So after doing that and collecting the Rock Tomb TM, which I taught to Malone since Thief never got much use, I see the entrance to the next trial site. I still find this to be pretty weird, because the game is still wanting me to check out the Battle Royal building, and usually it doesn't let me do stuff out of order like that. I'm also curious why I don't have access to Poke Pelago yet, since Joel said that it just kind of appeared on his menu out of nowhere one day, and was pretty sure I should have it by now. I figured maybe it was unlocked by doing the Battle Royal stuff, so I decide to head back there before moving on.
In the building, I see GLaDOS (I called him Gladius by accident last time, because I never remember what his actual name is ... it's Gladion, for the record) again, and a cutscene occurs where some jackass with a mask who calls himself the Masked Royal introduces himself to me. The very first dialogue option I'm given has "Professor?" as a possible response, which was honestly my first hint that it was just Kukui in a mask. As I'll be explaining in a bit, it should have probably been obvious from the moment he showed up, but I wasn't paying enough attention. Anyways, he forces me, Hau, and Glass Joe into a battle. This battle setup is kind of interesting, actually. Basically you have four trainers in a circle, all sending out one Pokemon, and you're able to attack any target you want. When any trainer runs out of Pokes, the battle ends, and the winner is the person with the most KOs, fewest fainted Pokemon, or most HP in the case of a tie.
I wasn't actually expecting to be forced into this battle, so I didn't prepare my team or anything, but Ratzenberger was in the lead and made short work of Maskm'n's Rockruff. After the battle, some dude with gray skin (not black, not dark brown, but gray. Kinda like Bosco from the Sam & Max series. Anyway, he introduces himself as Kiawe, the trial captain at the top of the volcano. I immediately decide that if the game is going to try and act like this area was required for the introduction, then I'm going to reset and go back up there and see if I can just skip this section after all. So ... that's what I do.
Turns out that even though the gate leading to the trial site was wide open, trying to go too close to it prevents you from passing until you go find Kiawe. I like this, because it was literally the only thing I didn't check when I did my first run through that area, and I probably came within a few inches of the trigger. So that was a slight waste of time, but it allowed me to see the Masked Royal cutscene again, and yeah, it should have been obvious from the moment he appeared. All his dialogue has that super enthusiastic, SirRonLionHeart feel to it, with the overuse of shouting "yeah" at everything. A bit later on, he also does that whole thing where he puts extra emphasis on anything with the number four, because there's "Four Trainers!" in a Battle Royal, so yeah. I skip through all that stuff again, and there's a pretty good exchange between Hau and Glade Plug-In afterwards.
"Why are you even here?"
"Because Null and I have to make it on our own. And I don't ever want to forget that."
Clip related
After that distraction, I once again climb up to the VERY TOP OF THE VOLCANO ITSELF and see what the trial's all about. Kiawe introduces it by saying "there will be a dance... and then another". So basically I watch a dance, and then I watch a dance again. Got it. So three Alolan Marowaks cut a jig, and then they cut the same jig. As far as I could tell, nothing was different. So I tried again, and still didn't see a difference. At this point I figure there's no reason why I can't get it wrong, since it's probably going to be like Blaine's gym and getting a correct answer just lets me skip a battle, which is no fun. So I pick a random answer, get it wrong, and I battle one of the Marowaks. The problem here is that you do actually have to get it correct to move on, so that plan didn't exactly work out. After viewing it a couple more times, I determine that the only difference is actually in the ending pose, and not the dance itself, so I get it right and ... battle the Marowak again.
Time for round two! The Marowaks...
Actually, let me interject here. I want to state for the record that I'm fully aware of the fact that all Pokemon names are both singular and plural. There's one Marowak, there's six Marowak. However, I don't care. It's one of those things with me, where I'd rather be incorrect that say it the right way, because I don't like the right way. It's the same reason why I usually say "me and so-and-so" instead of "so-and-so and I". I know it's wrong, but the right way annoys me.
... So yeah, the Marowaks dance around again, and I take extra care to make sure I memorize their poses at the end. Once I'm satisfied, I watch the second dance, and then all of a sudden some random Swedish dude just shows up in the picture, blocking some of it. I look at the options, and aside from the left, right, and center Marowak options, there's also "The Hiker". That's gotta be a trick, right? I choose it anyway, and nope, that was actually the answer. So I battle this guy, and round two is over! Alright then.
