New outfit! I mentioned that I switched to one last time, but I didn't include the picture of it yet. It'll be in this update's trainer card, so yeah. I tried my best to get a picture that wasn't super bright, but it was difficult, so it may be hard to tell that the skirt is light pink. I went a bit more expensive than usual with this one, deciding to finally buy one of the super expensive hats from the Hau'oli mall, along with a pair of shoes from there. I also made use of the dyeing facilities in Festival Plaza, and managed to snag the Red Designer Top from a visitor for an ungodly amount of FC. Overall I do enjoy this outfit, and the only thing that seems kind of out of place is the glasses, but those are non-negotiable. And I'd make some kind of comment on how it looks kind of similar to Lillie's original outfit (except she was all white and this is pink), but you can make that conclusion on your own. Oh wait, I pointed it out anyway.
At some point early on in this "session", I got a Kadabra from Poke Pelago, which you can't get anywhere else (not counting evolving an Abra). So that's kinda cool.
Moving on to actual progress, I returned to Exeggutor Island to meet up with Lillie again. She seems less concerned by my sudden imitation outfit and more concerned by the fact that a giant palm tree is attacking her. I mean, that is a bit of a problem, admittedly. So I battle the Memeggutor and catch it relatively easily. Afterwards, she thanks me for the help and then some very questionable camera work occurs. It kind of zooms in on her chin, then pans upwards until she's completely out of frame, just showing the background for a couple seconds before fading back to regular gameplay. No idea what that was all about. Two seconds later, it starts to rain, so she takes cover in a convenient cave entrance (which doesn't actually go anywhere) and then proceeds to give rain-related exposition. Apparently as a child, she ran out into the rain once and her mother ran out with her, and they danced together in the rain. Then they got sick and had totes bonding time. This was back in the good old days before Lusamine randomly became psychotic, it would seem, so I guess that answers my question from last time.
Lille then asks me what I plan on doing after the island challenge. One of the answers is "fill the Pokedex", which is the most accurate for me personally, so I go with that one. She then says that she wants to become a trainer now in what is actually something resembling real character development. I'm not sure how it would work in terms of game mechanics, but I'd be all for showing her the ropes and helping her get started. That actually sounds like a really enjoyable thing to me (though obviously a bit out of place for this point in the game, since it would basically be revisiting tutorial-type stuff), and I kind of wish they had worked that in somehow. But nope, she's just going to follow around sporadically (not even actually following me like whats her face from Colosseum or the companion trainers in Gen 4) with nothing but a bottomless bag of repels and healing items for me to leech off of. Speaking of which, how is it that the repels are working unless Nebby is a super high level? Eh, whatever. After this conversation, a random meteor shower comes in for no reason other than the game trying to give TEH FEELS. Oh, and as soon as it starts, she turns away from it and gives me a ^_^ face. Hey, you're kinda, uh, missing the thing there. Turn back around and actually watch the meteor shower, dammit!
The rain abruptly stops and we head back out to the only actual thing of note on this island, a small shrine with the Moon Flute on it. Well, that was easy. I go over and investigate it. Lillie says "Luna!" and nothing else. The camera zooms in on the flute. "A flute is placed on a very old pedestal... will you take the flute?" Of course I say no because I'm a dick, and the game just kind of throws me back to where I was standing with no further ... anything. I dunno, I just found that really funny for some reason. So I go ahead and actually take it, and then we head back to the boat where the chief dude says that we need to go to Vast Poni Canyon, since it leads to the Altar of the Moone.
Surprisingly, I head there without any further distractions, only to find a row of six Team Skull grunts squatting. Excellent, my favorite. The only girl of the group stands up and basically wants to know if there's any way that we can help Guzma get back from his dimensional escapade. But instead of actually like, trying to help or do anything useful, she battles me. Obviously the best choice of action. After that thrilling match, I see Plumeria hanging out on a nearby ledge, but she seems to just be observing for now. The remaining five grunts all attack at once, but since this isn't OR/AS, it's not actually a horde-style battle against five Pokemon at once, it's just a single trainer with five Pokemon. Oh, Gamefreak. If only you knew how to optimize your games and maybe create low-poly models for things, you wouldn't have to remove features from the previous generation. (I'm fairly sure they removed Triple and Rotation battles purely because they couldn't handle six Pokemon on screen at once along with the trainer models. That's kinda sad.)
After that non-threat is dealt with, Plumeria finally steps in and ... surprisingly, is somewhat reasonable. She apologizes to Lillie for the whole kidnapping thing from earlier, and in a somewhat "I'm not sure how this ties in to your motivation" sort of way reveals that Guzma has a thing for Lusamine. Apparently it's because she was the only adult who ever respected how strong he was. She then gives me the Poisonium Z for no real reason and leaves without having accomplished anything. But wait, you didn't show me the pose for it! And actually, I wouldn't have learned the poses for the ones I picked up randomly, either. Perhaps the poses aren't actually necessary at all, and it's all just a conspiracy to make people look like complete bogans when using them. It's possible. Oh, and then suddenly, Grand Trial.
No, I'm serious. I head into the next area, Hapu's there, and she won't let me progress until I battle her in what is officially the Grand Trial of the island. But... but I didn't do any other trials first though. Is this even allowed? I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S REAL ANYMORE ok fine I'll do it.
Starting off this battle against a Ground-type trainer, I lead with the ever-useful Crazy Bus. I know perfectly well this is a bad idea, but hey, I might get a cheap hit in or something. Hapu leads with Dugtrio, and I use Dig, hoping that it doesn't know Earthquake. It does. Goodbye, Crazy Bus. Next comes Skeeter, and Dugtrio drops to a single Scald. Her next Pokemon is a Flygon, and with that, the battle basically turns into "use Scald like ten times while both sides repeatedly heal" for a while. It was tedious, but I eventually took it down. Next she uses Mudsdale, and I decide to keep going with the same "spam this one move over and over" strategy. Surprisingly I actually did outspeed it and got a hit in, taking out about 75% of its health. But then it uses the Ground Z-move, Tectonic Rage, and Skeeter is no more.
Next I go for Lubba, since it has the whole Ground immunity going on, and I figure a Psychic would be enough to take out its remaining HP, but surprisingly no. It was a critical hit, and still only did about half of its already-low HP. Mudsdale went for a Heavy Slam, which would have one-shotted Lubba if not for Refresh kicking in and leaving 1 HP left. So now with the broken shell, Lubba was able to do more damage with Psychic and finish it off. I also got in a decent hit against her final Pokemon, a Gastrodon, before it used Muddy Water and KOed Lubba. That Psychic managed to trigger a Special Defense drop, so I sent out Laylee to see if I could get in some stat boosts and then do some good damage with Air Slash. I used a Calm Mind and took a hit with over half my HP left, so went for a second one, but then a rogue critical hit happened and so much for that plan. So next I send out Ratzenberger to try and tank a few hits while damaging it with the ever-present Scald. I managed to take it out with one followed by a Hydro Vortex, ending the battle.
As expected, I get the Groundium Z for winning, and then Hapu rides off mere seconds after saying that she'll be happy to help if we get into any trouble in the canyon. I guess it's a good thing I have a way of contacting you then... oh wait, this game doesn't have any sort of cell phone equivalent for some reason. Now that I think about it, is this the first game since the originals that doesn't? G/S had the Pokegear, R/S/E had the Pokenav, D/P/Pt had... actually, they didn't have anything either. But B/W and X/Y had the Xtranceiver and Holo Caster, so yeah, it's fairly rare to not have that. Wonder why they did that, maybe they're just going for a more "you're on your own in nature" sort of thing with this game. Except they also stuck a Pokemon Center on basically every route, so I'll just shut up now.
Luna looked out over the Vast Poni Canyon. It's big, it's grand, it's vast. Lillie takes some pictures, then realizing she can never show them to anyone, tossed the camera into the canyon below. "That's us," said Lillie, sporting a healthy wind-burned cheek. "We're like a disposable falling camera in a canyon that's constantly careening off things."
... Sorry. Actually no, I'm not apologizing for that last paragraph, that was beautiful. But yeah, I head into the canyon and nearly lose the first battle. It's a trainer with only two Pokemon, but they're also about 6-7 levels higher than my team, and the Pokemon in this game seem to be a lot tougher than usual, so that actually makes a fairly big difference. I do get through it though, and Laylee finally learns Revelation Dance as a result of hitting Level 40. This is a move that changes to whatever type matches the Oricorio's form, so in this case, it's a Psychic move. It's the only way to actually get a secondary STAB on Oricorio, so I've been waiting for this one for a while. I also learn pretty shortly after this battle that this is the location where Crazy Bus has the ability to evolve into a Vikavolt, so I checked that poll from earlier. There were only six votes, and it was 4-2 with "no" winning, so Crazy Bus is staying a Charjabug.
The rest of this area kind of progresses uneventfully. It's not the easiest place to get through, since the wild Pokemon are frequent, strong, and usually pretty fast (Dugtrio and Golbat are, at least), and the trainers aren't pulling any punches at this point in the game. I will say, however, that it's quite a nice area to travel through in a visual sense. It alternates between being inside a cave (which is still more visually interesting than most caves) and outside, and there's some pretty nice views. Along the way, I catch a Boldore, Machoke, Lycanroc (Midday form), Murkrow, and the new pseudo-legend of this generation, Jangmo-o and its evolution Hakamo-o. Since I usually like to comment on the new Pokemon when they show up, I feel somewhat obligated to say something about them, but they're just kinda "eh" to me. Not bad, but not amazing either. Not really my style, at least. Same goes for Lycanroc, actually, except I do very much dislike the Midnight form of that one. (And now that I think about it, I still have to catch one of those, but it's currently after 7 PM as I'm writing this, so I'll have to wait another day).
