All the Pokemens

[Aura]

Pyrite Colosseum -- Revisit

It seems almost nostalgic to be back here, but believe it or not, we're still not quite on par level-wise with some of the tougher trainers in this colosseum. We're going to be battling trainers in the level range of 50-54! I'm really not sure why the levels here skyrocket so high when this colosseum is available to challenge as early as defeating Miror B when you're team is only going to be around level 40-ish. I suppose driving out the criminal syndicate attracts more trainers to start battling in public again and growing their skills.

With Miror B. out of town, Pyrite Colosseum has now adopted rules identical to Phenac Stadium's. You can't enter with any shadow pokemon and you'll have to win a series of four battles in a row in order go be rewarded with prize money and a TM. Likewise, there are four rounds of battles and four different TM's you can get from doing so. You heal for free between battles but can't rotate your party so make sure you have a strong lead!

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 50

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Return, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 50

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 50

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Thundershock

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 50

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 50

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 50

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Triple Kick, Endeavor

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

Round 1:

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

Battle 1: Roller Boy Azal

 

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

Battle 2: Rider Trona

 

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

Semifinal: Bodybuilder Becher

  

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

Final: Chaser Zime

   

Reward: TM01: Focus Punch

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

Round 2:

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

Battle 1: Hunter Muna

 

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

Battle 2: Chaser Kell

  

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

Semifinal: Bodybuilder Torf

  

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

Final: Rider Ligam

  

Reward: TM07: Hail

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

Round 3:

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

Battle 1: Rider Vorem

  

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

Battle 2: Bodybuilder Seben

 

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

Semifinal: Hunder Athon

 

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

Final: Roller Boy Arez

   

Prize: TM05: Roar

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

Round 4

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

Battle 1: Bodybuilder Gano

 

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

Battle 2: Street Performer Balton

 

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

Semifinal: Hunter Argel

  

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

Final: Rider Heral

   

Reward: TM31: Brick Break

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

That final reward is the main thing we're after here! This should help out Balance's usefulness. While Triple Kick's three chances of critical hits is nice and all, it's not nearly consistent enough to rely on and I think that Brick Break is going to be much more consistently reliable going forward. The extra power is going to be well appreciated and even though Hitmontop's attack is a bit lacking compared to some other options thanks to its unfortunate Calm Nature, it can still lift the effects of Reflect and Light Screen, and this game seems to love those moves, so it should have no shortage of usefulness going forward. Anyway, my team is shaping up pretty nicely and next time I think it's about time we move on to Realgam Tower and see what it has in store for us.

[Aura]

Brief detour before we move on with the game, back in The Under, there's actually one new rematch now that we've defeated Ein.

As perhaps the strangest rematch in the entire game, it turns out that Chaser Gurks will battle us again as revenge for defeating both Venus and Ein. He just has two Wailord this time, so his team is arguably worse than before? I honestly didn't even know this rematch existed because there's another rematch with him that's near identical to this one after you beat the game. I was originally just going to ignore this, but I felt it was bizarre enough that I should probably at least address it.

While here, I also went ahead and bought a new Light Screen TM to teach to Faith in place of Return. At this point, Return is hardly dealing any damage so it's just not worth keeping around. Light Screen will actually serve a purpose going forward. I briefly considered teaching him Safeguard instead since Joy already has Light Screen, but I figured having both Light Screen and Reflect on one fast pokemon would be more consistently useful.

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

Realgam Tower

As we first arrive at Realgam Tower, the completed form of the construction lot from before, we can find two giant statues of Sudowoodo on either side of the entryway along with some really festive, celebratory-sounding music. In front of the door leading inside are two security guards. At first, it seems like getting inside is going to be an uphill battle, but, to our surprise, the guards happily welcome us and invite us inside...? This definitely feels like a trap, but it doesn't seem that we have much of a choice in the matter. We need to stop Cipher's growth as soon as we can.

As we make our way inside, the festive music ceases and is replaced with that typical Cipher Syndicate theme. we find that Realgam Tower is somewhat of a maze on its first floor. It's made up of several separate domes connected by elevator-like platforms. Right off the bat, you're probably going to want to resist the urge to head left or right. Instead, we'll want to head straight forward where we'll find a room with a healing machine and PC. It's always a good idea to locate these ASAP when exploring a new area so that you have a source of emergency healing. In this room, you'll find an old man who will tell you that the tower is rather confusing to navigate and will offer to take you. If you agree to his request, he'll confess he never told you where he would take you, and immediately reveal that he will take you... to your doom!!

The old man reveals himself to be Cipher Peon Bopen and this is an otherwise unremarkable fight, but I thought the dialogue here was funny enough to mention!

   

As you explore this area further, you'll find the four Admins of Cipher standing at each of the dead ends of the maze of domes. They won't battle you immediately unless you talk to them, but I think you can see where this is going. For now, we're going to ignore these guys and explore what we can first. Eventually, you'll come across a room with two Cipher Peons guarding the doors. You'll need to battle them to gain passage to the areas they're blocking.

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

 

Cipher Peon Arton & Delibird Lv. 45

 

Cipher Peon Baila & Sunflora Lv. 45

They both have a Shadow Pokemon, but neither are particularly difficult pokemon to snag. You're probably going to notice that many of these trainers have really low-level pokemon. Like I said, the level curve is very strange at this point in the game. Rest assured there are some really powerful pokemon to be found here.

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

Soon after battling those two Peons, we'll stumble across this gate with four pokeball-shaped locks. You're going to need to collect the keys from the four admins and insert them into these slots in order to light up the switches and unlock the gate leading to the next part of the tower. Yup, this is arguably the closest thing to an Elite Four this game has to offer. We've got some rematches to do!

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 51

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 51

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 51

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Thundershock

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 51

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 50

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 50

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Cipher Admin Miror B.

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

 

Ludicolo Lv. 44 & Ludicolo Lv. 45

 

 

Just as expected, Miror B. leads off with a duo of Ludicolo. Unfortunately, his Funky Groove doesn't play this time. It's almost that much scarier to know Miror B. isn't playing around this time. I figured they'd lead with the ssame Rain Dance lead, so I decided to open up with a Focus Energy from Balance and a Dragon Dance from Bliss. For the next round, I took a bit of a risk and went for another Dragon Dance with Bliss to build up some more attack. I figured Altaria would be able to take at least one hit from Ice Beam, so I had Balance target the stronger Ludicolo with Brick Break. With a critical hit thanks to Focus Energy, it went down.

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

Golduck Lv. 45

 

 

It turns out the other Ludicolo was the one that knew Ice Beam, so I didn't jam the attack just yet and it went through. On the next turn, I decided to use Detect with Balanceand Earthquake with Bliss. And... that was a huge mistake. I kind of drastically overestimated Bliss's physical attack. Even with the double Dragon Dance, this just wasn't enough to deal significant damage against a pokemon that resisted it. But, at least Golduck took a decent hit. Naturally, Bliss went down to an Ice Beam next.

 

 

Joy was the obvious next choice here. I figured against a rain team, an electric pokemon would be a great choice. From here, Balance used Brick Break against Ludicolo to finish him off.

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

Loudred Lv. 46

 

 

I tried to take out Golduck before it could do too much damage, but somehow I was caught off guard by its Psychic which was able to deal some fairly heavy damage to Balance. He was able to endure, though, and Joy's Thunderbot landed and took Golduck out.

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

Armaldo, Lv. 43

 

 

The final round was easy to decide. Brick Break on Loudred and Thunder on Armaldo and the fight was done!

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

With that, Miror B. was defeated and the Red ID Badge was ours! 

Of course, I should mention that if you failed to snag Sudowoodo back in Pyrite Cave, the same Sudowoodo will be available to snag here! Just keep in mind its level will still be 35, so don't overestimate its defenses! If you fail to snag it here as well, you still don't have to worry. Though the remainder of your chances are less than ideal, you'll still have an unlimited number of chances to catch every shadow pokemon in the postgame so you still don't have to stress about this too much, but for convenience sake, you may want to try to catch as many as you can without fail here! If you're not above it, I recommend saving before each rematch to make sure you snag the pokemon.

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

Cipher Admin Dakim

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

 

Claydol Lv. 46 & Whiscash Lv. 46

 

 

I lead off with Stability and Bliss this time. I didn't think Bliss would be able to contribute much as it stood, so she focused on building her stats with Dragon Dance while Stability went on the offensive with Surf. Whiscash strangely went for Earthquake to hit only Stability. Naturally, Stability's Surf didn't do a whole lot to Whiscash due to its high special defense. Claydol didn't go down either for the same reason, but it was at least enough to take it out on the next turn. Claydol started charging SolarBeam. Seeing how little Surf did to Whiscash, for the next turn, I went for Dragonbreath on it with Bliss while Stability went for another Surf to take out Claydol before it could get SolarBeam off. 

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

Forretress Lv. 45

 

 

Bliss used Flamethrower on Forretress, but was met with a Protect which I, admittedly, should have probably expected. Stability went for Earthquake this time to deal some decent damage to Whiscash. I wasn't able to take him out, but his Earthquake was able to take out Stability instead!

 

 

For the next turn, a repeat of Flamethrower on Forretress and a Reflect with Faith!

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

Flygon Lv. 46

 

 

Altaria's DragonBreath critted Flygon while Faith's Psychic was enough to take out Whiscash.

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

Entei Lv. 40

This was my second chance to snag Entei! With a couple of DragonBreath from Altaria, I was able to paralyze Entei and, to my surprise, it only took a single Ultra Ball to catch it! Definitely no complaint here!

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

With Dakim defeated, I was awarded with the Grn ID Badge! 

Again, it should be noted that, if you successfully snagged Entei back at Mt. Battle, you'll be battling a level 47 Houndoom here in its place.

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

Cipher Admin Venus

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

 

Bellossom Lv. 47 & Wigglytuff Lv. 48

 

 

I led off with Faith and Trust this time, two Male pokemon against Venus' Female Bellossom and Wigglytuff. However, her tactics are a little more advanced this time compared to the last, but still just as annoying with several more layers to frustrate you. She'll try to stack paralysis, confusion, and infatuation your pokemon if you give her the chance. Do yourself a favor and switch out your pokemon as soon as you get the chance. I started with a Psychic on Bellossom while Trust set up Toxic on Wigglytuff. Wigglytuff went for Body Slam on Trust which didn't do a whole lot of damage while Bellossom went for a Sludge Bomb on Faith with no poison. From here, another Psychic took Bellossom out and Trust went for Confuse Ray on Wigglytuff.

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

Raichu Lv. 48

 

 

Raichu came next and Wigglytuff hit Umbreon with another Body Slam which wound up paralyzing Trust. Raichu went for Thunder Wave on Faith to paralyze him. Synchronize was able to paralyze Raichu as well, but the damage was already done on my end. I kept Trust focused on Wigglytuff while Faith continued to shoot Raichu with Psychic, but Raichu was able to hit him with a Sweet Kiss that stopped his attack in confusion. Trust was also struggling with his paralysis and failed to attack through it.

 

 

I decided to retreat Faith for Stability who could then go for an Earthquake. Unfortunately, Trust's Paralysis got in the way of his Protect and so he got caught up in Stability's Earthquake which thankfully didn't do too much to him, but was able to take out Raichu and do pretty significant enough damage to Wigglytuff to cause her to succumb to her poison at the end of the turn.

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

 

Misdreavus Lv. 47 & Milotic Lv. 48

 

 

Misdreavus shouldn't be too difficult to deal with from here thanks to Umbreon, but Milotic was the bigger threat. I decided to have Trust use Toxic on Milotic before switching Stability out with Joy.

 

 

Misdreavus used Confuse Ray to confuse Trust, leaving me no choice but to switch him out as well. 

 

 

I didn't really have much of an idea as to who to switch to, so I just retreated into Faith. I had Joy use Light Screen to protect my team from Milotic's Special attacks, but Misdreavus was able to use Confuse Ray on her to stop her. Milotic similarly used Attract on Faith.

 

 

Ah, what an annoying battle! I had to retreat both members of my team this time. Misdreavus tried to Attract Joy, but thankfully, Trust took her place and is the same gender, so Attract failed. Meanwhile, Milotic went for Blizzard which didn't do much at all to Trust. From here, I used Bite on Milotic to reduce his health and a Surf from Stability was enough to take him out.

 

With only a female opponent now, I had no qualms switching Joy in and going for Thunderbolt to finish the job against Milotic.

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

For defeating Venus, she surrenders her Blu ID Badge, just one more to go!

As is probably unnecessary to note, if you failed to Snag it at The Under Subway, Venus will use that same Shadow Suicune in place of Milotic. This is your second chance to snag it!

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

Cipher Admin Ein

 

Starmie Lv. 49 & Rhydon Lv. 50

 

 

Ein's team absolutely was not at all what I expected him to lead with. I figured he'd probably start with a Protect and Earthquake strat, so I decided to use Protect with Joy and set up Reflect with Faith. Instead, I was caught off guard by Rhydon using Protect so that Starmie could set up Rain Dance. I felt a bit foolish falling for this, so on the next turn, I decided to have Joy target Starmie with Thunderbolt while Faith would use Psychic to take out Rhydon before it could get Earthquake off if it so tried. However, I'd completely forgotten about Rhydon's Lightningrod ability which draws all electric attacks toward it! This bought Starmie time to hit Espeon with a rain-powered Hydro Pump which was enough to take him out.

 

 

I truly felt like a fool after such a pathetic turn, so I needed a quick turnaround. Luckily, I had just the pokemon: Stability! To finish off the turn, Rhydon didn't actually use an Earthquake at all, but rather Toxic on Joy! From here, I just set up Light Screen with Joy while Stability used Surf to effortlessly take out Rhydon.

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

Crobat Lv. 48

 

 

Another turn which felt pretty obvious to me: Ice Beam on Crobat and Thunderbolt on Starmie. Unfortunately, Crobat used Fly, forcing Ice Beam to miss. But Thunderbolt was easily able to take out Starmie!

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

Pelipper Lv. 49

 

 

Another Thunderbolt to take out Pelipper while Ice Beam was shot at Crobat. Crobat hit Stability with a Toxic and took a hit like a champ while Pelipper flew into the air this time, avoiding the Thunderbolt entirely. Another Ice Beam, Crobat flew, Pelipper landed and hit Quagsire firmly. Both of my poisoned pokemon were starting to get pretty low on health which is never a good sign. Thankfully, Ein's team was getting pretty weak, too! Fly could only protect them for so long! Thankfully, with Pelipper back out of the air, Joy was able to take him out with relative ease.

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

Manectric Lv. 50

 

 

Earthquake and Protect is all it would take to deal with Manectric while Crobat was still in the air. Crobat landed only to be met with a Thunderbolt, ending the battle!

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

Of course, defeating Ein earns us the Ylw ID Badge, the final one! With this, we can get into the tower proper and proceed onward to face new opponents!

I probably don't need to mention it again, but just in case, this is your second opportunity to snag Raikou, who will take the place of Manectric if you failed to snag it back at the Shadow Pokemon Research Lab.

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

With the four keys in tow, we start to leave only to receive an Email! He spends quite a while summarizing his difficulties with technology and, before you know it, it seems he's reached the character limit on the email, so we have no idea what the purpose of the message was! Rui mentions that we may want to go back to Agate village to talk to him, but I think that can wait a little bit. For now, I want to see what we can find out about Cipher.

With all of these keys, we can finally return to the gate, enter the keys, and make our way beyond the gate! That is, of course, after dealing with the Cipher Peon that drops down to ambush us on our way forward!

 

Cipher Peon Dioge & Heracross

Nothing particularly notable about this fight, either, other than the Shadow Heracross which can be a very nice addition to your team since it already comes with Brick Break! It's a little late in the game to be using such a pokemon, though, but if you're willing to spare a Time Flute and/or grind up a little bit with it, you might still be able to get some decent use out of this guy.

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

Realgam Tower Lobby

As we pass through the gate, we're met with yet another deceptively friendly-seeming environment. But as we talk to the NPC's here, everyone only has one thing on their minds: Defeating us.

      

There are several tough trainers to be found scattered around this lobby area as well as the two rooms on either side in the back. None of these trainers have any shadow pokemon, but they're all trainers who have come from all over the region and are eager to battle in the new Tower Colosseum.

As we first set foot in the lobby, though, we receive another email, this time from Nett who says he's managed to extract a partial list of Shadow Pokemon that have been created form the Data ROM! He's updated our Snag List with the new information. By checking our Snag List, we can indeed see that, not only are there all the pokemon we've seen so far, but there's also an additional few: Skarmory, Quilava, Croconaw, and Metagross. If there are any other pokemon that appear as ????? here, obviously aside from Bayleef if you instead battled one of the other trainers back in Phenac City, then you're missing a Shadow Pokemon encounter that you should have already gotten by this point. It shouldn't be too difficult to trouble back and try to find that missing Shadow Pokemon, though I suppose it's possible you could have missed a shadow pokemon in the Research Lab which won't be rediscovered until much later on. 

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

In the left room, if you talk to the clerk, he will reveal himself to be the very same Cipher Peon you battled back in Phenac City. Unfortunately, this is just a second chance to snag the johto starter if you failed to snag it back then. It will always be the same one so there's no way to get a second Johto Starter just yet. He has no repalcement for the snagged starter, so this battle is pretty much just a total joke. 

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

As we make our way to the very back of the lobby, we'll find that Silva has disguised himself as a bodyguard and is standing in front of the elevator. He provides us with the intel that Cipher is planning to use the brand new Tower Colosseum to showcase the power of Shadow Pokemon to the world so that they can expand interest beyond the limits of Orre. After all, Cipher's goal is world domination, not just control of some measly desert region.

Silva steps aside allowing us access to the next area.

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

As we emerge from the top of the elevator, we find ourselves with a face we haven't seen in a while: Nascour. This is the very same man we saw walk out of the Mayor's office. He tells us he knew we would have a battle one day, but that he was surprise we'd be seeking him out here. He tells us he'll be waiting up ahead in the Colosseum before walking off and taking the elevator. Before running up after him, we'll want to check the door against the north wall. This will lead into a room with a healing machine and a PC as well as a jerkishly placed Chaser in front of the healing machine, forcing you through one more battle if you want to heal your pokemon with the machine. After emerging from here, you'll want to make your way up the stairs after Nascour to find that the elevator he took is unavailable. Going to the other one, it seems no good until someone comes down from above and it's the chance encounter of a lifetime.

It's Gonzap! The head of Team Snagem who explains to you that the Snag Machine came from Cipher who gave them the task of snagging as many tough pokemon from trainers as they could get their hands on. Impliedly, to transform them into shadow pokemon. He saw this as an opportunity for Team Snagem to grow big. They were just petty thieves before joining forces with Cipher, and now they're playing a part in conquering the world! He knows you're not going to see it his way, so he's going to go all out in one last battle with his ex teammate.

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 52

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 53

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 52

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Thundershock

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 53

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 52

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 53

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Snagem Head Gonzap

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

 

Crawdaunt Lv. 52 & Pinsir Lv. 52

 

 

To start, Faith wasn't a very good lead for this matchup, so I quickly swapped him out while targeting Pinsir with Flamethrower.

 

 

I swapped into Balance figuring I'd be targeted with a dark attack from Crawdaunt, or a bug attack from Pinsir. I also somewhat expected to decrease their stats with Intimidate but no luck in that department, they both have Hyper Cutter which prevents the reduction of the Attack Stat! Pinsir just went for a Cut attack while Crawdaunt went for Sludge Bomb. I guess I didn't really have anything to worry about after all. On the next round, Balance went for a Brick Break on Crawdaunt while Blissused another Flamethrower on Pinsir, this time burning it! Pinsir this time went for Earthquake without even caring about the residual damage of KO'ing his own Crawdaunt!

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

Shiftry Lv. 53

 

 

Shiftry took the place of Crawdaunt and, yet again, my decision was made for me. Flamethrower on Pinsir and Brick Break on Shiftry for a KO on them both!

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

 

Hariyama Lv. 53 & Skarmory Lv. 47

 

 

Yes indeed, another Shadow Pokemon! Not just any Shadow Pokemon, either, the Shadow Skarmory Nett's list predicted! Would ya look at that? This Skarmory is implied to be the very same one as the one from the intro to the game, so it's quite surprising to find that very Skarmory has been a Shadow Pokemon this entire time! Since Balance's HP was low, I tried to have Balance use Endeavor on Skarmory while Blisswould use Dragonbreath on Hariyama, but this idea fell through as Skarmory was effortlessly able to KO Balance.

 

 

I brought Faith back out to take Balance's place and from here, I had Bliss use DragonBreath to slowly reduce Skarmory's HP without KOing it, as well as with hopes for a paralysis. Meanwhile, Faith was able to make quick work of Hariyama with Psychic before setting up with Reflect on the next turn.

 

I switched into Joy coincidentally on the same turn Bliss managed to paralyze Skarmory with DragonBreath. From here, it was just a matter of throwing Ultra Balls until I caught the thing. 

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

We don't get anything for defeating Gonzap. He offers us one last chance to join up which we, naturally, decline. Gonzap is disappointed by our response but can't say he's surprised as he walks past us, leaving his elevator accessible now. We can finally make our way into the Tower Colosseum!

...buuuuut I don't think now's the time to head there juuust yet. There are a few more things I wanna do for cleanup before reaching this point. Besides, Gonzap's levels were on par with ours, so I suppose it's only natural to want to get a little bit stronger before we move on assuming the upcoming opponents are going to be even tougher than him. There's also that email from Eagun we still need to check out. And, just like before, I want to purify all the shadow pokemon we've collected here in Realgam Tower. So we've got our work cut out for us. Even though we could technically end the main story right here, we've still got a few more posts ahead of ourselves before we actually do that, I think. So next time, it's back to Mt. Battle for us!

 

[Aura]

Well, as I said in the last post, there's not going to be any story progress for a little bit. As always, I want to do some cleanup before heading toward the final stretch of the game.

First thing I wanted to do was revisit Agate Village to check up on what Eagun was trying to tell us in that email that got cut off by the character limit. When we go to speak with him in person, he gifts us the legendary Master Ball and tells us to go save the world with it!

I feel I should go ahead and mention that the Pokeball glitch actually does work with the Master Ball. This means that, by getting this one Master Ball, you have basically unlocked the secret ability to automatically catch any Shadow Pokemon you encounter. I've already gone on record to say I won't be using the pokeball glitch on any pokeballs I can't buy, and it goes without saying that this applies to the Master Ball as well. I will only be using this Master Ball for a single catch, one that I've thought over very carefully.

I'm kind of surprised at how nonchalantly the game just hands a Master Ball to you. They really don't make a big deal about it at all, Eagun just gives it to you like any other item and this is totally missable, too, if you opt to finish what's most important before going to visit Eagun, though I'm pretty sure you can still get this Master Ball in the postgame if you didn't get it earlier, but it's far less useful there, I'd say.

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

For the rest of this post, I think we'll be taking another trip to Mt. Battle again. We're going to be working on purifying some more pokemon and making more progress toward the top of the mountain!

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

Purified Pokemon:

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

Positivity (Sunflora F); Lv. 45

Item: None

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Sunny Day, Growth, Ingrain, SolarBeam

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

Charity (Delibird M); Lv. 48

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Hustle | Moves: Blizzard, Attract, Present, Fly

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

Strength (Heracross M); Lv. 49

Item: None

Ability: Guts| Moves: Reversal, Endure, Counter, Brick Break

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

Freedom (Skarmory M); Lv. 52

Item: Sharp Beak

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: Drill Peck, Metal Sound, Air Cutter, Steel Wing

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

In addition to purifying those four, I think it's finally time to make use one of those Time Flutes we've been saving up. We've already purified the other two legendary beasts, but they took quite a while to purify. So, I think it makes sense to go ahead and use this Time Flute so that we don't have to bother training up the last one.

Actually using the Time Flute is simple. Simply bring any Shadow Pokemon that has yet to be purified, preferably one with an untouched Heart Gauge to get the most use out of the flute, and approach the Relic Stone. Use the flute from your item list and then select the Shadow Pokemon you want Celebi to visit. 

