I get a free Egg from someone at the daycare, which I know to be an Eevee. Because I already have an Eevee, I don't bother to hatch it yet, but I'll keep it around for later on when I'm working on the living Dex. Aside from a couple uninteresting trainers, the only other thing really worth pointing out here is another artificial roadblock - the path leading south has two very easily avoidable Sudowoodos in the middle of it. I mean, it's not the first time Sudowoodo has been used to block a path, but here there's a ton of space between them, so it's not the same as the tile-based graphics of previous games where it can kind of be excused. At this point I should probably just repurpose the "Tauros counter" into a "roadblock counter". The problem is, there's been so many at this point, I don't know if I could possibly remember them all. Do all the painted fences in Hau'oli count separately? What about that weird thing where Kukui warped me to the wrong side of him? I'm always one for a stupid running gag, but it's a bit too unmanageable at this point, I think.
So after seeing the intended way for me to go, this is where I spent many hours backtracking and finding stuff. There's not too much worth reporting (one minor thing I do want to bring up is the Acrobatics TM in Ten Carat Hill, which I completely missed the first time around), but the few new things I did run into aside from random items are pretty noteworthy. The first one was an event that takes place in the Cemetery. I hear that it only happens at night, or if you enter the area while riding a Pokemon, and I'm not sure which is true. But anyway, a scene occurs where an old woman is being held by a very loud Machamp as they pay their respects at a grave. Apparently what happened was that her husband died in a car crash, and at the last second he put Machamp back in its Poke Ball, saving its life. Since that moment, the Machamp has refused to ever go back inside its Ball, probably due to survivor's guilt. It's not the saddest scene I've ever seen in a game by any means, but it was definitely not the kind of thing I expected to see in a Pokemon game. I'm glad that they include things like this every once in a while, because the Pokemon games are typically so happy-go-lucky and almost utopian at times that it's good to try and change that up a bit.
The other thing I came across was the mall in Hau'oli City, which apparently opened up after beating the Kahuna. The mall is fairly large and has a number of things to do, so I'll just point them out individually here:
First off, there's a move tutor that teaches the "Pledge" moves to starters, as well as another that will teach the elemental Hyper Beams to their fully evolved forms. I typically don't bother with this kind of stuff, but the Pledge moves are stronger than some of my current ones, so I go for it. Each of my starters now has one physical and one special move of its type.
There's another clothing shop here. A man at the counter gives away a free Gracidea flower, which I believe is the first time you've ever been able to get one without having a Shaymin. It's pointless without having one, but still. The shop has a number of interesting items that I'd like to buy (the shoes are much better than the ones I have now, for instance, and the hats are also pretty nice), but everything is really expensive and I can't really justify buying any of it... if I can even afford it at all.
The enigmatic Battle Buffet mentioned earlier is now available. I tried it out once, and it was pretty weird. You basically go around and try to get as much food as you can, and every time you go to take something, a trainer will fight you. You get a total of ten turns between all the battles before you're finished. When I did it, I think I beat six or seven trainers, and got a ridiculous amount of food in the process. But the dialogue afterwards seemed to imply that it still wasn't good enough. I got a Big Mushroom out of it though... I assume if you do as well as possible, you probably get a higher-selling item like a Balm Mushroom or something, but I haven't bothered trying again.
The most interesting thing to me was an event that was triggered by going near a stage area. There was a Grimer on the floor, and as soon as I went near it, some guy started yelling about making a mess. I assumed he was talking about the Grimer, but no, apparently he's telling at me for dragging a bunch of "garbage" in, and the Grimer is actually his. He goes to great lengths blaming me for this mess I allegedly created, and basically forces me to clean it all up. During this dialogue, it's implied extremely heavily that the garbage is actually Pokemon droppings, but the game refuses to state this directly. Probably because after you collect it, you FEED IT TO THE GRIMER. Oh yes, for anyone with a scat fetish, this is the minigame for you. Do I even need to say anything else? I finish the minigame and get some kind of unimpressive TM for it (I think Round), but I think the experience itself was enough of a reward.
So back to actual progress. Since the Sudowoodo were blocking one side of the path, I go the other direction and find myself on Route 5. One side of a fork in the road leads to Hau, who I avoid, and the other side just kind of has these two Team Skull Grunts randomly squatting in the middle of the road, blocking progress. The term "squatting" can mean a few different things, such as basically taking up residence where you don't belong, but I literally mean they're standing in the way with their knees bent low, talking about how squatting is good for muscle training or something stupid like that. I'd make some kind of reference to the alleged "Slavic people squatting while wearing tracksuits" trend, but I'm extremely confused by its existence, so that's all you're getting out of me.