Final round! There's some movin' and groovin', and then in the final shot, the three Marowaks pose with the random Swedish hiker from earlier, along with another Pokemon that I know to be a Salazzle. The options this time are "the Totem Pokemon", "the black Pokemon", and "the new Pokemon", and "the suspicious Pokemon". I'll admit that's kinda funny, but where's the challenge? The first one was actually kinda tricky until I realized what it was I needed to look for. The other two were just a waste of time before their respective battles. And is it just me, or are the trials so far WAY easier than the typical gym from previous games? Most gyms aren't actually very hard, to be fair, but these are even less so. I won't count my chickens early though, let's see if the Totem Pokemon battle this time is actually hard.
Short answer: it's not.
Long answer: I start out by switching from Ratzenberger to Crazy Bus, so that I can use Thunder Wave on the Totem Salazzle. In the process, I got hit with Toxic and it called for help, as expected. They also start using Venom Drench (which lowers stats) and Venoshock (which does extra damage to a poisoned opponent), so Crazy Bus is kinda taking a beating here. The main strategy was just to get a Thunder Wave in though, so her purpose has been fulfilled and I switch out to Skeeter. Two Scalds is all it took to take out the Salazzle, and both Pokemon got a levelup out of it. I switch to Malone to beat the Salandit, just to try and spread the experience around a little. But yeah, that was it. I appreciate the developers for trying to change up the formula a bit, but these aren't as hard as gym leaders. Keep in mind I have more than 6 Pokemon, so the experience is getting spread a little more thinly than usual, I'm not using the Exp Share, and none of the Pokemon in that fight were my starters, which have the extra exp boost beyond the one from having a high Affection level.
After that "grueling" battle, I'm rewarded with the Firium Z, which has the most complicated dance yet, and I decide not to give it to El Grapadura. At least not yet. I also just sort of randomly get access to Charizard as a Ride Pokemon, as the replacement for Fly. That's pretty cool I guess. I wish you'd actually get to fly around on it like the Soaring mechanic in OR/AS, but that would require GameFreak to actually implement concepts from their previous games, which they hate doing.
In addition to this, I also now have access to Poke Pelago, with absolutely no mention that this is the case other than a small notification icon on the bottom screen. Before I start getting into that, I'd like to explain that I do at least understand why. You have to fly to the Poke Pelago on Charizard, so it makes sense that you couldn't get to it earlier. There's also a fair number of NPCs that I run into later on that mention it, so it's not completely out of nowhere. It just seemed kinda weird and out of place at first. Also as a side note (only being mentioned because I update my Pokedex totals after each segment), I traded a Popplio egg for a Rufflet at this point. Rufflet may actually be obtainable from the Poke Pelago itself, and I claimed that this is the case in my Pokemon Availability Guide, but I don't actually have any proof of this, I'm just hoping that I'm right.
So... Poke Pelago. It's kind of like Festival Plaza, in the sense that it's a side area where I'll probably do a fair amount of messing around, but I won't go into the details very much here. It's run by a dude named Mohn, and because of this, I will always think of him as "Constant Mown" from the final Hitchhiker's book, "And Another Thing". The area basically works by spending a buncha beans to expand islands and such. Each island has a different purpose, and you can also spend beans to make those things work faster, but it's not necessary. The only ones I'm interested in for now are Isle Abeenz, which gets you more beans and also attracts wild Pokemon, and Isle Aphun, which lets you get items such as evolution stones. I level both of them up to the final stage, send a bunch of Pokes into a cave for 24 hours to look for crap, and (after a little while) find a wild Gastly. That's pretty much all I need to say about that.
Also at this time, I was watching Vinny (from Vinesauce)'s own playthrough of Moon, and found a couple things that I somehow missed the first time, both at Paniola Town/Ranch. The first thing was a house in the town, and I have no idea how I missed it the first time. I distinctly remember checking the town and finding it strangely empty and useless, and meanwhile there was just this big ol' building I never went into. But to be fair, there wasn't much in it anyway, aside from like 30 Magmars. One of them crapped out a Quick Ball (the text says it "pulls a toasty Quick Ball from ... somewhere"), and that was about it. The other event was at the Ranch, where you can interact with a moody Tauros. The farmers say that a visit from "The Dutchess" aught to help out, and this turns out to be a Miltank. Cue an extremely awkward scene, then a battle which I was overlevelled for, and then I got a Scope Lens for no real reason.