 

Celebi will personally emerge from the forest and bestow its power onto your shadow pokemon, instantly restoring its happiest memories and unlocking the door to its heart automatically.

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

Leadership (Entei); Lv. 40

Item: None

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Sunny Day, Leer, Bite, Fire Blast

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

Note that, by using the Time Flute, the pokemon hasn't actually done any battling yet so it won't gain a sudden burst of experience. If you want more direct control of your pokemon's leveling, that could be another use of the flutes! Alternatively, you can use this flute to bypass that awkward phase of training up a Shadow Pokemon. However, I personally really enjoy the process of purifying a new party member myself, I only find the process tedious when I have to do it for one pokemon after another again and again, but I suppose that could just be me. 

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

Anyway, beyond just purifying my shadow pokemon, I also mentioned wanting to give my team a little bit of a boost last time. I think it's now an appropriate time to push further toward the top of Mt. Battle. 

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 52

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 53

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 53

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Thundershock

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 53

Item: Soft Sand

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 52

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 53

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Mt. Battle Area 8

Levels 49 - 54

Reward: 900 Coupons

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

Area 8 Leader: Shobon

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

 

Cacturne Lv. 53 & Hariyama Lv. 52

 

 

My immediate response here was pretty much decided for me. Obviously, I'd need to switch Trust out, but the question was, into whom? I could go into Faith to help deal with Hariyama, but Cacturne was a dark type who very easily could know some solid Dark-type attacks.

 

 

I ultimately decided to bite the bullet and just do the switch into Faith, hoping Bliss would be able to outspeed Cacturne for round 2. Unfortunately, Hariyama decided to use Fake Out on Bliss, stopping her Flamethrower from even getting off. On the next Round, I went for the obvious Psychic on Hariyama and Flamethrower on Cacturne. This lead to an easy KO on Hariyama but unfortunately Cacturne was able to hold onto its life a little longer.

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

Weezing, Lv. 43

 

 

A very strange choice of replacement here, but I definitely won't complain. A Psychic from Faith and another Flamethrower from Bliss and they both went down!

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

 

Starmie, Lv. 55 & Golem Lv. 54

 

 

These two came into play next and I immediately got to work.

 

 

I figured Faith would be able to make quick work of Golem with Psychic, so I brought Joy out. To my surprise, Golem just barely survived the Psychic attack and, even more surprising, answered with a solid Earthquake! This KO'd Starmie, but also both Faith and Joy. This was a ballsy move but unfortunately gave me way too much freedom for my next turn.

 

Stability and Balance came out next and I don't think I even need to explain how that went down.

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

Mt. Battle Area 9

Levels 54 - 59

Reward: 1000 Coupons

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

We are slowly reaching the top of the mountain! We've already reached Area 9 where the winding path is starting to make its way toward the crater of the volcano. It's hard to believe but we're nearing the end of the entire challenge and, in fact, I'm pretty confident we could go ahead and clear it now if we really wanted to, but again, I'm going to exercise some level of restraint here and prevent myself from grinding until I'm several layers of OP. Still though, I felt it was reasonable enough to explore this town once again!

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

Area 9 Leader Norus

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

 

Ludicolo Lv. 60 & Tropius Lv. 60

 

 

I started out targeting Tropius with Psychic while Balance struck at Ludicolo with Brick Break. It took a few turns, but Ludicolo soon went down. Unfortunately, Tropius was stalling for time with Fly, so it would still take a bit longer to KO him.

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

Shiftry Lv. 60

 

 

The choice here was, again, pretty simple. Another Brick Break and Psychic deal was enough to take both opponents out.

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

 

Vileplume Lv. 59 & Bellossom Lv. 59

 

 

Again, the choice was obvious. Psychic on Vileplume and Brick Break on Bellossom. 

 

Of course, Vileplume went down and now Bellossom had nowhere to hide~ Of course, Bellossom didn't last long under the pressure, either. 

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

Oh, and I should also mention that I decided to swap out Stability's Soft Sand with Charity's NeverMeltIce. I was on the fence about this decision for a little bit, but I figured Earthquake is powerful enough it doesn't really need the extra boost to one-shot a significant number of opponents. Ice Beam, on the other hand, often comes so close to one-shotting a pokemon but leaves them with a sliver of health. Quagsire's special attack isn't nearly as good as its physical attack.

Anyway, with that, we've reached Area 10 which, again, I won't be advancing through just yet, but we'll definitely be returning soon! Next time, however, I think we'll be revisiting the Under for yet another colosseum challenge!

[Aura]

Under Colosseum

It's now time to begin The Under Colosseum! This colosseum has been available for us to participate in ever since we defeated Venus, but just like the Pyrite Colosseum, it is pretty absurdly high level for that point in the game. The levels in this colosseum range from 55 to 58 so I'd say we're only just now at an appropriate level to take on this competition.

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 56

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 56

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 56

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 56

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 56

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 56

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Under Colosseum -- Round 1

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

Battle #1: Hunter Korm

  

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

Battle #2: Rider Heste

  

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

Semifinal Battle: Bodybuilder Taman

   

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

Final Battle: St. Performer Kreble

   

Reward: TM37: Sandstorm

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

Under Colosseum -- Round 2

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

Battle #1: Rider Eshan

  

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

Battle #2: Chaser Belik

   

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

Semifinal Battle: Worker Sangon

  

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

Final Battle: Chaser Devas

   

Reward: TM36: Sludge Bomb

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

Under Colosseum -- Round 3

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

Battle #1: Bandana Guy Hadel

  

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

Battle #2: Bodybuilder Mirna

  

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

Semifinal Battle: Rider Ronal

   

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

Final Battle: St. Performer Shuf

   

Reward: TM30: Shadow Ball

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

Between rounds, I decided to teach that Shadow Ball TM to Trust because his Impish Nature has caused his Special Attack stat to unfortunately lag behind his physical attack. Dark and Ghost are very similar types, but Ghost will be able to take advantage of Trust's higher physical attack. It doesn't get STAB but its higher power should cause it to roughly equate to the same amount of base damage. The biggest downsides to this change are that Trust can no longer damage Normal Types, and Shadow Ball lacks the ability to flinch.

Needless to say, I also replaced Trust's BlackGlasses with the Spell Tag from Shadow Misdrevus.

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

Under Colosseum -- Round 4

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

Battle #1: Rider Neni

  

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

Battle #2: Bandana Guy Burge

   

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

Semifinal Battle: Bodybuilder Balus

  

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

Final Battle: Roller Boy Ardine

   

Reward: TM23 Iron Tail

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

The battles in here aren't too particularly difficult as long as you're on par with their levels, but the abundance of Attract and Confuse Ray can make some of these battles particularly tedious, but there are some really nice TMs for coverage options to collect here. This just might be a great place to stop by for a final splash of type coverage on your team before the final challenge. 

There isn't much else in terms of cleanup for now, we could go ahead and finish our Mt. Battle Challenge, but I don't want to be too high level for the earlier matches. My pokemon are all approaching level 60 now and, while that's not an unreasonable level to be at, the level curve is still a little bizarre so we're going to be battling some pokemon that are particularly underlevel compared to us. I'd also like to be a little underleveled for the final battle as well so that it isn't a massive pushover. 

So, next time, we're going to finally be taking on Nascour's challenge and entering the tournament at the Tower Colosseum!

[Aura]

Tower Colosseum

With our newly powered-up team, it's finally time to take on the final challenge of the main story: The Tower Colosseum.

Upon entering the colosseum, Nascour admits that with how long it took you to arrive, he had some concerns that perhaps Gonzap had actually managed to defeat us. He then tells us that, as payment for interfering with Cipher's affairs, you will repay them by battling for the world's entertainment. Cipher's plan is to use your fame against you and prove to the world how powerful their Shadow Pokemon really are by taking you down with them.

Thus, we'll be forced to participate in the Tower Colosseum challenge, though this challenge is a bit different than normal. The rules are rather stacked against you in this unjust game. As always, you'll be battling against four trainers in a row. However, shadow pokemon are allowed this time meaning each of your opponents are indeed going to have a Shadow Pokemon of their own for you to snag. That's right, four. Recall that Nett mentioned he'd only uncovered a partial list of shadow pokemon created. There are still some surprises to be had! This on its own wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the next major difference: There's no healing between battles. 

I likened the rematches with the Admins on the first floor to the Elite Four, though you could make an argument that this colosseum challenge is more accurate to that. However, these final trainers aren't so much difficult because of powerful teams of pokemon, but they're instead difficult because of the extra frustration that you'll have to go through the efforts of snagging all four shadow pokemon one after another without a break to heal or even reorder your party. This makes the shadow pokemon in this colosseum probably the hardest shadow pokemon to snag in the entire game. 

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 57

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 57

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 57

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 57

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 57

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 58

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Battle 1: Bodybuilder Jomas

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

 

Porygon 2 Lv. 45 & Miltank Lv. 48

 

 

Opening up, this was a very awkward lead for my choice to replace Trust's Bite with Shadow Ball. Shadow Ball can't affect either of these pokemon, so my only choice for Trust is to whittle down the opponent's HP with Toxic and Confuse Ray. However, using Toxic with Umbreon was a very stupid mistake. I hadn't been paying attention at all because I'd just used Toxic on a pokemon whose Trace ability copied my Synchronize... in other words, Trust badly poisoned himself. Faith set up Reflect and on the next turn, Faith was able to take out Porygon 2 with a Psychic.

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

Zangoose, Lv. 45

 

 

I retreated Trust into Bliss and then used Psychic again to defeat the Zangoose. Meanwhile, Miltank has been using Defence Curl to build up its defences like crazy.

 

I just started spamming DragonBreath with Bliss while throwing Ultra Balls at Miltank and was eventually able to snag it.

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

Battle 2: Rider Delan

 

Mightyena Lv. 46 & Absol Lv. 48

 

 

This was where I came to realize that my pokemon weren't going to be healed between battles. Considering Umbreon was badly poisoned, this was a major yikes. I decided to confuse Absol in order to prevent it from attacking while I'd set up Light Screen to protect against their special Dark-type attacks. To my surprise, Mightyena didn't go for a super-effective Dark Attack but rather the physical Iron Tail. Noticing this, I immediately set up Reflect too and also retreated Trust into someone a bit more useful.

 

 

On the next turn, I used Thunder Wave to paralyze Absol to keep it from attacking and reducing its health too much. That Swords Dance it set up previously had me worried. If it attacks, it's not only going to do a lot of damage to me, but a lot of recoil damage to itself which could potentially knock it out. 

 

 

I retreated Faith into Balance and Joy into Bliss so that I could weaken Absol while I threw Ultra Balls at it. Eventually, its HP was low enough that I was able to switch my attention to attacking Mightyena. I'd previously stocked up on lots of Ultra Balls so I didn't have to worry about the pokeball glitch here and I was free to use Bliss's turn to throw as many pokeballs as I needed. With a single Brick Break, Mightyena went down no problem.

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

Sharpedo Lv. 47

 

 

Sharpedo, too, went down without a second glance to a Brick Break.

 

Now I was able to focus my efforts on catching Absol. Unfortunately, its HP was now low enough that, with another Shadow Rush, it would be able to knock itself out. Absol was paralyzed, though, so there was still hope. He even did get fully paralyzed for one turn, so I was able to buy myself another Ultra Ball throw and... it broke out. Absol knocked itself out the next turn with Shadow Rush and I'd unfortunately failed to snag it.

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

Semifinal Battle: Cipher Peon Nella

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

 

Torkoal Lv. 47 & Houndoom Lv. 48

 

 

Trust's poison was getting his HP very low, but there really wasn't much I could do about that without using items in-battle, which I'm pretty determined to stick to. I had Faith set up Light Screen but, yet again, I was met with a surprise physical attack from Torkoal's Iron Tail! Trust confused Houndoom who just used Howl to increase its attack. 

 

 

On the next turn, Faith set up Reflect while I switched Trust into Bliss. Torkoal hit with another Iron Tail, bringing Faith's HP down low while Houndoom just continued to increase its attack. On the next turn, I used Psychic to get rid of Torkoal and DragonBreath to reduce Houndoom's HP into catching range. 

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

Magcargo Lv. 46

 

 

I began throwing Ultra Balls at Houndoom on Bliss's turn while Faith took out Magcargo with another Psychic.

 

I lasted a little bit longer, but Houndoom hit himself in confusion, nearly KOing himself thanks to his increased attack. I failed to catch it again, and before I knew it, it connected a powered-up Shadow Rush and took itself out with recoil along with Faith.

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

Final Battle: Cipher Peon Ston

 

Cacturne Lv. 49 & Tropius Lv. 48

 

 

Of course, things can only get more complicated with Faith down. Joy and Bliss were both low on HP so there was no way I'd be able to get consistent paralysis in this battle. I decided to try and use Ice Beam to take out Cacturne with Stability while Trust would retreat.

 

 

Unfortunately, Stability was unable to take out Cacturne in one shot, so Cacturne was able to take her out with a Needle Arm.

 

 

Next, I used Flamethrower to finish off Cacturne while Joy used Thunder Wave to paralyze Tropius.

Cradily Lv. 48

 

 

Replacing Cacturne was Cradily, an unfortunate choice for me. I took a moment to focus my efforts on reducing Tropius' HP with DragonBreath while Joy tried to keep Cradily at bay with Thunder Wave. I was able to get Tropius' health down low and started throwing Ultra Balls at it while Bliss tried her best to take out Cradily. Eventually, Bliss was KO'd with AncientPower.

 

 

With Balance, I was able to KO Cradily with a Brick Break while continuing to throw Ultra Balls at Tropius.

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

Vileplume Lv. 48

 

 

This Vileplume was going to be extremely awkward for me to deal with. Thankfully, I was able to successfully snag Tropius here.

 

Of course, Vileplume managed to overpower Joy, but Trust came in to finish the job with a Shadow Ball, that was a very close battle!

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

Upon completing the challenge, Nascour emerges from the elevator, with some rather intimidating music. He is merely amused by your battling for the entertainment of the millions, but the time for fun and games is over. It is time for us to face off against the head of the Cipher Syndicate: Nascour!

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

Vs. Cipher Nascour

Though Nascour had a distinct theme upon entering the arena, the battle itself is actually in total silence, only annotated by the roaring crowd as they watch from their seats, cheering for Cipher's victory.

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

 

Walrein Lv. 56 & Gardevoir Lv. 55

 

 

Thankfully, the game is merciful enough to automatically heal you before this battle. And that's good because we're up against a trainer who is using a full on six-pokemon team. I felt my lead was pretty obvious, I'd set up Light Screen with Faith while Trust would target Gardevoir with Shadow Ball. Gardevoir went for a Thunderbolt while Walrein used Body Slam. It felt like an obvious follow-up for now would be to set up Reflect and use another Shadow Ball to finish off Gardevoir.

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

Dusclops Lv. 55

 

 

Dusclops took Gardevoir's place and, no matter how quickly I tried to Psychic and Shadow Ball it, there was no taking this thing down before my time. Faith was done for.

 

 

This seemed like a perfect excuse to bring out Joy, though! Now I could use Thunderbolt to take care of Walrein and Shadow Ball to eliminate Dusclops. Unfortunately, Dusclops was able to confuse Trust, preventing me from winning that matchup, but Joy was able to take out Walrein in a single hit!

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

Xatu Lv. 54

 

 

On the next turn, I retreated Trust who was confused while Joy focused on using Thunderbolt on Dusclops.

 

 

Unfortunately, Joy was confused before she could attack. Thankfully, a lucky coin flip let me hit Dusclops with Thunder in order to take him out.

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

Blaziken Lv. 54

 

 

I coordinated my attacks here on Blaziken, going for a protect and Earthquake strat to take Blaziken out without much hassle.

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

Metagross Lv. 50

And of course Nascour has to have a Shadow Pokemon of his own! And, naturally, it's going to be a pokemon that's near-impossible to catch with an abysmal catch rate of 3, to match most legendaries! And, unlike with the Legendary Beasts, I'm confident in saying that Metagross' catch rate has not been adjusted. This pokemon is just as difficult to catch here as any legendary in the main series. And considering it's at the very end of the line here, this is a totally reasonable time to use your Master Ball, I'd say. Still, I want to hold onto that Master Ball a little bit longer. Besides, I don't want to be too eager here... 

 

 

Needless to say, a Protect and Earthquake was inevitable here, followed by a flamethrower and Thunder Wave. I was anticipating an Earthquake, but he didn't seem interested in using such a move. Nascour's pokemon were able to take out Bliss.

 

 

It was time for Trust to rejoin the battle and use Confuse Ray. Unable to get past Trust's defences, Xatu and Metagross both delegated their efforts into taking out Joy who couldn't last long under the pressure. Meanwhile, Trust had been using Shadow Ball to reduce Metagross' HP between ball throws.

 

 

I brought out Balance next and just had him spam Detect while I continued to throw Ultra Balls at Metagross. At some point, I started switching into Timer Balls since a lot of turns had passed at this point.

 

 

Quagsire was next and naturally wouldn't last. I just used Ultra Balls from him while Xatu rapidly reduced his health with Giga Drain. 

 

Eventually, it was just down to these three. I'd been throwing Timer Ball after Timer Ball to no avail. Things were looking hopeless until, eventually, it clicked. Literally. Metagross had been successfully snagged!

And from here, I... gave up. Yup, you read that right. I literally stopped battling and allowed Nascour's Xatu to defeat Trust through an extremely tedious process of repeatedly calling Trust until Xatu was able to finally reduce his HP to 0.

You may be asking yourself: Why, why in the world would I do that now? Well, the answer is actually rather simple: I missed some shadow pokemon but I don't want to lose the progress I've made. The fact is, even though you restart from your last save point after a whiteout, you don't actually restart from your last save. Obviously, there wouldn't be any penalty to using your items during battle and still losing if that were the case. Instead, you merely return to your last save point with half of your money depleted. A small price to pay, I'd say.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, it means that all the pokemon we've successfully snagged are still with us! If you like, you can even head back to Mt. Battle and purify them to challenge the rest of the colosseum again! And that's not a terrible idea, either, because some of the pokemon available in this colosseum are pretty powerful!

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

   

   

Upon returning, you'll have to challenge the same four trainers again and, as you can probably expect, their shadow pokemon will be replaced with a new team member of the same type if you've successfully snagged their shadow pokemon. Otherwise, you'll get a second chance at catching them. These pokemon are all the same level as the shadow pokemon they replace except for Sceptile who is a level higher at 49.

 

Nascour's own Metagross is replaced with Alakazam, which is honestly far, far easier to deal with. Really, all of these battles are far easier if you've already snagged the shadow pokemon since you aren't so worried about keeping the Shadow Pokemon alive. You can just Earthquake and Surf with reckless abandon.

...I should probably stress that I really don't like using this strategy. But I think you'll come to understand my reasoning by the end of this playthrough. Long story short, the completion bonus for this game only applies if you purified all of the Shadow Pokemon in the game, not if you've snagged every shadow pokemon in the game. This is a very significant distinction considering you also have to clear this colosseum again in order to receive your bonus. This means that allowing yourself to get all the way through this colosseum while missing shadow pokemon means you're going to have to complete this colosseum and view the credits three times just for failing to snag a single shadow pokemon among these, and there are plenty of reasons why you reasonably would. I hate having to do this because it really damages the flow of the scene, but failing to catch any one of the shadow pokemon previously is incredibly easy, especially if you're in the reasonable position where you have no idea you won't heal between battles. But, I suppose I've gotten a bit ahead of myself. Believe it or not, we're not done after just defeating Nascour.

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

Upon defeating Nascour, we're greeted with a familiar voice telling Nascour that he's merely wasting his time.

Up from the elevator comes Mayor Es Cade of Phenac City! What's he doing here?

Well, in what is perhaps the worst plot twist ever conceived: Mayor Es Cade reveals to you that he was the head of Cipher: Master Evice all along! I can't believe the man who completely failed to address a guy like Nascour coming out of his home just before you arrived in the beginning of the game turned out to be the villain! There are so many directions they could have taken this to at least make this twist more surprising but I don't understand this one bit. If you recall, I alluded to something like this way back when we first met Nascour as well.

I will admit, the game does do a good job of setting up Nascour as the main villain, but this twist ultimately feels completely pointless. It isn't satisfying at all and you only talk to the mayor once in the entire game and he has no relation to any other characters you meet across your adventure. This just feels like a bait and switch for no reason other than to have a bait and switch and it just leaves me feeling confused as to why they felt this was even necessary. I suppose a lot of this game was built around subverting expectations, so I guess having the obvious villain from the start of the game turn out not to be the main villain was an idea they wanted to explore, but this approach just doesn't work in the slightest. If they wanted to make this twist satisfying, they should have made the mayor more directly involved in the main story without giving away his identity. There's a number of directions you could take this, but I digress again. This isn't the time for a rant, but rather a time for action!

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 58

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 58

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 58

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 59

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 58

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 57

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Cipher Head Evice

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

 

Slowking Lv. 61 & Salamence Lv. 60

 

 

I'm sure you may have had your doubts, but, sure enough, the levels here are much higher than anything we've battled yet. Granted, I'm pretty sure you are expected to be about 5 levels under, Evice's team. From what I recall, this is still a really difficult fight. I led off with a Reflect from Faith and a Light Screen from Joy and it seems that Evice had an interest in buffing his pokemon's offensive presence to counter such a strat as he dropped an X Attack on both of his pokemon! I then used a Thunderbolt on Slowking and Psychic on Salamence while Salamence used Dragon Dance to increase his speed and Slowking used Psychic on Joy. Evice dropped a Full Restore on both of his active pokemon next, buying him another turn, but it was a rather pointless endeavor as we just brought his HP right back to where it was. The next turn, Joy was able to take out Slowking with a Thunderbolt, but Salamence was able to outspeed and take Faith out.

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

Slaking Lv. 60

 

 

From Slowking to Slaking. I like his style. Naturally, I brought out Umbreon to replace Faith and went for the Confuse Ray on Slaking. Ampharos was actually able to get a Quick Claw trigger and hit Salamence with a ThunderBolt before it could make a move and finished it off!

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

Machamp Lv. 61

 

 

Machamp was a really annoying pokemon to see here. I focused my efforts on stopping it from absolutely demolishing Trust. I used Confuse Ray and Thunderbolt hoping not to paralyze in order to avoid Guts. Slaking was loafing around this turn and thankfully, Machamp hit himself in confusion. From there, another Thunderbolt further reduced Machamp's HP. Both opponents hit themselves in confusion again, so I was able to split up my targets this time. Thunderbolt on Slaking and Shadow Ball to take out Machamp before it could get an attack off! To my surprise, ThunderBolt even paralyzed Slaking!

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

Scizor Lv. 60

 

 

With Slaking para-fused, it was easy to focus my attention on one pokemon at a time on the other side and Scizor didn't last long at all.

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

Tyranitar Lv. 55

And here it is! The ultimate Shadow Pokemon itself: Tyranitar!

 

 

This is an extremely bizarre choice of pokemon, Sand Stream has minimal synergy with Evice's team and its moves are even more bizarre. Despite Tyranitar's low special attack stat, apparently someone somewhere thought it was a good idea to teach this thing Thunder and Blizzard. Either way, it wasn't going to be affecting this battle. I can't think of any better time to use the Master Ball than the present! Let's catch the Ultimate Shadow Pokemon!

 

With Tyranitar captured, I switched into Balance and, on the next turn, retreated Trust for Stability. A little more bullying and Slaking would eventually succumb, winning the battle for us!

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

After defeating Evice, Police Chief Sherles and Officer Johnson from Pyrite Town arrive on the scene to place Mayor Es Cade under arrest. Duking and Silva quickly burst onto the scene followed by Eagun who has arrived in preparation to battle but is amazed, and relieved, to see there is nothing more to be done. Evice soon tries to make a getaway with a nearby helicopter, but then a mysterious fireball falls from the sky and destroys it!

The fireball belongs to the legendary Ho-oh! Everyone gathers around to marvel at the beautiful creature who proceeds to fly off and the game fades to black...

