can periodically check on it and see if I need to bang out a quick response. I think it's a good system...

...as long as people respond in a somewhat timely manner. With the flexibility to answer whenever you'd like comes a tendency to hold off on responding, whether that's due to forgetfulness or a thought of "Eh, I'll respond to him later, I don't feel like it right now." There's not as much accountability when your GM is staring at you from across the table, threatening to drop a tarrasque on your character's head if you don't make a decision sometime in the next ten minutes. Plus, simple conversations and encounters can get dragged out over longer periods of time. Because consider the following hypothetical exchange:

"I would like to attack that goblin. How far away is he?"

"Hm, he's about forty feet from you, but there is a bonfire between you and him, so you probably won't be able to charge at him."

"Ok. Could I move around the bonfire and attack him?"

"Well, you could get much closer, but not into melee range."

"What if I moved around the fire, right by that boulder there, and threw a dagger? Would that work?"

"Yeah, that should work well! Is that what you want to do?"

"Yep."

"Ok, roll me the attack roll for the dagger."

In an ordinary setting, that exchange would take all of thirty seconds to accomplish. But in a text-based game, in which people aren't necessarily responding immediately, it could drag on for quite a lot longer than that. Of course, it also depends on how punctual and how involved your players are, but there's no denying that converting spoken conversation to text slows things down a fairly significant amount.

Pictured: the approximate speed of a text-based game.

Another thing I find beneficial about text-based RPGs is that they're great for situations in which you want to run a one-off session with a player, but for whatever reason, you don't want to have to schedule another session just to go through this side thing. It tends to be a more convenient way to play in many situations. Again, setting aside time for a full session can be tough, so this all just goes back to the whole "you can answer whenever you'd like" point I made earlier.

But on the flip side, there are definitely situations in which a text-based game would be detrimental. I personally have never run a text-based game with more than one player at a time, but I can only imagine that with some of the difficulties that come with it, adding more people can get... chaotic. I feel that some of the "people don't respond in a timely manner" issues would only get exacerbated with more than two or so people playing. It'd be easy for the player with the quickest response time to completely dominate play, unless you put some significant regulations on your players - for instance, "no one player can respond twice in a row." Still, that could cause some frustration between players, too, so it's ground you'd have to tread lightly.


I think that one of the greatest benefits to a text-based game, though, is inclusivity. Not everyone is quick on the uptake when they play, and can have trouble getting into character at a moment's notice. Some players adapt quicker than others. I think reducing the game to text evens the playing field for your players, so they can all participate in the ways they do best. And if you have a deaf friend, it allows them to participate too, where a normal game obviously would not. (Fun fact - the reason I tried out a text-based game to begin with was because a deaf friend of mine really wanted to play, but couldn't participate due to her disability.)


This was a short post, but that's pretty much all I had to say on the topic. I think there are some real benefits to running a text-based game, especially when your players have different availabilities or different strengths that otherwise might not make it to a traditional sort of game. But it could also drag on for a much longer time, and unless you really lay down the law on when your players can respond, it might be tough to include more than two or so players in the game. Basically, I wouldn't try to run a full, five-person campaign completely over text, but I think there are ways to make it work. But give it a try! It's certainly a very interesting experience, regardless.

The Design of Dark Souls

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Makings of a Nerd, that blog where I'm finally done going over every Magic color in excruciating detail! Today I want to talk a bit about a game that has become pretty popular over the past few years, even spawning several sequels since its release in 2011. That game is Dark Souls, and in my opinion, it's one of the best-designed games I've played.

Yeah, this is pretty much the tagline. It's accurate.

Now, if you've never played Dark Souls, let's just put it in the following manner - it is not a game for beginners. (On that note, if you ever want to laugh, take your friend who has never touched a video game before, and tell them that "Dark Souls is really easy, you'll get the hang of it in no time.") The game and its sequels are designed around the idea that only a truly difficult challenge will leave you feeling satisfied when you finally overcome that challenge. As such, Dark Souls is no stranger to strong monsters, nefarious NPCs, and convoluted traps that will quickly kill you over and over again until you finally master that section of the game. Even after having beaten the game, I can go back to one of the beginning areas, and if I'm not careful, I can die within seconds.

But at its core, even though Dark Souls is a difficult game, it is ultimately a fair game (usually), and this is a large part of why I say it is one of the best-designed games I've played.

As an aside, before I delve into the topic in more detail, I don't know if I'd say Dark Souls is one of my favorite games. It's not something I can play casually - if I'm playing, my heart and soul have to be in it or it will get incredibly frustrating, sometimes to the point of not being fun. But you don't have to like Beethoven's music to agree that he's one of history's great composers. Dark Souls is a fun game, and a well-designed game, but I've had more fun playing other games.

