Pokemon Conquest Primer- Pokemon in Four Directions (Part Three)

Warriors, as ever in the Pokemon games, can have more than one pokemon, and will often work to train several pokemon at once.  This benefits your strategy, allowing you to alter the mixture of your combat team depending on what you’re about to fight.  However, not every warrior can have six pokemon, nor can they ever use more than one at a time.

Instead, each warrior has a Capacity rating- this number is the maximum number of pokemon a trainer can have Link with at any given moment.  This number can be as low as 2- or as high as 7 or 8.  Keep this number in mind when you’re looking for pokemon to Link with, because it can severely limit your options.  Also, when a warrior Links with a pokemon, they do not use a pokeball- instead, the pokemon they are currently using must move adjacent to the wild pokemon you are trying to Link with.  You then play a rhythm minigame, hitting the button with timing to match glows tracking across the screen.  You may not successfully form a Link in one shot- sometimes it can take two tries, even if you properly match rhythm.  This Link attempt replaces the pokemon’s attack for that turn, so make sure that your warrior’s pokemon can survive in the position you’re going to leave it in.  If you succeed at Linking to the pokemon, it vanishes from the battlefield- but the warrior’s current pokemon stays in play and can continue the fight.

As with the core games, each pokemon can hold one item.  This item can then be used in combat- but it can only be swapped or replaced in between battles normally.

Unlike the core games, this item is effectively attached to the warrior.  As with the warrior’s Ability, it can be used at the start of their pokemon’s turn and will take effect immediately.  Many of the choices of item here will only take effect for three turns as well, and a lot of the passive effect items will occasionally break just after their ability affects something- either boosting an attack or reducing incoming damage.  Additionally, during each battle, you can spot floating ‘giftboxes’- many maps will start the battle with one in a random location, holding a random item.  These are also dropped when you knock out a pokemon that was holding an item, whether that pokemon had a warrior or was wild.  Any pokemon can pick these up- yours or the opposing pokemon- and then gets to snag the item when its turn ends (after any attacks it makes).  If the pokemon picking up an item already had one, you (or in some cases the computer) then have to choose to either have it keep its old item and put the new one into your inventory, or hold the new item and send the old one to your inventory.

Finally, just like with the core games, six is a very important number.  In this case, you can only have six warriors in a given fortress at a time, and only six warriors from each side can join in each battle.