...what a sloppy ending. I can't lie, the ending to Colosseum is kind of a disaster. Which is a shame because the rest of the game's story is so cool! But there's just so many pointless twists strewn in here and far too many plot holes to go into detail about right now. Still, the mediocre ending doesn't change how hilarious a lot of the game's writing is and even though some of this ending is unintentionally funny, it's still funny nonetheless. It kind of just feels like the scene was written by someone off their ADHD medicine. It wanted to do everything and couldn't settle on one direction so it just did all of it which led to an extremely bizarre collection of strange events that all end abruptly... but, that's that! The game saves and we have officially beaten the story mode of Pokemon Colosseum! But don't think we're ready to move on to the next title just yet. Nope, not even close. There's still some postgame and cleanup to work out so you'd better bet we're going to be doing all of that. There's also still a whole other section of the game we've yet to touch!

So, next time, we'll be taking a moment to explore the postgame of Pokemon Colosseum!

[Aura]

When you start up the game again after finishing the main Story, you'll find yourself back at the Outskirt Stand where you immediately receive an Email from Nett telling you that they've updated your P*DA so that it can receive new updates by connecting remotely to the Kids Grid!

As you step outside, you get another email from Nett mentioning rumors of a strange pokemon that have recently surfaced. This sounds like another Shadow Pokemon to snag! We may have stunted the distribution of Shadow Pokemon, but it seems the streets still need a cleansing. We'll need to meet with Nett soon to get the details. For now, however, I want to focus my attention on the Shadow Pokemon we have right now.

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

You know the drill. I went back to Mt. Battle and threw my Shadow Pokemon at pokemon around the same level over and over until they were ready for purification. I did this for all the Shadow Pokemon I caught in the Tower Colosseum with the lone exception of two: Metagross and Tyranitar aren't going to be seeing any action here. These are the two pokemon that are the hardest to purify in the game and, if you recall, we have a second Time Flute that we stole from Cipher's stash hidden behind the U-Disk. As for the other one, well, let's just say we have some plans for him.

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

After purifying the Shadow Pokemon from the colosseum, I decided it was time to finish my pilgrimage to the top of Mt. Battle right here and now.

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 60

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 60

Item: Blackglasses

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Bite, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 60

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 61

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 60

Item: Dragon Fang

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 59

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Mt Battle Area 10

Level 60

Reward: 1200 Coupons & Potentially more

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

This final area has the platforms finally coil around the summit of the mountain, reaching the mountain's very peak.

In the crater of the mountain, is a massive platform, known as the Mt. Battle Colosseum where our 100th trainer believed to be the most powerful trainer in all of Orre, Somek, proudly stands. Before we go to talk to Somek however, you're going to want to take a quick peak to your right where you'll find a chest. Surprisingly, this chest contains a third Time Flute! This is arguably the most valuable item to be found here and you don't even actually have to defeat Somek to obtain it, all you have to do is reach the 100th floor. Still, it would be rather anticlimactic to turn back now, wouldn't it?

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

Mt. Battle Master Somek

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

 

Claydol Lv. 60 & Pinsir Lv. 60

 

 

This was a very uncomfortable lead but Somek's team is actually really balanced to the point where not having an uncomfortable start is pretty difficult. I opened up with a Reflect from Faith and a Toxic on Claydol, figuring that Pinsir would probably try to use some form of bug or fighting move to deal some devastating damage. It actually caught me by surprise by going for Earthquake instead. Thankfully, this was definitely covered by Reflect, so I was still safe. From here, I used Psychic to take care of Pinsir while Trust tried to hammer in Claydol with some Shadow Balls.

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

Crobat Lv. 60

 

 

An annoying follow-up to Pinsir, Crobat was able to deal some solid damage on Trust while Claydol reduced the rest of Faith's HP with a super-effective Shadow Ball.

 

 

Having Faith gone so early was going to be felt. I needed to take out Claydol as fast as possible, so I brought out Stability to do the job. On the next turn, it was a Confuse Ray and Surf turn to finish off what remained of Claydoll's HP and take it out while holding Crobat back with confusion. Unfortunately, Surf only came after both opponents coordinated their attacks on Stability.

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

Gligar, lv. 60

 

 

Right when I was about to switch Stability out for a pokemon that could more easily deal with Crobat, Somek decides to bring out a Gligar. I can't resist a quad-weakness to Ice Beam! So, I left Stability in to deal with Gligar while Trust went ham on Crobat with another Shadow Ball. Gligar once again caught me off guard by using Earthquake. Again, I was pretty confident Gligar couldn't learn Earthquake because it was a special move in Gen 2, but here we are! Still, thanks to Reflect, Stability was able to hang in there and hit Gligar with the Ice Beam it deserved.

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

Flygon Lv. 60

 

 

Flygon was next and... I'm starting to see a trend here. I suppose I got a little greedy here, but I decided to try and use Ice Beam on Flygon while Trust used Confuse Ray to confuse it and potentially stop its Earthquake. Flygon was unfortunately able to attack through this ruse and its Earthquake was unfortunately strong enough to deplete the remainder of Stability's HP.

 

 

Naturally, I brought Bliss as the next best thing for killing dragons. Bliss and Trust were able to focus on their respective opponents until eventually Crobat went down.

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

Gyarados Lv. 60

 

 

I was pretty confident I had all the answers at this point. Somek was down to his last two pokemon! I had Trust use Confuse Ray to potentially turn Gyardos' devastating attack stat against itself. Meanwhile, Bliss was able to take Flygon out with another DragonBreath.

 

With a Hyper Beam, Gyarados made the greatest mistake it ever could have. Though it did cost Trust's consciousness, Gyarados was now left completely defenseless for whatever I wanted to bring in next. I think you see where I'm going with this.

 

Joy was able to take out Gyarados with ease using ThunderBolt, and that was game!

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

Upon defeating Somek, he congratulates you on your victory and proudly offers you 1200 coupons. He encourages you not to quit yet and to keep taking the Mt. Battle challenge and see how strong you can get. Indeed, there actually is one more gift we can get from Somek here. If we start a new challenge from Area 1 and work our way all the way up to Somek without ever accessing the PC...

We'll be awarded the Earth Ribbon! A ribbon to congratulate you on winning 100 battles in a row! This ribbon will be given to every pokemon in your party upon defeating Somek if and only if you've met the requirements listed above. After defeating Somek, you have the choice of either using Abra to teleport back to the entrance or manually walking all the way back down the mountain as a sort of Victory Lap.

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

I gotta say, clearing Mt. Battle was actually rather exciting! I'm not sure if I've mentioned it yet, but this is actually my first time ever reaching the final part of Mt. Battle, so it was really cool to be able to thoroughly explore the metallic structure of the final arena. Even though the backgrounds of Mt. Battle aren't anything too exciting to look at on their own, being able to just peacefully make my way back down the mountain and pass by all these familiar places gave me a sense of satisfaction I wasn't expecting to get. As a kid, completing Mt. Battle felt like such a daunting task so I always just assumed it was considered absurd and never bothered to give it a try. As it turns out, it's rather easy. I do wish there was a bit more variety in environments between areas of the mountain though. Maybe they could have had a section over hot springs or another inside a cavern of precious gemstones! Regardless, the sighs here are really memorable to me so it was really nice to just be able to focus on them without having to worry about much else.

Ah, but there is something else to worry about, isn't there? We have two Time Flutes now along with a full team of Shadow Pokemon waiting to be purified! And so, it's off to Relic Forest!

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

Purified Pokemon

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

Nurture (Miltank F); Lv. 50

Item: None

Ability: Thick Fat | Moves: Milk Drink, Defense Curl, Rollout, Body Slam

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

Forewarn (Absol F); Lv. 51

Item: None

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Perish Song, Swords Dance, Slash, Faint Attack

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

Loyalty (Houndoom M); Lv. 49

Item: None

Ability: Flash Fire(?) | Moves: Faint Attack, Howl, Smog, Flamethrower

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

Nourish (Tropius F); Lv. 50

Item: None

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Synthesis, Magical Leaf, Fly, Solar Beam

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

And then, of course, we can't forget about the help our ally Celebi itself can offer us thanks to the Time Flutes!

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

Solidarity (Metagross); Lv. 50

Item: Metal Coat

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Hyper Beam, Iron Defense, Metal Claw, Psychic

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

Redemption (Tyranitar F); Lv. 55

Item: Nugget

Ability: Sand Stream | Moves: Crunch, Thunder, Rock Slide, Blizzard

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

And with that, we've once again purified every Shadow Pokemon we've snagged! Next time, perhaps we'll stop by The Under and see what the kids have to say about this "strange pokemon" Nett emailed us about. If there are shadow pokemon on the loose, we'll definitely need to snag it! Until then, though, I'll have to bit you adieu!

[Aura]

In my last post, I actually made a small error. It wasn't Nett who sent that second Email we received, but Secc from the kids' hideout inside Duking's home in Pyrite Town. If you go to Nett in The Under, he'll just ask if you got his email about the upgrade to the Kids' Grid network that allows your P*DA to connect to it in order to retrieve information from children all over the region. So, today we're going to be starting our venture into the postgame content by heading over to Pyrite Town!

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

I should mention briefly that, if you haven't been satisfied with your collection of pokemon so far, now that Evice has been defeated, the trading center in the basement of the Pokemon Center in Phenac City is now open! In case it's not immediately obvious that that means, it means that you can now trade with your copy of Ruby and Sapphire or any other Generation 3 pokemon game to use any of your favorite pokemon from those playthroughs here in Colosseum! In addition, you can bring the pokemon you snagged in Colosseum into the main series titles! Of course, Shadow Pokemon cannot be traded into the GBA titles since Shadow Pokemon do not exist in those games. So you'll need to make sure to purify any Shadow Pokemon you intend to use in the main series!

I'm not going to be messing with this just yet, but it's definitely an option that you might find useful if you've failed to snag a lot of shadow pokemon in this game. It might be helpful to transfer some pokemon that are better suited for catching pokemon. Just keep in mind moves like False Swipe might not be a good idea for snagging Shadow Pokemon since Shadow Rush can easily deal recoil damage and knock them out on the same turn. Likewise, you can bring in your more competitive, Battle Tower team to take on the various colosseums and Mt. Battle here. Just keep in mind that your pokemon will still gain Exp here and might grow beyond the level boundaries of the Battle Tower.

I will say though, that Mt. Battle seems like a far better place to grind your pokemon out than old fashioned grinding against wild pokemon or battling the Elite Four over and over again. And you get Poke Coupons to be redeemed for valuable items!

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

Now that we've arrived in Pyrite Town, I would like to take a moment to get familiar with the locals. After defeating Evice, the trainers here in town have their teams upgraded once again, so Duel Square is now home to trainers around level 57. I took a moment to battle all the rematches just because I've kept on top of that so far.

If we revisit the Jail, things are looking a little scary. Chief Sherles tells you that they'd made a grave mistake and all the criminals within the jail had managed to escape! Officer Johnson himself will confide in you that they managed to escape only because he took a quick snooze and says that he wishes the criminals would have told him that they were going to escape! As we inspect the jail cells, sure enough, they're all empty. Sure enough, Trudly and Folly as well as Reath and Ferma are all missing! It looks like we've got some tracking to do.

If we head over to Secc in the hideout behind the bookcase in Duking's house, he'll tell us that Rogue Cail mentioned battling someone with a Shadow Pokemon. If we come back to him, as expected, he tells us he might have information if we're willing to battle him for it.

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

Rogue Cail

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

 

Gardevoir Lv. 57 & Granbull Lv. 56

 

 

With the levels of pokemon we've obtained after defeating Somek at Mt. Battle, this battle is pretty simple. I'm not too stressed anymore about overleveling. To my knowledge, we've completed some of the most difficult challenges this game has to offer up until now, I'm not gonna lose sleep over being overleveled for trainers weaker than Evice. 

Cail dropped X-Speed on both of his pokemon, who were both able to take a Shadow Ball and Psychic respectively. He used a Hyper Potion in an effort to keep Gardevoir alive, but another Shadow Ball brough this health right back down while Faith took out Granbull.

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

Shiftry Lv. 56

 

 

Shiftry came to take Granbull's place. Naturally, Faith wasn't going to be able to do much about that, so I decided to switch.

 

 

I brought Balance out to deal with Shiftry's Dark Type while Trust took out Gardevoir with another Shadow Ball.

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

Machamp Lv. 57

 

 

Replacing Brain with Brawn, Machamp came out next.

 

 

Seeing this, I swapped Trust for Faith expecting him to target me with a powerful Fighting attack. Instead, Cail actually caught me completely off guard by going for an Earthquake and Giga Drain combo, completely ignoring the damage he was dealing to his own Shiftry. Due to the resistance and lack of STAB, it wasn't a whole lot of damage, but it was still an unexpected decision that led to the knock out of both my pokemon.

 

 

I brought out Joy and Bliss, expecting to bait that Machamp into using Earthquake to hit Joy. I went for Protect with Joy while Bliss used Flamethrower on Shiftry. Sure enough, both opponents focused their Giga Drain and Earthquake on Ampharos, allowing Bliss to pick off Shiftry.

 

Machamp is still rather bulky, though, and was able to take a DragonBreath just fine from Bliss. Joy was unable to get is attack off before being KO'd with an Earthquake.

 

From here, though, the battle was over. Between Earthquake and DragonBreath, there was no surviving for his Machamp.

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

Of course, I should mention that if you have yet to snag it, he'll still have his Shadow Furret in place of Granbull. If you've already been snagging all the shadow pokemon you can, then it's unlikely you'll encounter this here since you've already been able to rematch Cail as many times as you've wanted.

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

Upon defeating Cail, he mentions battling a trainer with a shadow Johto starter, specifically the one strong against the shadow Johto starter you've already encountered. In my case, Quilava. He explains that he has no idea where the trainer went, but that they said something about the Snagem Hideout... The hideout was supposedly abandoned after the explosion in the beginning of the game, but it sounds as though the remnants of cipher are planning something there... It sounds like we have our heading! But first... Remember those escaped criminals? Well if you recall, Ferma happens to have a certain pokemon of interest for us. We're going to want to track her down and I think I know exactly where she might have gone. Unfortunately, it's rather well-hidden.

I'll be taking note of all the "missable" shadow pokemon and where to snag them here in the postgame as we arrive at their destinations. Indeed, you can rematch them as many times as you want. But before we go today, I'd like to summarize all the "unmissable" shadow pokemon. The ones belong to trainers you could already rematch as many times as you liked before the final battle, in case you happen to be playing along with me or something and haven't decided until now to go for actually catching all of the shadow pokemon. It's the postgame, after all, so it's reasonable to decide that now is the time to clean the streets of the misery of poor Shadow Pokemon.

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

Pyrite Town

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

The first batch of unmissable pokemon are found here in Pyrite Town at Duel Square! All of these shadow pokemon are level 30.

 

You have Rider Vant & Misdreavous which comes with a Spell Tag to power up ghost-type attacks.

 

Bandana Guy Divel & Quagsire

 

Rider Nover & Shadow Noctowl

 

St. Performer Diogo & Flaaffy

Rider Leba & Skiploom

 

And Roller Boy Don & Slugma

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

 

Aside from Duel Square, there's also Cail at the gate of Pyrite Town with his level 33 Shadow Furret.

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

 

There isn't anything inside the Pyrite Building, but on its roof, just outside the entrance to Pyrite Cave, you can rematch Hunter Doken for his level 33 Shadow Qwilfish.

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

Inside Pyrite Cave, there's a couple of Shadow Pokemon that have been available for rematch as well.

 

Rider Dovel & Meditite w/ TwistedSpoon

 

Rider Sosh & Dunsparce

 

Hunter Zalo & Swablu

All three of these pokemon are level 33.

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

Realgam Tower

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

  

  

As long as you've failed to snag the first Johto starter from Verde, Rosso, or Bluno, you should be able to rematch them at Realgam Tower as much as you like. I should mention that information on this is a bit spotty online so I can't guarantee the accuracy of this, but if they don't show up here, it's likely they'll show up in a certain couple of other locations instead. Each one is level 30 and comes with a MiracleSeed, Charcoal, or Mystic Water respectively.

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

     

     

I'm not quite sure if I should label them as "unmissable," but you can play through the ending of the game as many times as you like by simply returning to the Tower Colosseum. If you failed to catch any of the Shadow Pokemon available there, you can always rematch them as many times as you like. 

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

In hindsight, this list of "unmissable" shadow pokemon is actually rather small. You would think places like The Under would be chock full of Shadow Pokemon, but this doesn't actually seem to be the case. The vast majority of Shadow Pokemon available for immediate rematches are in Pyrite Town alone. Still, it's good to just run through checklists like this and absolutely make sure you have everything you can at this point. It's always good to double check yourself!

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

Now that we've verified that we haven't missed any Shadow Pokemon, we've gotta get started on those missable ones! And we happen to have some getaways right under our noses! To get to them, we'll need to make our way all the way up the Pyrite Building. Beyond even where we battled Reath and Ferma originally.

In order to find this duo, we're going to need to follow them all the way to the back of Pyrite Cave, all the way to Miror B.'s Hideout! And along the way, throughout the building and the cave, every single one of the trainers whose paths we cross will battle us again, just as always. Even worse, none of their teams are any different than the last time we came through here to fight Mirakle B. Honestly, I don't blame anyone for having no clue where to find Reath and Ferma because I doubt anyone had the patience to work their way all the way to the back of the cave for a third time, especially when the trainers are still just using level 40 pokemon.

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

 

When we finally make our way to Miror B.'s old hideout, we find Reath and Ferma standing in the same place Mirakle B. once was. Yup, once you've defeated Evice, Mirakle B. will disappear and be replaced by these two. If you talk to them, they'll of course be surprised to see you and challenge you to a battle. Just like before, they'll both battle you one after another. I also recommend you save it before this battle because, if you fail to snag their shadow pokemon here, you'll have to leave Pyrite Town altogether and return, then battle all the way back here all over again to get a second chance.

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

Miror B. Peon Reath

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

 

Luvdisc Lv. 53 & Ariados Lv. 53

 

 

This couldn't have been a more perfect lead against this trainer. I don't think I even need to explain my first attack here.

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

 

And again, the result of this matchup was pretty obvious as well.

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

If you failed to snag it before, Reath's shadow Remoraid will be available to snag here in place of Seaking. And oh, boy, if there's ever a point where you're going to feel the lack of leveling on Shadow Pokemon, it's here. This level 20 fish would already die if you looked at it wrong back when we first battled it in the Pyrite Building. Now that we have a full team around level 63? You're gonna need to be extra careful. I recommend using Confuse Ray in order to just let it damage itself and then throw some Nest Balls at it to snag it easily thanks to its low level.

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

Miror B. Peon Ferma

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

 

Yanma Lv. 53 & Mantine Lv. 33

 

 

As you can probably expect by now, we're mainly here to snag Mantine! I opened up by using Thunder Wave on Mantine while Faith used Psychic to blast away Yanma.

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

Furret Lv. 51

 

 

Obviously, there was no way Joy would be of much help with actually reducing Mantine's HP, so I decided to switch to someone who I was confident would be able to damage it without a KO.

 

 

With Bliss out, Faith took out Furret with a Psychic, simple as that.

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

Aipom Lv. 52

 

 

Naturally, Aipom went down to a Psychic while Faith began whittling at Mantine's HP with a couple of Flamethrowers.

 

After two Flamethrowers reducing Mantine's HP to about half, I began throwing Net Balls at it until it was officially snagged!

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

If you have already snagged Mantine, you'll be dealing with a Sharpedo Lv. 50 instead.

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

Upon defeating Reath and Ferma, they'll mention that it seems Cipher isn't going to be sticking around for much longer and that they'll both need to start looking for other jobs...

Remember how I said you will have an infinite number of chances to catch every Shadow Pokemon in the game? Well, this holds true! Now that we're in the postgame, every shadow pokemon is available for us to snag if we've yet to snag it. Trainers with Shadow Pokemon can be rematched over and over until you successfully snag the pokemon, though you may have to return to the world map in order to reload the area. That's not to say the process of rematching a trainer again and again isn't tedious, but you'll never screw yourself out of catching every shadow pokemon unless you encounter some really bizarre glitch. And don't worry, as you'll soon see, this doesn't just apply to boss characters. We'll also get to rematch regular trainers with "missable" shadow pokemon as well, namely members of Cipher. 

Again, due to the limited nature of information on this game, I should probably add that I can't claim with 100% certainty that you won't be able to screw yourself out of snagging all the shadow pokemon. I suppose it's possible certain assumptions I'm making aren't actually true. Because of this, I strongly recommend reloading a save if you fail to snag any of the pokemon in this postgame.

Considering the game is generous enough to allow you to rematch many trainers as much as you want, I'm going to assume that you'll always have an infinite number of chances. However, you can never be too careful and I would absolutely hate to save after unknowingly failing my final chance at snagging a particular pokemon. That said, I do believe the very final shadow pokemon in the game (we've yet to see, obviously) is permanently missable. I'll make sure to point it out when we get to that point. Just try to stay on the safe side and double check to make sure you get another chance at catching a pokemon before saving after failing a snag. The last thing you want to do is put all that effort into snagging every shadow pokemon and permanently fail one, forever locking that completion bonus away.

Anyway, next time I think we'll be making our way to the Snagem Hideout. But not before tracking down the rest of Miror B.'s goons!

[Aura]

On our way to the Snagem Hideout, I wanted to stop by Phenac City because, if we check out Mayor Es Cade's home now, we can find that the mayor is nowhere to be seen.

 

In his place, Trudly and Folly have made themselves at home here! If we talk to them, they'll each battle us. Their teams are just powered up versions of their same teams from before.

These rematches are significant, though, because this gives you more chances to snag the Shadow Makuhita from Folly if you happened to fail the snag back in the beginning of the game.

If you have successfully snagged Makuhita, it'll be replaced with a Machoke here.

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

Snagem Hideout

When we first arrive at the Snagem Hideout, we receive an Email from Secc mentioning that Cail told him to tell you that the trainer who used the Quilava's name was Rosso.

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

Snagem Hideout 1F

As we first enter the hideout, there initially doesn't seem to be much here but a single item chest containing some Max Elixirs. But, messing with the perspective a bit, you can find a gap in the east wall that leads into a PC. 

As you try to make your way up through the doorways, you'll be ambushed by a Cipher Peon!

 

The opponent I faced here is Cipher Peon Nore, the same one who had the Shadow Yanma back at the Cipher Building, so here's where you get your new chances to snag Yanma!

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

 

Snagem Hideout 2F & 3F

When we first arrive on the second floor, we receive an email from Nett mentioning that he's uncovered some more pokemon in the list of Shadow Pokemon on the Data ROM including a previously unknown Shadow Smeargle!

     

As we explore the ruins of the hideout, we'll find several Team Snagem members who are rather resentful toward us for our betrayal, as well as some scavengers who are searching the wreckage for pokeballs holding rare pokemon. None of these trainers have any shadow pokemon so there's no need to worry too much about any of them. That said, you don't want to allow yourself to get too low on HP or PP. You'll want to try to retreat to heal in order to see why.

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

 

On your way back, you'll be ambushed by none other than Cipher Peon Skrub! Meaning yet another chance to snag his Hitmontop! This placement of him is pretty rude because his team can actually be pretty difficult to deal with if you're running on low PP which is where I was at when I tried to leave to heal.

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

Once you defeat Skrub, that's not all you'll have to worry about here, either. Every time you enter this room after leaving, another Cipher Peon will ambush you here. I'm under the impression that they'll rotate in a cycle to give you an infinite number of chances to snag their pokemon. This also makes it rather annoying to return to heal so make sure you don't let your PP drop too low or you won't be able to fight back!

These are the peons that can appear here:

 

Cipher Peon Kloak & Ledian Lv. 40

 

Cipher Peon Baila & Sunflora Lv. 45

 

Cipher Peon Arton & Delibird Lv. 45

 

Cipher Peon Dioge & Heracross Lv. 45

They're mostly the peons from the first floor of Realgam Tower as well as Kloak from The Under.