Next up we have the infamous "Lillie and the bridge" cutscene. I say infamous because people liked to bring it up a lot as being unnecessary and overdramatic. To summarize, Lillie catches up to you as you reach a bridge crossing over the section of the canyon where we originally came in. She mentions that she wants to get over her fear of heights, and so crossing this bridge is going to be her own personal trial. She slowly moves across, then a group of three asshole Murkrows show up and start harassing her. She freaks out a bit, then runs all the way across. Afterwards, she says "I completed my first trial! Amazing, right?", and the options you have to respond with are "Yeah!" or "It was all right".
I'm going to defend this cutscene in some ways, though I will admit the claims that it was unnecessary and overdramatic were still pretty accurate. I like how they're trying to develop Lillie's character and make you care about her. Maybe some people are just finding her annoying or wimpy at this point, I know she isn't exactly loved by everyone, but I actually enjoy having her around. Maybe I just have a thing for helping (or at least being a role model for) someone who's in this sort of position. I mean, she is actively trying to toughen up at least. One thing I also see complaints about is the fact that her fear of heights hadn't been established at any point, so bringing it up as a thing to suddenly need to get over is pretty lame. And ... yeah, I'll accept that also. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be implied that it was a thing ever since the Spearow attack on the bridge at the start of the game, but she never specifically said that it was the reason for freezing up, so I assumed it was just a general fear of the Pokemon attacking and not having any of her own to defend herself and Nebby with.
With that said, I couldn't bring myself to be mean to her, so even though it was a bit lame overall, I answered positively to her "Amazing, right?" comment. Trying to put myself in the situation and not just treating the bridge like what it is in-game (a solid surface to walk on with no chance of moving underneath your feet, and invisible barriers on the sides preventing you from ever falling off), I realized that I'd also be hesitant to cross it since I'm also really bad with heights myself. So whatever, I'm siding with Lillie over the haters on this one, and ya'll can deal.
With that out of the way, I continue through a few more cave areas and outdoor areas, including an optional section that you had to crawl into. There's a few Strength rocks, a section where you walk down a dead tree-ish thing, and it's just generally a pleasant journey overall. Or it would be without the constant wild Pokemon harassment, but that's my own fault for not being a high enough level to use repels. Along the way, Dreemurr learned Wood Hammer (which I taught over Sucker Punch) and I found a TM for Dazzling Gleam, which I taught to Lena to replace the extremely underpowered Disarming Voice. But most importantly, I finally managed to get Aleene up to Level 42, meaning she evolved into a Palossand! Here's to hoping that she's more useful overall now. It's also somewhat worth noting that the battle that triggered the evolution was a trainer with a Muk and Magnezone, which brings back memories of the Aether employees that caused such a problem earlier on and started this whole "you need to evolve soon because you suck" thing.
Eventually I come across another bridge, and this one has a new character on it. This is Mina, the artist who was mentioned back in Seafolk Village, and dear lord does she look high. Basically, half of her dialogue is stupid art-related comments (similar to Mallow's cooking puns), and the other half is just acting... well, high. Basically that she doesn't really care about what's going on and is just kind of going along with whatever. To emphasize this point, she admits that she's a trial captain but doesn't actually have a trial set up, and gives me the Fairium Z for absolutely no reason. I've... I've got nothing. I kind of hope she comes back later on, because otherwise this is a complete waste of a character. No idea what to think at this point. (Also, is it just me, or are there a lot more female NPCs this time around? It's probably about 50/50 if I actually counted, but I feel like almost all of the trial captains have been girls. Then again, I still have a hard time seeing Ilima as male, so that's probably a contributing factor.)
With that behind me, I reach another big outdoor area and, after going into another cave, open a shortcut back to the beginning. I see a crevice leading off into the distance with a few trainers, and it finally occurs to me that this area is totally Victory Road. God, am I actually that far into the game? I am heading to an area where I'll be presumably summoning the version mascot, but man, I could have sworn there was going to be a lot more before the end. I've still got Mount Lanakila to get through before the Pokemon League at least, so maybe this isn't the final area, but it's sort of giving off those vibes. But with that said, this is where I'm stopping for now. I guess next time we'll find out how close to endgame this really is.
Current status:
I could just lie and say that I did stuff all on one day, but that wouldn't be FAIR, yo.
After the massive plot dump and super cereals from last time, this is going to be a much more chill segment. I start off by leaving the bedroom, and the very next room (which I was probably in earlier and just never paid attention to it) has a number of doors and staircases blocked off by fairly conspicuous iron bars. Kinda weird, I wonder if that'll ever open up to anything. I go out further, and a cutscene triggers. We haven't had enough of those lately, so sure, bring it on.
Actually it's fairly inoffensive. Lille's gotten a change in outfit - while still sticking to the white color scheme, the hat has been ditched, her hair is no longer braided the way it was before, and the dress has been replaced with a fairly similar-looking top and skirt. But I suppose it's different enough to get across the point that she's trying to change her overall attitude or whatever, and does a cheesy Z-Power pose to really get the point across.
Then Gladion comes in and is all "oh by the way I found this really important relic downstairs, you should have it" and gives the Sun Flute to Lillie. But... why Princess Ruto? He says that the flute is to be played alongside the Moon Flute to call the Legendary Pokemon. I probably would have already known that if I had read that one poem earlier, but it annoyed me. In addition to the Sun Flute, he also picked up a Master Ball from somewhere and gives it to me. Alright, thanks then. Into the bag it goes for all eternity, unless I come across a shiny that has the ability to KO itself and I get desperate. Gladion then says that he's going to stick around a bit to "clean up Aether Paradise", whatever that means. Possibly just see how many other evil dudes are around.
Hau also shows up (it's always nice when people happen to wake up at the same time and head outside to the same exact spot), and says Lillie's new makeover looks fantastic, to which Gladion just says "What was that?". That's all he actually says on the matter, but I kinda like how he reacts, even if not much. It's the game designers reminding us that oh right, they're siblings. Gotta get that typical overprotective brother thing in there, but only for one sentence and then probably never bring it up again. Anyway, Gladion also apologizes for roping him into this whole mess, but Hau's cheerful as ever, just happy to be seeing new and exciting things. We go our separate ways for now, since he still has some catching up to do with Acerola's trial and stuff.
Now that I'm given free range to meander wherever I want, I of course try to see if there's any new items accessible (if there were, they were unimpressive) and if there's any new dialogue. In the big outside area there are a few people around, and I feel the ned to comment on a couple of their statements. One person says that when a Pokemon is injured in the wild, they go and hide somewhere to recover. Not an amazing concept in itself, but it does make me think how the game always says that wild Pokemon just "faint" instead of die, and honestly if they wanted to make it more realistic without having you kill stuff, they could just have the wild Pokemon run away when they get to 0 HP. I'm not really sure why that's not the case, honestly. 0 HP doesn't mean "dead" or even necessarily "unconscious" anyway, it's more of a "I'm too hurt to fight any more" sort of thing. The other thing was someone mentioning that it would be horrible if a Pokemon species was brought to extinction, because then we'd never be able to see them again. Fair enough, but then I remembered that this is a world with machines that can restore Pokemon from fossils. I'm sure they could clone up a bunch of something if it was never completely necessary. (Not that I'm saying go and overhunt anyway, but you get what I mean)
That's about all there was of interest in Aether Paradise, so it's about time to move on to the fourth and final island of the game, Poni Island. As long as there's no weird arcade games absorbing the souls of people, I'm good. I'm told that this island doesn't have many people on it, and is a lot more natural and untouched than the other islands. Guess that's why there's no more clothing shops, then. We have a bit of a moment between Lillie and Gladion where he apologises for leaving her behind (apparently Lusamine got quite a bit worse after he had left), but he was too focused on saving Null. I'd make some kind of comment on how those are some pretty messed up priorities, but for all I know, Lusamine may have actually been somewhat sane at that point and not really considered a threat, so eh. Before long, we arive on Poni Island.
The first location here is a small town (if you can even call it that) called Seafolk Village. It's basically a boardwalk with a number of boats docked around it, and all of them are shaped like different Pokemon. There's a Magikarp, Whiscash, Huntail, Wailord, and Steelix, so I've got a decent amount of stuff to explore before leaving this area. The first thing I found was in the Huntail boat, where a girl just kind of gives you an Aerodactyl for no reason. I mean, alright, I'm not going to say no to it, but how random was that? There's also a guy in the same boat who talks a bit about all these rare treasures he has, and he gives me an Electirizer and Magmarizer. Good to know that I'll at least have one of each without having to grind for BP, then.
Moving on, the Whiscash boat seems to be the home of an artist named Mina, and the whole thing screams "important NPC", so I'll be expecting to see her as a trial captain or something later on. Speaking of which, that reminds me that I did want to go back and battle Sophocles and Acerola now that I've completed that island, but I checked on Serebii and apparently you don't actually get to rematch them until specific points in the game later on. And I got indirectly spoiled towards something, so... oops. Not a huge deal though.
Going a bit further into the village, a cutscene triggers where the seafolk "chief" shows up and chats a bit with Lillie. And pretty much nothing of importance was said other that a little background information for this area - that it's just where people come to trade the various goods they find sailing around in the region. He tells us to go see Hapu, which I'm sure I'll be doing after wasting as much time as possible. First I've got me a Steelix boat to check out. It leads to the Flash Cannon TM (which nothing on my team can learn) and also the only fishing spot in the area. I get a Wailmer from it, and after a fair amount of searching, a Dhelmise.
