All the Pokemens

January 25, 2021

Before we start this post, I'd like to note that this is the 300th update to this project! We're 13 pages deep and still less than halfway done even just going by generation count. You've probably already noticed that the generations are getting larger as we get further down the line and that's a trend that's only going to continue. I'd even go so far as to say we're really only halfway through Generation 3. While we only have one more game to go in terms of main series, there's still a couple of extremely significant spinoff titles we'll be spending a loot of time on very soon as well.

While I must say playing through Fire Red and Leaf Green has given me a bit of the burnout I was honestly expecting much earlier in the series, there are a lot of upcoming titles I'm still very much excited to get to and we'll be over this hill before we know it! I'm honestly surprised I've yet to totally get tired of this idea and I hope to continue at a consistent pace going forward!

Anyway, with this little celebratory message here, I think it's time to get back into the action of Fire Red!

===============

One Island -- Kindle Road (Ember Spa)

Returning to One Island, I made my way up Kindle Road and got the HM for Rock Smash from the Spa halfway down the road.

I taught Rock Smash to Lemon the Psyduck, the same pokemon I gave Strength to. With Lemon's aide, we should be able to climb Mt. Ember and reach the location of our final legendary bird!

================

Mt. Ember

Once again, there's not much new to talk about here, save for the fact that Magmar is obviously absent from the base of the mountain in Fire Red as well as Kindle Road itself. Other than that, this location is entirely unchanged.

At the summit, of course, we'll run into our target!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Wing Attack, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Pikachu M); Lv. 47

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Quick Attack, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Kadabra F); Lv. 47

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 46*

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Onix M); Lv. 46

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Dig, Iron Tail, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Seadra M); Lv. 47

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Surf, Twister, Agility, Ice Beam

------------------------

*Absent in place of HM user

==================

Wild Moltres Lv. 50

I think I should start this section by mentioning that this was, by far, the most difficult time I've had catching a legendary pokemon in this series so far and I honestly could not tell you why. It took me five tries of using all or most of my 37 Ultra Balls, sometimes even my 17 Great Balls, 13 Pokeballs and even Nest Ball as well. This thing just absolutely refused to stay in a ball! I had to reset several times to get this thing to battle me.

As always, I led off with Yellow against the legendary and would usually go for Thunder Wave to paralyze it. Moltres can't outspeed me, but it can one-shot me with Flamethrower. This actually forks my strategy a bit. Sometimes, Moltres won't hit Yellow with a Flamethrower on turn 1 either because it went for another move or because it was fully paralyzed. This can allow me to get a Thunderbolt in as well which already reduces its health down to a comfortable catching range (or, what should be, anyway...) On lucky attempts, I may even be able to sneak in a few Brick Breaks to further chip away at Moltres' health before I start throwing Ultra Balls. However, typically Yellow will just get taken down by a Flamethrower. If this is the case, my plan B comes into play.

I first send out Gray to hit Moltres with a Rock Slide. Gray can take a single Flamethrower from Moltres without going down. On a lucky streak, I can evade further damage and heal off enough damage with my Leftovers to avoid getting KO'd by the next Flamethrower. That's rather difficult, though, because Fire Spin will undo any healing from Leftovers and there's always the risk of getting burned by Flamethrower as well. Additionally, Rock Slide really just does about the same damage as Yellow's ThunderBolt thanks to Gray's low attack stat. That means it's not going to be as easy further reducing Moltres' HP. Having to use Gray to reduce Moltres' health is undesirable for these reasons, but it's not a terrible option if Yellow went down before getting a ThunderBolt.

Once Moltres' HP is reduced, my strat is to just use the typical stall tactics to catch it while hopefully baiting out all the PP for its only particularly powerful move: Flamethrower. All the while, I throw Ultra Ball after Ultra Ball in an attempt to catch Moltres. I'll intentionally save Seadra for last since he has the most potential to stay alive the longest, and if I can avoid sending Gray out early in the battle, I'll use him just before Kingdra. Since both of these pokemon have Leftovers, lucky strings can get them to heal off enough damage to protect against an additional Flamethrower each. There was the occasional turn where Moltres would go 20+ turns without using Flamethrower, leaving me convinced he was out of PP, before he suddenly, out of the blue, decides to start using it again.

Eventually, after several attempts, I was finally able to capture this thing! I'm honestly shocked it took me so long as most other legendaries throughout this series I was able to capture on my first attempt and Moltres definitely didn't give me any trouble in Leaf Green! Regardless, I finally caught it and named it Blaze. And with that, we can return to Kanto for one last gym battle!

===============

Viridian City

We fly back to Viridian City, I actually only just realized I accidentally forgot to explore the route between Cinnabar and Pallet Town, but there's really not much of interest there. After Moltres took far longer than I expected, I just wanted to take out the next gym and be done.

================

Viridian Gym

This gym is a ground gym and the trainers here mostly use ground-types, but there are really a variety of pokemon types here including Ground, Normal, Poison, and Fighting as well thanks to the Blackbelts and Tamers all around. It took a varity of team members to make it through here, though Ivory, Ch'ding and Blue were of particular note.

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Wing Attack, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Pikachu M); Lv. 47

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Quick Attack, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Kadabra F); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 48

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Onix M); Lv. 47

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Dig, Iron Tail, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Seadra M); Lv. 48

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Surf, Twister, Agility, Ice Beam

==================

Viridian Gym Leader Giovanni

-------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 45

I led with Blue who was able to easily take out Giovanni's lead Rhyhorn.

-----------------------

Dugtrio Lv. 42

Surf took care of Dugtrio easily as well...

----------------------

Nidoqueen Lv. 44

Nidoqueen... too....

----------------------

Nidoking Lv. 45

....and same with Nidoking. His final pokemon?

----------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 50

...another Rhyhorn.

------------------------

MVP: Blue

Once again, MVP is rather indisputable here. It goes to Blue without a question!

===============

Yeah... again, I can't believe how absurdly easy Giovanni's team is, especially coming right off of a gym that adamantly requires you to have unlimited access to a powerful Water-type attack to even reach. His team has no outs to so much as a single water-type at all. The only thing remotely dangerous about his team is that, if you somehow fail to one-shot any of his pokemon, they can hit you with a powerful Earthquake.

Funnily enough, if you come at his Dugtrio with a pokemon in the Ghastly line, his Dugtrio can't even touch it at all! In fact, aside from his Nidoking and Nidoqueen's Poison Sting, the only pokemon that can touch the Ghastly line are his Rhyhorn with Rock Blast! Considering Ghastly can learn Giga Drain, as well, you can also consider Ghastly a hard counter to Giovanni's entire team and I find that to be absolutely hilarious. I guess my little theory about him taking pokemon training seriously after battling with you was a bit of an exaggeration, but I can headcanon what I want, dammit!

Yeah, I can't say I'm totally surprised, but it turns out that Moltres actually wound up being the much more difficult task and I probably should have handled these tasks in the opposite order, but I thought it would be much more thematically appropriate to end this post with our final gym badge rather than begin with that. It's just unfortunate the battle itself was rather anticlimactic. But, who knows, the gym battles are just baby talk for the challenges that still lie ahead! And we're still not quite as close to the end as we would be in Gen 1! Next time, I suppose we'll make our way to the Indigo Plateau!

January 26, 2021

Route 21

Before we continue from where we last left off, I quickly returned to Route 21 to battle the trainers I missed there. There wasn't a whole lot to worry about, but every bit helps!

===============

Route 22

After that, it was back to Route 22 to battle with Blue once again! That is, not before teaching Earthquake to Gray, of course!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Wing Attack, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Pikachu M); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Quick Attack, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Kadabra F); Lv. 48

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 48

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Onix M); Lv. 48

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Earthquake, Iron Tail, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Seadra M); Lv. 49

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Surf, Twister, Agility, Ice Beam

==================

Rival #7

----------------------

Pidgeot Lv. 47

Right off the bat, things weren't looking great with this matchup. I was able to take out Pidgeot, but it took several hits to accomplish with Rock Slide where I was honestly expecting just a couple.

---------------------

Blastoise Lv. 53

It completely caught me off guard to see his Blastoise out so soon, but it was really his best out to Gray, so it make sense in hindsight. I was expecting a strong water attack, but this was the point where I realized I had a critical lack of specially defensive pokemon on this team. My best switch-in to take the hit was probably Blue, but there wasn't much Blue could do to a Blastoise's defenses.

I ultimately retreated into Kadabra who I figured could take a special hit better than anyone else on my team. It turned out I was worried about nothing because this Blastoise just hit me with Water Gun of all things. Still, it did an uncomfortable amount of damage and from there, Bite was a two-hit KO. I was only able to get Blastoise down to the red with Kadabra.

I brought out Yellow and Blue healed off his Blastoise with a Hyper Potion. I took the opportunity to hit him with a Thunderbolt to bring his health right back down and on the next turn finally took him out!

-----------------------

Rhyhorn Lv. 45

I yet again made the noob mistake of anticipating a ground-type attack from a Rhyhorn that doesn't have any.

Ch'ding ended up switching right into a Take Down from this guy, completely crippling Ch'ding's potential usefulness for the rest of the battle. Still, figuring I might still get some use out of him, I decided to retreat.

Blue was met with another Take Down which wound up getting Rhyhorn poisoned thanks to Poison Point! From here, Surf was able to flush it out!

----------------------

Exeggcute Lv. 45

Exeggcute couldn't stand a chance against Blue's Ice Beam and ended up going down immediately.

-----------------------

Alakazam Lv. 47

Alakazam took a Surf but was able to overpower me with Psychic and finish Blue off.

I brought Ch'ding back out but I just wasn't able to outspeed Alakazam and ended up going down rather quickly.

I brought out Gray. In hindsight, this was a terrible choice since Alakazam could clearly outspeed me and take me out, especially with the accumulated damage from Pidgeot. Thankfully, Alakazam went for Future Sight. And after poking around on bulbapedia for a bit between sessions, I actually came to understand why the AI does this whenever they could easily take me out with a Psychic. I don't think I ever fully understood how Future Sight works, but apparently the damage it deals is calculated the turn the move is selected, rather than the turn the move connects. This is significant because if you use it against a pokemon like Onix, you can guarantee heavy damage on the next pokemon that comes into play regardless of how high their special defense is. This explains why the move dealt so much damage sometimes in previous games. I honestly can't believe I never picked up on this until now. If you're in a bad defensive matchup against a pokemon with Future Sight, it might be a good idea to retreat immediately so that they end up wasting their Furture Sight on a pokemon it won't get much damage off of! I can definitely see the competitive viability of such a move now!

Anyway, thanks to the Future Sight, I was able to nearly take out Alakazam with an Earthquake. I thought I was doomed now, but he decided to go for another Future Sight! Now, this is an AI loop I don't think I'll ever understand but I'll take it and finish Alakazam off with Earthquake!

--------------------

Growlithe Lv. 45

At this point, the battle was over. A single Earthquake won me the game!

----------------------

Man, I gotta say, though we ended up winning, this battle does not bode well at all for the battles up ahead. I've really gotta work on some serious strategies for my team if I want to do well against the Elite Four. It doesn't help that, in all honestly, this is probably my weakest team yet. I'll be totally honest and say that a lot of my pokemon have been kinda screwed with bad natures from the start and it's not until the next generation where you can still kind of work with odd natures. But my Onix has a plus in special attack while my Pikachu has a minus in Speed and my Seadra has a minus in Special Attack despite being probably my most consistently helpful pokemon. I suppose one thing that's definitely not going to help is the fact that all but two pokemon on my team aren't even fully evolved yet. And one of those two is a Farfetch'd who I think I've already noted has started to really show how poorly his stats hold up against pokemon his level by the endgame.

Thankfully, we'll be ready to evolve some of these pokemon real soon and hopefully that'll be enough to help us comfortably defeat the Elite Four. We're also about to pick up some nice new moves to finalize some of our movesets!

===================

Route 23

So, I made my way along Route 23 and finally entered the final challenge standing between us and the Indigo Plateau: Victory Road!

==============

Victory Road

First of all, right off the bat, I got TM02: Dragon Claw from the first room and taught it to Apollo in place of Wing Attack. There are very few opportunities to use Wing Attack. Aside from types that are also covered by Fire, it's only strong against Fighting which I'm already well-equipped to handle given my Flying type and strong special attacks. On the other hand, Dragon Claw is only resisted by Steel, which is already covered by Fire, and might prove itself useful against Lance. In addition to all of that, if I desperately need a physical attack, I still have Steel Wing!

-------------------------

While exploring the caves of Victory Road, I found a handful of Arbok, so I naturally caught one and named it Noire.

-----------------------

Battling my way through the tough foes here, Yellow finally reached level 50 which allowed it to learn Light Screen! Did I need to do this? Probably not, I could have just as easily taught it Light Screen by TM and saved the hassle of keeping it a Pikachu all this time, but even as a Pikachu, Yellow's been significantly helpful! I decided to replace Quick Attack because, though Quick Attack undoubtedly has its uses, those uses have become quite niche and I haven't been using the move effectively very much. It just doesn't do enough damage to reliably KO a pokemon low on HP. Light Screen might help me protect my team from its significant weakness to special attacks and may even buy Yellow another turn!

As you've probably pieced together by my phrasing in that last paragraph, no, it was never my intention to keep Yellow a Pikachu throughout the entire game as some sort of reference to Pokemon Yellow or anything like that. I'm actually a big fan of Raichu and Raichu doesn't get a whole lot of love these days! This is one of the last gens Raichu is actually all-around better than Pikachu. Hopefully with its boosted stats, it'll be able to take a few more hits and its reduced speed growth won't hurt it too much!

===================

The final significant change to my team came from the Move Tutor at the end who taught Gray to use Double-Edge over Iron Tail. Now, this may come as a bit of a surprise since, once it evolves, Iron Tail will be stronger than Double-Edge with STAB. However, Iron Tail will be no stronger than Earthquake which will continue to get STAB and, in most cases that I could use Iron Tail, I'll just end up using Earthquake or, if Earthquake won't effect, than I'll end up using Rock Slide instead which, in most cases, will be super-effective because the opponent is a Flying-type. Granted, once Gray evolves, Rock Slide won't have STAB anymore and will be doing even less damage than it did against Blue's Pidgeot. Still, in spite of all of that, Iron Tail only has 70% accuracy which heavily discourages me from using it most of the time. On the other hand, Double-Edge is 100% accurate and still has a very respectable 120 base power. I also don't have to worry about the heavy recoil downside because of Gray's Rock Head ability which prevents recoil damage! All in all, though it's not quite as cleanly matching to his type as I'd like, I think this decision is for the best overall.

=================

And with that, we have once again arrived at the Indigo Plateau! I'm still honestly rather nervous about how well my team will be doing, but it's still not quite complete. In fact, we're not actually going to be doing the Elite Four in the next post. Instead, we're going to be focusing on filling out our pokedex in the most time-efficient way I can think of!

January 27, 2021

So, we've made it to the Indigo Plateau but, as I mentioned last time, we're not actually going to be taking on the Elite Four this time around. Instead, we'll be focusing our efforts in building our Pokedex up enough so that we can get the National Dex at the start of the postgame so that we can jump right into the Sevii Islands.

Last time, I ended on the note that I had an idea for how we might be able to accomplish this in the most time-efficient way I could think of. Well, when I started this playthrough, my original intent was to just run around the wild and catch a bunch of pokemon at random, but then I'd just be catching a bunch of pokemon I already had in Leaf Green. I figured there was a way I could kill not one, not two or even three, but four birds with one stone today! Okay, well, we'll be killing one bird but injuring the wings of three others so that they're a bit easier to take out later... wow, okay, I don't think I've ever considered how cruel that idiom sounds...

So far, I think you probably have an idea of where I'm going with this. If you recall, I still have one more pokemon that can evolve right now: Ivory! Kadabra happens to evolve by trade. So, I figured, while I'm trading to evolve Ivory, why don't I also trade over some pokemon from Leaf Green that require evolution to obtain their final forms?

And so, from Leaf Green, I traded over Leaves the Caterpie, Sting the Weedle, Sky the Pidgey, Lake the Dratini, and Mercury the Squirtle which I traded over at the very start of my Fire Red playthrough!

I'm aware that I do already have a Pidgey and a Dratini, but I didn't their evolutions registered and they'll level up faster if traded over. By leveling up and fully evolving these five pokemon, along with evolving Kadabra, this should put me at exactly 60 pokemon registered in my pokedex. I tried to lean toward pokemon that I already had the second stage of in Leaf Green but, as it turns out, there weren't many of these. The only ones I had were Metapod, Kakuna and Pidgeotto, so I had to improvise a bit with the Dratini and Squirtle. Granted, I'll need to evolve these last two pokemon again in Leaf Green to get their middle stages registered in the pokedex, but it'll be easier to level them up to their middle stages than their final ones. That said, there was still another factor I hadn't yet considered which we'll get to in just a bit.

So there's two of those birds, so what about the other ones? Well, for bird #3, I went ahead and traded over some of my Fire Red exclusives in exchange for that pokedex fodder. This will help our pokedex count in both games tremendously! Of course, we'll still need to trade over more version exclusives later on, but getting a small head-start isn't gonna hurt anyone!

After going through these trades, Ivory was finally fully evolved into Alakazam!

As for the last bird? Well, there's a certain key item I mentioned a long time ago that I'd cover in more detail later on. I was planning on putting this item to use later on, but I figured now was as good a time as any.

The Key Item I am referring to is the Vs. Seeker!

This item isn't really all that special, but it does grant us access to repeated trainer battles and some special unique rematches with certain trainers. I've explained its basic functionality previously, but now I'll go into more detail about how it actully works.

Simply put, all you have to do is use the item while a trainer you've previously battled is on screen. The trainer will respond to it with either an X or a !! over their head. If they have !!'s over their head, they'll start raising their hands in the air and some will jump in the air.

As usual, credit goes to Bulbapedia for this gif!

There's actually some really cute attention to detail here. Athletic trainers will jump in the air trying to get your attention while older trainers like Gamblers will simply raise a hand in the air. After playing the game looking at the same old sprites with minimal animation, it's pretty surprising to see them spring to life like this!

Not every trainer will rematch you whenever you want, obviously. Sometimes they can decline. As far as I can tell, whether or not they'll accept or decline is entirely up to chance. What's a bit frustrating about this is that there are some limitations to how the Vs Seeker works. For one, it only affects any trainers that are currently onscreen and sometimes, even after responding to the Vs Seeker initially, the trainer will just randomly stop jumping even if you make a beeline straight to them. In general, though, they'll remain prepared for a rematch until you've left the area, or have taken 100 steps. You can battle as many as you want in the meantime! So, I recommend trying to get as many trainers on screen as you can at once so that you can get the most use out of your Vs. Seeker.

Unfortunately, if the trainer you want to rematch in particular declines, things are slightly more complicated than just using the Vs Seeker again. This is because, for some reason completely unknown to me, the Vs Seeker has a battery that needs to be charged by taking 100 steps between uses. (The previously mentioned 100 step limit means that your Vs Seeker will by fully charged again by the time everyone loses interest, so that particular limitation isn't too much of an issue). This is just another pointless limitation that I'm really not sure why they bothered to add considering all it takes is a few quick laps around the Vs Seeker fully charged again.

Now, unlike Ruby and Sapphire, you can actually rematch any trainer you want in this game, as long as they're outdoors! However, most of these rematches will be identical to their original battles. Still, there are certain specific trainers around the world who will train their team up and battle you with higher level, and even evolved pokemon, just like in Ruby and Sapphire! Sometimes, you a trainer will only have one rematch team and sometimes they'll have multiple tiers. Their rematches may require you to reach certain milestones in story progress such as obtain certain gyms or entering the Hall of Fame. (That later limitation was what previously had me considering waiting a bit longer to do this, but I figured it wasn't too terribly important.)

If you want information on which trainers can have special teams for rematches, I recommend checking out each route on Bulbapedia and check the rematches section under the list of trainers from Fire Red and Leaf Green. This way you don't have to painstakingly rematch every single trainer in the entire game to figure it out. I should also mention that the Vs Seeker only works outdoors, so trainers in caves or gyms will never rematch you.

And so, I did just this. I started from Route 3, the first route with any noteworthy rematches, and retraced my steps across the Kanto taking on every upgraded team on the way. All the while using Exp Shares to power up some of these weaker pokemon.

By the time I was finished with this little journey, the pokemon I'd traded over were mostly fully evolved, though I did have to put a little bit of extra grinding in the end to evolve Pidgeotto into Pidgeot. Clever observers may notice that Dragonair isn't actually fully evolved... that's where that last mistake I'd realized I made with this decision. Dragonair doesn't actually evolve until Level 55 which is actually higher level than my party. In addition, I actually came to recall that you don't actually have to evolve Dragonair at all in order to get a Gen 3 Dragonite! But, if I didn't evolve this Dragonair, I'd be stuck with only 59 pokemon in the pokedex and that just wouldn't do. I could easily solve this by dropping into Victory Road and picking up a Geodude or Machop or something, but I wanted to do something that would actually be useful for my overall goal, so I returned to the PC to take a look at my options.

This was when I notice Peach the Exeggcute and Amethyst the Nidorino! These were both pokemon I already had in Leaf Green, so evolving them here wouldn't waste any time! In addition, I could evolve them right now without needing to grind or anything!

And so, I used a Leaf Stone and Moon Stone on Exeggcute and Nidorino respectively to evolve them into Exeggutor and Nidoking respectively! With this, I now had 61 pokemon registered in the pokedex meaning I was ready for the postgame!

===================

In addition, my team is finally as complete as it can possibly be at this point in the game! As an added bonus to my method of evolving all those pokemon from before, they're also a bit stronger, making them somewhat more prepared for the challenges ahead. They're now mostly level 52 with Apollo at 53. If I recall correctly, my team was around level 50-51 at this point in Leaf Green. I'm still pretty confident the Elite Four are going to be a bit awkward in some places, but I can't go around doubting myself forever. We're definitely going to pull through! Next time, this team will be entering the Hall of Fame!

January 28, 2021

Indigo Plateau

Well, it's finally time to take on the Elite Four with my newly evolved team!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 53

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Dragon Claw, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Raichu M); Lv. 52

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Light Screen, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Alakazam F); Lv. 52

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 52

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Onix M); Lv. 52

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Earthquake, Double Edge, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Seadra M); Lv. 52

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Surf, Twister, Agility, Ice Beam

==================

Elite Four #1: Lorelei

--------------------------

Dewgong Lv. 52

Dewgong nearly went down to a single ThunderBolt. It survived but just went for Safeguard, so I was able to finish it off on the next turn with no lasting damage.

------------------------

Cloyster Lv. 51

Cloyster went down to a single ThunderBolt thanks to its lower special defense.

------------------------

Slowbro Lv. 52

Slowbro probably would have been able to take a Thunderbolt, but I got a lucky crit to take him out in one!

------------------------

Lapras Lv. 54

Lapras was able to take a couple of Thunderbolts, but wasn't able to take Yellow out in time.

----------------------

Jynx Lv. 54

Jynx was finally able to take out Yellow, but it was a bit too little too late.

With Apollo next, I was able to take out Jynx with ease to end the battle with Lorelei.

------------------------

MVP: Yellow

=================

Elite Four #2: Bruno

-----------------------

Onix Lv. 51

I led off with Blue and dealing with Onix couldn't be easier.

-----------------------

Hitmonchan Lv. 53

I wasn't too terribly afraid of anything this Hitmonchan could do to me, so I stayed in and hit it with some Surfs to try and take it out. However, its physical attacks wound up racking up a lot more damage than I was honestly expecting.

I switched into Ivory expecting the favorable matchup to cover for my low defense. Unfortunately, Hitmonchan's Sky Uppercut critted and dealt a huge chunk of my HP. Thankfully, though, Alakazam is fast enough that this ultimately didn't mean anything.

-----------------------

Hitmonlee Lv. 53

Psychic was more than enough to take care of Hitmonlee

--------------------

Onix Lv. 54

There was no need to switch out against Onix, so I took it out with Psychic as well.

---------------------

Machamp Lv. 56

Finally, Psychic made quick work of Machamp as well.

----------------------

MVP: Ivory

==================

Elite Four #3: Agatha

-----------------------

Gengar Lv. 54

I led with Ivory this time and, once again, Psychic was all that was needed to take out Gengar.

---------------------

Golbat Lv. 54

Golbat was the same story.

-----------------------

Arbok Lv. 56

...And Arbok...

----------------------

Gengar Lv. 58

Not even her stronger Gengar could stand up against Ivory's Psychic.

------------------------

Haunter Lv. 53

And if I could take out her Gengar, then you know I can take out her Haunter as well.

-------------------------

MVP: Ivory

A clean sweep with Ivory! As long as you have a fast Psychic type pokemon, Agatha's entire team is a total joke in this game, honestly.

===============

Elite Four #4: Lance

-------------------------

Gyarados Lv. 56

Of course, you always wanna lead with an Electric-type to deal with Lance's Gyarados lead!

--------------------

Dragonair Lv. 54

Against Dragonair, I set up Light Screen while he set up Safeguard. Then, I retreated because I had some much more favorable matchups.

Under the protection of Light Screen, I brought out Blue who was able to defend against Dragonair's Outrage. With an Agility and a couple of Ice Beams, Dragonair went down!

-------------------------

Dragonair Lv. 54

Rince and repeat with the next Dragonair, though this one was able to hit me with a Thunder Wave which unfortunately crippled Blue's usefulness for this battle.

-------------------------

Aerodactyl Lv. 58

While this would have been a rather favorable matchup, I decided to switch out due to my paralysis.

In his place, I brought out Gray who was the best defensive matchup against this Aerodactyl's attacks. All it could do was hit me with Wing Attack, so I took it out with a couple of Rock Slides.

------------------------

Dragonite Lv. 60

Naturally, this battle didn't end very smoothly. I tried to go for Rock Slide since a switchout really didn't seem all that worth it.

With Yellow, I set up Light Screen and followed up with Thunder Wave before finally getting taken down with Outrage.

With Dragonite paralyzed, I normally would be bringing out Blue to finish the fight, but with blue paralyzed, too, and without its Speed boost from Agility, I was pretty confident Dragonite would be outspeeding him. Instead, I brought out Apollo and, with Light Screen as my armor, started hammering away with some super-effective Dragon Claws! After some struggling with Full Restores, Dragonite was eventually able to outlast Apollo.

This was fine, though, because it turns out Alakazam's Psychic was able to deal more damage than Charizard's Dragon Claw, so I was able to catch Lance off guard with some extra damage for the KO!

================

And now it was time to take on our final opponent at the Pokemon League: Our rival, Champion Blue!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 53

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Dragon Claw, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Raichu M); Lv. 53

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Light Screen, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Alakazam F); Lv. 53

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 52

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Onix M); Lv. 52

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Earthquake, Double Edge, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Seadra M); Lv. 54

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Surf, Twister, Agility, Ice Beam

==================

Vs. Champion Rival #8

While I've had a relatively easy time with the Elite Four up until now, this particular battle turned out to be a massive problem! It took me several attempts to win this one. I'm not going to cover all the failed attempts, but I'll mention what problems I faced and my various strategies to solving them.

Pidgeot Lv. 59

The Pidgeot lead is always simple enough. Usually, I'd use Thunderbolt to bring him down to red, he'd heal, then I'd use Thunderbolt again to bring him back down to red. On the next turn, instead of healing, he'd usually anticipate my Thunderbolt and retreat into Rhydon. I tried reading this by using Brick Break instead of Thunderbolt the second time Pidgeot was low on HP, but Brick Break didn't do much to Rhydon on switch-in to really change anything. Another time, in anticipation of the switch, I tried to bring out Blue, but, of course, that one time he decided to stay in and attack instead! That led to a very strange and obtuse order that nearly helped me win, but unfortunately Blue's Arcanine wound up getting a lucky burn and KOing one of my pokemon early later on, causing my loss.

Anyway, on my winning attempt, I planned to try that same strat, retreating into Blue in order to see what would happen. However, I ended up critting Pidgeot on the second Thunderbolt which, in the moment, was actually pretty bad because I'd much rather have gotten that switch strategy off. So far, any timeline where Rhyhorn came out second was a losing timeline for me...

===============

Rhydon Lv. 59

So, why was I so afraid of this Rhydon? Well, keep in mind that I'm playing on Set mode and this thing has nothing it wants to go for other than Earthquake. Looking at my team, a free switch on Earthquake is a pretty easy move since I have two Flying types. However, both of those options happen to be dead-ends with this matchup as Rhydon can simply hit them both with Rock Tomb and neither of them are capable of taking that. I also don't have any good switches from there that aren't also weak to Earthquake.

My strat for handling Rhydon at this point was always to just send out Ch'ding and go for Fury Cutter. Why Fury Cutter? Well, it does less damage that Slash due to its low power, but I actually had one round where I had some incredible luck against Rhydon. Due to Rock Tomb missing over and over, I was able to hit him with several Slashes in a row. I'm pretty confident had I been using Fury Cutter all that time, I may have actually been able to KO him! So, on the offchance that I can get that kind of insane luck again, I started using Fury Cutter instead of Slash here. Every other time, though, he'd just hit me with Rock Tomb and take out Ch'ding in one hit. Ch'ding hasn't had a good opportunity to get in any screentime this entire challenge and let's just say there's a reason for that. Using Ch'ding as a meat shield for switch-outs is pretty much the best help he can offer at this point. Sorry, buddy!

It's here that Blue could do his part to take out Rhydon with a Surf. But that's just one of my rival's many troublesome pokemon. And these pokemon are too high level to rely on just a couple really strong pokemon like I've been doing up to this point.

==============

Exeggutor Lv. 61

This is another predictable move that can easily be countered with a switch. Thankfully, doing so doesn't leave me in nearly as awkward of a situation!

Exeggutor will always go for Giga Drain against Blue, so I'll retreat into Apollo to quad-resist that attack and pay it back with a powerful Flamethrower! This isn't enough to KO Exeggutor and this will buy him one extra move. He usually likes to go for Egg Bomb. On my winning run, I actually got a lucky burn here reducing the damage of Egg Bomb! This saved damage didn't actually matter in the end, though, but it did leave me feeling a bit more secure.

================

Blastoise Lv. 63

Now this is where the awkward really starts. Blue likes to send out his Blastoise to counter my Charizard. Obviously, I can't just leave Charizard out here, but I tried all sorts of switches. Blastoise's Hydro Pump just deals far too much damage to everything on my team! The only pokemon that resists it is Blue. The best Blue can do, though, is hope to Freeze Blastoise with Ice Beam. I actually got this lucky chance off once, but Blastoise just thawed out right away. Yellow could take a single Hydro Pump but wouldn't be left with enough HP to hit Blastoise with the two Thunderbolts necessary for the KO. The only one who could take Hydro Pumps well and still stay in was Ivory. But unfortunately, Blastoise also knows Bite which can take out Ivory after Hydro Pump softens him up. This Blastoise was the biggest run killer on Blue's team. While it wouldn't kill me on its own, it would leave me in such a crippled state that I'd have no outs to the remainder of his team.

So, what was my winning strategy?

I started out by bringing in Blue the Seadra to take a Hydro Pump and then get Blastoise to start using Bite. Then...

Out comes Yellow! Switching in on Bite is much easier. From here, I can set up Light Screen before getting hit by a Hydro Pump to protect myself better! From here, ThunderBolt was able to get Blastoise do around 1/2 health before Yellow gets brought to low health with Hydro Pump forcing me to retreat.

Ivory comes up next, still under the protection of Light Screen, and... fails to take out Blastoise. This is an unfortunate damage range issue, but this bad luck was complimented by some good luck! I got the Special Defense Drop on Blastoise! So, while Blastoise's special defense was lowered, Psychic now became a two-hit KO instead of a three-hit! This is significant because I was now able to take out Blastoise without taking any damage at all! Blastoise, aware of Light Screen decided to set up Rain Dance to deal some extra damage with Hydro Pump. I knew that this was a huge choke on his part because rain would be his downfall!

It was too early to celebrate, though. Coming up were some of Blue's most difficult pokemon for me to out.

===============

Arcanine Lv. 59

If Ivory stays in on this matchup, he'll just get taken out with Extremespeed. So...

I switched in Gray! Extremespeed hardly did anything and, under the protection of the last turn of Rain Dance, his Flamethrower was near useless as well! In hindsight, I definitely should have switched into Blue instead, but this was the strat I had decided on trying ahead of time before taking the rain into consideration and it was a bit too late when I realized the mistake. Still, this small mistake ultimately didn't matter. All I needed to do was reduce Arcanine's health by a decent chunk and a couple of Earthquakes from Gray did just that! Once the rain cleared up, Arcanine was able to take out Gray, but that was just fine because I'd be retreating.

I brought Blue back out and endured a couple of Flamethrowers before taking Arcanine out with a Surf attack!

=================

Alakazam Lv. 57

Don't be fooled by its relatively low level, this Alakazam was probably the most difficult foe to deal with. Usually, by the time I got down to it, this Alakazam was just too fast and powerful for all my crippled pokemon to take care of. I stayed in and went for Ice Beam in hopes of coincidentally freezing it but, again, no dice. Alakazam went for Future Sight of all things which actually made a lightbulb go off in my head. Now that I know how Future Sight works... I decided to stay in for now and go for another Ice Beam. Predictably, Alakazam hit me with Psychic to take me out.

Next came Yellow who was low on HP as well. Yellow took his turn to set up Light Screen, but naturally was outsped by Alakazam and taken out instead.

I then sent out Gray who took the Future Sight attack which, since it used the Special defense of Blue for damage calculation, didn't do nearly as much as a regular attack. Kadabra saw this as an opportunity to set up another, much more powerful Future Sight... He doesn't know it yet, but this is Checkmate. I hit him with an Earthquake before he took me out with a Psychic.

I then brought out Ivory and went for Seismic Toss. He hit me with Psychic which I survived and his Future Sight took me out.

Finally, out came Apollo who was not only able to outspeed Alakazam, but was able to deal enough damage with Blast Burn to get the KO before Blue was in the range to heal! And with that, we finally succeeded in defeating the champion and entering our team into the hall of fame!!

------------------------

MVP: Yellow

Yellow's Light Screen played a huge role in keeping my pokemon alive against Blue's Blastoise and if I didn't have so much to work with, I don't think I would have been able to take him out!

I must say this was an incredibly difficult champion battle! I had to try so many weird strategies to see what could and couldn't work and it did take a little bit of luck even, but I made it! I'm definitely going to have to be less careless with my team selection going forward. The better pokemon on my team definitely carried me throughout this whole ordeal, though!

================

And so, our team gets registered in the Hall of Fame and we've become the champion of Kanto once again!

