A New Pokemon Update Will Surprisingly Add A Brand-New Poke Ball
The Pokemon Home update will finally allow players to use a special new Poke Bell, and it cannot come soon enough.
Pokemon Home will finally become fully compatible with Pokemon Legends: Arceus and Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Pokemon Shining Pearl, as announced by the Pokemon Company this Thursday. Unfortunately, the company only stated that the compatibility update would arrive soon, and despite sharing plenty of information, it hasn’t specified the exact release date. This will allow gamers to freely move their Pokemon between games, using the Pokemon Home app and brand new Poke Balls.
As reported by IGN, the aforementioned Pokemon games are set to join a complex ecosystem of games, including Pokemon Go, Pokemon Let’s Go, and Pokemon Bank — though some systems will support only one-way transfers to Pokemon Home. As per the official announcement, Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, Pokemon Shining Pearl, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Pokemon Shield, and Pokemon Sword — all of which are Nintendo Switch titles — will feature two-way transfers to and from Pokemon Home.
Pokemon Let’s Go: Eevee and Pokemon Let’s Go: Pikachu are the only two Pokemon games for the Nintendo Switch system that won’t support two-way transfers. These are joined by Pokemon Go, a smartphone release and an important piece of gaming history, and Pokemon Bank, which is a Nintendo 3DS video game. But that’s not all, and there are some pretty interesting catches surrounding this announcement and the Pokemon transfer.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are giving away free Pokemon and in-game items to gamers. For example, the first time a player transfers a Pokemon from Legends: Arceus into Home, they’ll receive Rowlet, Cyndaquil, and Oshawott, as well as mystery gifts in the smartphone version of the app/game. Doing the same with Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl will grant gamers a Turtwig, Chimchar, and Piplup with Hidden Abilities.
Strange Balls, a type of Poke Balls from the distant past featured in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, will also make an appearance in Home, and all Pokemons transferred to Arceus will arrive in a Strange Ball. This type of Poke Balls is also set to appear in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, but not in Sword and Shield games. However, several potential drawbacks are associated with the Pokemon transfer between games.
Mainly, the Pokemon Company state that transferring Pokemons to a game they weren’t originally caught in may cause certain changes to known move sets, levels, and types of Poke Balls they were caught in. This means that the Pokemon transferred from one game to the Home app, and/or other games might transfer to the same Pokemon with a different set of moves and states that would correspond to the original.
However, once those Pokemons are returned to their original game, their original moves and states will return, regardless of what they might’ve learned from other games. At this point, it’s still unclear whether Pokemon that are currently unavailable in Sword and Shield games, such as Chimchar, will be transferrable from other games. There are still plenty of things surrounding Pokemon Home that need to be analyzed, but one thing is certain —cloud-based Pokemon storage is expanding its compatibility list.