Now here's a Pokemon that I have a few things to say about. Not only is Dhelmise fairly rare in one specific out-of-the-way fishing spot (which is stupid on its own), but I was also really looking forward to liking this thing until I found out that it's a Grass/Ghost type. And that's not a bad thing on its own, since I like both of those types and the combination, but it's the same type as Decidueye AND two Gen 6 Pokemon. I still consider those relatively new, and it seems like overkill. Plus, it's a freaking boat anchor, how is this thing not either Water, Steel, or both? Well, it's because the Pokemon itself is apparently just the seaweed coating it. It's haunted seaweed. With no face or ... anything. Now, I'm fine with object-based Pokemon for the most part, and I tend to like them just as much if not more than a lot of the animal-based ones. But I feel like Dhelmise is a bit too abstract. I can't think of any other Pokemon that doesn't have a face or any sort of personality to it, and no, I'm not counting the compass as an eye, because it isn't one. So yeah. I don't hate Dhelmise, I actually still kind of appreciate the fact that they tried something unusual, but I would have liked it better as a Grass/Steel, Grass/Water, Water/Steel, or basically anything else other than its current type, and I wish the Pokemon itself wasn't just featureless green crap that happens to be surrounding an anchor.
Ok, I'm done rambling. The last thing I do in the area is check out the Pokemon Center. This one is selling a number of TMs, most of which are of the high-power, low-accuracy variety like Fire Blast, Thunder, and Stone Edge. There's a few exceptions though. I pick up Calm Mind to teach to Laylee over Swords Dance, and Blizzard for Lena to replace Sing (since I found that I never use it, and when I do, it misses).
The next area I'm able to explore is Poni Wilds, a somewhat unremarkable-looking route that has a coastline to the west and some raised ledges and such to the east. I go to battle the first trainer here, and DAMN, I am not doing so well. Her two Pokemon were a Garbodor and Toxapex (the evolution of Mareanie). She also had the Poison Z-Crystal, for what it's worth, but yeah, I barely won that match despite my team massively outnumbering hers. I think this is a pretty good sign that I'm underleveled, but I refuse to actually do anything about that for now. As long as I can scrape a win, I'd rather be like this than breezing through all the fights like I was earlier on in the game.
The rest of the trainers aren't as bad, though I do have to go back and heal after basically every one of them, and same goes for half of the wild Pokemon. Speaking of which, I catch a Granbull and Exeggcute in the grass, and quite a few things in the water: Lumineon, Tentacruel, Gastrodon (East Sea), Wailord, Relicanth, and Lapras. For such a small section of the ocean that I have access to, there's a surprising amount of sea life there. Let's not question how massive Wailords are getting into this area, or how it takes so long to randomly encounter a Lapras through surfing when they're also fairly large and should be able to be spotted from a distance. While going through these battles, Lubba learned Power Gem (a good replacement for Ancient Power and an excuse for me to not deal with Stone Edge) and Lena attempted to learn Hyper Voice, but I declined. There's also quite a few berry trees around here, which seem to give the "weakens a super effective whatever-type attack" berries, so I'll have a lot of those to grow when my current crop is done.
The final trainer in this area (the "fight everyone else first" kind) is a dancer with all four forms of Oricorio. They also all happen to be holding Focus Sashes, they all know Teeter Dance, and half my current party at the time was weak to Air Slash. So yeah, it should go without saying that it was quite a difficult fight to get through. Somehow managed it though.
Moving on to Ancient Poni Path, I come across Hapu and her Mudsdale. She comments on Lillie's new outfit, which just makes me question why I'm able to completely alter my appearance every few days and nobody seems to notice. She also makes the comment "no one could call you lily-livered", which is not only an awful pun, but also a really obscure one that I had to actually look up to understand. She mentions that there's no kahuna on this island, which I find highly suspect, especially since she was apparently the one to fight off the Ultra Beast that had appeared here earlier, and then wanders off to the next set of Ruins.
Immediately after this, an old lady spying on us from behind a wall introduces herself as Hapu's grandmother and uncermoniously gives me access to Machamp as a Ride Pokemon. Oh lord, I knew this was coming eventually. So in case you haven't seen it, Machamp carries your trainer around in its two lower arms and uses its two upper ones to push giant rocks. The way it cradles you around and your character just kind of looks up at it with the usual face of serene happiness is uh... pretty suspect. It was kind of funny with the two golfers back at the hotel, but the Machamp obsession this game has going on has gone a bit too far, I think.
Before checking out Poni Breaker Coast, I'd like to do everything else possible (as usual), so I start by exploring the immediate area, including the big house here. As is tradition, I must attempt to sleep in every possible bed to see what kind of creepy comments are made about them, but this time we get a little something different. As a callback to the scene in your own bedroom where Meowth wakes you up, there's an Alolan Meowth here that does the same thing. Except it does it by punching you repeatedly in the face, before handing over the Awakening. I've gotta say, I didn't expect that, but I rather enjoyed it. I then go to see if I can access the other connected areas here. Vast Poni Canyon is the first I check, and it's apparently blocked off without the kahuna's permission. But... Hapu said there wasn't one. Yeah, I was pretty sure that was a jape. So I move on to the next area, Poni Grove. This one is even better, since it's blocked off until I become champion. Yeah, that's fine. Just have a random jungle area that literally only one person in the entire region can access, seems reasonable. Reminds me of the guy back in the Thrifty Megamart who wouldn't sell me anything until I "train a little harder" and become Champion. Kind of limiting your customer base there a little bit.
So uh, Poni Breaker Coast. It's small, and it's fairly useless. I got the Frost Breath TM, but didn't teach it to anybody. I also caught a Sharpedo here after reloading the rippling water spot about 25 times. That's pretty much all I can say about it.
The only other thing I can do now besides progress like I'm supposed to is to go back and push the Strength boulders that I've come across previously, and luckily enough, I wrote down where all of those were. The first was in Ten Carat Hill, and it leads to, interestingly enough, the Flyinium Z. I guess that's one less to get from a trial captain or kahuna then. The second was in Diglett's Tunnel, and it leads to a little section of Konikoni City with a lighthouse. There's a little ramp going down from here to the main area, but there's a small fence built in the middle of this ramp that prevents all passage. Then... why put the ramp... just WHY. Oh, and there's a TM for Will-O-Wisp. Not a bad move, but not going to use it. The third and final Strength rock was in the Lush Jungle. Pushing it leads to a little cave that randomly dumps you out on a ledge on Route 8, and this contains the Energy Ball TM. This one I actually do use, teaching it to Fellana over Razor Leaf. (It's not a physical move, but it'll do for now.)
Oh, and I go and check out the other two sets of Ruins now that I can get through them. It was a waste of time, you can't actually get anything from them yet.
At this point, things got a little weird. I was watching the Vinesauce stream archive of this game, and he was doing a bunch of Wonder Trades and trying to sync it up with the chat so that people watching could try to trade with him. I suddenly got the inspiration to try and do the same thing myself, even though I've never actually watched any of his streams live and I don't know if I'd even be able to realistically. But that's not going to stop me from randomly hoping that it'll somehow work out.
So I tried to think of a Pokemon that he'd be interested in getting, or would at the very least be somewhat relevant. I decided that a Snivy would be kind of cool, but that would require actually catching a Serperior through Island Scan first, and I've been avoiding doing such things until the postgame. I looked it up, and apparently Serperior appears on Poni Island on Thursdays, and it's a Thursday now, so I figured it was worth trying. I scanned 10 QR codes (all of stuff I've already caught, and none as shiny, since I don't really want to fill my dex with stuff I haven't gotten on my own), and started the scan to see where Serperior would appear. "Exeggutor Island", apparently. Well crap, I haven't gotten there yet. But I looked it up and it's extremely close to where I am, so sure, why not.
The next sequence of events happened very quickly, since I only had an hour before the Island Scan would run out. Because of that, I kind of skipped through the dialogue really quickly and didn't pay super close attention to it. I could look up a video of it, or at least look at the game script, but that would almost be going against how it actually turned out, so I'll just try to recap it from how I remember it.
I meet up with Lillie at the entrance to the Ruins of Hope, and ... go in without much happening. I'm sure some stuff was said, but I sure as heck don't remember what it was. I go inside and Lillie attempts to push one of the giant cubes despite it being at least twice as tall as she is and made of solid stone or metal, because she is an intelligent person. I hesitantly get into the warm embrace of my Machamp once again to shove them out of the way and get through, only to find that Hapu is already there. So either she was able to fly in even though the game won't let me do that, her Mudsdale leapt gracefully over the blocks, she teleported, or the blocks moved back into place after getting through. My money's on that last option, judging from how the last few Ruins seemed to operate.
Hapu gets a piece of tinfoil from the altar and thanks Tapu Fini for its gift, as apparently she has now been named kahuna of the island. Ok, question time. I thought she was just yanking my chain earlier about the "no kahuna" thing, and that she just didn't want to admit it yet, and the guy blocking that one path seemed to indicate that I was probably in the correct line of thinking. But now I don't know what to believe. Anyway, I guess her grandfather (I was very tempted to either say "Elf Grandfather" or "Grand Dad" there, but I was strong) was the kahuna here previously, but after his death, nobody else was named one for ... some reason. Lillie shows her the Sun Flute and Hapu's all "oh yeah, I know exactly where the other one-of-a-kind legendary artifact is, it's on Exeggutor Island where anyone can get it. Let's go there". And then suddenly they ride off on Mudsdale. I'd fly after them, but Charizard can't be called here. And then when I leave, the Strength rocks reset, so ... yeah, maybe there was some truth to the "jumped over the blocks" idea after all. After slowly shoving them out of the way again, I meet them back at Seafolk Village.