And then the credits roll! The credits between Fire Red and Leaf Green are identical so there's not much to talk about in that regard.

Just like before, we're not quite done though! We've got the postgame content to cover and there are a few version exclusive pokemon to find in the Sevii Islands! A few notes, I can't guarantee I'll be too worried about the Elite Four rematches this time around. It was already tough with my team in Leaf Green and, even with the evolutions, I'm a little doubtful my team here will be capable of performing very well. Still, at least right now I do intend to give the rematches a shot.

This definitely is not the best team I've ever put together. I honestly just kind of lazily threw together a bunch of pokemon that I'd yet to use because I wanted a more challenging run and I kind of underestimated how difficult that would make the genuinely difficult parts of the game. Anyway, since I've used all these pokemon, that means there's no reason for me to ever use them again! I consider that a win! So, next time, we'll be nabbing that national pokedex and venturing onto the Sevii Islands! Don't worry, this whole process will defintiely be faster than the first time around!

January 29, 2021

Fire Red Postgame

Now that we've finished the main story in Fire Red, there's a little bit more we can do! Of course, with our 60 pokemon, we'll get our national dex as soon as we boot up our save. With this, we can finally evolve Gray and Blue!

But wait, we still need to get a Metal Coat and Dragon Scale...

...Or do we?

Yeah, so I suppose it's technically against the rules I typically follow, but when I traded those pokemon over for pokedex purposes, before, there was also one more bird I took out in the shadows. I actually slipped a Metal Coat and Dragon Scale onto two of them so that I could evolve Gray and Blue as soon as I got the National Dex. I figured this wouldn't be a very big deal since I'm about to get these items anyway, but trading them over allows these two pokemon to get a bit more screentime than they would otherwise. Screentime which I'm actually very concerned about now that I've actually gotten to this point and realize... there's really not much at all to do left in the game. Anyway, I wanted to give these two pokemon as much time to shine as I possibly could, so here it is! I hooked Fire Red and Leaf Green up together to trade once again!

With the power of the Metal Coat, Gray finally evolved into a Steelix making him a much more competent defensive tank! He gains a weakness to fire where he previously resisted it, but in return also gains all sorts of resistances thanks to his Steel tying!

But if you want to talk about Defensive Upgrades, look no further than Blue! With the help of the Dragon Scale, he was able to evolve into a Kingdra! I've explained it in Gold and Silver, but I'll say it again here. Kingdra is rather infamous during this period in Pokemon because the Dragon type it gains covers all of the Water type's weaknesses while Water covers one of Dragon's two weaknesses. In other words, while Kingdra doesn't resist much, its only weakness is Dragon which, while a bit more common here than in Gen 2, is still an incredibly rare type.

In addition to Kingdra's beautiful defensive typing, it drops Seadra's Poison Point in favor of returning to Horsea's Swift Swim, meaning it can also become extremely fast in the rain! I no longer have a need for Agility and can instead teach it Rain Dance by TM!

===================

Now then, with all the preparations made, we set out for One Island to begin our quest!

Of course, our first objective is to head to Mt. Ember in search of the Ruby.

There really isn't anything of interesting between here and there since we already have Slugma in Leaf Green, so we just kind of run through this dungeon, grab the Ruby and skedaddle.

========================

After returning the Ruby to Celio and getting the Rainbow Pass, we make our way to Four Island. It's here where we'll actually be seeking out our first new pokemon, but it's not the Wooper we can catch in the water, that's for a later bit!

We head straight to Icefall cave without delay.

Inside the cave, we start hunting down our first version exclusive: Delibird!

It took a rather uncomfortable amount of time to find Delibird but we eventually managed to find one and I named him Snow!

I get the Waterfall HM and then continue onward to take on the Rocket Grunts with the help of Lorelei in order to stop their schemes and return to the outdoors where we can now continue further!

================

Five Island

On Five Island, there's a couple things we can do.

First of all, while we can't get into the Rocket Warehouse just yet, we can hop over to the Meadow and start fishing for our next version exclusive!

Qwilfish is a really underwhelming pokemon for how difficult it is to catch. I really wish this pokemon got some more attention down the lines, but it just seems to be a pokemon that's just been mostly left forgotten. Remoraid is by far a much better pokemon.

In addition to Qwilava, we can also head up north toward Resort Gorgeous! While I don't have any intentions to complete the quest here, there is one pokemon of interest nearby.

We enter the Lost Cave and stumble around a bit to find our first item room...

And once we're there, it's just a matter of seeking out the wild pokemon we're after!

It was actually pretty shocking how long it took me to find a Murkrow down here despite its 20% rarity. But, I eventually caught it and named it Noire.

===============

The next stop was Six Island where we'd need to locate the Sapphire!

But once again we're going to deviate from the path a bit and head up north to Green Path!

From Green Path, we can enter Pattern Bush!

We won't be spending too much time running around here and battling all the trainers, but we can check this grass out for some new pokemon...

And it's here that I caught the soft version exclusive Spinarak which I named Silk!

Back on track, in Ruin Valley, there's another pokemon to catch!

In place of Marill here in Fire Red is Wooper! Wooper was actually a bit of an annoyance to catch since I couldn't paralyze it was really low level and I couldn't use my typical strategies of paralyzing it with Thunder Wave or chipping away at its health with Sandstorm. Thankfully, Ch'ding's 10 power Fury Cutter was able to keep it alive so long as it didn't crit. Thankfully, Wooper is available at 100% in the water here, so accidentally KOing one isn't the worst thing in the world.

I enter the Dotted Hole and made my way down to the depths of the cave.

I got to the Sapphire Room where, of course, Gideon drops down to snatch my prize right from under my nose! It's time to return to the Rocket Warehouse on Five Island!

=================

Rocket Warehouse

There really isn't too terribly much to talk about here. I just... did it. Of course, why not, let's talk about the Admin battles!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 57

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Dragon Claw, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Raichu M); Lv. 57

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Light Screen, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Alakazam F); Lv. 56

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 56

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Steelix M); Lv. 56

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Earthquake, Double Edge, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Kingdra M); Lv. 56

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Twister, Rain Dance, Ice Beam

==================

Team Rocket Admin F

---------------------------

Muk Lv. 52

Gray's newfound power was more than enough to take care of this Admin's Muk in a couple of hits.

-----------------------------

Arbok Lv. 53

Arbok, too, didn't stand much of a chance, though he did catch me off guard (again), with Earthquake... Yeah, I really don't pay attention, do I? Regardless, Earthquake didn't do nearly enough to make me worry and I took him out with my own Earthquake.

--------------------------

Vileplume Lv. 54

This Vileplume could only use Stun Spore and Petal Dance while I hammered away at it with Double Edge. Easy enough, though Stun Spore would have a lasting effect on the upcoming battles.

===================

Team Rocket Admin M

You aren't required to do these battles back to back. In fact, the game even encourages you to go back and prepare, but I had such an easy time this time around that I figured I'd just keep going at it.

---------------------

Golbat Lv. 53

I led with Ivory this time and used Psychic to take out Golbat easily enough.

-----------------------

Weezing Lv. 54

Weezing, too, went down right away.

------------------------

Houndoom Lv. 55

Houndoom on the other hand would take a little bit of doing. I wasn't about to leave Ivory in to take a Crunch, so I retreated.

In came Blue to show off his new defensive capabilities! I saw no reason to set up Rain Dance since I had such a tight advantage already, so I just went for Surf and took him out.

==================

Scientist Gideon

------------------------

Voltorb Lv. 46

One Earthquake,

------------------------

Electrode Lv. 46

Two Earthquakes,

------------------------

Magnemite Lv. 46

Three Earthquakes,

-------------------------

Magneton Lv. 46

Four... Yeah, Gideon's team is just as much of a joke compared to the admins as it's always been. The only reason any of these pokemon lasted more than a turn is because of Gray's lingering paralysis from the first Admin. Not even sure if it's totally necessary to show this battle in detail. But of course, there's still the last one that was capable of putting up any sort of a fight.

--------------------

Porygon Lv. 46

Porygon knows Recover and is a two-hit KO with Earthquake and Double Edge, so the paralysis was actually a bit of a hindrance. It even confused me with Psybeam. Unfortunately, there wasn't any way Porygon could deal enough damage to overcome my Leftovers so eventually, I was able to take it out without even needing to retreat.

================

I'm glad both of my new evolutions got some screentime in these battles, because, like I said, they're not going to be seeing a whole lot of action and I find that to be extremely unfortunate.

Now that we've got the Sapphire Back, we could bring it to Celio, but there is actually one more pokemon we need to catch here, and I don't think it's too crazy to go ahead and go for it.

================

Seven Island

I made my way to Seven Island and will be completely ignoring most of what this island has to offer. Instead, I'll be making my way down south.

However, my trek will stop right at the start of Sevault Canyon. There's absolutely no need to go any further in this playthrough because what I need is already right here!

Our final version exclusive pokemon is Skarmory! I caught one right here at the entrance and named it Silver before leaving! There's absolutely no need to go all the way down to the Tanoby Ruins since there's nothing but Unown down there.

=================

We finally return the Sapphire to Celio on One Island to complete the Team Rocket quest once again enabling Fire Red to trade directly with Ruby, Sapphire, and Colosseum as well! Not that I think I'll be needing it to, but I suppose the option is nice.

So yeah, if you want a more accurate representation of all the content the Sevii Islands has to offer, I definitely recommend checking out this part of my Leaf Green playthrough as I took my time and explored these areas much more thoroughly there. Here, I kind of just rushed through it all. In addition, I'm starting to think I'm not going to be doing the Elite Four rematches. If I do, I feel like I'll be setting a precedent that I'll be expected to follow up with every single time which will artificially extend my second playthroughs for every game with Elite Four rematches. This one was challenging enough as it was and I imagine the rematches will remain that way going forward as well. In addition, I was severely underleveled for it in my Leaf Green playthrough after doing everything the game had to offer (except for Vs Seeker rematches, I'll give you that one.) I don't want to go out of my way to do all of these optional areas again just so that I can stand a chance at battling those powerful pokemon all over again. I really don't think it's worth it. But, if you're interested in seeing me do the rematches with this team, feel free to post here and tell me you're interested! Otherwise, I think I'd rather just move along to the next game...

Of course, just because we're not doing the Elite Four rematches doesn't mean we're quite done after doing the Team Rocket plot. I still have a particular final battle in mind and I think you all know what I'm talking about. Plus, there's a brief cleanup operation I'll probably tack on at the start of the next post. There really isn't a whole lot left in the game, so we've only got a little more to go! Hang in there and we'll be onto a "new" adventure before you know it!

January 30, 2021

Since I decided last time that I wouldn't be doing the Elite Four rematches, that means today is going to be the finale of our playthrough of Fire Red!

Before we finish off Fire Red, though, I first want to revisit Leaf Green to pay a quick visit to one area I completely forgot about in my cleanup.

Three Isle Port

When you first arrive at Three Island, there's a small cave at the entracnce of Three Isle Port where a man is digging a tunnel.

Three Isle Path

Well, it just so happens that, after obtaining the National Dex, this tunnel is finished and the prospector reveals that he's finally struck gold! He'll give you a Nugget to share his wealth.

Exiting on the other side of this cave will lead us to an exclusive area with nothing but a patch of tall grass. This tall grass actually has a really low encounter rate, but when you finally find a pokemon...

You'll have a 100% chance of encountering a Dunsparce! I named it "Isolation." Dunsparce is a very strange pokemon to be sure. No, this wasn't totally necessary since we already have one of these guys in Colosseum, but I caught everything else in the game, so I didn't want to leave this guy out of it, too! It's just such a strange location that's very easy to forget. But I did remember in the end! I'm sorry for missing you, buddy.

=================

Route 7

Well, we've just got a couple more things to do with this playthrough involving the remaining legendaries in the game. You know the drill at this point, our first priority is to use our Master Ball on the wandering legendary beast! We'll do so on Route 7 this time but the process is still the same. Just make sure you have a pokemon under level 50 at the front of your team, pop a Max Repel and run around in the grass a little bit. If the beast doesn't show up, just enter the guard house nearby and come right back out to try again! Eventually, you'll find yourself face to face with the legendary beast with a type advantage against your starter.

This time around, it's the Legendary Beast Suicune! Of course, I used my Master Ball to complete this encounter easily enough and named it Crystal with my ginormous brain's abilities to come up with creative and unique nicknames for my pokemon.

I should mention that, in the process of buying repels to seek out Suicune, I also bought a TM for Hyper Beam to give to Blue over Twister. Hyper Beam can take advantage of its higher physical attack and potentially deal some devastating damage to unsuspecting opponents.

================

Before we move on to finishing the game, I should probably take special note Birth Island and the Deoxys event. While in Leaf Green, catching Deoxys would cause him to take on his Defense forme, if Deoxys is caught here in Fire Red, he'll take on his Attack forme which causes his defensive stats to drop more but boosting both of his attack stats even further. Attack Forme Deoxys simultaneously has the highest attack and special attack stat of any other pokemon, so I'd say this tradeoff is worth it. However, you should be careful because this is the most obvious example of a glass canon in the entire series with both of his defenses being at an all-time low. Its Special Defense rivals that of Igglybuff, Caterpie, Weedle, and Magikarp while its physical defense is even worse than the latter three! When you attack with this thing, you wanna make sure you get that KO! And you definitely don't wanna run moves like Hyper Beam on this thing! Yikes!

================

Cerulean Cave

Our final destination is Cerulean Cave. Again, since we've already thoroughly explored this area, there's no need to go through the hassle of bringing a Rock Smash user or anything like that. We can just go straight to the final floor ignoring all the items and dead ends.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because there's one more pokemon besides Mewtwo I wanna catch here.

Golduck! Again, he's more common here than anywhere else, so this is where I tracked him down! I named him Drip. Honestly, I did encounter some of these guys before in the Seafoam Islands, but I completely failed to actually catch any of them. I just kept underestimating the power of my own attacks compared to its level!

====================

As we approach the final floor, it's time to prepare ourselves for our final battle against Mewtwo!

================

My Team:

--------------------

Apollo (Charizard M); Lv. 57

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Dragon Claw, Blast Burn, Flamethrower, Steel Wing

------------------------

Yellow (Raichu M); Lv. 57

Item: None

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Brick Break, Light Screen, Thunder Wave

--------------------------

Ivory (Alakazam F); Lv. 56

Item: None

Ability: Synchronize | Moves: Reflect, Seismic Toss, Psychic, Disable

------------------------

Ch'ding (Farfetch'd M); Lv. 57

Item: Stick

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Aerial Ace, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Slash

-------------------------------

Gray (Steelix M); Lv. 56

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Rock Head | Moves: Earthquake, Double Edge, Sandstorm, Rock Slide

-------------------------

Blue (Kingdra M); Lv. 56

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Surf, Hyper Beam, Rain Dance, Ice Beam

==================

Wild Mewtwo Lv. 70

Now, this battle took a few tries. Naturally, my team is a bit lower level than the one I used in Fire Red, so I had a more difficult time taking hits and hitting him.

Right off the bat, things are sort of down to luck. I have to use Thunder Wave and hope Mewtwo doesn't open up by setting up Safeguard. If I can get paralysis on him, I don't have to worry about speed for the rest of the battle and I can focus exclusively on defense and damage. He obviously does outspeed me, though, so if he goes for Safeguard, he completely shuts down my first turn. Thankfully, Yellow is capable of surviving any of his attacks once, even without Light Screen. So things will be just fine if he uses any of his other three moves. It's worth noting that, since Mewtwo is a wild pokemon, the moves he uses seem to be entirely random so he often does some pretty dumb things like using Safeguard while it's already active or, best case scenario for this first turn, using Recover while at full HP.

Regardless of whether or not I can hit him with Thunder Wave on the first turn, I can usually stall out long enough that his Safeguard will run out and get another chance to use Thunder Wave. He has a 50/50 chance on the second turn to either use Recover while still at full HP, or Safeguard while it's still up. I can use this to my advantage to set up Light Screen to reduce the damage from Psychic. If he hasn't used it yet, that buys me at least three full hits! Otherwise, if he takes out Raichu I'll be able to protect the next pokemon that comes out in order to get some desperate damage against him. But, really, if I can't paralyze him here, things are going to be really difficult since he effortlessly outspeeds my entire party.

Once Light Screen is set up, all I need to do is spam Thunderbolt until his Safeguard drops or, if he's already paralyzed, his health is low and I can start throwing Ultra Balls. Eventually, he'll take out Yellow and my next choice really depends on how the matchup with Yellow went.

If Mewtwo still has a lot of HP or wasn't successfully paralyzed, my best bet is to bring out Gray who can take a couple of Psychics thanks to his resistance, especially if he's under the cover of Light Screen.

From here, I just use Earthquake to get his HP down. He'll sometimes heal it off but I can bring it down and, due to his random attacks, he'll eventually buy me some opportunities to throw Ultra Balls. Sooner or later though, he'll be able to build up enough damage to take out Gray. If he wasn't paralyzed, then he can potentially just sweep through the rest of my team, so I'd better hope 4 more Ultra Balls are enough to catch him!

If Mewtwo is low on HP after defeating Raichu and is successfully paralyzed, then I'll bring out Ivory instead. If Mewtwo decides to use Recover, I can use Disable to temporarily stop him from healing, then use some Seismic Tosses to bring his health back down. His Swift can still do a lot of damage, so I'll have to be careful about that. Using Reflect can help keep Ivory alive for longer while I continue this strategy for using Ultra Balls.

Once Alakazam is taken care of, I'll bring out Blue. If Mewtwo wasn't paralyzed, then I'll send Blue out after Steelix goes down and use Ice Beam in a desperate hope that A: Mewtwo doesn't use Psychic and B: I can get that 10% chance to freeze him. If I can successfully freeze him, then I'll quickly set up Rain Dance to outspeed him with Swift Swim and, depending on the condition of his health, I'll either immediately start chucking Ultra Balls or use Surf to reduce his health. Anytime he defrosts, I'll go for Ice Beam again. Naturally, I never got to or had to freeze him. This is a pretty niche strategy but one I was prepared to resort to if everything went down the shitter.

Most of the time, though, Blue will simply resort to spamming Surf and Ultra Balls after Alakazam goes down.

Once Blue is down, Apollo is next in line with pretty much the same deal as Kingdra, just Flamethrower if Mewtwo needs his health reduced and Ultra Balls wherever I can.

You know I'm desperate once Ch'ding hits the spotlight. There is literally nothing Ch'ding can hope to do except throw Ultra Balls and hope Mewtwo chooses not to attack for the turn. You can imagine how well this one usually goes.

-----------------------

After a few failed attempts, I was eventually able to catch Mewtwo in an Ultra Ball and named him Platinum.

===================

And with that, I think our Fire Red playthrough is finished! There is a little bit more I want to do in these two games, but unlike Ruby and Sapphire, there's not a whole lot of interaction between the games. There's no secret bases or mixing records or anything of the sort. The only form of interconnectivity within these games is found in the Cable Club and the Joyful Game Corner. Berry Crush isn't nearly as interesting as Berry Mixing in Ruby and Sapphire and the minigames, while they're interesting, aren't anything I'd scramble to get my friends to gather together for. It's all really standard stuff and, sadly, kind of sets a low bar for the bare minimum of what a pokemon game needs to bring in from previous titles... we'll put a pin in that because it's going to be a recurring complaint I have about a lot of the main series titles down the line.

Anyway, with Fire Red now behind us, we're finally going to be going back to the world of Hoenn for one more grand adventure! This will be the final main series title in generation 3, but it's a big one!

January 31, 2021

Much like Pokemon Crystal and the Japanese Pokemon Blue before it, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire had a definitive third version released well after the initial games. These third versions are going to be a running trend, though later in the series Game Freak starts to get a bit experimental with how to handle these ideas. In general, these third versions are designed as general upgrades to the original games. Certain pokemon are often made available much earlier in the game, making them much more accessible parts of your tema, and there will be many aesthetic changes and changes to the story along with lots of new content.

One thing you'll probably notice pretty quickly with Emerald, though, is that this game is significantly more different from Ruby and Sapphire than any definitive version before it. Where Crystal added some minor changes here and there such as expanding the ruins of alph and adding an extra side story focused around Eusine and Suicune, Emerald makes some much more drastic shifts to the story of Ruby and Sapphire which I think make the story more complete all around.

If you recall, depending on the version, the story of Ruby and Sapphire differed slightly to be focused on either Team Magma's plot to expand the land of Hoenn by evaporating the sea or Team Aqua's plot to expand the sea by flooding the land where the opposite team would serve as your ally in the fight against them. So you might be wondering how exactly these themes are handled in this version? Well, I think the solution they went for is a really interesting one! It'll become apparent how this was handled later on but for now, let's focus on starting our new adventure! I'm really excited about this one!

================

Aside from the different intro which you can watch in the video above, the first difference will become immediately apparent on selecting your gender: The protagonist has been redesigned!

May now has an entirely new outfit.

Brendan doesn't have any particularly significant changes to his design, though both characters have their bags and their cap recolored green. I'm really not a fan of this design choice, I think both characters look better with their Ruby and Sapphire designs, but maybe some people disagree.

Anyway, I was originally going to select May for this playthrough since she actually has a more significant design change, but we'll be seeing both of these characters throughout the course of the story anyway. I'm personally more nostalgic with Brendan as the protagonist of this game and while I've grown to love May's design more than any other female protagonist, I'm not as much of a fan of her Emerald design. Either way, though, it's a difficult choice!

So, I went with Brendan as my character. In hindsight, I am thinking I probably should have gone with May after all, but I'm already committed to my decision! I also made this choice because I figured the name "Emerald," which I wanted to use, sounded like a more masculine name.

===============

Littleroot Town

Another difference you might not notice right away are some minor aesthetic changes in the overworld tiles.

This'll be more apparent if you compare LittleRoot Town in Emerald (Left) to Ruby and Sapphire (Right)

The trees are redesigned with more detail and the types of flowers are shifted. The rooftops on the houses are also different! There are lots of aesthetic changes like these throughout the game. I'll try to mention them wherever I notice but some are more immediately noticeable than others, so I can't promise I'll be able to note them all. Still, I'll do my best because, as always, my main focus of this playthrough will be on changes between this version and its predecessors.

The intro to the game plays out mostly the same. Again, with minor aesthetic changes here and there. You hop out of a truck, but as you enter the inside, you'll find a bunch of Vigoroth are the ones carrying boxes into the house rather than Machoke like in the original. Perhaps they figured it better to introduce the player to a pokemon more strongly associated with the Hoenn region right away. We go upstairs to set our clock, which I set to 6:30 PM. Again, my internal battery is dried out, so time won't change from this point. I set it here so that I'll have access to the lower floors of Shoal Cave later on. To my knowledge, this shouldn't affect anything else of particular relevance.

Checking the PC in our room reveals that we still have the free potion in there, but, more significantly, the item sprites used in Fire Red and Leaf Green return here!

And if we check our bag menu, we can see that the bag itself is also green!

----------------------

After setting your clock, you return downstairs, your mom mentions that your dad was on TV but you must have just missed it, and then encourages you to go speak to the neighbor's kid next door.

As we head over to May's house, things again play out similarly but slightly different. Instead of finding her at her PC in her room, we'll instead find her room to be empty save for a lone pokeball in the middle. As we approach to investigate the ball, May will enter the room and be surprised to see you! She'll introduce herself and then go on to her PC in order to prepare to help her father in the field.

===============

Route 101

Of course, from here, it's time to head up north and find Professor Birch in danger from a... Zigzagoon? It's a pokemon with a much less intimidating design than the Poochyena in Ruby and Sapphire, but there is a reason for this change. First thing's first, we've got our choice of starter!

----------------------

Would you look at that! Just when you thought they were gone, pokemon now have entrance animations again just like in Pokemon Crystal! Not only that, these animations look a lot livelier than ever before! From here on out, this is going to be a mainstay of the main series titles.

Of course, our choice of starter is already made for us. In Ruby, we chose Mudkip, and in Sapphire, we choce Torchic. Naturally, we'll be going with Treecko this time around!

--------------------------

Forest (Treecko M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Move: Pound, Leer

------------------------

Once we've selected our partner, it's time to help out Prof. Birch!

---------------------

Wild Zigzagoon Lv. 2

This battle is just about as one-sided as it's always been. Even if you manage to lose (really only possible by intention, it will just flee when you're in kill range. This battle is a bit tougher here, though. Namely because this Zigzagoon happens to be holding an Oran Berry, so it'll heal a little bit before you can take it out. Still, it's really just a matter of hitting it with attacks over and over.

================

After saving Prof. Birch, he'll bring you back to his lab and allow you to keep your starter. I chose the name Forest for him. My naming convention this time around might seem similar to my convention for Leaf Green, but this time around it's designed more around types of geographical areas rather than the habitats of animals... in hindsight it's a very minor difference and it's probably gonna seem lazy. But... eh, I'm not too terribly concerned about it. Birch then asks that we go out to meet with his daughter on Route 103.

====================

Route 101

One of the first differences in wild pokemon is the encounter rates of Poochyena and Zigzagoon being swapped. This will be a consistent difference in these early areas. Poochyena is now 45% on this route, while Zigzagoon is at 10%.

====================

Odale Town is mostly unchanged, we can heal up at the Pokemon Center and get our potion from the Poke Mart representative before moving further up north.

=====================

Route 103

North of Odale Town is Route 103.

The differences in wild pokemon available here are similar to that of Route 101, but Zigzagoon is actually 10% less than Poochyena in Ruby and Sapphire. The additional 10% is used to make Wingull a more common 20%! Since Wingull already knows Water Gun, this can actually make this area a bit more challenging if you started with Torchic.

But of course, the main attraction here is our rival battle!

==================

Rival May #1

------------------------

Torchic Lv. 5

Once again, this battle can easily be won just by spamming Pound. If you have bad luck due to crits or so, then you can always fall back on your free potions! The battle was easily won and Forest gained not one, but two levels! This allowed him to learn his first Grass attack, Absorb!

=================

After defeating May here, she mentions that we should head back home, so we do just that, healing at the pokemon center along the way.

Once back in Littleroot, Prof. Birch gives us our Pokedex and Pokeballs and we can finally begin our adventure!

On our way back out, we get our Running shoes and it's such a relief to have access to these shoes so early on rather than having to wait until after the first gym!

=================

Route 102

Here on Route 102, we have one of the more significant changes in this game. Where Lotad and Seedot were hard version exclusives between Ruby and Sapphire, here they are actually both available, though Seedot is only available at a meager 1%. However, much like Surskit, Seedot can be found here at 30% during a swarm! Unfortunately, these swarms require time not to be frozen so it's not an event we'll have access to.

However, as you might have guessed, this means Seedot replaces Surskit and Surskit is sadly no longer available in this version of the game. Yes, just like in Crystal version, there is a small selection of pokemon that were previously avialable in both Ruby and Sapphire, but are not available in Emerald. Surskit happens to be one of these pokemon. I will mention, however, that unlike Crystal, none of the missing pokemon in this game are particularly big losses in my opinion, though I am well aware that every pokemon has its fans. They don't pull any fast ones like removing Mareep, one of the few Electric type options in the Johto region.

I also went ahead and caught a Zigzagoon for HM usage which I named Urban.

================

Petalburg City

When we first reach Petalburg City, not much is changed at all. You still go through the same story. You meet with Norman in Petalburg Gym where Wally shows up and you go with Wally to help him catch his Ralts.

As you're about to leave, however, you'll be passed by a strange new NPC. He doesn't say much and is gone as quickly as he appears, but considering he has a unique sprite, you can imagine we'll probably be seeing him again.

===============

Route 104

Over here on Route 104 is were some of the more exciting changes are found! Poochyena, taking the place of Zigzagoon of course, and Wurmple are both available at 10% less than originally. That's to make room for a new pokemon!

Marill is now available a bit earlier than normal, right here at a perfectly reasonable 20%! This is an even more fitting location to catch Marill, I'd say, and I've honestly gotten so used to being able to find Marill here I completely forgot he wasn't available here in Ruby and Sapphire. Since this is the first pokemon here that was available in Fire Red and Leaf Green, I should probably mention that the pokemon in this game's sprites are based on their appearances from Ruby and Sapphire. So any pokemon whose sprites changed between the games will look the way they did in Ruby and Sapphire, presumably to maintain consistency.

Aside from Marill, though, there is one particular pokemon we can catch here that I want for my team.

----------------------

Ozone (Tailow M); Lv. 5

Item: None

Ability: Guts | Moves: Peck, Growl, Focus Energy

----------------------

Another notable change here is that a new Fisherman was added on the beach just south of Mr. Briney's boat house. He just has a Magikarp so it's free experience!

Additionally, the locations of Lady Cindy and Rich Boy Winston have been swapped. This seems like a really arbitrary decision since both of these trainers are identical other than their classes, but maybe there's some subtle difference in the stats of their Zigzagoon.

================

Petalburg Woods

Other than Poochyena replacing Zigzagoon, there is no notable differences in the wild pokemon here in the Petalburg Woods. There are differences in some trainers' teams but I should probably mention that I'm not going to be detailing any such differences since I never detailed the trainers' teams in the initial playthroughs.

However, if you recall, these woods are home to something significant. This was where we had our first encounter with Team Magma or Aqua in Ruby and Sapphire respectively! And as we progress through this event, it will play out the same as in Sapphire version. That's right, it's an Aqua grunt that shows up here! And when the battle begins, this time with a unique battle animation that shows the Team Aqua logo!

==============

Team Aqua Grunt

-----------------------

Poochyena Lv. 9

This battle is simple enough. I was able to take Poochyena out with a couple of quick attacks to finish the job.

=================

On the northern side of Route 104, things are again mostly the same. Of course, in the place of Lady Cindy, we now have Rich Boy Winston. We can still get the TM for Bullet Seed here, which I taught to Forest over Absorb since it has far more potential for damage output.

There's also the matter of the twins. While this battle isn't notably different from the original, I should mention that double battles are no longer optional and are much more prevalent in this game. We'll elaborate on a big part of why that is soon, but the first non-optional double battle is right here. These twins will now initiate the battle when you pass in front of them on the bridge! While this battle is still pretty standard, you may want to come prepared with more than one pokemon by this point! There are lots of options to choose from, even if it's just going to be a temporary partner. I do recommend you don't waste too much time in getting one, though!

===============

Rustboro City

We've finally arrived at the first gym city: Rustboro! But before we get too deep in, we're going to do some poking around.

All the items are in the same locations as the original including HM01: Cut! This isn't totally necessary just yet, but of course we're going to want it.

Inside the Trainers' School, we can still get the Quick Claw which I'll be giving to Forest for now. We'll definitely have a better pokemon to give this to later, but this is our best option for now.

There is one extra addition here, though. We can find that strange NPC we saw in Petalburg. He introduces himself as Scott this time and mentions that the potential of the trainers here in this school have yet to be seen. He seems to be scouting strong trainers for some reason... curious...

================

Now, we could go ahead and take on the gym, but there's one last feature I wanted to address here.

In the building north of the Pokemon Center, you'll find a new NPC of interest here in Emerald version! This is Walda, whose father seems to be having problems getting his little girl to smile. He seems to have tried everything and is currently trying to come up with a joke to make her laugh, but nothing seems to work. It's rather sad to see, actually. He'll ask you to step in and give it a try to which, surprisingly, a standard typing menu will pop up rather than the anticipated easy chat system the game usually uses.

But all this setup means nothing. If you try to tell a joke in the space provided, you're most definitely not going to succeed. It seems this girl has a very peculiar sense of... "humor."

You see, this is actually a disguised location to enter a secret code! But what is this code? Well, it's not so simple. In all honestly, it's hiding a really cool feature of this game. The girl's name is a hint: It's a wallpaper for the PC storage!

But the wallpaper you can get from this isn't just any wallpaper, and this is why I can't just simply give you a code to work with. Rather, the code is not only randomly generated based on your trainer ID, but there are also hundreds of codes you can enter for various wallpapers. Depending on what code you enter, you could get a wallpaper with different combinations of patterns, designs, and colors. The variety of customization on this wallpaper is actually really impressive and I honestly wish this mechanic wasn't buried behind such an obscure secret. I never would have known about this if it wasn't for the internet. Maybe these codes were explained at some event?

Thankfully, this isn't actually lost to time like you might think. Excitingly enough, there is an online tool that you can use to find out what codes you need to get what designs and fully customize your own custom wallpaper! I'll link this tool right here. There's some really cool wallpapers hidden here and you can even see some previews of unlockable wallpapers in future games! But this mechanic has never been as in-depth as it is here in Emerald.

This was the design I ultimately ended up with. The green and yellow in the pattern were part of the customization. I went with these colors as an abstract representation of Rayquaza who is unfortunately absent from the base pattern. I strongly recommend playing around with the pattern rather than just going with a random one because some of them can look really nice while leaving it up to fate can lead to some... really ugly designs, too. If you aren't satisfied or want to change your pattern, you can do so easily just by telling another joke to Walda!

And while we're on the topic of wallpapers, we haven't spoken about the PC storage just yet!

Scenery 1

Forest, City, Desert, Savanna

Scenery 2

Crag, Volcano, Snow, Cave

Scenery 3

Beach, Seafloor, River, Sky

Etcetera

Polka-Dot, PokeCenter, Machine, Simple

Friend

This last wallpaper will only show up once you've told a joke to Walda and you can only have one at a time. If you tell her a new joke she enjoys, this wallpaper will be replaced.

==================

Rustboro Gym

It's finally time to take on the first gym! As you can see from the image above, gyms are significantly redesigned between the original (left) and Emerald (right).

Though the number of trainers differ, the trainers we battle here are still mostly the same. They all just use Geodude. One thing you may notice when looking at the floorplan, however, is that the Hiker's sights are crossed with one of the youngsters. This is an arrangement of trainers you're going to see a lot of going forward. Why? Well, in previous games, getting seen by two trainers at the same time would mean battling each one one after another.

If you're spotted by two trainers at the same time in this game, however, the two trainers will team up in a double battle against you! I really love this concept and it can help save some time in clearing out all the trainers. Double Battles have been very scarce in the main story of Pokemon games up until now, but with this mechanic, they're so much more common that it's actually more viable to build your team with double battles in mind! Still, very few of these double battles are actually required as double battles. Usually, you can just be careful about your movement or talk to the trainers directly to battle them individually, so I wouldn't say moves like Helping Hand are really all that necessary.

===============

My team

--------------------------

Forest (Treecko M); Lv. 14

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Overgrow | Move: Pound, Leer, Bullet Seed, Quick Attack

------------------------

Ozone (Tailow M); Lv. 12

Item: None

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Growl, Focus Energy, Quick Attack

=================

Rustboro Gym Leader Roxanne

Right away, you might notice that Roxanne has 3 pokemon instead of 2. That's right, even the gym leader's team, including the number and types of pokemon they have might vary! The leader's strongest pokemon will even be holding an Oran or Sitrus Berry to heal automatically when their health is low.