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

As we continue to explore, we'll find some familiar locations from the game's intro, including the mannequin the portable Snag Machine was on as well as Gonzap's office where we can find a chest containing 3 Rare Candies. 

Making our way back down, we'll pass by two large machines with long claws that seem to be the larger Snag Machines mentioned on the news that were destroyed in the explosion. As a neat little touch, we can actually loot these large machines for some spare Ultra Balls! A small detail I can't blame anyone for failing to pick up on.

As we reach the end of the path, we'll finally find the trainer we came here for. This will be the trainer with a shadow pokemon strong against the Johto starter you snagged. In my case, that's Rosso.

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

Vs. Cipher Peon Rosso

 

Muk Lv. 55 & Quilava Lv. 30

 

 

I led off with Bliss and Joy. Again, you wanna treat this almost like defusing a bomb. This Quilava is only level 30 so you can't just carelessly attack this thing if you want a chance at snagging it. I started by using Thunder Wave with Joy and a Not Very Effective Flamethrower with Bliss which on its own brought Quilava to around 1/4 HP. On the next turn, I had Joy hit Muk with a Thunderbolt while I threw a Premier Ball at Quilava for the catch.

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

 

Grumpig Lv. 54 & Breloom Lv. 53

 

 

Rosso replaced Muk with a Grumpig and Quilava with a Breloom. I targeted Breloom with a Flamethrower and Grumpig with a Thunderbolt, but Grumpig was able to survive the hit and use Bounce to avoid damage on the next turn.

 

From here, it was just a matter of waiting for Grumpig to come back down before we could coordinate our attacks and finish the job.

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

  

  

Depending on the trainer you battle here, their team will be slightly different, albeit rather predictable. They each have their respective starter and a pokemon that's strong against that pokemon's weakness in place of Rosso's Quilava and Breloom. Other than that, their teams are identical.

With Rosso's Quilava snagged, there's not much else for us here in the Snagem Hideout so I suppose it's back to wandering the desert for us!

[Aura]

As we leave the Snagem Hideout, headed toward any destination, we'll receive an Email from Marcia of Pyrite Town mentioning that mysterious people have been bringing Shadow Pokemon from Pyrite Town down into the Under and tells you that Nett might have more information on it. So, back to The Under we go! If we make our way to Nett, he'll tell us that Chaser Gurks seems to have had a run-in with a Shadow Pokemon recently, so it turns out that this is where our next rematch with him happens!

I was actually mistaken by mentioning this rematch earlier because it actually isn't available until now. As mentioned before, Gurks has two Wailord now that are slightly higher level than his previous team. Considering his initial team had a Magikarp and Feebas, I would have expected his new team to feature a Gyarados and Milotic as well, but I suppose those are delegated to be pokemon exclusively for bosses instead. Fair enough.

Upon defeating Gurks, he'll tell us that he battled with a trainer using a Shadow Croconaw. Naturally, if you chose any of the other trainers in the beginning of the game, he'll mention whatever shadow starter you haven't encountered yet. However, he doesn't give us much information to go off of, so we'll just have to search blindly for now. As we leave The Under, we'll get another message mentioning that villains seem to be regrouping at the Shadow Pokemon Research Lab we previously cleared out including a man in a blue suit using a Shadow Croconaw!

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

As we make our way back to the Research Lab, we'll find that, indeed, Cipher Peons are lying in wait ready to ambush us.

      

     

As you can probably assume at this point, these are your second chance at snagging the Shadow Pokemon that belong to these Peons here in the facility. From left to right, these are Cole & Aipom, Lare & Murkrow, Vana & Forretress, Lesar & Ariados w/ SilverPowder, Tanie & Granbull, and Remil & Vibrava w/ Dragon Fang.

If you've failed to snag any of these pokemon your first time around, now's your chance! Their levels are all 43, some come prepared to catch some lower level pokemon. Of course, you should already be prepared to snag a lower-level pokemon because...

Right where Ein was once standing is Bluno! Be wary, though, because unlike Rosso, he'll head right for us the moment we approach, so you'll want to save before advancing towards his location.

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

Cipher Peon Bluno

 

Muk Lv. 63 & Croconaw Lv. 30

 

 

Since I wasn't expecting the fight to occur right away, I didn't have a chance to rearrange my party, so I definitely did not have the lead I would have liked. With a bit of improv, I decided to use Confuse Ray to get Croconaw to hit itself while retreating Balance into Joy to paralyze it. Then I can focus all my firepower on Muk while throwing Pokeballs tat Croconaw until it gets caught.

 

 

This plan saw mild success. I was able to paralyze Croconaw, but I realized a huge mistake I'd made... Muk didn't just attack or set up Acid Armor like I'd expected. He went straight for minimize. I had no out to an evasive foe like this and nothing I had on the field right now was really prepared. I decided to start throwing Net Balls at Croconaw while retreating Trust into Faith.

 

 

Naturally, Muk went for another Minimize, making himself even more difficult to hit. Thankfully, I'd managed to successfully snag Croconaw and used Psych Up to copy Muk's evasion so that I could at least guarantee that Faith could stay out long enough to hit him once.

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

Grumpig, Lv. 62

 

 

The next turn, I'd missed Muk with Psychic as expected and, before Joy could get a Thunderbolt of, Grumpig made the terrifying decision to use its own Psych Up against Muk to mirror its changes to evasion as well. With the evasive boost, Thunderbolt also failed to connect, leaving me in an extremely difficult position. Maybe it would've been a good idea after all to let Stability learn Haze like she wanted... Well, hindsight is 20/20 and it's clear that this battle is going nowhere from here. So, I decided to go for better odds of hitting my opponents.

 

 

As I brought Stability out, Grumpig hit her with a Confuse Ray! My plan was to use Earthquake and take the gamble that Faith would be able to avoid the attack while I'd be able to hit one, or both, of the other two. However, thanks to the confusion, the attack naturally didn't go through. Thankfully, Faith's Psychic did manage to connect and take out Muk.

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

Camerupt Lv. 61

 

 

I wasn't going to leave a confused Stability out to just soak up damage, so I swapped her out while I went for Reflect with Faith.

 

 

Camerupt went for Earthquake and, to my luck, he hit his own Grumpig and not Faith! Grumpig didn't quite go down just yet, though and it used Confuse Ray to hit Faith. I decided to leave Faith in, though, and use Light Screen. I figured that, if Camerupt would keep using Earthquake, he might KO his own Grumpig. After Bliss missed with a DragonBreath, though, Faith was hit with a Flamethrower from Camerupt. I decided if this was the case, I should probably try to just do it myself again.

 

 

I switched Stability back in only to be hit by a Flamethrower and taken out.

 

 

I decided now my best bet was to try and bait Camerupt into using Earthquake himself. I was getting rather desperate at this point to just hit the damn Grumping!! The Camerupt adamantly refused to take the bait, though, and continued to use Flamethrower to take out Faith.

 

 

Grumpig hit Joy with a Confuse Ray, but thankfully, Joy managed to attack through the confusion and finally take out Grumpig!

 

From here, it was just a matter of dealing with Camerupt. But that should be pretty simple.

  

Anticipating another Earthquake, I switched into Bliss while Trust used Protect. Then, a Shadow Ball and Earthquake later and Camerupt was down as well.

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

 

Of course, depending on the remaining starter, you might battle one of the other peons, Verde or Rosso, in Bluno's place. Their teams are identical save for Camerupt and Shadow Croconaw being replaced with their respective starter and its coverage, the same ones as in the Snagem Hideout. 

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

With Bluno defeated, the Shadow Pokemon Research Lab has been cleared out again and we have one more shadow pokemon to check off our list! Now, there's only three pokemon remaining on our Snag List: The Shadow Stantler we'd failed to snag before as well as a Shadow Smeargle and Shadow Ursaring uncovered by Nett on the Data ROM. Slowly but surely, we're making it there! Next time, it's back to the streets until we get another lead!

[Aura]

On our way out of the Shadow Pokemon Research Lab, we're met with an email from Nett mentioning that the P*DA can also receive images! He sends an image of Megg and her Shroomish as a test for the feature, this might be useful in the near future to identify suspicious characters. 

After leaving toward any destination, we're met with another email, this one from Bitt, mentioning a rumor that Team Snagem had managed to repair one of their giant Snag Machines. That definitely can't be good! We're going to have to get rid of that before it causes more problems! 

So, we head back to the Snagem Hideout! On arrival, we'll get yet another email mentioning sightings of a Shadow Ursaring and Smeargle as well as another email detailing an update to our snag list including a newly uncovered Shadow Shuckle.

  

As we explore the inside of the hideout this time, we'll find that, alongside the trainers from before, there are now a few more blocking our way to the snag machines. Much like the Cipher Peons ambushing us at the entrance, these trainers will rotate at various chokepoints deeper in the hideout. These are the trainers we battled back in The Under Subway and they're all ready to take you on again, giving you another chance at snagging their Shadow Pokemon, including the Stantler I'd missed before!

  

 

The first trainers are Bodybuilder Lonia & Piloswine and Rider Nelis & Sneasel

 

 

The next pair of trainers are Hunter Ferna & Gligar and Chaser Liaks & Stantler

All of these shadow pokemon are level 43. If the you need to battle the opposite trainer, just leave the room and come back and the other should be in their place. 

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

When we finally reach the Snag Machines we saw before, we'll come across a Snagem Member, Biden, who reveals that the snag machines were broken beyond repair. The rumor about the Snag Machines was spread because Team Snagem knew it would lure you here so they could get their revenge on you! He then challenges you to a battle!

 

Team Snagem Biden & Smeargle, Lv. 45

Biden comes at you with a simple team of nothing but Smeargle. Smeargle can be a little scary since they can theoretically know any combination of moves, however, they're very lacking in stats so it's pretty easy to deal with them before they can even get the chance to get an attack off. As you can probably expect from a guy with a team full of Smeargles, his final pokemon is the Shadow Smeargle mentioned earlier. My first time through, I actually accidentally killed this thing trying to reduce its HP. Thankfully, it's just a matter of exiting out to the world map and returning to get another chance to snag that Smeargle.

Actually snagging this thing was quite a pain because of how fragile it is. It also has the ability Own Tempo, so I wasn't even able to rely on Confusion Damage like I normally do for weaker pokemon. The best I could do was bring Balance out and try to bait him into attacking Balance so that I could use Endeavor to reduce his HP without KOing him. Needless to say, this took several turns longer than it should have, but eventually, it ran out of PP for DoubleSlap and started using Shadow Rush to attack me which meant recoil damage and, by extension, an easier snag! Eventually, I was able to catch it in a Timer Ball!

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

As you make your way to the makeshift exit, you'll find yourself face-to-face with yet another member of Team Snagem: Agrev.

 

Team Snagem Agrev & Ursaring Lv. 45

Once again, Ursaring is rather low level, but unlike Smeargle, I was able to snag it pretty easily even at full health thanks to just Paralysis and an Ultra Ball.

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

We've made it out of the hideout in spite of Snagem's pathetic attempt at a trap, and we've made away with some more Shadow Pokemon! But, if Snagem is still trying to get back on their feet, we're going to have to have a talk with a certain someone. So, let's head back in and make our way to the boss' office on the second floor where, you guessed it, we'll find Gonzap himself. He looks to us and claims that this is his home turf, and broken up as Team Snagem is, he isn't about to accept a loss here.

It's been quite a while since I've felt the need to do a team summary before a boss fight, but this one actually can be rather difficult and his levels are, believe it or not, pretty much on par with mine!

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 65

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 65

Item: Spell Tag

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Shadow Ball, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 66

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 66

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 65

Item: Charcoal

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 65

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Snagem Head: Gonzap

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

 

Granbull Lv. 64 & Crawdaunt Lv. 64

 

 

Since I couldn't actually reasonably expect to get a one-hit KO on that Crawdaunt, especially with Granbull's Intimidate reducing Balance's attack, I instead went for a Light Screen from Faith while Balance continued to attack. Both of Gonzap's pokemon took the turn to set up their stats with Swords Dance and Bulk UP, but these were not the opponents to do so against. Another Brick Break and Crawdaunt was down and a Psychic could take care of Graunbull in spite of his increased defenses.

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

 

Machamp Lv. 64 & Armaldo Lv. 64

 

 

Again, a simple matchup, though Armaldo was a bit awkward to deal with, I was able to do some decent damage with Brick Break. In the meantime, he decided to go for Swords Dance to increase his attack which definitely was not a good precedent. Faith was able to take care of Machamp as expected, though.

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

Breloom Lv. 64

 

 

Another predictable turn. Armaldo was still enduring my attacks and Breloom went down to another Psychic. Armaldo continued to build its attack, it was becoming a very scary pokemon that I'd have to deal with soon.

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

Gyarados Lv. 64

 

 

Gyarados seemed simple enough to deal with.

 

 

I retreated Balance into Joy while Faith used Psychic to finish off Armaldo. What I definitely was not expecting, was that Gyarados decided to use Earthquake and completely demolish both Joy and Faith.

 

With my best counters to Gyarados taken out, I decided my best bet was to turn his attack against him. I brought out two of my tankiest pokemon and got to work Confusing Gyarados while going ham on it offensively and then using Protect and Detect to avoid damage from Earthquake every other turn. He soon caught on, though, and started using Dragon Dance. An extremely scary move, to be sure. Eventually, with two Dragon Dances up, Gyarados attacked Balance with a powerful Hyper Beam, yet Balance had somehow managed to hang on with a sliver of HP. From here, Gyarados couldn't attack on his next turn and so a new Shadow Ball and Brick Break combo took him out completely.

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

It should probably go without saying that Gonzap will have his level 47 Shadow Skarmory here if you failed to snag it back at Realgam Tower. Though which pokemon it replaces, I'm actually unsure. Both Serebii and Bulbapedia list it differently. Serebii claims that Skarmory replaces is Armaldo, but Bulbapedia claims it replaces Gyarados. I'm more inclined to believe Bulbapedia since Gyarados is at least a Flying-type and Serebii also lists... Growlithe on his team instead of Machamp for some bizarre reason. 

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

Upon defeating Gonzap in battle, he just shrugs off his loss. He refuses to give you the satisfaction of him asking for your motivation. He seems to already know the answer anyway. But Gonzap doesn't seem to have any intention of changing his ways and he swears that Team Snagem will rise to its former glory one day before leaving the room. It's worth noting that, even if you don't win this battle, if you've already snagged Skarmory then Gonzap will disappear never to be battled again. On your way out of his office, you may notice something shining on the table. As you go to pick it up, you'll find that it's a D-Disk! It looks like there's yet more to see in The Under, after all! I think we have our heading for next time~

[Aura]

It seems that we just keep finding ourselves back here. This time, it's because of the D-Disk Gonzap left in his office. I like to headcanon that he's secretly started to agree with our perspective, and had already made up his mind to leave the disk behind to give you a chance to infiltrate Cipher's final hiding place and snuff their shadow pokemon out for good. Regardless, we'll naturally need to see where this disk brings us. As we make our way to The Under, we get an Email from Bitt mentioning that he saw a dude with a really impressive head and sends us a photo of Miror B. standing in the UFO as it heads downward. In case you couldn't immediately connect the dots as to where to use this D-Disk, this Email should help you to figure it out. With the disk in hand, we set the UFO and climb aboard, headed deeper into The Under than we've ever been before!

There isn't much down here except for an old iron tunnel with a large gate. Nearby, we can pick up an item: The Steel Teeth! If you recall, there was an old man standing above the chasm who we couldn't understand very well. Maybe he dropped his teeth down here? It's a little gross, but we should probably return them to him. Picking up the Steel Teeth, we bring them back to the old man outside the Under Colosseum and he pops them back in...without even washing them...? And thanks us with the L-Disk. With this disk, we can finally make our way to that item box that's been lingering in the background this whole time to find out that it's... just an Amulet Coin. Well that's anticlimactic. There's nothing else here, so no more stalling. It's time to explore Deep Under!

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

Beyond the gate down here, there isn't much to talk about. As it turns out, this iron hallway happens to be the entrance to one final Colosseum: The Deep Colosseum which was created out of the old abandoned mineshaft down here. This is where the toughest trainers in the criminal world gather to test their skills against each other. Naturally, we're going to investigate. If Miror B. was spotted heading down here, then Cipher might be up to something. Of course, that means we're going to have to enter the competition.

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 66

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 65

Item: Spell Tag

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Shadow Ball, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 66

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 66

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 65

Item: Charcoal

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 66

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Deep Colosseum: Round 1

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

Battle 1: Hunder Dewig

  

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

Battle 2: Bodybuilder Palen

  

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

Semifinal Battle: Worker Toway

   

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

Final Battle: Cipher Admin Miror B.

 

Exploud Lv. 64 & Ludicolo Lv. 65

 

 

Unaware of which Luidcolo I was facing here, I decided to just play it safe and focus all of my firepower on Ludicolo just in case it happened to be the one with Ice Beam, which I was pretty confident it was. Of course, it would probably take the first turn setting up Rain Dance, so I started with a Flamethrower and took the opportunity to use Toxic on Exploud so that his HP would still drain over time. After the Rain Dance, a Shadow Ball and Dragon Dance was able to take Ludicolo out.

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

Ludicolo Lv. 63

 

 

As expected, another Ludicolo took its place while Exploud focused on trying to take out Trust. This Ludicolo was going to take significantly longer to take out and, as I unfortunately discovered, the one I'd taken out was not the one with Ice Beam, this one hit Bliss with a hard Ice Attack. Bliss was able to hang on with some HP, but it wasn't exactly looking pretty. We dealt as much HP as we could to the Ludicolo before Bliss went down.

 

 

In Bliss' place came Balance who was able to deal with the second Ludicolo with a simple Brick Break. At this point, there was no purpose in targeting Exploud since his poison damage was starting to build up.

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

Ludicolo Lv. 64

 

 

Who ever would have guessed his next pokemon was another Ludicolo? Exploud used Extrasensory to hit Balance with surprising force. The two of these pokemon weren't quite able to finish off Ludicolo before it was able to take out Trust.

 

 

In Trust's place came Faith. At the end of the turn, the Toxic Damage and finally caught up with Exploud, causing him to faint.

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

Armaldo, Lv. 65

 

 

Next up was Armaldo and this battle was shaping up pretty nicely. A Psychic on Armaldo and Brick Break on Ludicolo and the battle was won! 

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

If you have failed to snag Sudowoodo during your battle with Miror B at Pyrite Cave as well as your rematch at Realgam Tower, then here is where you'll be able to battle Miror B. as many times as you need to snag his Sudowoodo which will continue to take the place of Armaldo until you snag it. As you can probably tell by now, the Deep Colosseum's main purpose is to give you extra chances to snag the shadow pokemon of all four of the Cipher Admins. It's definitely not ideal, but you will be able to snag all of these pokemon here.

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

Your prize for completing Round 1 of the Deep Colosseum is TM12: Taunt. After receiving this TM, you'll receive an email from Nett who mentions rumors of a man named the "Deep King" who is apparently a really powerful pokemon trainer well known among citizens of The Under.

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

Deep Colosseum: Round 2

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

Battle 1: St. Performer Regol

  

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

Battle 2: Fun Old Man Gorbel

  

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

Semifinal Battle: Bandana Guy Lobert

   

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

Final Battle: Cipher Admin Dakim

 

Claydol Lv. 63 & Solrock Lv. 64

 

 

Anticipating that Solrock to set up Sunny Day, I went ahead and went for Surf on the two opponents before me, and Shadow Ball on Solrock to try and rack up as much damage as I could. To my surprise, both opponents instead went for Earthquake which didn't serve his needs very well. The next turn, I was able to take out Solrock with Shadow Ball.

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

Swampert Lv. 65

 

 

Swampert took the place of Solrock while Claydol went for a SolarBeam. It seems he was hoping for Solrock to set up Sunny Day this turn. I focused Shadow Ball and Ice Beam on Claydol to take it out before its Solar Beam could be unleashed, but all it took was Shadow Ball.

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

Flygon, Lv. 64

 

 

Stability was able to get its Ice Beam off on Flygon, knocking it out as well.

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

Houndoom Lv. 65

 

 

Houndoom happened to be on the unfortunate receiving end of an Earthquake from Swampert, so he wasn't able to stay around for very long, either. This same Earthquake did take out Stability, though.

 

From here, I just brought out Faith, set up Reflect and Light Screen, then proceeded to barrage Swampert with attacks until it went down.

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

Naturally, Houndoom will be replaced with Dakim's Entei if you haven't snagged it at Mt. Battle or Realgam Tower.

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

For clearing Deep Colosseum Round 2, your reward is TM48 Skill Swap. You'll also get another email from Nett who mentions that he's gathering information on the Deep King now. In particular, he's curious about what pokemon the Deep King uses.

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

Deep Colosseum: Round 3

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

Battle 1: Bodybuilder Varug

  

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

Battle 2: Rider Shatol

   

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

Semifinal Battle: Researcher Zogo

  

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

Final Battle: Cipher Admin Venus

 

Blissey Lv. 65 & Dusclops Lv. 64

 

 

I really don't think I could've had a worse lead here. I immediately retreated both of my pokemon into a setup more fitting. This unfortuantely gave Venus a leg up on me.

 

 

Thankfully, Blissey's Attract missed Trust. Dusclops tried to attract Joy, but swapping her out with a Male Pokemon stopped that attempt as well. From here, a simple Brick Break was all it took to take care of Blissey.

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

 

Raichu Lv. 63

 

 

Dusclops confused Trust with Confuse Ray but Shadow Ball got through and hit him. From here, I retreated both of my pokemon once again in an attempt to throw off her strats.

 

 

I switched into Stability and, although Duclops got the Confuse Ray off and Raichu hit Bliss with a Thunder Wave, I went for Earthquake anyway along with a DragonBreath on Dusclops. Stability was stopped by confusion, but I was still at least able to get DragonBreath off in spite of Bliss' paralysis. I decided to leave Stability in while Bliss retreated to cure her paralysis with Natural Cure.

 

 

I brought out Umbreon who was able to take Stability's Earthquake like a champ while it took out Raichu and nearly finished off Dusclops who again tried Attract on Bliss and failed.

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

Meganium Lv. 64

 

 

Meganium was our next foe and I obviously wasn't going to leave Stability in for it. I had Trust go for Shadow Ball on Dusclops to finish him off.

 

  

Meganium's Giga Drain did next to nothing against Bliss while Shadow Ball was able to take out Dusclops!

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

Milotic Lv. 65

 

  

A Flamethrower wasn't quite able to finish Meganium off, and Meganium used Attract to stop Trust from attacking.

 

  

On the next turn, Bliss was able to take out Meganium while I swapped out Trust for Joy. Milotic went for an Ice Beam but it wasn't enough to take out Bliss. Bliss hit Meganium with another Flamethrower to take it.

  

From here, a couple more Thunderbolts was all it took to finish off Milotic.

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

Can you guess what I'm gonna say next? Yup, if you haven't snagged it in The Under or Realgam Tower, then you'll be able to snag Venus' Shadow Suicune here as well.

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

For completing this round, you're rewarded with TM44: Rest and Nett sends you another Email with further information on the Deep King, mentioning that he uses that Shadow Shuckle we'd discovered previously! That makes him a priority target we'll have to find! For now, we'll just have to keep battling.

I went ahead and taught Dragon Claw to Bliss. While the occasional Paralysis from DragonBreath was nice, the lower power was definitely a struggle I've been feeling this whole game.

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

Realgam Colosseum: Round 4

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

Battle 1: Chaser Drook

   

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

Battle 2: Roller Boy Dult

   

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

Semifinal Battle: Hunter Ophel

  

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

Final Battle: Cipher Admin Ein

 

Crobat Lv. 65 & Manectric Lv. 65

 

 

I figured Ein would lead off by trying to poison Stability and Paralyze Balance before using Fly with Crobat to stall for time. So, I decided to try and get damage on Crobat while I could. I used Ice Beam on him but was caught by surprise when he used Toxic on Balance instead. The next turn, I used Detect and Earthquake but Crobat hit Stability with Confuse Ray instead of Flying. I decided to leave Quagsire in in spite of the confusion and continue using Ice Beam on Crobat while Balance continued to use Brick Break on Manectric. Soon enough, Manectric went down but Quagsire wasn't able to hit Crobat with Ice Beam while Crobat started using Bite to attack.