Once again some kind of dialogue occurs and I don't read it because I'm in a hurry, despite having like 45 minutes left on the timer. It wasn't anything major, probably just "oh, you want to go to Exeggutor Island? Not many people go there because reasons, but if you hop in my Magikarp boat I'll be happy to take you there and then wait there for ages while you fly away and go do other stuff for like six hours". Because spoilers, I do that. I arrive at the island, Lillie's pumped and ready to get the other Flute, and I completely ignore this and instead look around in the grass for a while until Serperior shows up. After a few encounters, I run into it and catch it in a Premier Ball. Woot. Time to breed this thing like crazy.
Fast forward about an hour or so (probably longer) and I now have an entire box of Level 1 Snivies named "Vine Snek". Step one, complete. Step two, try to be awake at a time when Vinny streams this game and wait around until he hopefully does Wonder Trades again. Step three, try to get stupidly lucky and have my trade be one that goes through when there's dozens if not hundreds of other people doing the same thing, not even counting all the other people that happen to be Wonder Trading at the same time unrelated to the stream. Yeah... my chances are not high, but I'm a big enough fanboy to at least try.
After breeding and hatching all of those Snivies, I decided to also hatch the starter eggs I made a while ago for living dex purposes. And then bred a bunch of other stuff that needed to be bred, such as the fossils (once again, for living dex), and the things that have prevolutions not found in the wild. So that means Snubbull, Gible, Shellos, and Carvanha. And since I was in the mood to procrastinate (mainly so this entry wouldn't be super long), I also went and cleared out most of the SOS encounter exclusives on Akala Island, catching a Jigglypuff, Espeon, Seaking, and Starmie. That just leaves Umbreon (which only appears at night, so I'll try for that later on) and Goomy (which is weather-specific, and I could get one from Route 17 but I'd like to see if it rains in Lush Jungle anytime soon).
That's pretty much it. Well, aside from another massive outfit change that cost me somewhere around 200,000 Pokebucks. I wasn't really feeling that last one, so I figured I might as well change it up again. I do rather enjoy the new one, but I'll hold off on updating the Trainer Card picture until the next update because I haven't really done anything in the new one yet. That's totally the reason why, and not because I don't feel like busting out the webcam at 12:30 in the morning and trying to get a good shot of it. Maybe it's a bit of both. But yeah, you'll be seeing it next time. Will I ditch the glasses this time? Will I finally give Luna proper pants instead shorts or a miniskirt? Will I continue to combine blue and green articles of clothing in a random assortment that doesn't really resemble how normal people dress? Will I try out a shorter haircut for once? Find out ... right now! The answer to all of those is "no".
Current status:
(the "+2" under the Pokedex numbers is for non-Alolan Pokemon, since they don't count towards the Dex in this game. Serperior and Snivy, in this case. For the record, there's 85 of them available without Bank, counting the Greninja from the Demo)
One of these days I'll get back into a better groove of playing and writing that doesn't involve splitting it over multiple days, but oh well. This is going to be a plot-heavy one, so be prepared.
I start by returning to the Aether House, now that the Yungoos has returned. But it turns out that this was basically just one big diversion, and while I was gone, Lillie was abducted by ninjas! Or at least by Team Skull people. The game randomly cuts to a flashback sequence and shows what happened - Plumeria must have come back pretty much right after Acerola and I left the area, and she starts threatening Lillie to give up her Cosmog. She calls Lillie a thief (which is probably accurate, judging from what the intro cutscene showed, but I don't know the motives involved yet), and Lillie is unwilling to use Nebby's teleportation ability to escape since it seems to hurt it pretty seriously whenever it uses that. Instead, she decides to go with them willingly rather than risk any violence. And apparently Hau was there for the whole incident and didn't really do much to help, which he's pretty upset about.
Suddenly, Gladion (yes, I'm going to be using his actual name now, since he plays a pretty major role here) bursts in, grumbles a bit, and then randomly battles me. Surprisingly, the battle is actually kind of challenging despite the fact that my Pokemon outnumber his two to one, and one of his is a Golbat. That Golbat hits like a truck with Acrobatics though, and Type: Null isn't exactly a slouch. After this unnecessary anger-fueled battle, he takes me to the ferry back at Maile City to chase after Team Skull. But we can't actually leave yet because Hau isn't here (where the hell is he?), and then all of a sudden, Nanu shows up, casually mentions that he's the kahuna of the island, and asks if I want to battle him now. Can't say I saw that coming. I do at least get the option to delay fighting him for now, and if I talk to Gladion again, we still can't leave until Hau shows up. I wonder if these two unrelated events might somehow be tied together, HMM.
Regardless, I take this time to do a little bit of unfinished business. One thing I neglected to do the first time was check out the "clean Pyukumuku off the beach" mission thing back at Hano Beach. It's an unimportant thing to do, but you get quite a lot of money from doing it (20,000 pokebucks, I believe), so it's worth spending the minute or two to do it. I also catch another Haunter for the sake of an NPC in the Tapu Village Pokemon Center, since he wants to trade his Graveler for one. Both Haunter and Graveler have trade evolutions, so I get an Alolan "Great Leader of Soviet Russia" Golem. This thing is hilarious looking and I'm somewhat tempted to use one in a future playthrough. I've been saying that about a lot of things though, and I generally don't ever delete my original file in Pokemon games (especially not if it's the first game of a generation), so I'm not sure when that would ever happen unless I decide to get Sun at some point, or if the Stars rumor turns out to be true.
That's about it as far as time-wasting goes, so I head back to challenge *looks name up* Nanu. I swear, there's too many similar names in this. Hala, Faba, Hapu, Nanu, and arguably Lana (though hers at at least a "normal" name), along with all the locations. Haina, Hano, Hau'oli, Heahea, Hokulani, Kala'e, Mahalo, Lanakila, Paniola... it must just be a cultural thing, since I assume these all do actually mean things in Hawaiian, but to me, it's really hard to remember half of them. Anyway, since this is a Grand Trial, I first try to guess what type he's going to use. Eliminating the Z-Crystals I've already gotten, the remaining ones are Flying, Poison, Ground (which will probably be Hapu), Ice, Dragon, Dark, and Fairy. Given this guy's general demeanor and the giant pile of Meowths in his police station, I'm guessing Dark. And judging from his first Pokemon, a Sableye, I think I guessed right.
The battle starts out with Laylee versus his Sableye. I, stupidly, use Swords Dance and he one-shots me with Shadow Ball. So Lena comes out next, and it turns into a bit of a spamfest with me whittling him down with Disarming Voice and him damaging me with Shadow Ball. We both end up healing at some point, but eventually I win that matchup. He sends out a Krokorok next, and although I definitely have the type advantage here, I switch to Skeeter to share the experience a bit. Skeeter gets Swaggered on the first turn, but manages to hit anyway and one-shots the Krokorok with Leech Life. Lastly, Nanu sends out Garfielf (I'm not going to stop calling it that). I switched off to El Grapadura, and despite getting in a solid hit, he went down after two Power Gems. To finish it off, I sent out Ratzenberger and we had a bit of a Z-move showdown. Ratz managed to just barely survive the Black Hole Blitz, but Garfielf was no match for Hydro Vortex.
With that, the third island is officially complete! Well, aside from challenging the trial captains, but that'll be done a bit later after the plot events. Hau shows up, and Gladion's all "don't you dare say that this is fun", but Hau actually seems pretty serious for once. Our destination is Aether Paradise, apparently. We arrive there without incident, and Hau asks why Lillie would be here. Gladion, being the edgelord he is, of course doesn't bother to answer this question. They take off, and I'm mainly just curious at this point if Aether is actually the enemy or not. One of their employees seems to have no problem with me taking the ferry out of here if I need to prepare myself or whatever, so they seem to be fine with that. But after taking a few steps away from the dock area, I get spotted by a different employee and forced into a battle, so ... maybe some of them are bad and some are good. Or they might just be confused, since the dialogue seems to indicate that they're here to stop a Pokemon thief, and they don't actually know who the thief is. I continue through a few more of these battles, check the place for items (getting a Toxic TM in an area that was blocked off the first time I was here), and then make my way to the others at the elevator.
This elevator won't go down to the lower floor without the proper clearance, so we have no choice but to go up. There we meet up with Faba, who's being all self-important like usual, and Gladion insinuates that he knows what's going on. After some more uninteresting conversation, he battles me with his single Pokemon, a Hypno. Thanks to Laylee's flinch-causing Air Slash and a couple Chesto Berries, I get through the battle without taking any damage. Afterwards, Faba says that the Cosmog might be held downstairs, where they're holding "experiments aiming to tear the very boundaries of the world apart". As we take the elevator down, the camera focuses on Faba's random evil grin. Oh no, I wonder if there might be a trap or something. That would be so unexpected. I am frighten.
Reaching the basement area, Gladion mentions that he had last been here two years ago, and we need to go check out Secret Labs A and B. No really, they're actually called that. He goes to Secret Lab A, while Hau and I go to check out B. I'd take this time to check if there's anywhere else to go, but the game doesn't actually let me go anywhere else. Well, aside from leave the island entirely, that's a thing. So yeah, apparently Gladion's ok with being interrupted to head back to Ula'ula Island. I'm not even sure why he comes with, but he does.
I take this time to check out the malasada shop that now randomly contains an event that wasn't there before. An Oranguru (weird how I've been seeing so many of these around and not a single Passimian) in the shop just kinda grunts and hands me the TM for Frustration. Immediately afterwards, a cop comes in and explains that this is his "partner", Gru. I'd make a Despicable Me reference, but I only saw the first movie once and didn't get very much out of it. Instead I'll just mention again that this is probably Judy from Dr. McNinja. Either way, the cop gives me the TM for Return, which I teach to Dreemurr because Slam's accuracy is awful. I also take this time to buy the Bulldoze TM for Ratzenberger, since his current moveset kinda sucks (I delete Feint Attack) and go back to the desert to find that dude that gives the Safety Goggles. Luckily he didn't take that long to find. Oh, and at some point I ended up getting a Murkrow from Poke Pelago, which was actually a Pokemon I didn't have yet.
