Pokémon Home adds convenience to catching and collecting ’em all, but as it’s still in its infancy, there are some features that leave something to be desired.
Pokémon Home is an app for the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices that intends on making your journey to collecting all 890 Pokémon as smooth as possible. With the Pokémon game releases spanning well over 20 years, it only makes sense that the monster capturing series has implemented a modern hub for all of your precious creatures.
A lot of the current features are handy in Home. For instance: You don’t have to pay to use the app’s basic trading and storing features, and switching Pokémon to and from the app to a Switch console is a breeze. With minimal glitches, Home is a feat of ingenuity and hard work ethic. Imagine having to check the code of nearly 900 characters to make sure that all of their moves, abilities, natures, etc. were transferring over nicely.
Pokémon Sword and Shield do not have a living dex, making it impossible to trade in certain Pokémon from Home into them (for now). This is essentially the living dex that fans have been asking for, albeit in a storage app, rather than in a main-series game. Let’s hold out hope for an in-game National Dex, while also appreciating all that Home has to offer, and considering the possible improvements yet to come.
Change Original Color Magearna living dex mythical Pokémon requirement
Currently, the only way to get an Original Color Magearna Magearna is by completing a living dex in Home. This means that you have to collect all 890 Pokémon in the entire series and have them in Pokémon Home. The problem with this is, it’s very, very difficult to catch some mythical Pokémon, such as Arceus, who are locked behind events (adding insult to injury, Arceus was never released outside of Japan in Diamond and Pearl).
With Pokémon like Mew locked behind paid DLC, it’s beginning to feel difficult to capture ’em all when all aren’t exactly so accessible. Adding insult to injury, you currently cannot GTS trade mythical Pokémon in the app. To make the living dex achievement feasible, the mythical Pokémon trade ban needs to be lifted. Even if you’re not interested in getting the special living dex Magearna, it still would be nice to transfer over, say, a Mew from a previous game (even if it was via the very complicated Pokémon R/B/G/Y Pokémon Bank/Home compatible virtual console release glitch).
Mass deleting ‘mons
Pokémon GO has a leveling system based off of candies, which are earned when you “send a Pokémon back to the lab” (colloquially referred to as “cooking them up and making some candy out of the remains”). Animal cruelty ethics aside, it would be very convenient if this GO feature made its way over to Home.
If you’re asking yourself, “why would anyone bother to transfer Pokémon that they already want to release into Home?,” consider this: releasing every single breeding reject in your PC can take a long time. As you’re able to transfer full boxes of Pokémon into Home from a game all at once, simply highlighting and mass releasing a bunch would make clearing out breed reject boxes all the simpler. Plus, you’ve done a lot of in-game walking to earn those hatches. Why shouldn’t you earn a few EXP candies as a reward?
Breeding in the app
Speaking of breeding: we need to be able to set it up in the mobile app, let alone the Switch one. It would make playing the Pokémon games so much more convenient if you could consistently breed a Ditto with your desired monster by using your IRL step count. It would further the Pokémon GO trend of exercising for the sake of catching new Pokémon, and would honestly convince me to get up and moving a bit more.
Sitting stagnant while breeding Pokémon in Sword and Shield as my avatar rides around on a bike in the Wild Area feels so lame. Adding breeding to the Pokémon Home apps is the natural next step for the monster capturing series that is now known for getting us nerds up and moving. It worked with the Poké Walker, and it would work in Home. Simply put, it feels good to walk with a purpose, and if that purpose is to save yourself the inconvenience of grinding for hours on end to yield a competitively viable Pokémon, in-app breeding seems like a no-brainer.
Remove hidden ability deletion glitch
Pokémon Home users are reporting that Pokémon coming in from the Nintendo 3DS app Pokémon Bank into Home are losing their hard-earned hidden abilities. In the case of the Twitter user below, the glitch removed an ability on a particularly rare Ditto.
Is there a fix being worked on for some Pokémon transferred from Bank to #PokemonHOME losing Hidden Abilities? My Shiny Imposter Ditto now has Limber, all my Prankster Sableye have Keen Eye. Two friends have similar issues. It’s no big deal to me but may be for others. Thanks!
— Nick Race (@theNinjaNick333) February 22, 2020
Hidden abilities are rarer to come by, and are often much better than a Pokémon’s vanilla ones. While a fix for the Pokémon Home IV hyper training glitch was already put into effect, it seems as though this hidden ability glitch is not quite on the Pokémon Company’s radar. Hidden abilities are important for breeding. Getting the right combination of hidden ability plus nature and IVs is an arduous task, to say the least. Please fix this glitch, Pokémon team. Save me all of the work I put into my Sun and Moon teams so that I can safely bring them in to the current Generation of Pokémon. I’m paying for this service because I both need it and trust in it. I’m sure that in little time, this glitch, amongst the aforementioned improvements, will be considered by the app’s development team.
The upcoming Sword and Shield DLC will patch in more Pokémon from previous games for free. The Isle of Armor DLC pack will release in June 2020, and the Crown Tundra DLC will release in Fall 2020 for the Nintendo Switch.
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