What is the purpose of Pokemon moves, Celebrate and Hold Hands?

Question

So, I just read this articles about Pokemon moves, Celebrate and Hold Hands.

Both of them introduced in Generation VI Pokemon games and does absolutely nothing. Both of them also shares this trait with Splash move that introduced from Generation I.

But not like Splash, both moves are event-exclusive move. Splash introduce because it have some related Magikarp that said it only can splashing around. People will remember Magikarp if we're talking about Splash and vice versa.

So, how about Celebrate and Hold Hands? Are they have related with some event (in Pokemon of course) or they're just... umm... useless moves?

Answer 1

Whilst they seem to have no tangible benefit in-battle, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire's Contests is another matter:

• Celebrate gives 2 Appeal and will excite the audience, no matter what the type of contest is.
• Splash gives a whopping 4 appeal in Generation VI but will make the audience quickly grow bored when an appeal move has little effect.
• Hold Hands Only gives 1 appeal but also prevents the user from being startled until the turn ends.

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Unfortunately after extensive research I was unable to find any evidence that definitively proves or disproves whether Hold Hands has any effect on Pokemon's Happiness.

• The in-game description is:

  Ally Pokémon hold hands. This makes them very happy.

• Bulbapedia, Smogon and Veekun list it as "No Effect" in battle
• Serebii does not list a secondary effect on the Hold Hands page, but on the Event-exclusive moves page they describe the move as:

  This special move doesn't do much in battle, competitively, but is said to make the Pokémon very happy.

• From the Bulbapedia discussion page for Hold Hands:

  Q: So, does this really do nothing? Does it perhaps raise happiness?
  A: From what I've tested, if it does raise happiness it does so by a very small amount. It also doesn't boost Return.

• From a PokemonDB question:

  ...currently, there is no known effect of this move. I do believe it may increase the happiness, but we will have to wait and figure out what it does...

Until we can see some in-game testing or a trusted source that definitely lists it as proven or disproven I think the jury is still out on this one.

The other rumor that was floating around was that it boosted Happiness-based moves (i.e. Return), however this has been disproven, it provides no immediate benefit in-battle.