Anyway, let's dive right in!

The setting

The first thing that should jump out at you when you play Dark Souls is the atmosphere. The general premise of the game is that in this world, undead exist, and while they retain their humanity for a time, they slowly become "hollow" and are driven mad. You are an undead who is trying to avoid that fate. As such, you begin the game in an asylum for the undead, and the asylum is crisscrossed with dark corridors, flickering torches, and rotting undead who have long since become hollow. It's a tough thing to describe through text, but it feels like a long-neglected asylum, in which the normal people of the world throw their undead and try desperately to forget about their existence. Every location in the game world is simply atmospheric, and I think a big part in this is played by the lack of music. Music only plays in about two locations in the game (not counting boss fights - more on music later), and as such, the game can't rely on music to set the mood. Ambient sounds, monsters and NPCs, and the setting itself need to provide that atmosphere.

Each location has its own quirks, and its own enemies, that

really work to set it apart.

Plus, very little information is actually told to you, as the player. NPCs give limited background, and what little they do tell you is often flavored by their own goals and motivations. The first NPC you meet upon escaping the asylum, a crestfallen warrior, will gladly tell you about some of the initial locations in the world, but the information is limited and given to you with more than just a hint of pessimism, as if he knows you're just going to fail at whatever it is you intend to do. If you want to learn more about the background of the world, you need to work to piece together what little information you glean from NPC conversations and the information obtained from reading item descriptions, and even then, you're given little more than a piecemeal account of the lore of the world. It's something that was done very well, and I think it is a fabulous way to tell an intricate story without shoving hours of exposition down the player's throat.

My other favorite thing about the setting of Dark Souls is that in general, if you can see a place, you can go to it. For instance:

This screenshot is taken in an area called the Tomb of the Giants. Far below, we can see what looks like a lake of magma, as well as some ancient buildings. That area is the Demon Ruins, and it's another location within the game. Of course, to get there requires traveling through about six other named areas, and would probably take about 15 to 20 minutes of just running, but they are connected. Plus, except for specific locations (like the Undead Asylum and one or two others), there are no loading screens between areas - everything is actually interconnected in the exact way it looks to be interconnected. Which I think is just a really cool thing about the design of the world.

The gameplay

What sort of discussion of a video game could I have without talking about the gameplay itself? As I said earlier, while Dark Souls is difficult, it is also fair - the game simply doesn't coddle you. If you die, it's essentially your own fault. Either you mistimed a dodge, or you blocked an attack poorly, or you attacked when you should have defended. Very rarely is a death actual unavoidable bullshit - the closest the game comes to that is the Anor Londo archers, and anyone who has played the game knows what I'm talking about there.

There's a lot to be said for the gameplay of Dark Souls, but I really just enjoy the checks and balances that are present throughout. Heavier armor slows down your movements and dodgerolls, but you won't get staggered as easily. Lighter armor allows for quicker movements, but you can't take a hit. A scimitar combos attacks really well but doesn't stagger opponents easily; a dagger is excellent for backstabbing but has terrible reach and deals little damage otherwise; a halberd has great reach but leaves you exposed after some attacks; a zweihander hits like a truck but takes an hour to swing. Nearly every decision in the game has an upside and has a downside, and despite the dozens upon dozens of potential weapons and armors in the game, very few of them can be said to be strictly better than any others.

Besides, you can wield silly weapons like this.

This is one of the smaller ones.

And of course, the last thing to mention is that Dark Souls really takes that "harder challenge leads to greater satisfaction" idea and runs with it. The bosses in particular can be insanely difficult, and can even feel like a game of "find the exploit," but once you do manage to beat them, there's little else like it. If you can get past the feeling of dying 17 times in a row to Ornstein and Smough, first.

Thunder and Thighs.

Snorlax and Pikachu.

Biggie Smalls.

Fatboy and Slim.

You get the idea.

The music

The last thing to mention about the design of Dark Souls is, of course, the music. Dark Souls has an epic, orchestral soundtrack... that really only plays during boss fights. And it makes the fights feel appropriately large-scale and, well, epic. Especially since you're typically fighting against giant animal-demons, grotesque dragon monsters, and ancient war heroes gone mad. Most fights have their own themes, and each one feels appropriate and on-point.

