So last time I stopped right before taking the boat to Akala Island. The cutscene on the boat itself is actually fairly cinematic and good-looking, and it didn't do anything to offend me, which is rare for this game. I enjoyed Hau's comment that Lillie didn't want to go faster because of her hat flying off, and for a minute it actually feels like characters with actual personality interacting with each other, whereas usually the dialogue is very forced.
The next scene proves my point, because basically every line of it was stupider than the preceding. After reaching the island, Hau yells out "Land ahoy", and Lillie calls him out on this because reasons. He then turns to me and wants confirmation that it was funny. The game allows me to answer truthfully here ("It was supposed to be funny?"), and he just kind of makes a face and asks the same thing to Kukui. The professor's response is "The land is certainly ahoy, oh boy!", and I don't even know what the hell that means. Lillie makes a face about equal to mine at that point, and then everybody laughs like it's the end of an episode of a cheesy sitcom. Christ, get me out of here.
But we're not done yet. Immediately after this, an unknown voice calls out "Still haven't managed to find a shirt that goes with your lab coat?", and I'm just thanking the game for asking the real questions at this point. Lillie goes to hide Nebby in her bag, but Kukui seems completely uninterested in such things as "security" and is perfectly fine with everyone knowing about it.
The person who called out earlier turns out to be Olivia, another trial captain, and she almost remembered to wear clothes today. Her companion, who is totally not Saria from Ocarina of Time, introduces herself as Mallow and tries to cram as many cooking-related puns as possible in the space of about five seconds. I wonder what her personality gimmick is going to be.
As they walk off, Kukui rushes forward for no reason other than to check out their asses (the camera shows this as well), and he explains that there are three trials on the island. Since there's only three, he can't reuse his favorite animation. Now I'd like to point out that so far, everything I've summarized took place in about three minutes of cutscenes. If I'm going to do this stuff constantly, we'd never progress anywhere, but much like Spoony's reactions to Final Fantasy X, it's impossible to go anywhere in this game without having to question something.
So moving on, I explore Heahea city as much as this game's linearity allows me to. The main things that catch my interest are a Magnemite named "Chrome Dome", which is quite a bit less stupid than most Pokemon you get off the GTS, and one of those tourist stop staples, the cutout with a hole in the face so you can take your picture from behind it. This is only noteworthy because it features a Bellossom, which is surprisingly absent from the regional dex. And also there's not really any way to properly line up your face behind the cutout.
Lillie, being the slightly useless character that she is, is standing outside the clothing shop but has not actually bothered to buy anything. Nebby has escaped the bag for about the 800th time, apparently because it wants to see this island's guardian deity, Tapu Lele. Since I gave Tapu Koko a stupid name previously, I feel like it's only fair to call this one Top Lel. (And for the record, I'm not actually trying to be clever here, this is what they were called on a list of legendaries extracted from the coding. Not sure if that was edited or not, but if it was, it's not my joke.)
I'm not nearly as interested in Top Lel as I am with the clothing shop though, so I know where the next hour or so of my time is being spent. I'll try to summarize this one as much as possible though. The main "speciality" of this shop seems to be a Splatoon-ish outfit set based on Alolan Muk. It doesn't look bad by any means, but it's not really my style. I also don't care for the pink shirt with Professor Oak's face plastered on it, or most of the other unique shirts here. There's also a few pairs of shoes, most of which were pretty awful looking. But the main difference between this shop and the first one is that this one sells skirts and glasses. I buy one of the skirts, a shirt to complement it, the shoes that suck the least, and basically just try to make this work. The difficult part here though is with the glasses, because I did want to try them out, but they're really huge and dorky looking.
You'll be able to see what my character looks like from the trainer card at the end of the post, but since I spent so much time working on it, I feel the need to ramble about it a bit more. Remember how Luna originally looked somewhat like her namesake and was more or less normal looking? Well, she kind of got a reverse makeover here, and ended up looking like a total dweeb until I decided to mess with a few different hairstyles, long socks, and a new hat. And yes, this involved going back to the previous store since they don't share the same stock. I'm still not sure how I feel about the look, to be honest, but I'll stick with it for a while.