Ok, so back to Aether Paradise. I head over to the only area I can actually go, only to run into three scientists with funky astronaut helmets. Each one of them uses a single Pokemon - a Muk, then a Magneton, then a Porygon2. I remember this distinctly because this is where I got annoyed once again at Aleene's underperformance. I actually reset after fighting the first two and tried again, this time with the Eviolite, but it didn't actually help. Not even the Magneton, which is 4x weak to Ground, could be beaten without me having to switch to a different Pokemon. The Porygon2 would have been theoretically beatable, but it kept stalling with Recover and it made itself levitate to avoid Bulldoze, so I only had one non-STAB move, Giga Drain, to actually damage it. So yeah, those battles were made more annoying than they needed to be because of me trying and failing to give one of my underdog Pokemon a chance to shine. I'm reallllly hoping evolution fixes this problem. But ignoring that, the only other thing I get out of this encounter is the information that they're doing some kind of experiments on Nebby, and that it's the key to opening Ultra Wormholes. I think I already knew that, but it's hard to remember sometimes.
Gladion's hanging outside the door to Secret Lab A, and has a bit of an interesting quote, so I'll just put the whole thing here: "Don’t even think about getting in here. Me and Null... We’re more alike than we might look. We’re both what we were made to be... I was like an ornament to my mother. Wearing whatever she told me to wear, acting however she wanted me to act... Null was crafted just as carefully. It was made just to battle the beasts. In this room...right here..."
I'll admit, the backstory there is sort of intriguing me. I know a smattering of random spoilers for character backgrounds and motivations, but not everything, so it's still kinda interesting to piece it together. Anyways, I head over to Secret Lab B, where Hau is apparently having a heated argument with a shelf. No really, his animation couldn't possibly indicate anything else, it's pretty great. After fighting off a couple more goons, I check the room for information. I find a bit on Ultra Wormholes that doesn't really say anything I didn't already know, followed by a report on Cosmog: "Cosmog is hypothesized to be a type of Ultra Beast that hails from another dimension. A dimension that we have named Ultra Space. When placed under sufficient stress, it reveals the power to create and open Ultra Wormholes in order to escape from its suffering. We are now working on a device that will allow us to manipulate the Ultra Wormholes created when Cosmog is subjected to extreme stress..."
Once again, not much we didn't already know, but it does mention that Cosmog itself may be an Ultra Beast, so that's something new. We go off to deliver the information to Gladion, who now theorizes that we were sent down here on purpose to waste time in a dead end, so he rushes back to see what else can be done. I, in the meantime, take my sweet time checking out Secret Lab A, since it's now available for me to enter. There's a number of documents in here on "BKP Development", along with a blog that Faba's been updating. The blog, as is typical for Faba, basically says a lot of nothing, but there's a few noteworthy tidbits in there, such as development on a special sort of ball (which we kind of knew about already), and the line "My superior’s family stole the results of our research and ran off." Interesting.
The BKP Development stuff has more information overall, and I'll try my best to summarize it the best I can. BK stands for Beast Killer (the P is probably for Pokemon, but I don't think it's ever specified). Materials were gathered from the Canalave library in Sinnoh to start on development for the "Type change" program, or RKS System. They managed to create a dummy version of this system, and were ready to apply it to their artificial Pokemon named "Type: Full". They created three of these Pokemon, and after applying the RKS System to them, all three of them rejected it and went berserk. They were given control masks to limit their power, and all three were put into permanent cryogenic stasis ("for the rest of eternity", as the game puts it). Because the project didn't work, they were renamed as "Type: Null". Pretty interesting stuff overall. And although the game itself doesn't point this out, I'd like to mention for anyone who hasn't seen this or figured it out on their own: RKS, when said out loud, is extremely similar to (the correct, but frequently unused pronunciation of) Arceus. Arceus can also change to any type, and is most well-known in the Sinnoh region. It all ties together very well.
Now that I've finally finished looking at all this background info, it's time to see what the others are up to. There's more fairly unremarkable battles, though Crazy Bus learned Dig in the process. (I replaced Crunch, which may be a bad move in the long run, but I'd prefer more Ground coverage over Dark.) We go back up to the top floor, and are greeted by Wicke, who actually seems to be completely innocent in this whole situation. She refers to Gladion as "young master", which causes Hau to freak out a bit, though I can't say I'm entirely sure why. And then, shock and horror, Faba shows up with a bunch of backup! I wind up in another battle against him, and apparently he's added two more Pokemon to his team in the last few minutes. His two new Pokemon, a Slowbro and Bruxish, don't pose much of a problem. His Hypno poses even less of one because I battle it with Dreemurr. You'd think the AI would be smart enough to not try to put me to sleep when I'm already asleep, but it tried anyway and was unsuccessful as a result. The battle ends with a pretty great cutscene showing everyone's standard facial expression: Gladion's all angry and edgy, Hau's grinning like an idiot, and Luna's staring blankly into the camera with no soul. They really should work on that if Stars is a thing.
With Faba beaten again, we get the key to reach whatever the hell this big back area is, and come to find a scene of "like an uku billion Team Skull thugs", to use Hau's wording. Gladion rushes up to Guzma and they just make faces at each other for a bit, and then I go to check out the various Dead Guy Perezes laying around in the area. They don't respond at all, so make of that what you will. I mow through a couple of Grunts (though I will mention the second one's Raticate did a lot more damage to my team than it had any right to), and the third one actually gets smart and refuses to fight me. That means there's nothing more between me and Guzma, so I head back to heal and then unknowingly enter what is probably the hardest battle in the game so far.
I dunno what it is with me and the Guzma fights, but I always suck massively at dealing with him. I'm going to partially blame Aleene for this, since she's basically just an empty slot in my team as far as usefulness is concerned (you'd think the resistance to Bug would be nice, but it doesn't matter), but I'm also just using a bad set of Pokemon in general, since I don't have my main Fire or Flying users on me at this time. Anyway, I'm just making excuses, so let's see how the battle went.
I start off the same way as last time, with Stealth Rock. The instant super effective damage to all his bug types (including Goliopod's re-entry) is too good to pass up on. Unfortunately, that's also the only thing Lubba gets to do in the match, since it gets one-shotted by Razor Shell. I send in Crazy Bus next, and get in a Thunder Wave since I'm still afraid of this thing destroying my entire team, and will take any opportunity to cripple it. My first Wild Charge doesn't quite manage to get it below 50% HP, which means that the second one will almost beat it. Through some stroke of luck, I do manage to get both of those hits in, due to Golisopod's decision to use Swords Dance on both turns. So I get it down to about 10% of its HP and it gets forcefully switched out to Masquerain.
Masquerain's a bit of an odd duck. I don't expect it to be particularly threatening (especially since it lost half its health from the Stealth Rock), but it surprised me. I took a turn to switch to Malone, who took way more damage than I'd expect. It then outsped me and I didn't get a single hit in, so that's pretty cool I guess. I sent in Aleene, since I figured the Bug resistance would be good here. Remember earlier when I said it wouldn't matter? Yeah. I got in a Shadow Ball, which did next to nothing, it used Air Slash, and Aleene got knocked into the red, so obviously that wasn't happening. I finally took it out by switching to Dreemurr and getting in a Sucker Punch.
Guzma's next Pogey is a Pinsir. Not the strongest of Bug types, but certainly not one of the worst, either. Surprisingly, it's the member of the team that causes the fewest problems. I start off with a Sucker Punch, knowing perfectly well that Dreemurr will probably not survive whatever attack comes in, and I was correct. So I switched to Ratzenberger and went for the Hydro Vortex to get it out of the way early. I kinda lucked out there though, since its X-Scissor nearly knocked Ratz into the Solo Form range.
Next came Golisopod again, who came out, took Stealth Rock damage, and then that was it. Ok, bye. That leaves only the Ariados, which I didn't expect to be much of a problem. Good lord, was I wrong. It starts off with Fell Stinger, which KOs Ratz. I didn't realize this at the time, but that move apparently gives the user a +3 boost to Attack when it KOs something, so that's immediately a problem. I send out Crazy Bus to try and get in the Thunder Wave, and through some miracle, the Refresh benefit kicks in and I survive with 1 HP, meaning that I do succeed in paralyzing it. If only it actually mattered. This thing has Shadow Sneak, so any hopes of actually outspeeding it are immediately lost.
From this point on, the rest of the battle basically turned into a sequence of reviving something, losing whatever was currently sent out, and repeating the same process until it got fully paralyzed and I got a chance to do something else. I went through about six or seven revives and did not manage to get a single hit on it that entire time. Every time I tried to either attack it or heal up, it would just one-shot my Pokemon with its maxed attack and priority. After getting incredibly sick of this, I decided to use a Revival Herb (basically a Max Revive that lowers happiness, I usually avoid these kind of items) on Ratz and got lucky with a paralysis turn. That allowed me to finally beat it with a couple Scalds, and I probably wouldn't have been able to if I hadn't gotten lucky and had it get fully paralyzed a second time during the process.
So yeah, overall it wasn't my proudest moment. Any battle that requires huge amounts of revive swapping is always a very undeserving victory, as far as I'm concerned. Either way, Guzma's out of the way and I can move on, but not before heading back to heal and switch around the team members. And then we have plot. Oh man, do we have plot.
I walk in on Lusamine belittling Lillie. She basically says that Lillie isn't even worth my time, because I'm at least a decent trainer. Lillie also reveals that Lusamine is her mother, which is a fact that I was spoiled on a while ago unfortunately. It turns out they have an extremely terrible relationship, with Lusamine denying that she's her child and saying "you're not beautiful enough for my world". In other words, if there was any doubt from our last interactions that she's a horrible person, then that's been cleared up now.