The rest of the time, the game is silent. There are only two locations in the game, and one is essentially a secret area. The other, Firelink Shrine, has one of my favorite music tracks in any video game soundtrack. Firelink Shrine is the first location you see after leaving the Undead Asylum, and you (as well as most NPCs) often return to it as a sort of base of operations. And the area is filled with somber, almost sad music. It's hard to describe in words, but in my opinion, it really embodies the sort of despair and melancholy but also the hope that pervades the game, not only in your own character but in the NPCs as well. There's not much more to say - have a listen!

So there you have it! There's a lot to say on the subject, of course, but for the sake of my poor typing fingers, I'll leave it there. Overall, a brilliantly well-designed game, for quite a few reasons!

...In my opinion, at least!

The Magic Color Series - Green Thumb

And now, ladies and gentlemen... the moment you've all been waiting for... the post where I finally stop talking about Magic: The Gathering colors every other week!

Probably. 

Three weeks ago, I wrote the second-to-last post in this series on the color red, which is a very simple color, all about passion and emotion and fire and dealing as much damage as physically possible in the shortest amount of time! This week, we'll be talking about green, which is another fairly simple color. Also, my favorite. But more on that later!

And we finally come full circle, to the top left!!

I won't bother with another description of the color pie and what it means - let's just hop right into it!

What does green represent?

In case you couldn't tell by now, the picture on a color's mana symbol often coincides with what the color represents. Red had a fireball, and was focused on fire and passion and emotion. Black had a skull, and was focused on death, especially as a tool to further one's own goals. So, let's take a moment and look above. 

Any ideas?

How about now?

If you guessed "nature," "trees," "plants," "growth," or anything like that, you'd be pretty spot-on. The biggest thing that green represents is growth, whether in a literal sense or in a more metaphorical, personal sense. That being said, green typically approaches growth through the lens of nature (although this isn't always true, especially when combined with one or more other colors). Green represents life - which overlaps slightly with white - as well as instinct. It's a pretty simple color, in all honesty - it's similar to red in that regard. You can sum up green, mostly, by saying that it represents life, nature, instinct, and growth. It does get slightly more interesting when we get to the gameplay, though.

What does this mean for gameplay?

I'm glad you asked! So when you think of nature, what's the first thing you think of? Is it bountiful land, full of trees and plants and whatnot? Well, seeing as green uses forests as its mana source, you wouldn't be too far off on that one. And with that, green is the color that's most focused on ramping up its mana base, whether through getting as many lands onto the field as possible or through the use of creatures that help produce mana.

Like this guy. Or the weird plant-person thing in the last picture.

If, instead of lands, you think of creatures when you think of nature, then you just hit green's favorite card type in the game. Green doesn't really care so much about spell-slinging with instants and sorceries - it's perfectly content just slapping some creatures onto the field and letting them have the run of the place. Green doesn't care for blue's machinations, or black's underhandedness. That's not green's style. If green is going to kill you, you'll see it coming from a mile away, but you just won't be able to do anything about it. It's like the inevitability that nature will reclaim all things, if you like analogies.

So, there are two general categories to how green plays with creatures. Option 1 is big armies of small creatures. Perhaps "armies" isn't quite the right word for it - green isn't as organized as, say, white is. But don't fret, green can easily have dozens of creatures on the field, all helping each other grow in strength (see what I did there?) and overwhelm the enemy. The most obvious creature type for this option is elves, of which green has a metric ton. Option 2, on the flip side, is small groups of big, stompy creatures. This is where you find your elephants, your hydras, and all other assorted beasts. Green is all about instinct and growth, like I said, so it plays very intuitively - build up your mana base early, maybe throw out a few weaker creatures to fend off an attack, and then end with some big monstrosities that'll show your opponent the brute force of nature.

Pictured left: Elves.

Pictured right: Beasts.

You get the idea.

However, like I said earlier, green doesn't play a manipulative game. Green doesn't use underhanded tactics to win. Its simplicity and its reliance on instinct can often be its downfall. It is very good at removing enchantments and artifacts (which can be seen as nature reclaiming what rightfully belongs to it), but it is comparatively terrible at removing creatures from the board. When it comes to creatures, green will always attempt to simply have the biggest ones around, and hopefully that will be enough. When it does come to targeted removal of opponents' creatures, this is where the "fight" mechanic comes in, of which green is the most prolific user. When you cast a spell that causes one creature to "fight" another, they essentially just damage each other as if one had just blocked the other in combat. It's a much more limited form of creature removal than, say, black's tendency to just murder things, but it suits green just fine.

Finally, to go right along with green's focus on growth, green is where you'll find the most cards that simply make your creatures bigger than they already are. This can take the form of temporary, "until end of turn" effects like the one seen on Giant Growth, or it can be a more permanent effect, such as a +1/+1 counter. Green likes both of these methods, and uses them both extensively. As long as its creatures are getting bigger, it doesn't much care how it happens.