---------------------------

Geodude Lv. 12

With Bullet Seed, Geodude went down easily.

---------------------------

Geodude Lv. 12

This second Geodude was a similar story. One Bullet Seed and he went down!

-------------------------

Nosepass Lv. 15

With Nosepass, I didn't have the double type advantage on my side, so I decided I'd try to set up to buy myself as much time as I could.

I retreated into Ozone hoping he might go for Harden or Block. My intent was to use Growl to reduce Nosepass' attack so that he couldn't do as much damage against Forest. Instead, he ended up hitting me with Rock Tomb, knocking out Ozone with one shot.

I brought Forest back out and, thankfully, Nosepass' offensive power alone wasn't enough. It wasn't able to take out Forest in one shot and my Bullet Seed conveniently landed five whole hits! This brought its health down to red where it was driven to eat its oran berry. I hit it with another Bullet Seed and this time only hit it twice, so it was able to stay alive. Roxanne healed it with a Potion this time, so I hit it again. It healed one more time and I was finally able to take it down with one more Bullet Seed!

------------------------

And with that, Roxanne was done for! We got our first badge! Next time, we can continue further!

And at the end of this battle, Forest reached level 16 and evolved into Grovyle!

===================

Wow, that was a long post. I probably shouldn't have messed with Walda. I honestly didn't expect that to be such a rabbit hole. I just looked it up on a whim and decided to go ahead and do it. But yes, there was a lot of general information to cover today. Hopefully the future posts will be shorter. Anyway, I'm really excited to see how this playthrough goes! Next time, we'll be going to the gym at Dewford Town!

February 1, 2021

Rustboro City

-------------------------

Once we've cleared Rustboro gym, events play out just the way they did in Sapphire. An Aqua grunt runs by along with the Devon worker running after him demanding the goods be returned! We quickly stop by to heal up our pokemon and then give chase onto Route 116!

================

Route 116

Here on Route 116, things may look quite a bit different. While the general layout is similar, the formation of the trees in the northern part of the route is different to accommodate for new setups of trainers. If you want to avoid double battles, you'll want to be careful about how you approach the trainers in this area. Of course, some of the trainers are also shuffled around, with the lass now being located behind the cut trees while the female school kid is moved to the grass below. While changes are generally kept minimal to make each area still have the same general feel, it's clear they're making an effort to change up the experience a lot more meaningfully. This route should give you an idea of the kinds of changes you can expect to see when it comes to world design and NPC placement.

Anyway, aside from the trainers being relocated, this area is home to one more new pokemon: Abra! Abra is available here at 10% cutting into the encounter rate of Whismur which is fine since Whismur can still be found in the Rusturf Tunnel easily enough. That said, there's one more pokemon of interest here...

----------------------

Hills (Nincada M); Lv. 7

Item: None

Ability: Coumpound Eyes | Moves: Scratch, Harden, Leech Life

----------------------

Yes, my new party member is going to be a Nincada named Hills! This is a pokemon I've wanted to toy around with a bit for a while since its evolutions are both so interesting! However, the build I want to use for it is extremely unqiue unlike any pokemon I've ever used for single player before. It might actually prove really difficult to train after a while for a reason that will become apparent soon enough.

=================

Rusturf Tunnel

This tunnel itself is largely unchanged save for a slight shift in color from the original. We once again enter to battle with the grunt inside the cave to rescue Peecko, the wingull he's holding hostage!

==============

Team Aqua Grunt

---------------------

Poochyena Lv. 11

Thanks to Hills' super-effective Leech Life, I was able to take out Poochyena with moderate ease... even with STAB and a favorable type matchup, Leech Life is still a rather weak attack, unfortunately, so it can only be so helpful.

================

After defeating the grunt, he surrenders the Devon Goods to you and leaves Peecko behind as he retreats. Mr. Briney then comes inside to be reunited with his Wingull and then thanks you for your assistance before leaving back to his cottage. It all plays out just like in Sapphire version.

=================

After rescuing Peecko, we return the Devon Goods to the Devon Worker and he leads us back to Devon Corp.

Just like before, he leads us to the president's office where we're given a Letter to deliver to Steven and the PokeNav! If you check the PokeNav menu right now, though, you might notice that the Trainer's Eye menu option is missing! There is a reason for this, however...

As we make our way out of the building, we'll be stopped by an employee the moment we step outside. He'll install a new feature onto our PokeNav: Match Call! As you can probably guess, this adds functionality very similar to the Pokegear's phone card from Gold and Silver! With this feature, we can now register the numbers of various trainers we battle! I won't be listing which trainers you can and can't register, but I will say if you're interested in doing rematches, you may want to double back over the routes you've explored and talked to all the trainers you've already defeated. Some of them will exchange contact info with you!

To my knowledge, there aren't any special events that can be triggered from Match call like Pokemon swarms or special items, but I've been wrong before. This is a feature I never paid too much attention to as a kid, so it's very possible I could have missed some part of its functionality.

----------------------

This is yet another section I'm retroactively adding here, but I completely forgot to note that there is actually a brand new rival battle added here! In Ruby and Sapphire, you would find your Rival on your way out of Rustboro City where she would tell you that Mr. Briney has a sea cottage on Route 104 and that's it. In Emerald, however, she'll actually ask if you're interested in a battle! This is an optional Rival battle. It's one that I did, but in my haste to finish this post, I ended up forgetting to mention. Hopefully I'll do a better job of being more thorough going forward because a whole rival battle is a rather big event to just forget about, I'd say!

================

Rival #2

-------------------

Lotad Lv. 13

With a couple of super-effective Leech Life attacks, I was able to take out Lotad with ease.

---------------------

Torchic Lv. 15

This was an unbalanced matchup, but I saw no reason to switch out when there wasn't much else Hills could do for the rest of the battle anyway, so I went for a scratch before getting finished off with Ember.

From there, Ozone could take care of the rest with Quick Attack.

--------------------

It isn't entirely obvious under these circumstances, since Lotad is technically both a Water and a Grass type, but your rival will battle you with their starter and an additional pokemon of your starter's type. In this case, Lotad is included because it's a Grass-type. I'll go into more detail about the differences in these battles next time as it'll involve minor spoilers with her future party members.

================

Using cut in Petalburg woods can gain us access to the NPC who will give us a Miracle Seed! I gave this to Forest since he's the only one with a grass-type attack and moved his Quick Claw over to Hills.

While here, I also picked up a Shroomish which I named Marsh. We're gonna need a Flash user soon, so he's the most convenient option.

===============

If we return all the way to Littleroot Town, we can actually register both our mother and Prof. Birch in the pokenav!

===============

Finally, we return to Route 104 and speak with Mr. Briney to set sail toward Dewford Town!

================

As the boat passes through Route 105, we get a call from Norman who is checking up on us after hearing that we've gotten our PokeNav! His number is registered and we continue toward Dewford Town!

===============

Dewford Town

The music here is so nice! I honestly forgot how wonderful the atmosphere in Hoenn really was, so it's nice to experience it all over again!

Anyway, there's a couple items of interest here just like in Ruby and Sapphire. The Old Rod isn't too terribly important but I suppose there's no reason to leave it. the Silk Scarf, on the other hand might be useful! Since Ozone is the only pokemon without a held item, I went ahead and gave it to him.

=================

Dewford Gym

Once again, you can see the trend of trainers being positioned for double battles. You'll wanna be careful because you might actually be caught off guard in the darkness!

The sheer number of trainers here is dramatically increased from Ruby and Sapphire, and there are an unfortunate number of Meditite you'll have to battle your way through. These are a little annoying because they like to spam a mixture of Bide and Detect to halt your attacks. Thankfully, Ozone can make quick work of all the pokemon in here wherever Hills fails.

===============

My team

--------------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 17

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Move: Pound, Fury Cutter, Bullet Seed, Quick Attack

------------------------

Ozone (Tailow M); Lv. 16

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Growl, Focus Energy, Quick Attack

----------------------

Hills (Nincada M); Lv. 14

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Coumpound Eyes | Moves: Scratch, Harden, Leech Life

================

Dewford Gym Leader Brawly

------------------------

Machop Lv. 16

Brawly's first pokemon is a Machop. I was able to make quick work of this thing with Ozone's Wing Attack no problem. It was a two-hit KO turned three-hit thanks to Brawly's healing, but that was no problem since he couldn't attack between hits.

-----------------------

Meditite Lv. 16

A new addition to Brawly's team here is a Meditite. This pokemon is rather inconsequential, though and is mostly just free exp so long as you don't retreat. Why is that? Because the only thing it ever seems to do is spam Focus Punch. If you're unaware, Focus Punch is a powerful attack that requires the pokemon to focus their energy for the turn. If you attack them while their focus is tightened, they'll lose their focus and the move will be wasted. Essentially, it's a powerful attack designed to counter greedy attempts at setting up. But, if you go full aggro against this Meditite, it'll never connect a single one of its attacks. According to Bulbapedia, it does have a full moveset, but I've never seen this thing do anything other than use Focus Punch. Even if it did use its other moves, the worst thing it could do is set up Light Screen or Reflect for the upcoming pokemon which, admittedly, would be rather devastating. Thankfully, he really seems entirely focused on the offensive here.

Needless to say, Ozone didn't have a problem taking him out.

------------------------

Makuhita Lv. 19

Now here we have the infamous one. Makuhita is a powerful beast this early in the game. Combined with Brawly's healing, it's a force to be reckoned with. I naturally went for Wing Attack to try and make quick work of it, but it survived the hit and went for Focus Energy. It ate its held Sitrus Berry, healing off a large chunk of the damage I'd inflicted. Another Wing Attack was just barely not enough to take it out and it hit me with a critical Vital Throw which finished Ozone off.

Forest was my next bet and it was obvious he'd be going for a Super Potion, so I decided that Makuhita's defenses were going to be too strong to handle. I went for Fury Cutter honestly forgetting that Bug was weak against Fighting. It was a bad choice, but I was committed to trying to build up Fury Cutter! In the mean time, Makuhita didn't take long to finish off Forest with some Vital Throws.

Lastly was Hills who really didn't stand a chance at all due to his low level. I went for a couple of Scratches since it was my strongest move but it was a no-go. Hills went down and that was the end of my first attempt. But I got close! I was pretty confident I could win if I just made some better decisions, so...

=================

Dewford Gym Leader Brawly

Attempt #2

-----------------------

Machop Lv. 16

Since Hills wasn't a whole lot of help against Makuhita, I figured he'd be a much better fit for this first matchup. This came with its own set of risks, however. If this Machop could set up enough Bulk Ups, it might be able to withstand Wing Attack and that would leave me in an even worse position than before. However, if I could manage to defeat him with full health, it could... well, actually, in hindsight, it wouldn't help me at all. Ozone already got to Makuhita with full HP last time. Still, I could get some nice exp on Hills which counts for something, right? Well, predictably, Hills couldn't stand up to Machop and ended up going down.

The matchup now rested on the shoulders of Ozone with whom it probably should have been resting on from the start. I immediately went for Wing Attack to take out what remained of Machop's HP.

----------------------

Meditite Lv. 16

Meditite was the same story as before.

-----------------------

Makuhita Lv. 19

Then came the real test. This matchup went the same as it did before, I got Makuhita to eat its Sitrus Berry, then nearly KO'd it before Brawly took me out with a Vital Throw, this time it wasn't a crit confirming what I already suspected, that the crit was irrelevant last time.

This time, I went straight into barraging Makuhita with Bullet Seed. I got five hits with the first attack! The next attack only hit twice, but I was able to endure his second hit. The final Bullet Seed took him down, winning the battle!

---------------------

With that, Brawly was defeated and I had earned the Knuckle Badge! Once again, it's looking like I'm having a bit of difficulty with these gym battles which is just the way I like it! Hopefully the battles are consistently this difficult which, if my memories are accurate, is definitely the case! Especially looking at my team heading toward the third gym... hoo boy is that gonna be a toughie. But that's neither here nor there. Next time, we'll be headed through Granite Cave and progress toward Slateport!

MVP: Ozone

February 2, 2021

With the Knuckle Badge in tow, we can now explore the next area!

================

Route 106

While there's nothing too note worthy in terms of differences here, I felt like I should take note of the fact that, from now on, trainers will automatically be registered in our PokeNav if they're interested in rematching you one day. This differs slightly from how the PokeGear phone number system worked previously where you had to manually talk to the trainer after defeating them to register their number, but it's okay because there's no limit to the number of trainers you can store! You may as well collect as many as you can along the way!

===============

Granite Cave

This cave is pretty much identical to its counterpart in Ruby and Sapphire save for the new cave textures.

For comparison, here's what the cave looked like in Ruby and Sapphire. I think the emerald version has an overall rounder and more natural look, more akin to that of Fire Red and Leaf Green.

-------------------------

As you move down to the dark basement floors where you'll need Flash to be able to see (though it's admittedly not too difficult to just feel your way around without Flash in this particular cave thanks to the small spotlight around you), you may recall that there was a pair of version exclusive pokemon to be found here.

Well, once again, it Emerald seems to be taking more after Sapphire in this regard. Sableye is available here while Mawhile from Ruby version is entirely absent from the game!

-----------------------

As we make it to the end, we're met with Steven Stone. If you recall, this was the champion of Ruby and Sapphire! Ah, but of course we're not supposed to know that yet! Let's just play dumb for now and deliver the letter.

He thanks us by giving us TM47: Steel Wing which I immediately taught to Ozone to help him deal with Rock-types!

==============

With the letter delivered, we could advance toward Slateport, but I want to make a quick detour and return to Rustboro.

===============

Along the way, while travelling through Petalburg Woods again, I got a call from Roxanne on my PokeNav! She mentioned that she'd heard we earned our second badge and that she is currently preparing her gym for a rematch. She said she'll call us back as soon as she's ready to take me on at my strongest!

That's right, for the first time ever, gym leaders can now be rematched in this game! Though, the implementation is actually rather sloppy, so I would definitely understand if someone might have played this game and never ended up doing any of these rematches... I'm also not sure why they brought it up so early in the game when I'm pretty sure you don't actually get to rematch these gym leaders until the end. Still, her number is now registered in our PokeNav so we can call her anytime! I'll definitely try to do as many of these rematches as I can, but I can't guarantee I'll be able to do them all. I'll explain them in more detail when they come up.

==============

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to return to Rustboro is that, as soon as we deliver the letter to Steven, we can receive the Exp Share from Mr. Stone. This is going to help us train up Hills who is rather lacking in strength at the moment. We no longer have to lead with such a weak pokemon and can focus more on our stronger fighters. Don't worry, I have lots of plans for this little bug once he comes out of his shell, no pun intended...

================

Route 109

Once again, this area has been redesigned to accomodate for the new trainer tag-up mechanic. Some of the trainers are actually deviously hidden under the parasols as well, so you might find yourself in a couple of endurance rounds if you're not careful. Once again, I recommend making a beeline for Slateport City to heal up before coming back down to deal with the trainers.

Since you can battle two trainers at once, you may be wondering what'll happen if you end up in the sights of three trainers at once. Well, unfortunately it's nothing too special. The two trainers to your side will battle you first as a tag-team in a double battle and then the one in front of you will challenge you immediately after to a single battle.

Strangely enough, the Seashore House on this route doesn't seem changed from the original. I definitely would have expected the trainers to be rearranged to allow for double battles to happen, but it seems to be identical to the one from the previous version which is a little bit disappointing, but I guess you can't expect everything to be different.

================

Slateport City

If you compare the Emerald layout (below top) with the Ruby and Sapphire layout (below bottom), you'll notice some pretty notable differences between the versions.

-----------------------------

Ignoring the elephant in the room, you'll find that Slateport has been largely redesigned to look much more like an actual port! There are docks and even boats in the water! The marketplace was also redesigned slightly with a lot more color!

Most of the shops at the marketplace are identical to the ones from Ruby and Sapphire, but there is a new NPC across from the Secret Power Club.

This woman will give you a familiar item introduced in Ruby and Sapphire: The Powder Jar! That's right, just like in Fire Red and Leaf Green, berries can be crushed into Berry Powder instead of made into pokeblocks where they can be traded for rare items! This can help you make use out of a lot of the more common berries that don't make very good pokeblocks.

You'll find this to be another recurring trend: Pokemon Emerald is actually compatible with the Wireless Link Cable, so it can more effortlessly connect with Fire Red and Leaf Green via the Union Room, though keep in mind that you still can't trade with Fire Red and Leaf Green until you've gotten the National Dex here and returned the Sapphire to Celio in the Sevii Islands there. Again, a huge headache that never had to be there in the first place, but I've done enough complaining about that before. But yes, a lot of the features intended to take advantage of the Wireless Adapter return from Fire Red and Leaf Green including Berry Crushing, Mystery Gift (which can be unlocked at Poke Marts in the same way), and even the Joyful Game Corner minigames which we won't be seeing for a while, but we'll take note of them when we get there!

-----------------------

Perhaps one of the largest additions to Emerald, however, is something we're introduced here in the Pokemon Fan Club. It's another returning mechanic from Fire Red and Leaf Green! One of the NPC's inside will offer to teach one of your pokemon the move Swagger. That's right, move tutors are here to teach your pokemon a wide variety of moves that were previously TMs! Where Fire Red and Leaf Green mainly focused on Generation I TMs, Emerald brings back all of the moves available by Tutor from Fire Red and Leaf Green alongside many new moves that were TMs in Gold and Silver! Don't get your hopes too high, though, because a lot of these moves are learned from tutors in the postgame. Still, some like this one can be considered quite helpful!

---------------------------

Before moving on, one more small detail is that I actually visited the Name Rater to change the name of my Nincada from Hills to Hill. I figured it would flow better that way.

--------------------------

Just like in Sapphire, there are a bunch of Team Aqua Grunts blocking the way to the museum as well as blocking our way forward past Slateport, so we're definitely gonna need to drive them out somehow.

Of course, we head over to Stern's Shipyard to devlier the Devon Goods but Captain Stern is out at the moment. But as we leave, we find that the Team Aqua grunts have finally all filtered into the museum, so we can finally make our way inside.

===============

Oceanic Museum

Such a beautiful rendition of the S.S. Anne theme. Honestly, I'm not sure why they didn't use this song for the actual S.S. Anne in Fire Red and Leaf Green, but I promise I'm not trying to be spending this entire playthrough crapping on those games!!

As always, you wanna make sure to get TM46: Thief from one of the Aqua Grunts in this lobby here before you move forward!

--------------------------

Of course, on the second floor, we approach Captain Stern with the Devon Goods before a pair of Aqua Grunts barge in with intent to take the goods again. Unfortuantely, this isn't a double battle like you may have come to expect. It's a really big missed opportunity, I'd say, but these two seem to be more interested in battling us one on one!

==================

Team Aqua Grunt #1

-----------------------

Carvanha Lv. 15

This Carvanha naturally didn't stand a chance against Ozone's Wing Attack, though Ozone suffered some damage from the Rough Skin.

==================

Team Aqua Grunt #2

--------------------

Zubat Lv. 14

Zubat went down even more easily than the Carvanha thanks to the lack of Rough Skin.

--------------------

Carvanha Lv. 14

And once again I had to endure a bit of damage from Rough Skin to take out Carvanha with ease.

=================

Finally, Archie comes into the room and gives us one stern warning not to interfere with Team Aqua's plans any longer before turning and leaving us.

We finally hand thee Devon Goods over to Captain Stern who is excited to get to work with the new parts! And finally, we can get going once again.

As we leave the Museum, Scott shows up once again after noticing all the Aqua Grunts filing out of the museum and concluding that we must have driven them out. He considers our potential for a moment before deciding to give us his contact information. A strange fellow indeed, but it is very interesting...

=================

Now, normally I would go ahead and get moving toward the next town so that we can take on our next gym battle, but I think it's time we address that Elephant in the Room I brought up earlier. That's right, the Pokemon Contest Hall is replaced with a completely new building! This is a Battle Tent! Don't worry, Pokemon Contests aren't entirely replaced, but most of their locations have been replaced with Battle Tents where you can participate in battles with special rules! I think this is a suitable location to end our session today on!

As soon as we try to enter, Scott will bump into us but won't say much other than telling you a bit about the Battle Tent, but you'll learn more yourself inside.

===================

Slateport Battle Tent

If we check out the bulletin board at this tent, we can see the unique rules. Each Battle Tent has different rules, so you'll want to pay attention to these as it may affect the types of pokemon you'll want to use! In this case, you will select three level 30 rental pokemon out of a pool of six and face off against other trainers. After you defeat a trainer, you'll have the opportunity to switch one of your rental pokemon with one of theirs. Hopefully, you can assemble a strong enough team to win three battles in a row!

Before we get in, we can speak to the NPC's in here and they'll all talk about their thoughts on the new rules. Some talk about using pokemon they wouldn't use otherwise, another comments on how convenient it is that anyone can battle here thanks to the use of rental pokemon.

Most notably, there's a Sailor who will give you TM41: Torment. This guy was in the Contest Hall here in Ruby and Sapphire, so thankfully, he wasn't mistakenly left out with this change. Now then, why don't we take on this challenge ourselves, hm?

=================

Battle Tent Rental Options (Lv. 30):

---------------------

Numel

Item: Charcoal

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ember, Growl, Earthquake, Sunny Day

------------------------

Kadabra

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Disable, Confusion, Reflect, Recover

-----------------------

Wailmer

Item: Rawst Berry

Ability: Water Veil | Moves: Rollout, Curse, Growl, Whirlpool

What a joke it is that this Wailmer has a Rawst Berry, which only heals Burn, but also has the Water Veil ability which already prevents it from being burned... I can't help but feel like this was done intentionally.

------------------------

Ninjask

Item: Silverpowder

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Fury Cutter, Double Team, Screech, Sand-Attack

------------------------

Shroomish

Item: Figy Berry

Ability: Effect Spore | Moves: Absorb, Stun Spore, Spore, Leech Seed

-----------------------

Marill

Item: Ganlon Berry

Ability: Huge Power | Moves: Double-Edge, Rain Dance, Tail Whip, Water Gun

================

There were definitely some interesting choices to go with here, but I'm only allowed to go with three. I thought over my options real carefully and ultimately decided on my three:

I'd go with Kadabra, Numel, and Marill!

Numel and Marill had some of the most powerful attacks on this team and, at Level 30, these moves have the potential to be even more devastating! Marill also has the benefit of Huge Power to further increase the damage of Double-Edge, and it works well with that Ganlon Berry that'll boost its defense when its HP is low. And if I need a water-type attack, Water Gun isn't too terrible an option, especially if its competition is Whirlpool. Numel's Earthquake is going to be a force to be reckoned with, though he'll definitely have trouble against Flying types. Thankfully, his Charcoal helps to power up his Ember a tad. I felt that Kadabra would be a pretty solid lead. He's fast and comes with Reflect to help set-up against physical opponents. Recover and Disable can also be nice follow-ups to jam the opponents physical attacks and then heal off the damage.

Shroomish's Spore was tempting, but there wasn't much he could do but stall out while Leech Seed does all the work which just isn't a very fun strat. It is worth noting that Shroomish did have an appropriate nature to avoid confusion from the Figy Berry, so that wasn't some cruel trick they tried to play on beginners. Similarly, Ninjask is a pretty fun pokemon I was tempted to go for, but this particular build seemed a bit too reliant on Double Team which I'm not a fan of, so I had to give that a pass. Wailmer was also tempting with that Rollout, but he lacked Defense Curl and Whirlpool is a really disappointing option. Plus, though it was very unlikely to ever come into relevancy, it's never a good idea to run redundant items on your pokemon. You never know when you'll get hit by a move like Thief that will turn your item against you.

So, with my team selected, let's see how my challenge goes!

===================

Battle #1: Expert Kristen

----------------------

Mightyena

Talk about a rough start! Of all pokemon my first opponent had to lead with, it had to be a Dark type??

I retreated into Numel who took a Bite easily enough, but then Mightyena hit me with a Swagger. I hit myself in confusion twice in a row and then Mightyena pushed me out with a Roar. Lovely.

This brought Kadabra back out.

Once again, I retreated into Numel, but was hit with another roar. This is a fun battle.

This time, Marill was brought out, so I went for Double-Edge and was honestly appalled by how little damage I was able to do even with Huge Power. I suppose I should've paid a bit more attention to my pokemon's stats before jumping right into battle based solely off of their builds. Regardless, Mightyena wound up taking out Marill and I wasn't feeling too confident.

I brought out Numel and Mightyena hit me with another Swagger. I hit myself in confusion again and things were getting real uncomfortable real fast. Thankfully, Mightyena took a gamble and went for another Swagger to further boost my attack hoping I'd knock myself out by hitting myself one more time. I was able to attack through confusion this time and finally took out that pesky Mightyena!

------------------------

Aron

Now this was a matchup I was happy to see. All I needed to do was cross my fingers that I wouldn't hit myself in confusion! Thankfully, Numel ended up snapping out of it, so I was able to hit Aron no problem!

------------------------

Makuhita

There may have been a chance of this pokemon surviving my Earthquake if it wasn't for the four stages of attack boosts thanks to Mightyena's Swagger. Even if Makuhita was able to take out Numel, though, I'm pretty confident he wouldn't stand a chance against Kadabra.

-------------------------

Disappointed by Marill's performance, I decided to take this victory as a chance to swap pokemon. I should probably mention that you can't actually check the summaries of the pokemon you obtain from your opponents, so your knowledge of these pokemon is exclusively based on what you observed during the battle. This meant I had absolutely no idea what Aron and Makuhita's builds were like.

Form what I witnessed with that Mightyena, its build is rather risky and I don't like the negative synergy Swagger has with Intimidate. Aron isn't a bad option, but I figured Numel is already defensive enough. Most importantly, this battle revealed to me that I'm really vulnerable to Dark-types, so I decided to go for Makuhita in hopes of countering that weakness.

----------------------

Makuhita

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Thick Fat | Moves: Sand-Attack, Knock Off, Arm Thrust, Belly Drum

This was a much better moveset than I was honestly expecting, and hopefully Makuhita will be able to make up for Marill's lackluster performance.

================

Battle #2: Pokemaniac Davion

--------------------

Spinda

I immediately opened up with Reflect, figuring Spinda would probably try to hit me with a physical attack. Instead, it went for Faint Attack! However, my Confusion was still able to overcome its offensive presence without too much resistance.

---------------------

Loudred

Loudred was next and, thanks to Reflect, I was able to endure the damage of his physical attacks while taking him out with Confusion!

--------------------------

Magnemite

While Kadabra wasn't able to take much more abuse, he was able to get a couple of Confusions in before ultimately getting taken out.

Victory was practically assured at this point, though, so I hit Magnemite with an Earthquake from Numel and finished the round!

---------------------------

I didn't struggle with my current team too much, none of these pokemon really stood out to me, and I was actually pretty happy with my current team, so I decided I'd pass on switching pokemon this time and stick with my current team.

=================

Final Battle: Aroma Lady Jolie

--------------------

Barboach

Right off the bat, this thing just went for Water Sport, so I was able to set up Reflect and then take it out rather quickly with Confusion.

--------------------

Solrock

In all honesty, as soon as I saw Solrock, I thought this battle was over. Between its Psychic type and Levitate ability, this thing was a hard counter to literally my entire team. What are the odds!! I tried to keep Kadabra around as much as possible by using Confusion and setting Reflect back up, but it was no use and he went down with ease.

I brought out Makuhita, but this was no time for Belly Drum like I was hoping to do. I just opened up with Knock Off out of concern that it might have some annoying berry held. It was just holding a Hard Rock which sort of helped as it reduced the strength of Solrock's Rock Throw. Especially after it revealed that its only psychic attack was Psywave which can't actually be super effective. Still, things were not looking good. I continued to use Arm Thrust just hoping for lots of hits or criticals while slowly chipping away at Solrock's health. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take Solrock out in time, but my Focus Band triggered, keeping me in for one more round! I went for another and again, my Focus Band saved me! Okay, while I was initially salty that I was paired up against a hard counter to my entire team, I can't deny that this double Focus Band save more than made up for it! One more Arm thrust was enough to take Solrock out!

-------------------------

Shroomish

Her final pokemon was a Shroomish with a rather familiar moveset. But this was a joy for me to see! It opened up with Spore and put Makuhita to sleep. I hoped to wake up, but I wasn't able to before Shroomish hit me with Leech Seed and drained my last HP in a way that even the Focus Band couldn't save me from.

Thankfully, my last pokemon, Numel, was the perfect out to this Shroomish! With a single Ember, the battle was over!

==================

MVP: Kadabra

And with that, my Battle Tent challenge was complete! My prize?

A... Full Heal... which goes for the retail price of 600P... This wasn't exactly an easy challenge if I'm being totally honest, so this reward is rather unfortunate. I get it's early-game and they don't wanna give away too powerful of an item, but I honestly would have preferred they give me a Luxury Ball or something! Not a consumable item that does something I can do for free at a pokemon center! Unfortunately, this is a recurring trend. The prizes at these Battle Tents are rather lackluster, but I still feel that these tents are a significant enough part of the game to warrant exploring in this thread, so I will be taking on each one as they show up! Within reason, of course. If I find that my team as is can't handle the challenge being too low level or whatever other limitations there may be, I'll have to come back for them. I honestly never paid too much mind to these before so I really don't know what to expect out of them. It's an interesting concept and, really, it's just a small taste of a much larger feature waiting for us in the postgame that I personally have mixed feelings about, but we'll have to see how things go when we get there! For now, we'll need to focus on our campaign though as we're slowly approaching the point where the story of Emerald starts to diverge a bit from what we're used to with Sapphire.

Anyway, next time, we'll be making our way toward Mauville City where we'll be battling for our next gym badge!

February 3, 2021

Route 110

With Slateport City all cleared out, we can no advance further along onto Route 110!

Aside from the typical version difference of Zigzagoon replacing Poochyena, this route takes more influence from Ruby version where Minun is the more common pokemon while Plusle is only available at 2%.

==============

Trick House Puzzle #1

As you probably could have guessed, each of the Trick House puzzles have been redesigned! I'm not sure if I can necessarily say that they're "harder," by any means, but they're definitely different.

Ruby and Sapphire (Left); Emerald (Right)

They're similar enough that if you're used to the Ruby and Sapphire variations, you might get thrown off trying to go for what was originally the correct path. I'm not going to be covering these in too much detail since they're pretty much identical, but I'll definitely do them and take note of each one as they become available. For the most part, the prizes are identical to Ruby and Sapphire with one minor exception which I'll be sure to note as well.

=================

As we make our way along the underpass of Route 110, I do want to take a moment to take about a lesser-known feature that I've actually always appreciated. I'm not sure if I've previously covered this, but as far back as Generation 1, the HM move Cut has had a hidden use. If you use it near Tall Grass in the overworld, you can actually cut the grass down and turn it into a regular grass tile that can be walked on without encountering any pokemon!

Of course, when you leave the area and come back, the tall grass will return, but this can be used to minimize wild pokemon encounters where they're unwanted. It's especially nice for routes like this with sporadic patches of grass. I don't like to get too trigger happy with this mechanic, but I do find it really useful to use whenever I need to make a turn inside tall grass. If you use it the tile before the corner of your turn, you can cut not only the next tile, but both tiles next to it as well, allowing you to skip three full chances of encountering Wild Pokemon! I know it's a bit random for me to bring this up now, but it's something I've wanted to mention for a while and I've realized I've never had a good time to mention it before and it's slipped my mind ever since. It's also unfortuantely not a mechanic that will stick around for much longer, either, so I'd like to get as much use out of it as I can!

Of course, as we make our way down this road, we'll inevitably run into our rival for our second required rival battle!

================

PKMN Trainer May #3

----------------------

Wingull Lv. 18

With a couple of Bullet Seeds, her new pokemon, Wingull, went down with ease. To my surprise, it never used Wing Attack which could have made things a bit more awkward for me!

---------------------

Lombre Lv. 18

While I could use Fury Cutter to deal super-effective damage against Lombre, I figured I had access to a much faster solution.

I retreated into Ozone who took her out easily with Wing Attack.

---------------------

Combusken Lv. 20

Thanks to its fighting type, Combusken was even more vulnerable to Ozone's Wing Attack. Another easy win!

------------------------

Now, I want to take a moment to talk about May's party here. If you've been paying attention, you might have noticed that this team is significantly different than anything she had in Ruby and Sapphire.

While the choice of starter will naturally remain the same, it is indeed true that the rest of her team is completely different. Much like Blue, Brendan and May will always have a Grass, Fire, and Water-type pokemon.

In Ruby and Sapphire, these three pokemon were Shroomish, Numel, and Wailmer. They all have a single evolution and, of course, one of them will be replaced with the starter strong against yours. This was already strange because most of these pokemon aren't even available at this point in the game.

In Emerald, things are a little bit more awkward. Instead of Shroomish, Numel, and Wingull. I suppose they did the best they could to include three early-game pokemon, but by replacing Shroomish, they created another oddity here. Lombre is a part of a three-pokemon evolutionary line. I suppose this is acceptable, though, because you don't really see it alongside the others when it's in its first stage, so for all intents and purposes, it only has one evolution at this point. Still, it's also odd because this pokemon could technically fill the role of either a water or a grass-type.

There's also one more oddity and that's related to the Slugma. You see, if you started as a boy with a Torchic, you might have noticed an inconsistency here as well.

Back in Rustboro City, May, and only May, actually had a Torkoal of all pokemon back in Rustboro City! If you played as a girl, Brendan would have a Slugma in its place like you would expect, but here on Route 110 and all battles going forward, May's Torkoal is nowhere to be seen and is replaced by a Slugma. The only explanation I can think of for this oddity is that, at one point, they considered replacing Numel with Torkoal before they decided Torkoal might be too powerful for the early game. so they replaced it with Slugma but accdientally overlooked the optional battle with May in Rustboro City when making these changes to all the rival teams.

-------------------------

After defeating May, she gives us the ItemFinder just like before, which we can use to find hidden items around the world. It still works the same as it does in Ruby and Sapphire, rather than Fire Red and Leaf Green, though, so it's really not the most useful. A very situational item. In most cases, you'd be better off just walking over and checking the area you're curious about.

==================

As for the remainder of the route, there isn't anything too significant in terms of differences that aren't to be expected by this point.

One funny thing I wanted to take note of, though, is that there is a new Triathelete to be found down here. She tells you that she fell from Cycling Road and that got a laugh out of me!

==================

Mauville City

For the most part, things are unchanged here save for minor aesthetic shifts, namely this time around the Gaem Corner which is now adorned with more lights.