Lillie begs her mother to not sacrifice Nebby to open the Wormholes, which of course falls on deaf ears. Lusamine then takes a teleporter to her "private collection", with Lillie and I following shortly after. We arrive in another room that has the usual all-white decor, but this room also has the added touch of SEVERAL POKEMON ENCASED IN BLOCKS OF ICE. Jesus, this lady's got some serious problems. I made a joke last time about the old Bugs Bunny cartoon with the big guy basically killing his pets through too much love, and apparently I was quite accurate in that assessment. Anyway, she rambles on a bit about her plans for the Ultra Beast, basically saying that it doesn't deserve to be frozen like the others, but rather, it should have free reign to unleash its power and cause destruction.
Oh, and Gladion is her son, too. That I actually didn't know, which is surprising because the game dropped at least two hints earlier in this section about that being the case. Both he and Lillie stole something from the labs (Nebby and Null) and abandoned Lusamine... rightfully so, from what I'm seeing here, though I don't know if she was always this psychotic. But yeah, Gladion and Hau show up, just in time for things to get real. Lusamine had previously opened the wormhole using the gases emitted by Cosmog, but now that she's taken it and has it stored in a little box, she's able to use all of its power to open a bunch of portals across the region. The jellyfish from earlier appears in the room, and another insectoid beast appears above Melemele Island, basically right in front of Hala. Tapu Koko appears to battle it, but we don't see the results of the battle before perspective shifts back to the other characters.
Guzma decides to join the fun at this point, entering the room to try and remove us with force. The problem with that idea is that he's still quite outnumbered. Gladion shouts out some orders, saying that he's going to battle the Ultra Beast, Hau can fight Guzma, and I'm left with Lusamine herself. Clearly this isn't because she's the only one I haven't battled against, no sir. But yes, that means we're in for yet another major battle.
Lusamine starts off with a Clefable. I guess she's a Fairy user, then. I lead with Napstablook and, like usual, start out with a Thunder Wave. Clefable's first attack doesn't do anything thanks to Disguise, but oddly, it chooses to just spam Cosmic Power for several turns afterwards instead of actually doing any damage. When it finally does attack again, its Moonblast takes out more than 50% of Napstablook's health, whereas my attacks are doing progressively less damage to it thanks to its defense buffs. It goes for a Metronome and gets Super Fang, which thankfully, Napstablook is immune to. The same applies to its next Metronome move, Force Palm. Got pretty lucky there, and through a fair amount of patience, Clefable goes down.
Her next Pokemon is a Mismagius. Ok, maybe she isn't a Fairy user then. I'm hoping to outspeed it and go for the Shadow Claw again, but no such luck. Mismagius goes first and uses Power Gem, but somehow Napstablook manages to hang on with only 5 HP left and one-shots the Mismagius. The next thing out is a Lilligant, and I decide to finally switch, deciding El Grapadura deserves a shot in the ring. Lilligant's Petal Dance is not very effective, but it still takes out almost half of his health. My attack, a Fire Fang, gets it down to about 10%, but I can't take another hit so I have to use a Hyper Potion. After getting lucky and not taking confusion damage following its Teeter Dance, Lilligant goes down. (The opportunity to learn Thrash came up here, which I decided against.)
Next out is a Milotic, which is a pretty bad matchup, but I figure it's probably best to just take the loss instead of waste a turn switching. Luckily enough for me, its Hydro Pump misses, so I get a decent amount of damage in with Darkest Lariat before falling on the next turn. Fellana finishes it off with a couple Razor Leafs, resisting Milotic's attacks surprisingly well in the process. So that leaves Lusamine's final Pokemon, a Bewear. I've not had to fight one of these yet, but I know that it's extremely durable physically due to its ability. What I didn't know is that it's also stupidly strong. I'll spare the exact details, but each of my team members went up against it and either did a piddly amount of damage or didn't get a chance to attack at all up until my final Pokemon, Lubba. Despite it lowering its own speed a couple times with Hammer Arm, it still managed to go before me, but wasted its turn with the attack-lowering Baby Doll Eyes. Psychic takes it down to about a third of its health, and it goes for the Hammer Arm again, leaving Lubba at 2 HP. Deciding to go out with a bang, I finish it off with Continental Crush and win the match. (And a few levelups later, teach Sucker Punch to Fellana over Pluck, under the reasoning that I can always teach Acrobatics if I decide I'd rather have the Flying move.)
Despite having lost the battle, Lusamine doesn't seem terribly upset, and continues with her plan to catch the Ultra Beast in the newly developed Beast Ball. But then, and I have no idea if this was part of the plan or not, she disappears along with Guzma and the Beast itself into the portal. And I'm sure they'll never show up in the game again from this point on, this story arc is definitely over.
In the aftermath, it's found that Nebby has survived, but it has also changed into a tiny orb-like form. Lillie grabs it and from here it's somewhat unclear what we need to do next. Gladion suggests that with Alola's Legendary Pokemon, we might be able to access other worlds and go after them, but he's unsure if they even exist. Hau, ever the optimist, says that they must be real, and I know perfectly well that he's right (even if I didn't know anything about this game, it's on the freaking box art and the title screen, so yeah), so I agree. We all basically take it easy for the rest of the night and next time, we'll see what awaits us on the following day.
Current status:
First off, obligatory reference to the fact that it's been a few days since the last update. I will now provide an extremely in-depth explanation as to what I did on those days. Trust me, it's not much, even if it looks like it at first.
Wednesday, December 7:
I decided to check out Haina Desert, since it was now available to explore but the game isn't specifically telling me to go there yet, so I'm curious if I can actually do anything. Pretty much right after getting inside, I get attacked by a wild Trapinch, which I catch. Turns out that it's apparently the rarest encounter here, so that's kinda cool. I also catch a Sandile almost immediately after, and then start to explore the area a bit. I had been warned beforehand that this place was pretty annoying, and the guy outside of the desert explains the correct way to get through it, so I keep that in mind. It's very hard to pay attention to where I'm going with the constant battles every few steps though, so I get annoyed with it pretty quickly. At the time that I was playing this, I wasn't able to take notes as I went through the game anyway, so I figured it was for the best to wait until later.
Later that night I reload the game, take a few steps, and find a wild Dugtrio, which I hadn't encountered yet. Very early on in the battle it summons a Gabite, which I know to be a weather-specific SOS encounter, and those are generally considered pretty rare, so I figured it's definitely something to go after. Unfortunately the Dugtrio knows Magnitude, which hits all targets, so it weakens the Gabite quite a bit and threatened to knock it out before I had a chance to react. By the time the Dugtrio was defeated, Napstablook fainted and the Gabite was down to the low yellow HP range. It's here where I learn that Gabite also knows Take Down, a recoil move, and this puts me in a pretty bad place because I really don't want it to faint from recoil damage. I'd switch to Napstablook, whose Ghost type would block Take Down, but he's already fainted and I wasn't entirely willing to risk spending a turn reviving him when one more Take Down could probably end the battle. So I decided to just throw a ball and hope for the best. Nope, it breaks out.
At this point, it proceeds to use Slash for a number of turns, bringing Lubba (who's not damaged by the sandstorm going on, thankfully) slowly down to a very low HP. I throw a ball every turn, and despite getting to use about ten of them, none of them succeed in catching it. If I was smart, I'd take advantage of the low HP (and therefore low recoil damage if it used Take Down at this point) to use the Revive, but I didn't think about that and just kept chucking balls until eventually Lubba went down from Slash. So I switch to Skeeter and decide to risk a turn with the Revive, and wouldn't you know it, the Gabite uses Take Down on that turn and faints. Well crap. Annoyed, I catch the next Dugtrio I run into and call it a night because I didn't want to deal with this at the moment.
Thursday, December 8:
While at the laundromat, I go through the desert more thoroughly and somehow bumble into a Psychium Z along the way. I'm not sure if it was required to enter that screen or not, since this is a very Lost Woods-type area and even with the instructions given, it's still fairly confusing. Mainly though I just find it weird that there's a Z-Crystal here, when every other type-based one up to this point has been given by a trial captain, a kahuna, or at least someone affiliated with them. It seems a bit out of place.
I continue through the desert (using repels, which helps but doesn't completely eliminate the problem due to the Pokemon that chase you through the sand) and eventually find the Ruins of Abundance. They seem pretty much exactly like the last set of Ruins, what with the giant blocks and overall Zelda dungeon feel. On the way back I intentionally try to check every possible dead end, and wind up finding a Comet Shard and the TM for Dream Eater along the way. As far as I can tell, I've gotten basically everything from the area aside from the Safety Goggles item, which is given by an NPC. At some point I also decided to attempt to find a Gabite again and managed to successfully catch one without too much trouble.
Later on in the day, I'm basically stuck with nothing to do for about four or five hours, and still don't have the ability to take notes on the game, so I figured this would be a decent time for me to waste a bunch of time and go after SOS-specific stuff on the first island, where the experience gained from the battles would hopefully not be super high. I first go after a Gyarados, which doesn't pose too much of a challenge. Not really knowing what other things can be gotten, I decide that it's about time to try for a Salamence also, and ... yeah.
In case you don't know the specifics, Salamence is a rare spawn when fighting Bagon specifically on Route 3. Bagon itself only has a 1% encounter rate there. It's more common in Kala'e Bay, but it won't spawn Salamence down there, only Shelgon. The reason people have given for this (which is kind of clever, actually) is that the Bagon are jumping off the cliff, as their Pokedex entries often say they do. That's why there's more of them down there than there are at the top, and when they evolve and can fly, they'll occasionally fly back up to the top of the cliff, but never stay at the bottom of it. Interesting background info, but it doesn't exactly make it easy. I believe I looked for a Bagon for at least an hour before one showed up, and when it did, my 3DS battery was on red and I had no ability to charge it, so that was the end of that for a while.
