Pokemon Surprises Users With Giveaway for Decidueye, Incineroar, and Primarina

Pokemon fans can now get their hands on all three Alola Starter Pokemon.

Subscribers for the Pokemon Bank cloud service can now receive Decidueye, Incineroar, and Primarina, the fully evolved forms of the Alola Starter Pokemon. All three of their Pokemon have their Hidden Abilities activated, meaning that all three are even more useful in battle.

Hidden Abilities are secondary Pokemon abilities that don't appear on a Pokemon's information screen. When obtained via normal means, Starter Pokemon don't have their Hidden Abilities activated, so this distribution is the only way to get them.

Decidueye's Hidden Ability is Long Reach, which allows it to make attacks without actually touching its opponents. This Hidden Ability is useful against Pokemon that can paralyze, burn, or do damage whenever an opponent makes contact. Decidueye (and its pre-evolved forms Rowlet and Dartrix) are the only Pokemon that have the Long Reach ability.

Incineroar's Hidden Ability is Intimidate, an ability popular with competitive players. A Pokemon with Intimidate lowers the Attack of an opponent by one stage automatically whenever it switches in. This means that Incineroar can automatically debuff opponents simply by entering the battlefield.

Primarina's Hidden Ability is Liquid Voice, a new ability exclusive to Primarina and its pre-evolved forms Popplio and Brionne. Liquid Voice turns all sound-based moves into Water-Type attacks. This means that moves like Hyper Voice would get a same type attack bonus for extra damage whenever Primarina uses it in battle.

In order to get these special Pokemon, players simply need to have a Pokemon Bank account. Pokemon Bank allows players to store and mass transfer Pokemon between various Pokemon games. Not only is it useful for saving all of the Pokemon you've trained and collected over the years, it also means that you never have to worry about losing those Pokemon to errant saves ever again. Players can also use the Pokemon Bank to transfer Pokemon from the Virtual Console versions of Pokemon Red, Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Silver, and Pokemon Crystal into modern games.

The Pokemon Bank does have an annual charge of $4.99 and can be downloaded via the Nintendo 3DS eShop.