A short distance away is an entrance to an area called Melemele Meadow, which I know is of interest to me (due to me looking at all the Pokearth locations a few days ago when I was working on my chart and stuff), so I'm actually somewhat ok with the game forcing me over here. Honestly, I probably got there faster this way than if I had come from the proper direction.
Immediately inside the Meadow, I find Lillie, who has for about the 20th time already, lost her Cosmog. Except I use the term "lost" very loosely here, since it's just kind of hanging out a short distance away, but Lillie's too useless to go get it back on her own, so whatever. Since I always try to avoid progression whenever possible, I let her deal with this problem for a while and explore the area first. The wild Pokemon here include Petilil, which was my first experience with the annoying SOS mechanic. Basically, after completing the first trial, wild Pokemon will randomly call for help and can cause another Pokemon (sometimes the same species, sometimes not) to appear in the battle. This can either be good or bad, depending on what you're trying to do. I'm sure I'll complain more about it later, but either way, I caught the Petilil after a bit of annoyance with it constantly getting reinforcements and healing itself.
In addition to Petilil, you can also find Oricorio here, which is of interest to me because it's one of the several gimmicky Pokemon this generation that I wanted to try out. Oricorio's deal is that it has four different forms, each of which represents a certain dance style, and they all have different secondary types. This form is the Pom Pom style, which is like a cheerleader and is part Electric. While the typing is good, I don't exactly care for this form in particular, but I'll be able to change it later anyway, so whatevs. I catch the Oricorio in a Heal Ball and name her "Laylee". This is not intended as a reference to Yooka-Laylee (since the character from that is a bat), but mainly because the form I intend to stick with for most of the game is sort of a hula dancer, and naming it after a ukulele just seems to make sense. Laylee is a Lonely nature and is "Very finicky".
Aside from those wild Pokemon, I also found a hole in the wall that I was tempted to check out, but didn't because this game has already taught me to be afraid of anything that might trigger a cutscene, so I save it for later. Instead, I just mess around with Pokemon Refresh for a bit, get everyone to Affection Level 2 (which will make the overleveling problem even worse, but I like the other benefits it gives), give Laylee the Normalium Z to boost the power of Pound, and call it a night.
... I guess I should probably explain, the last section was done the same night as the last write-up, but after I had written all of that stuff. Not that it really matters, but the only reason this was worth pointing out is because the next time I started playing again, it was nighttime in the game and I was able to backtrack and catch a Misdreavus. Woo.
Remember how Kukui was blocking that one bridge? Well, apparently the act of going inside the Meadow and leaving was enough to make him leave, so it made the backtracking a bit easier, since I didn't have to go through any new territory. I ended up exploring it anyway though, and there really wasn't much to see. The majority of the route is kind of a mountain-y, ridge-y area, and you can encounter some bird Pokemon by walking into the shadows circling around the area. On this route, I catch a Mankey, a Delibird (which was a massive pain in the ass to catch for some reason), a Vullaby, and lastly a Bagon, which is quite rare but didn't take me very long to find.
You may know that Bagon has a chance of summoning its final evolution, Salamence through the SOS system. Typically when I play Pokemon games, I try to catch everything possible the first time through an area, but I'm making an exception for SOS exclusives because of their annoying nature. Also, you have to defeat a lot of Pokemon in the process of getting them to spawn, and I'm already over-levelled, so I'll be saving those for later in the game.
Anyways, during this process, Malone learned Pursuit, Lena learned Aqua Jet, Laylee learned Air Cutter, and I did a little switching around of held items, but I'm sure nobody really cares about the details. Since at this point I had basically done everything else possible to waste time, I check out that one hole in the wall from earlier and find an area called Seaward Cave. It's much more of a generic cave than the last one was, and didn't really contain a whole lot other than some items. There was an exit to some kind of secret beach though, called Kala'e Bay. This beach was very small and had absolutely nothing except for one item (which I don't remember being very important), so it'll be something to remember for later when I get the ability to Surf. So I head back and then spend a decent amount of time looking for a Butterfree in Melemele Meadow because I'm kind of annoying that way. It's a 1% spawn, but isn't SOS exclusive, so I can't just not catch it.
Finally, at this point I "save" Cosmog by talking to it, and this triggers some more dialogue with my companions, including Hau, who challenges me to a battle. It was completely unremarkable in every way, but at least his Pichu evolved. Hau has also completed the Trial (I'd like to know how he got the third wild Pokemon to show up without Team Skull interfering), and the only thing left to do on the island is to battle the Kahuna, Hala.
Deciding that there was really nothing else I could do, I head back to Iki Town to challenge him. After entering the town, Rotomdex helpfully says that "we need to try and find where the Kahuna is" or something along those lines. Too bad that right before this, the camera pans over to Hala standing in the middle of the road, so this line was completely unnecessary.
The battle with Hala was ... interesting. I hesitate to call it difficult, but it didn't go the way I expected. The game decided to tell me that he specializes in Fighting types right before battling him, so there goes the possibility of me leading the battle with a bad Pokemon. I lead with Crazy Bus, who doesn't exactly have an advantage, but it at leasts resists Fighting moves. He starts out with a Mankey, and it goes down without too much effort. His next Pokemon is a Makuhita. I switch out to Laylee and beat it with some Air Cutters, and end up learning Baton Pass after doing so. Usually I'm not one for that kind of strategy in-game, but I figured it was worth giving a shot, so I delete Pound in favor of it.