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

Rhydon Lv. 63

 

 

Any turn now, Stability would be able to snap out of confusion. Instead of attacking with Balance, I decided to retreat.

 

  

I brought out Bliss in anticipation of an Earthquake. Stability was able to get a Surf off this time and take out Rhydon. 

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

Mantine Lv. 64

 

  

Mantine came next and unfortunately, Quagsire wasn't going to be taking many more hits and went down to one more Bite from Crobat.

 

  

With the LightningRod out of the way, I was comfortably able to bring out Joy to finally take care of Crobat who was unfortuantely able to get a Confuse Ray on Bliss.

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

Gyarados Lv. 64

 

  

I was swapped out Bliss in order to cure her confusion and used Thunderbolt to make quick work of Gyarados before it could get an Earthquake off.

  

Now, it was just a matter of attacking Mantine until it went down.

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

If you haven't snagged Raikou at the Research Lab or Realgam Tower, then you'll get your remaining chances here, just like the others.

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

Your reward for clearing Round 4 is TM02: Dragon Claw. You'll get yet another email from Nett, this time mentioning that the Deep King has entered the Deep Colosseum challenge and that we'll need to enter in order to have a chance at battling him and snagging his Shadow Shuckle! That's right, unlike all of the colosseums before, the Deep Colosseum has one more round! A fifth round! This will be our final Colosseum challenge for the story mode!

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

Deep Colosseum: Round 5

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

Battle 1: Rider Nelon

  

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

Battle 2: Athlete Lorge

   

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

Semifinal Battle: Hunter Grons

  

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

Final Battle: Deep King Agnol

 

Shedinja Lv. 68 & Girafarig Lv. 68

 

 

Leading with a Shedinja is a decision that makes absolutely no sense to me, but it's the decision Agnol went with, so I suppose I won't argue with the Deep King. I went for a Shadow Ball to easily take out Shedinja while Balance went for a Brick Break on Girafarig.

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

Skarmory Lv. 66

 

 

Skarmory came next and, anticipating a Toxic, I used Confuse Ray to try and stunt its attack while retreating Balance into Bliss to fight back.

 

 

To my surprise, Skarmory just went for a Steel Wing. No Toxic strat at all here? That's pretty much the only thing Skarmory is known for in this gen, so I'm shocked it didn't work out like that. Bliss went for a Flamethrower to make quick work of Skarmory but it unfortunately didn't faint.

 

 

For the next turn, I retreated Trust for Stability so that I could start damaging Girafarig again. In the meantime, Agnol used a Full Restore on his Skarmory to heal off the damage. A really bizarre decision when faced with a 100% accurate attack, but his HP returned right back to where it was. The next turn, an Earthquake and another Full Restore. I took out Girafarig and Skarmory's HP was once again right where it was before.

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

Kingdra, Lv. 70

 

 

Kingdra came out next! I used Ice Beam on Skarmory to take him out while Bliss used Dragon Claw to deal with Kingdra. Kingdra was able to hold on, but Skarmory was outta there!

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

Sableye Lv. 69

 

 

I went for Surf with Stability while Bliss hit Kingdra with another Dragon Claw.

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

Shuckle, Lv. 45

 

 

The last Shadow Pokemon on our snag list was finally here! I was a little worried when I realized it was still so low level and I was hitting it with a super-effective attack, but thanks to Shuckle's insanely high special defense, it only did about half its health. For the next turn, I had Bliss take care of Sableye with Dragon Claw while I throw a single Net Ball at Shuckle for a successful snag! And with that, Deep King Agnol was defeated! Honestly, for as much as he was built up, I was expecting his team to be far more dangerous than it actually was. He was a pretty major pushover all things considered. The only thing threatening about him is that his team reaches as high as level 70 but none of his pokemon are actually all that dangerous.

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

Upon defeating Agnol, you're only rewarded with prize money. Unfortunately no more TM's can be obtained from here. Now, our Snag List seems to be complete with 47 Shadow Pokemon! Now, with no new updates, we can move on to purify our 7 remaining Shadow Pokemon which is what we'll be doing next time!

[Aura]

With Agnol defeated, we have all of the shadow pokemon available to us, so we'll now make our way to Mt. Battle to purify the remaining shadow pokemon! But on our way there, we get a highly unexpected email. The Athlete from Phenac City is asking us why we attacked them with our pokemon all of a sudden! These are pretty serious allegations, so we shouldn't just let this rest!

When we go to Phenac City to talk to him, he affirms that he was the one who sent the email and demands an answer from you. When you deny his story, he refuses to talk to you any further. This is an unsettling story, but for now, we'll just have to pay it no mind. As we leave for any other destination, though, we'll receive yet another email from Bitt who mentions that he caught you on camera, sending you a photo of... You! Attacking that very same Athlete with a Togetic! Returning to Phenac City, you receive a message from Nett telling you to check the TV where we find footage of the incident being broadcast to the entire region!

 

It seems to depict, clear as day, Wes and a Shadow Togetic. This isn't good, someone is clearly stealing our identity and tarnishing our reputation!

I try to return to The Under to speak with the kids about this when we receive another email about the News. So, I turn around and head back to Pyrite to listen to the broadcast.

 

This time, it's a live broadcast from the scene of this very same trainer at Outskirt Stand! This time, he's battling Rider Willie. If this is a live broadcast, that means he's still there! We're going to have to get there before he leaves! I strongly recommend you save it before you go, however. Remember how  i said there was one particular Shadow Pokemon I was especially uncertain as to whether or not it was missable? Well, this is it! As soon as you go to the Outskirt Stand, you'll be forced into a battle, so hopefully you have some Pokeballs prepared. Worst case scenario, you can always trade a pokeball in from a GBA game and use the Pokeball Glitch to get infinite uses out of it.

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

When we arrive at Outskirt Stand, indeed we find someone disguised as Wes standing at odds with Rider Willie as a newscaster, Ancha, reports on the incident. I've always understood this to be the very same newscaster that reported for The Under Times, but apparently this is actually a generic trainer class model that we haven't seen yet since it's delegated to another mode, so I suppose that claim isn't necessarily confirmed. Everyone is shocked to be seeing double as we arrive on scene. It's only natural that this is going to lead to our doppelganger challenging us to a battle to silence us.

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

My Team:

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

Faith (Espeon M); Lv. 66

Item: TwistedSpoon

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Psychic, Light Screen, Reflect, Helping Hand

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

Trust (Umbreon M); Lv. 66

Item: Spell Tag

Ability: Synchronise | Moves: Shadow Ball, Toxic, Protect, Confuse Ray

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

Joy (Ampharos F); Lv. 67

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderBolt, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Protect

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

Stability (Quagsire F); Lv. 68

Item: NeverMeltIce

Ability: Water Absorb | Moves: Earthquake, Amnesia, Surf, Ice Beam

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

Bliss (Altaria F); Lv. 67

Item: Charcoal

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Flamethrower, Dragon Dance, DragonBreath, Earthquake

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

Balance (Hitmontop M); Lv. 68

Item: Blackbelt

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Detect, Focus Energy, Brick Break, Endeavor

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

Shady Guy Wes

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

 

Armaldo Lv. 68 & Milotic Lv. 68

In case it isn't immediately obvious, this identity thief has no originality at all. Even his team is just mimicking the strongest pokemon of the admins we've fought before. That's right, his team is almost entirely comprised of the pokemon that substitute the shadow pokemon of the four cipher admins and the Gyarados from Gonzap's team. 

 

 

I led off with Trust and Faith and immediately went for a Reflect from Faith and got a Toxic off on Milotic. The Reflect protected me from Armaldo's Rock Blast while Milotic set up a Safeguard to protect from further status afflictions. How frustrating! I used Psychic and Shadow Ball on Armaldo to hopefully take it out but it barely hung on. Milotic then hit me with a Hydro Pump which hurt pretty hard, so on the next turn I had Faith follow up with Light Screen while Umbreon just continued to attack as best he could. He used Hydro Pump again and even with Light Screen, it was still able to brute force a scary amount of damage. All I had to do was endure it, though, until Toxic took it down. That is, until the next turn where he dropped a Full Restore on Milotic to bring it back to full health and heal the poison. Oooh it's gonna be one of those battles. Thankfully, there was no saving Armaldo and he went down pretty easily on the next turn.

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

Houndoom Lv. 68

 

 

It wasn't too long before Houndoom came out to play next. His Crunch was enough to take out Faith pretty comfortably.

 

 

I brought out Stability in Faith's place and went for Earthquake and Protect. Unfortunately, Houndoom's Crunch and Milotic's DragonBreath did an unexpected number on Stability, but she was still able to hang on and get her Earthquake off to take out Houndoom.

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

Manectric Lv. 68

 

 

Manectric came next and by this point, SafeGuard was down. If I wanted, I could afflict Milotic with Toxic, but at this point, that felt pretty unnecessary. So, I just went for Confuse Ray to stop her from attacking. Meanwhile, Stability tried to go for another Earthquake but of course Manectric also knew Crunch so she wasn't able to get it off in time.

 

 

This would've been the prime time to get Joy out here to take care of that Milotic, but Manectric probably had LightningRod just like Ein's which was going to make things difficult. I brought out Bliss to hopefully take Manectric out with an Earthquake. Sure enough, the next turn Bliss was able to get an Earthquake off, but not before suffering from a Thunder Wave. They both barely hung on and the opponent healed them both with two more Full Restores! I just went for another Earthquake and Protect followed by a DragonBreath to finish the job. Unfortuantely, due to the paralysis, Bliss had to endure a Thunderbolt but thankfully Milotic hit herself in confusion.

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

Gyarados Lv. 68

 

 

The next turn, he dropped yet another Full Restore on his Milotic. I quickly went for Confuse Ray on this Gyarados to try and turn its attack stat against it while Bliss tried for another Earthquake. Unfortuantely, Milotic snapped out of confusion this turn and hit Bliss with a solid Ice Beam, taking her out for sure. 

 

 

I really wanted that annoying Milotic off the field, so I brought Joy out next and went for a Thunderbolt and Shadow Ball combo. Gyarados hit itself in confusion while Milotic missed with a Hydro Pump. Trust's Shadow Ball was able to take Milotic out at the end of the turn.

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

Togetic, Lv. 20

No, that level is not a typo. This thing is indeed only level 20. You're going to need to be very careful in snagging this thing, especially considering I can't guarantee a second chance at battling this trainer. You'll especially want to be careful what moves you use to finish off this trainer's second to last pokemon. I strongly recommend using a Ground- or Ghost- type attack just in case the target goes down unexpectedly so as to avoid damaging Togetic as it's sent in.

 

 

Here, I used Confuse Ray on Togetic as it along with Recoil was most certainly the only way I'd get any damage on it without risking killing it entirely. Meanwhile, Joy's move was obviously to hit Gyarados with a Thunderbolt. Gyarados was able to get an Earthquake off, but Joy was thankfully able to endure it.

 

From here, Joy was able to hit Togetic with a Thunder Wave and I started throwing Ultra Balls at it. I recommend Nest Balls since it's level is so low, but I never actually got any. It didn't take long at all to snag the little guy! And with that, we've snagged all 48 Shadow Pokemon in the game! Well, that's a bit of a half-truth, but as far as we're concerned here in the US, there's nothing more to worry about except to purify these guys!

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

Upon defeat, the faker reveals himself to be a Cipher Peon named Fein and he retreats after tarnishing your reputation as a desperate act of revenge for dismantling Cipher. Unfortunately for him, our encounter was obviously broadcasted live, so everyone in Orre already knows the truth. It seems his little revenge mission was a failure.

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

Now, normally I'd leave this for another post, but I did promise that today we'd purify the rest of our shadow pokemon and I'm excited to do just that!

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

Escape (Mantine M); Lv. 33

Item: None

Ability: Swift Swim | Moves: Wing Attack, SuperSonic, BubbleBeam, Take Down

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

Warmth (Quilava M); Lv. 30

Item: None*

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Sunny Day, SmokeScreen, Dig, Flamethrower

*Originally held Charcoal

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

Sass (Croconaw M); Lv. 30

Item: Mystic Water

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Rain Dance, Scary Face, Bite, Surf

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

Relaxation (Ursaring F); Lv. 46

Item: None

Ability: Pickup | Moves: Faint Attack, Fake Tears, Lick, Slash

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

Wonder (Stantler M); Lv. 44

Item: None

Ability: Intimidate | Moves: Astonish, Hypnosis, Leer, Take Down

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

Poetry (Smeargle M); Lv. 46

Item: None

Ability: Own Temp | Moves: Sketch, Tail Whip, DoubleSlap, Iron Tail

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

Privacy (Shuckle F); Lv. 46

Item: None

Ability: Sturdy | Moves: Safeguard, Encore, Rest, Bide

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

Prayer (Togetic M); Lv. 23

Item: None

Ability: Hustle | Moves: Metronome, Charm, Sweet Kiss, Yawn

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

And with that, we have 48 Shadow Pokemon snagged and 48 Purified! We've come a long way since the beginning of the game... But where many people's interest in the game might die here, our journey has only just begun! Next time, we're going to have to build up a team for use in the other gameplay mode. We'll probably be taking some time to plan out our competitive team. Normally I don't have to think so hard about things this early in the generation, so there might actually be a bit of a hike in wait times here, hopefully making preparations isn't going to take too long!

[Aura]

Battle Mode

If you recall, when we first started up the game, there were two choices of modes. Everything we've done up until this point has been in Story Mode, and we're still not quite done with Story Mode. There are a few more small details I wanted to touch on there which we'll cleanup today while also dipping our toes into Battle Mode. First, I'm going to go into what we can expect out of Battle Mode, especially considering the very limited information on this game available to the public.

First of all, there are two options for Battle Mode: Colosseum Battle and Battle Now. We'll cover Battle Now a little bit later on during the Battle Mode cleanup. Instead, I want to delve into Colosseum Battle. This game mode is where most of the Pokemon Stadium influence can be found. When you first enter this menu, you'll see several options. First, there's a team registration window which you can use to register your team either from your Story Mode save file, or from a GBA title linked to the game using a GBA-GCN Link Cable, just like Pokemon Box. By registering your team from Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, you can use your teams straight from those games! There's also a menu allowing you to exchange PokeCoupons for items, just like at Mt. Battle in story mode. The selection of items and prices are the same, so there's nothing too notable about this. However, in this mode you can win PokeCoupons attached to a specific GBA title, allowing you to exchange them for items sent directly to that game! So, if you have a working battery, you can send one of the rare berries directly to your game and plant it to begin growing more.

As for the main focus of this mode, there are two in particular: Colosseum challenges and the Mt. Battle 100-Trainer challenge, as well as an option to continue a suspended Mt. Battle challenge. For now, we're going ot be focused on the Colosseum challenges. This is somewhat akin to Stadium Mode in Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2. However, instead of Poke Cup, Prime Cup, Little Cup, and Challenge Cup, we have a selection of various Colosseums we've visited in Story Mode, as well as two ominous ???? colosseums. The colosseums available to us are Phenac Stadium, Pyrite Colosseum, Under Colosseum, and Tower Colosseum. The first three have level restrictions set to 50, meaning no pokemon higher than level 50 can enter. Thankfully, there's no complicated total level rules at play, so just level all of your pokemon up to level 50 and no further. The Tower Colosseum has a level restriction of 100 so anything goes in terms of levels. Just keep in mind your opponents aren't going to scale to your level, so you're going to need to level all the way up to 100. This is essentially Colosseum's Prime Cup. Unfortunately, there's no transfering a team of level 100 pokemon in from Red and Blue this time so it seems there's no getting out of manually leveling up.

Aside from the levels, the rules for colosseum battles are consistent. These are the pretty standard clauses and such from Pokemon Stadium. Things like no two pokemon of the same species, no duplicate held items, no two pokemon asleep or frozen, etc. The restrictions on items and Pokemon are are rather unclear.  One of the rules mentions not all items are allowed, but I haven't the foggiest clue what items wouldn't be allowed, my only guess is perhaps the Enigma Berry which I believe unknown items are changed to by default if they find their way into the game, perhaps other event-only items, or items exclusive to future titles also won't be allowed. As for Pokemon, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem there are any pokemon restrictions. Pokemon Stadium wouldn't allow you to use legendaries like Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-oh, Mew, and Celebi so I would imagine this game to have similar restrictions on Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza as well as Jirachi, just like the Battle Tower, but this doesn't seem to be the case. But as far as I can tell, as long as you can legally get these pokemon within the level restrictions, they're all perfectly legal. 

Also just like Stadium, these colosseum challenges in this mode feature eight battles instead of the typical four. Each trainer comes in with a full team of six and selects three pokemon to use.

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

Preparation

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

So, we have a bit of a problem. Obviously, we can't just use our Story Mode team for the level 50 colosseums as our pokemon are well above 50 and rapidly approaching 70. Thankfully, all hope is not lost. Looking back on my teams from Ruby and Sapphire, I've found that the majority of my team from Sapphire is below level 50! The only exception being Kyogre who I don't think I'd want to use at level 50 anyway. The downside to this idea is that I'll be getting rid of my main source of rain on my team built around Rain. However, my team was built in such a way that the rain really wasn't totally necessary and I think this team will be manageable even without it. I'll need to find a replacement for Kyogre though and, thankfully, my Ruby team also has a single pokemon that is exactly at level 50: Shiftry! 

So, I figured it's worth a shot to at least see how well this team goes, and I'd have to make some adjustments to make the team more playable with the given changes. In order to do all of this, I think it's time to switch back over to Story Mode real quick.

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

Remember how I mentioned that the trade machine in Phenac City's Pokemon Center is now available? Well I think it's finally time for us to make use of it. But while we're here, I think I should address what I said earlier about how it was a half-truth that we'd snagged all the shadow pokemon in the game. You see, there actually are still some Shadow Pokemon that remain unused in the international version of this game. This is because the Japanese version of this game actually had e-Reader compatibility. This Pokemon Center not only had a trade machine, but also a scanner room where you could scan e-Reader cards to take on a special battle challenge called Panel Battle. This e Room could also be found inside the left door in Phenac Stadium. Neither of both of these rooms would only be made accessible after defeating Evice, just like the Trade Machine. Here, you would enter a VR capsule and battle with virtual trainers by scanning them in using e-Reader cards. After clearing each of the three difficulties, you would be challenged by a real person outside of the VR capsule who has a unique Shadow Pokemon:

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

Chaser ボデス (Bodesu)

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

  

Sabeleye Lv. 40, Grimer Lv. 41, Gulpin Lv. 40

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

Togepi Lv. 20

Shadow Rush [Metronome], Charm, Sweet Kiss, Yawn

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

Hunter ホル (Horu)

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

  

Qwilfish Lv. 51, Skitty Lv. 51, Duskull Lv. 50

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

Mareep Lv. 37

Shadow Rush [Thunder], ThunderShock, Thunder Wave, Cotton Spore

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

Bodybuilder ワーバン (Wabban)

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

  

Murkrow Lv. 60, Claydol Lv. 60, Steelix Lv. 60

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

Scizor Lv. 50

Shadow Rush [Fury Cutter], Metal Claw, Swords Dance, Slash

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

As you can see, most of these pokemon aren't very interesting. They're mostly just prevolutions of shadow pokemon available elsewhere in the game. Mareep is an especially strange choice considering you can snag a Flaaffy with a near identical moveset from a trainer who can be infinitely rematched since the very beginning of the game. Considering you have to beat the game in order to even have access to this room, this is an extremely bizarre decision. I'd expect this to be something more like a Pikachu at least. Shadow Togepi is a bit more interesting since you can snag it without the need to go through all the rigamarole necessary to snag Feins' Togetic, but Shadow Scizor is a massive outlier since Scyther is unobtainable anywhere else in the game or in Ruby and Sapphire and Scizor on its own is an exceptionally rare pokemon, even in games where Scyther is accessible due to his difficult evolution condition.

Unfortunately, all three of these pokemon are buried behind unused elements in the international version of the game since the e Room was made inaccessible in the international release due to the failure of the e-Reader.

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

As for what we came here for? Well, let's get to trading!

     

I went ahead and traded most of my Story Team with my team from Sapphire version except for Leviathan as well as Seeding from Ruby. Then, I brought this team of sub-level-50 pokemon up to Mt. Battle for some quick grinding, just to nudge them up to level 50, paying extra care to ensure that none of them level beyond 50, which is a bit more tricky in Colosseum's double battles, but this is the fastest way to level these pokemon up. Thankfully, since Wes isn't the OT, it's even easier to level these pokemon up! It didn't even take one trip through Area 7 for each of them to reach level 50. The lowest-level pokemon were Melon and Pumpkin at level 47.

So, say hello to our level 50 team for Battle Mode! Note, for convenience sake so that I don't have to worry about my GBA battery dying on me or my cartridge shaking loose (this is a very old copy like I said in my Sapphire playthrough, this is the very same cartridge I grew up with so it's faced a lot of wear and tear over the years), I'll technically be using this team as a Story team, but if you play straight from your cartridge, the trainer from your save file will be loaded instead! So, I'll be using the face of the real trainer behind these pokemon, even though it's technically Wes battling in my actual playthrough.

Lastly, taught Blaziken Sunny Day over Bulk Up to give Shiftry some more usability. This didn't actually mess with the synergy of my team too much because, in an effort to make the team playable before getting Kyogre during my Sapphire playthrough, I made sure to build my team in such a way that it didn't rely too heavily on rain.

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

My Team:

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

Cherry (Blaziken M); Lv. 50

Item: King's Rock

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Brick Break, Sunny Day, Mirror Move, Blaze Kick

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

Coconut (Ludicolo M); Lv. 50

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Rain Dish | Moves: Fake Out, Surf, Ice Beam, Protect

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

Melon (Breloom M); Lv. 50

Item: Miracle Seed

Ability: Effect Spore | Moves: Giga Drain, Sky Uppercut, Mach Punch, Toxic

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

Lemon (Manectric F); Lv. 50

Item: Metal Coat

Ability: Static | Moves: Rain Dance, Thunder Wave, Thunder, Iron Tail

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

Pumpkin (Claydol); Lv. 50

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Levitate | Moves: Earthquake, Psychic, AncientPower, Hyper Beam

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

Seedling (Shiftry M); Lv. 50

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Nature Power, Fake Out, Shadow Ball, SolarBeam

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

With our team brought together, it's time to return to Battle Mode and begin our journey! The three colosseums available for our level 50 team vary in difficulty with Phenac Stadium being labelled as Easy. We're going to need to complete all three, so may as well start from the top. Each colosseum has two variations: One for Single Battles and one for Double Battles. In order to complete this mode, we'll have to clear every colosseum in both formats.

Phenac Stadium -- Battle Mode [Single]

In case you're curious about the other potential pokemon these trainers could use, just like in Mt. Battle, you can click the name of the colosseum here to view Bulbapedia's list of participating trainers.

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

Round 1: Roller Boy Garlow

Starting off, we have some really exciting remix of the trainer battle theme from Ruby and Sapphire in the style of Colosseum! It's a nice change of pace. Even though I love the music from Colosseum, the music can get a bit redundant, so it's nice to hear something new!

  

Here we have the typical first opponent we've come to expect. A team full of unevolved pokemon. Though Garlow's a bit more advanced than what Stadium has brought us to expect. I would have expected, Wurmple and the like. Regardless, his team was really easy to stomp with just Cherry.

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

Round 2: Chaser Gucio

  

Gucio's team is full of Water pokemon, so she was easy to pick off with Lemon. She has a Barboach in her pool of pokemon, but I easily could have dealt with that using Giga Drain from Melon so it really didn't matter.