I won't lie. I just love the picture from this card.

My opinions on the color:

As I mentioned in the red post, my preference is to play a creature-heavy game, and if that's the goal, there's no better color than green for the task. It sure as hell has the creatures to smack your opponents around, and it also has the mana manipulation (via land retrieval and creatures that produce extra mana) to get those big creatures on the field. And the other reason green is my favorite color in Magic is because of its directness. There is little more satisfying than watching a blue player attempt to control a green deck, only to have his attempts foiled by an ever-expanding barrage of giant beasts.

Also, hydras are probably my second-favorite creature type in the game (behind krakens, which are frankly the most green-like blue creatures around). 

I mean, look at that thing. How could you not just want, like, 

twelve of them?

But, as with many colors, green can be a bit boring on its own. In fact, I'd argue that green is one of the weaker colors on its own, too. White and black can absolutely hold their own in a mono-colored deck, while mono-red just kills you before you have a chance to play. Mono-blue can be tough. But while mono-green has the potential to be very strong (generally speaking, most green cards work at least somewhat well together), it does have some serious drawbacks in that it has little in the ways of control - especially for creatures. Plus, it is heavily reliant on mana, so if you target a green player's mana producers or simply destroy his lands (something that we in the MTG community generally refer to as "a dick move"), you can slow or halt a green deck's momentum. The other problem is that green has the fewest flying creatures in the game, so it can become quickly overwhelmed by a flyer-heavy deck if it doesn't have a creature with reach.

Overall? I'm a huge fan of green. To me, the only reason I don't like red is because when it comes to creatures, green does the same thing, just better. Personally, my favorite color combination is green/blue - use the blue to keep the opponent under control, until your big stompy green creatures can sweep in for the kill. Plus, it lets me use krakens and hydras in the same deck. Which is always awesome.

That's all for the Magic Color Series! To read more about green's place in the color pie, a series of articles was written by Mark Rosewater, Magic's current head designer, on the subject of the color pie. Which is really where I got a lot of my information about the colors anyway. You can find his article about green by clicking here.

Star Wars - [Insert Clever Title Here]

(I realize that the text size is tiny for some reason. I apologize for that - I'm trying to fix it as soon as possible.)

Hey everyone! I had spoken to many of my friends, family, and coworkers about the topic of today's post before finally realizing that I would need to make a post about it. Because really, how can I claim to have a blog about all sorts of nerdy topics without discussing my thoughts on the latest Star Wars movie?

Now, there are a lot of things to be said about the new movie. It broke new ground in a lot of ways, while also staying true to the characters and setting established by the previous six movies. (Some people would say "the previous five movies," but we'll allow Episode I to be considered, if only because Darth Maul was a badass. Also, Liam Neeson.) What I would like to do for this review, then, would be to discuss some of the specific things I liked about the movie, as well as a few of the specific things I didn't like as much.

I do want to mention, though, that overall, I greatly enjoyed The Force Awakens. I only got the chance to watch it once in theaters, but I would have happily gone to see it multiple, multiple times if I'd had the opportunity.

In case you couldn't already guess, there will likely be a ton of spoilers as we move forward. So if you haven't seen the movie yet for whatever reason (yeah, some people haven't seen it yet - they're out there), you should probably stop reading now. Also, I would like to point out that these are simply my opinions, and should be taken as such. Feel free to disagree with me!

So without any further ado...


Pro: The lightsaber fight

One of my biggest complaints about Episodes I, II, and III - a complaint that is shared by many people with whom I've spoken on the topic - was the lightsaber fights. (For now, let's ignore the complaints about characters, plot, and dialogue in the prequel trilogy, because otherwise, we'd be here until Episode VIII is released.) The choreography was always very well done for those fights - look at the Darth Maul/Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan fight in The Phantom Menace as an example, or the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight in Revenge of the Sith. But to me, those fights were always extraordinarily over-the-top. The Jedi involved would always flip and twirl and make about seventeen unnecessary movements for every one legitimate swing of the lightsaber at their opponents.

Exhibit A.

Also, this just in - I can use .gifs! So many possibilities.

Of course, looking at the original trilogy, we often see the opposite issue. While I understand that the special effects were not as good in the 1970s and 1980s, the lightsaber duels in Episodes IV, V, and VI could sometimes be bland affairs, with the two opponents just whacking away at one another until somebody lost. This wasn't always the case, either, but it tended to be a running theme with those duels.