Later that night when I got home, I figured I might as well continue trying to find the Salamence. I think overall it took about three hours. I didn't count how many Bagons I fought in the process, but it was enough to get Napstablook up to Level 33 (from 30, I believe) and also max out his Attack EVs. When I finally did catch the Salamence, I did so in a Premier Ball and it stayed in on the first attempt. Afterwards I cleaned up the rest of the SOS encounters on the island by catching a Slowbro and Shelgon down by the Bay (where the watermelons grow), but thankfully they were a lot more cooperative and therefore less interesting to complain about. But yeah, that should be every possible wild Pokemon from Melemele Island. It's a small victory, but I'm at least making progress in that regard even if I'm not really progressing in the game yet.
Friday, December 9:
Yet again I didn't have much of an opportunity to do anything major in the game for most of the day. I did check if there were any new clothing shops coming up soon though, and discovered that the one in Malie City was actually the last one in the whole game. So knowing that, I picked out a new outfit which, as usual, you'll be able to see on the trainer card at the end. I also went out of my way to take a photo for the passport specifically when Luna blinked in order to get a fairly dumb-looking picture. It would probably look better without the glasses, I think.
Other than that (and the mandatory checking of the Poke Pelago for beans, berries and treasures), the only thing of note I did this day was trade an Alolan Sandshrew to Joel for its counterpart, Alolan Vulpix. And I also got a couple more trade evolutions added to the Pokedex, but still none of them are actually mine yet, they're just registered as caught. And ... that's about it.
Saturday, December 10:
At last, actual progress occurs! I'm actually going to try and get through this a lot quicker than I usually would, without focusing on all the tiny details. I probably won't succeed at this and it'll come out massively long anyway, but I can try. Where I last left off in the story, I had completed the Ghost trial and the game wanted me to go back to Aether House for some reason. Well I went back, and it turns out that Plumeria is there. She doesn't really give any kind of reason for being there, but she battles me anyway. It doesn't last particularly long, and her team (of a whopping two Pokemon, a Golbat and Salandit) is the same as last time aside from level. With her and the random Grunts (fought off by Acerola and Hau, I believe) out of the way, I go into the house, and OH NOES. That one Yungoos from before was stolen! I'm not sure if I should be impressed that Team Skull actually managed to steal a single Pokemon, confused as to why they bothered doing it, or just amused by the fact that it's a Yungoos of all things. I'll be fair, if it was someone's pet then of course they're going to want it back, but it's just funny that it's one of the most common, disliked Pokemon of the generation.
Apparently Team Skull took it back to their base in Po Town, and I'll have to go there alone to get it back. Well, it's not like I have anything better to do, so that's fine with me. Oh wait, did I say I don't have anything better to do? Because there's actually a little side thing that I'm going to distract myself with first. And since I don't know where else to fit this in, I should mention that in one of the rooms of Aether House, there's a Mimikyu that says "Me...me curse...you...", and that's not only a bit creepy, but also unusual because I'm not sure why it's able to speak.
The distraction that I go and check out is back in Malie Garden. I'm not sure when it became available, since I actually went back there several times to see if the ice cream shop opens (I'm fairly sure it doesn't) and to find the person that gives you an Air Balloon (I still haven't found them). But regardless, some people have taken over the area and turned it into Nugget Bridge from Kanto. And when I say they've turned it into Nugget Bridge, I mean it's an exact replica with the same exact dialogue and the same Pokemon, except higher-leveled. This leads to some excellent things such as battling a Level 29 Caterpie and also fighting things that aren't in the Alola Dex at all (Weedle, Pidgey, Nidoran♀, and Ekans). After beating the five trainers, the final guy gives me a Big Nugget and gives the usual "would you like to join Team Rocket? No? Well too bad" speech. Afterwards he admits that Team Rocket is completely irrelevant to everything, makes a brief reference to Giovanni, and then just like that, they're gone. Like a... like an angel's kiss.
Alright, well... back to what I was doing before, then. I'm supposed to look for a guy in a kimono on the Route 15 beach. And there he is, just hanging out. I go and say hello, and- oh hi, Grimsley. You sure are another random cameo. Y'know, Grimsley! Everyone's favorite Gen 5 Elite Four member that, like basically every other Elite Four member, never did anything of note. Anyway, he says he's going to flip a coin and I have to guess which way it will land. The game gives me the option of "neither", so I of course pick that one to be difficult. He flips the coin, the camera zooms in on him, it zooms in on my grinning face, and then "...Astonishing. I had indeed been planning to have Skarmory snatch it out of the air as it spun in the sky." Except uh, he didn't actually do that, so the fact that I guessed neither didn't really matter there, since I was wrong. I guess I managed to guess his original intent though, so we'll go with that. Anyway as a reward he gives me access to Sharpedo as a Ride Pokemon. It's a Tauros that works in water, basically. Goodbye Lapras, I'll miss your really stupid "swimming backwards" animation when you spin in circles on it at just the right speed.
You should know what this means now - more backtracking! I just gained access to a new thing, so I've gotta go back and use it wherever I can. Turns out there's not that many places actually, just these:
- At Melemele Sea, there's a little island you can access with the Rock Slide TM. I teach this to Malone and consider teaching it to Lubba but decide against it.
- There's a secret entrance to Ten Carat Hill that leads to the Explosion TM. Gonna pass on that one.
- Nothing else at all.
Back on Route 15, I break the rocks that were blocking my way previously and explore this fairly large water route. There's like two whole trainers, as well as another small island that houses the Wild Charge TM. They're really handing these things out, aren't they? I teach it to Crazy Bus and continue onwards to the next shoreline. Here there's a couple swimmers doing sit-ups on the beach, and I get into a double battle with them that's actually somewhat challenging for some reason. Mainly because Aleene dies to basically every single Pokemon she goes up against. Can't wait until that evolution, I've gotta say. Oh, and after the battle, the girl mentions that Pyukumuku keep sticking to her ass. Oh, Gamefreak, you scamps.
After exploring the remainder of this beach and checking for items, I go up the ramp and suddenly it's Route 16. But trust me, not for very long. This is basically about one sixth of the size of Route 15 and is just somehow its own area. In the Pokecenter, I get 20k from showing an Aether person Mimikyu's dex entry, and then elsewhere on the route I crawl underneath a trailer (for some reason you can just do that here) to find the X-Scissor TM. Crazy Bus already knows that, and I prefer Leech Life on the rest of the team that can learn it, so once again, I'll pass. Outside of the trailer are a couple people looking at a group of three Spindas. Spinda's gimmick is that each one has a different pattern, and the people comment on this, saying that they have their own favorites, but the Spindas here all look completely identical, so yeah.
Finally I go inside the trailer, only to be greeted by our good friends Dexio and Sina, the latter of which immediately starts a spiel about Zygarde and the Reassembly Unit. Yeah, that's just kinda here in this trailer. I can use it to combine the Zygarde Cells I've been collecting, and then deconstruct them afterwards if I choose to. At one point Dexio says "Zygarde is said to maintain the order of the Kalos region...then why is it in Alola...? Is it a sign that something is about to happen?", and I have to applaud the game for raising a question and then not answering it. This is slight spoilers, but from what I've heard, Zygarde is never brought up again a single time after this. After they leave, I go ahead and test out the machine, creating a Zygarde 10% Forme (or Zydoge, as I usually call it). Rotom comments on this, saying "You registered a Legendary Pokemon! That's, well, legendary!" I do like how the postgame legendary of X/Y is now just a midgame thing that you can get with no fanfare. Not that it had one in X/Y either, but whatever. Point is, I don't understand what their plans for Zygarde were, because I really doubt that what we got was their original vision.
At this point, I decide to go back and battle the "fight-everyone-else-and-then-you-can-fight-me" trainer on Route 15. This would normally be kind of uninteresting and not worth talking about, and ... it is. But I planned ahead before this battle and made sure that all three of my starters got enough experience to reach Level 34 after the fight, so that means we've got ourselves another triple evolution! Fellana becomes Decidueye, the part-Ghost archer owl, and learns Spirit Shackle, a fairly good Ghost move. El Grapadura becomes Incineroar, the part-Dark wrestler tiger, and learns Darkest Lariat, a fairly good Dark move. And Lena becomes Primarina, the part-Fairy siren seal, and learns Sparkling Aria, a ... rather unimpressive Water move. The problem here is that Spirit Shackle and Darkest Lariat were replacing Shadow Claw and Bite, and was a pretty good upgrade in both cases. They both also have pretty decent side effects - Shackle prevents the opponent from switching, and Lariat ignores the opponent's stat changes. Aria, on the other hand, is replacing Water Pledge, which is only an increase of 10 attack power. Its side effect is that it cures the opponent's burn if it has one, and I can't think of any situation that this would ever be useful unless they have Guts or Facade or something. I mean, I'll take it anyway, but I kinda wish it was a Fairy move instead. Also, I've gotta mention how the first time I did the starter triple evolution, it was in the battle against Sina, and this time it was fairly shortly after talking to her. How ... random.
Since there's nothing else to explore on Route 16, I move on to Ula'ula Meadow. This area is also pretty small, since most of it is not actually explorable for some reason. It's mainly just a series of bridges and like, one patch of flowers that you can go into. In said flowers I catch this island's Oricorio form (Baile Style) and a Ribombee, which is Cutiefly's evolution. On an extremely minor and nitpicky note, I do want to point out here that the Baile Style is usually regarded as the "first" Oricorio form according to the trailer, sites like Serebii, and apparently even the in-game coding (ripped here). This goes against the fact that it's the third one you encounter normally through the course of the game, and it can't be explained from a geographical point either, since going through the islands from east to west also doesn't match the order. I'm fine with this, but the Pokedex in-game actually seems to disagree, and it considers the Pom-Pom Style to be the first one. It's weird, I'm not sure why the two sources disagree, and not knowing the proper order of things annoys me. I don't have this problem with any other Pokemon. Then again, the text dump also lists Minior's Meteor Form seven times whereas the Pokedex only lists it once (which makes sense, since they're identical), so I've got nothin'.
