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Pokemon X and Pokemon Y are the games that heralded the arrival of the incredibly short-lived sixth generation of Pokemon. Released for the Nintendo 3DS in late 2013, X and Y had incredible influence over the direction the series would go in future installments: for one, they're the first mainline handheld games to abandon sprite-based artwork in favor of making the leap to full 3D polygonal graphics. They're also responsible for shaking up the Pokemon type chart that had been untouched since Gold and Silver on the Game Boy: along with tweaking Dark and Ghost types they introduced the brand new Fairy type as a way to counter the sheer omnipresence of Dragon types in the Gen 4 and Gen 5 metagames, while also countering Fighting and Dark types while being weak to Poison and Steel.

But as major as that addition was, it paled in comparison to Mega Evolution. This mechanic was groundbreaking and unique among the mechanics introduced in past installments, and allowed certain Pokemon to transform mid-battle into a far more powerful form with a unique appearance, boosted stats, and alternate abilities and even typings to help change the flow of battle. It was also a key focus in the storyline, as detailed below...

You are a teenaged Pokemon trainer living in the Kalos region, a France-inspired region famous for its beauty and historical architecture. Like in other entries, you are given a starter Pokemon courtesy of Professor Sycamore and set out on another Pokemon adventure where you travel with a group of friends, take on the Kalos region's Pokemon Gyms in hopes of conquering its esteemed Pokemon League, and foil the schemes of the nefarious Team Flare, a gang of garishly-dressed fashion snobs with sinister designs for the world at large. And on your adventure, you come to learn about the amazing power of Mega Evolution, and learn just how it ties into the history of Kalos while seeking to make its power your own on your quest to catch 'em all!

Tropes used in Pokémon X and Y include:
  • Action Mom: Grace is unique among the mothers of past main characters in the sense that she's a former athlete. Specifically, she used to be a Rhyhorn racer, and her prized Rhyhorn can be seen sitting around and sleeping outside the house.
  • Adults Are Useless: As per series tradition, the only people actively fighting against Team Flare's evil schemes are the child-aged protagonist and their equally young friends.
  • Ambiguously Bi: Thanks to the dialogue being the same no matter if you're playing as a boy or girl, Shauna's interactions with a female player are still just as full of Ship Tease as they are with a male.
  • Badass Grandpa: Wulfric is the strongest Gym Leader, and his team's levels are on par with a few champions from earlier games. He's also an old man, but still incredibly spry for his age.
  • Big Bad: Lysandre, a once-optimistic philanthropist turned into a misanthropic madman leading Team Flare, who seeks to wipe out all life aside from himself and his Team Flare lackeys.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Most of this game's tougher battles aren't with plot important characters, but with otherwise ordinary trainers encountered in the wild. Famous examples include:
    • Rising Star Hamish, who has a Kadabra at level 14, which is 2 levels lower than when Abra can actually evolve. Usually a Kadabra spamming Confusion against your team isn't anything to worry about, but when it's this early in game? It's a monster than can and will melt your Pokemon as if they were nothing.
    • His fellow BiMC Rising Star Paulette has an Axew at level 19 that doesn't seem out of the ordinary... until it pulls out Dragon Rage, a move that will ALWAYS do 40 damage. And keep in mind that when you fight her, most of your Pokemon's health pools are hovering around the 50's/60's. If you run into her during a Nuzlocke, you better hope you were lucky enough to snag a Fairy type!
    • Poke Fan Family Jan and Erin, a.k.a the infamous Furfrou couple hated by many a Nuzlocker. Encountered near Parfum Palace, they fight you in a double battle with two Furfrou. You may scoff at the idea of such frilly looking poodle Pokemon being a threat, but their Fur Coat ability allows them to tank even the most powerful physical moves like they're nothing, and they'll batter your Pokemon with STAB-boosted Headbutts and are usually fast enough to cripple your guys by constantly making them flinch. They're an incredibly nasty surprise for first time players not expecting otherwise goofy Pokefan trainers to have such deadly Pokemon.
    • Black Belts and Battle Girls as a whole tend to count as this. While their choice in Pokemon is predictably all Fighting types, all those fighting types hit hard and have surprisingly expansive movepools to trip you up with: sometimes you'll fight one with a Sawk who will pull out a surprise Poison Jab to knock out the Fairy type you're using, other times your Flying type won't quite cut it and will get crushed by Rock Slide or Stone Edge for their trouble.