There is an NPC here who will teach your pokemon the move Rollout, though! He's standing on the path between the Pokemon Gym and the Pokemon Center. It can be a nice attack, being essentially a rock-type counterpart to Fury Cutter only it starts stronger and ends up with a higher max power as a result, but has the tradeoff of being less accurate and only working for a maximum of five turns while Fury Cutter will maintain its max power until it's interrupted.

I went ahead and got my Mach Bike from Rydel, grabbed a Rock Smash HM, then marched straight into the next gym. Of course, in front of the gym, we'll run into Wally who wants to battle with us.

==============

PKMN Trainer Wally

-------------------

Ralts Lv. 16

There's really nothing to say about this battle. One Wing Attack and Ralts is crushed along with Wally's ego.

===============

After defeating Wally, the event plays out the same with Wally agreeing to go back to Verdanturf Town with his Uncle, and his Uncle inviting you to come over.

This time, Scott approaches us from behind and comments about how impressed we were that we absolutely crushed, dominated and humiliated such a pathetic trainer who wasn't even worth our time or something to that effect. Seriously, I never liked this whole situation, it really doesn't feel good to beat Wally here and I'm not sure what purpose it really has for his character development... Maybe if there was more dialogue involved, it could be a beautiful learning moment, but as it stands, it just seems like Wally just walks off with his tail between his legs and that just kinda sucks. Scott seems to think it's a good thing to never hold back even against your friends, though, so I guess that's something?

Anyway, there's nothing stopping us from going into the gym now, so let's get it over with!

==============

Mauville City Gym

Once again, there are more pokemon trainers to be dealt with here than in the original. They don't all have Electric-types, but they all have Electric-type attacks. As always, you have the option of battling paris of trainers as double battles or single battles by walking between them or talking to them individually.

While battling my way through the trainers here, Ozone grew to level 21 and evolved into Swellow!

In that very same battle, Hill also grew to level 20 and evolved into Ninjask, which also meant leaving his shell behind which evolved independently into a Shedinja since I had an open party! These evolutions are going to be a huge help because, I'll be honest, I wasn't super confident about my team going into this gym. In fact, I was reluctant to even allow Ninjask to evolve since he'd be losing his Ground-type in favor of a Flying type which turns his immunity to Electric into a weakness. However, I ultimately decided to allow it since it gave me access to Shedinja which, going forward, would be a key asset to making this gym battle possible without having to go out of my way to grind a little bit.

=================

My Team:

-----------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 23

Item: Cheri Berry

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Pursuit, Screech, Bullet Seed, Quick Attack

-----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 21

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Growl, Focus Energy, Quick Attack

-----------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 20

Item: Exp Share

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Fury Swipes, Harden, Fury Cutter, Screech

----------------------

Shedinja M; Lv. 20

Item: Cheri Berry

Ability: Wonder Guard | Moves: Fury Swipes, Harden, Fury Cutter, Screech

-----------------------

So, right off the bat, you'll notice some oddities with this team. Yes, I'm currently noting both Hill and Shedinja as party members. While I don't intend to keep Shedinja as a permanent addition to the party, I decided to make use of it right now. Furthermore, the held items here are rather unusual. I normally avoid using Berries as much as possible since they can't be regrown without a functioning internal battery, but Cheri Berries are rather abundant and the use of these berries helped to make this battle a bit more consistent. I say "a bit," because even after applying the best strategies I could come up with, to win with this team was going to take some luck and several attempts. I'm not going to detail every single attempt because it took a lot of tries, but all I needed was a single good run to be able to win and I was pretty confident it was doable after some experimentation. You know how stubborn I am about this particular playstyle! I do really love the challenge!

==================

Mauville Gym Leader Wattson

--------------------

Voltorb Lv. 20

This Voltorb wasn't much of a hassle at first. Usually, it would just go for a combination of Spark or Shock Wave so I'd be able to take it out with a couple of Bullet Seeds. I found out through some experimentation that it knew Rollout, so I couldn't use Shedinja against it. This is a big part of why Forest was given a Cherri Berry. It wasn't uncommon that he'd get paralyzed during this matchup. Anyway, this seemed like a consistently (mostly) painless victory where I'd take a couple of resisted hits from Spark or Shock Wave before being defeated. Sometimes, I'd even be able to bait Wattson into wasting one of his Super Potions here. However, at some point, this thing arbitrarily started using SelfDestruct at seemingly random points! It wasn't doing it at first so I'm really not sure why it started blowing up all of a sudden, but, while its decision to detonate was rather sporradic, I developed a consistent strategy to deal with its unpredicatability.

Usually, when Voltorb did use SelfDestruct, it would do so when it started the turn with around half health. If I found it in this situation, I'd switch into Shedinja who was immune to the Normal-type attack. Even if Voltorb decided not to Self Destruct, it would probably go for Shock Wave or Spark which, thanks to Wonder Guard, Shedinja was also immune to. Of course, once face to face with Shedinja, Voltorb would have no choice but to go for Rollout.

So, if Voltorb wasn't taken care of yet, I'd retreat into Forest. Rollout isn't capable of doing a whole lto of damage on the first hit and, if it connects, he'll be locked into it for the next turn meaning no SelfDestruct or healing. From here, it's a free KO with one or two more Bullet Seeds.

On my winning run, though, I was able to correctly predict a SelfDestruct, so I was able to get this Voltorb to take care of itself.

--------------------------

Electrike Lv. 30

Yes indeed, it seems Wattson's team was readjusted to make room for the actual new Electric types introduced in Gen 3. It was strange that, in Ruby and Sapphire, his team lacked any pokemon from Gen 3 or even Gen 2! Anyway, at first I was concerned about the possibility that this Electrike might know Bite, but that ultimately proved not to be the case. This thing was entirely helpless to my Shedinja. As such, regardless of how the Voltorb went down, I'd either retreat into Shedinja, or just leave Shedinja in from the previous round. Believe it or not though, this matchup was a pretty strong determining factor in my ability to win this battle. This is for reasons that will hopefully become clear soon, but the important fact is that I want Electrike to be able to take out Electrike without getting paralyzed. Unfortuantely, with my current moveset, I do have to make physical contact with this thing a lot in order to take it out. My only offensive attacks are Fury Cutter and Fury Swipes which both are weak attacks that make contact over several hits to build up collective damage. This is why I ran a Cherri Berry on this set.

My plan to take out Electrike was just to spam Fury Cutter and hope I don't get the 30% chance to trigger Static. The Cherri Berry gives me a bit of leeway, but it's still a lot of luck to take this thing out without getting paralyzed again. It's not something I can consistently hope for, so I have to have a backup plan just in case. Either way, Electrike is going down fairly easily. On my winning run, I was able to take out Electrike after only getting paralyzed once, allowing me to go into Magneton with Shedinja without paralysis but unforutnately having already used its Cheri Berry.

---------------------------

Magneton Lv. 33

This thing right here is the source of a lot of my pain and suffering and really the only reason I was worried about this gym battle. You see, I have absolutely nothing to use against a Steel Type. A sane person would probably go back to Granite Cave and catch a Geodude or Makuhita to be able to deal with this foe, but that's just not how I roll. I wanted to get by with my own stregnth! That's easier said than done, though. While Magneton was Wattson's strongest pokemon in Ruby and Sapphire, he still has one more pokemon to worry about here in Emerald and that one's an offensive beast hiding right behind this fortress of a pokemon.

My best hope to take out this Magneton with my current team was to weaken its impenetrable defenses. Thankfully, I had the perfect move to do that: Screech! As a matter of fact, three of my four pokemon have Screech, so I can work with this! While I tried various approaches to reducing Magneton's defenses consistently, I quickly ran into a consistent problem: I just wasn't prepared for his final pokemon. So, this was where a lot of my attempts would die because I really just had to cross my fingers and hope for some good RNG.

You see, Wonder Guard protects me from all of Magneton's direct attacks (even SonicBoom, though it isn't affected by type matchups, is stopped by Wonder Guard!) However, Magneton can hit me with Supersonic to cause Shedinja to hit himself which will instantly cause it to faint. To make matters worse, the Persim Berry isn't actually available at this point in the game. The only way I can heal that confusion is to use items manually and, again, you know how stubborn I am about that.

Now then, the first thing I want to do here is set up for Wattson's final pokemon. It took a lot of thought to figure something out, but I eventually came up with an idea.

It might seem like madness, but I switch Ozone in against Magneton in hopes that it goes for Thunder Wave to paralyze Shedinja. (This is why it's so important to make sure Shedinja defeats Electrike without being paralyzed. Magneton obviously isn't going to go for Thunder Wave against a pokemon that's already paralyzed!) Why is it important that Swellow switches into a Thunder Wave? Well, by doing this, I get to take advantage of its powerful ability: Guts! This gives him a huge boost to his attack power while he's suffering from Burn, Poison, or, you guessed it, Paralysis. And thanks to Quick Attack's priority, I don't have to worry about the speed drop from Paralysis and the Silk Scarf helps to boost Quick Attack's strength further! Ozone will be my key player against Wattson's final pokemon!

After Ozone is paralyzed, I can consistently expect this Magneton to go for Shock Wave to get an easy KO against Ozone (which definitely will OHKO him!) So, I retreat into Shedinja which should be a safe retreat. From here, I start to spam Screech until Magneton's defense is down 6 stages. This is easier said than done, however, because it doesn't take long for Shedinja to start suffering from the effects of Parafusion. After all, it's the only way Magneton can out this thing. Even if Shedinja manages to pass the confusion check, there's still a chance he won't be able to attack through paralysis.

If Shedinja ends up hitting itself in confusion before minimizing Magneton's defense, Hill comes next and goes for Screech. This is usually the mark of a losing run. Hill will get KO'd and I'll have to resort to trying to finish Magneton off prematurely with Forest and Ozone which will either end with Magneton taking out them both, or Ozone taking out Magneton but being unable to take out his final pokemon on its own.

Alternatively, if Shedinja is already paralyzed going into this matchup, I need to hope for a lot more luck. Rather than switching out into Swellow, I'll just need to stay in and keep going for Fury Cutter, hoping Parafusion doesn't end up jamming my Fury Cutter. With lots of luck on my side, Shedinja can take out Magneton on his own! Though without the reduced defense, this takes many, many turns to build up the damage. However, trying to reduce his defense and build up Fury Cutter while starting at such a disadvantage is just relying too much on the dice. If paralysis stops my Fury Cutter, things start looking dire. I switch up by going for Screech and returning to my usual strat, though with the disadvantage that Ozone isn't paralyzed and thus doesn't have the benefit from Guts.

On my winning run, I wish I could say something more than I just got really, really lucky. I got Ozone paralyzed and then, with Shedinja back out, Magneton missed Supersonic multiple times, buying me some free turns to avoid KOing myself. I was able to get three Screeches off without too much concern. I did miss one, but I was able to land three regardless. After that, I started building up Fury Cutter. With the reduced defense, I was able to do much more damage than I otherwise would. Paralysis did end up interrupting my Fury Cutter, and Magneton did end up confusing me, but I never hurt myself in confusion and ended up snapping out before finishing him off with Fury Cutter. What a rough matchup, but I was in a good position to take on his final pokemon.

---------------------------

Manectric Lv. 24

Against Manectric, I was very confident this thing had Bite. I was rather nervous here because this matchup would basically confirm whether or not I would need to regroup and figure out some new approach to this battle. I don't think I could so much as hope for a better matchup. I'd only gotten to this Manectric once before and Ozone's Quick Attack was only able to do a quarter of its HP. While Guts would help him to do more damage, it wasn't going to be enough.

My plan was simple. I was pretty confident that Forest could take a single hit, and that Hill could outspeed, so I could reduce his defense by four stages if I used Screech with both of them. Coupled with a Quick Attack from Forest and the boost from Guts, Ozone might be able to take him out in one shot. To help with this, I decided to go for Fury Cutter to keep the 160 power I'd built up against Magneton going. To my surprise, Manectric just used Howl, which had me convinced in the moment it had just sealed its fate! But on the next turn, he didn't use Bite again... and again.... apparently, this thing didn't know Bite at all! It was completely defenseless! At some point, paralysis stopped my Fury Cutter, but all my nerves were gone now that I realized how safe I was. Manectric was a sitting duck and finally went down after several turns of building Fury Cutter back up.

---------------------------

With all that out of the way, I finally defeated Wattson and earned my Dynamo Badge!

Do I feel bad about cheesing the end of that battle? Honestly, not really. This was a really tough challenge and I felt like even my cheesy strategy took a lot of setup and was far more satisfying than merely coming back and using a Geodude's Magnitude to sweep through his entire team. At least this way, I'm still using a byproduct of my team.

MVP: Shedinja

=================

And here I thought that battle with Misty in Fire Red was the toughest battle I'd face in this gen. Still, this is the Wattson I remember! Though my victory was heavily luck-based, I still have to say that was a lot of fun! This is the type of challenge I remember these gym leaders offering and I really hope this remains a consistent thing throughout this adventure! Its battles like these that stand the test of time and really make gym leaders memorable! Anyway, next time I think we'll take the invitation of Wally's Uncle and pay a visit to Verdanturf!

February 4, 2021

Route 118

I dipped my head into Route 118 real quick to battle the trainers I could reach there. Normally I wouldn't mention, but the redistribution of trainers here is actually a little bit more significant than usual. If you recall, there was a bug with the aroma lady on this route in Ruby and Sapphire where she could see you while you were standing at the top of the ledge, causing her to approach you and walk onto the ledge which is normally impossible. Implying that she was likely either originally in a different location, facing a static direction, or that the ledges were added later and her behavior wasn't changed to address that.

In Emerald, this bug was fixed by relocating this trainer. Though it's unclear if the bug was fixed deliberately, or if it was just a byproduct of the typical shuffling of trainers because she is now standing across from a youngster, allowing you to challenge them both to a double battle.

==============

Route 110

With the Mach Bike from Mauville City, we can now take Cycling Road to the south of Route 110 and battle the trainers up here! Of course, we also can't resist going for that perfect 0 Collisions score and a 9-second time!

Of course, with a new gym badge means a new Trick House, so let's get to it!

Trick House Puzzle #2

Ruby and Sapphire (Left); Emerald (Right)

Once again, the changes to this puzzle are rather arbitrary. It's still just a straight linear path from start to finish with a few small forks here and there where you can find items occasionally. Honestly, this puzzle was never tough, but it feels even easier here since the paths were made a lot straighter. It's kind of just a big troll, though as it makes you go all the way to the end before finally opening up the path to the button at the very beginning which opens the path to the scroll.

More importantly, though, it's this Trick House puzzle that wins you a free Harbor Mail!

If you're a cheapskate like me, that means a free Coin Case in Mauville City! Now we can buy coins and play the games there! ...there's no actual changes in the game corner, though, so there's no real need to go over that.

================

Hoenn Route 117

It's probably not necessary by this point to mention that the trainers are scrambled around with lots of additional trainers added in. The grass, however, does have some noteworthy changes.

While Route 110 pulled more from Ruby having Minun as the more common pokemon, Route 117 seems to once again be pulling more from Saphire with Illumise taking the more common role over Volbeat.

In addition, just like before, Surskit is replaced with Seedot and again, Poochyena takes the place of Zigzagoon.

One more thing you might notice pretty quickly is that the pokemon Oddish is found much more commonly here at 40% as opposed to its original 10%. Well, as you can probably guess, there's a bit of a sad reason for that.

Much like Surskit before it, Roselia is no longer available in Pokemon Emerald. It can be considered a version exclusive to Ruby and Sapphire.

================

Verdanturf Town

And now we've arrived at Verdantuf Town! Once again, the contest hall has been replaced with a Battle Tent! There really isn't a whole lot to do here just yet, but it's always a nice place to come and pay a visit. The music is just as calming as I remember it. Of course, our main focus is going to be on this Battle Tent!

================

Verdantuf Battle Tent

Before we get ahead of ourselves, just like Torment in Slateport, you can get TM45: Attract here which was originally available in the Contest Hall here.

---------------------

Reading up on the rules here is going to make it clear that we're at a rather heavy disadvantage. As I alluded to before, each Battle Tent comes with its own set of rules that make for a unique way of battling. Whereas the previous Battle Tent in Slateport required us to use rental pokemon, meaning it conveniently didn't need our pokemon to be at any particular threshold of power, this one does require us to use our own team of pokemon. The opponent's pokemon will all scale to the level of your strongest pokemon, but they'll only scale to a minimum of level 30... My strongest pokemon is level 25. But there's more.

If we're using our own pokemon this time, what are the special rules for this challenge, then? Well, the rules here dictate that you don't actually get to control what moves your pokemon use. Well, not directly, anyway. Your pokemon's choice of moves will be decided by their nature. The only influence you have over your battle is to switch pokemon.

There is a full table on Bulbapedia that will describe this in detail, but I'm not going to link it here as it relates to something I'm intentionally being coy about for now. I'll simplify it to the best of my ability.

Every move in the game falls into one of three categories: Offense, Defense, or Support. Which moves fall into which categories are typically pretty obvious. Offensive moves deal damage, defensive moves increase your stats, and support moves disrupt your opponent through status conditions or stat reductions. Each Nature assigns two sets of move preferences to your pokemon: One for while it has high HP and one for while it has low HP. These preferences will determine how likely a pokemon is to use a move of each category.

For example, a pokemon with a Lonely nature has a 20% chance of using an offensive attack, 25% chance of using a defensive attack, and a 55% chance of using a support attack. However, once its HP drops to below half, a glint will appear in its eye and it will become significantly more likely to use offensive attacks with a massive boost up to 84%, while both its defensive and support rates drop down to a measly 8.

You might think you can circumvent this mechanic by just loading up your pokemon with a bunch of moves it doesn't like so that it has no choice, but that's not a very good idea, either. If a pokemon's moveset is full of moves it doesn't like to use, it will occasionally pass its turn entirely!

I haven't played around with these rules very much just yet to get a feel for how this RNG works, but it seems that your pokemon also has a preference for the move in its first slot. So, if I had to guess, the game will roll separately for each move going down the list. If it fails to get a successful roll on any of the moves, then it'll pass its turn. So, I recommend putting the moves you want your pokemon to use more in the early slots and the moves you want it to use less in the back. That way, you can maximize the chances of using the moves you want, even if it's unpreferred at the moment. Again, this is all based on speculation after a single battle in this format. As you can probably guess, I didn't do too hot...

=================

For this challenge, you're allowed to select three pokemon to enter with. The pokemon can be of any level, but it's recommended that they are all the same level and are at least level 30.

My Team:

---------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 25

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Nature: Timid

(High HP: 62% Offensive, 10% Defensive, 28% Supportive | Low HP: 30% Offensive, 20% Defensive, 50% Supportive)

Moves: Pursuit [62% | 30%], Screech [28% | 50%], Bullet Seed [62% | 30%], Quick Attack [62% | 30%]

--------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 24

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Guts | Nature: Relaxed

(High HP: 25% Offensive, 15% Defensive, 60% Supportive | Low HP: 75% Offensive, 15% Defensive, 10% Supportive)

Moves: Wing Attack [25% | 75%], Steel Wing [25% | 75%], Focus Energy [15% | 15%], Quick Attack [25% | 75%]

---------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 24

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Speed Boost | Nature: Jolly

(High HP: 35% Offensive, 5% Defensive, 60% Supportive | Low HP: 35% Offensive, 60% Defensive, 5% Supportive)

Moves: Fury Swipes [35% | 35%], Harden [5% | 60%], Fury Cutter [35% | 35%], Screech [60%, 5%]

----------------------

Yes, I am aware that Ninjask is probably my fastest pokemon thanks to Speed Boost, however, I don't really have anything else to give him at the moment, though I suppose I could've given him another Cheri Berry, buuuut, well, let's just say I don't exactly have high hopes for this challenge.

===============

Battle #1: Expert Tyson

----------------------

Makuhita Lv. 30

Right off the bat, this wasn't the best matchup. It was made even worse by Forest's tendency to use Pursuit instead of Bullet Seed! Things were going fairly smoothly at first. Makuhita just kept going for Bulk Up implying it must have had a nature that heavily prefers Defensive attacks. But, after getting a few Pursuits in, a glint appeared in Makuhita's eye and the tables turned almost immediately. It used SmellingSalt to take out Forest in one shot with its massively boosted attack.

I figured that maybe, by some miracle, if Ozone could survive an attack, he might be able to get a strong Wing Attack in with his shifted focus. But no. To add insult to injury, it didn't even use a single attack before going down to SmellingSalt!

And lastly, Hill didn't stand a ghost of a chance. He was able to get a Fury Swipes in, but that could only do so much thanks to the boosted defense of his opponent.

==================

Yeah... that was incredibly rough. I think we're gonna have to come back here with some stronger pokemon and some updated movesets. We may even have to return again much later with new additions to our team. For now though, I think I'm going to go ahead and consider this failed attempt the focus of our post. I know it was a short one today, but I had a pretty busy day, the next milestone is quite a ways away from here and, I'm gonna warn you, it's probably not going to turn out a whole lot different from this one.

February 5, 2021

Route 111

Since we're not really able to do much at the Verdanturf Battle Tent, I suppose we can go ahead and move on. Maybe by the time we revisit Verdanturf, we'll be able to handle that tent a little bit better. For now, we'll be returning to Mauville City and heading north onto Route 111!

As always, this is a huge route and, with such a huge route means lots of changes! Of course, we took on the Winstrate family and there aren't any changes there. Aside from the typical differences, the first difference that will catch your attention is the addition of a new building built into the rocky mountain range to the east.

===============

Trainer Hill

This building is home to a brand new attraction introduced in Pokemon Emerald: Trainer Hill! Unfortunately, this attraction is still under construction and won't be available for a while, but you can probably tell just from the name and the way the lobby looks just what kind of attraction this will turn out to be. We'll definitely take the time to revisit this place as I think it's different enough that it'll be worth covering!

=============

Route 112

Of course, we can't explore the desert on Route 111 without the Go-Goggles, so we won't be covering the changes there. Instead, we'll have to take the detour through Route 112.

As a bit of a strange twist, the Machop that were once available on this route are now replaced with Marill. This is strange considering Marill's been available for a while and Machop is still available nearby, but I suppose putting Marill here brings a bit more variety to this part of Hoenn? I really think adding Sandshrew or Slugma here would make more sense, but I'm sure they had some reasoning behind this choice.

More significantly, though, if we head up to the cable car that leads to the summit of Mt. Pyre where you might have expected to see some Team Aqua grunts, you'll instead find two Magma Grunts! I think it should be clear now why I said before how Emerald chooses between Team Aqua and Magma is pretty interesting. The two grunts are questioning whether or not their boss is really panning on awakening "that pokemon," which, judging from our knowledge of Ruby version, we can only assume to be referring to Groudon. However, it seems they're going to need the power of a Meteorite in order to awaken Groudon. obviously, we don't want to let Team Magma get their hands on this Meteorite, but I suppose, at this point in the story or if you've only played Sapphire, you might not necessarily think of these guys as villains just yet.

=============

Fiery Path

This place is identical to its counterpart from Ruby and Sapphire.

Like Ruby version, Koffing is more common here while Grimer is only available at 2%.

================

Route 113

The biggest difference here is that Sandshrew has been replaced with Slugma! Slugma's Flame Body can be rather annoying to deal with here while gathering Soot in your Soot Sack, but if it bothers you too much, you can always pop some repels while you gather your soot.

Of course, the Soot Sack and the five colored flutes from Ruby and Sapphire return as well. Once again, I went ahead and gathered the soot for a Blue and Yellow flute before moving too much further.

I should warn you, though, I actually wound up in a painfully awkward situation. Under the veil of the trees near the entrance to the route are three trainers waiting to ambush you after you drop down from the ledge above. You'll have to battle two of them in a double battle and one in a single battle if you carelessly walk straight forward. Normally, this would be fine, but since I still only have three pokemon, things got rather hairy when the first tag team of trainers included a Ninja Boy whose Koffing used Self Destruct to wipe out all the HP of both Forest and Ozone, leaving me with just Hill and my HM users to finish the double battle. It ended up coming down to me having to keep Hill alive with Super potions while hoping his Fury Cutters continue to land in spite of steadily decreasing accuracy from Sand-Attack. It was a disaster of a battle, but we still had to finish the SIngle-Battle afterward which just happend to involve a Baltoy with Rock Tomb... this was a nightmare scenario for me and is probably the greatest challenge I've faced from just standard trainers in this entire series! I guess you really should never underestimate your foes!

===============

Fallarbor Town

There isn't much to do here in Fallarbor Town just yet. However, there is the Move Tutor from Ruby and Sapphire who will teach your pokemon any moves they were capable of learning at a previous level. In addition, there's a new-style move tutor in the local PokeMart who will teach one of your pokemon metronome!

But of course, once again, the main focus of our time here is going to be the Battle Tent that replaces the Contest Hall. This is the last of the Battle Tents we'll be seeing, though we do still have to revisit the one in Verdanturf once we're better prepared.

===============

Fallarbor Town Battle Tent

Of course these rules differ from the rules of the other two tents, these rules follow a more orderly system. Each battle will be divided into individual matchups. With each matchup, there will be a time limit of three turns. If neither pokemon is knocked out in three turns, the winner will be decided by decision. In addition, you can't switch pokemon and your pokemon have to be sent out in order of first, second and third meaning there's no switching into a better matchup. It also means you can't assume that your opponent's second pokemon is their best matchup against yours. That can be a blessing and a curse!

As for how matchups are decided when the timer runs out, the decision is made based on the trainer and pokemon's ability to work together. Both trainer's battle style will be judged on three categories: Mind, Skill, and Body. In order to win by decision, you'll need to perform better than your opponent in two of these three categories.

Mind is more of a judge of the trainer rather than the pokemon. In order to perform well in this category, you'll need to select offensive moves and avoid defensive ones. Whether or not these moves go off doesn't actually matter. It's entirely based on which moves you selected. If you use defensive moves like Protect or Detect, you'll score poorly in this category.

Skill judges your pokemon's overall performance. To perform well, you'll need to try and make sure your moves connect as much as possible. Since there's no switching out, however, that can be easier said than done. You'll want to try and avoid getting afflicted with status conditions. In addition, this is where type matchups are factored into the equation. Using super-effective hits is a huge boon to your performance here.

Lastly, Body is perhaps the most straightforward. It's based solely on how much HP the pokemon lost over the course of the matchup. In order to do well, you'll want to avoid as much damage as possible.

================

Once again, your opponents' levels will be scaled to a minimum of 30 and you will enter with a team of three pokemon. My team is much better equipped this time, though still not quite at 30. It's much closer to where I'm pretty confident we'll be able to come out on top!

My team:

-----------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 29

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Pursuit, Screech, Leaf Blade, Quick Attack

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 28

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Steel Wing, Focus Energy, Endeavor

-------------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 28

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Fury Swipes, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter, Screech

==================

Battle #1: Lass Kiana

------------------------

Round 1: Forest vs. Goldeen

This round was handled rather effortlessly. I couldn't have asked for a better matchup and Goldeen went down in just one turn!

--------------------------

Round 2: Forest vs. Golbat

This round was a rather unfortunate matchup. but Golbat wasn't quite able to do enough damage to Forest to matter. I went for a couple of Pursuits to rack up some damage before switching to Screech expecting to get taken down before long. However, Golbat wasn't actually able to do a whole lot of damage. Instead, he spent some time trying to reduce my defenses with his own Screech.

O Mind X

Since Golbat focused more on reducing my Defense, he didn't score a whole lot of points in terms of offensive attack selection.

X Skill O

Since Golbat had the type advantage, even though he only attacked me once, he earned more points in this category in spite of not doing as much damage as me.

O Body X

Since Golbat primarily focused on stat reduction, he wasn't able to do a whole lot to me.

2 - 1

Since I won two out of three categories, I won the round by decision! Because of this, Golbat was eliminated from the battle forcing Kiana to send out her last pokemon.

--------------------

Round 3: Forest vs. Mightyena

Mightyena's intimidate reduced my attack, but that was irrelevant to the damage output of Leaf Blade! I was able to take out Mightyena with ease before it could even land an attack.

=================

Battle #2: Ninja Boy Rory

---------------------

Round 1: Forest vs. Swalot

Well this was a rough matchup. There was no winning here. Swalot's sludge just did too much damage and all I could do was try to reduce its defenses.

----------------------

Round 2: Ozone vs. Swalot

Swalot was able to survive an attack from Ozone in spite of the reduced defense, but he went for Yawn. This is a strategy which takes advantage of my inability to switch out! Since Ozone was locked into battle, I may as well try and do as much damage as I could. I finished off Swalot with another wing attack and succumbed to the sleep.

-----------------------

Round 3: Ozone vs. Ninjask

Ugh! What a terrible matchup! Normally I would be overjoyed for my foe to be stuck in the ring with a Ninjask against a Swellow, but of course, Ozone has to fall asleep because of Yawn! As a direct result, I couldn't attack at all and became a sitting duck while Ninjask freely built up his stats with Swords Dance and Speed Boost before knocking me out for free.

-----------------------

Round 4: Hill vs. Ninjask

While this was my best chance of winning, it was no lie that my opponent had a huge leg up with the boosted speed and attack. My only chance here was to get lots of hits with Fury Swipes, but to add insult to injury, I missed and on my next chance, only connected two hits! Hill ended up going down, causing me to lose my first challenge.

==================

Attempt Two

I'll admit, I had a bit of confusion about the rules during my first attempt. I was under the impression it was going to be a best of three scenario where both trainers would use their next pokemon on the next round and each battle would span only three rounds. Instead, it's more of a standard pokemon battle with an extra rule to speed up the process and deter stall tactics. With this in mind, I restructured my team so that I could send my pokemon out in what I felt was a more appropriate order. In hindsight, I'm thinking I should have gone with Forest second and Ozone last. But I figured Ozone would be a powerful second pokemon since he has the most diversity in his moveset thanks to Steel Wing. Hill I felt would be a strong lead since he could potentially set up with Swords Dance and pick off all of my foes in a clean sweep.

=====================

Battle #1: Gentleman Howard

-----------------------

Round 1: Hill vs. Linoone

This Linoone really caught me off guard by hitting me with a Shock Wave and taking Hill out really quickly! Not the best start...

----------------------

Round 2: Ozone vs. Linoone

It was a bit worrisome that Ozone was stuck against an opponent with Shock Wave, but I was able to survive a Shockwave from full health, allowing me to get in two Wing Attacks and take out Linoone.

-----------------------

Round 3: Ozone vs. Wailmer

I went for an Endeavor to cut Wailmer's health down low before he took me out with his own Water Gun.

------------------------

Round 4: Forest vs. Wailmer

This was a nice matchup! With Leaf Blade, I was able to take Wailmer out with ease! Especially with his reduced HP from Endeavor!

--------------------------

Round 5: Forest vs. Sandshrew

With a stroke of good luck, the last matchup was perfectly in my favor! This Sandshrew couldn't do a thing to help it survive against my Leaf Blade!

==================

Battle #2: Camper Jameson

---------------------

Round 1: Hill vs. Magikarp

What an insulting lead! There was no way this Magikarp would be able to deal enough damage to work around me! I could even buy some turns to set up Swords Dance and sweep through the rest of his team! Really, the only way I could lose this round is... by... missing.... on the third turn...

X Mind O

X Skill O

X Body O

0 - 3

All I needed to do was connect Fury Swipes on the final turn and I easily could have won in the Skill and Body categories (if I'm understanding these rules correctly). But unfortunately, the miss meant that Magikarp gained the upper hand even with his miniscule damage. Magikarp won by decision. What a humiliating loss.

-------------------------

Round 2: Ozone vs. Magikarp

I wasn't taking any more insults. Magikarp was down right away to a couple of Wing Attacks.

--------------------------

Round 3: Ozone vs. Nincada

A perfect matchup! One super-effective Wing Attack won me the battle!

--------------------------

Round 4: Ozone vs. Poochyena

Once again, this was a really easy win. I was able to take out Poochyena with ease. All it could do was try and reduce my accuracy but it didn't affect a thing.

================

Battle #3: Ninja Boy Rory

It's the very same Ninja Boy from before!

--------------------------

Round 1: Hill vs. Ninjask

It's the grudge match of the century! Now on even ground, I found that Hill is indeed faster than Rory's Ninjask and I was able to take him out after setting up with Swords Dance and finishing him off with a couple of Fury Swipes.

-------------------------

Round 2: Hill vs. Dustox

With the boost of my stats set up against Rory's Ninjask, Hill was a bit too powerful for Rory to stand up to! This was a much better start! I took out his Dustox with some Fury Swipes!

------------------------

Round 3: Hill vs. Nincada

It was a bit disappointing that Nincada was here instead of Rory's Swalot. But, this confirms my suspicion that there's a limited number of teams you can battle here and the pokemon aren't chosen at complete random. If I had to guess, there's a pool of different trainers who each have a full team of six pokemon of which three are randomly chosen before your battle. This is a similar manner to how certain similar events are handled in future titles, so it wouldn't surprise me if this is where it begins.

Anyway, with my boosted stats, Hill cut through Nincada like paper. This was a rather anticlimactic final battle, but I'm certainly not going to complain!

====================

MVP: Ozone

With three victories in a row, we have successfully completed the Fallarbor Battle Tent Challenge!

As our prize? A... Hyper Potion... I mean, I guess it's a really powerful healing item this early on. Still, I really think they could've given out some much nicer prizes with these tents. Why not give out rare berries to actually incentivize people to do these challenges? In all honesty, you could completely skip out on all of these and still not even really miss out on much... but I do still consider them to be interesting enough on their own merit to be covered.

==================

With the Battle Tent behind us, next time we'll be advancing toward Meteor Falls!

February 6, 2021

Route 114

There are lots of version differences stacked on top of each other here, so let's go ahead and start with the wild pokemon!

Of course, Lotad and Lombre are more prominent here like in Sapphire.

And while Surskit was replaced with Seedot in the earlier routes, it's replaced with Nuzleaf here at a mere 1%.

Furthering the Sapphire influence, we can also find the Sapphire version exclusive Seviper! I should note, however, that it's easier to catch Seviper in Sapphire version as, here, Seiver is only avaialble at 9% as opposed to his original 19%. The exttra 10% goes to making Lombre more common.

As you may have been able to assume from that, the pokemon Zangoose is unfortunately not catchable in this game. It is exclusively available in Ruby version. In my opinion, this is probably the biggest hit to version exclusivity in Emerald version. Although, as a kid, I always thought both of these pokemon were pretty cool. The problem being, that meant I always wanted both of them on my team! Without trading, that's just unfortunately never an option.