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

Round 3: Hunter Hasman

  

Hasman's team is all about Ground and Rock types. Again, easy pickings for Coconut. Hilariously enough, according to Bulbapedia, his Trapinch is holding a Silk Scarf despite not actually having any Normal attacks. Looking back, apparently this is a recurring trend as Gucio's Wailmer also has a Hard Stone despite not having any Rock attacks...

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

Round 4: Lady Stouner

  

Lady Stouner uses Ground and Grass-type pokemon... there's a joke to be made here, but I think it's best just to wrap this up. Cherry was able to make quick work of this one. Again, Cacnea has a useless held item with a Poison Barb but no poison attacks.

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

Round 5: Lady In Suit Oatley

  

Oatley specializes in Ice- and Normal-type pokemon. Conveniently all weak to Cherry.

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

Round 6: Newscaster Riesko

  

Here we finally have that Newscaster trainer class that is never battled once in all of Story Mode. Riesko mostly uses poison-types with Elektrike who is there... I'm... sure to cover something. Anyway, Claydol was a perfect counter to her entire team.

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

Seimifinal Round: Fun Old Lady Gularte

  

Gularte thought she would be clever by leading with her Wynaut. I led with Seedling and hit her with a Fake Out followed by a Shadow Ball which nearly KO'd the thing. She tried to set up Destiny Bond, but all I instead went for SolarBeam. I was actually able to take advantage of the recharge turn to ensure I'd be able to hit Wynaut immediately after Destiny Bond went down to take him out. Was it necessary? No, but it felt real damn good!

As for Duskull and Shuppet, just a couple of Shadow Balls was all that was necessary in that department.

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Kauson

With the final round comes new music! This time, a remix of Ruby and Sapphire's Gym Leader theme!

Here we have yet another exclusive trainer class for Battle Mode: The Supertrainer. This basic model has been used for some area leaders in Mt. Battle, but the generic trainer class itself wasn't seen anywhere. These are some of the toughest trainers in the game so you'll definitely need to watch out for them.

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

Ralts Lv. 50

               

               

I decided to lead off with Pumpkin, but unlike the rest of the battles, this wasn't such a clear cut victory. This had the potential to not remain a clean sweep all the way through. I used Earthquake to make quick work of Ralts.

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

Makuhita Lv. 50

               

               

Makuhita came next and this was another simple matchup.

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

Poochyena Lv. 50

               

               

Lastly was Poochyena who I was able to blast away with a Hyper Beam, simple as that.

Okay, so maybe I overhyped this battle a bit, but it is the easiest colosseum in the game. I'm pretty confident these guys are going to be using some extremely dangerous pokemon as we go forward. Even here, his team was far more impressive than any of his predecessors. Looking at his team in hindsight, it seems he has two separate strategies that he chooses depending on where your team's weaknesses lie. One team is built more around an all-out offensive with powerful attacks, the other is built around an all-enduring defense. Unfortunately, none of his stall tactics managed to work for him so I was able to sweep through his team, but he has some surprisingly dangerous moves, so don't underestimate your opponent!

For clearing the tournament, I was awarded with 500 Poke Coupons. Next time, we'll be taking on the Double Battle tournament!

[Aura]

Phenac Stadium -- Battle Mode [Double]

As I mentioned previously, each colosseum has two modes, Single and Double that each have a completely different set of trainers. Going forward, depending on how well things go in each colosseum, I'll try to do both single and double battle challenges in the same post. The double battle format is slightly harder, but I think that's partially due to the fact that I'm using an already-compromised team that's also built primarily for single battles. Still, this is only the Easy Mode challenge so if Pokemon Stadium is anything to go off of, things are going to amp up in difficulty before I know it. Hopefully, I can avoid the need to grind an entirely new team up just for Level 50 battles. I do have the means to EV train some, but I'd rather avoid that necessity if I can.

Since this is the first time for double battles to make their debut in this Stadium format, I suppose I should briefly mention how they work. Rather than choosing three pokemon out of the six in your party, both trainers will choose four pokemon. Other than that, the rules play out the same, just with Double Battles instead of Single Battles. 

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

Round 1: Rich Boy Marcon

   

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

 

With a lead of Cherry and Seedling, this whole team dropped like flies. It turns out these two make a pretty solid duo. Seedling can use Fake Out to stop one of the opponents from attacking while Cherry can set up Sunny Day. Then, Cherry can nail 'em with a solar-powered Blaze Kick while Shiftry can blast away with SolarBeam.

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

Round 2: Roller Boy Peres

   

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

 

This was the battle where I established another solid duo of pokemon on my team: Coconut and Pumpkin. Coconut has Protect so he can let Pumpkin use Earthquake to its heart's content. In addition, Coconut's Ice Beam smoothly clears out flying-types which Earthquake can't hit. Its Grass type means that, in a pinch, it also resists Earthquake so it should be able to take an accidental hit from Pumpkin to boot. Surf is good for picking off enemies that Earthquake didn't take out as well. This combo is even better to switch into if I had Lemon out in Pumpkin's place originally. That way, I can set up Rain Dance and then switch Pumpkin into a ground-type attack, but I suppose I'm thinking too far ahead. Double Battles are a lot more interesting than I think people give them credit for!

Anyway, between these two, it was another sweep without much to say.

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

Round 3: Lady Denslon

   

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

 

Once again, the duo of Coconut and Pumpkin was able to clear out the opposition easily enough. 

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

Round 4: Glasses Man Lamag

   

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

 

I came at this one with the duo of Coconut and Lemon, another good duo for similar reasons to Seedling and Cherry. Fake Out can help buy time for Lemon to use Rain Dance and then he can Thunder away while Coconut soaks up the HP with Rain Dish. Between Carvanha's Crunch and Zubat's Confuse Ray, though, this battle wasn't quite as smooth as I would have liked.

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

Round 5: Chaser Busen

   

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

 

There couldn't have been a better duo here than Cherry and Melon. Between Break Break and Sky Uppercut, most of Busen's team was completely defenseless save for her Ralts which was easily taken care of with a simple Blaze Kick instead.

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

Round 6: Bodybuilder Yagon

   

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

 

Her team was almost entirely fighting-types with two ground types. (Her other two pokemon were Machop and Makuhita). I felt like there wasn't a more perfect lead than Coconut and Pumpkin and victory was handed over just as easily as expected.

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

Semifinal Round: Fun Old Man Radle

   

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

 

This team was a rather annoying counter to mine. I decided to go with Cherry and Seedling again, Cherry mainly just to set up Sunny Day so that Seedling could get the benefit of Chlorophyll, but Blaze Kick could also deal some decent chip damage. I also had Pumpkin lying in wait, ready to drop some AncientPower or Earthquake if necessary, but I was ultimately able to overpower my opponents and come out on top!

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Tangut

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

 

 

This team took a bit of an unconventional approach. The moment I saw Wynaut in her party, I figured it would lead, so I'd have to get rid of that as quickly as possible. I tried to accomplish this by hitting Wynaut with Fake Out to stop it from attacking and then nailing it with Hyper Beam from Pumpkin, but the assault didn't do nearly as much as I would have liked. While Claydol recharged, I had Coconut take out Treecko with Ice Beam.

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

 

 

She next brought out Torchic which quickly fell victim to Protect and Earthquake, which as also able to take out Wynaut since he didn't get the chance to use Destiny Bond.

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

 

Lastly was Mudkip who went down to a simple Psychic and Surf.

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

And with that, Phenac Stadium Battle Mode is complete in its entirety! Just two more colosseums to go for level 50's before we unlock the final one! I've yet to really be challenged so far, but let's not get cocky just yet. Things are probably only going to get tougher from here. Next time, we'll get started on Pyrite Colosseum: Normal Difficulty!

[Aura]

Pyrite Colosseum -- Battle Mode [Single]

Today we begin on Pyrite Colosseum! The Medium difficulty level 50 colosseum. As mentioned before, we're going to take on both the single and double battle formats back to back in a single post this time. I think I forgot to mention it last time, but just like in Stadium, you can earn continues by winning a battle without losing a single pokemon. I mention this now because, with this challenge being more difficult than the Phenac Stadium, this is where you may find yourself having to be more intentional about trying to earn Continues. They're still not particularly important, I never found myself getting particularly close to losing a battle, but they're always good to build up for just in case. You never know when you might get finch or crit haxed the entire game.

       

Anyway, I'll be going in with the same team from before so let's get started!

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

Round 1: Glasses Man Omarl

  

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

I decided to lead with Lemon here. Omarl had a Vibrava so I was a bit worried that he might lead with that, but in such a case I could easily switch into Ludicolo. He didn't, so I instead went for Rain Dance. The unfortunate Swablu went for Fly, so I was able to snipe it right out of the air with Thunder. Following wthat, the rest of his team was a clean sweep.

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

Round 2: Researcher Kukla

  

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

 

I started out using Cherry for an easy KO against his lead Skiploom. When he followed up with Mareep, I switched into Pumpkin to take the predictable Thunder Wave before tearing through the rest of his team with Earthquake.

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

Round 3: Bodybuilder Seet

  

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

Seet's team was almost entirely Rock and Steel types, so Melon seemed like a solid lead. A few Giga Drains and Sky Uppercuts was all it took to seize this victory.

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

Round 4: Supertrainer Charl

  

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

 

This one was mildly annoying. I was fully prepared to deal with Charl's Vulpix, but it was unfortunately able to outspeed me when I tried to hit it with a Surf, so it was able to stop my attack in its tracks. Instead, I retreated into Cherry to take the Fire Blast Vulpix used and then took out the rest of her team with Brick Break. 

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

Round 5: Athlete Senton

  

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

  

Annoyingly, I managed to miss a Blaze Kick against Senton's Heracross, giving it a turn to move. Thankfully, it just went for Bulk Up. I wasn't able to take it out in one shot, but on the next turn, it only went for Bide, buying me a free turn to set up Sunny Day before delivering the finishing blow. Afterward came Sharpedo who would have gone down to a Brick Break had it not gone for Swagger instead, causing me to hit myself and then retreat into Melon who was then able to turn things around with a Giga Drain. Last came Chimecho who I brought Seedling out to take out with a couple of Shadow Balls. I do believe this was the first battle that took all three of my teammates working together. These battles are certainly getting more involved!

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

Round 6: Worker Retay

  

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

 

Retay's entire team was full of Normal Types, so it was easy enough for Cherry to take care of on his own, though the Furret put a bit of a wrench in my plan by going for Dig, making me retreat into Melon who could resist the attack and finish the foe off with Mach Punch. From there, a Sky Uppercut was able to finish off Retay's Spinda.

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

Semifinal Round: Teacher Carden

  

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

 

Carden's team was actually really well-balanced, so I had to be pretty careful with my choice of pokemon. Many of her pokemon were weak to Fighting attacks, so I decided to lead with Cherry, but keep Seedling on standby in anticipation that she'd probably lead with Alakazam. Sure enough, she did so I immediately retreated into Seedling to avoid the incoming Psychic Attack. A Shadow Ball was all it took from here to finish off Kadabra. Stantler was a bit of an awkward pokemon to face, so I retreated into Cherry again. I switched into a Bite and was expecting a Psychic Attack to follow up, so I went with Brick Break with the hope of finishing it quickly, but failed to take it out in one shot. Thankfully, it just went for Shock Wave, allowing me to finish it off. With her final pokemon, Cosola, I had plenty of options to dispose of it. I decided the safest was to go for Sunny Day to reduce the impact of any potential water attacks it could use against Cherry, then retreat into Shiftry to take it out with a powerful SolarBeam.

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Gally

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

               

                

Gally's team looked very defensive, but he didn't have much to defend against Electric, so I decided it best to lead with Lemon. I opened up with Rain Dance but was hit with a Thunder Wave. I went for a Thunder, but Nosepass had Magnitude. It didn't quite take me out, but it was able to do a significant chunk of damage. I'd hoped Thunder would be enough to take him out, but Nosepass was still able to hang on and I didn't want to risk another Magnitude taking out Lemon, so I retreated.

               

                

Thankfully, Nosepass was weak enough to where a Fake Out from Coconut was all it took.

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

               

                

He followed up with his own Rain Dish Lombre, and this Lombre was also holding Leftovers! It was going to be annoying taking him out like this, so I had to make up a different plan.

               

                

It was just spamming Water Pulse, so I retreated Coconut into Melon and tried to go for Toxic. Unfortunately, I missed, twice, and he was able to confuse me to boot, so I had to retreat back and forth again. I managed to find a rhythm to his movements, however. Every time the rain died, Lombre would set up Rain Dance again. So, I could use that turn for a free switch into Ludicolo and use a combination of Fake Out and Protect to stall for some turns until the rain died again so that I could switch back into Breloom and get another Toxic off. After successfully poisoning Lombre, it was just a matter of stalling until Toxic took him out.

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

               

                

With Nuzleaf, all I needed was Sky Uppercut to finish the battle, ending the Pyrite Colosseum single battle challenge! But we're not done yet, because there's one more to do today!

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

Pyrite Colosseum -- Battle Mode [Double]

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

Round 1: Athlete Busik

   

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

 

The unlikely duo of Cherry and Coconut were a big hep in this battle, dividing up their skills, we were able to make quick work of Busik's selected team.

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

Round 2: Athlete Tria

   

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

 

The duo of Coconut and Lemon was able to make quick work of this team between Rain Dance and THunder as well as Ice Beam and Surf, these opponents didn't stand a chance.

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

Round 3: Lady Sturk

   

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

 

A good lead yet again. No need to use Protect with Coconut, he was able to take Earthquakes just fine, so I was able to hold Staryu back while Pumpkin Quaked away, tearing through Sturk's whole team, no questions asked.

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

Round 4: Rich Boy Symin

   

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

 

Like Coconut, Seedling was also capable of enduring Earthquake really well without the need for Protect, so a Shadow Ball to take care of Abra while Earthquake dealt with the incoming Totodile and Slakoth easily. All that was left was the Cyndaquil which was just as easy to deal with.

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

Round 5: Hunter Golog

   

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

 

 

I got really sloppy with my choice of pokemon here. I'm not sure if I just wasn't paying attention or if it was a misclick, but somehow I ended up putting Melon in a battle where all of his attacks were resisted by every possible pokemon the opponent had except for one. I looked at this team of bug and flying types and decided to go with Melon instead of Coconut.

 

 

I set up Rain Dance and switched into Pumpkin, but both of the opponents zeroed in on it. It was able to get a Psychic off, but that wasn't enough to finish the job, nor was Lemon's Thunder. This made for a disastrous battle as the opponents zeroed in on my main out to most of Golog's pokemon. 

 

 

The rain sabotaged Cherry a bit, but we were able to take care of both of these opponents.

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

 

 

The next two took a couple of hits, the rain made it especially difficult to do a whole lot with Cherry, but I was able to overcome them a few turns later. Your lead is very important, make sure you pay attention when selecting your team!! This is a mistake I want to make sure I never make again.

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

Round 6: Worker Laber

   

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

 

The unlikely duo of Cocounut and Cherry was a big help here. Cherry was able to knock out Skiploom easily enough with Blaze Kick. Flaaffy took Skiploom's place and took Coconut's Surf along with Graveler who would have been taken out, but his Focus Band allowed him to hold on to 1HP! I thought this was rotten luck until his Graveler went for Magnitude. This was able to take out Cherry, but as a 1 for 1 with Flaaffy, so I'm satisfied with that result. In hindsight, I'm really not sure why he didn't send Vibrava out in Gravler's place, but I suppose the AI isn't quite that advanced at this difficulty level. It probably just saw an opportunity to afflict Cherry with a status condition first. With an Ice Beam, Vibrava went down as well.

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

Semifinal Round: Lady In Suit Grat

   

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

 

 

The Rhyhorn was a bit of a pain here because of Lightning Rod, so I'd have to take it out first before being able to use Thunder. Thankfully, coconut's Surf was more than enough to deal with that hassle.

 

 

When Marshtomp took its place, I expected a ground attack to target Lemon, so I retreated into Pumpkin. Unfortunately, Marshtomp targeted Lemon with a water attack instead, taking Pumpkin out with the help of Sealeo's Aurora Beam.

 

 

I brought out Melon to finally take out that pesky Sealeo with a Mach Punch.

 

 

The following turn, I hit Marshtomp with a giga drain and then the fight was over once it was down to Coconut's Surf to take out Kirlia.

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Mauri

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

 

 

I led off with Pumpkin and Seedling. My decision felt simple enough. I had Seedling use Fake Out to stun Vigoroth for the turn and tried to KO Machoke with Psychic. Unfortunately, I failed to KO it so it was able to get off a Cross Chop. Thankfully, Seedling was able to endure the powerful hit.

 

 

The next turn, I retreated Seedling into Coconut so that I could go for an Earthquake with Pumpkin. Vigoroth's Slash did a huge chunk of damage to Coconut as he came in, but Earthquake was able to do significant damage to Vigoroth as well as finish off Machoke.

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

 

 

I used another Fake Out with Coconut while Pumpkin went for another Earthquake to take out both foes.

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

 

Now that it was down to these two, a simple Earthquake and Protect was all it took to finish the job.

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

And with that, Pyrite Colosseum is clear, leaving us with just one more level 50 colosseum before we unlock our final trial! I've done some thinking about the future of this playthrough and decided I'm probably going to put the level 100 colosseum challenges off until near the end of the generation. I'll provide more details as to why I've made this decision, but I think things will flow a little better if we handle it in this way. Anyway, next time, we'll be headed off to The Under Colosseum: Hard Mode!

[Aura]

Under Colosseum -- Battle Mode [Single]

Where the difficulty started to ramp up in the Single Battle mode, this is where I really started to feel the lack of EV Training on my team. A lot of attacks that felt like they should have one-shotted their target instead left them with some excess HP. It's all just par for the course, though. Things are really starting to build up in difficulty.

      

Of course, I'll once again be using my Sapphire team since it's my only option for the level restriction.

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

Round 1: Rich Boy Sainz

  

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

This was a simple enough battle for Cherry to handle. Sainz had a Rhydon in his pool which could have forced me to switch, but he didn't select it for his team, so an easy win for me!

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

Round 2: Teacher Foshe

  

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

 

This could have been a clean battle for Cherry, but Foshe's Mawile decided to go for Attract which basically ruined my day. Retreating into Melon, I was able to take Mawile out and then brought Cherry back to finish the rest of the pokemon.

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

Round 3: Bodybuilder Glya

  

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

 

This battle was simple enough, I led with Lemon to use Rain Dance and Thunder to deal with Illumise. After that, she sent out Wailord perhaps expecting to take advantage of the rain, but it wasn't able to hold up to a Thunder. When Metang came out, I expected an Earthquake, so I retreated into Pumpkin. It turns out that it was just going for Brick Break. Lemon probably would have been fine staying in, but with Pumpkin all it took was a single Earthquake to finish the deal.

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

Round 4: Rider Fokil

  

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

  

I led off with Seedling here. As to be expected, Misdreavus led off with Perish Song to which I responded by switching into Coconut. He tried to trap me using Mean Look an then went for a second Perish Song, but the strategy doesn't exactly work in that order. Once Misdreavus' perish count fell to 0, it was KO'd and then I was able to switch Coconut out with Cherry against his Breloom. A Blaze Kick came next and, for Shuckle, I simply retreated back into Coconut and went for Surf to finish the job. Another easy win!

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

Round 5: Newscaster Sclim

  

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

  

Don't ask me how to pronounce that name. Schlim? Slime? Slim? Sklim? Sklime? 

Anyway, Cherry seemed like a solid lead to take out that Castform before it could transform, but unfortunately it managed to outspeed me! Like I said, this was where I really started to feel the lack of EV Training. It's definitely not typical for a Castform to outspeed a Blaziken and this was not a good precedent. Well, seeing this, I retreated into Seedling to take the incoming Weather Ball (Castform has literally one possible viable moveset so it's highly predictable). Unfortunately, Weather Ball was able to do a surprising, and worrying, amount of damage. I used a combination of Fake Out and two Shadow Balls to take the thing out. As for Lanturn, I was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I tried to stall as long as I could with Seedling so that the rain would die, but ultimately was taken out with Ice Beam. From there, I brought out Pumpkin who was able to take out both Lanturn and Torkoal with Earthquake.

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

Round 6: Hunter Rina

  

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

This one was very simple. I had Cherry to take care of Forretress, but Coconut was great against so much of Rina's team I decided to leave him out and just brute force Forretress with Surf since it wasn't particularly painful. After overcoming this, the Camerupt and Magcargo that followed were done.

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

Semifinal Round: Rider Kou

  

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

 

This was another case where I really felt the difference in EV training. A Psychic from Pumpkin dealt less than a third of Hariyama's HP. It took the opportunity to set up Bulk Up and on the next turn, it hit me with revenge which dealt less than half my health. Of course, the next turn I was damage ranged and it was able to take me out with only one more Revenge while holding onto a sliver of his own HP. I brought out Cherry next to make quick work of its remaining HP before using Brick Break to sweep through the rest of Kou's team.

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

Final Round: Bandana Guy Roblin

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

               

               

Roblin led off with a Rhydon. I was pretty confident it would go for an Earthquake, so I simply retreated.

               

               

Coconut has been known to take Earthquakes really well and sure enough, Rhydon was only able to deal about a quarter of my health. From here, I used Surf to take him out easily.

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

               

               

He probably thought he'd take advantage of Ludicolo's weakness to Flying when he sent out Tropius, but he clearly didn't expect an Ice Beam which took Tropius out in one shot!

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

               

               

Armaldo seemed like it would be simple enough, but he caught me off guard by using Hyper Beam! This was able to take out the remainder of Coconut's HP.

               

               

I brought out Cherry to hit him with a couple of Blaze Kicks. The cooldown on Hyper Beam gave me the chance to get a free hit in, and the second one brought him down to about 1/3 HP before he took Cherry out with Earthquake. For some reason, it hadn't even crossed my mind that Armaldo could probably learn Earthquake.

               

               

It was all down to Pumpkin versus Armaldo. Pumpkin was able to finish the battle with a Psychic before ending the game.

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

And with that, we've cleared the Under Colosseum Single division and earned 1500 Poke Coupons as our reward! But just like before, our job isn't done yet! We've got one more to do today!

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

Under Colosseum -- Battle Mode [Double]

The Double Battle division is, as always, slightly harder than the Single Battle divison. This was the division where I started to actually use up some continues at a rather worrying rate considering there's still one more level 50 division to go...

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

Round 1: Fun Old Man Sciet

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

 

 

This was a really annoying team to go up against. Right out the gate, Sciet's team was really well balanced so it was difficult to cover all my bases and decide on a good lead.  I went for Lemon and Coconut but of course he had to lead with his two poison-types. I didn't think they'd be too bad, so I stayed in and used Fake Out to stop Weezing's attack. Seviper used Poison Fang to hit Coconut pretty hard, but Lemon was able to get off Rain Dance. To follow up, I hit Weezing with a Thunder but it didn't go down. It used Sludge Bomb to take out Coconut! It's really easy to forget just how strong of an attack Sludge Bomb actually is!

 

 

Naturally, I brought out Pumpkin who was also hit by a Poison Fang from Seviper. I swapped my targets this time and hit Seviper with a Thunder while Pumpkin finished off Weezing with Psychic.

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

 

 

At this point, I wasn't going to be building up any continues off this battle, so I figured I may as well just go for Earthquake. In the meantime, Lemon went for Thunder and took out Spinda while Earthquake took out everyone else on the field, winning me the battle.

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

Round 2: Rider Orden

   

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

 

Orden's team was a little bit scary on the surface, but I quickly realized his team was full of almost nothing but OHKO attacks like Fissure, Guillotine, and Sheer Cold. Pokemon Stadium had its fair share of trainers like this as well. All he does is spam these OHKO attacks in an attempt to brute force the RNG. He'll rarely get anywhere with this strategy, but odds are he'll get one or two of these attacks off, so don't expect to earn any continues off of this battle.