Hala's last Pokemon is a Crabrawler, and I do enjoy me some mirror matches, so I decide to immediately try out the Baton Pass strategy. I use Work Up a couple times (including doing one of them as a Z-move, which increases Attack by two stages), and pass the stats off to Malone. Malone uses Brick Break and... misses. Apparently Laylee was hit by a Sand-Attack from the Makuhita and the accuracy drop was also passed along. Hala's Crabrawler destroys me with a Z-move and I figure at this point, I'm just going to restart the battle and make it work out properly.
In the rematch, the start goes the same way, but I get into an accuracy debuff war with Crazy Bus's Mud Slap versus Makuhita's Sand-Attack. Both sides were at a -5 Accuracy before I switched to Laylee and finished it off. This time, I figured I was sure to pull the strategy off, so I did my stat-ups, used Baton Pass, and ... died from the Z move anyway. Bleh. Screw it. I beat his Crabrawler with Fellana and feel slightly empty from that victory, but whatever.
The reward for beating Hala is the Fightinium Z, and the ability to use traded Pokemon up to Level 35. I honestly forgot that that was even a thing, and I'm kinda curious how high I could have gotten my starters before they stopped obeying, since it never became an issue. Also, that freaking Tauros shows up again -
TAUROS COUNTER: 5
- and now I can force it to do my bidding with the ill-explained Pokemon Pager thing. All I know is that you get a thing that can call Pokemon to help you out, and you have to wear a fairly doofy outfit while riding them. As for how these Pokemon suddenly teleport to you, and why you're able to use them for field moves but aren't allowed to catch them or use them in battle, I have no idea. I think this Tauros is supposed to belong to Hala, but I guess he's fine with me constantly teleporting it around, and I don't even know what would happen if there was a second person somewhere who wanted to use it. But here I am again questioning the logic of a Pokemon game. It's certainly more convenient than HMs, I'll give it that much, but I never really hated HMs as much as most people anyway.
Since every time I accomplish something it causes every NPC in the game to show up, this scene is followed by Ilima telling me I should have a rematch with him, and Lillie asking if it's ok if she continues to travel with me, since she's trying to repay Nebby for saving her life. I'm not entirely sure what her goals actually involve at this point, but it's not like I can tell her to leave me alone, so sure.
It's at this point where the game expects you to take the boat to the next island, but because this is me we're talking about, I spend another good four or five hours dicking around. With Tauros at my command, I can explore some new areas of the island. There were a couple TMs laying around (Infestation and Thief if I remember right, I taught Thief to Malone, replacing Pursuit), and gained access to some new grass patches on Route 1.
These new patches contain Bonsly and Munchlax, which weren't available previously. I find Bonsly without any trouble, though catching it was of course somewhat annoying because I think that's just the new standard. Munchlax on the other hand, took me at least an hour and a half to find, possibly longer. For reference, Bagon and Butterfree both had 1% encounter rates. Munchlax's is 5%. I have no idea why it took so goddamn long. My persistence is eventually paid off, since it was holding a Leftovers (and you'd better believe that was annoying to deal with when trying to catch it), which is always a good item to have. I give it to the Pokemon with the highest HP on my team, Laylee, since the Normalium Z wasn't really all that useful for her.
The last new area to explore is Ten Carat Hill, which was also in the demo, but it's a bit different this time around. There's no Poke Finder spots (so far I think I've only found two of those, one of which was in the Cemetery and I forgot to mention it), no Jangmo-o, and there's also the new inclusion of a GIGANTIC boulder that I'll have to come back for when I have the proper field move.
The first encounter I find in Ten Carat Hill is a Carbink, which calls for a Sableye early on. Sableye's actually an SOS exclusive, so I made extra effort to catch it while I could, and then got everything else in the area - Carbink itself, Rockruff, Machop, and Spinda. Some of those were in an outdoorsy area that was quite a bit more aesthetically pleasing than the cave itself. At this point, the only completely new (not counting evolutions of stuff) Pokemon available on the island that I haven't caught yet is Happiny, which appears as an SOS from certain stuff on Route 1, but I decided not to bother with it yet.
Since Ilima mentioned a rematch, I went and talked to him at his house, and we somehow teleport back to the Trainer's School. He has a Gumshoos now (my first time seeing one in-game), and it completely wrecks Crazy Bus with a Z-move. It seemed to be quite the one-trick pony though, since after that, it didn't really do much to stop me from Baton Passing a bunch of stat buffs to Malone and take it out with a Brick Break. His other Pokemon, Smeargle, didn't even get a chance to attack before I destroyed it with my own Z-move. A bit cheap perhaps, but I have a grudge against that Smeargle, so I'm fine with that.
After the battle, there was this really odd bit of text that said "The way that Ilima looked in that battle seems to linger in your mind...". It seemed quite out of place and I'm not sure what to make of it. Anyway, got an Everstone which is of no use to me at the moment, showed the Rockruff I caught to some dude on Route 3 for 3,000 Pokebucks, and ... that's about it. The next thing to do is to take a rather dodgy-looking sailboat to the next island, and I'm gonna wait until next time to do that. I think I can safely say I've spent more time on this first island than I had any right to, so I'm interested to see what lies ahead.
Oh, and I made the little trainer card thing a lot more spiffy looking, so check it out!
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