Oh, and if it wasn't clear, I'm dropping the whole "I and the character I'm playing are two separate entities" style of writing, because screw that. I only did that with Harry because he wasn't the character I was sticking with.
Alright, so moving on. Before actually doing anything worthwhile, I shuffled about in the grass near Iki Town for a while until I caught a Ledyba and Pichu (yeah, I'm that kind of person, I have to catch everything possible). There were also a few trainers I never fought earlier, but the only one worth pointing out is this kid who starts the battle by shouting "Let's go! Kneecaps!", and afterwards mentions that "Pokemon with cool knees are so neat". I'm not sure what the hell he's going on about in general, but it's made even better by the fact that his only Pokemon, a Grubbin, doesn't really have knees at all.
It's around this time that I've come to learn that Route 1 is actually a lot bigger than I thought. I already knew that the grass patches in different areas could have different Pokemon, but I failed to realize at first that the beach area with Kukui's house was actually part of the same route, as is the road with the Pokemon Center and the Trainer's School. So I explore the beach a little bit, catch a Slowpoke and Wingull, and find an area blocked by boulders. Apparently it leads to Ten Carat Hill, which is weird, because that was in a totally different location in the demo, from what I remember. The demo had you just kind of teleport around though, so I guess it's not an inconsistency as much as it is just somewhat confusing.
After wasting about as much time as I possibly could, I decide that I still haven't wasted enough time, and decide to claim the gifts from the demo. It's a fairly annoying process, because the demo doesn't actually remove any of the items from the list after you transfer them, and it gives you the same warnings every time you do it. Actually picking them up was surprisingly convenient though, because it lets you claim all the item gifts at once instead of doing them all individually. I haven't picked up the Greninja or Munchlax yet, not sure when I'll bother with those. So, that aside, I finally move on to the Trainer School that has been my main objective for the past three hours or so. Upon reaching it, there is a Tauros blocking the street so I can't move any further. Good.
TAUROS COUNTER: 2
Remember how last time, I mentioned that the Pokemon catching tutorial was really the only super-tutorial-ish thing that was included in all the early cutscenes? I still somewhat stand by that, but you could argue that a lot of the early game stuff was teaching you the basics of the game and what a Pokemon trainer does, or whatever. The stuff in Festival Plaza was also definitely a tutorial, but to be fair, it was at least for something that was a new mechanic. Here though, this Trainer School is definitely trying its best to be a forced tutorial. If it wasn't for the fact that I try to read all the text anyway, I'd actually be able to avoid most of it, but ... actually, I'm not sure what my point was.
Anyway, after arriving at the school, Kukui explains that I'm supposed to fight four trainers, and reuses his "four fingers held up" pose from earlier while doing so. He also used that pose in the demo. Really wanted to get their money's worth from that one, I guess. As far as I'm aware, he only has three poses - his default, that one, and the laughing one. He seems to laugh at basically everything, for probably the same reason. But yeah, he explains that and then gives me the Exp Share, which I immediately turn off because I'm afraid of overleveling. From what I understand, it doesn't give as much experience as it did in Gen 6, but it was stupidly overpowered in those games.
So I wander around the school a bit, taking in the usual "this is what status conditions are, this is what an ability is" brand of information, but also run across a child that wonders aloud what happens to the Poke Balls that you throw at Pokemon, but then they break out. I never really thought about that, I guess they either decompose in a matter of seconds, or they're picked up by the same group that collects all the fainted Pokemon littering routes. I'd make a reference to the old webcomic "Pokemon X", but I forget what they called it in that. It was just some kind of system set up where any defeated Pokemon would just get teleported away, healed, and then released back into the wild. It at least somewhat explains why you can't catch something after you KO it.
Either that, or you are actually killing them and the game just doesn't want to let you know.
After a bit of wandering, I receive a Quick Claw, which I give to Crazy Bus, and then come across the absolute best dialogue I've ever seen. Remember those weird malasada commercials? Well, there's one for the "Mythic Malasada", and they say "Fair suck of the sav! That’s a bewdy... This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my mouth! It’s so gooooood...*munch munch* I didn’t believe the furphy...". I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what this means. I just looked it up, and apparently "fair suck of the sav" is an Australian colloquialism that means something along the lines of "you've got to be kidding", and "furphy" is an improbable story. That ... kind of helps? But why is it using random Aussie slang? I just have no further words for this. Amazing.