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

Round 3: Guy Baben

   

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

   

This battle was the first one I had to use a continue on all because his Muk is holding a BrightPowder and kept making me miss my attacks! Thankfully, even though I hadn't actually earned any continues, it seems you either start with 5 for free, or they carry over from other challenges at the same colosseum. 5 Continues seems like kind of an absurd number to start with, but I'm definitely not going to argue with it. The second try, I was able to actually get some hits in to take out the Muk. Sunflora was able to take an obnoxious number of hits, but I was eventually able to KO it as well. By nature of how bulky all of Baben's pokemon were, this battle really came down to the wire and considering this is only battle 3, that is not a good precedent.

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

Round 4: Teacher Denaw

   

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

 

Thankfully, that disaster of a battle was followed up with one that I couldn't have scripted more cleanly. I led with Lemon and Coconut against two Fire-types. With the combo of Rain Dance and Surf, Camerput stood no chance and Torkoal barely hung on. She replaced Camerupt with Wailord while Camerupt just used Curse. The next turn, Thunder took out Wailord while Surf was able to take out Torkoal and get some free damage on Xatu as well. xatu of course went down to a Thunder and even if it managed to survive, it still had an Ice Beam coming.

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

Round 5: Rider Kibbe

   

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

   

This was another really down-to-the-wire battle that I wound up losing because of Bright Powder screwing me over. My first run, Kibbe had a Murkrow that ruined my entire battle because I missed it with Ice Beam. Even the second time around, things didn't go very smoothly. You see, my team's biggest weakness is Flying in case you haven't pieced that together by now. This was a concern I had as far back as the planning period for my Sapphire playthrough. Lemon does partially cover for this weakness, but setting up Rain Dance can be pretty slow and Thunder's accuracy just isn't reliable enough on its own for my tastes. Coconut does have Ice Beam to further help this coverage and Pumpkin does have AncientPower, but that can hardly be considered a coverage option. The problem with this particular battle is that it was just a perfect storm of weaknesses against my team. Under most circumstances, Quagsire would be easy to take care of with a Sunny Day and Solar Beam combo, but because of the abundance of Flying types on Kibbe's team, I was definitely going to need to use Lemon and Thunder, so I'd have to rely instead on Melon's Giga Drain which isn't quite as strong since Breloom is more of a physical attacker and Quagsire has some good special defense in spite of the quad weakness. In addition, the many Flying-types on Kibbe's team are really fast and capable of dishing out some heavy damage quickly, so I typically have to take them out first before I can focus on Quagsire. The problem with that is that, obviously, Quagsire has Earthquake which will tear through my Electric-type Manectric like paper. Of course, let's not forget that Melon also has a quad-weakness to Flying and my only out to Flying-types is Manectric which is countered by Earthquake. Bear in mind as well that this team was designed almost entirely with Single-battles in mind, so it's definitely not meant for double battels like this.

 

 

On my winning run, I led with Lemon and Coconut, Coconut used Fake Out to stop Quagsire's inevitable Earthquake while Lemon used Rain Dance and Dodrio used Drill Peck to take out Coconut in an instant.

 

 

Breloom came in next and Lemon was able to finish off Dodrio with Thunder.

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

 

 

Dodrio was replaced with Swalot which thankfully meant that it would be taking the full brunt of Quagsire's incoming Earthquake. It was able to survive, though, but the same couldn't be said for Lemon.

 

 

I was already down to my last two pokemon so things were getting rough. I went for Giga Drain with Breloom to take out Quagsire but it still managed to hold on. Swalot then used Sludge Bomb to take out Breloom leaving me with just Pumpkin.

 

Pumpkin went for Earthquake which was supposed to take out both of the opponents but only managed to finish off Swalot while Quagsire went for Brick Break, thankfully not knowing any Water-type moves.

 

And then came Noctowl. Whether or not I'd be able to turn this into a victory hinged entirely on whether or not I could handle this Noctowl on my own along with Quagsire's constant chip damage with Brick Break. I just resorted to spamming Hyper Beam. At one point, Noctowl had managed to put me to sleep with Hypnosis and started spamming Dream Eater, but thankfully this was resisted and I woke up in two turns. My health was really low now, but I used one more Hyper Beam to guarantee the KO on Noctowl. From there, all I had to worry about was Quagsire's damage. He brought me down to red with one more Brick Break. I was able to get the last laugh, though, when I finally hit Quagsire with an Earthquake for game.

I haven't been giving MVP much throughout this game, but if that wasn't an MVP-defining battle then I don't know what is! Pumpkin managed to endure so much and carry my entire team to victory! Looking at their move lists, though, I'm genuinely baffled by their choices of moves. Had Quagsire gone for Yawn or Noctowl gone for Aerial Ace at any point, I'm pretty confident I would not have won this battle. But let's not look a gift horse in the mouth. We'll take this win and move on! Let's just make sure not to lose the rest of our continues!

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

Round 6: Chaser Defren

   

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

  

Right away, I thought this was going to be a terrible time. However, this battle didn't prove to actually be all that bad. Thanks to a Fake Out, I was able to stall for time to set up Sunny Day, then used Brick Break and Solar Beam on the following turn to take out Milotic pretty well. Corsola was able to hit Seedling with an Ice Beam, but it wasn't too rough. Another Solar Beam and Blaze Kick and I could take out Corsola and nearly take out Meganium. With a Body Slam, Meganium was able to finish off Seedling, forcing me to bring out Coconut who used Ice Beam to take out Donphan while another Blaze Kick finished Meganium. Let's just be thankful that Meganium didn't stick around long enough to do some real damage.

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

Semifinal Round: Hunter Milag

   

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

 

This was another pretty straightforward battle. Between Earthquake, Fake Out, Surf, and Psychic, I was able to take out all of these opponents really smoothly with the only minor hiccup that Octillery's Octazooka nearly took out Pumpkin in one shot, but I was able to endure it and return it with a full-force Earthquake for the KO.

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Holoh

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

 

 

Now this was actually pretty funny. Out of all those difficult battles so far, this one was arguably the easiest battle in the entire tournament for me. This Plusle and Minun only spammed Thunder the entire time they were out. As we know from Stadium 2, Thunder's accuracy is actually cut in half by Sunny Day. By a combination of Fake Out and Sunny Day, I was able to jam their attacks and by focusing our attacks on just Minun, we were able to take it out, rendering Plusle effectively useless. It just took a Solar Beam and Blaze Kick to knock out Minun.

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

 

 

Illumise was also a joke. A Blaze Kick and a Shadow Ball and it was down. Meanwhile, Plusle was basically helpless, just hopelessly spamming Thunder and watching it miss wildly.

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

 

 

Lunatone was last and, as expected, it went down to a SolarBeam and Brick Break.

 

Now, we could finally gang up on the poor Plusle who went down before it could say "uh-oh."

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

And with that, the Under Colosseum is finished and we've finally unlocked our next destination: The Orre Colosseum! So, next time, we'll be headed there! I'm a little worried in regards to how well this team will perform in a colosseum that's much more difficult than this one, but here's hoping it's nothing we can't handle!

[Aura]

Orre Colosseum (Lv. 50) -- Battle Mode [Single]

And here we have the final challenge for our level 50 teams! You may have expected to see the Deep Colosseum, but as it turns out, the Orre Colosseum is the Battle Mode-exclusive conterpart to the Story Mode-exclusive Deep Colosseum. This long-lots colosseum deep in the desert has mysterious runes that make the colosseum and the stadium within it appear to be a pokeball within a trainer's hand. This lost colosseum is known only to the best of the best. In order to unlock it, you'll need to clear the other three Level 50 colosseums in both Single and Double format.

As expected, this colosseum is even more difficult than the Under Colosseum. If the pokemon in the Under colosseum weren't intentionally EV Trained, they most certainly are here. We've got some pretty serious level 50 teams here which we're going to have to force our ways through. I should mention that, due to the difficulty of this colosseum, I will be splitting this colosseum into two separate posts, one for each division.

      

Once again, we'll be entering with the same team. We struggled pretty badly with this team in the Double format last time, so things are going to be really rough going forward. Worst case scenario, I can wait and come back later when I have better resources to train up a better competitive level 50 team, but I'd rather avoid having to do that if possible. We've come so far with this team that it would feel like a waste turning back now.

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

Round 1: St. Performer Erion

  

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

Lemon had no chance of outspeeding Swellow under normal circumstances, so this felt like a quick loss when I saw that lead. However, I went for Rain Dance so that Coconut would be able to follow up better. Swellow went for Return which nearly knocked Lemon out but got paralyzed thanks to Static! At this point, the only thing I had to worry about was Erion's Flygon, but as you can see by the pokemon listed above, she didn't select her Flygon, so I was able to sweep the rest of her team with Thunder!

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

Round 2: Guy Ghols

  

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

Ghols was a huge pain my first time around because his Gligar is a really solid counter to everything on my team. Whenever he chooses Gligar, I have to go a really roundabout way of swithcing out and whittling its HP down with Fake Out. Thankfully, this time around, he didn't go for Gligar so I was able to sweep his entire team with Breloom. One thing to note, however, is that his Smeargle is shockingly fast. I've lost a few battles because he was able to outspeed even Lemon and Cherry! Ghols also loves to spam OHKO attacks, so you'll really need to watch out.

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

Round 3: Athlete Taot

  

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

 

I've come to understand from repeated battles against her, that Taot's Dusclops is basically helpless against Seedling if he has access to SolarBeam. So, I set up Sunny Day with Cherry, then retreated to avoid the incoming Earthquake. To my surprise, his initial attack was a Shadow Ball this time around, so I even avoided the painful initial Earthquake! Against Seedling, he'll try and use Imprison to stop me from using Shadow Ball, but all I need to do is spam SolarBeam to take him out. To follow up, he brought out Porygon2 which, again from repeat playthroughs, I knew had Ice Beam, so I retreated into Cherry. Porygon2 is a rather bulky pokemon, so it was able to take a brick Break, but all it could do was go for Tri-Attack which thankfully didn't get any special effects off. Porygon2 went down and Granbull came out to take care of Blaziken after taking a Brick Break. From here, I got to take advantage of one more thankful detail I've picked up on. It just so happens that, in the Orre Colosseum, Nature Power turns into Earthquake! So, I have a really powerful ground-type attack in my arsenal! This I imagine will prove extremely useful in the upcoming Double Battle challenge. It just might be that Seedling will prove his worth! With a Nature Power Earthquake, Granbull's remaining HP was depeleted!

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

Round 4: Fun Old Lady Ludum

  

This "Fun old lady" wasn't so fun for me. Her team was far too diverse to be battled comfortably with any selection of my six pokemon. On top of these three who arleady cover each other's weaknesses really well, she also has a Pinsir, Gyarados, and Ampharos. In addition, many of her pokemon know Hidden Power which can really catch you off guard. I've also learned due to unfortunate luck with RNG causing me to miss Fake Out among other critical attacks, her Espeon is holding BrightPowder. This is the lady who stole all my continues from me my first attempt. This battle is obnoxiously difficult.

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

   

Across my many losses, I've come to understand that she pretty consistently leads with Espeon, but not always. When she does lead with Espeon, she sometimes leads with Reflect, but sometimes, as I learned from the one time I went for Brick Break instead of switching out, doesn't. Judging by type matchups and her move choices, I'm pretty confident her Espeon's Hidden Power is Ground-type. Meanwhile, her Gyarados has Hidden Power Flying to get a decently strong STAB move he otherwise wouldn't have access to. That HP Flying is incredibly dangerous to my team, so I'm more than thankful he didn't use it this time around.

I led with Cherry and when I saw the Espeon lead, immediately retreated into Seedling. Thankfully, she didn't read the switch and went for Psychic rather than Reflect. This made taking Espeon out really quick and easy for Seedling. There isn't much at all Espeon can do against Seedling except spam a not-very-effective Hidden Power. A few Shadow Balls is all it takes to overcome Espeon. Mightyena takes its place and annoyingly reduces my attack with Intimidate. I can't leave Seedling out because Mightyena will go for Poison Fang, so I retreat into Cherry who I know, again from repeated failures, can take Poison Fang pretty well. Even if he gets badly poisoned, it shouldn't have too much of an impact since he's not going to be taking many big hits either way. A couple of Brick Breaks and Houndoom went down. Against Medicham, I just set up Sunny Day because it was my only hope. Medicham was able to take me out with Frustration, so I brought out Shiftry. Thanks to Chlorophyll, I went for a super-effective Shadow Ball before getting KO'd with a Hi-Jump Kick. My final hope was Pumpkin who would finish the battle with an Earthquake! Finally, I was able to move on to blind territory!

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

Round 5: Chaser Slaben

  

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

  

Slaben's strategy is rather predictable once his first lead blows up in your face. He likes to use Explosion with all of his pokemon, bringing the battle down to a 1v1. Once you pick up on this, it's pretty easy to counter. Just keep your best pokemon around. In my case, I led with Coconut but immediately retreated into Pumpkin who was able to take the explosion from Weezing. His Shiftry came in and actually caught me off guard with another Explosion when I retreated into Cherry. I actually had completely forgotten that Shiftry could learn Explosion. This took out Cherry and brought him down to just Golem. I sent Pumpkin out to finish Golem off, but my Psychic missed meaning he must have been holding a Bright Powder or Lax Incense. (I'm really loving the abundance of these items in case you can't tell). Since I only had a sliver of HP left, he was able to take me out with Rock Slide. Thankfully, Coconut was able to finish the deal with Surf.

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

Round 6: Cooltrainer Cosney

  

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

Just looking at Cosney's team, full of Swift Swimmers and Electric-types, it was obvious we were dealing with a Rain Team. If she was going to set up Rain for me, then there was only one obvious lead. I just spammed Thunder and her first two pokemon weren't even able to set up the Rain because I hit with both Thunders, taking them each out in one hit. The Mantine outsped me but was even so kind to set up Rain Dance to guarantee the final hit.

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

Round 7: Cooltrainer Morton

  

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

  

The biggest threat on this team was Bellossom. It led with Sunny Day but was able to survive a Blaze Kick. From there, it hit Cherry with a Sleep Powder! I had no choice but to retreat into Seedling to take the incoming Solar Beam and try to chip away at her health with Shadow Ball. This took a lot of finagling with switching out. Eventually, I was able to get Cherry to wake up and weaken Bellossom enough so that I could bring Seedling out to finish it off with Fake-Out. From there, Octillery was next and I was able to defeat him fairly well with SolarBeam. It took me out with Flamethrower though, forcing Coconut to come in and finish the job with another Fake-Out. Finally, Sabeleye survived a Surf and hit me with Confuse Ray. I had to cross my fingers and hope that Coconut could attack through the confusion since Cherry was still asleep, I couldn't guarantee that Coconut could take another hit and if it was down to Cherry, there was no telling when he'd wake up. Thankfully, Coconut was able to attack through the confusion and take out Sabeleye with Surf!

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

Final Round: Supertrainer Avos

With the final challenge of the Orre region comes a remix of the Hoenn Champion Theme! It's a bit of an underwhelming remix, but it's an awesome song regardless! This battle was really intense. I had six continues going in and won on my last one. I tried many different strategies. Her team consisted of the three Johto Starters as well as the Hoenn Starters, but this came with a surprising amount of type coverage.

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

               

               

I started out with Coconut and she led off with Meganium. I've had this thing crit me several times, really making me want to rip my hair out of my head. It was able to take Ice Beam really well but the worst it could do against Coconut was either spam Giga Drain to chip away at my health or use AncientPower in hopes of stat boosts. A few Ice Beams would take it down fairly easily. I was about to throw my controller when Meganium's first Giga Drain critted, though, putting me at a huge disadvantage for the rest of the fight, but that luck was more than made up for when my Ice Beam got the Freeze off, allowing me to finish off Meganium without a single hiccup.

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

               

               

Next up was her Typhlosion, which Coconut may have been able to handle, but I figured I'd want to keep Coconut around as long as possible, so I didn't want to take any chances with him just yet. An extra Fake Out just might come in handy.

               

               

Anticipating a fire attack, I decided to send out Cherry in Coconut's place. I went for a Sunny Day to help take this thing out. Cherry was able to outspeed and get the Sunny Day off, but Typhlosion caught me off guard with an Earthquake, taking Cherry out with ease.

               

               

From here, my plan was coming together. I brought out Seedling and, thanks to Chlorophyll, I was able to outspeed this thing! With Fake Out followed up by a Nature Power Earthquake, I was able to take out Typhlosion in one hit! It all came down to her final pokemon!

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

               

               

Her final pokemon was Feraligatr. I was distraught when I found that my SolarBeam didn't take it out and thought the game was over. However, Ferlaigatr's Ice Beam didn't deal quite enough to take out Seedling which I was more than thankful for. I went for another SolarBeam but it still was just barely not enough! Feraligatr went for one more Ice Beam and all I could hope for with Seedling was the Focus Band to kick in. Unfortunately, it didn't.

               

               

My only choice here was to rely on Coconut to carry me to victory. I held my breath while using Fake-Out, but thankfully, I was able to deal enough damage to finish the match and win the tournament!

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

With this, I suppose you can consider me the Champion of the Orre region? We still have the Double Battle format. I'm not sure how necessary that is. You don't actually unlock anything for doing it, but I figure it might be something worth trying out. However, if it proves to be too much more difficult than this one, I may put it off for a future revisit along with the other level 100 colosseums. All you get for clearing the challenge, all the effort it took, is a mere 2000 PokeCoupons. It's a nice reward, but nothing compared to the satisfying rewards you would earn in Pokemon Stadium. Oh well, there's still some more to look into! I'm not really sure how seriously I'm going to take it, but I'll definitely give the Double Battle format a shot!

[Aura]

Well, minor update today. As I said yesterday, I'd be trying to complete the Orre Colosseum Double Battle division today, but in doing so I've just found myself growing incredibly frustrated trying to use the lackluster team I currently have. I could probably very easily try to train up an all-new team, but I'd rather wait to do that until I have more convenient options that open up later in this generation before I start building serious competitive teams. You don't unlock anything for clearing this Colosseum other than 2000 more pokecoupons, so we really aren't missing out on much besides bragging rights. I used similar reason to justify not doing round 2 in Pokemon Stadium, though this is admittedly a bit different.

It may be considered a little anticlimactic, but I think I'm going to end Colosseum Battle for now and go ahead and share my opinion of the mode as a whole now.

I really appreciate that Colosseum Mode is here to provide a more serious challenge akin to Stadium, however I really wouldn't say that anything here ever really got to the same level of intense difficulty that stadium provided, even in Round 1. Even though I did walk away from the final level 50 challenge, that was more just because my team wasn't really the best. My pokemon were frequently getting outsped and I was so often failing to deal enough damage. The frequency of BrightPowder and Lax incense was also really infuriating, making many losses feel like it was just the result of a bad coin flip rather than anything actually within my control.

But, I'm not going to let my salt speak for me. It was fantastic to see the generation 3 pokemon in 3D and, just like in Stadium, it's really cool to bring your party from a main series title into this spinoff, brought to life in 3D! There are a few things that are missing to really complete the experience of a Stadium game, though. There is no Gym Leader Castle equivalent to battle characters from the story of Ruby and Sapphire, I suppose Story Mode is considered this game's version of that. I actually really appreciate Story Mode and do enjoy it more than I probably would've enjoyed a Hoenn Gym Leader Castle, I'll share my opinions on that more after we complete this game, but I'd be lying if I said Battle Mode didn't feel like it was missing something without Gym leader Castle or any other more direct references or interaction with Ruby and Sapphire.

I didn't just like Stadium because of the competitive battling. I loved it because it was an overall convenient tool to have in conjunction with the main series. I loved that you could store your pokemon and items on the N64 cart, allowing you to restart without fear of losing all your pokemon. I loved the smaller bits of flavor it had, too. You weren't battling arbitrary random schmucks, but you were working your way toward battling gym leaders and other iconic characters from the main series. Even though they weren't all that great, I really loved that you could choose from a massive selection of pretrained rental pokemon. Even if it was just limited to the Hoenn Pokedex, it would be really cool to see rental pokemon again so that you could build a dream team of your favorite pokemon.

If they wanted to go the Stadium route with this part of the game, I think it would've been great to have some more compatibility with the main series. Instead, it feels like Gen 3's "stadium" is split between this game and Pokemon Box: Ruby and Sapphire. It's a shame and I'm not really sure why it had to be this way. Why couldn't Pokemon Box's functionality been packaged in with Colosseum? Why can't I play my GBA titles on the big screen here? Why can't I easily transfer pokemon between save files here? Why couldn't they have added some Quality of Life additions here? Maybe give me an on-disc place to farm berries so that I don't have to worry about my internal battery or a way to make better pokeblocks? Mystery Gift functionality? Why can't I see my pokedex in 3D?

Even the battles themselves feel like something's missing without an announcer commentating on the battle and the music, while exciting, isn't nearly as good as Story Mode or the fantastic remixes in the Stadium Titles. Unfortunately, Battle Mode just isn't as fun.

Anyway, I don't mean to be such a downer. There are still some really cool things to be found here! Also, there's one more option in Battle Mode to be completed, but it's a sort of hybrid between both Story and Battle Mode and it offers us much more freedom of choice with our team! Next time, we'll be headed off to the final trial of Colosseum: The Mt. Battle challenge in Battle Mode!

[Aura]

Alright, alright, I've got some explaining to do. My plan today was to take on the Battle Mode Mt. Battle 100 Trainer Challenge with my Ruby Team. My initial plan was that I was going to be using the Ruby Team mostly unchanged save for replacing Groudon with Blaziken from the Sapphire playthrough. However, I got just a little bit into Mt. Battle and realized a major hiccup in this team: Zeal. You see, Zeal's performance was already fairly lackluster back in Ruby, but I hadn't considered that, by trading her into Colosseum, her friendship was not only reset due to being with a total stranger, but it's reduced since she's been traded. This makes the move Return incredibly weak.

Because of this, I decided instead to just grind up the rest of my Ruby Team. This way, I can build up friendship with Zeal once again. Only caveat now being that, as it turns out, raising Friendship in Colosseum isn't just as simple as that. Apparently, just using your pokemon in battles isn't enough in gen 3. More specifically, you have to use your pokemon in certain battles. According to bulbapedia, this includes battles like Gym Leaders, Elite Four, etc. The only problem is, it isn't made clear in Colosseum exactly what battles count. I can only assume major bosses like the Cipher Admins and such would count, but what about everything else? Does every battle in every colosseum count? Do the battles at Mt. Battle count? Without a friendship checker, there's absolutely no way to tell without reverse engineering the entire mechanic. You can increase your pokemon's friendship by using items on it, but that stops working once its friendship reaches a certain point in order to avoid exploitation. You can still increase friendship at this point using vitamins, but Zeal's EVs are already maxed out, so I'd be unable to use any of them. 

As it turns out, according to Bulbapedia, there are exactly two ways to increase a pokemon's friendship further at this point: Leveling up will increase friendship by 2 points, and walking 255 steps has a 50% chance to increase friendship by 1 point for all pokemon in the party. I can only assume that the only battles that my pokemon will gain happiness from participating in include Mt. Battle Area Leaders, or at the very least Somek himself, the Cipher Admins in the Deep Colosseum, and Nascour and Evice at the Tower Colosseum. There may be more that will increase happiness, but there is absolutely no way for me to know as far as I'm aware. To add insult to injury here, if Zangoose faints at all at this point, he will lose 10 points of friendship. I tried just grinding this pokemon's levels up until its happiness reached its maximum, but at this point, it just doesn't seem worth it in the slightest, so I decided to cut my losses and just settle on a Return that wasn't quite as strong as it could be.

