Today I started out saved outside of the Lush Jungle, where the third and final trial of the island takes place. Upon going in, Mallow explains that the trial this time is basically just being forced to help her search for ingredients for the "Mallow Special". There's four items to collect, and although the game doesn't explain it straight away, there's four areas to explore, so that works out pretty nicely. I was actually expecting this jungle area to be a lot more free-roaming and confusing to navigate than it was, so I'm not sure if I should be disappointed or not. I kinda like big open areas, but I also suck at fully exploring them, so meh.
The first item I come across is in a small patch of mushrooms. (Each of the items are invisible and require Stoutland to uncover, but some at least have some kind of visual cue that they might be there). I'm supposed to find a Tiny Mushroom, and the game gives me the option to either get that or a Big one, so I intentionally choose wrong to see what happens. Well, it caused a Shiinotic to show up, which was kinda unexpected. Didn't get to catch it though, due to this being a trial and all, so that's kinda lame.
To the west is an area where a similar sequence occurs. I find the hidden item, a Mago Berry this time around, and a Fomantis attacks when I take it. Not much of a threat. There is a photo spot here though, with a Bounsweet that takes its sweet time walking away from the camera, then very quickly bounces back towards it, giving very little time to get a good picture. I'm mainly pointing this out because later on when I was looking for Bounsweet, I checked this area in particular, thinking the photo spot would imply that it was found here. I was correct, but it took way longer than it should have to appear, so I wondered for a while if it was even there.
The area to the north has a few patches of short grass (though several of them were kind of obscured by the camera angle), and this is where I'm supposed to find the Revival Herb. After checking them all and getting attacked by another Fomantis every time, I came to the conclusion that the game probably just forces you to fight all three and the Herb is in whichever spot you check last.
The final area to the east is actually pretty empty other than some breakable rocks. I find the Miracle Seed here with no resistance. After getting all four items, Lana and Kiawe show up with their own ingredients, and what ingredients they are! Lana has brought some Fresh Water, which is a bit boring but understandable, and also a Rocky Helmet. I can't wait to see how this is used. Kiawe's items are even better, as he has brought a Thick Club and a Rare Bone. Keeping in mind that a Thick Club is literally just a bone, that means he just brought two bones.
So it turns out the Rocky Helmet is being used as a bowl. I mean, I guess? You could just bring a freaking bowl though. The two bones are used to crush the ingredients into a goop, which you do in a scene that is frequently cited as being awkward and sexual, but it really wasn't that bad. You just kind of mash the A button and she cheers you on, there's really no more to it.
After completing the Mallow Special, there's a pretty excellent cutscene where the three trial captains get a look of horror on their faces, and then Luna, with her constant blank look of blind happiness, slowly turns around to reveal a giant Lurantis behind her. Or maybe a regular-sized one, since I'm not sure how big they're supposed to be. It was fairly large though. Anyway, time for a Totem Pokemon battle!
Remember how last time I said these were really easy? Well, I think the game knew I had a problem with this, so it stepped up the difficulty quite a bit here. I will admit that some of this was due to the fact that I am doing a self-imposed challenge where I can't use any healing items at all during the entire trial, and that includes revives. But anyway, Lurantis appears with a speed buff, and I use my first turn (with Fellana) to attack with Pluck, which actually takes out about half of its HP. It calls in a Castform for support, which was somewhat unexpected, and also fairly concerning.
So here's basically what happens. Castform uses Sunny Day to turn its Weather Ball attack into a Fire move, make Lurantis's Solar Blade into a one-turn attack instead of requiring a charge turn, and also boost the effectiveness of Synthesis. Yeah, this is pretty bad. I put up a respectable fight, but I really stood no chance at all. By the time my entire team was wiped out, both of my opponents were not quite down to half health. So yeah, quite the difficulty boost from last time.
On my second attempt, I lead with Crazy Bus to get in an early Thunder Wave. Lurantis also happens to call a Trumbeak this time instead of a Castform, so none of the weather-related crap occurred. These two changes made it substantially easier, and I also got pretty lucky with it being paralyzed at the best times, and I never got hit with confusion damage after the Trumbeak used Supersonic. So after taking out the Lurantis with Laylee's Acrobatics (unboosted, for the record, since she's still holding Leftovers), I switched to Ratzenberger for the Z-move, taking out the Trumbeak with no resistance.