Meanwhile, I've been fighting a few trainers scattered around the area. There's a girl with a weird tennis racket/paddle thing, Youngster Joey (who is not interesting in any way, despite the legacy behind that name), and also a patch of grass with some new wild Pokemon, so I go and catch those. Got me a Magnemite, Meowth, and Grimer. Meowth and Grimer are in their Alolan forms, of course, and I've gotta point out how so far, all the Alolan forms I've come across are Dark types. In fact, every single new Dark type Pokemon (Gen 7 or Alolan form, I'm including both) has already been available by this point of the game. I'd also like to point out how my team members are gaining experience at a stupidly high rate, and the act of catching a new Pokemon is apparently enough to level up more often than not. The fact that Crazy Bus is the only non-traded member of my team means that it's getting a lot more screentime than the starters, and I'm not sure if there's going to be a way to fix this at any point.
Also, when I talked to Lillie to heal, she did that thing where she refers to the first Pokemon in my team, but actually defaulted to the first non-fainted one. So I come up to her with a fainted Popplio, and she says "I'll take care of your Grubbin". That's pretty good. So after an embarrassingly long time spent looking for the fourth trainer (who was just in front of the school the whole time, and I actually did talk to earlier but didn't realize he was one of the four), I receive the TM for Work Up, and immediately teach it to all three starters because it's better than Growl. Then I get called up to the second floor of the school, and for some reason both Lillie and Rotom Dex assume that I'm in trouble for something. This stands out to me because I was always afraid of getting in trouble for something when I was a kid, and even the half-joking manner here kind of brings back those old feelings.
But I'm not in trouble for anything, instead the head teacher just wants to praise me for beating up a bunch of kids and then she battles me herself. It was thoroughly unremarkable, and the only thing I remember is that she was kind of cute. (Don't look at me like that, I have a thing for glasses.) Then someone with a really weird shade of pink hair shows up, with a name that I eventually determine is "Ilima". I assumed that this person was female for quite a while, but happened across a topic on GameFAQs that corrected this. I probably would have never known otherwise, because this isn't really a Bugsy situation (where the character is young and androgynous), this is more of a "this character is totally a chick, look at their face" situation. But fine, I guess not. So HE introduced HIMself as a trial captain and probably says some other stuff, I don't really remember. All I know is that everyone kind of crowds around and heaps praise onto me for no real reason, the school makes an official announcement that I'm awesome, and Lillie leads me away before I get a chance to explore the top floor, which is fairly annoying. But hey, here's that stupid Tauros again.
TAUROS COUNTER: 3
Screw this thing, I'm going back to the school, I want to see what's on the top floor. So I head back and find that there's exactly one door you can go in, and it's being blocked by a random Blackbelt. ... You know, I don't think this is going to be a recurring thing, but what the hell:
BLACKBELT COUNTER: 1
So after petting the Tauros and making it bugger off, I gain the ability to reach Hau'oli City! This is the area from the demo, and before going back to the usual summarization, I have a sequence of thoughts to share.
1) Thank god, I'm finally at a city, maybe it will be less linear.
2) I'm eager to get off the plot rails, but I also don't want to wander for ages, so maybe this isn't a good thing.
3) Oh, this is the biggest city in the region? I don't remember it being that big, so that's kind of disappointing, actually.
4) Wait, that's a plot marker on the road. Can I avoid that? No? Well, so much for being nonlinear.
5) (after exploring the city for a while) JUST LET ME GO WHERE I WANT!
Yeah, the hallway is real. I'm usually not bothered by this very much, but it's REALLY bad here. This city is set up in such a way that you're forced to visit its various points of interest in a very specific order, and the game doesn't really let you find them on your own either, people will specifically show them to you. So here's basically what happens.
Upon reaching Hau'oli City, Hau (who I will mention is the only reason I will remember the name of this place, since his name is part of the city's name) runs off to the beach, and Lillie does ... something. I go to the beach, and Hau is nowhere to be seen. I did find a few people that are apparently picking up Pyukumukus and chucking them about, though. I also found a Pearl embedded in a palm tree, which I think was the first hidden item I found.
I leave the beach, and come across a random hole in the wall. I seem to remember this from a trailer, with it being a spot where I can take photos with Rotom Dex. I don't seem to have that option yet, though. There's also a guy standing next to it, saying that he karate chopped the wall and that's why there's a hole in it, which is kinda funny.
