Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: castform, Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go

Pokémon GO Weather Week 2021 Event Review: Wishing For Rain

The Weather Week event is wrapping up in Pokémon GO. This was a bit of an unusual one, so let's see how this week measured up to other recent event.

What worked in this Pokémon GO event

• The bonus: Ever since the introduction of Levels 41 – 50, XP mattered again after a long time of Level 40 trainers only really concerning themselves with Stardust. Personally, my renewed XP grind has me slacking on the Stardust front, so I was happy that this event offered an increase, however slight, in the Stardust offered when Pokémon with weather boost were caught.

What didn't work in this event

• The Shiny release: I don't really even know where to start here. Rainy Form Castform was this week's Shiny release. Generally, it is locked to rainy weather in Pokémon GO, with other forms of Castform appearing during other weather in-game. One would think that for an event where the only new thing added to the game is Shiny Rainy Castform, though, that Niantic wouldn't lock it to a specific type of weather worldwide. They did, though. No rain? Out of luck. The only Rainy Castform you'd see were the five in the Special Research. It's bad enough when Pokémon GO locks a Shiny release to raids, but to rain? One of the most ridiculous moves in Niantic's history, especially considering the fact that other Pokémon normally associated with raids like Lotad were spawning as event features. I couldn't imagine a more ill-conceived plan for a Shiny release. I've been playing the game loyally since it came out and I consider myself a huge fan of what Niantic has done. Largely, I feel, they get more right than they get wrong. Here I am, stunned at what a huge miss this was.
• The spawns and the raids: There just wasn't enough variety. There was nothing new in raids either making this feel like a less exciting extension of the Charge Up event.

Overall

Weather Week is a rare complete miss for Pokémon GO. It's an event that failed to meet expectations in even the most obvious of ways, turning what could've been a fun, low-key, filler event into a week of gameplay that I anticipated putting behind me. Imagine if Snowy Castform gets this treatment when released as a Shiny? It'll be rarer to have than Shiny Deino.

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