With the trial complete, I receive the Grassium Z (which I will also not be using, at least not yet). Mallow explains that while using it, you're supposed to shout "GRAAAAAASS!" while doing the pose, which I think I'll pass on. With the necessities out of the way, everyone tries a taste of the Mallow Special. Lana mentions that "the flavor from the Rare Bone seems to fill [her] own mouth", which is another line people like to read into too much, and then the two of them run off because apparently it's super spicy.
And then Kukui shows up for no reason and is all like "hey, you should check out the Dimensional Research Lab", and also gives me the TM for Smart Strike... which none of my team members can learn. Well, I was going to head back to that area anyway, so that's fine by me. Maybe the douche with the Stoutland is finally gone?
Nope. He's still here. I'm not convinced he'll ever leave at this point. Out of curiosity, I also check out Diglett's Tunnel again, and Olivia still won't let me pass for some unstated reason, so I guess I'm checking out the lab.
There's actually a fair amount of plot advancement in this segment, but there's also a few unrelated things I wanted to point out, so I'm just gonna take the easy way out and do this in bullet point format.
- Lillie is outside the Lab, talking to Nebby like usual, and mentions (without knowing I'm there) that apparently Hau and I have kind of opened her mind towards trainers, which she always had sort of a grudge against. Character development, yo.
- Some guy in the lab makes a reference "A Pokemon that uses rings to send itself through space", which is obviously Hoopa. The reference doesn't go any further than that, though.
- The person running this lan is Professor Burnet, who happens to be Kukui's wife. She's also the character from Dream Radar, that one eShop minigame that was compatible with Black 2/White 2. How ... random. To the game's credit, they do try to tie this together, because a book mentions that she's been researching the "Interdream Zone" that exists between reality and dreams, so this could be argued to be a dimension in itself.
- Burnet apparently found Lillie and Nebby unconscious on a beach three months ago, and that's how she got introduced to Kukui as an assistant.
- At one point in the conversation, Hau is brought up, and someone says that he's getting stronger and might become a kahuna one day. On cue, he shows up at that moment and is all OMG RLY!!
- The reason I was called here is due to something called an "Ultra Wormhole". Apparently this is something that has opened up above various parts of the region, causing the powerful Ultra Beasts to come to this world. The four island guardians fought them off long ago, but the wormholes have been showing up again recently, and in fact, one does right after I leave the building. I mean... it shows up, nothing happens, and then it disappears again, but hey, big rift in the sky. That's something.
- Going out of order slightly on these, but there were a few other books in the lab that mention Pokemon with the ability to transcend dimensions: Giratina, Palkia, and Bronzong. Uh.. one of these things is not like the others. Also, apparently Mohn from Poke Pelago published the theory on Ultra Wormholes. Can't wait to see how that's tied in.
Alright, so after all that, I realized that I never actually caught the new stuff from the Lush Jungle, so I take the time to go back and do that. I already mentioned the fun time with Bounsweet, and then I found a Pinsir in the northern area without too much trouble. Comfey and Oranguru, on the other hand, took entirely too long to show up. Not as bad as Munchlax, but it still took longer than I would have liked. I have no plans on using any of these new Pokemon, but I don't have any issues with them either. Bounsweet's evolutions look pretty good, Comfey's a bit derpy but not awful, and Oranguru is a bit interesting but really more suited for double battles, so I'm gonna pass.
Also around this time, I checked Poke Pelago again and found that the Gastly from yesterday is no longer there. I have no idea what determines if it decides to join you or not. I also got the results back from the group that went mining, and they found nothing but colored shards, which is not exactly what I was hoping for. I sent them back to look for evolution stones and spent some more beans to open and upgrade the Berry-growing island, but none of this is really important. I'll refrain from bringing any of this stuff in the future unless something cool happens.
So now that I've cleared the game's most recent random objective, I'm allowed to actually go into Diglett Tunnel. The area is fairly bland, I've gotta say. It's way more interesting than the Diglett's Cave from Kanto, but that's not saying much. The only things worth mentioning here are random Team Skull shenanigans - apparently they were messing with the Diglett earlier on and causing them to freak out, which is the game's reason for why I couldn't explore it before. Despite the Aether members saying that they've all left, I run into a pair of Grunts and get the usual brand of dialogue that I've come to expect:
"Just when things were startin' to heat up, yo, I got surrounded by Diglett and beat up, yo!"
Ugh. Since there's two trainers here, clearly the game can't allow me to try and beat them on my own, so Hau comes to TEH RESCUES and we have a double battle. Surprisingly, they actually use stuff that isn't Zubat. (Fomantis and Salandit). After beating them, he says "Are we headed to the grave, yo? Will our bones by laid bare, yo?", which wasn't quite as good as the previous line, but it's still up there.