If the above preference to Sapphire version isn't enough for you, Lanette will also give you a Lotad doll! Normally, I would accept this as an arbitrary decision since Lotad is more common than Seedot, however I'd like you to keep this in mind as we see how this game handles other similar version exclusivity issues down the line.

===============

Meteor Falls

This is by far the most aesthetically different location compared to its ruby and sapphire counterpart and I honestly gotta say... I'm not much of a fan.

While it does have more color variance compared to its Ruby and Sapphire counterpart, I really think the almost otherworldly golden hue to this place was absolutely beautiful and made the location far more memorable. I'm not sure what the general consensus is on which version looks better.

The only significant detail to note here in terms of wild pokemon is that they tried to make up for the overwhelming favortism toward Sapphire by making Solrock the pokemon available here.

Where Zangoose is a true version exclusive to Ruby, this makes Lunatone a true version exclusive to Sapphire. If you want to complete the national dex with just the main series, you're going to need to play through both Sapphire and Ruby in order to get Lunatone and Zangoose respectively. Yes indeed, just like every generation, Gen 3 goes out of its way to ensure that you need at least one pokemon exclusive to each game across the series. There is one upcoming title that may help you complete the national dex if you're trying to do so in this game, however.

------------------------

Moving a little bit further, we can find Team Magma accosting Prof. Cozmo over the meteorite, just like in Ruby!

As expected, Team Aqua arrives, but this scene I personally think is filled with far more tension than it ever was in Sapphire since both Team Magma and Aqua have been introduced as villains by this point. Despite already making enemies of Team Aqua, it's far more fascinating here to see Archie walk up to you and, rather than introduce himself out of the blue, address that he might have been wrong about you and admit that your behavior is curious to him. The writing here already lends itself to a far more interesting story and it's only just beginning!

Of course, Team Magma gets away with the Meteorite and Team Aqua starts pursuing them to Mt. Chimney to stop their plans.

We're going to be... right behind them... yeah...

=================

There isn't anything special past Meteor Cave, so we can cut through Rustboro City and return to Verdantuf Town through Rusturf Tunnel! And while we're here... okay, I'll admit, I really just want to get the Battle Tent out of the way while we're here. I mean, it makes sense for us to practice our battling a little bit before taking on Team Magma, right??

===============

Verdanturf Battle Tent

You already know the rules here, so let's get right down to business and take on the challenge!

-----------------------

Attempt #2

Our levels are doing much better this time around! In addition, I also reorganized my moves so that my pokemon are more likely to use their useful moves based on my observations from my first challenge.

My Team:

---------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 31

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Speed Boost | Nature: Jolly

(High HP: 35% Offensive, 5% Defensive, 60% Supportive | Low HP: 35% Offensive, 60% Defensive, 5% Supportive)

Moves: Screech [60%, 5%], Slash [35% | 35%], Swords Dance [5% | 60%], Fury Cutter [35% | 35%]

-------------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 30

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Nature: Timid

(High HP: 62% Offensive, 10% Defensive, 28% Supportive | Low HP: 30% Offensive, 20% Defensive, 50% Supportive)

Moves: Leaf Blade [62% | 30%], Pursuit [62% | 30%], Screech [28% | 50%], Quick Attack [62% | 30%]

--------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 31

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Guts | Nature: Relaxed

(High HP: 25% Offensive, 15% Defensive, 60% Supportive | Low HP: 75% Offensive, 15% Defensive, 10% Supportive)

Moves: Wing Attack [25% | 75%], Steel Wing [25% | 75%], Focus Energy [15% | 15%], Endeavor [25% | 75%]

===============

Battle #1: Lass Cecilia

-------------------

Aron

While this matchup normally wouldn't be all that terrible to me, since I'm not in direct control of Hill's attacks, I can't rely on Fury Cutter to consistently build up damage or even be used. So, I retreated into a much more favorable matchup.

With Forest, I had a much stronger chance of using a better move against Aron. I'd rearranged my moves so that Leaf Blade was now at the top of my list and, sure enough, Leaf Blade was the most common attack used by Forest. With this, I was able to take out Aron without much of an issue.

--------------------

Nuzleaf

Again, it would have been really nice to have a Fury Cutter built up for this, but we can't get into the trap of thinking all pessimistic!

Again, while I'm pretty sure I could handle this matchup on its own, I'm not going to do very well if Forest uses Leaf Blade too much.

I decided to switch into Ozone who was thankfully able to attack Nuzleaf with Wing Attack in order to take him out.

---------------------

Mightyena

Mightyena's Intimidate reduced Ozone's attack, but I should be fine. I wasn't able to take him out just yet. Ozone failed to attack a few turns while Mightyena racked up some damage. This caused a glint to appear in Ozone's eye allowing him to attack more consistently... unfortunately he somehow still ended up using Focus Energy which was already set up, so he ended up getting taken down before he could make much use of his shift in personality.

Hill, unfortunately, has a pretty heavy interest in setup moves. This is why I moved Screech to the front of his moveset so that, worst case scenario, the target at least ends up with reduced defense so that the next pokemon can have an easier time dealing with him. In this case, however, I ended up using a lot of Swords Dance and Screech without a single Slash to take Mightyena out. Thankfully, he wound up knocking himself out with recoil from Take Down, taking Hill out in the process, but since I still had Forest, I won the battle!

================

Battle 2: Swimmer F Lillian

-----------------------

Pelipper

Once again, Hill just couldn't set up enough and ended up getting too greedy. Between Screech and Swords Dance... there wasn't a whole lot of Slashing.

Ozone came in next and made up for Hill's slack with Wing Attack. Thanks to Pelipper's reduced defense, I was able to take him out in a single attack.

-----------------------

Marill

Ozone was able to take out Marill as well! Pretty good luck considering the low odds of using an attack.

-----------------------

Tentacool

Tentacool also couldn't stand much of a chance against Ozone and went down with ease!

=================

Battle #3: Guitarist Ernesto

---------------------

Voltob

A bad matchup that needed to be fixed quick!

Since Forest resisted Spark, I was able to last a little while. And since he couldn't choose his moves, I was at less of a risk than usual to get spontaneously SelfDestructed.... aaand then we both went down to a SelfDestruct.

----------------------

Pelipper

This Pelipper seems suspiciously similar to the one from before, which I now has me convinced that the teams are chosen from a much larger pool of pokemon more akin to the Battle Tower than what I'd previously thought. This Pelipper has the same berry and seemingly the same moves. I imagine other identical pokemon will also share the same builds.

Once again, Hill didn't last long before getting taken out with Wing Attack.

Ozone was definitely able to make up for lost ground once again!

---------------------

Electrike

And what rotten luck... the very final pokemon in the final battle of the challenge happened to be a terrible matchup for Ozone. There was no way I'd be survivng a Shock Wave.

================

Attempt #3

I got really close that last attempt so I'm pretty confident we can do it this time! I was originally considering coming back with a new party member with the hope that it might have a better nature for this tournament, but I'm pretty confident I'll be able to knock this challenge out while we're here!

===============

Battle #1: Cooltrainer Ashlyn

-------------------

Solrock

This was a really scary start. There are a lot of dangerous moves this Solrock could have for my team.

I didn't have a whole lot of potential outs to this thing under these rules, but thankfully Solrock didn't use any Fire attacks which is what I was worried about. From here, I could hit him with a couple of Leaf Blades to finsih him off.

--------------------

Cacnea

Once again, this wasn't the best possible matchup, so I decided to retreat.

I was pretty confident that, no matter what this Cacnea did, it would be pretty useful for Ozone. At worst, he'd do a decent chunk of damage with a dark attack and get me down to the glint in my eye to help me use my attacks more consistently! I just ended up getting hit with a Needle Arm Wing Attack took out Cacnea right away and finished the job there.

--------------------

Goldeen

Since this was the last of her pokemon, I saw no reason to switch Ozone out. Sure enough, I was able to take out Goldeen in a couple of turns.

===============

Battle #2: Aroma Lady Brenna

--------------------

Lotad

Hill was able to take out Lotad after managing to land a Slash after several Screeches and Swords Dances.

----------------------

Shroomish

You'd think with all that setup, I'd be prepared to sweep the rest of the team, but you're underestimating this ruleset! I couldn't get Hill to attack at all at this point and he wound up going down due to only using Swords Dance left and right.

Thankfully, Ozone was able to pick of Shroomish to, once again, make up for lost ground.

---------------------

Swalot

If we assume that all of these Battle Tents have been pulling from the same pool of pokemon, then it's looking like we get our revenge against that Swalot that ruined our run in Fallarbor Town!

Ozone ended up going with Focus Energy missing its once chance to attack before getting hit with Yawn. Under these rules, however, I'm actually able to retreat!

It was a really big risk, but I brought out Forest. I say it's a risk because he very easily could have just used Sludge and taken out Forest in one shot. However, I did catch him by surprise with this switch and he wound up going for Acid Armor.

I figured Swalot would probably go for Sludge this time, so I retreated back into Ozone. Ozone was able to take a Sludge and was left with a little over half its health meaning there was no glint in its eye just yet unfortunately. I went for another attack but of course Ozone decided to go for Focus Energy again! Once again, I was hit with a Yawn and once again, I had to retreat.

This time, Swalot was prepared and hit me with a Sludge for the KO!

Things were looking really rough. I was down to my last pokemon and I'd yet to even touch this Swalot. I went for another attack and, this time, I landed a Steel Wing and got a defense boost! He hit me with another Sludge and brought Ozone down to the red, but this caused a glint in Ozone's eye! Now it was a very high chance I'd be able to hit him going forward. One Wing Attack from here was hardly not enough to take him out, but he hit me with another Yawn giving me a free turn to take him out with one more Wing Attack for the game!

=================

Battle #3: Camper Bradley

----------------------

Dustox

While Hill might have been a good matchup here, I definitely had a much better one lying in wait.

With Ozone, it just took one Wing Attack to finish the job.

-----------------------

Goldeen

I wasn't going to take any chances here so I retreated into a more favorable matchup.

Not really fearing the potential super-effective Peck, Forest ended up switching into an easily-resisted Waterfall attack. From here, a Leaf Blade did all the talking.

----------------------

Taillow

It almost felt like a joke that the final battle in this challenge was such a gimme, but again, I wasn't going to complain. I didn't even bother switching out here since it was three on one and just went for a couple of Pursuits to finish the game. All Taillow did was growl at me so it didn't take long for the battle to be over.

==================

MVP: Ozone

So, our prize for winning this challenge? Do you think it was worth it?

Of course not! It's a Nest Ball! This is perhaps the most laughable prize of all of these Battle Tents since you can literally buy these same pokeballs in the PokeMart in this town. Again, I'm really not sure why they even bothered with such lame prizes.

But, with that, the Battle Tents are all over and done with! They were definitely interesting, and while a lot of it did feel like it came down to luck by nature of the special rules, I'd be lying if I didn't say the rules made things a bit more interesting than your typical pokemon battle. Hopefully if we ever see more challenges like these coming up (hint hint), we'll have a much better prepared team to be able to handle these challenges more consistently!

Anyway, now that we're done with our little distraction, next time we'll need to make our way back up toward Mt. Chimney! We might have been putting off something rather important there... But, I'm sure everything will be fine!

February 7, 2021

Route 1112

Now that Team Magma has gotten away with the Meteorite, the grunts blocking the way to the cable car have mobilized to reinforce Team Magma against Team Aqua's advances. Of course, this means we can ride the Cable Car to the top!

==============

Mt. Chimney

After taking the Cable Car, we arrive on the summit of Mt. Chimney where, just as before, we find Team Aqua struggling to keep up with the Magma grunts who outnumber them!

As we make our way further up the mountain, we'll start battling our first Magma grunts! Whom you can face together in a double battle! Like Team Aqua, they too have their own unique battle transition featuring a close-up of the Magma logo! Shortly after battling these two...

===============

Team Magma Admin Tabitha

-------------------

Numel Lv. 18

Tabitha's Numel isn't anything to worry about. A clean Leaf Blade is all it took to take him out.

--------------------

Numel Lv. 22

Though his second Numel was a bit stronger, it still didn't survive a Leaf Blade from Forest.

-------------------

Zubat Lv. 22

While Zubat would be able to resist Leaf Blade, it's still not capable of putting up much of a fight and still wound up going down pretty easily after a Screech and Quick Attack.

--------------------

Poochyena Lv. 20

If none of the other pokemon were able to survive a hit from Forest, there was no way this Poochyena would be able to survive!

----------------------

And with that, the first admin of Team Magma, Tabitha, is defeated. I'm glad they expanded his team and toughened him up a bit compared to Ruby version. It really helps to make him stand out a bit better compared to the surrounding grunts.

================

Magma Leader Maxie

----------------------

Mightyena Lv. 24

I set up with Swords Dance before building up a couple of Fury Cutters on Mightyena. He hit me with a Sand-Attack, though, which ultimately caused me to loose my chain to a miss before he used a Super Potion to heal up a bit. There was little point in trying to build up Fury Cutter with reduced accuracy, but since I had increased attack, I ultimately stayed in to attack with Slash for the KO!

----------------------

Zubat Lv. 24

I'm not really sure why they replaced Maxie's Golbat with a Zubat here considering it's definitely high enough level to be evolved. Maybe they wanted to make this battle a bit easier since it actually could be a rather difficult battle originally? Either way, a Slash was all it took to take out Zubat.

---------------------

Camerupt Lv. 25

A single Slash wasn't quite enough to take out Camerupt. After an Ember followed by a miss, Hill was taken out with an Ember.

At this point, though, victory was basically assured. With a Leaf Blade, I was able to take out the remainder of Camerupt's HP.

-----------------------

And with that, Maxie was defeated and his plan to use the Meteorite to cause the volcano to erupt was rendered a failure.

He retreats, leaving the Meteorite inside his machine for you to recover. We can deliver this to Prof. Cozmo at a later time.

=================

Archie soon approaches you after Maxie leaves. He thanks you for your help but once again expresses genuine confusion about whose side you're on. After expressing his gratitude for your help, he leaves Mt. Chimney and we're about to head off as well!

=================

Jagged Pass

With the battle on Mt. Chimney out of the way, we can finally reach Jagged Pass which means we have access to our fourth team member!

-----------------------

Stars (Spoink F); Lv. 22

Item: None

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Odor Sleuth, Psybeam, Psych Up

-----------------------

We've gone so long with only three primary party members so it's a little surreal to finally be catching another pokemon. However, I actually do appreciate that our team members have been a bit more spread out than usual this time around. It lets each one have a chance to be the baby of the group for a while!

Spoink doesn't seem to be a very popular pokemon in this generation, but I've always been quite fond of it! Though I rarely get a chance to actually use one because I usually prefer one of the other psychic types. However, where Ralts can be seen as a sort of Hoenn counterpart to Abra, I'd say Spoink is the Hoenn counterpart to Drowzee. It's less powerful in terms of its special stats, but its got some extra physical bulk that'll help it take some more hits than its more delicate counterpart.

I originally wanted my Spoink to have Thick Fat to help it take Fire and Ice-type damage better, but I think Own Tempo can be just as helpful!

----------------------

In addition to our new Team Member, there aren't any notable changes to wild pokemon, though I should mention the really odd discrepency between versions here. None of the encounter rates were altered between Ruby and Sapphire, but strangely, the wild pokemon available here are higher level in Sapphire. I don't know if there's a similar location like this where pokemon are higher level in Ruby, but it seems like a really arbitrary change between versions. In Emerald, the wild pokemon have the higher levels from Sapphire.

As we make our way down the Jagged Pass, the most significant change in Emerald Version is that there is now a stray Team Magma grunt loitering around. If we speak to him, he'll battle us and then mention something about how he should've retreated into the hideout. Curious, as there doesn't seem to be any hideout nearby...

=================

Lavaridge Town

There aren't any notable changes here in Emerald. I grabbed the Wynaut Egg from the Old Lady before heading into the gym.

===============

Lavaridge Gym (1F - B1F)

This gym was expanded to be much larger on both floors and, of course, accomodates for far more trainers which is rather typical for these redesigned gyms. Regardless, the gimmick is still mostly the same. Pay attentiont o where the holes line up between the floors and you'll generally be able to piece together where the trainers will pop out to catch you by surprise. Again, this is Saffron Gym done right. It's actually a maze that can be solved with logic rather than just blind trial and error.

================

My Team:

---------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 31

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Screech, Quick Attack

-----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 31

Item: Soothe Bell

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Steel Wing, Focus Energy, Endeavor

-------------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 31

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Screech, Slash, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter

--------------------

Stars (Spoink F); Lv. 25

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Confuse Ray, Psybeam, Psych Up

==============

Lavaridge Gym Leader Flannery

---------------------

Numel Lv. 24

With my memory of Flannery's team in Ruby and Sapphire, I decided to lead with Ozone on the offchance that I might be able to get burned on one of her Slugma's Flame Bodies. Of course, I'd underestimated how different her team would turn out to be here. Slugma is a much less prominent part of her team and this new team is significantly more difficult to handle! Numel itself wasn't exactly difficult to take out, though.

---------------------

Slugma Lv. 24

Slugma also didn't stand much of a chance against Ozone. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a Burn off of Flame Body. As it turns out, this Slugma has Magma Armor rather than Flame Body, so that never had a chance of happening to begin with!

---------------------

Camerupt Lv. 26

Now here we're faced with a much more difficult foe! Wing Attack on its own wasn't enough to take Camerupt out. He went for Overheat which would reduce his Special Attack at the cost of nearly taking out Ozone on its own. After taking another Wing Attack, Camerupt took Ozone out with a Take Down.

I brought out Forest next and went for Leaf Blade! Flannery took the turn to heal her Camerupt, but his HP was brought right back down. Another Leaf Blade was enough to finish him off.

------------------------

Torkoal Lv. 29

I couldn't stand a chance against Torkoal. I went for Screech in an attempt to reduce his Defense in order to help out Nincada, but to add insult to injury, I completely forgot that Torkoal's White Smoke ability prevents its stats from being reduced by enemy attacks! In addition, this Torkoal is not holding a Sitrus Berry like most other gym leaders. Where my best plan was to bait Flannery into using Overheat to reduce her Special attack, she was one step ahead! Her Torkoal is holding a White Herb! This is a consumable held item similar to berries that prevents stat reduction, allowing her to get a free use out of Overheat!

There was no way I'd be able to get Torkoal's special so low that it'd be unable to take out Stars, so I decided to use Stars to Confuse it with Confuse Ray and hope I can get it to hit itself a lot. Of course, such a desperate strategy is highly unlikely to work and Stars ended up getting knocked right out. She'd even set up Sunny Day to power up Overheat further!

There wasn't a whole lot of hope left. I brought out Hill who predictably got burned to a crisp in one last Overheat.

===================

Attempt #2

----------------------

Numel Lv. 24

For my second attempt, I decided to lead with Stars this time. I figured the Flame Body strategy wasn't going to work out so well if there was only one Slugma. This way, I can get some better use out of Stars while also saving Ozone for Flannery's tougher pokemon. Right away, I noticed some issues with this idea, though. Namely, Stars isn't going to be able to take out Flannery's earlier pokemon as easily giving her more opportunities to set up Sunny Day.

Numel went down after a couple of Psybeams after only taking some Take Downs.

----------------------

Slugma Lv. 24

Slugma decided to take the chance to set up Sunny Day. On the next turn, I wasn't quite able to take it out before it hit me with Overheat for the KO.

Since its health was in the red, I figured Flannery might take the chance to heal. I took this opportunity to set up a Swords Dance. From here, just one Slash was all it took to KO Slugma on the next turn.

---------------------

Camerupt Lv. 26

Things were looking a little bit better here. I went for another Slash wholly expecting to get KO'd with Overheat. Instead, Camerupt was brought down to the red and went for Sunny Day! With its health low, I was able to anticipate another heal and went for another Swords Dance! Camerupt went down to a Slash, finishing him in one shot thanks to the 4x boost to attack!

-----------------------

Torkoal Lv. 29

A much better position for this matchup! With just one Slash, I was able to take care of Torkoal!

----------------------

MVP: Hill

I honestly cannot say I ever would have expected Hill to win MVP in Flannery's gym, but once a Ninjask can get in a clean setup, there's no stopping it! I'll be honest, Hill's carrying his weight as a standalone fighter far better than I ever expected him to.

--------------------

With this victory, I've earned the Heat Badge and can now use Strength outside of battle! Next time, we'll be able to proceed right away to our next gym!

February 8, 2021

As soon as you leave the Lavaridge Gym, just like before, your rival shows up to suggest you go challenge your father's gym and gives you a pair of Go-Goggles to allow you to explore the desert on Route 111.

==============

Before we get to the desert, though, I actually want to revisit Mt. Chimney because there's actually a detail I completely forgot about in my playthroughs of Ruby and Sapphire.

If you come back to Mt. Chimney after obtaining the Heat Badge, you'll find that the previously empty summit of Mt. Chimney is actually now populated by a few new trainers. This is true even for the original Ruby and Sapphire. This may make it slightly more difficult to retrieve the Meteorite if you forgot to do it after defeating the leader. Though none of these trainers are particularly noteworthy, there are some who are capable of offering rematches.

================

Route 111

Finally, we have access to the desert!

Before going into the desert to explore, though, I strongly recommend making sure you have a few Repels and a Mach Bike as well as a pokemon that knows Rock Smash. I don't typically use repels but just trust me in saying that it's a very useful item to have going forward.

While there is nothing in particular we really need here, things are a bit more special in this case. If you recall, this was where we got our choice between the Root or Claw Fossil in Ruby and Sapphire. But as you explore the desert here, you may find it to be rather disappointingly empty even compared to Ruby and Sapphire. Even the fossils are missing!

Of course, looking at this map, there's a huge elephant in the room: A giant tower right at the southern entrance to the desert! However, this tower isn't going to be present every time you come here. Don't worry, it's nothing absurd like the Mirage Island. This tower has a random chance of appearing every time you enter this route. If you don't see it, simply leave the route and come back. It's right at the entrance, so it's real quick to check.

================

Mirage Tower

This area is a dungeon exclusive to Emerald version! Well, I use the term "dungeon" loosely. There's not really much to this place. There are wild pokemon, but it's just a 50/50 chance of being Sandshrew or Trapinch. The most significant aspect about this location is that this is where these pokemon are found at their most common, so if you're looking for either of them for pokedex completion, you may want to catch them while you're here.

-----------------------

2F

On the second floor is the primary reason I suggested having the Mach Bike and some Repels before exploring the desert. As you can see, there are some cracked floor panels. If you recall from Ruby and Sapphire, these ground tiles will collapse under your feet as soon as you step on them. The only way to get past them is by riding at high speed on your mach bike which means you'll have to make some precise turns in order to get through. The repel isn't totally necessary, but you don't want to get interrupted by wild pokemon while trying to build up or preserve speed.

-----------------------

3F

Here, you'll need Rock Smash to continue climbing further up. Hence the Rock Smash user I suggested to bring as well.

----------------------

4F

As we reach the top of the mountain, we'll find that this is where our fossils are located!

As always, we have our choice between the Claw and Root Fossil. Your choice this time is actually rather arbitrary for reasons we'll explain later, but unless you're interested in using Armaldo or Craydily on your team, it really doesn't matter which fossil you go for.

I grabbed the Claw Fossil.

=================

As soon as you make your choice of Fossil, the entire tower will begin to collapse and you'll be kicked out!

As the tower sinks into the ground, the fossil you didn't choose will be left behind before sinking into the sand as well, just like before. From this point forward, the Mirage Tower will never appear again. What a mysterious location...

This area is very interesting in terms of the sense of mystery it brings to the region, but I'm not really sure how necessary it was. I mean, there's already a rather significant sense of mystery throughout the region thanks to the Legendary Golems and the ancient civilization that locked them away, and this mirage tower does seem to needlessly complicate the process of simply finding a fossil in the desert like in the original games. But, there is one addition we'll come across later on that will make the fossils a bit more convenient than they were in the preceding game.

=================

Trick House Puzzle #3

Of course, the Heat Badge unlocks the third Trick House puzzle. I'd say this puzzle is a little bit trickier than its Ruby and Sapphire counterpart, but it's still nothing that'll stump you.

The prize is, again, unchanged, but I figure the Hard Stone is probably an item worth mentioning.

==============

As we pass through Rustboro City on our way back to Petalburg, we'll go ahead and pay a visit to Devon Corp. to awaken Anorith from our newly obtained Claw Fossil.

==============

Petalburg City

So we finally make our way back to Petalburg! There's not much to speak about here, so let's go ahead and take on our father's gym!

================

Petalburg Gym

This gym's overall shape is mostly unchanged from the original and the gimmick is still the same. You'll have to face a minimum of three trainers as you work your way to the back of the dojo to battle with Norman. The "Zero-Reduction Room" has now been replaced with a "Confusion Room" and the colors of the mats in each room seem to correlate to their perceived difficulty with blue being easier and red being harder.

----------------------

1st Room: Speed or Accuracy

The Speed room features a male cooltrainer with a Swellow. You'll notice right away, though, that these rooms are handled a bit differently than previously. First of all, the trainers now use a wider variety of Normal-type pokemon rather than the majority of Linoone from the previous games. In addition, these trainers no longer simply mindlessly open up with an X-item of their specialized stat. This in turn means you don't get any free hits in.

The Accuracy Room is home to a Delcatty. With the help of some X-Accuracy, she likes to make you struggle with normally inaccurate attacks.

------------------------

2nd Room: Confusion, Defense, or Recovery

If you chose the Speed Room, you'll geet your choice between the Confusion or Defense room next. Alternatively, if you chose the Accuracy Room, you'll get to choose between Defense or Recovery.

The Confusion Room is home to a Cooltrainer who uses a Spinda. This Spinda loves to use Teeter Dance to confuse you, meanwhile protecting itself from confusion with Own Tempo. Thankfully, this strat was easily countered with Stars who also had Own Tempo!

In the Defense Room, we've got a Wigglytuff. Contrary to what you might be expecting, this thing loves to come out with fists flying using Double-Edge rather than building up its defenses to stall you out. Considering you probably came in prepared to deal with physical defense, this Wigglytuff might actually give you some problems. But still, it's six against one so it shouldn't be too rough.

In the Recovery Room is a rather odd choice. A Slakoth definitely isn't the best choice for a tank, but let's assume this guy's simply in training. It's holding a Sitrus Berry and he likes to heal it with items.

--------------------

3rd Room: Strength or One-Hit KO

The Strength room is mostly the same. It features a powerful Zangoose who can tear through your team with strong attacks. Thankfully, a mixture of Stars' Confuse Ray, Hill's Screech, and Ozone's speed, he didn't stand too much of a chance at all.

The One-Hit KO room is home to a Vigoroth who loves to assault you with high crit-chance attacks.

-----------------

Once you've made it past the third room, it's finally time to take on the gym leader!

================

My Team:

---------------------

Forest (Grovyle M); Lv. 32

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Screech, Quick Attack

-----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 32

Item: Soothe Bell

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Steel Wing, Focus Energy, Endeavor

-------------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 33

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Screech, Slash, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter

--------------------

Stars (Spoink F); Lv. 31

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Confuse Ray, Psybeam, Magic Coat

==============

Petalburg City Gym Leader Norman

--------------------

Spinda Lv. 27

Much like his gym, Norman's team is full of a wider variety of pokemon!

Right away, I went to set up Swords Dance. It's a bit of a risk considering Spinda probably knew Teeter Dance, but I knew setting up early would pay off really well if I could do it successfully. Thankfully, Spinda ended up going for Facade, so I was able to take a hit and take him out in a single Slash on the next turn, putting Norman in a difficult position already.

--------------------

Vigoroth Lv. 27

I went for Slash again and brought Vigoroth's HP down to the red. All he did was go for Facade which still wasn't able to KO me. Now, this is where my playstyle got rather sloppy. I should have gone for Swords Dance on calling his inevitable heal. But, for some reason I wasn't confident he'd be dropping a potion on his Vigoroth. I'm not sure why I thought that, but thankfully my next Slash was a crit and took him out anyway. However, I missed out on a free chance to get an extra +2 on my attack which, looking ahead, definitely could have bought me an admit-one into the sweepstakes.

-------------------

Linoone Lv. 29

Linoone is where my initial sloppy play started to catch up on me. I hit Linoone with a Slash but, like Vigoroth, it didn't go down. From here, it finished me off with a Slash of his own.

I brought out Stars next and, calling his next heal, I used Confuse Ray to limit the Linoone's attacks. Again, this was very sloppy play as I risked Stars getting KO'd to Linoone's attacks and Confuse Ray would definitely be far more useful against Slaking's Truant ability. Thankfully, Linoone hit itself in confusion twice in a row allowing me to take it out with Psybeam.

--------------------

Slaking Lv. 31

Unlike its predecessor, this Slaking does more than simply spam Focus Punch. With a single Faint Attack, he took out Stars like it was nothing.

I brought out Ozone next to soften Slaking up with some Wing Attacks. But after the two hits, there was no way I could survive the incoming Facade. Again, this was very sloppy. I definitely think I should have sent out Forest to hit him with a Screech or two first in order to increase the damage of Wing Attack from Ozone.

It was now all up to Forest. With Leaf Blade, I was able to finish Slaking off and end the battle!

-----------------------

MVP: Hill

Any underperformance of my other pokemon was purely due to my own negligence. I'll be honest, I started this battle not expecting to win my first attempt, I just wanted to test out some quick ideas and ended up getting lucky with my first attempt! Still, in spite of my sloppy playstyle, I'm confident in saying that Hill is MVP here. Regardless of how much better I could have used my other teammates, had I used that Swords Dance when I should have, I have no doubt he would have been able to sweep through the entirety of Norman's team except maybe the Slaking, which I'd have the rest of my team to deal with.

================

And now, our father, Norman is defeated and we've claimed our 5th badge!

Normally, I'd end the post here, but there's actually a rather sudden scene added here in Emerald version in which Wally's Father enters the room and pulls us aside. He guides us to his home and, from here, the typical dialogue from Ruby and Sapphire plays out where he thanks us for all we've done for Wally and gives us HM03 Surf.

This scene felt rather shoe-horned in, but I can tell why they added it. In Ruby and Sapphire, it was rather easy to miss this HM since you could easily forget about Wally's parents and you get it from an otherwise completely unmarked house. A similar complaint with the Strength HM in Gold and Silver, really. Still, I definitely think they could have handled this scene better. Why not as you leave the gym like with May and the Go-Goggles? This kind of intrudes on the emotional moment of your father saying he's proud of you and if you want to talk to Norman again, you'll need to walk all the way to the back of his gym again. It's definitely strange.

Anyway, next time, with the power of Surf, I can't promise we'll be making any story progress. There's quite a bit to cover and a lot of the world is now open to us with HM03. That also means... I think it's finally time to grab not one, but two new party members!

February 9, 2021

Route 103

As suggested last time, there's not going to be any story progress in this post. There's just too much to cover between here and the next gym. Instead, we're going to focus our efforts on catching not one, but two new party members today!

We're going to start by crossing the water at Route 103. I should mention that there is some other stuff we can do on this side of Hoenn first, but we'll end up crossing back over anyway. For now, the main objective is to catch our two new party members, so we're going to be skipping over some things along the way and coming back to do them later in an effort to help level up the new team members.

As it turns out, Stars was right on the cusp of evolution! A simple battle with a wild pokemon leveled her up to Level 32 where she evolved into a Grumpig!

================

Route 118

Once we've returned to Mauville, we'll first poke our head into the eastern side of Route 118.

Here, a Fisherman will give us a Good Rod and I think you can tell where I'm going with this one. As soon as we get this Rod, we're going to turn right around and make our way back.

===============

Route 114

I finally made my way up to Route 114 to put this Good Rod to good use.

------------------------

River (Barboach M); Lv. 10

Item: None

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Mud Slap, Mud Sport, Water Sport

-----------------------

Now, I actually went back and forth quite a bit on what Water-type I wanted to use for this playthrough. Just like Kanto, there are lots of water-types in Hoenn that I really wanted to use and have never used before. I initially wanted to use Huntail since it was a trade evolution which I normally can't do. However, realizing how late in the game Clamperl is made available and that Huntail's learnset is rather limiting, I then briefly considered Lanturn before realizing I'd face the same issue, so then changed it to Sharpedo because it's another one of my childhood favorite pokemon that I just never got around to using. But ultimately, I decided that Sharpedo will perform better in future generations, so I passed on him as well. That finally brought us to Whiscash which, while this movset is probably going to seem almost identical to the moveset I gave to my Quagsire in both Gold and Colosseum, which might make it a bit boring for some people, but I felt it was a better use for the TMs I'd end up using on Sharpedo anyway. What can I say? I have my preferences.

Right away, I taught this little guy the HM for Surf.

While I was at it, I also taught Ozone Facade over Focus Energy. While Focus Energy was nice to set up every once in a while, I'd usually rather just hit the enemy with a strong attack. Facade is basically an attack with the effect of guts built in. With both of these multipliers applied in addition to STAB, this will really make Ozone a force to be reckoned with if he ever gets a status effect. And for that matter, I'm not against returning to Route 113 and attacking a bunch of Slugma until one of them gets Ozone burned if I ever find myself getting walled with a difficult battle in order to get the benefit of such a powerful asset. Even without the boosts from having a status ailment, its base 70 power isn't that bad offensively, either.

================

As for our next pokemon, we'll need to return to Route 110 and from here I think you can tell where we're going with this.

Along the way, I spoke to Wattson in Mauville City to retrieve the Basement Key, though this isn't going to be necessary just yet.

================

New Mauville

The pokemon we need here is actually 1% more common in this tiny entrance room than inside New Mauville Proper.

----------------------

Cliff (Magnemite); Lv. 22

Item: None

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderShock, Supersonic, SonicBoom, Thunder Wave

---------------------

Yes, yes, speaking of familiar pokemon, we're going to be retreading old ground yet again. Trust me! I definitely did not want to use Magnemite again here. If I was going to use this pokemon again, I really wanted to wait until Gen IV where I'd have a new evolution to work with at least, but your choices for Electric types in this game are shockingly limiting. It's no coincidence that my Ruby playthrough completely lacked an Electric type pokemon entirely. But, this is where my feelings led me. I didn't want to use Manectric again and I'd literally just used Electrode in Leaf Green, so that felt like it was off the table as well. Plusle and Minun are, let's face it, garbage tier pokemon that aren't really worth seriously considering for more than a second. (Don't get me wrong, I adore their designs, but their contributions to a team will be paper thin!) Magnemite was the only option here, really. Ultimately, though, I do think this will work out pretty nicely because I can finally use the Magnemite build I would have preferred back in my playthrough of Silver!

Anyway, after catching Cliff, I immediately turned right back around because I wasn't going to explore New Mauville just yet. I wanted River to get a bit stronger before doing so so that I could deal with the pokemon in there a lot easier.