So back to Heahea City, progressing another eleven inches has you run into a dude riding a Stoutland, and the game's reason for blocking your progress this time is because the guy is looking for hidden items and ... that's it. I'm not really sure why this prevents you from passing, but I'm used to it at this point. Going the other way, I run into everyone's favorite forgettable characters from X and Y, Dexio and Sina! You know, those two assistants that didn't really do much, but randomly had superhero outfits during part of the game? Yeah, me neither. They show up and Sina challenges me to a battle.
Now, I've got an interesting story to tell about this battle. I went into it with all three of my starters at Level 16, and about halfway to the next level. Sina sends out a Delibird, and since they're about the least threatening things ever, I take this opportunity to switch between all three starters, then finish it off with El Grapadura. This is enough experience to get everyone up to Level 17, which also happens to be their evolution level!
But wait, we're not done yet. She then sends out a Glaceon, and I do the same thing for this one (send out all three against it). Through a combination of the traded exp boost, the Refresh exp boost, and the "this Pokemon is beyond the level it evolves at" boost, they managed to gain another level each, or two levels in Litten's case. So that's a total of 7 levels from beating a single trainer with only two Pokemon. Yeah, the overlevelling problem is still a thing. But hey, triple evolution! I've never been the biggest fans of the middle form starters in most cases, and these aren't really an exception, but they'll do for now.
After the battle, they give me a Zygarde Cube, which starts up a whole new sidequesty thing where you have to find all 100 of its cells scattered throughout the region. Since I'm pretty thorough with exploration most of the time, hopefully I'll be able to find them all without having to go through a list. The first one I find is inside the giant fancy hotel right in front of me. The only other things worthwhile in there were the presence of Lillie, who surprisingly does NOT progress the plot for once, and also a restaurant's waiting list where people have apparently been waiting for over ten years. Oh, Pokemon. You silly.
The only other place to go now is Route 4, a kinda foresty/jungly area that has kind of a winding road but otherwise isn't all that noteworthy. The new captures on this route are Mudbray (which I would name DONKEH if I was going to use it, but I'm not), Lillipup, Igglybuff, and Eevee. Eevee's fairly rare, but I found one without having to waste too much time, and actually managed to get a female one too. It can apparently call for help from Espeon and Umbreon, but I'm not bothering with those until later in the game. Oh, and there was a guy on this route who had a non-Alolan Rattata, which was kinda funky.
Let's take a second and look at the progression here. We're on a new island that isn't terribly different from the last. There's a big fancy hotel with an aquatic Pokemon theme, a jungly route, and where do you end up next? Well, obviously the old west!
... Yeah, can't say I was expecting that. After arriving in this new area (Paniola Town), Hau immediately challenges me to a battle, which is not really all that different from the last one aside from his evolved starter. He also has a Z-Ring now, but didn't actually use it. But no, the important thing from this battle is the fact that there's tumbleweeds in the background. Tumbleweeds are the freaking best, and I want one. If Tangela ever gets a regional form that is based on a tumbleweed, that thing is going on my team immediately.
Side note here, but Crazy Bus learned Acrobatics after this battle. I've gotta say, this thing learns way too many good moves. I never expected a first route bug, let alone one that looks so similar to such heavy-hitters as Caterpie and Wurmple.
So after seeing all zero things that this town has to offer, I head up to the ranch (which is basically the same exact area, let's not kid ourselves here). Some guy basically forces me to go to an area that I didn't originally plan to, and it turns out Mallow's there. She doesn't battle me or anything though, instead, I randomly get access to a Stoutland as a rideable Pokemon, as a replacement for the Item Finder. I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this, because I find it less convenient than Dowsing Machines in Gens 5 and 6, but it does allow you to move faster than running when you're not actively searching for stuff, so it's not too bad.
Since I now have this Stoutland and have also initiated the Zygarde Cell quest, this is the point where I basically need to go back to the first island and explore everything again, but that'll be next time (and you won't be reading about any of it, since obviously it's not exactly the most thrilling thing). Instead, the last thing I do in this session is catch a Tauros and Miltank on Route 5. Seeing as how they're 5% encounter rates and are fairly difficult to catch, you can imagine how long it took to do that, so yeah.
(Small detail: I apparently lost the last part of the notes for this segment, so I don't have the correct game time, money, etc for this trainer card. The reason the elapsed time is so high on this one is because this was after doing the majority of the backtracking that I mentioned, and after several occurrences that won't be written about until next time.)
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