Oh, and I caught a Fomantis in the grass here. It's one of those Pokemon that I wasn't really planning on using, and had a moment where I considered it, but didn't in the end. It's alright though, might give it a shot in a future playthrough.
So since the game has once again railroaded me, I go see what Hau's up to. He's talking to some super-emo looking jackass who's rambling about something or another, then looks at me and asks if I'm Luna. Since I've gotten an extreme anti-makeover since the last island, I could probably say no and go unquestioned, but I decide to be honest. He says that admitting this means I have really bad self-preservation, and honestly I'd have to agree. I'm usually pretty bad about that when similar situations pop up in RPGs.
Anyway, this guy is named Gladion, and apparently has a partner named "Null". I of course already know what this means, but I guess it'll make you wonder what he's talking about if you haven't looked at any pre-release info. Gladion and Null apparently do jobs for Team Skull without actually being an official member of the team. He challenges me to a battle, in which his first Pokemon is the ever-unimpressive Zubat, and the second is the abomination of nature known as Type: Null. I didn't expect to run into this thing so early in the game, I've gotta be honest. Since the game hasn't really explained much about it, I won't spoil it yet, but Type: Null is about as artificial-looking as its name implies, and it's definitely a funky-looking Pokemon. Unfortunately I don't get to see it in action for long because Malone's Z-move makes short work of it.
After the battle, Gladion taunts Hau a bit because apparently he doesn't make use of his talents well enough, and this is why he couldn't beat Hala. This confuses me, because I thought he already did, but maybe I wasn't paying attention. A couple Grunts show up (though not the same ones from before as far as I can tell, since one is female and I think the two from before were both dudes), and they ramble about something unimportant for a bit... mainly I'm just interested in the TM that I can see in the background of this cutscene. I'm still not sure if I actually grabbed that or not, it might be currently inaccessible.
So with them out of the way, I continue down the relatively boring Route 5, and the one interesting thing that happens is that Crazy Bus hit Level 20 after beating some random trainer, and that means she evolved into Charjabug, the best Pokemon ever. I've gone on about this thing at length before, but it's just so dumb looking that it's awesome. I don't plan on evolving it to its final form in this playthrough, though to be fair, the place you evolve it is really late in the game anyway, so I might change my mind later.
After a quick heal, I go to the next area, known as Brooklet Hill. A new character named Lana shows up. Hi Lana, I'm Luna, and this is my Pokemon, Lena. Why are you so depressed looking? Anyone with blue hair shouldn't look like that. Anyway, she's another Trial Captain, and just kind of wanders off without doing anything interesting. Fine by me. I check out the nearest grass patch and catch a few new things: Poliwag, Psyduck, Paras, and most importantly, Dewpider.
Dewpider here is my seventh team member. As I've been doing in every Pokemon game since SoulSilver, I plan on rotating through a team of twelve Pokemon, since I like a lot of variety. Perhaps this isn't the best example of variety, since I already have both a Bug and a Water type on the team, but this game has two Bug/Waters and I wanted to try one of them out. So I catch Dewpider in a Net Ball, spend a stupidly long amount of time trying to think of a name other than Skeeter (and failed, so Skeeter it is), and add him to my team. Skeeter is Rash and "alert to sounds". He's also fairly weak, but that will change soon I think. And for the record, the name is mainly a reference to the enemy from Mario 64, but there's also a very similar enemy in Pikmin 3 with basically the same name. And even though he's completely irrelevant, Skeeter Valentine from Doug is what usually comes to mind with the name, so yeah.
I level up Skeeter a bit by battling the nearby trainers, and decide to teach him Hidden Power, which in this case is a Fighting move. Lana's here by the pond, and really wants me to check out this weird splashy spot in the middle of it, so she gives me access to Lapras as another rideable Pokemon. That was quick. Not sure why she can't just check it out on her own, but ok. Now if you know me, you know exactly what's about to happen next: more backtracking.
Like before, I'll spare you the exact details of checking every new water area available to me. The main one was a stretch of ocean that goes between Hau'oli City and Route 1, featuring a decent number of swimmers. I also couldn't help but notice that almost all of them were female, so I feel like the designers really wanted to make use of those character models. Also, it was an excuse to slip in the required bikini quotes that always end up in these games. While surfing around, I also catch a Finneon and Tentacool. Joy.
The last area I visit is that secret beach (Kala'e Bay) accessed from Seaward Cave... which was in turn accessed from Melemele Meadow. The area is fairly obscure and out of the way, and I kinda like it for that reason. It's overall kinda pointless, with just a few Pearls, an unimpressive TM (Roar), and not much else, but it's cool. So I stop the game there for the night, since that's about all I can do without progressing the plot.
Well, aside from catching Morelull and Surskit the next day, but whatever.
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