===============

I immediately headed back to the Pokemon Fan Club in Slateport City to speak with the Move Tutor to teach Cliff Swagger. Like I said, it's not going to take long for his moveset to become almost identical to Magnanimus from Silver.

===============

Route 109

With Surf, we can now explore the southern part of Route 109! There's not too much to talk about here, though.

==================

Route 108

More importantly, Route 109 spills into Route 108 which also means...

=================

Abandoned Ship

We can now explore the ominous abandoned ship wreckage!

There isn't anything too terribly noteworthy about version differences in this location save for the usual. But, I thought I should mention it because, as you know, this is where you get TM13: Ice Beam!

I didn't hesitate to teach Ice Beam to River to help him cover his weakness to Grass-types.

================

Route 105

I then made my way up through Route 105 to return to Petalburg where I began. Along the way, I did stop by to do a few more things that aren't really worth noting. Just collecting items and such.

Most significantly, I returned to Littleroot Town and received the Amulet Coin which I gave to Stars since she lacked an item after moving her Quick Claw onto Cliff.

===============

Trick House Puzzle #4

Original (Left) Emerald (Right)

You didn't think I'd forget about the Trick House in all this mess, did you? Of course, with the Balance Badge brings us yet another puzzle to solve! This time, we need Strength, so we'll need to prepare!

Thankfully, we can fish for Wailmer right outside on Route 110. I named it Ocean and immediately taught it Strength and Rock Smash.

The puzzle itself is once again different but still similar. Just be careful where you're pushing the boulders and try to keep your options open as much as you can. The puzzle isn't anything too complicated, but you may have to leave and come back in if you make a mistake.

While battling through the trainers in here, River grew to level 30 and evolved into a Whiscash!

=================

New Mauville

I know it may seem like I'm giving you whiplash by jumping all over the place, but there really was a lot I did in today's session but not a whole lot is very interesting. The last thing I did was make my way through New Mauville and shut off the generator. This location is entirely unchanged from Ruby and Sapphire, so there's nothing much to talk about here, either. I didn't save it up for any dramatic reason, I just wanted River to be able to deal with the electric pokemon here that were going to be a nuisance without him.

================

Of course, we revisited Wattson for our reward: TM24: ThunderBolt.

Once again, I didn't hesitate to teach this move to Cliff.

Now, while we didn't make much story progress, today definitely wasn't as much of a waste of time as it looks on the surface. Our team has been upgraded dramatically! Even though we aren't ending on a significant boss battle or anything along those lines, I felt it was appropriate to show off what our team looks like with 6 pokemon for the first time!

=================

My team:

-------------------

Forest (Gorvyle M); Lv. 34

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Screech, Quick Attack

---------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 33

Item: Soothe Bell

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 33

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Screech, Slash, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter

----------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 33

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Confuse Ray, Psybeam, Magic Coat

----------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 32

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Magnitude, Amnesia, Surf

----------------------

Cliff (Magnemite); Lv. 29

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, SonicBoom, Thunder Wave

=================

This team is already shaping up really nicely! Though lots of these pokemon certainly weren't my first choices, I think the team I wound up with is capable of handling a decent variety of moves and I have a good mixture of strong offenses and defenses here. In case you're curious, River and Cliff both have neutral natures which naturally isn't beneficial but also means they aren't getting screwed over with bad stat distributions either. All in all, I'm very excited to see how well this team performs in the endgame!

February 10, 2021

Route 118

With all our scavenging over with from yesterday, we can finally make some story progress again! We'll start by crossing over to Route 118!

The wild pokemon encounters here aren't changed from the original games. Normally I wouldn't say more than that, but it's actually a little more significant this time around.

That is because Zigzagoon and Linoone are both available here! Normally, their encounter rates are swapped with Poochyena and Mightyena in Emerald, so you'd probably expect to find Poochyena and Mightyena here instead. I can't tell if this is intentional or not, but it seems to be the case that this is where you can most easily find these guys in this game!

===================

Route 123

We can head over to Route 123 and explore what little we can reach, but as always there's not much to really cover from here. The Berry Master's house is unchanged from Ruby and Sapphire, so you can still get all the same rare berries as before.

---------------------

As I battled the trainers here, Cliff was finally able to level up and evolve into a Magneton! We're one step closer to having our entire team fully evolved!

==================

Route 119

It's Route 119! The infamous home of Feebas! Just like Route 118, the wild pokemon are unchanged here meaning you can find Zigzagoon and Linoone here at the same odds that you could before! Of course, it also means Feebas is still found in the exact same tedious way. Love it or hate it, it's gonna stay this way for a while.

I did end up catching a Tropius and nicknaming it Jungle! This'll help with HM usage going forward.

One detail about the route I don't believe I've ever noticed before is that this route actually does have changing weather patterns! I haven't really been taking note to any changes in weather, but I definitely thought I could recall this route being a lot more stormy in my childhood. Apparently, the weather here will either be clear, rainy, or storming. With rain and thunderstorms both bringing rain into battle. Unfortunately, there's no chance for intense sunlight like I still think should be present!

There isn't much to talk about in terms of version differences until we reach the weather institute where it seems we'll be dealing with Team Aqua as it's two Aqua Grunts blocking our way forward.

================

Weather Institute

Just like in Sapphire, we battle our way through a handful of Team Aqua grunts, this time male and female, before taking on the leader of the crew!

================

Aqua Admin Shelly

---------------------

Carvanha Lv. 28

Right off the bat, this wasn't a very good matchup so I definitely needed to retreat.

I retreated into Cliff for an easy counter to her Crunch before taking Carvanha out with a ThunderBolt. I was actually hit with a Screech instead which was a bit unfortunate but wouldn't be affecting too much.

---------------------

Mightyena Lv. 28

And with this matchup, Mightyena couldn't do anything to stop the sheer power of Cliff's ThunderBolt and wound up going down as well.

================

Yeah, even though Tabitha's team was given a notable boost, it seems Shelly's been left mostly unchanged. She's still just as forgettable as ever.

After defeating Shelly, one of the grunts from outside hurry into the room and announce that Team Magma had shown up and managed to push past their defenses as they headed toward Mt. Pyre! This causes Shelly to immediately shift her attention and mobilize her entire squadron to give chase, leaving the Weather Institute behind. I really love this detail as it really captures the tension between Team Aqua and Magma. At the moment, it definitely seems Team Magma are the more powerful organization which Team Aqua are trying to stop.

----------------------

A slight version difference here is that Castform is now automatically given to you after rescuing the head of the Weather Institute. You no longer have to make room for him in your party, he's just placed directly into your PC. Again, I'm really not sure why this mechanic is so inconsistently implemented as you do have to make room in your party in order to claim a Fossil pokemon, or to claim the egg from the old lady in Lavaridge Town, and I'm going to continue to complain about it with each example going forward.

=================

With Team Aqua distracted by Team Magma, we can now move further along Route 119! We're right at the end, but you know what that means!

================

Rival May #4

---------------------

Pelipper Lv. 29

This time, I led with Ozone and, though Pelipper put up some defenses with Protect, he wasn't able to hold much ground and ultimately wound up going down to Facade.

---------------------

Combusken Lv. 31

Going straight for Combusken shows her desperation. Ozone took Combusken out with a single Wing Attack.

---------------------

Lombre Lv. 29

Of course, her Lombre wasn't much better off, either.

================

After defeating May, she admits that, of course, you've only grown stronger. She gives you HM02: Fly and then rides off on her bicycle. However...

A familiar face soon approaches after our battle. He mentions how he saw a trainer ride by on a bike and could immediately tell we just beat them in a battle. Why? He described her face as being "red with anger and embarrassment." That line actually really stood out to me in a way that I wasn't expecting. Of all sources, it was somehow Scott they used to bring a lot more character to May than she was ever able to express on her own in Ruby and Sapphire. This one line changes this fairly generic interaction into some rather emotional insight into May's character. She's genuinely embarrassed that she keeps losing to you but doesn't want to show that side of her to you. It kind of makes me want to actively seek her out and talk to her now.

Anyway, Scott doesn't actually have anything else to say to us, he just points out how odd it is that we keep running into each other before heading off.

===============

Fortree City

We have now arrived at Fortree City!

Once again, there isn't too much to talk about in terms of version differences here, though the trainer who would trade their Skitty for your Pikachu has now been replaced by a trainer who will trade their Plusle for your Volbeat. On the surface, you might assume that this was an attempt to make the rarer Plusle more easily obtainable... but then you realize that Volbeat is even rarer than Plusle in Emerald verison. It would make so much more sense if this was Illumise for Plusle but that unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case. A very curious change indeed...

Of course, just like Ruby and Sapphire, the path to the gym here is blocked, so we'll need to poke our heads into the next route a little bit in order to deal with the Kecleon in our way.

===============

Route 120

Once again, the general rule of thumb returns here, where Zigzagoon and Linoone are replaced entirely with Poochyena and Mightyena, further begging the question of whether or not it was intentional that these pokemon were left unreplaced on Routes 118 and 119.

As in Ruby and Sapphire, we meet with Steven on the bridge here where he reveals a hidden Kecleon to us.

I caught this Kecleon and named it Tropical.

Steven then gives us his Devon Scope to help us reveal any more Kecleon in our way before flying off. We can now take on our next gym!

=================

Fortree City Gym

This gym was given a bit of a facelift compared to its predecessor. It seems the collar of the floor and walls have been reversed which is a bit of an odd choice. I'm not sure if this is the intention, but perhaps the pillars were colored green to resemble trees seen from high above? Anyway, as always the gimmick is still the same, just modified to change up the puzzle and sprinkle in some double battles.

The trainers here all use a wider variety of Flying types this time around. Though, still, you're generally going to be able to work well enough with an Electric-type. By this point in the game, you should have no problem finding a strong electric type for your team unless you're dead-set on waiting to catch a Pikachu at the Safari Zone.

=================

My team:

-------------------

Forest (Gorvyle M); Lv. 35

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Screech, Quick Attack

---------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 35

Item: Soothe Bell

Ability: Guts | Moves: Wing Attack, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 35

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Screech, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter

----------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 35

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Confuse Ray, Psybeam, Magic Coat

----------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 35

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Magnitude, Amnesia, Surf

----------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 35

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, SonicBoom, Thunder Wave

=================

Fortree City Gym Leader Winona

---------------------

Swablu Lv. 29

Opening up, I led with River against Winona's Swablu. I figured Ice Beam would give me a solid leg up on Winona's earlier pokemon. Sure enough, I was able to take out Swablu in a single hit.

----------------------

Tropius Lv. 29

Tropius came next. In the moment, I was surprised that she went for a pokemon with a quad-weakness to Ice attacks but then I realized she probably went for Tropius because it'd be able to hit me with a grass attack. Still, I outsped and had the level advantage, so I was able to take out Tropius pretty easily.

---------------------

Pelipper Lv. 30

This time, things weren't so terribly predictable. I wasn't going to be able to simply one-shot Pelipper with an Ice Beam, so I retreated knowing River would be a powerful tool against Winona's Altaria.

I brought out Cliff in River's place and hit Pelipper with a solid ThunderBolt.

----------------------

Altaria Lv. 33

I was definitely anticipating Altaria's Earthquake here. However, I ended up getting rather greedy. I tried to go for Swagger to see if I could maybe get lucky with the Quick Claw. Of course, I paid for my greed and got absolutely destroyed with the Earthquake I probably deserved.

From here, though, I could easily bring River back out to hammer Altaria with that quad-effective Ice Beam. It wasn't quite a one-shot giving Altaria a chance to eat its... Oran berry? Really? At this point in the game? The berry healed hardly anything, so Winona followed up with a Hyper Potion to heal off the damage. Meanwhile, Ice Beam nearly took out Altaria once again. Winona squandered yet another Hyper Potion before her Altaria was taken out on the following turn. To add insult to injury here, she was actually frozen by this Ice Beam, but she did manage to defrost and hit me with a DragonBreath before getting taken out.

----------------------

Skarmory Lv. 31

This battle was set in stone by this point. All it took was a couple of surfs to pick off Skarmory and all it could do was pepper me with Fury Attack.

----------------------

MVP: River

==================

That was honestly really sad. I certainly wasn't expecting to be able to sweep Winona's entire team, but my team this time around was just too well-equipped to handle Flying-types I suppose. Anyway, I'm glad our newest member of the team was able to shine here and something's telling me this isn't the last time he'll be doing so...

February 11, 2021

Route 121

With Winona defeated, we can progress further beyond Route 120!

It should be no surprise at this point, but of course Emerald takes after Sapphire yet again with Shuppet being more prominently available here while Duskull won't be available until Mt. Pyre.

Unlike in Ruby and Sapphire, we can't actually enter the Safari Zone on our first visit here, though. They won't allow you inside unless you have a PokeBlock case!

------------------------

As we run through this route, we'll find a familiar squadron of Team Aqua grunts marching toward Mt. Pyre to provide backup against Team Magma. It's definitely a good idea to go after them, but I think it's more important that we get to the next town so we have a quick way back!

And, while battling my way through these two routes, I should mention that Forest evolved into a Sceptile at level 36! With this evolution, my entire team is now fully evolved and ready to take on any challenge!

================

Lilycove City

Much like Sapphire version, Team Aqua have taken up residence in this city which locals and tourists alike are not happy about.

Probably the first thing that'll catch your eye here is the Pokemon Contest Hall! Yes, where Contest Halls were scattered around Hoenn in Ruby and Sapphire of varying levels with only Master rank contests held here, all Pokemon Contests are helled here in Lilycove in Emerald to make room for Emerald's Battle Tents in place of the other contest halls. I kind of wish they'd made up for the lack of Contest Halls by sprucing up this one's appearance, but I suppose I shouldn't be complaining! We're not going to mess with Pokemon Contests just yet, we've covered that back in Sapphire, but I would definitely like to try out the rest of the contents before putting Hoenn behind us. I feel it was a bit unfair that we only tried the Beauty Contest and left the others untouched.

The rest of the attractions here are the same as in Sapphire. Okay, there are a couple more notable differences, but I think we have more important matters to tend to at the moment. Team Aqua's hideout is still in the same place, but that only begs the question. Just where is Team Magma's hideout? Well, we'll worry about that question later. For now, we'll heal up our pokemon and get going toward Mt. Pyre!

================

Route 122

Sailing south from the pier on Route 121 will bring you to Route 122 which is entirely unchanged from Ruby and Sapphire. Most importantly, this place is home to Mt. Pyre which is where some pretty major story beats are laid out.

===============

Mt. Pyre

2F - 6F

The arrangements of gravestones on some floors of the interior of Mt. Pyre are slightly altered to accomodate for more double battle opportunities in Emerald.

Just like in Sapphire, Duskull is only available here in the interior of Mt. Pyre on floors 4 and above. Not too terrible of a loss, but I still find it strange how little they seemed to try to hide the fact that this game was clearly built on top of Sapphire version specifically.

--------------------------

Mt. Pyre Exterior

You'll find Vulpix and Shuppet far more commonly on the exterior of Mt. Pyre. Vulpix is boosted from a 20% to a 30% while Shuppet is boosted from 40% to 60%. You know what this means. Yet again, we have a pokemon from the original games that was cut from the wild entirely in this version!

Yes, where Meditite was once available here at 30%, it is no longer available anywhere in Emerald. Thankfully, this is the last pokemon that is excluded from availability in Emerald, so if your favorite gen 3 pokemon was sparred by the power glove by this point, you should be able to at least find it somewhere in the game.

--------------------------

Mt. Pyre Summit

As we arrive at the summit of Mt. Pyre, it seems we've missed Team Magma and so have Team Aqua! However, they're not about to give up so easily.

After battling our way through the Aqua Grunts, we find their leader, Archie "talking things over" with the old couple who watch over the Red and Blue Orbs said to be able to calm the eternal battle between the Legendary Pokemon of the Land and Sea and spare the world from their dreadful path of destruction. It seems that Team Magma has stolen the Blue Orb already, so Archie decides to combat their plans by stealing the Red Orb himself to use its power to stop the power Magma plans to awaken. Now, both the Red and Blue Orbs have been stolen!

As we check with the old couple, the old woman hands us a Magma Emblem dropped by the men who stole the Blue Orb. The Old Man will once again tell the same legend he spoke of before about the Orbs and the Battle between the Pokemon of Legend. More importantly, this Magma Emblem holds some level of hope for us.

It actually surprises me, but the game kind of relies on your own sense of awareness to figure out where to go from here. If you weren't paying attention earlier in the game, I can genuinely imagine you getting stuck figuring out where to go. But, if you recall, Team Magma said they were trying to awaken a pokemon back at Mt. Pyre using the Meteorite... In addition, there was that suspicious stray Grunt loitering around on Jagged Pass...

===============

Jagged Pass

Indeed, if we bring the Magma Emblem to Jagged Pass, a hidden passage will reveal itself!

===============

Magma Hideout

Yes indeed, you're looking at a brand new dungeon created exclusively for Pokemon Emeraldf! A much more fitting hideout for Team Magma, I'd say! This hideout is less like Team Aqua's, though, and more like a cave of sorts. It's even filled with wild pokemon!

The wild pokemon in here are consistent throughout, with Geodude at 55%, Graveler at 15% and Torkoal taking up the remaining 30%.

As you've probably come to expect, this dungeon is packed full of Team Magma grunts so come prepared to battle with lots of Ground-types as well as Mightyena and Zubat!

1F

B1F (Room 1 and 2)

I'm going to apologize right now if any of these area connections are confusing or even erroneous. This area is massive, you're climbing up and down stairs left and right and Bulbapedia erroneously lists each of these rooms in ascending order (1F, 2F, 3F, etc.) even though you're obviously moving deeper as you climb down multiple flights of stairs.

This place is a big of a maze with lots of empty space that folds over itself in multiple areas, so it might be difficult to wrap your head around a set of disjointed maps like this without just playing around in the area yourself. I was personally really caught off guard by how much there actually was to this area. I was honestly totally prepared for this to be just a couple of rooms slapped together with a bunch of Magma Grunts strewn around and called a hideout, but it seems they really wanted to make it feel like a genuine dungeon, even moreso that Ruby and Sapphire's Aqua hideout, I must say. Though this feels less like a hideout, admittedly, and gives off a vibe more familiar to the Undersea Cavern.

Anyway, as we battle our way to the depths of the hideout, many grunts will allude to the legendary pokemon they're trying to awaken. It seems they're all trying to keep it a secret, but we can easily piece together it's the Legendary Continent pokemon Groudon. We know how bad of an idea it is to let Groudon awaken thanks to Ruby version, so we'd better stop Maxie ASAP!

The dialogue from the grunts throughout this hideout is actually pretty funny. There's one grunt standing next to a pool of lava who complains about being stationed there because his ear is burning, and then proceeds to comment about how weird it is that they have to wear hoods in such a hot environment. Another grunt addresses how his buddy was freaking out about losing his Magma Emblem, the very one we recovered, and there's some other insights into how Team Magma is structured such as how more critical posts are given out to whoever arrives to Roll Call first.

Most interestingly, there's even a Team Magma grunt who seems to have reservations about whether or not awakening the legendary pokemon is a good idea and, after losing to you, mentions that he should really speak to his boss about this. There's a surprising amount of variance and confliction among Team Magma which greatly sets them apart from Team Rocket who are all unified merely by a love for money and power. I think it's far more interesting to see a villainous team with deep-rooted flaws that cause it to crumble in on itself in the end, but maybe that's just me.

B2F (Room 1)

As we make it down to the very depths of the hideout, we've still got a little more battling to do. This time, against Team Magma's finest who do not want any interruptions.

=================

Magma Admin Tabitha #2

----------------------

Numel Lv. 26

I went ahead and set up a Swords Dance with Hill while Numel... definitely tried his best to hit me with a Magnitude. Come on man, are you even trying? With a Slash, Numel was down.

---------------------

Mightyena Lv. 28

Mightyena's Intimidate cut into my attack a bit, but I was well enough off that I could take a hit and set up another Swords Dance before cutting him off with another Slash.

-----------------------

Zubat Lv. 30

Zubat? Pleeease.

------------------------

Camerupt Lv. 31

Once again, definitely stronger here than he was in Ruby version, but is that really saying much? With another Slash, thanks to my +4 Attack boost, Camerupt was outta there.

===============

But of course, the real action lies with Maxie. As we approach him, we find that he's already arrived at the dormant Groudon. And, with the Blue Orb's activation...

Groudon Awakens!

...and prompty flees.

Baffled by this revelation, Maxie feels almost insulted. The look on your face says it all to him. "There's a reason Groudon Fled." In his fury, he challenges you to a battle after concluding you must have been up to some cheap trick..

==============

Magma Leader Maxie #2

----------------------

Mightyena Lv. 37

Just like before, I went for a Swords Dance. This time, Mightyena hit me with a Swagger. Thanks to my Yellow Flute, though, this was a free +3 in Attack taking away the drop from Intimidate. From here, I was able to Slash Mightyena down to size.

----------------------

Camerupt Lv. 39

This time, I wasn't too confident I'd be able to KO Camerupt in one shot with Slash, and I could already take a guess as to what Camerupt had in store for me.

I retreated into River and was met with a Rock Slide which I resisted. From here, a Surf drowned Camerupt out without a worry.

------------------------

Crobat Lv. 38

With Crobat next, it took a handful of Ice Beams to finally take him out, but he wasn't able to do a whole lot to me and went down fairly easily.

Aand that's the game. Yeah, Maxie still has fewer pokemon than Tabitha. Though to be fair, they're notably higher level this time around. Still, you'll notice that Maxie has a Crobat here just like when you battle him at the Seafloor Cavern in Ruby... yet they replaced his Golbat with a Zubat on Mt. Pyre? It's a decision that still genuinely baffles me.

================

Upon defeat, Maxie retreats from the hideout in pursuit of Groudon. So, things aren't looking great. There's now a giant kaiju let loose on Hoenn and who knows where it's headed. Maxie still has the Blue Orb and let's not forget that Archie has the Red Orb and is very likely also taking matters in his own hands. Our job definitely isn't over yet and Maxie has successfully distracted us from Team Aqua's doings!

I think this'll make a good cut-off point for this session. It may not look like we did much once again, but we did just go through an entire dungeon. A new one, at that! And don't forget we also went through the entirety of Route 120 and 121 as well as Mt. Pyre. I don't think there's a need to strictly adhere to the whole "finish every post with a gym" guideline I've established, especially under circumstances like these! Next time, we'll try to shut down Team Aqua before they get too far ahead of themselves, too! $10 says it's not gonna go very well.

February 12, 2021

Lilycove City

Now that we've dealt with Team Magma, at least as much as we can right now, we'll need to deal with Team Aqua next. That means returning to Lilycove to gather information.

===============

If we head into the Aqua Hideout, we'll find that there are still two grunts standing guard at the entrance preventing our ability to go inside. These grunts will spill Team Aqua's plan to steal a submarine! Immediately, we can connect the dots. Of course they'd jump straight into stealing that Submarine if they've gotten their hands on the Red Orb! We need to make our way to Slateport fast!

===============

Slateport City

As we return here, things begin to play out just the same as in Sapphire. There's a whole crowd gathered in front of the harbor as Cpt. Stern discusses his discovery of a new trench deep under the sea.

As the discussion plays out, we hear Team Aqua announce their presence from inside before making their getaway with Cpt. Stern's submarine! They challenge us to stop them at their hideout before taking off and leaving us in the dust. Of course, we'll need to make our way back!

================

Aqua Hideout

I'm not sure whether I should be surprise our should expect this, but the Aqua Hideout is completely unchanged from Sapphire save for, say it with me, the location of the trainers.

Let's not forget to grab our Master Ball from the hidden chamber! From my last two playthroughs, I'm already well-versed enough to be able to grab this and the nearby Nugget without setting off any Electrode!

As we reach the end, we run into Matt whose sole goal is to battle us to stall for time so that Archie can make his getaway with the necessary supplies and crew for his mission.

=============

Aqua Admin Matt

---------------------

Mightyena Lv. 34

Stars happened to be at the front of my party which wasn't a good matchup for Mightyena.

I switched Cliff into a Crunch before dishing out some pain with a ThunderBolt!

--------------------

Golbat Lv. 34

Sending out Golbat here was basically admitting defeat. Another ThunderBolt and he went down!

--------------------

And.. that's it. This battle was weirdly made easier than in Sapphire. I suppose this is our first time battling Matt in this game, since it was Team Magma we fought back at Mt. Pyre, but it still feels strange that he doesn't even have so much as a single water pokemon!

===============

Well, regardless of my feelings on Matt's disappointing team, he still managed to buy enough time for Archie to get away, leaving us with the need to search the entire sea once again... Of course, thanks to information from our parallel universes, I think we already have an inkling for where they'll end up. But we're going to need to get to our next gym before we can catch up!

==============

Lilycove City

Now the Aqua Grunt training his Wailmer is out of the way and we can explore the vast seas of Hoenn! Buuut we've got some small things to go over here in Lilycove before we move on.

First of all, I forgot to mention that the Pokemon Center here in Lilycove actually does have something noteworthy! If you recall, Mauville City's Pokemon Center had a strange man who could play out various roles which were randomly generated based on your trainer ID. (I never addressed it back in mauville, but I got the Bard in this playthrough! I changed his song from "Shake it Do the Diet Dance" to "Shake it do the Diet Happiness." What does that mean? I have no idea, but I'm only allowed to change one word!)

Well, in the Lilycove Pokemon Center in Emerald version only, there is a new NPC who functions very similarly to the strange man in Mauville. This time, it's a lady sitting in the same location.

The first of the ladies who can potentially appear is the Contest Lady who has a random selection of pokemon.

Depending on the pokemon, she'll want a different flavor of pokeblock. If you give her the appropriate pokeblock... she'll say thank you. That's... definitely an odd one and probably the last one you'd want to see. But, at least you get some cute variable pokemon to look at!

Another lady you might run into is the Favor Lady, this is the one I happened to get. This lady will ask for an item with an incredibly vague description and you'll have to guess exactly what item she wants. And, though her description is incredibly vague and match many items, there is only one that she wants. I completely misinterpreted the guide on this and gave her a Stardust when she asked for "something pointy." She just acknowledged that it was indeed pointy but just thanked me for the item.

If you manage to guess the correct item, she'll apparently give you a vitamin for a stat corresponding to the description she used, but if you get it wrong, you won't get another chance until the next day which means... never in my case. Oops.

The most interesting of the ladies that can appear here, however, is the Quiz Lady who will ask you a question and, if you answer correctly, you can receive one of many items! There are lots of different items you can get here, but the most interesting part of this NPC in particular is that she actually lets you string together your own custom quiz question and even select an item from your bag as a prize for correctly answering! This might not seem very interesting until you consider that, like the man in the Mauville pokemon center, this Pokemon Center lady in Lilycove can be transferred between save files by mixing records! Granted, you can transfer items just as easily simply by giving it to a pokemon and trading it over, but I'm uncertain if selecting a prize actually takes it out of your bag. (Admittedly, it probably does rendering this feature functionally useless). Although its usefulness may vary based on aspects that I can't really play with myself to test, it does seem like a fun mechanic to make up silly questions to pass around with your friends. It's just a shame it's only compatible with other copies of Emerald version, so no passing them around to my other playthroughs.

=================

Now then, you didn't think I'd forgotten about our rival, right? Just like Ruby and Sapphire, she's standing right here in front of the Lilycove Dept. Store waiting to battle you.

=================

Rival May #5

------------------

Tropius Lv. 31

I led off with Cliff and could've taken out Tropius if it wasn't for its Whirlwind getting in the way.

Really, Whirlwind just ended up making things worse for her, though, because it drug out Ozone of all things. With an aerial Ace, this matchup was through.

-----------------------

Pelipper Lv. 32

Pelipper tried his best to stall with Protect, but her defenses just couldn't protect her for long against Ozone's Facade.

------------------------

Cumbusken Lv. 34

Aerial Ace. Need I say more?

------------------------

Ludicolo Lv. 32

And again, Aerial Ace.

-----------------------

Aaand that's the end of this battle! Yeah... May once again acknowledges how strong you've become, reminisces on your first battle, then announces she'll start completing the pokedex going forward! Once again, she's left at a really strange anticlimactic end to her character arc that leaves me more concerned than satisfied. You may have assumed that, if they added a new rival battle in Rustboro, that they'd probably add another rival battle after this one to give her a better chance to put up a good fight, but no, her team is just as bad here. Her starter isn't even fully evolved, her Ludicolo is still using Absorb and Astonish, and you'll never guess what her Combusken's strongest attack is... Quick Attack. It had Double Kick before, but no longer here. It doesn't even know Ember for crying out loud!

I'm honestly kind of annoyed that they treat your rival so poorly in this game. I guess they just wanted to go a different route with her. Rather than being a tough opponent to overcome, they wanted her to fall behind over time as her attention drifts away from training her pokemon and more to collecting new ones. It's unfortunate but yes, even in Emerald, this strange final battle is still the last you get to see of May. Still, at least her other pokemon are fully evolved. Perhaps there was some sort of internal rule that May shouldn't have her starter fully evolved. Maybe they wanted to emphasize trading to see the final evolution of her starter? Or maybe there's just some aspect to her character I'm not seeing, I'm really not sure.

But, after defeating May, she flies off, granting you access to the store she was blocking.

================

There isn't much new here in the Lilycove Dept. Store. It's mostly identical to Ruby and Sapphire save for the Rooftop where there is a new move tutor! This tutor will teach the move Substitute to one of your pokemon! It's a really useful move, but it's also takes some creativity to use effectively. I'll pass on it for now but I will definitely come back here a bit later on...

==============

Route 124

Now, it's finally time to set sail across the open sea! There's a lot we can do here, but for now, I think it's in our best interest to head straight to the next town.

===============

Mossdeep City

This is perhaps the most aesthetically changed location in Emerald version!

Here's the Ruby and Sapphire version for comparison.

The first thing you'll probably notice is that the Mossdeep Space Center has been completely redesigned! It now looks like an actual space center with a rocket and everything! In addition, the trees that dot the island and the rooftops of the buildings look very different as well! And the differences aren't just surface level, as there are some more specific changes we'll find as we poke around, too.

Most of the NPCs from Ruby and Sapphire return here in Emerald with one notable exception: The building with the mysterious back door blocked off which was once used for e-reader trainers has now been removed and instead replaced by an Emerald counterpart to FireRed and LeafGreen's Joyful Game Corner! The very same minigames available in Fire Red and Leaf Green, Dodrio Berry Picking and Pokemon Jump, are available to play here. I won't cover these in any sort of detail as I've already addressed them in my Leaf Green playthrough, but they're there if you want to play and have a friend and some wireless adapters lying around!

===============

In addition to functionality and aesthetic changes, the Mossdeep Space Center has now become somewhat more involved in the main story. I always thought it was odd that this location went almost completely unutilized in the original games. When you arrive here, you'll find that the space center has received a calling card from Team Magma threatening to steal their rocket fuel! No doubt it's related to some plan to track down Groudon.

Steven is here expressing concern over the calling card, but confesses there isn't much to be done about the blind threat until Team Magma arrives. For now, we needn't concern ourselves with this. Instead, I think it's high time we take on our next pokemon gym!

=================

Mossdeep Gym

If you though the immediately notable version differences would end with the gym, you've got another thing coming! Mossdeep Gym is, without a doubt, the most changed gym in the entire game! The very nature of the puzzle is completely shifted from the gravity tiles to these squares of tiles that rotate when you press buttons of the same color. This place does use warp tiles akin to Sabrina's gym in Kanto, but these warp tiles are much easier to work with so it's not anything to complain about.

This gym is heavily redesigned to really emphasize the double-battle mechanic. As you press the switches, the trainers and statues will rotate and even turn to face you! If you're careful, you can avoid a lot of the battles, but not all!

By cleverly manipulating the tiles, you can battle nearly every trainer in this gym in a double battle! It's actually a really fun gimmick to play with. I must say this is probably my favorite gym in all of Hoenn thanks to this redesign. It's a good idea to get used to these double battles if you've been intentionally trying to avoid them because, if you recall, the gym leader here is a double battle and the gym leaders have had a tendency to be notably more difficult this time around.

=================

My Team:

--------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 41

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Screech, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 41

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 41

Item: Silk Scarf

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Fury Cutter

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 40

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Psywave, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Magic Coat

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 40

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 40

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

================

Mossdeep City Gym Leaders: Tate & Liza

---------------------

Claydol Lv. 41 & Xatu Lv. 41

Right off the bat, things are very different than the last time we battled these two. Indeed, Tate & Liza specialize in more than just their Lunatone and Solrock this time around, and we'll need to be prepared to take them all out!

I led off with River and Cliff. I actually had this lead because of a false memory where I could have sworn these two opened with a Xatu and Girafarig, but Claydol definitely makes sense, especially with the Xatu's flying type. It's worth noting that there is a pair of trainers earlier in the gym that do battle you with a Xatu and Girafarig, so I suppose that must've been what I was remembering. I got a little bit greedy here and tried to go for ThunderBolt. I really just wasn't thinking, to take out Xatu easily while River focused on using Ice Beam to concentrate its power on Claydol. As to be expected, River failed to KO, the quick claw didn't take effect, and Claydol got its Earthquake off, dealing a sizeable chunk of damage to River and leaving Cliff no hope of survival. The Xatu got away scott free with a free turn to set up Calm Mind!

The next pokemon I brought out was Forest who was able to help bring that Claydol down with a Leaf Blade followed by a Surf which helped stack up some damage on Xatu while he continued to set up Calm Mind.

------------------------------

Solrock, Lv. 42

Solrock came next, so I went for Surf once again with River. Forest caught me by surprise though, by being able to take out Solrock in one hit with Leaf Blade!

-----------------------------

Lunatone, Lv. 42

Don't forget, this isn't a typical pair! These two gym leaders fight as one, so their pokemon can fight on either of their teams!

With Lunatone, things were looking good! I'd hopefully be able to get off a decent chunk of damage with Surf and continue building damage on that Xatu! That is, until Xatu hit me with a Psychic to take advantage of its +2 boost to special defense... yeah, in a double battle you definitely don't want to focus too much on one side of the battlefield or the foe ends up setting up an unstoppable fortress of a pokemon!

Stars came out next. This was my greatest hope at dealing with Xatu by this point thanks to Psywave's fixed damage. Forest went for a Leaf Blade to try and take out that Lunatone but to no avail. Xatu picked its target, but Stars not only resisted the attack, but her bulk allowed her to take it like a champ! Another Leaf Blade was enough to take out Lunatone before it could successfully put me to sleep.