I take about two more steps after this, and Hau reappears from the void, saying that there's this super amazing new thing that I have to check out in the Tourist Bureau. Turns out it's the camera function for Rotom Dex, which is given the generic name of "Pokemon Finder". I'd complain about the game introducing the mechanic two milliseconds after seeing that it's potentially a thing, but to be fair, the only reason I knew the hole was related was because I remembered it from a trailer, so never mind. Also, this place has plushies that look like toucans. SPOILERS, JEEZ.
Upon leaving the Bureau, I get accosted by Lillie, who mentions a clothing shop, and this interests me greatly. But before I get a chance to check it out, the karate chop dude from earlier immediately pulls me aside and is like "hey, check out this broken wall, you can take pictures of Pokemon behind it!". So yeah, like I said, you can't go two seconds without the game dragging you towards what it wants you to do. In this case, it's actually interrupting itself. I mess around with the camera a bit and take pictures of a Pikachu, Growlithe, and Rockruff, unlocking the ability to zoom in along the way. It's ... pretty useless, honestly. I really wish that you could just pull this camera out wherever, but obviously that would be too much trouble, so it's not too different from taking pictures of animals at a zoo. Which is fine if you want pictures of animals standing around in an enclosed space doing nothing, but this isn't exactly Pokemon Snap, and that's a shame. Oh, and when you take pictures of them, the game generates a bunch of weird comments, usually including this shrug emoji: ¯\_(´ー｀)_/¯
At this point, I do want to check out the clothing shop, but I'm also irritated with the game yanking on my arm constantly, so I wander off into a patch of grass and, after a fair amount of resetting, managed to catch an Abra. There's also a gate that leads to the other side of the city, but since it's this game, you can't go through it. The reasoning here was that the gate has wet paint on it, courtesy of Ilima and HIS Smeargle. I'm not pleased. But hey, I guess it's time to go customize, so I meet up with Lillie. She gives me not only the Lens Case, but also a Makeup Bag, which is ... unusual, I wasn't exactly expecting that.
So here's where I get to be a bit cringey, because I'm overly eager to dress up my pre-pubescent female avatar. I enjoyed the customization in X/Y quite a bit (though I ended up sticking with the same outfit for the entirety of the postgame once I found one I really liked), and I'm interested to see how it works in this game. I check out the dressing room to see what's up with the Makeup Bag, and it seems to be just for different colors of lipstick. This was actually in X/Y also, but only when doing Trainer PR Videos, so it's nice to have the option outside of those. After playing around with them a bit, I find that the character looks better without any though, so whatever. The "nude pink" color was ok, but it also gives a weird amount of detail to her lips that just looks ... odd in this game's artstyle. And I have no idea why there was an option for blue lips, that was kinda weird.
The clothes you can buy in this shop are a bit on the generic side. There's V-neck shirts and tanktops of a few different colors, three "unique" shirts that are kinda meh, two types of shorts of the same colors as the shirts, two types of socks in various colors, and a couple hats that aren't horrible, but we'll get to those in a minute. The long socks are stupidly long, and the short ones are barely visible, but I do buy the short white ones just because it looks slightly better than not wearing any at all. I get a couple colored items, the unique shirts, and that's about it. I decided that with this somewhat underwhelming selection, I'll just go with some blue because it's the Ravenclaw house color, and the "Surfing" shirt is more interesting than the plain blue one I originally decided to wear, so I'll stick with that one for a while.
The most important thing to note here, however, is the ability to actually take your hat off! In X/Y, you could remove the accessories and socks if you wanted, but the hat always had to stay on, which was a bit annoying. I'm gonna be a rebel and not wear one for a while. The derpy little "chicken hat", as people call it, had its own sort of charm, but the ability to remove it is appreciated, and I'd rather go hatless than wear one of those. And to finish up the customization process, there's a boutique right next door, so I get my hair "cut" (and by cut, I mean somehow extended) into the "long and wavy" style, with the "platinum blond" color, since I'm trying to go for a Luna Lovegood look at the moment. I put in the gray contact lenses, and the look is complete! I'll have a picture attached to the post so you can see what it looks like, since it's surprisingly not too bad. I'll probably change it up a bit when I reach the next clothing store.
After messing around with that for entirely too goddamn long, I explore the rest of the city, and not very much occurs that is really all that impressive, but I'll hit the highlights:
- Apparently there's something called a "Battle Buffet" in a mall, but I can't actually go inside it, so I dunno what that's all about. Makes me think of Bible Buffet though.
