Why don't you make like a tree and

1010: Iron Leaves

Y'know, I was JUST about to put up the Bloodmoon Ursaluna review and very nearly forgot about Iron Leaves here. So make of that what you will.

If you were playing Violet, the book in your version of the game was teasing some sort of fusion of the Musketeer Trio, which wound up being represented in "real life" as Iron Leaves and its pals that we'll see a little later on. Just covering these two since they were dropped via free update BEFORE any of the DLC was out.

And, sure, it's another one of these action figure-y types of Future Paradoxes. Hard to really add anything since it varies so little from Virizion, most noteworthy thing just being that it's now Grass/Psychic, as Psychic will be the new common type between this trio. Not sure where they get the Psychic type from, since the Pokedex is unhelpful with Paradox Pokemon as usual, other than maybe it's being used as shorthand for "energy blades", which even then I feel like Electric would not only be a better fit but also provide a much more unique typing here.

The energy blades in question are. Kind of a cool gimmick? I suppose? The swords that appeared out of the heads of the traditional Musketeers were just some nebulous energy thing anyways, but sure. It's neat I suppose. It just falls so flat compared to Walking Wake which has a wacky-but-wicked feel to it that this just doesn't capture. Whereas Walking Wake felt like a cool, full realization of what an "Ancient" Paradox can be, Iron Leaves just feels like more of the same. And I feel like you've extra-failed a little bit when these are supposed to be the coolest of your meta-defining quasi-Legendary version exclusives. Like, thanks, guys. I really got screwed over basically because purple is my favorite color.