Well, that was a pretty underwhelming event all things considered.
Didn't get any shinies except one Gible, which is hardly world-shaking. At pretty much every event whether I had a ticket or not I've ended up getting a shiny hat Pikachu, but this is the year where that streak finally ended (I am in no way complaining about this fact).
It was kind of a weird day in terms of motivation. The sheer amount of crappy spawns which weren't Sinnoh Pokemon kind of killed my enthusiasm to spend time catching stuff, especially given the lack of a collection challenge. I know Sinnoh has a vast amount of cross-generational evolutions, but Johto Tour managed to make things interesting with the addition of shiny-eligible Gloom, Seadra, and Golbat and the way in which species like Kingdra, Bellossom, and Crobat spawned with a low chance too. It would have been cool to have had the same thing here and to have had Electivire, Magmortar, and Rhyperior et al as possible spawns. I'm still missing a few Sinnoh shinies so was hoping for a shiny Shellos, Stunky, Cherubi, Finneon, or Skorupi (or a female Combee), but no joy. Did start a route at one point but it didn't seem to generate any spawns so I wasn't able to get a white Basculin. Annoying.
The best I can say is that the drop rate for 10km eggs was excellent, so I'm really hoping I get at least one shiny regional out of them. Got a shiny Torkoal last year which was a nice belated surprise 3 or 4 days after the fact. Shadow Pokemon in research rewards was nice too, wish they'd do that more often.
More broadly it's just really disappointing that we had a Sinnoh Tour which didn't actually include all the Sinnoh Pokemon. Part of the appeal of previous tours was that you had the chance to finally complete that region's Pokedex, but Manaphy, Phione, and Arceus are still MIA. Hell, we've still got half the Hisui forms missing though I suppose Hisuian Lilligant/Goodra are Unova/Kalos Pokemon so maybe that's why. It just felt really half-assed overall. I'm not able to play today but from what I've seen there's nothing new on Sunday so I don't really feel like I'm missing out.
But it basically ended up being a glorified raid day. Did a load of raids for both Origin Dialga and Palkia during their respective hours (was a bit perplexed as to why anyone would want to do the standard forms, but to each their own) but had quite underwhelming results. It felt a bit pointless doing party challenges for a Regigigas and then battling Giovanni for
another Regigigas - but whatever, I'm not going to complain about getting two of them.
For me personally the most enjoyable aspect was finding the lake trio in the wild. They were actually decently common and I was surprised at how many I was able to catch. And that was the undisputed high point - towards the end of the day, someone reported a hundo Azelf was nearby and a massive column of people went walking off in search of it. Managed to get it - at a nicely high CP - and yes, yes I used the Master Ball on it because frankly I ain't leaving that up to chance.
Pretty pretty. I also caught a 40 CP Mesprit which I'll treasure.
As I said, not playing IRL today but if anyone sees my accounts online please feel free to send invites to Origin raids on the off-chance.