  • Boss Rush: Ignoring the usual example in the Elite Four and Champion, at one point you get into three consecutive battles against Shauna, Tierno, and Trevor on a bridge with no warning whatsoever.
  • Breakout Character: Greninja became the iconic Gen 6 Pokemon after proving to be a popular 'Mon in these games, and would go on to make prominent appearances in the anime as one of Ash's main Pokemon in the Kalos arc, the Detective Pikachu movie, and most importantly Smash Bros where it became a playable character starting in the Wii U and 3DS games.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: Routes 14 and 19 are swampy and frequently rainy.
  • The Bus Came Back: After not making any appearances since Hoenn, the Hex Maniac trainer class makes a comeback... aaaaaaand promptly vanished from the series once again after the next generation games were released.
  • Bystander Syndrome: You can hilariously invoke this by having Phil the Photo Guy take a photo with you posing in front of The Ultimate Weapon in Geosenge Town, right before Team Flare tries to use it to destroy the world. Skewed Priorities much?!
  • Call Back: Quite a few to Red and Blue.
    • Santalune Forest is a dead ringer for Viridian Forest, complete with having the exact same layout.
    • A sleeping Snorlax is blocking your path through the rest of Route 7, and you can't get past it until you find the Poke Flute and play a tune that will wake it up.
    • When you reach Lumiose City, Professor Sycamore will let you choose one of Kanto's three starter Pokemon to take with you on your journey.
    • Lysandre's hideout is full of floor tiles that will either warp you around the building, or forcibly push you forward much like the tiles in various Team Rocket-associated areas.
  • Character Customization: These would be the first games to introduce this feature: you can customize your trainer's skin color, hair color, hairstyle, and clothes. And thankfully, this feature would be here to stay in future titles (Aside from the Hoenn remakes and second Kanto remakes for the sake of accuracy).
  • Character Name Limits: These games saw a permanent shift in the letter limits for trainer and Pokemon names, going from seven and ten letters respectively to twelve for both.
  • Child Prodigy: One of the new trainer classes are Rising Stars, which are basically grade school-aged Ace Trainers whose Pokemon and strategies are a cut above most of the other early-game trainers.
  • Crutch Character: Farfetch'd can be found really early, and in a twist of fate is actually useful for a bit! Sure, its usefulness falls off a cliff after the first Gym, but it learns Aerial Ace really early on which makes it a big help against Viola and her Bug types.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Since these games messed with the long-established type chart, it's not uncommon to fall back on old habits such as trying to have your Steel type tank the Dark and Ghost type moves it used to resist, or sending out a Fighting type against the former Normal type Clefairy, who's been retconned into a Fairy.
  • Disc One Nuke: One of the things that makes X and Y so easy compared to other games is that they hand these out to you like candy. You get a Mega Lucario for free after beating the third Gym, and can catch competitive powerhouse Snorlax before ever taking on the second Gym while past psuedo-legendaries Bagon and Axew can be caught around the same time. You also get the newly-buffed EXP Share a little after beating the first Gym, and as long as its on it distributes half of the EXP your current Pokemon would get to everyone in your team, which will eventually result in your entire team being 5 to 10 levels stronger than everything you're currently fighting.
    • Wonder Trade takes this Up to Eleven. It doesn't matter how early you use it: all you have to do is send out a Pokemon over the internet, and you have the very real chance of getting, say a level 65 Dragonite or a level 100 Yveltal BEFORE THE FIRST GYM in return. Even though they usually won't listen to you because of the Gym Badge-related failsafes to keep you from steamrolling the game with super strong traded Pokemon, they can tank tons of hits before obeying and one-shotting your current opponent.
  • Dug Too Deep: Terminus Cave was a prosperous coal mine that got closed down due to reports of a terrifying monster lurking in its depths. Thankfully, said monster is a benevolent legendary Pokemon named Zygarde that won't go out of its way to hurt you, provided that you're not doing anything to threaten the stability of the environment.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Malva is a total psycho who is not at all subtle about wanting to burn the player character alive for ruining Team Flare's plans, but even she thinks Xerosic experimenting on children is going too far.