Progressing onwards, the gate to Route 8 is now open. It's sort of a seaside cliff area, and is one of the more straightforward routes of the game. It starts out with some trailers, which are filled with Aether people (who don't really do anything), and have a particularly stupid Poke Finder spot underneath them. You basically get one attempt to take a picture of a Yungoos that runs by for about half a second, and then that's it. Poke Finder spots are useless as they are, but this one is extra special.
Slightly further down the road, I get accosted by random cameo #3, Colress! You know, that one guy from Black 2/White 2 who uh... did some stuff, probably? I mainly remember him for his hair. He just kinda shows up, gives me the Flame Charge TM, and leaves. Alrighty. As usual, I take the time to check the route for new wild Pokemon, in this case being Fletchinder, Trumbeak, and Stufful. Stufful's another Pokemon on the list of stuff I might use in a later playthrough, but I decided to hold off on it this time around. After catching it, I show it off to the person in the trailer that wanted to see it, and get some moneys for doing so.
Further down the road, I come across someone mentioning a dude who is basically planning to build Jurassic Park. No really, he's going to make a park of some sort in the jungle with a ton of Fossil Pokemon roaming around. Let's hope that shows up in a sequel or something, but for now, he's just the go-to guy for reviving fossils. I like how that's just a thing that you can casually do in this series. Can you also bring human bones back to life? Would they have their original memories? Maybe if they were fast-fossilized into Dolomite™, "the tough black mineral that won't cop out when there's heat all about", then they may yet have a chance.
On a less interesting note, and by less interesting I mean mainly questionable, there's some guy in the nearby Pokemon Center that says "There's this Pokemon called Comfey that you can find in Lush Jungle that can... Well..." and then doesn't really say what. No idea what his deal is. There's also another motel near that where apparently one of the rooms has been checked out for two years. I go inside, see Gradient, and he utters one of the best lines in the series: "Get out."
Clip related
Oh, and apparently Mallow is off gathering the freshest toing in the Lush Jungle, but I've yet to see this in person. I'm mainly interested in finishing up this route first. I find a rocky beach sort of area where a Pokemon dashes into a hole, and I fail to catch it. Well, I'll be back for that later I guess, there's a bit of a surfing spot first. On a small island, I find a Blackbelt and a midget punching the air in unison. The start-of-battle text is "I'm training together with this genius next to me in order to beat him!", and the trainers are introduced as Karate Family Samuel and Guy. So far this is shaping up to be one of the weirdest fights in the game. For the first time in any game, I managed to pull of a double Pledge move, with Lena using Water Pledge and El Grapadura using Fire Pledge. Doing so just sort of made a rainbow appear. I don't know what that did, but it was COOL, DAMMIT. After the battle, the midget says "I keep a smile even when my Pokemon and I lose! It reassures my Pokemon", but his character art is making an extremely pained face. So yeah, best battle in the game.
Heading back, I realize that this is totally going to be one of those routes that has an awkward, low percent chance water Pokemon from fishing in a rippling spot, and I was correct. It was Chinchou. So I caught that and then went back to the quick little scurrying thing from earlier. Running with Tauros made catching up to it pretty easy, and it's revealed to be (as if I didn't already know) a Wimpod. This is the other Bug/Water type I mentioned, and its main gimmick is that it runs off (or switches to another Pokemon in a trainer battle) if it gets below half HP. A lot of people seem to really hate this gimmick, but it sounds kinda interesting to me, though I can see it getting annoying at times. Well, it's not going on my team this time around, so I catch it for the PC and that's about it.
At this point, the only things left to do besides go into the Lush Jungle are to explore the upper half of Route 5 (it was blocked off earlier) and then fight the trainers both there and on Route 8 that are fightable after beating everyone else on the route. So uh, I do that. Not much to really talk about other than the line "What do you think of the largeness of my area?!", which is another classic. The two "special" trainers use a Fearow and Slowpoke with their respective Flying and Psychic Z-moves, and actually did pose a bit more of a challenge than usual, but that's about it.
Next time, Jungle Animals in Decidedly Non-Jungle Situations!
Current status:
No comments:
Post a Comment