The tunnel dumps me out on Route 9, which is ridiculously short and uninteresting. I'm kinda ok with that, though. It has a police station, and uh ... maybe a second thing? No, just a police station, that's pretty much it. The road forks ahead, with one end leading to a town and the other to a cemetery. I decide to check out the town first, which is called Konikoni City. I refuse to call this place a city, though. Maybe a Konikoni Island Disco Palace, but definitely not a city. It's more of a street market and like maybe two other things.
One of those things was a restaurant that had no immediately obvious battling gimmick, but did indeed have stuff to spend money on, which is kinda weird. I ordered the "special" dish, and... well, I'll just quote the game for this one:
"The thick soup is sour, and the fish fillet is full of little bones! The patty is too moist and leaves sticky juices dripping down your chin... And whatever the mysterious grayish thing is on the side, it doesn’t taste of anything..."
Insert reference to the "Space Special" from Spaceballs here.
At the end of the road is a cliffside with a lighthouse, and a person there gives me the excellently-named Pikanium Z. I suppose it was only a matter of time until I got a Z Crystal that wasn't tied to a trial, but I can't say I'll be making any use of this one. There's also an Eviolite nearby, which I stick on Crazy Bus and will most likely keep it there for the remainder of the game. So with that collected, I check out the rest of the "city" and find some decent shops selling TMs and such, but more importantly, a new clothing store. Oh lord, here we go.
I've gonna admit something. When I last changed Luna's appearance, I made comments on how she looked a bit dopey, and called it a "reverse makeover", but it actually grew on me really quickly. I definitely like the dark hair and glasses look, but the rest of it is due for a bit of a change, so time to waste a crapton of money.
Long story short, after buying a lot of stuff that I didn't use (including an extra pair of sandals in a color I ended up not liking, which was absurdly expensive), I eventually settled on what you'll see in the trainer card at the end. It actually took me longer than you'd think to settle with this though, because I originally went with an all-purple outfit, where both the top, the skirt, and the purse were all purple with white stripes, but then I started hating it after only a few minutes and went to a set with a few different colors. I also tried out the pink "Seed" cap, but decided against it in the end, and changed the hair style a few times, but determined that the sideswept bangs looked the best.
Just when I thought I was finally happy with the setup I had going on, I realized that a hair accessory would look nice, but was unable to find any sold in any of the shops. I managed to buy one off a person in Festival Plaza (a black bow of sorts), but didn't really like it. Then, going out of order in the sequence of events slightly, I eventually went into the "Jewelry Shop" that was actually the next plot marker, and found that they sold accessories there. So I got a green band thing and a white flower, which the game won't let me dye in the Festival Plaza for some stupid reason. Eventually decided to go with the flower. But yeah, you can tell by the length of this section how freaking long I spent trying to decide on this crap. It's a bit stupid.
So with that out of the way, I'll try to wrap this up. At the cemetery, known as Memorial Hill, you've got the usual grievers and whatnot, but there's also a kid that says "People in graves are sleeping forever, right?", which is kind of ... much for this sort of game, I think. I catch a Phantump here, which surprisingly doesn't have a creepy or dark Pokedex entry this time around. Wouldn't have guessed that.
The next area connected to this is "Akala Outskirts", which is honestly sort of a non-area with not much in it, but I was able to catch a Nosepass, Gumshoos, and Raticate there, so I guess that's something. It also held the TM for Leech Life, which got a major buff between generations. As a 80 BP Bug attack that also heals, this thing immediately went on anything that could learn it, which in my case was Skeeter and El Grapadura (replacing Infestation and Lick).
The far end of this area leads to the Ruins of Life, which is where Top Lel resides. It was actually kind of a weird area to wander into, because you're greeted by a bunch of big, ornamental cubes that I guess I'll be pushing with Strength later on. But mainly it just looked like a Zelda dungeon at first glance... I dunno, it just sort of caught me off-guard. Anyway, nothing to actually do here yet, so I head back.
At was at this point that I went into the Jewelry Shop mentioned earlier, and in addition to buying the accessories and one of each Fossil type (Plume and Armor, in my case), a Probopass gave me a note that Olivia made a change of plans and decided to meet me back at the Ruins of Life. I'm not bothered about the backtracking as much as I am just annoyed at the fact that she wasn't actually there until I reached the point of the game that prompted her to be there. That's just weak. But that's where I'll stop for the day. I guess next time we'll probably be starting off with the Grand Trial of the island, and then maybe, FINALLY, that Stoutland guy will be gone. I'm not holding my breath, though.
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