Pokemon Go players slam “lame” costumed species for missing key feature

Niladri Sarkar
pokemon go costumed kirlia and smoochum

With the Pokemon Go Fashion Week 2023 event giving fans a bunch of special costumed species in their collection, many are left frustrated with a missing feature that makes them “pointless,” as they call out Niantic for a much-needed update.

Completing the Pokedex in Pokemon Go is only half the job done as players try to also collect the various forms, shinies, and costumed versions of the available Pokemon.

When it comes to costumed species, the annual Fashion Week event gives the community an excellent opportunity to catch them and, with the event done and dusted, many are left with large numbers of fashionable Pokemon, some being hundos (100 IV) as well as shinies.

That said, fans have a major complaint with their collection of costumed Pokemon and they’re hoping Niantic does something about it.

A Reddit user named ‘Unicornshit9393’ posted a screengrab of their hundo costumed Kirlia in Pokemon Go and captioned it with: “Well this is lame. What’s with the lack of evolution anyway?”

The player is referring to the fact that certain costumed species cannot evolve in Pokemon Go as Niantic hasn’t updated the graphics of their evolutions. Since evolved species are usually stronger and rarer, their pre-evolutions do not bring too much value to trainers.

Users expressed their disappointment with comments such as: “I never understood why they would make an event costume Pokemon and not allow it to evolve,” as well as: “This costumed variant was introduced years ago. Wasn’t evolvable then, isn’t evolvable now.”

Others believe that Niantic is “too lazy to code and design in the add-ons to the evolutions,” as another mentioned: “Hate these event mons with no evos. They are so pointless.”

It appears that the community is even willing to sacrifice the costumes as long as the Pokemon is able to evolve. “Super lame… I would even remove the hat to be able to mega evolve,” one person mentioned.

pokemon go costumed gardevoir and flygon from go fest 2021
Ironically, Go Fest 2021 featured a costumed Gardevoir with a hat.

That said, Niantic had updated the costumed versions of some evolved species in Pokemon Go, with a notable example being Toxicroak. This makes some of the trainers hopeful for the future.

This prompted suggestions from fans who commented: “Keep it. They might let it evolve later,” followed by, “They have eventually added costumed evolutions before. Hang on to this.”

It remains to be seen if Niantic enables the costumed versions of these Pokemon in the future, but it is wise to hold on to them in your collection.

As you explore Pokemon Go to complete your Pokedex, check out the rarest and the strongest species to collect.

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About The Author

Niladri is a Writer who specializes in Pokemon Go, Scarlet and Violet, and competitive VGC battles. With more than seven years of experience in copywriting and SEO content writing, Niladri has previously written for Pokémon GO Hub and Smogon. He has been covering Pokemon for CharlieIntel since June 2023. Niladri can be contacted at [email protected].