It was now two on one, but this Xatu still had some worrisome stat buffs! Thankfully, there wasn't anything Xatu could do against Stars and even building its own defenses higher wouldn't help it against Psywave's fixed damage! Psywave coupled with a bit of chip damage from Forest's pursuit was enoguh to finally take out Xatu and finish the battle!

----------------------

MVP: Stars

===============

With that, Tate and Liza were defeated and the Mind Badge was mine! I've definitely gotta say that this battle is far more exciting with these two having four pokemon instead of only two. I love the fact that they share their team and battle as a single trainer rather than a duo of trainers. It really drives home their telepathic abilities! The additions to their team, while utilizing a rather fundamental double battle strategy of pairing Earthquake with a Flying-type or a pokemon with Levitate, but it's really cool that they really tried to take advantage of double battle mechanics to the best of their abilities. It's strange to me that, to this day, there has never been a gym leader quite like this with maybe one exception much, much later.

Anyway, with the Mind Badge in hand, we can now use the HM Dive out of battle! But first, we should probably check back on the space station...

February 13, 2021

Once again, there is another version difference I forgot to mention here. There's a blackbelt on the shore of Mossdeep City who will teach one of your pokemon DynamicPunch if you're interested! I need to take better note of these move tutors because they're easy to forget about.

Anyway, last time we mentioned how we should check up on that calling card and, as we make our way to the space center...

As we make our way there, just as expected, we manage to catch a glimpse of Maxie and Team Magma as they make their way toward the center!

===============

Mossdeep Space Center

As we enter the space center, we'll find that all the employees are backed against the wall as Team Magma has forcibly taken over the facility. We'll have to battle our way through the grunts, and there's actually quite a lot packed into such a small place. The stairs leading up to the second floor are blocked by a single grunt who refuses to back down unless we beat him in a battle.

---------------------

As soon as you enter the second floor, you're immediately ambushed by a squad of three grunts who you'll have to battle in a row. None of them are double battles, which is yet another missed opportunity. They'll all battle you in individual 1-on-1 single battles.

Once they're defeated, we can push further past to find Steven Stone cornered by Maxie and Tabitha who are working together to hold him off while the rest of the team works on stealing the rocket fuel. Steven demands to know what they plan to use the fuel for, a request Maxie decides to entertain. He explains he plans to dump the rocket fuel into the volcano to force it to erupt in order to fulfill his dream of expanding the land without the help of Groudon. As we approach, Steven asks for our assistance in taking care of these goons.

And with this, we're prompted to select three of our six pokemon! Yes, it might come as a surprise, but this time around, the game has incorporated a multi-battle into the main story! This isn't the last time we'll be seeing this mechanic, and it's implemented more smoothly in the future, but in order to join forces with Steven, we'll need to split our party in half.

So, we each chose our three pokemon, I went with Cliff, Forest, and River. Cliff may seem like an odd choice, but I really just went with him because he was in the front of my party and I wanted him to get some levels. Meanwhile, Steven went with Metang, Skarmory, and Aggron! Lots of cool pokemon and we can even look at their summaries after the battle! Of course, we can't actually use any of his pokemon. Only he gets to command them.

Magma Leader Maxie and Magma Admin Tabitha

With our pokemon selected, it was time for the battle to begin!

Mightyena Lv. 42 & Camerupt Lv. 36

I immediately opened up by using Reflect to protect myself from the potential Earthquake from Tabitha's Camerupt. It seems we were pretty well in-synch, because Steven decided to open up with Light Screen! A beautiful show of teamwork! Thankfully, Maxie and Tabitha both focused on stats this turn, with Mightyena going for Scary Face while Camerupt went for Focus Energy. On the next turn, to help protect Cliff better, I used Swagger against the Camerupt. Swagger failed to stop it from attacking, though, but it only hit me with a Take Down. Unfortunately, Mightyena managed to get Metang confused, so I had to use a Yellow Flute to help him out. Still, I gained some valuable information here. This camerupt evidently either didn't know Earthquake or Tabitha didn't want to risk KOing his boss' pokemon with it. So, I decided now to focus my efforts on Mightyena using ThunderBolt.

------------------------------

Crobat Lv. 43

From here, another Thunderbolt took out Crobat while Metang tried to attack Camerupt with a Metal Claw.

------------------------------

Camerupt Lv. 44

And now we're seeing double!

Still under the protection of Reflect, I retreated into River and, while Earthquake probably would have been the better option because of all the Amensias these two Camerupt were able to set up, I didn't want to damage Steven's Metang with it, too, sometimes you've just gotta emphasize the RP part of an RPG! With Surf, I was still able to take them both out. This eliminated Maxie from the battle, but Tabitha still had two more pokemon to deal with. That said, victory was pretty much assured as the rest of the battle would be 2-on-1 from here on and Tabitha's team was clearly far weaker than Maxie's.

----------------------------

Golbat Lv. 40

He brought out his Golbat probably with the intention of shutting down my Earthquake. Little did he know I was well-prepared to deal with Flying-types using Ice Beam!

--------------------------

Mightyena Lv. 38

With another Surf and Metal Claw, this battle was done.

--------------------------------

And so, Team Magma is defeated yet again and this time, Maxie seems to truly admit defeat.

====================

During the battle, Maxie seems to come to an understanding on just what he's been trying to do and what he's become. And suddenly, it his him just how much of a mistake summoning Groudon was. After this revelation, he also comes to realize that Archie is about to make the very same mistake! Immediately, he departs with Team Magma in an attempt to stop Team Aqua from awakening Kyogre!

Now, you might think this is a good time for Steven to give you the HM for Dive, but... nope. He just kind of thanks you and then leaves.

===================

Weirdly enough, you still get the HM for Dive the same way you do in Ruby and Sapphire. You just kind of awkwardly pay Steven a visit at his house immediately after this and he gives it to you there and then mentions the cavern discovered by Capt. Stern. Definitely a good place to go looking for Team Magma.

I did briefly visit Shoal Cave before moving on, but there isn't anything of interest up there in Emerald version, so no reason to really cover it.

Of course, I should note that I got some new held items. I gave the Focus Band to Ozone in hopes that he might be able to make more use out of Endeavor on occasion and gave the NeverMeltIce to River in place of his Soft Sand since Ice Beam doesn't get the boost from STAB.

I did some further rearranging by replacing Hill's Silk Scarf with a Lax Incense to help it evade rock attacks which tend to be rather inaccurate. Every miss will generate more opportunities to build stats! This will become incredibly important once it learns a new move that's actually coming up pretty soon...

As for Ozone's King's Rock, I moved that onto Forest in place of his Miracle Seed.

Before we set sail, we also receive a call on our PokeNav from May who is calling from Pacifidlog Town and mentions that she saw a giant green pokemon flying overhead. A curious story, I think we can piece together exactly what that pokemon was, but for now, we'll need to put it on the side.

==================

Routes 127 & 128

Just as before, we now need to explore the sea in search of this deepsea trench in question.

Of course, this also means diving underwater to see what we can find. You might notice some new areas on the map here, but let's not mind those too much just yet as they aren't actually currently accessible. Regardless, we currently have tunnel vision because of our important task... nevermind the entirely specific tunnel vision I seem to have that allows for random exploring wherever it's convenient for me!

=================

We soon find our way to the submarine underneath the Seafloor Cavern which can only mean one thing... Team Aqua is here!

Seafloor Cavern

It's unsurprising to note that this dungeon is, once again, almost entirely unchanged from Sapphire.

Of course, you'll only be dealing with Team Aqua grunts here which is honestly a bit of a shame. I would have loved to deal with a mixture of Team Magma and Aqua grunts at some point in this game, but it seems Team Magma has yet to arrive and recent events make it unlikely Team Magma will be battling against us again going forward.

The first couple of rooms are pretty much identical to the original.

The fourth room differs slightly in design with a slightly more simplistic Strength Puzzle (left) compared to the one from the original (right). Still, the general idea is still the same. You'll need a combination of Rock Smash and Strength to continue further.

The fork ahead leads to the same two rooms as before, though they admittedly appear a bit different with the smoother tilesets. I do believe that this water tile is actually unique to this area as well, though I could certainly be wrong on that claim.

The next room is probably the most significantly redesigned. The original (right) is rather infamous for a weird glitch that could leave you in a soft lock. Not a fun place to be. This redesigned version features a choice. You can take the path on the right, a strength puzzle, to sneak around behind the guards blocking off the other path, or you can head straight up and have your rematch with Shelly, this time in a double battle with a grunt!

=================

Team Aqua Grunt & Aqua Admin Shelly

----------------------------

Mightyena Lv. 35 & Sharpedo Lv. 37

Well, you know exactly what this matchup means. Earthquake galore! I wasn't quite able to take out Sharpedo in one shot thanks to Mightyena's Intimidate, but coupled with Ozone's Facade, Mightyena couldn't handle the pressure.

---------------------------

Golbat Lv. 35

Golbat took an Ice Beam right out the gate, eliminating the grunt while Ozone picked off Sharpedo with another Facade.

-------------------------

Mightyena Lv. 37

Another Mightyena meant another intimidate, which also meant Earthquake was a less viable option. I went for Surf and Facade for a KO.

--------------------------

And these two were defeated, earning us the rite of passage onward!

==================

The following room has the same strength puzzle from before. Once again, just try to think ahead and be careful not to box your boulders in unless you're sure they'll be out of the way. This puzzle used to stump me a lot as a kid.

And here in the final room, we have a TM for Earthquake which I hastily grabbed and taught to Forest over Agility before progressing onward.

Of course, just like in Sapphire, we reach the end of the cavern where Kyogre is laying dormant.

Archie follows us inside and challenges us to one final battle before he awakens Kyogre.

================

Aqua Leader Archie #2

I feel like we've been hearing this music a lot, but it's a good song!

------------------------

Mightyena Lv. 41

His Mightyena has no chance of overcoming River, as evidenced by the many Mightyena we've triumphed over recently. (Seriously, I really wish they tried a little harder to diversify these teams a bit more. Couldn't Shelly have had a Wailord? Couldn't Tabitha have had a Torkoal?)

-------------------------

Crobat Lv. 41

Big shocker here, I take out his Crobat with an Ice Beam.

-------------------------

Sharpedo Lv. 43

And, yeah, Sharpedo didn't last long to my Earthquake, either.

--------------------------

Big surprise! The same team didn't stop me the twelth time I've battled it! Thankfully, this is the last time we have to deal with these repetitive Team Aqua and Magma battles.

===================

After defeating Archie, things begin playing out just like in Sapphire. He makes his speech about how the Red Orb will help him control Kyogre, but the Orb begins glowing on its own.

This causes Kyogre to awaken and, just like Groudon, it then retreats from the cavern. Much like Maxie, Archie is stunned by this revelation.

A bit late to the party, Team Magma arrives on the scene and Maxie begins to explain his understanding to Archie, admitting that he is well aware he is in no place to shame Archie since he, too, had made the exact same mistake. Now, Archie gets a call from his teammates warning him about the torrential downfall brought forth by Kygore.

=================

Route 128

We return to the surface and, indeed, the harsh rainfall from Sapphire version. But by the time we reach the surface, it doesn't take long to notice that things are a bit different from Sapphire. Rather than just being harsh rain, the weather seems to be frequently fluctuating between heavy rainfall and Ruby's harsh sunlight. Almost as if the extreme weather is competing for dominance! The music reflects that of Sapphire, so the ominous drought music from Ruby is completely lost in this version. It could've been really cool if the managed to do a satisfying mix of the two songs, though, sort of like this fanmade one.

Well, with our story arriving at its crisis, both Archie and Maxie realize that something needs to be done in order to stop this disaster, and they both leave to regroup and figure out what to do.

Steven arrives to question us about what happened to cause this disastrous weather and then mentions that the distorted weather patterns seem to be swirling out from over Sootopolis City, so he leaves to investigate but once again warns us not to do anything too dangerous. But of course, we can't just stand around and wait for things to roll over!

==================

Route 126

We make our way over to Route 126 during the chaotic weather. What's interesting is that this shifting weather actually does affect the state of the weather in-battle depending on which effect is active when the battle stars. Whether it's raining or the sun is shining intensely will reflect the in-battle weather. So, if you want that extra advantage over your local trainers, or if you want the extra challenge presented by the rain powering up their water pokemon, you may want to time your encounters appropriately.

We can explore everything else later but for now we've gotta fix the weather as soon as possible!

======================

Sootopolis City

I probably don't need to mention this at this point, but this video is not mine.

The residents are all captivated by the fight between the two legendary pokemon who have suddenly appeared within the city. Some are scared, some are excited, but the catastrophic effects are undeniable.

This needs to be stopped and both Maxie and Archie are desperately trying to do just that but their efforts are fruitless.

As we explore the city, we come across Steven who tells us there's someone he wants us to meet before leading us to the entrance to the Cave of Origin.

=================

Cave of Origin

This cave is effectively unchanged, but is heavily truncated from its variants in Ruby and Sapphire.

There is only one ladder here that leads straight into the final chamber.

This chamber lacks the pool of lava or water from the other games and features both Rubies and Sapphires embedded in the walls.

It is here that we meet with Wallace who reveals to us that he was once the Sootopolis Gym Leader, as he was in Ruby and Sapphire, but that "something came up," and he has now entrusted his gym to his old mentor, a man by the name of Juan. It seems we've got a new gym leader to look forward to, but that's the least of our worries for now. Wallace is aware of the chaos outside and has been pondering what to do. He reveals that there is a third ancient pokemon just like Groudon and Kyogre who could potentially stop the other two, but he has no idea where this pokemon would reside. It's up to us to piece together from the various clues we've gathered from a number of NPCs throughout the game. Once we've deduced that this pokemon can be found at Sky Pillar, Wallace agrees with our logic and sets out for the pillar! And we'll need to be right behind him, too!

=================

Routes 129 - 131

Naturally, we'll need to make our way across the sea routes 129, 130, and 121 to make our way to Sky Pillar. After coming all this way, though, you may as well go the extra mile to make it to Pacifidlog Town and heal up.

==================

Pacifidlog Town

Once again, this town is almost entirely pointless and really just serves to be a landmark to help you find your way to Sky Pillar. This is another point I recall a childhood friend getting stuck at as it's another point where you really have to pay attention to dialogue in order to figure it out. Nothing directly points you there which, you might argue is nice that the game isn't holding your hand too much, but at the same time I think it's a bit of a design flaw with how large this game's world is. The best recent hint you have is May mentioning Pacifidlog Town. Other than that, there was that man in Fortree City who mentioned seeing a giant pokemon flying toward Route 131, but how many people would have actually talked to that guy, let alone remembered what he said this long after? Even still, as you surf along Route 131, it's very easy to miss this location entirely just because of how massive the sea routes are.

Anyway, here in Pacifidlog Town, the only notable difference is that the trade of Bellossom for a Corsola has been replaced with an arguably even more insulting trade: Your Bagon for their Horsea.... No thank you...

Other than that, there's a move tutor (Ha! I remembered this time!) in the Pokemon Center who will teach your pokemon Explosion.

Anyway, we have important matters to attend to! Back to the Pillar!

=====================

Sky Pillar

As we arrive at the pillar, Wallace meets us at the base and tells us that he'd opened up the entrance to the tower.

If we'd arrived here before this point in the story (yes, the pillar would still be there unlike in Ruby and Sapphire), the tower would be sealed off at the entrance preventing our ability to go inside.

As Wallace speaks, the distorted weather begins to spread its reach, now covering more of the sea and reaching even the pillar. He tells us he has to return to Sootopolis to help the city however he can and entrusts the task of awakening the legendary pokemon to you.

Right away, you'll notice that Sky Pillar is looking a lot cleaner than it did in Ruby and Sapphire. The pokemon and their encounter rates are all identical to Sapphire version here which means no Dusclops or Mawile for you here! But of course, since you're here much earlier in the game, the wild pokemon's levels are significantly decreased so that you're not absolutely destroyed by a level 60 Altaria.

And, of course, as the top of the pillar, you'll find Rayquaza where he's nested to rest.

As we approach him, you might be surprised to find that you don't actually get to battle him here. Instead, as soon as you interact with Rayquaza, he simply flies off. Perhaps he already knows what we've come here for? I suppose for now our only choice is to head to Sootopolis and see how things work out.

================

Sootopolis City

As we return to Sootopolis, we find that Groudon and Kyogre are still going at it.

But, the clouds soon part and Rayquaza decends from the sky and its mere presence seems to terrify Groudon and Kyogre, causing the both of them to retreat to the corners of the earth. The chaotic storm is cleared up and the weather returns to normal.

Maxie and Archie are both stunned to see the legendary pokemon they were pining for all this time retreating just like that in the presence of this powerful monster. They both have nothing more to offer than a nervous laugh as they are well aware their crimes will have serious repercussions.

Steven and Wallace both offer their thanks for our help in awakening Groudon, and Wallace even rewards us with HM07: Waterfall, the key to entering Ever Grande City and challenging the Elite Four... but of course, we'll need to claim the Rain Badge from our next gym.

Hoo boy, today was a long one. I definitely should not have chosen today to do all that miscellaneous exploration in the beginning. Perhaps I should have split this into two posts, ending the first with the battle against Archie and this one with our final gym battle, but hindsight is 20/20! Anyway, next time will very likely be a much shorter post as the next gym is literally right there. I might do some more miscellaneous exploring as well, but I don't know how much of that will actually be relevant to this thread.

=================

As for my opinion of what just went down? Well, I absolutely love it! It feels like a much more chaotic moment and actually seeing Groudon and Kyogre duking it out really adds to the tension, however I think it's a little anticlimactic that Groudon and Kyogre just... retreat after Rayquaza appears. I definitely think I would have much preferred being able to catch Rayquaza and then return here to battle Groudon and Kyogre both with it.

Also, since this is the last we see of Team Aqua and Magma in this game's story, I'd like to mention a major oddity that I've noticed throughout this game. We've encountered Team Magma many times throughout this playthrough.

But, notably, each events only featured the admin Tabitha.

So... where's Courtney? It seems an extremely bizarre omission. They added an entire new hideout and even a whole new encounter at Mossdeep City's Space Center... but still, you only battle Tabitha at each of those points.

They managed to incorporate both Matt and Shelly of Team Aqua, but you really mean to tell me that they couldn't find an excuse to throw Courtney into the Team Magma base, or even just tack her on at Mossdeep City? Have her battle you instead of Tabitha there?

I suppose it's not too much of a loss, it's not like her team was any different compared to any of the Magma members, but I just find it to be a really strange omission. I kept expecting to run into Courtney throughout this entire game, but it just doesn't happen. So, I guess if you're ever playing Ruby version, make sure to take special note of the battles with her because you'll never get to meet her here in Emerald!

February 14, 2021

Sootopolis City

Even with the weather cleared up, people are still gathered around discussing what just happened, and so everything on the east side of the town past the Pokemon Center is still out of bounds for now. However, the doors are no longer locked on the east side, so we can see what's inside these houses now!

There isn't much new to talk about, though. But you can still get the TM for Brick Break! This time, though, I don't think I actually have much use for that. Of course, we can't go back into the Cave of Origin as there is now an old man standing in the way.

================

I decided to take a brief moment to explore the outskirts of Sootopolis City.

This of course includes the undeerwater part, but again, there's just nothing much to cover here that stands out compared to Ruby and Sapphire. Just a bunch of rare items, treasures, and shards!

I also went back to explore the underwater part of Route 124 as well, but again, nothing much to speak of.

==================

I did mention that this would be a very short post, didn't I? It really seems like, at the moment, there's nothing left to do but check out the Pokemon Gym.

That's not entirely true, after all, we did just awaken Rayquaza. If you really want, you can leave right now and go back to the top of Sky Pillar to battle Rayquaza, he's made available far earlier in the game this time around, but everything in the game's story seems to be nudging me in the direction of the gym at the moment and I don't want to disrupt the game's story too much. Let's let Rayquaza have a little break before we go to disturb it again.

==================

Sootopolis Gym

Of course, the consequence of Mossdeep City being the most significantly changed gym is that this gym isn't nearly on the same level. Sootopolis Gym brings with it the typical changes. The trainers are redistributed and the puzzle solutions are altered. Honestly, I found these puzzles to be easier than the ones in Ruby and Sapphire. Perhaps too many people got stumped originally? As long as you make sure to leave a space to walk as you find your path, you should be fine.

Of course, the threat of falling between two trainers at once isn't as dangerous since you can now battle them both in a double battle, but you still don't wanna get stuck falling at the very top if you're trying to avoid trainer battles. Odds are you'll have to battle at least three trainers as you make your way down. Once again, I recommend doubling back and intentionally failing each puzzle to battle the trainers on each level as you make your way up.

As for the gym leader, of course, Wallace mentioned that he wasn't the gym leader anymore. Indeed, we can see Juan has assumed his position at the top of the gym.

=================

My Team:

-----------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 45

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Earthquake, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 45

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 45

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Baton Pass

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 44

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Calm Mind, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Rest

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 44

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 44

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

================

Sootopolis City Gym Leader Juan

---------------------

Luvdisc Lv. 41

If you paid attention to my team summary, you may have noticed that Hill has finally reached level 45 and learned a new move: Baton Pass. This is the move that this pokemon is entirely built around and I'm about to use Juan as an example of just how powerful this pokemon's potential really is.

While it's really tempting to just go for the Slash and knock out this Luvdisc ASAP, why don't we take a bit of a gamble and set up a bit against it? It managed to hit me with an Attract, but I was able to get two Swords Dances off and a couple of Speed Boosts to boot. From here, I went ahead and took Luvdisc out with Slash before it managed to confuse me, too.

---------------------

Sealeo Lv. 43

He brought out his Sealeo next, no doubt due to the type advantage. But what he doesn't know is that I'm about to ruin his whole career. By using Baton Pass, Hill is able to switch out with another pokemon. But, the pokemon he switches into will maintain the same stat buffs and debuffs that Hill had. So, all that Speed Boost and Swords Dance? Now it's being transferred onto any pokemon I choose.

Since I'm expecting an Ice attack, I switch into River who is probably my best physical attacker capable of taking an ice-type attack. From here, I'm pretty much set for victory. Due to the multiple stat boosts, River's capable of outspeeding and one-shotting just about anything Juan can send out. So, Sealeo goes down to an Earthquake.

----------------------

Whiscash Lv. 41

He goes for his own Whiscash, but it's pretty clear which one has the upper hand.

--------------------

Crawdaunt Lv. 43

Crawdaunt also doesn't even get a chance to shine before going down to another Earthquake.

-----------------

Kingdra Lv. 46

Now, Juan's Kingdra is normally a very serious threat. Its only weakness is Dragon thanks to its Water/Dragon typing and it loves to build up lots of Double Teams. Buuut I've come prepared. I go for Earthquake again, but Kingdra does manage to survive the hit. It goes for Rest and unfortunately my next Earthquake misses, giving it the chance to heal off the HP and cure its Sleep with its Chesto Berry. But, my next Earthquake lands. He's able to set up one more Double Team before getting locked into a loop of using Hyper Potions. I miss one more time allowing him to set up one more Double Team, but I'm finally able to take him out after he ran out of Hyper Potions to keep his Kingdra alive.

-------------------

MVP: Hill

I know River took out all of his foes, but let's not forget that it was Hill who did all the work to get him with all that strength. Earthquake definitely would not be one-shotting all those foes without his help.

=================

And so, Juan is defeated and I've earned the Rain Badge, allowing me to use Waterfall outside of battle! We're already at the endgame! But let's not get too carried away here. There's still a little bit to do before we head off to Ever Grande City. Next time, I say we go for some Legendary hunting!

February 15, 2021

Pacifidlog Town

Today, we'll be starting from Pacifidlog Town as a central base of operations. I said last time we'd be doing some legendary hunting, but there's a little bit more to it than just that. I still don't think we should head straight to Rayquaza atop Sky Tower just yet. Instead, there's another trio of legendaries that we can get. I think you know where this is going.

Now, normally I wouldn't worry about going through the hoops to catch these three pokemon again, but the method to doing so here in Emerald is actually slightly different, so I figured it's worth going over once again.

==================

Of course, our first step is to get the necessary pokemon required to open the tombs the pokemon are sealed in. To do this, we'll need to catch a Relicanth from the reefs below Route 126 and either evolve a Wailmer or catch a Wailord at Route 129. I could have simply traded these pokemon over from my Ruby playthrough, but you should know me better than that by now. Yes, I went ahead and caught another Relicanth which I named Reef, and another Wailord which I named Sea.

=================

Routes 132 - 134

Next comes the thorough exploration of the routes between Pacifidlog and Slateport. The one-way current ensures this place is just as annoying to navigate as always. Make sure to bring a pokemon with Fly so you can save time in starting over if you miss the island you're after, and there's really no shame in using a map to figure out the best path, either. I took several laps to battle all the trainers and collect all the items before finally arriving at the diving spot on Route 134.

=================

This spot leads us to the same underwater passage with the mysterious braille message at the end.

"GO UP HERE"

We follow its instructions and surface while standing in front of the braille.

=================

Sealed Chamber

And here, we find ourselves in the Sealed Chamber. I won't bother describing what you'll find in these chambers because we've already done so in my Ruby playthrough.

We brought Urban back into the spotlight for this one and used Dig to gain entrance to the back of the sealed chamber.

================

And it's in this chamber that we'll run into our first difference in Emerald.

"FIRST COMES WAILORD,

LAST COMES RELICANTH"

While it may not seem too different, note the fact that Wailord and Relicanth's positions have been swapped. I suppose this was done as an extra measure to ensure you didn't just cheat the answers off of your friends and actually went through the effort to decode the braille using the instruction booklet.

Reading this message with Wailord at the front of your party and Relicanth at the back will cause the chambers around Hoenn to open yet again. These chambers are all in the same locations as before, so finding them should be really easy.

=======================

Route 111

Our first chamber is located in the south of the desert on Route 111.

================

Desert Ruins

"LEFT, LEFT,

DOWN, DOWN,

THEN USE

ROCK SMASH"

These instructions differ yet again from the ones in Ruby and Sapphire. This time a bit more significantly. Instead of going right, you have to move left, and instead of Strength, you'll need Rock Smash! Once you follow the instructions, the passage to the sealed away ancient golem will be revealed.

================

Regirock Lv. 40

As soon as we challenge Regirock, we'll find that each of the Regis have a new battle transition, just like Team Aqua and Magma. Instead of the logo of the team from before, we'll get the pattern of dots on each titan's face.

Actually catching these golems is actually pretty simple, though. They're all level 40 and share nearly identical movesets. In the case of Regirock, it was just a matter of paralyzing him with Thunder Wave, setting up Reflect, then hitting him with a single ThunderBolt to get him down to catching range. His strongest move against Cliff was SuperPower, which is shared among all the legendary golems, but weakens his physical attack every time he uses it. From there, he'll just have to use Curse in order to make up for the lost ground or keep dealing with the reduced Attack.

He was equally as lost as to how to deal with River. By the time he was able to get any headway on me, I was able to catch him in an Ultra Ball. This had taken a little over 20 Ultra Balls to accomplish. I've certainly had worse runs against legendaries.

------------------------

I named this Regirock Desert. One down, two to go!

======================

The next chamber is on Route 105.

=================

Island Cave

"STAY CLOSE

TO THE WALL

RUN AROUND

ONE LAP"

This is probably the most changed puzzle in the game, but it's pretty straight forward. No need to bring any HM users this time. In the original, you had to stand against this wall and wait two minutes. Just as the instructions say here, you simply need to read the message, then stay up against the wall and do a full lap around the chamber. Once you return to the message, the passage will open leading to your next legendary encounter!

==================

Regice Lv. 40

------------------------

This matchup was actually even easier than Regirock's. Regice's specialty is its special defense, so it does take a few more ThunderBolts to weaken, but likewise, its physical attack is much lower, so its SuperPower needs a lot of build up to be able to do significant damage to Cliff.

Just like Regirock, Regice was powerless against River after it had finally managed to pick off Cliff. Regice gave me a bit more of a problem, getting me down to my last 10 ultra balls at which point I started mixing in some Timer Balls which eventually managed to catch it.

---------------------

And so, Regice was now mine as well. I named this one Iceberg.

==================

Our last chamber is on Route 120.

===============

Ancient Tomb

"THOSE WHO

INHERET OUR

WILL SHINE

IN THE MIDDLE"

Perhaps a bit less cryptic than the one in Ruby and Sapphire, this one seems to more obviously indicate that you have to use the move Flash while standing in the center of the chamber to open this passage and face against the third of Hoenn's legendary golems.

================

Registeel Lv. 40

-----------------------

Registeel, has a heavy emphasis on both of his defenses making him a rather tough foe. Still, his split in the stats is obviously not quite as good as Regice's specialty against special attacks, so I was able to get his health into the red after a few ThunderBolts. This turned out to be the easiest of the Golems to catch as Cliff was all that was needed here and I was able to catch him in only a handful of Ultra Balls. I still had 29 left!

------------------------

I named Registeel "Mountain."

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but it's a little bit surreal to think back on my original view of legendary pokemon. As a child, I genuinely thought it was impossible to catch legendary pokemon with anything less than a Master Ball. I always thought the abundance of legendaries were there so that you had to choose among them, just like starter pokemon. And the presence of ultimate legendary pokemon like Mewtwo were there to reward you for beating the game without needing to use your Master Ball on anything else. Even after discovering you could catch pokemon in regular pokeballs, it still seemed like such a monumental task to catch them all. I remember trying for hours on end to catch Articuno and it just seemed like such an impossible task at the time. I eventually just gave up and threw the Master Ball anyway. Now, I'm just jumping from legendary to legendary and catching them all without a second guess. It's kind of funny how much you can grow over the years.

===================

Now, we've caught all three of the legendary golems and I'd say this is a reasonable point to stop, buuut there is one more legendary pokemon we can catch which I've alluded to quite a few times. Since it's the mascot of the game and it's intentionally made available much earlier in the game, I feel like it's only appropriate to catch Rayquaza before we move onto the Elite Four. After all, the fact that it's available at all this early is arguably the most significant change to the main story of Emerald.

===================

Sky Pillar

------------------------

After Rayquaza has been awakened the first time, Sky Pillar looks a bit more familiar on your second visit.

Yes indeed, Sky Pillar now more directly resembles the tower from Ruby and Sapphire and, just like then, requires the use of the Mach Bike in order to climb all the way. It definitely looks like the tower suffered a bit of damage under the harsh conditions of the chaotic weather.

Thankfully, the wild pokemon are still the same levels they were on our first visit, so we still don't have to worry about getting destroyed by overleveled wild pokemon.

==================

The roof of the tower has certainly seen better days. It appears to be far more destroyed than it was in Ruby and Sapphire. But, more importantly, our ally in the fight against Groudon and Kyogre is waiting for us here.

==================

My team:

-------------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 47

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Pursuit, Earthquake, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 47

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 47

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Baton Pass

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 47

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Calm Mind, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Rest

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 46

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Future Sight, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 46

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

==================

Rayquaza Lv. 70

As we interact with Rayquaza, we of course get a unique battle transition fo rhim, too. This one focusing on the unique markings lining Rayquaza's body. More importantly, though, take a look at that level! Yikes! This is a far cry from the level 45 Groudon and Kyogre from Ruby and Sapphire! Indeed, while the local wild pokemon have been scaled down, Rayquaza is still at the very same level he is as a postgame boss in Ruby and Sapphire! We've got a really tough battle ahead of us... To make matters worse, I should mention that I actually brought Jungle the Tropius with me so that I could fly off of the rooftop since you can't simply use an escape rope to leave the pillar. It'll just take you back to the rooftop since it's technically outdoors.

Right off the bat, I need to open up with a Thunder Wave or nothing on my team will have any chance of outspeeding this thing and getting a single hit off. Thankfully, even if Rayquaza opens up with its most powerful attack, Outrage, I'll be able to take one hit at full health. Ideally, though, Rayquaza will go for Extremespeed allowing me to paralyze it. I briefly tried the swagger parafusion strat but I found that Rayquaza's Attack would be boosted so high that it would often end up KOing itself in confusion if I used Swagger, so instead I'd usually just set up Reflect and start hammering him with ThunderBolts. And this is where things get even rougher because, if you recall, Rayquaza knows rest. Because of that, my Thunder Wave is not perfect, so I'll generally start throwing Ultra Balls whenever Rayquaza is around half health or less. Or as low as I can get it within the two turns of Rest so that I can take advantage of the Sleep multiplier. There are all sorts of different options to switch into depending on what Rayquaza chooses to do. The most dangerous option he can go for is Outrage.

If Rayquaza starts going for Outrage, I'll actually send out Jungle to soak up one of the hits.

And he'll be followed closely by Forest. The object of this strategy is to get Rayquaza confused from fatigue so that his parafusion can help stop him from healing off his paralysis and even cause some extra damage to build up.

If Rayquaza is not locked into Outrage and is still paralyzed, I'll often bring out Stars to hit him with Confuse Ray before he can do anything. This will hopefully stop him from attacking for the turn so I can start setting up Calm Mind and hit him with Psychic if necessary. Consequently, this will help me to resist Outrage, though it takes a lot of Calm Mind to turn Outrage to anything less than a two-hit KO so it's really not worth it. Instead, I tend to focus on a mixture of using Rest to keep Stars alive and Psychic to reduce Rayquaza's HP. Throwing Ultra Balls at every chance I get. Still, I'm trying to wall a Rayquaza that's over 20 levels above me, so this wall is certainly never going to last long.

In a desperate situation, such as Rayquaza having used Rest to cure his paralysis after having KO'd Cliff, I'll bring out Hill and use Protect to build up some speed before baton passing into Stars to try and get a Confuse Ray off. The issue with that strategy is that the pokemon I switch into still has to be capable of taking a hit. I could circumvent this by having the move tutor at the dept. store teach Hill the move Substitute, but I'm not quite sure I want to commit that hard to leaving Hill as exclusively a Baton Pass user while we're still in the main story. I want this thing to at least be able to pick off wild pokemon on its own for now. Usually, what ends up happening is I Baton Pass into a pokemon who just ends up getting hit by an Outrage and going down. Best case scenario, though, Rayquaza will be at full health and waste his turn using Rest. Extremespeed is also a nice option for him to go for. As long as he doesn't use it twice in a row, anyway.

River is a major glass canon. In the event that Rayquaza uses Rest, I'll often switch into him to get a powerful Ice Beam in which will instantly bring Rayquaza right down to around half health where I can start throwing Ultra Balls at him while he's asleep.

----------------------------

Obviously, with these strats against a level 70 Rayquaza... none of my attempts last very long before my party is wiped. Perhaps bringing Ozone in place of Forest would have helped a bit thanks to the Focus Band, but in all honestly I don't think Ozone would be capable of doing a whole lot to this thing either. This beast is just that tough. It took me several tries, over which I refined this strategy until I was finally able to catch him in an Ultra Ball!