  • Evil Is Burning Hot: The evil team of these games is Team Flare, who dress in red suits and sunglasses, have a flame-shaped logo, and in the case of the Grunts, have hair styled like flames. It's a bit downplayed otherwise, since their plans don't have anything to do with fire, and Fire type Pokemon aren't especially prominent in their teams aside from Lysandre's Pyroar and Malva's entire Pokemon team.
    • Malva however plays this straight compared to the rest of Team Flare: ignoring her all-Fire type team, she makes it clear that she would love to burn the player to ashes for ruining Team Flare's plans.
  • The Fair Folk: While a lot of Fairy types are as sugary-sweet and adorable as they look on the surface, a few still have that classical malevolent streak to them. Klefki is a mischievous thief who loves to steal people's keys, and the newly-retconned Mawile will trick opponents with its cute appearance and mannerisms before chomping on them with the monstrous mouth on the back of its head, among others. Also, the new Fairy Tale Girl trainer class is full of seriously weird-looking and creepy little girls, some of which threaten you with death while others make remarks indicating that their adorable Fairy type Pokemon are a lot more sinister than they appear...
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Kalos' starter trio invokes this by design.
    • Chespin's evolutionary line is the Fighter, and even becomes part Fighting when it's fully evolved into Chasnaught. The family's stats gear towards high offense and defense at the cost of low speed, and are designed after chivalrous knights.
    • Fennekin is the Mage of the trio, with its evolutions Braixen and Delphox resembling witches while it also gains a Psychic subtyping and a few magic-related moves as it grows. It's a powerful special attacker, and even uses a stick as a wand in combat.
    • Then there's Froakie, whose evolutions are clear-cut thieves with their high speed, low defenses, and eventual Dark subtyping. Its sneakiness really shines in its hidden ability Protean, where it gains the typing of its most-recently used move which can really turn the tables against an enemy who seems to have the advantage over it.
  • Hot Mom: As per tradition, the main character's mom Grace is quite a looker.
  • Hypocrite: One of Lysandre's reasons for taking the deep dive into misanthropy is his hatred of greed, and is not at all subtle about how he views greedy and selfish people as filth before he's outed as the villain. However, this doesn't stop him from charging a 5,000,000 dollar entrance fee for Team Flare hopefuls, which leaves a bunch of greedy idiots as the sole inheritors of Lysandre's new world.
    • Malva hates Xerosic and assists the player in taking him down because him hurting children "sullies the good name of Team Flare". This is the same Malva that wants to burn the teenage player character alive for ruining Lysandre's plans.
  • Meaningful Name: The Holocaster comes this close to sounding like "Holocaust", which is appropriate since its creator is an elitist megalomaniac seeking to wipe all the people he deems inferior off the face of the Earth.
  • Not-So-Harmless Villain: Thanks to their garish fashion sense, unwarranted smugness, and ridiculous buffoonery, it's hard to take Team Flare seriously... until it turns out that their master plan is to essentially nuke the world and that they all take sociopathic glee out of being able to wipe the slate clean. They come within a hair's breath of pulling it off, too.
  • Pandaing to the Audience: This game marks the debut of the adorable Fighting type panda Pokemon Pancham, and its more intimidating Dark/Fighting big bro Pangoro. Both are based on Japanese delinquents with Pangoro's thuggish appearance being offset by its hatred of people who bully the innocent.
  • Scenery Porn: The Kalos region's beauty is hyped up by the lore and locals, and boy does it deliver. Whether it's the calm grassy fields of the early routes, the bustling streets of Lumiose City, the abandoned ruins outside of Laverre City, or the gem-infested Reflection Cave, Kalos is a gorgeous region.
  • Took a Level In Badass: Any Pokemon that can Mega Evolve does this, but the biggest examples are Pokemon that were originally mediocre. Mawile went from an unremarkable Shitmon to an absolute monster, Kangaskhan went from a decent but overshadowed Pokemon to a competitive nightmare that nearly derailed the meta, and competitive laughingstock Charizard got two Mega Evolutions that are both a force to be reckoned with.
  • Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Lysandre is an unhinged maniac willing to nuke the world out of misanthropic angst, but his goons are a bunch of stupid, pompous goofballs.