Semantics aside, I clear out the area and then battle the beat-everyone-else trainer, who had a pretty great opening line: "Let me guess. You were wondering what a Golfer would be doing in a meadow like this. If you want an answer to that question, then defeat all of the Trainers in this meadow first." Guess what - there was no answer given. This trainer uses a Flame Orb to trigger his Hariyama's Guts ability, and are you freaking serious. The ONE circumstance where Sparking Aria would actually be useful (kind of... it would just trigger a burn again on the next turn I'm pretty sure) and I don't have Lena in my team. Wow.
Also, apparently I had 49 Zygarde Cells when I reached the Reassembly Unit the first time, because the very next one I collect gives the message that I've now collected 50 of them. I go back to switch my Zydoge to the 50% Forme, and I'll admit, I'm a little confused here. It seems like now that I've collected that many, I have no way to actually form a 10% Forme again. I guess if I have 60 Cells then I can have one of each, but what about when I get all 100? It seems weird to be permanently locked out of the previous form like that. And actually, I know for a fact that the 100 Cell "reward" can also be used on the 10% Forme, so yeah, I'm a bit confused. I guess I'll figure that out later.
On the other end of Ula'ula Meadow, there's two different ways I can go. One leads to Route 17, and the other to the "Lake of the Sunne". I do know the significance of this place (sort of), but for right now it's pretty much useless, just a big empty temple thing. Oh, and it contains the Psyshock TM, which none of my Pokemon can learn. So heading back, I guess I'll go to Route 17 instead. It's raining here, and from what I've read, it's never NOT raining here. So I guess it's a pretty good place to look for Goomy once I'm ready to sit through enough wild encounters to find one (which isn't now). This is basically the road leading up to Po Town, the area completely occupied by Team Skull, and the smattering of Skull Grunts around the area pretty much indicate this. There's a police station here, but it's completely empty aside from about a dozen Meowth. Not sure what that's all about.
The rest of the route is kinda bland. It has a section that kind of ramps up a bit and then has ledges going down, which you'll need to go through multiple times to get all the items. These items include *gasp* another TM, this time for Poison Jab. I teach that to Skeeter just for the sake of type coverage. I also catch an Alolan Graveler here, so that's a thing I guess. Towards the end of the route, I encounter a "grand Grunt" who is no different from any of the previous ones, other than she likes Carnivine a lot but doesn't have one. Alright. There's also some old dude who shows up blocking the entrance to the town, giving me an option to head back if I'm not prepared. He also utters one of the most oddly dark lines in the game so far: "If you don't make it, I'll be sure your remains at least get back home." Jeez, dude. Not only is that kind of over the top for this sort of game, but it's Team Freaking Skull, they're about as dangerous as a bag of lettuce.
In an attempt to wrap things up a bit quicker, I'll spare you all the details and stupid Team Skull quotes that this area has to offer and just hit on some of the highlights:
- The whole area is covered with random graffiti, some of which are just splats. Are we sure this isn't a Splatoon level?
- As soon as I enter the town, a couple of Grunts have a barricade in my way (which is identical to the trial barricades, so either they stole it or this used to be a trial site at one point). To get past it, I crawl through a gigantic and very obvious hole in the hedge off to the side. This same kind of mechanic is used a few times in the area.
- The dialogue in the Pokemon Center is on a whole new level of excellence. I'll just go ahead and put the entire thing here:
When first entering:
Ready for fly rhymes in your ear, yo? ♪ But, yo, what’re you doin’ here, yo? ♪
Yo, it’s darker than Darkrai up in here, yo. ♪ I’m gettin’ scared like I met with a Fearow! ♪
Ain’t nobody around. I’m feelin’ kinda down, ♪ but I’m still holdin’ it down here in Po Town! ♪ Hey, yo, spin it, Spinda!
Spi-spin! ♪ Spi-spi-spin! ♪
When trying to heal:
So listen up, intruder. ♪ She wants money, but it always eludes her! ♪
Team Skull, represent! We can’t pay the rent! ♪ Had a lot of fun, but our youth was misspent! ♪
This Pokémon Center is where we cower, ♪ but we can’t pay bills, so we got no power! ♪
If you give us $10, we will help you out, ♪ by healing your team before your next bout! ♪
When agreeing to be healed:
I knew we could count on you, yo! ♪ Thanks to you, we can make do, yo! ♪
Cash makes us perky. ♪ So even though you were a bit jerky, ♪ I’ll heal up your team so you can do work-y! ♪
Talking to them afterwards:
Team Skull, represent! We never forget! ♪ That’ll be a choice you live to regret! ♪
Since Team Skull started cracking, ♪ I’ve been mad lazy like Slaking! ♪
- There's also a Dead Guy Perez on the floor in one of the buildings, who says "That's enough, Grunt! Back into your Ball!" when you try to talk to him.
- I swear, the awful dialogue doesn't ever end. There's some guy who may or may not be Invisible Jason standing on top of a car who busts out this masterpiece: "One, two, hit THREE sandbag. Four, five, we’re ra-SIX-cals." I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANY OF THIS MEANS.
Yeah, this is getting pretty painful, and there's still a lot more. After getting through that mess, I reach the Shady House, and it just keeps going with more of the same. This is basically a mansion that's been taken over by Team Skull, and is about as wrecked as you'd expect it to be. I didn't know this once I first got in, but apparently the entire reason I had to go through all the stuff I did was because of a chandelier laying on the staircase that I'm incapable of walking around, and also a small stack of cardboard boxes blocking a hallway. More excellent quotes include "I always make sweet pancakes or sweet Berry cakes, yo" and probably a few others I'm skipping over.
While exploring the area, I come across some old passwords that include "Beat Up", "Golisopod", and "Tapu Cocoa". One of the notes also mentions that "a true Team Skull member always butts heads and answers with a hearty 'No!'", and this is surprisingly important later on. Also in the area are the Sludge Bomb TM (really handing these things out like candy lately, but I don't teach this to anyone) and a room with a bunch of Wiimotes and a couple Wii U Gamepads. Team Skull knows what's up, yo. They also seem to be shouting random stuff before fights now (at least I don't think they did before), with one of them sounding like "Dartclaw". I'm talking about actual audio clips here, so I have no idea what he actually said.
I suppose I should also mention the one room that everyone else talks about, too. After going in a certain room, there's a couple of female Grunts arguing about whose shirt is whose. The conversation progresses to "we should write our names on them so we don’t mix them up", which is answered with "Uhmm, hello! Our names are all Grunt. What’s the point?". Ok, I'll admit that's actually pretty funny. They also call me a "cute girl" before the battle, which I'm sure is severely overanalyzed by the community.
Eventually after wading through all this nonsense (taking a moment to walk around on the roof outside in the heavy rain, since that's obviously more reasonable than climbing over some cardboard boxes), I reach Guzma's room. He's apparently been hoarding a bunch of Buginium Z crystals because he wants to be the true Bug master or some crap like that, but he doesn't actually have a Z-Ring of his own because apparently he needed to be handicapped or something? I dunno. But either way, Guzma fight! It went down like this:
I started with Dreemurr against his Golisopod. It used First Impression and Dreemurr went down in one hit. I decided to switch to Lubba and set up a Stealth Rock, since I thought it would come in handy later in the fight. Lubba also went down in one hit, but at least he accomplished what was intended. Next came out Crazy Bus, who I used to paralyze the Golisopod with Thunder Wave and then damage it with Wild Charge. This got it below half of its health, so it was forced to switch out, and Ariados took the entry hazard damage. So far, so good.
I mentioned earlier that Aleene has been failing against most opponents, so I sent her in to try and take out the Ariados with Psychic, but it knew Sucker Punch and that kind of put an end to that plan. She did hang on with 1 HP though, so I was able to switch out to Malone and finish it off while still letting the experience be divided. (After that levelup she learned Giga Drain, which I decided to replace Psychic with for the time being just to see if it does any good.) With the Golisopod back out, it took some more Stealth Rock damage, putting it at about a quarter of its HP. I took this opportunity to revive Dreemurr and then switch him in, in order to get the KO with Breakneck Blitz. After that fight, my entire on-hand team managed to reach Level 36. I like when things work out evenly like that.
With Guzma defeated, he let me take the Yungoos back (which I had actually completely forgotten about at this point), and I snagged a Buginium Z from his pile. Before leaving, I decided to take a seat in his fancy chair, only to trigger a cutscene where a Grunt came in and was all "ur not da boss, wut". I'm not really sure what else I expected. After sitting in it a second time, I got the flavor text "The arms of the chair look like they’ve been slammed countless times by angry fists." My boy Guzma's got a bit of an anger problem, methinks.
After leaving the building, that one angry dude from earlier shows up, and so does Acerola. Apparently this is her uncle, Nanu. He seems to stick around because he's interested in protecting the Pokemon in the area, but tries to disguise this with his hardass attitude. The interaction is fairly standard, but he leaves with the line, "Pokémon tucked up in their Poké Balls, Team Skull locked up in their little town... I wonder if either enjoys the experience?". I found that kinda interesting. Not sure what to say about it really, just interesting. And with that, I'm finally done with this write-up. Overall, I'd just like to say screw Team Skull. I'm kind of astonished they managed to take control of this town, to be honest, but for right now I'm just tired of dealing with them and look forward to seeing less of them.
Current status:
