Are all 700+ Pokémon available to be caught in Pokémon X/Y? I read on the Pokémon franchise page that one of the generations only had 200-something Pokémon available out of the 300-something total, which means you would have had to catch the remaining Pokémon in the previous games and transferred them to the newest game. I'm assuming Pokémon X/Y have all the Pokémon since you can't transfer from previous Pokémon games.

@insouciant: Yes, all 700+ Pokemon. For the first time, they have all been 3D modeled and placed in one game. Exciting!

Seriously? You only have to trade for the X or Y specific ones and everything else is available?

Oh shit, I might have to get this now if that's true.

I doubt it. You can transfer up to X/Y as far back as Ruby/Sapphire from the Game Boy Advance (R/S > Pearl/Diamond or HG/SS > Black/White 1&2 > X/Y) ... I mean where would you find a Mew? It's always been like this. If you want the really rare ones or the legendaries you have to get them the hard way...

No, you can't catch all the Pokemon. HOWEVER, you can catch a fuck ton of them. Generstions 1-4 only have like ten families of Pokemon you can't catch (such as Growlithe and Arcanine, one family, are not in the game). Gen 5 is almost barren since it's the most recent one and they want you buy that game too. There are at least 450 available to catch judging by the Pokedex.

All Pokemon games have all Pokemon in them, as in they are all programmed into the game.

Yes all pokemon are available.

Getting them is the problem. Since you need to catch some from pokemon red and blue transfer them onto the later ones, then upload them them to the Pokebank (online cloud storage, you MUST pay a subscription for) then download them to X and Y.

Really in order to catch all 700 through trades or such you will need ALL the games as well and do a whole bunch of jiggery POKEry with a subscription in between to get them.

@deegee: FUCK I needs me an Arcanine, and I didn't buy black 2. Looks like I know where my Yveltal is eventually going.

Just wait a few months for someone to romhack in the rest of the pokemon.

@insouciant: Oh, how many can be caught. 450 can be caught in the X/Y games according to the dex. Which I believe is the most in the series. And all 700+ can be traded to the game.

In other words, there are plenty of Pokemon.

Yeah kinda, but you'll have to wait until December. The cloud service that will allow you to transport your pokemon from previous games into x/y will be up and running 2 months from now totally free for a month and then $4.99 for one year. Unfortunately you're going to have to make due with the pokemon available currently in the game and those that come in through special events till then.

There was a time when there were certain Pokemon that were basically unobtainable due to not being able to trade with some early versions of the game. I believe this was only before HeartGold/SoulSilver though. At this point every Pokemon can at least be obtained in a game that can trade with X/Y, meaning you can theoretically have them all without hacking. (You'll be able to trade with the DS games and indirectly the GBA games once the storage system is available.) Obviously that's pretty friggin' hard though, especially if you haven't been collecting them already, as many are event Pokemon that you can't obtain normally.

"Catching 'em all" is kind of a fools errand at this point I feel. It's not worth the trouble.

Well that sucks. I wanted to get all the Pokemon without trudging through 5 other exact same games. Who the fuck would do that?

@mideonnviscera said:

If it was just a matter of playing the other games I wouldn't find it unreasonable. You would only need to trade over the ones that you can't get in X/Y. Event Pokemon are the real problem.

I know you say that, but play through this whole game and see how exciting the idea of doing it numerous more times is. Pokemon is a great concept and has so much multiplayer potential (which it lives up to) but the games are tedious as all fuck. Like Final Fantasy 1 tedious.

@mideonnviscera said:

I've played through most of the old Pokemon games several times, and I probably will again at some point some day. The idea of playing through those games another time seems way less tedious than trying to collect all 700+ Pokemon. It's not just a matter of catching all those Pokemon (which can be tedious in and of itself), but also training up many of them to their final evolution. That's a hell of a lot of grinding.

Although I suppose there's nothing stopping you from just trading for those Pokemon with another player instead of playing those games are catching/training them yourself.

The Global trade system is good and once the pokebank is running come January it will be better. Ive been playing the GTS like its a stock market. Buying up wanted starter pokemon with common cheaper pokemon and trading them for rarer pokemon. Once I get I ditto I can print Pokemon! MUHA HA HAHAHA!!!

Starter pokemon (for now atleast) and rare/legendaries are the current currency on the GTS. If you can print them (its still work) you can buy anything on it. Still not easy....or reasonable.

I spent a little bit of time today just searching the GTS for certain Pokemon, mainly just to see their new models. I guess I have until December to try to finish this game as well as some DS games to bring my GBA Pokemon over. Hopefully someone will want to trade their Yevatl, and then I won't feel compelled to buy a copy of Y. Or wait for the inevitable Z or X2/Y2 release.

We definitely play Pokemon for different reasons. To me it's all about collecting and training them. This is only the third one I've dabbled in but I'm already bored of the exact same story over and over. I actually beat White and now regret trading it in because I had almost all the Pokemon available in it.

The story is like a barrier to get past for me. I'm usually not that type of gamer but playing this is like "Oh yeah, my room. Oh yeah, my friends. Oh yeah, Victory Rd.". I do like it better than White though since I can get Pokemon I recognize before I beat the game.

I also think it's a cultural thing. Over in Japan it 'catching them all' might not bad so hard. A lot of the wireless trade stuff feels like it caters to this, also the subscription service feels like something more for Japan, especially some of the wording on the site, like 'for competitive trainer's I doubt there are that many competitive trainer's in America.

I think you would be pleasantly surprised at how healthy the competitive pokemon culture is in America. Maybe not full scale competitions and events, but certainly consistently battling players who set up their own "leagues" and pay attention to the meta game and the deeper statistics and strategies.