Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Cottonee, Lush Jungle, Niantic, pokemon, pokemon go

Pokémon GO Event Review: The Lush Jungle Event 2022

The Lush Jungle event is wrapping in Pokémon GO. Let's take a look to see if this event reinvigorated the hype of the Season of Alola that started strong at the beginning of March and was quickly dashed with the dry Festival of Colors.

What worked in this Pokémon GO event

• New species drop: Fomantis arrived in the game along with its evolution of Lurantis unlocked. Fomantis wasn't rare but was relatively uncommon, which made hunting it the perfect amount of fun without getting frustrating. This is a great spawn rate for new species, keeping them from flooding the game which would cut the hype down quickly but also not making them prohibitively rare.
• Two types of research: I had my critiques of the Tapu Koko Special Research that came with the Welcome to Alola event, and I feel the same way about this new Tapu Lele Special Research that came with this event. The encounters just seem too random, so the dialogue of the quest doesn't end up feeling related to the actual tasks and Pokémon we catch. However… this Research shows up in the positive section of this review not because of an improvement in the tasks but rather because we got two questlines: a Timed Research and a Special Research. While I do prefer my Research to be themed, I can't say that I didn't have fun working through two of these at once while also chipping away at the Masterwork Research from Pokémon GO Tour: Johto.
• Tapu Lele: While it's technically not confined to this event, I do like that Niantic has been timing Legendary drops to event launches. It adds to the overall anticipation of an event kicking off.

What didn't work in this Pokémon GO event

• Cottonee's rarity: Cottonee was ludicrously rare outside of the weekend's Park Spotlight event-within-an-event, and even that didn't make up for this new Shiny's low spawn rate during the event. Niantic wanted to make Cottonee encounters more exciting by making them rare, but they ended up making this event about half as exciting as it could be. If a new Shiny is released, it should be among the most popular spawns in the game, as it's still hard to catch a Shiny within an event even if you play a lot. Cutting the spawn rate down to this just makes it so players don't want to go out and play.
• Not enough event spawns: Overall, the spawns were similar to the Season of Alola spawns, often to the point where it didn't feel like an event was going on.

Overall

Outside of the double Timed/Special Research offerings, this low-key offering felt like a Fomantis drop rather than an actual event.

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