So now we get to The Force Awakens, and we have a climactic lightsaber duel between Kylo Ren and Finn, which is then continued between Kylo Ren and Rey once Kylo incapacitates Finn. (It's really weird calling him just "Kylo," but I think it's better than calling him "Ren." So we're sticking with Kylo.) And in my opinion, this is the best lightsaber duel in the entire Star Wars saga, or at least in the top three. It struck a good middle ground - it was a largely story-driven fight like the majority of those seen in the original trilogy, while also being exciting and well-choreographed. Plus, it never felt over-the-top in terms of its choreography. And the other thing I enjoyed about that duel is that it demonstrated the characters' personalities very well, especially Kylo's. But more on that in a minute!

By the way, many of my above assertions apply to the special effects in the movie as well, I feel. Which I also thought to be a positive part of Episode VII.


Con: A New Hope 2.0

Probably my biggest issue with Episode VII was that, after watching it, it felt as if I had just seen Episode IV all over again, just reskinned. Droid with important information is lost on a desert planet after a stormtrooper attack and gets picked up by a local, who then flies away in the Millennium Falcon to bring the droid to the Rebellion/Resistance. The local, who is actually Force-sensitive and turns out to be more than they appeared at first, is assisted by an older companion, who was an important figure in the war of the previous trilogy. A few fights later, the protagonist's party meets up with the Rebellion/Resistance, who then take the fight to the Empire/First Order. The old sage is killed by the villain, who happens to be directly related to a few of the main characters. The movies culminate in the protagonist destroying the Empire/First Order base of operations/weapons platform, which was demonstrated to have destroyed at least one planet earlier in the movies. Plus, there's another mysterious villain who appears by hologram, and there's a scene at a bar.

And the aforementioned droids are awesome.

I realize that a) I left out a metric ton of differences between the movies, b) I'm oversimplifying significantly, and c) I'm not really mentioning that having callbacks to the original trilogy seems to be what J.J. Abrams was going for. But the similarities are hard to deny. And while I appreciated the callbacks, and I understand why they were done the way they were (I feel that they were done in order to help establish the new characters in the setting, while keeping things familiar and showing, perhaps, that history is doomed to repeat itself?), I felt that it was done just a little too much.


Pro: Kylo Ren's character

This will probably be the most controversial point of this whole post. People who have watched The Force Awakens seem to have one of two reactions toward Kylo Ren as a character - either they loved him and thought he was very well-acted and well-written, or they hated him and thought his character was terrible. I haven't really spoken with anyone who fell in the middle ground. Generally, there is a consensus that Kylo was established as an intimidating, fearsome villain in the beginning acts of the film, but once he removed the helmet, all pretenses were lost and he became an emotional trainwreck.

If you haven't seen it yet, please go look up Emo

Kylo Ren on Twitter.

But really, I liked Kylo Ren for that exact reason. I think that some people were disappointed because they were expecting Darth Vader 2.0, and instead they got Anakin. I felt that his character was very well thought-out and fleshed out, and you could constantly see the inner turmoil that defined Kylo's actions throughout the movie. You see him as an intimidating badass, but you also see him as a child on a temper tantrum. You see the nigh-successful attempts to emulate Vader, but you also see his very real flaws. I also felt, as I somewhat mentioned earlier, that the lightsaber duel was an excellent insight into his character. He fought relatively skillfully for someone whose training was cut short (and someone who just took a bowcaster shot to the torso and walked it off), but you could actually see the rage and inner conflict in Kylo as he attacked Finn and Rey. 

Kylo Ren was absolutely one of my favorite new characters in The Force Awakens, and I'm very interested to see how his character continues to develop over the course of the next two movies.

Con: The comedy

Not much to say here, really, since my argument is essentially the same as my earlier statements about similarities between Episode IV and Episode VII. Basically, I really enjoyed the comedy that was included in The Force Awakens - it was funny without being goofy (looking at you, Jar Jar), and it rarely felt forced. That being said, I felt that there was just slightly too much comedy added into the movie, especially in the first half. It's a pretty nitpick-y complaint, but I guess I expect a pretty serious tone when I go into a Star Wars movie, and while The Force Awakens was certainly a serious movie, I felt that the comedy was slightly overdone.

Pro: This guy

'Nuff said.

Con: Not enough of this gal

Also 'nuff said.

But yeah, that's most of what I had to say on the topic. There were other high points and low points in The Force Awakens, but these were the major ones that I wanted to discuss. Like I said before, I thought that overall, the movie was excellent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, most of my complaints were simply "this was done very well, but they went too far with it." Which is not a very bad complaint at all, I feel.

That's about that! See you all next week!

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