- I got something for showing a guy that I caught 10 Pokemon, and I honestly don't remember what it is. Just checked Serebii, and it was an Ultra Ball. Yay.
- A girl in the Pokemon Center wants to see a Drifloon, which I'll try to remember for later.
- I try the "Roserade Tea" from the cafe, and apparently the point of getting that was to get a Lava Cookie and some beans. The tea itself doesn't actually do anything, and it's not an item you can use.
- Tauros is blocking the road again! Get hyped!
TAUROS COUNTER: 4
- There's a big fancy house (which I think is where Ilima lives) with a pool out front, and you can't walk around this pool despite there being tons of room where you should be able to do this.
- There's a Drifloon in the house that has its own dog food dish and toy bone. How appropriate? Also, can I just borrow this Drifloon for a minute? No? Crap.
- Upstairs is a room with several shelves filled with thousands of what I assume are DVDs. They're probably books, but I like to think they're DVDs, because it's weirder that way.
- Down the road a bit, there's a large empty lot that has a couple Machamps standing around. Is this a reference to that one lot in Vermilion City where the Machop is stomping on the ground, and it was never used for anything in four consecutive generations?
- The police station has a rather grumpy looking Granbull has its mascot, and also just kind of has a set of keys hanging out in the open. I'd like to think they're for a jail cell somewhere, and that I could steal them if I wanted.
- There's a person by the docks who says "You've got a real sweet kind of face, don't you? I bet old ladies like to give you candy.", and I don't think I need to add anything to that.
It's at this point that Team Skull shows up, and oh god, Team Skull. OH GOD, TEAM SKULL. Apparently people like these guys, but I can't for the life of me understand why. They're the most ridiculous thing ever, I mean come on. It's like a 70 year old white lady's idea of what gangsters act like. The outfits, the terrible music, the constant gesticulating... I dunno. I know they're supposed to come off as try-hards, but I think they succeeded a little too well. The one good thing I can say about them is that they remind me of Dark Smoke Puncher from Dr. McNinja, and his whole thing is that he's a massive poser. Reference for this character if you have no idea what I'm talking about:
Dark Smoke Puncher's Debut
So yeah, not a fan. I get that they're supposed to be lame on purpose, but that doesn't make it any better as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, two of them show up and I get to battle one while Ilima battles another. Mine uses a Zubat and doesn't get a single hit in on me. I swear, I'm not trying to be overleveled. I get a completely unnecessary heal after this, and then I get to battle Ilima after the jabronies run off.
This battle is actually kind of weird, and I'd love to know what happened. So Ilima starts with a Yungoos, and I send out Crazy Bus. I manage to get it to flinch on every single turn, and it never gets a move in. Next comes out the stupid Smeargle that's responsible for some of the previous railroading. I switch to El Grapadura, and Smeargle uses Tackle... and takes away more than half of my health. Excuse me? Smeargle has no Attack stat to speak of, why is it doing this much damage? I get an Ember in before it KOs me, and I'm still wondering what the hell happened there.
So next I send in Fellana, and apparently this Smeargle has a secondary move that is super effective against whatever starter you picked. Since Luna picked Rowlet, it has Ember, and this is actually slightly dangerous. After realizing this, I switch to Lena and finish off the Smeargle, in what was the first actual challenge of the game. I'm still wondering about that overpowered Tackle. I've heard that some of the enemy Pokemon in this game are EV trained, so I have to assume that was what happened there, but would it really make that big of a difference? Kinda weird.
Finally, with that completed, the game decides that the random roadblock Tauros can get out of the way, so it runs off to Route 2, where I'm supposed to follow. This seems like a good place to stop for now, and at this point I'm just hoping that the hallway is over. Like I said before, I'm fine with linearity, but I don't like when the game literally forces you to check out certain things in a certain order, and using the same Tauros as a roadblock four times in a row (five, according to Joel, I must have missed one earlier on) is a bit much. I also don't see why I wasn't allowed to explore the city properly instead of being locked into a single road because of wet paint. That's really unnecessary. But hopefully it gets better from this point on.
Current status:
I might spruce up this thing a bit for next time, make it a little fancier looking, but it gets the job done for now.
NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: I considered remaking this "beta" trainer card design to match the current design (and doing the same for the one in the next segment, and also adding one to the first segment), but right now I'm just trying to put a bunch of these up at once. I might go back and do that later when I have more time to fiddle around with it.
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