I nicknamed this Rayquaza Stratos. Now, I'll be honest, I initially wanted to include Rayquaza as a team member just like Groudon and Kyogre. As I said before, I usually try to incorporate the version mascot onto my team. However, with this thing being level 70? I don't know how comfortable I am just tossing a level 70 pokemon onto my team and expecting everything to be A-OK. I don't think the rest of my team will ever reach that level until the postgame and it seems like at that level he'll be nearly strong enough to singlehandedly take care of the entire Elite Four all on his own. It's a bit of a shame, though, because I do genuinely like Rayquaza as a pokemon, he's really cool, but I think I'll limit my use of him like I did with Mewtwo in Gen 1. I will try to get some use out of him, though!

=======================

And with that, we've come full circle and we're back to where we started. Next time, we're going to do some miscellaneous item hunting before finally marching through Victory Road!

February 16, 2021

Meteor Falls

Once again, today is going to be another rather short post. I started out with some simple spelunking, clearing up the last few areas that remained and gathering the items.

There's nothing in particular of note here for Emerald exclusively, but I figured I should mention it because I did have a primary purpose for this detour.

My primary purpose was to get my hands on TM02: Dragon Claw which I taught to Forest to round out his moveset with a decently strong special attack to finally replace Pursuit. Other than this brief detour, most of my effort today was spent making my way toward the Elite Four!

==================

Ever Grande City

Sailing east from Route 128 brings us to Ever Grande City where we can use Waterfall to climb up to a pokemon center and the entrance to Victory Road!

In the pokemon center here, you'll find Scott who applauds your ability to reach this point in your adventure and encourages you to give the battles ahead your best shot!

===================

Victory Road

By this point in the game, I probably don't need to tell you what kinds of changes you can expect to see in Emerald version's Victory Road. However, there was one change I was certainly not expecting right here near the entrance of the dungeon.

It's Wally! Yes, to my surprise, you battle Wally far earlier in Victory Road. I suppose they wanted it to seem as cheap of a shot to have him ambush you at the very end of the road when all of your pokemon are weak. I kind of respect that, but at the same time, it also makes Wally himself a bit... easier to defeat. That said, he definitely did catch me off guard and I was not prepared at all for this battle.

================

Vs. Wally #2

---------------------

Altaria Lv. 44

Thankfully, River happened to be leading my party, so I was able to make quick work of his Altaria using Ice Beam.

---------------------

Roselia Lv. 44

His Roselia came next to try and take advantage of my weakness, and naturally was met by the same fate.

---------------------

Delcatty Lv. 43

Delcatty came out next and couldn't stay standing during the Earthquake!

----------------------

Magneton Lv. 41

Magneton? A joke. I knew it was helpless against me, so I even set up a Future Sight before taking it out with Earthquake. All it could do was hit me with Tri-Attack.

----------------------

Gardevoir Lv. 45

Another Earthquake? I think another Earthquake is due. It didn't quite take out Gardevoir, but that's what the Future Sight was for! The Future Sight struck and... he barely hung on with what I'm confident was a damage range. I went for Surf on the next turn but of course he healed Gardevoir's damage off. But, one more Surf was all it took to finish him off.

-----------------------

While I do appreciate the devs respecting Wally enough to give him a fair fight, it seems they didn't respect him quite enough to give him a higher level team capable of actually handling some of these endgame attacks.

====================

Of course, the rather standard changes persist throughout Victory Road. However, there are some notable changes in the wild pokemon.

Mawile who wasn't available at any point prior to this is finally available here! It doesn't take the place of Sableye, though.

Instead, its 5% encounter rate is capitalizing on the absence of Meditite and Medicham, with the additional 10% boosting the encounter rate of Lairon.

The encounters are mostly the same on B2F as B1F, just with higher levels overall.

Of course, Cooltrainer Vito is still here, the older brother of the Winstrate Family. I found his team this time to be a bit easier to manage. He seems to specialize more in fast pokemon this time around, but his team was pretty easy for me to deal with using just Cliff.

I wanted to mention this battle, though, because I actually finally encountered a bug I wasn't sure if I'd ever encounter. Sure enough, it did end up happening! I'm referring to the ThunderBolt glitch! If you're unaware, there's a strange bug in Gen 3 in which, whenever ThunderBolt is used, there's a very slim chance that the sound effect the lighting strikes make will loop infinitely even after the animation for the attack ends. The sound will then continue to loop even after the battle is over, even if you use ThunderBolt again. As far as I'm aware, the only way to stop the obnoxious sound is by saving the game and turning it off. Don't worry, it's not a harmful glitch by any means unless you find the sound to just ruin your experience, it's just a rather amusing one.

Here is a video of the glitch in effect. I honestly have absolutely no clue how or why this glitch occurs. From what I can tell, this glitch only occurs in Emerald, Fire Red and Leaf Green and seems to be related to a similar glitch in some versions of Ruby and Sapphire where the move can actually cause the game to crash. I guess the game just has difficulty processing the rapid succession of repeated sound effects?

When you finally get to the end of Victory Road, you might expect to have a battle with May had I not kind of already spoiled the fact that, no, there is no rival battle at all here at the end of the road.

====================

Ever Grande City -- Pokemon League

With that, we've finally made it to the Pokemon League! Like I said, it's definitely a short video today. I definitely don't intend it to be this way, but there's just not much to talk about in all the time I played.

=================

My Team:

---------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 49

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 50

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 50

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Baton Pass

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 50

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Calm Mind, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Rest

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 49

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Future Sight, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 49

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

==================

I'm honestly pretty excited to see how this team stacks up against Hoenn's Elite Four. And there's nothing more standing in our way. Next time, we'll be taking on the Elite Four with full force!

February 17, 2021

Ever Grande City

After doing some stocking up, involving grabbing a bunch of Lemonade from the vending machines and Lava Cookies from Mt. Chimney, it was now time to take on Hoenn's Elite Four once again.

The gym leaders this time around definitely put up far more of a fight this time around making most of them much more memorable! Their teams were all modified to be slightly more difficult this time around and no doubt that pattern would keep up going forward!

We march on up to the gate to have our badges checked, and once that's been done, we're permitted entry into the first chamber of the Elite Four!

=================

My Team:

---------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 49

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 50

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 50

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Baton Pass

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 50

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Calm Mind, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Rest

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 49

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Future Sight, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 49

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

==================

Elite Four #1: Sidney

-----------------------

Mightyena Lv. 46

Right off the bat, it seems we're at a pretty comfortable level this time around. Sidney's Mightyena is a few levels below our lowest, so we shouldn't have too many problems going forward. With a couple of Leaf Blades, Mightyena went down, though he did manage to get a Sand-Attack on me which would soon come back to bite me.

------------------------

Absol Lv. 49

Up next came his strongest pokemon. I went for a Leaf Blade and took out a significant chunk of HP while Absol went for Swords Dance to build up its Attack. A big mistake since I'd be able to take it out this turn with another Leaf Blade! That is.... assuming the attack connects. Of course, that Sand-Attack from before caused me to miss this Leaf Blade, buying Absol the chance to take me out with Aerial Ace.

Since Absol's attack was so high, I figured I should bring out Cliff to take some solid hits. I went for ThunderBolt but Absol was barely able to survive. On the next turn, he healed off the collective damage with a Full Restore. ThunderBolt had dealt enough damage for me to be comfortable going with again a couple more times.

-----------------------

Cacturn Lv. 46

Sidney actually caught me off guard by switching into his Cacturn right here. I guess he thought it would be a better matchup? Either way, this was pretty standard. My ThunderBolt did a decent chunk of his HP and I followed up with Swagger and Thunder Wave as I tend to do. Cacturn wouldn't last much longer before KOing itself between Confusion and collective damage from ThunderBolt.

-------------------------

Shiftry Lv. 48

Shiftry was a bit trickier to handle. We both kept using Swagger on each other, but with Thunder Wave, I had the leg up. Not to mention Cliff's higher physical defense protecting him better against his low physical attack. It didn't take too long for Shiftry's attack to get so high that he wound up KOing himself at over half HP.

-------------------------

Crawdaunt Lv. 48

Do I even have to say how this matchup went?

Of course, all he had now was his Absol and, if he wan't comfortable with this matchup at +2 Attack, there was no way he'd be getting anywhere here. One more ThunderBolt and down it goes!

-----------------------

MVP: Cliff

==================

Elite Four #2: Phoebe

If you can believe it, Phoebe in this game is even more of a nightmare than she was in Ruby and Sapphire. It took me a few tries to take her out and I'll explain why as we continue.

---------------------

Dusclops Lv. 48

Right off the bat, her Dusclops ruins a lot of striaght-forward strategies.

My first idea was to lead with Forest. As it turns out, however, this Dusclops knows Protect. And likes to use it. A lot. Combined with Pressure, he's able to waste a ton of PP if you aren't careful about how you approach. In my case, he was even able to use Protect four turns in a row out of sheer luck, amost entirely draining all of my PP for Leaf Blade on entirely wasted turns. While I was able to take him out on this first matchup, she'd only follow up with her other Dusclops who knows Ice Beam. That second Dusclops was tough enough that it was capable of sweeping my entire team thanks to its surprising type coverage.

On my next attempt, I tried to lead with Cliff to get a better edge on Phoebe's Dusclops. Using Swagger and Thunder Wave, I was able to disrupt her protect strategy, then set up Reflect and pick off the rest of his HP with ThunderBolt. From there, I'd try and do the same for her next Dusclops but, of course, Earthquake hit me like a truck. This strat just wasn't consistent enough.

My winning strat was probably the cheesiest option I could go with. It didn't feel great, but honestly, this long drawn-out battle is a massive stain on the Hoenn Elite Four. This time, I led off with Hill and played a game of chess with this Dusclops' Protect. On the off turns, I'd anticipate an attack and go for Protect myself to get an extra turn of Speed Boost. Any turn other than that, I'd antcipate a Protect and go for Swords Dance instead. He was able to afflict me with a Curse, but that didn't mean much.

From here, I used Baton Pass to pass the +6 Attack and +3 Speed onto Ozone, turning this bird unto an unstoppable sweeping machine. To add insult to injury, Dusclops went for Shadow Punch on this turn, which Ozone's normal typing rendered useless. From here, I was able to easily take out Dusclops with an Aerial Ace.

------------------------

Banette Lv. 49

A second Aerial Ace made quick work of her Banette.

--------------------------

Banette Lv. 49

Rinse and repeat for her second Banette.

----------------------------

Dusclops Lv. 51

Her Dusclops was able to survive a single Aerial Ace, but its Ice Beam was just barely unable to kill me, so I took it out after a bit of a push-and-pull with Full Restores.

-------------------------

Sableye Lv. 50

And there was never any hope for this little guy to begin with.

--------------------------

MVP: Hill

It's easy to attribute this victory to the one who dealt all the damage, but let's remember to give credit where it's due! Hill was the who paved the way forward! Without him, Ozone would have gotten walled pretty hard by Dusclops.

====================

Elite Four #3: Glacia

Friendly reminder if you're playing along to make sure you use your Ethers or Elixirs after Phoebe's battle! Dusclops eats PP for breakfeast! Don't... take that out of context.

-----------------------

Sealeo Lv. 50

I was able to successfully anticipate an Ice Ball which I knew I'd be able to survive the first hit of and I could also halt with Protect before Baton Passing. It was a win-win! In addition, possibly thanks to my Lax Incense, the first hit even missed! This bought me a free turn to set up with Swords Dance! Sealeo unfortunately decided to go for Body Slam next since it missed that turn to set up. Unfortunately for me, she got the paralysis chance on me which would make further setup rather awkward. I decided to go for one more Swords Dance knowing I'd be able to take one more hit from either Body Slam or Ice Ball. She went for Ice Ball this time which nearly KO'd me. I didn't want to take the risk of my paralysis stopping me from using Protect, so I just went straight for Baton Pass from here. Thankfully, I was able to get out of there without Paralysis taking effect.

On a failed attempt, I made a very noobish mistake of switching into Cliff who... couldn't actually capitalize on all those Swords Dances I'd set up with. I didn't actually lose the battle though, I just reset after realizing the error I'd made.

Anyway, on my successful attempt, I brought out Whiscash and, well, you know how the rest of this battle goes from here. An Earthquake took out Sealeo.

------------------------

Glalie Lv. 50

Earthquake took out Glalie.

-------------------------

Sealeo Lv. 52

Earthquake took out Sealeo.

------------------------

Glalie Lv. 52

Earthquake took out Glalie. Is the deja vu setting in yet?

------------------------

Walrein Lv. 53

Well, her Walrein was capable of putting up a bit of a fight after surviving an Earthquake, but it was too little too late and one more Earthquake was enough to seal the deal.

----------------------

MVP: Hill

==============

Elite Four #4: Drake

-------------------------

Shelgon Lv. 52

I once again led off with Hill with the expectation of setting up at least one Swords Dance before Baton Passing off to Sceptile and using a combination of Dragon Claw and Earthquake to pick off the rest of Drake's team. (Though I am well aware that Dragon Claw is a special attack and wouldn't get the benefit of Swords Dance, it's still a super-effective attack!) Shelgon led with Rock Tomb which missed. I thought Rock Tomb was weak enough that I'd be able to survive the hit, but I was evidently wrong because the next turn came and down Hill went. I didn't think this was worth resetting over because, even with the Lax Incense, I don't think it's right to restart until I get a convenient miss. I just cut my losses here and moved on to my next pokemon.

I brought Forest out and started going for those Dragon Claws. Drake used one of his Full Restores to keep this thing alilve, but it was a waste because Dragon Claw was a two-hit KO.

---------------------

Flygon Lv. 53

Flygon was next and I had a pretty strong feeling I'd be seeing a Flamethrower from this guy.

I had the perfect switch for this very situation! River switched in on the Flamethrower and immediately countered with an Ice Beam. Flygon outsped of course and hit me with an Earthquake, but I was able to take one with low HP remaining. Flygon couldn't take the Ice Beam and ended up going down.

---------------------

Altaria Lv. 54

Altaria was next and Drake had the balls to go for Dragon Dance in this matchup! This bought me a free turn for Ice Beam and I even got a lucky Freeze! Of course, the game's not just going to hand the win over that easily and Altaria defrosted right away before taking me out with a Double-Edge and just barely surviving the recoil.

I brought Forest back out to finish the job. Even with the speed boost from Dragon Dance, Altaria couldn't outspeed Forest!

----------------------

Kingdra Lv. 53

I anticipated that this Kingdra probably knew Ice Beam, (in retrospect I was actually wrong about this), so I retreated from this matchup.

Cliff joined the battle while Drake used Dragon Dance which actually kind of puzzled me. I wasn't sure what sort of physical attack he could be running to justify Dragon Dance. For now, though, I decided to just go for Swagger to turn that increased attack against him and Thunder Wave to reduce his opportunities to attack. Between hitting himself in confusion and Cliff's ThunderBolt, Kingdra didn't last very long.

-----------------------

Salamence Lv. 55

Now this was a matchup to fear. Salamence's speed renders him nearly untouchable if you can't take an attack. I hoped my Quick Claw would trigger allowing me to hit him with a Thunder Wave, but it didn't. Thankfully, by some miracle, I was able to survive a Flamethrower with only 2 HP remaining and was able to counter with my Thunder Wave. The following turn, my luck was repaid, though, as my Swagger missed and Salamence took me out with Crunch.

I was able to get a couple of Dragon Claws in with Forest before getting taken down, but Salamence was now in KO range!

I brought out Ozone and went for a Facade to finish the job!

----------------------

MVP: River

Multiple pokemon played a substantial role in this battle, but River really helped pave the way to victory by dealing with some of Drake's tougher foes with ease using Ice Beam. Had he still been around, he also could have helped take out Salamence with ease as well.

===============

Champion's Room

And finally, we arrive at the Champion's Room of the Elite Four. You might notice that this room is a different color than it was in Ruby and Sapphire. That's because, as a surprise twist...

The champion this time around is none other than Wallace! He has been upgraded from the Sootopolis Gym Leader to the Champion of Hoenn! I'm... not really sure how I feel about this shift. Steven's the character you've been interacting with over the course of the game and Wallace is only introduced near the end. Yet, changing the champion seems to be a decision they felt pretty strongly about. Enough so that they designed an entirely new character to be shoehorned in as his replacement at the gym? Perhaps this change is explained better in the postgame, but it definitely raises an eyebrow from me for now.

Of course, with the upgrade from Gym Leader to Champion comes an upgrade to Wallace's already rather formidable team!

===================

Hoenn Champion Wallace

------------------------

Wailord Lv. 57

I led off with Hill once again to try and set up for an easy win, but, without much surprise, Wailord took me out pretty easily with a Blizzard.

Cliff came next and, with a ThunderBolt, Wailord was down for the count!

--------------------------

Gyarados Lv. 56

Now this was a change that really made me do a double take. He actually, willingly sent out his Gyarados against my Magneton?? II was confident he had multiple better options to send out, so this was completely unexpected. I'm sure his reasoning was that this thing knew Earthquake and could one-shot Magneton, but this matchup has very rarely ended well for the Gyarados. A single ThunderBolt later and Wallace and tell you exactly why that is.

------------------------

Whiscash Lv. 56

This is definitely the pokemon I would have expected to see long before he ever considered bringing Gyarados out against a Magneton. Obviously, there wasn't a whole lot Cliff could hope to accomplish against a Ground-type, but thankfully Whiscash's choice of move was rather predictable here.

I had the perfect retreat for this matchup. Forest resisted the Earthquake and could immediately trade blows using Leaf Blade to take Whiscash out in one shot!

------------------------

Milotic Lv. 58

Another rather scary sight to see! I definitely wasn't prepared to be dealing with this thing so soon! But, I did have a couple of ideas to deal with Milotic and it certainly wasn't going to involve sitting here and taking an Ice Beam.

I immediately switched Cliff into the incoming Ice Beam before trying to set up the Swagger Parafusion strat on him. Unfortunately, I wound up missing and, though I was able to survive the first Surf, the second knocked me out. I was only able to paralyze Milotic which was still certainly going to be useful don't get me wrong!

My next plan was to go for Stars. I immediately confused Milotic with Confuse Ray and then started setting up with Calm Mind. As it turns out, Milotic's only attacks are special, so once I started building my special defense, it was completely helpless to stop me. The worst it could do was hit me with Toxic which I could just use Rest to heal right off whenever my health got low. Once my special stats were maxed out, I turned around and started blasting Milotic with Psychic until it went down. Even with max special attack, though, it still took two solid hits to KO. This thing is a beast!

--------------------------

Tentacruel Lv. 55

I was actually overjoyed to see Tentacruel here! With my maxed special attack, this was sure to be an easy win! ...At least, that's what I thought until Tentacruel wound up outspeeding me and KOing me with Sludge Bomb. Ouch...

Well, the obvious follow up was to bring out River who not only resisted Sludge Bomb, but could use Earthquake to deal with Tentacruel. He tried to go for Toxic to build up damage, but it was fruitless. He didn't have the time to stall and it took two Earthquakes to finish him off, though he did do his best to stall using Full Restores.

-----------------------------

Ludicolo Lv. 56

This was another matchup where his next move was extremely obvious.

Ozone switched into Ludicolo's Giga Drain before reciprocating with an Aerial Ace. It didn't quite KO him, but I think this victory was rather assured at this point. I braced myself for an Ice Beam but was met instead with... Leech Seed. Huh. Well, there was no way Ludicolo would be stalling any further and one more Aerial Ace was enough to confirm my victory!

--------------------------

MVP: Stars

As always, it's really difficult to choose an MVP when my entire team pulled their weight really well against the champion. Well, except for Hill, but the odds were stacked against him from the start in this battle, unfortunately. He contributed a lot in the battles leading up to here, though, so he's far from deadweight! I decided to go with Stars here since it was her ability to hold her ground against Milotic that allowed me to overcome Milotic in an otherwise really awkward position after Cliff wound up getting KO'd. Without Stars, I don't think I ever would have been able to take out that Milotic. That said, Cliff is definitely a close runner up because I'm not sure what I would have done against that Gyarados or Wailord without him either!

==================

Well, Wallace congratulates us on becoming the new Champion of Hoenn!

Just like before, May rushes in to give you advice on battling the champion and is surprised to see you've already won. Prof. Birch follows shortly behind and checks your pokedex progress before Wallace leads you into the back room to be entered into the Hall of Fame!

======================

Hall of Fame

------------------------

Forest (Sceptile M); Lv. 51

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Leaf Blade, Dragon Claw, Earthquake, Aerial Ace

----------------------

Ozone (Swellow M); Lv. 51

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Guts | Moves: Aerial Ace, Steel Wing, Endeavor, Facade

--------------------

Hill (Ninjask M); Lv. 50

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Speed Boost | Moves: Slash, Protect, Swords Dance, Baton Pass

-------------------

Stars (Grumpig F); Lv. 50

Item: Amulet Coin

Ability: Own Tempo | Moves: Calm Mind, Confuse Ray, Psychic, Rest

-------------------

River (Whiscash M); Lv. 50

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Oblivious | Moves: Ice Beam, Earthquake, Future Sight, Surf

--------------------

Cliff (Magneton); Lv. 51

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: ThunderBolt, Swagger, Reflect, Thunder Wave

------------------------

I've honestly gotta say this is probably my favorite team I've been able to put together throughout all of these playthroughs. Usually there's one or two pokemon that really just fail to hold their weight against the competition, but I really don't feel that way about any of the pokemon here. Every single pokemon on this team had a solid purpose and they all felt like they contributed a ton to the overall experience. If there was a Pokemon Stadium 3, I can assure you that you would be seeing this team a lot throughout that game and I'm willing to bet you can expect to see a lot of these faces returning in future ventures as well.

================

And after our team is registered in the hall of fame, we're treated to the credits as per usual! This is our final playthrough of a game in the main series of Generation 3, so it's rather bittersweet in a way. I'll soon have to say goodbye to my favorite region, but that only means we're getting one step closer to some of my favorite games in the series as well!

Of course, here I go getting all sappy at the credits, they kinda have their way of digging that out of you. Trust me when I say, though, that we're not even close to being done. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, up to this point, I've only dipped our toes into what's different between Emerald and its predecessors. We've got a lot of content to cover as we march forward into the postgame. However, I will confess that a significant chunk of that postgame content might actually have to be put off for a little while and I'll explain why that is when we get there. Still, I'm just going to say that, though the main story has come to a close, the real game is only just now about to begin. Next time, we'll start looking into what the postgame of Pokemon Emerald has in store for us!

February 18, 2021

Littleroot Town

After being entered into the hall of fame and loading up your save file, you find yourself once again in your bedroom.

As you make your way downstairs, you'll find your father and mother talking just like in Ruby and Sapphire. He'll give you the S.S. Ticket once again and be on his merry way. So far, things are seeming very similar, but you'll soon see that this S.S. Ticket is your ticket to something much, much larger than it was in Ruby and Sapphire.

Additionally, the TV's news broadcast covers the appearance of a pokemon soaring over the skies of Hoenn! However, there seems to be some signal interference when the color is mentioned. Your mother asks you what color of pokemon you saw on the TV to which you can respond "red" or "blue." It's probably pretty obvious what this means, but I think I'll play coy with it for just a little while. I answered "Red," before heading out of the house.

------------------------

As you step outside, you're met by none other than Prof. Birch and May in a somewhat new event! Here, Prof. Birch will lead you and May to his lab where he'll upgrade your pokedex to the National Pokedex! In Ruby and Sapphire, the National Dex mode was built-in to your initial pokedex, it automatically becomes upgraded once you trade with another game. The reasoning perhaps being that they wanted to keep it a surprise that the remaining pokemon were still in the game the whole time? Regardless of the reasoning, they actually make a show of it here. Don't worry, unlike Fire Red and Leaf Green, there's no quota of pokemon you have to have registered in order to get this upgrade. It's totally free! And now that we have this National Pokedex, a few areas of interest are now open for us.

On our way out of town, we'll also get a call from Scott who will tell us he's on board the S.S. Tidal and wants to speak to us about a special place he wants to invite you to. We're definitely going to be taking up this offer before we put this game on hold, but that's a whole can of worms we're not quite ready to open up just yet.

Instead, there is a lot that's available to us even just in the mainland of Hoenn compared to what was made available in Ruby and Sapphire. I will give you a warning, though, I'm going to be getting some of the more boring content out of the way first here today while saving some of the more exciting content for the next couple of posts.

================

Route 114

Our first area of interest is actually immediately west of Fallarbor Town on Route 114. If you recall, there is a man on this route who was digging for fossils. However, here in Emerald version, it seems he's been a lot more successful in his search!

In the back of the tunnel he's dug, you'll now find an opening in the cave wall. As you try to approach, he'll warn you that he thinks its dangerous to go any further in. It seems there's unexplored territory in here...

===============

Desert Underpass

This extremely long passage stretches all the way from underneath Route 114 and Fallarbor Town to the desert on Route 111! Sand is even seeping in from the roof. But, do you know what that means? Perhaps there's a chance of a certain item being here...

Ah! But of course, there's something more significant here than just that old thing! In these caves you'll have a 50% chance of running into one of the first available National Dex pokemon! Ditto! I named mine Lab. The presence of Ditto here means that you can breed for baby pokemon without the need of having a female of its parent species. It's a very useful pokemon for pokedex completion.

Other than Ditto, you can also find Loudred here at 16% and Whismur at the remaining 34%.

--------------------------

And, as you may have expected, at the very end of this long empty passageway is the remaining fossil that disappeared into the sand when it fell from the Mirage Tower! Perfect! We now have access to the other fossil pokemon! In my case, it was the Root Fossil. This is why I mentioned back in the desert that your choice of Fossil here in Emerald didn't really matter as you'd be able to get both of them here!

================

Of course, I made a quick stop at Rustboro City to restore that Root Fossil into Lileep which I named Seafloor.

==================

Route 110

I do want to make a brief detour to talk about the Trick House because, yeah, yeah, I did forget about it but to be fair, there aren't a whole lot of convenient opportunities to return to it once you get caught up in the story progression after the fifth badge!

-------------------------

Trick House Puzzle #5

Ah, yes, the quiz room. The '?' shape of the original has been replaced by a '!!' shape, but the puzzle is still basically the same. You have a new pool of questions to answer, of course, and just like before the advanced questions are your typical "how many X were at Y" type of questions. Not a very satisfying quiz and you'll probably just end up brute forcing through some of the more advanced questions.

-----------------------------

Trick House Puzzle #6

This puzzle is naturally modeled after Fortree Gym's gimmick just like Ruby and Sapphire. You'll have to push your way through the pivoting gates while making sure you aren't cutting off your way forward. I actually really enjoyed this puzzle since it really required you to think a few steps ahead. If you move carelessly you can easily get yourself trapped, but you also have to have confidence in your solution because the correct path might require you to temporarily close off your only way back.

-------------------------

Trick House Puzzle #7

Since Mossdeep Gym's gimmick was drastically changed between games, so too was the Trick House puzzle modeled after it. Just like Mossdeep Gym, this room is chock full of double battles. You'll need to watch the buttons you press and where the trainers and statues are positioned to figure out where to go. It's a fun one! I actually really like this gimmick, it's fun to play around with. I don't think I actually mentioned that I really do prefer this type of puzzle over the original. This one is far more creative and it's satisfying to figure out how to do as many double battles as you can.

------------------------

Trick House Puzzle #8

And the final puzzle honestly felt even easier here than the one in Ruby and Sapphire. I'm not really sure what happened here.

But, this final puzzle is the only one where the prize differs from the original, or at least, slightly. Upon offering you your ultimate reward, the Trick Master tells you he actually has two and asks you to choose whether you prefer red or blue. I went with red since I've noticed so much influence from Pokemon Sapphire throughout this game and even chose the color of the pokemon from Sapphire as well while watching the TV, so I felt it was only fair to choose the red tent here. It's not like I planned to use the tent in my decorations this time around anyway. They take up a lot of space and I'd rather use that space for new things!

===============

Route 103

I didn't just visit Route 110 to catch up on the Trick House, though! Just west of it on Route 103, after obtaining the National Dex, you might be surprised to find a mysterious cave has opened up! Hmm...

====================

Altering Cave

In an unexpected twist, it's a cave with an identical shape and name to Altering Cave from Fire Red and Leaf Green! Here in Emerald, it even shares the same music as Kanto and the Sevii Island's caves. How bizarre... I've already told you part of the story behind this cave, but the short version is that the game's data suggests there were supposed to be event distributions that would replace the 100% Zubat encounter here with a selection of new pokemon...

These pokemon were Mareep, Aipom, Pineco, Shuckle, Teddiursa, Houndour, Stantler, and Smeargle.

Keep this list of pokemon in mind because it might explain why these distributions were never released but is also the start of a rather strange mystery in regards to this cave's inclusion in the final build of this game period.

===================

There is one more area I want to explore today but, before doing so, we're going to need to visit Lilycove City and make some PokeBlocks!

I just threw in some low-level berries to get some basic pokeblocks. Once again, you can probably tell what I have in store from this alone.

===============

Safari Zone

That's right, we're back in the Safari Zone! As much as I really would rather stay as far away from this place as I could get... As you might be able to tell from this map, the Safari Zone is looking a bit different than it did before. That's because, over the course of the game, there's been an expansion project behind the scenes and the new area is now open to the public! As you can probably expect, these two new areas, Area 5 and Area 6, are home to even more new pokemon that were previously unavailable in Ruby and Sapphire! This is where the bulk of our time today will be spent.

-----------------------------

Area 5 is distinct thanks to its river and small lake. It's just around the corner from the starting area so it's easy to reach. Meanwhile, Area 6 is to the north of Area 5 and is a more mountainous region with some Rock Smash Boulders. We'll start hunting for pokemon here in Area 6 because of those boulders.

When using Rock Smash here, if you encounter a wild pokemon, it'll be Shuckle 100% of the time! I named it Stone!

---------------------------

As for the grass in this area, there are lots of pokemon available, so you'd better get comfortable! Keep in mind that bug in the coding I described back in Ruby version still applies here in Emerald! This will make catching the rarer of these pokemon much more painless when they can't flee from you!

Hoothoot is available at 5%. I named it Holes!

Ledyba is available at 10%. Its name is Yard!

Aipom is named Treetops and is available at 30%! Surprisingly far more common than Hoothoot and Ledyba!

Teddiursa is also available here at 30% as well! Its name was Cave.

Branch is Pineco's name, Pineco is available at 5%!

Houndour was named Underworld and is also a 5% rarity pokemon.

Last but not least is Farm the Miltank! Miltank is available at 5% as well.

------------------------------

Moving back down to Area 5, we find that Spinarak takes Ledyba's 10%. I named it Grass.

Mareep takes the place of Teddiursa at 30%. It's name is Ranch!

And Sunkern swaps rarities with Aipom at 30% here. It was available at 10% in Area 6, while Aipom is available at 10% here. I named it meadow.

The first of the 5% pokemon is Gligar who, even with the help of pokeblocks was incredibly difficult to catch. It nearly took me all 30 Safari Balls in a single game just to catch one! When I finally succeeded, I named it Valley.

The second 5% slot is taken by Snubbull which I named Doghouse.

The final 5% slot goes to Stantler who was named Woods!

If you're curious, the remaining 5% here is shared for Hoothoot. Strangely, no Sentret is available here.

-----------------------------

You might think we're done, but you'd be wrong! There's still the water we need to address!

While surfing, Wooper is available at a whopping 60%! I named him bank!

39% is taken up by a measly Marill, but that isn't nearly as exciting since Marill could already be caught much earlier in the game.

That remaining 1% is reserved for Quagsire! Though the pokeblocks would certainly make this thing more viable to catch, I didn't have the patience to seek out Dragonair and I certainly don't have the patience to seek out a Quagsire. I've got much better ways to waste my time.

-----------------------------

Of course, we're still not finished because there's also pokemon available via fishing! Starting with Remoraid which is available at 59% with the Super Rod! I named it Pond!

Like Quagsire, Octillery is also available at 1% with the Super Rod, but also like Quagsire, I really don't think that effort is worth while.

The remaining 40% belongs to none other than Goldeen, and you're not missing anything else of interest with the weaker rods.

=================

These two new areas added to the Safari Zone really put the rest of the Safari to shame! Since we haven't touched on the Safari Zone yet, I should probably also take a quick moment to note that the encounters in the other four areas are all identical to Ruby and Sapphire. These two are the only ones of interest for our purposes! Now, if you've been paying attention, you've probably already connected the dots with many of the pokemon I've just listed here.

Indeed, almost every single pokemon that was meant to appear in Altering Cave thanks to event distributions have been instead made available in this new expansion to the Safari Zone. The main reason I can think as to why they would make this change is simply to make these pokemon more widely accessible. Perhaps Game Freak recognized that requiring event distributions to obtain certain pokemon in order to complete the national dex wasn't a foundation they wanted to build the future of pokemon on, and so they decided to make these pokemon available through normal gameplay and consequently never released the distributions for Altering Cave. But that only begs the question...

If they made this decision during the development of Emerald version, why did they keep Altering Cave in the game at all!? I can understand it being in Fire Red and Leaf Green where it may suffered from a lack of foresight, but this area serves absolutely no purpose in the final game and the fact that it only appears after you get the National Dex was sure to confuse many kids at the time! Especially with the three distinct chambers the cave divides into! It really seems like there's some sort of puzzle you're supposed to solve here! I probably would have assumed you'd have to do something like bringing the legendary birds to Altering Cave in Hoenn and the Legendary Golems to Altering Cave in the sevii islands to encounter some mythical pokemon or something! I can imagine all sorts of kids wasted hours of gameplay trying to figure out what this place was all about to no avail and it's such a shame considering this game so heavily rewards your curiosity across its entire world. Surely they could have put something in this cave! What if you could encounter a Legendary Beast here, or even a Johto starter? Ah, but we're getting ahead of ourselves there. Let's not step on the toes of what else this game has to offer going forward!

Ultimately, I'm glad they decided to make the Altering Cave distributions simply available through normal gameplay. It would come off as rather scummy if you were required to get Colosseum just to complete the National Dex these days. Though, it might still come off as a bit scummy back then when you could have been able to complete the National Dex with just Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red and Leaf Green but the lack of these event distributions means you either needed to get Colosseum, too, or Emerald. Believe me, though, if you're just focused on pokedex completion, Pokemon Colosseum is the better option by far.

===================

Now then, like I said, we really just covered all the boring stuff today. Going forward, we've got some much more exciting content to cover! To start with, I think we should go with what we would be doing in Ruby and Sapphire: Tracking down the newly available legendary pokemon! There's some pretty major differences this time around, so I think next time will be a bit more interesting!

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