Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: Flabébé, Niantic, pokemon, pokemon go, valentine's day

Pokémon GO Event Review: Valentine's Day 2022 Event

Pokémon GO hosted an oddly-timed version of their annual Valentine's Day event this past week, with the event set to end today… on the actual holiday that the event is based around. Was this the only weird choice made during this event? Let's see if this one warmed our hearts like the Valentine's Day events of previous years.

What worked in this Pokémon GO event

• Regional Flabébé: I thought Flabébé was a good choice for region-based color varieties. Regionals make crossover events like Safari Zones and GO Fest more exciting and they are a staple of the game, but I strongly believe that they should be limited and well-chosen in order to not make Pokémon GO seem insurmountable for completionists. Having three of Flabébé's color varieties be region-based was a good choice because we can at least register our version in the Dex and then work on getting the others down the road.
• Shiny-capable spawns: While there were major problems with the spawns, almost every feature was Shiny-capable. This event was a major Shiny hunt for those who needed Minun, Plusle, Luvdisc, Alolomola, Audio, and more.

What didn't work in this Pokémon GO event

• Rarity: The rarity of the two worldwide Flabébé spawns was all out of whack. Every location had three Flabébé available: their own region-based color along with the worldwide orange and white variants, which were, without exaggeration, Deino-rare. I have never played an event where I haven't been able to find and often even have a fair shot at hunting the "If you're lucky, you may find…" species until now. These felt prohibitively rare, which left us with nothing much to do in the game. No silhouettes to hunt. They were almost treated like Shinies, but I had a better chance of getting full odds of 1:500 Shinies than these two Flabébé. Of all the aspects of Pokémon GO events I've been reviewing for the past two years, this strikes me as one of the silliest choices I've seen Niantic make.
• Raid Rotation: Coming off of the stellar Lunar New Year raid rotation, there was suddenly nothing to raid that wasn't in the wild.

Overall

The worst event in quite a long time, Valentine's Day 2022 didn't live up to Niantic's past events. This could've been a slam dunk, but making orange and white Flabébé are-they-even-in-the-game rare instead of rare enough to make the hunt rewarding was a horrendous choice.

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