On the plus side, in spite of the disappointing struggle with the friendship stat, I was able to level my entire team up to level 67 which is not only on par with my actual main story team, but I was also able to get together a more complete team as well as exchanging some coupons in for some really useful battle items! Say hello to my new and improved Ruby team:

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

My Team:

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

Marco (Swampert M); Lv. 67

Item: Leftovers

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Earthquake, Protect, Ice Beam, Surf

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

Seedling (Shiftry M); Lv. 67

Item: Focus Band

Ability: Chlorophyll | Moves: Nature Power, Fake-Out, Shadow Ball, Solar Beam

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

Rarity (Gardevoir F); Lv. 67

Item: Lax Incense

Ability: Trace | Moves: Light Screen, Psychic, Reflect, Thunderbolt

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

Numa (Camerupt F); lv. 67

Item: Quick Claw

Ability: Magma Armor | Moves: Sunny Day, Rock Slide, Eruption, Earthquake

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

Zeal (Zangoose F); Lv. 67

Item: Scope Lens

Ability: Immunity | Moves: Return, Quick Attack, Swords Dance, Brick Break

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

Behemoth (Groudon); Lv. 67

Item: BrightPowder

Ability: Drought | Moves: SolarBeam, Hyper Beam, Earthquake, Fire Blast

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

So, let's get the elephant out of the room. Yes, I have decided to go ahead and use Behemoth. I don't foresee myself having much need for PokeCoupons going forward, but worst case scenario I can always grind for them later. I want to make as quick work of this upcoming endurance round as I possibly can and Groudon is going to be an immense help in that. Plus, the syndergy between Behemoth and Seedling is just too good to pass up. I was on the fence about giving Behemoth BrightPowder or a Choice Band, but I decided he really doesn't need an extra boost to his power and I found that he would often end up soaking up a lot of attacks while grinding, so I figured Bright Powder might help him avoid the occasional unexpected counterattack. Thanks to his learning SolarBeam, his moveset is pretty well built to handle just about anything that comes his way. 

Quickly highlighting some of the changes, as just mentioned, Behemoth learned SolarBeam at level 65 which I replaced Rest since I really wasn't using it all that much. Marco also learned Earthquake, which replaced Mud Shot, at level 52. I gave him Leftovers since he's pretty bulky and, even though this is going to be a single-battle challenge, in double battles he tends to take a lot of Earthquakes. Lastly, I gave Zeal a Scope Lens to help increase his damage output.

      

I'm feeling much more confident about this team from a competitive standpoint, so I'm really excited to see how it goes! Next time, we'll be taking on the Mt. Battle 100 Trainer Challenge for real!

[Aura]

Mt. Battle: Vs. 100 Trainers [Single]

Well, well, well, we've finally arrived at our final destination. For now, anyway.

      

As mentioned before, we'll be using Ruby's team for this challenge. We'll also be doing the single battle division! This challenge is just as it implies: You'll climb your way all the way up Mt. Battle from Trainer 1 to Trainer 100. In Battle Mode, the trainers you'll encounter are different than in Story Mode. They all have full teams of 6 pokemon each and you'll battle them all with Stadium rules. That is, choosing three out of your full team of six. As far as I can tell, this is an anything-goes challenge so you can bring in a fully team of level 100 legendary pokemon and sweep your way to the top. This game does have a feature that discourages the use of legendary pokemon, though. Depending on how many legendary pokemon are on your team, you'll see a certain percentage cut from the number of Poke Coupons you'll receive at each checkpoint on the mountain. The number of Coupons you miss out on becomes much more significant the higher up you are, especially considering you get significantly more coupons for clearing Mt. Battle here, with the number of coupons obtained starting at 50 but increasing much more rapidly to 100, 200, 400, etc. All the way up to 5,000 for defeating the 100th trainer. Of course, this prize is cumulative, so if you clear the entire challenge without a single legendary pokemon, you'll ultimately walk away with a whopping 14,950 coupons! Timewise, though, I think you'll probably get much better returns just clearing Area 10 in Story Mode over and over which doubles with allowing you to actually earn Exp.

The opponents you face also scale to your level here! Rather than being at the preset level 50 or 100, their levels will all scale to the highest-level pokemon in your party, but they'll only scale down to a minimum of 50 just like in Stadium. So, unlike in Story Mode, there's no simply grinding out to overlevel your foes. However, you'll quickly find that there's no real reason to. The pokemon you'll be battling are all available between Pokemon Colosseum and Ruby and Sapphire, so you don't have to worry about any illegal opponents. 

Now, I'm going to go ahead and say right now, if you've been playing along, you're going to want to set aside a lot of time for this. In order to get the ultimate completion reward from this game, you're going to need to clear this entire challenge in a single sitting. You can't suspend your game partway through, and you can't continue from an already-started run. Something that's incredibly sinister which you'll probably notice right away, is that this game constantly asks you if you want to suspend your challenge. It asks you after defeating every trainer if you want to continue or suspend, and as you try to proceed further, the game will ask you again if you want to suspend the game. This is especially baffling considering that, in Story Mode, this same prompt appears but instead asks if you'd like to continue moving forward. Thankfully, there's a second confirmation if you accidentally say yes out of habit, but keep this in mind so that you don't accidentally suspend your game part way through your challenge and have to start all over from the beginning. Considering you'll have to have all the Shadow Pokemon purified for this challenge, you've probably spend a lot of time here in Story Mode.

Another requirement you'll need to face is clearing this mode with your story team. Now, this doesn't mean you have to use exclusively pokemon captured within Pokemon Colosseum, but you have to make sure the pokemon you're using are registered from your Story save file. You must register your team from your story save after purifying all 48 Shadow Pokemon, or else the game will have no idea whether or not you've accomplished that task. (If you register from a GBA Cartridge, it only reads data from the cartridge and not at all from the Story Mode save file.) If you would like to use a team from a GBA title, you can feel free to trade them into Colosseum Story Mode at Phenac City. Since you have to purify all 48 Shadow Pokemon, you most certainly have already cleared Story Mode as well. I am unsure how the Japanese e-Reader exclusive Shadow Pokemon factor into this requirement as well. I can only assume they're excluded, but I'm curious to know if the game merely checks for 48 purified pokemon, a Snag List in which every Shadow Pokemon is purified, or if the game checks specifically for the 48 Shadow Pokemon to see if they've been purified. This could affect the usefulness of the e-Reader pokemon in the Japanese version, but I can only assume the game probably takes the latter idea, checking specifically for the 48 shadow pokemon available in normal gameplay. 

So, to recap, the requirements you will need to meet during this run:

• 48 Shadow Pokemon snagged in Story Mode
• 48 Shadow Pokemon purified in Story Mode
• You must be using a team registered from Story Mode after the above requirements have been met.
• You must clear the entire run in one sitting, no suspending the game.

To my knowledge, these are the only requirements for this completion bonus. Of course, there's also a soft prerequisite that you must have defeated Evice in Story Mode, but that's given already by the 48 Shadow Pokemon requirement since four of those are only available in the postgame. Even the e-Reader Shadow Pokemon require Evice to be defeated.

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

Area 1

Area 1 is full of standard, early-game pokemon. You know, you've got your Wurmple, your Zigzagoon, your Sentret and Hoothoot... Just like in Story Mode, I'm not going to list every opponent because this would just take too long, but I'll once again link to the page for each area so you can see the trainers themselves. Just scroll down past the Story Mode teams to see the Battle Mode Single Battle section. If you're curious, you can also look ahead at the double battle section as well.

I mostly found myself favoring Rarity here since she could hit every foe with a consistent attack and take them all out with ease.

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

Area 1 Leader: Vannos

     

You're going to find me repeating myself a lot on this, but taking out this team was really simple to the point where I don't even remember which pokemon she used. I just spammed Earthquake and SolarBeam using Behemoth to tear right through.

Reward: 50 Coupons

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

Area 2

This is another collection of really simple battles, just a bunch of Little Cup pokemon will be found here such as the basic stage Starters and other early-game pokemon like Oddish and Nincada.

The strategy still hadn't really changed, Rarity was pretty much all I needed.

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

Area 2 Leader Eben

     

Second verse same as the first, I was mostly able to take care of each of Eben's pokemon so quickly with Behemoth that I'm not even sure which ones he used. The only one I recall in particular is Wobbuffet who I was able to take out with a second hit instead of a single, shocking, I know.

Reward: 100 Coupons; 150 total

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

Area 3

Here we see some more early-game pokemon with a couple of first-stage evolutions mixed in here and there like a Kadabra and starter evolution. One thing you may start to realize here is that many of the teams we're battling are starting to feel a little bit repetitive. To be fair, there is a rather limited selection of pokemon, but even still, some of these teams are eerily similar to ones we've already beaten, just with a few pokemon switched around.

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

Area 3 Leader Leven

     

Look at this team and take two guesses as to how I was able to beat this team with a Groudon that knows SolarBeam. You'll never guess.

Reward: 200 Coupons; 350 total

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

Area 4

Here, we're starting to see first stage evolved pokemon a bit more commonly. The eerily familiar teams aren't letting up, though. This time around, the foes are starting to come at us with Held Items!

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

Area 4 Leader Slewis

     

I think Slewis used his Mawile, Kadabra, and Swellow against me, though my memory could be faulty on that front. I definitely noticed that his Kadabra happened to be holding a BrightPowder since I managed to miss with Behemoth's Earthquake, but these foes were still hardly able to leave a scratch on me.

Reward: 400 coupons; 750 total

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

Area 5

The pokemon found here hardly felt any different than the ones in the previous area! The trainers were starting to get so redundant here that I could have sworn I'd already battled identical teams previously. I burned through this area as quickly as possible so as not to waste any time.

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

Area 5 Leader Cryal

     

As it turns out, between Earthquake, SolarBeam, and FIre Blast, Behemoth is capable of covering all three of the Johto and Hoenn starters! Once again, it was really easy to finish off all the foes here with just him.

Reward: 800 Coupons; 1550 total

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

Area 6

Just like in Story Mode, Area 6 is where the teams you face start to get a bit more competent. But only a bit, at some point in this area, Behemoth missed a grass-type with Fire Blast but was met not with the Giga Drain or SolarBeam I was bracing for, but instead a mere Razor Leaf. Perhaps I'd overestimated my foes. Still, we were at least starting to see some new pokemon so that's a bit of a release!

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

Area 6 Leader Glydin

     

Glydin was actually capable of taking out Behemoth thanks to a miss against her Sneasel and a crit with Slash along with accumulated damage from a previous pokemon that also didn't go down in a single hit. Thankfully, Rarity was capable of picking up the slack.

Reward: 1600 Coupons; 3150 total

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

Area 7

At this point, all of the pokemon we're battling are fully evolved, but other than that, they're still mostly just going down to one hit from Behemoth.

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

Area 7 Leader Vario

     

Vario led with his Manectric which was easily taken out with an Earthquake. Cacturne came next but went down to Fire Blast. I tried to take out his Slaking with Earthquake, but it survived and completely turned the tables on Behemoth with a Counter to take him out in one shot! Thankfully, I now had two more turns to take him out with Rarity.

Reward: 1800 Coupons; 4950 total

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

Area 8

Judging by the types of pokemon I was seeing, I thought this was where the battles would start to get serious. That was, until I failed to KO the first trainer's Kingdra with Behemoth's Earthquake and it hit me with... water gun. Now, as we near the top of this area, we do start to see our first legendary pokemon. To my surprise, Trainer 77, Rider Zalla, uses a Jirachi on her team! As it turns out, her team is in reference to the movie Jirachi: Wish Maker and is full of pokemon with prominent roles in that movie.

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

Area 8 Leader Dessa

     

I was a little bit nervous when Behemoth was met with a mirror match as its first opponent here. As it turns out, though, Dessa's Groudon doesn't know SolarBeam! With a couple of SolarBeams from my own, her Groudon went down. Her Swalot took its place and fell to an Earthquake and her Castform followed suit!

Reward: 2000 Coupons; 6950 total

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

Area 9

The trainers here aren't much different than the ones in Area 8, though they lean more heavily into the Endgame pokemon. You'll start to see pokemon like Metagross here.

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

Area 9 Leader Axley

     

Axley's team is actually pretty cool. It's in reference to the Regi Trio and how to catch them in Ruby and Sapphire. In case you were able to decipher the hieroglyphics but were unable to solve the riddle, perhaps these pokemon could provide a hint. Of course you have the three Legendary Golems themselves, but you also have Relicanth and Wailord, the two pokemon needed to open the caves, as well as a Flygon which knows Fly, Dig, and Strength, the three moves needed to open the secret rooms inside the caves!

As for the team itself, it was pretty easy to pick off with Behemoth. He led with Relicanth which was easy enough to take out with SolarBeam. Regirock came next and was able to survive a hit and do some decent damage with Superpower. Thanks to its White Herb, it was able to prevent the associated stat reduction. Unfortunately for Axley, it wasn't going to be surviving long enough to get any use out of that maintained attack because another SolarBeam took it out. Last was Registeel who went down to a couple of Fire Blasts.

Reward: 3000 Coupons; 9950 total

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

Area 10

Out of the entire challenge, this is the only part that is of any particularly noteworthy difficulty. But that's really only because this is the only part where the trainers start to freely use legendary pokemon. More specifically, these are Legendary Pokemon that are legal to obtain at or below level 50 including the Legendary Beasts and the Eon duo. Beyond the legendaries, I'm pretty sure this is the only point where trainers start to have EVs on their pokemon as well. There was a trainer with a bunch of Dragon/Flying types that was really overwhelming for my team. Marco would be able to take out one, maybe two of them, but they're all really fast and strong so he'd be unable to pick them all off. This same trainer also had a Sceptile who was able to outspeed Groudon and punish him hard for missing a Fire Blast. 

The big thing that makes this area a joke, however, is the fact that, across areas 1-9, I've built up a grand total of 88 continues. The only ones I'd failed to earn up to this point were the result of misses and critical hits. Even if I lost any of the battles here, I'd be able to just pick right back up where I'd left off pretty much infinitely. I honestly think this challenge would have been more difficult had it been exclusively Area 10. That said, I still got through the entire challenge without using a continue.

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

Mt. Battle Master Infin

     

Infin's team was actually pretty scary-looking on the surface. I still struggle a bit with Flying-types, though Rarity's Thunderbolt and Marco's Ice Beam have been a huge help in dealing with them.

  

I decided to go with the obvious lead of Behemoth. His Earthquake will be able to take out Magneton and Aggron while his Earthquake can hopefully make quick work of Gardevoir. Hyper Beam may also be able to contribute some significant damage to Altaria and Crobot. Lastly, if I can switch away from him and back into him against Kyogre, then I can easily shut down Kyogre's Drizzle and follow up with a SolarBeam for the KO. Rarity, of course, is mainly here to help against Altaria and Crobat with Psychic, and her Thunderbolt can help to deal with Kyogre. Lastly, Shiftry is just here to hopefully finish the job against Kyogre if it manages to take out Behemoth. With this in mind, I charged into battle!

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

               

               

I couldn't have asked for a better lead here! Magneton was easy pickings for Behemoth's Earthquake.

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

               

               

To my surprise, my second opponent was the next best pokemon for Behemoth to counter. It, too, went down to a 4x Earthquake

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

               

               

Now here comes the real challenge: Infin's most powerful pokemon is his very own Kyogre! Its Drizzle would make Behemoth's SolarBeam next to useless, so I obviously needed to retreat.

               

               

I retreated into Seedling who got hit with a powerful Hydro Pump. Even with his resistance, Kyogre's raw power in addition to the rain was able to take out over half of my HP! I switched into Seedling specifically, though, because I was confident that, while he'd start out going for a water attack against Behemoth, he'd probably also have an Ice attack for use against Seedling which would be a much more favorable switch-in for Rarity. This way, I also got a free Fake-Out on him!

               

               

Just as planned, I switched Rarity into an Ice Beam which she was able to take really well. In preparation for another Hydro Pump, I quickly set up Light Screen. Thankfully, my Lax Incense was able to protect me from the incoming Hydro Pump! Now that I had Light Screen up, I just kept spamming ThunderBolt and, before I knew it, Kyogre went down! He was never able to deal enough damage to take me out. I wasn't expecting Rarity to hold her ground, but she did a fantastic job walling this Kyogre!

Reward: 5000 Coupons; 14950 total

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

With this task behind us, we claimed our coupons, though notably with a small cut since we used Behemoth on our team. As for our big reward:

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

Ho-oh: Lv 70

Item: None

Ability: Pressure | Moves: Recover, Fire Blast, Sunny Day, Swift

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

This is the only way it's possible to obtain Ho-oh within Generation 3 with only one exception which involves an event distribution that's, obviously, not realistically available today. This is why Colosseum is so critically important for National Dex Completion. This Ho-oh will be deposited into the first open slot in your Story Mode PC, you'll want to check it there! Unfortunately, this Ho-oh cannot be given a nickname, so a nicknamed Ho-oh is still an illegal Ho-oh sadly, but it's exciting to have one more pokemon off our list!

As for how worthwhile this Ho-oh is to get? Honestly, unless you want the satisfaction of obtaining as many pokemon as possible in Gen 3, I don't think this is very necessary at all. Still, I don't ever have the heart to do a playthrough of Colosseum and not purify all the Shadow Pokemon. It just feels nice to do and it can be really fun to use a larger variety of pokemon, even if the end result is a massive grind to purify every last pokemon and it takes an uncomfortably large amount of time. If you're going to do this anyway, the amount of time it takes to do this challenge is pretty comparable to just one last grinding session to purify a new batch of Shadow Pokemon and it's not at all difficult to do.

You might be thinking that this challenge was only so easy for me because I was able to hide behind my Groudon for so much of it, but I'm going to be honest and say I really don't think that's the case in the slightest. When I say this challenge was a joke, I really mean it. Even as far in as area 8, I was still getting hit with attacks like Astonish and Water Gun. It really is only the final area that you'll have any sort of difficulty without an Uber Legendary and even then, Behemoth himself wasn't all that useful against Latias or Latios. I wound up relying more on Marco to deal with those two. We dealt with the Legendary Beasts just fine much earlier in the game and you saw that even Rarity was able to handle Infin's Kyogre pretty much exclusively on her own. I through the effort of grinding up this team expecting this to reach the same level of difficulty as the Orre Colosseum by the end but instead was just met by 90 battles that felt more like they were making fun of me than actually trying to defeat me. By the time you reach Area 10, you've built up around 90 continues assuming there's no cap since you get one every single time you clear a battle without losing a single pokemon. And if all they're gonna do to reduce your HP is hit you with Astonish? Yeah, nothing's getting KO'd. Without Behemoth, I'm sure this challenge would definitely be more difficult since I couldn't hide behind a giant mountain that conveniently had perfect coverage options and an extremely overpowered ability, but I really don't think it would be all that much worse. The greatest threat to your run is accidentally suspending between battles or a power outage because it took you six hours to clear. 

Sadly, you don't actually get the Earth Ribbon on your pokemon for clearing Mt. Battle in Battle Mode. The only way you can get this is by clearing Mt. Battle in a continuous run in Story Mode. That would probably be a lot faster and feel like less of a waste of time since your pokemon will be gaining levels the whole way, but that's really it.

There is definitely still some content we haven't touched on yet. Next time, we're going to be touching on some of that content, but we're going to be leaving a lot of it for a later return. So, up next, it's time for the cleanup of Pokemon Colosseum before we finally move on to the next project!

[Aura]

As mentioned in the last post, today we're going to be focusing on our cleanup operation for Pokemon Colosseum. Now, we won't be covering everything we haven't touched on yet, as mentioned previously there are still some modes I'm going to wait to deal with until we near the end of the generation. But we will be covering all the smaller details we can touch on right now.

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

First of all, there is actually yet another Mt. Battle challenge we can do right now, the Mt. Battle Double Battle division. I currently do not have plans to complete this challenge since it was mostly just a massive waste of time in the Single Battle division. Now that I have Ho-oh, all I can possibly get from this challenge is Poke Coupons which I really don't have much use for anymore. If I were to do the double battle division, I'd probably climb the thing with my actual Story Mode team but I just don't think that's necessary at the moment. I might come back here at a later time, but I feel as though I'm probably more likely to want to focus my efforts on a similar challenge in a future title.

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

     

If you do decide to take the Double Battle route, the final battle at the summit will be against Infin's twin brother Inity and this is the team you can expect to see. If you're curious about the rest of the double battle teams on Mt. Battle, you can find them all on all the same pages as the single battle teams, just scroll a little bit further down.

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

From the main menu, there is a second option under Battle Mode: Battle Now. This mode functions almost identically to the Battle Now mode in the Stadium titles. You'll be given one of a small pool of preset teams of rental pokemon to do a quick battle with an AI opponent using another randomly-selected team. This just makes it all the more frustrating that there's no mode that lets you build your own team of rental pokemon like in Stadium, but I've already voiced my frustrations about this before. It's a decent mode if you just want a quick fix for a 3D Pokemon Battle, but most of the time you'll just get frustrated with the subpar movesets you're using.

One difference between this mode and its predecessors is that there is now a difficulty selection! You can choose one of four difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Ultimate. The difficulty selected changes the pool of preset teams. Basically, the types of pokemon you'll see at each difficulty are the pokemon you'll find in the respective section of Mt. Battle (Area 1-3, Area 4-6, Area 7-9, and Area 10). That's not a hard rule or anything, that's just what I've assumed based on the quick glances I gave the teams I peeked at. Most notably, the Ultimate difficulty teams can come with legendary pokemon like the Legendary Beasts and Golems. I'm unclear on if that also includes Jirachi and the Eon duo, though. The AI you battle against will have AI to match the selected difficulty as well, the same difficulty as trainers from the respective colosseum (Easy is Phenac Stadium, Medium is Pyrite Colosseum, Hard is Under Colosseum, and Ultimate is Orre Colosseum). Battle Now battles all take place at Phenac Stadium, regardless of what difficulty you are playing on.

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

 

Gang Battle

This is the standard 2P mode. Using GBA-GCN Link Cables, you can connect Pokemon Colosseum with 1-3 GBA titles to do 3D Pokemon Battles according to your preferred rules. You can even customize your own ruleset, but you can't customize anything like a selection of banned pokemon. You can set level limits and turn on and off various clauses as well as setting timers for battles and move selection. In general, I've always questioned the purpose of in-game rules like this outside of tournament applications. It seems like anything these rules can allow for can be moderated merely by mutual agreement outside of the game. It's not like this game has online functionality or anything.

Anyway, you can do standard 1v1 battles either between your Story Mode party and one GBA Party, or two GBA parties controlled by two separate GBAs. Additionally, you can do 2v2 Multi Battles with four players as well as standard 1v1 Double Battles.

1v1 Battles will take place in Pyrite Colosseum while Multi Battles will take place in the Under Colosseum.

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

Finally, let's talk about the Pokemon Colosseum Bonus Disc. I was considering covering this title as a "Game" much like Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire, but ultimately decided it was best talked about as part of the cleanup for Pokemon Colosseum. This bonus disc was given out as a pre-order bonus to people in the US who pre-ordered Pokemon Colosseum. Remember that Jirachi we filthy Americans couldn't get from Pokemon Channel? Well, this is how we were expected to get it over here! Clearly a timeless solution to our problem. By linking your GBA to the Gamecube with this disc in, you could receive a special Jirachi distribution as part of the promotion for the then-upcoming movie Jirachi: Wishmaker.

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

Jirachi; Lv. 5

Item: Salac / Ganlon Berry

Ability: Serene Grace | Moves: Wish, Confusion, Rest

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

Aside from this, this disc also came with preview trailers for Pokemon Colosseum as well as the movie, nothing too terribly exciting today but I'm sure 7 year-old me would have absolutely loved to have this disc. The best thing about this is that the Jirachi you can get from this disc is technically unlimited. You can get one per save file, but this only works between Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire and not for any other generation 3 games.

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

You may think we're done with the Bonus Disc, but as it turns out, the Japanese version of this disc is a bit more interesting. Rather than just a trailer for Pokemon Colosseum and an upcoming pokemon movie, the Japanese disc was home to trailers for many then-upcoming Nintendo titles such as Mario Kart Double Dash, F-Zero Maximum Velocity, Mario & Luigi SuperStar Saga, etc. 

As you can probably guess from the cover art here, though, the main focus of this disc is the ability to obtain the Mythical Pokemon Celebi! There are a few more restrictions on this distribution, though. In order to get the Celebi, you must have a save file from Pokemon Colosseum with all 48 Shadow Pokemon purified on your memory card. The title it is being distributed to must have also defeated the Elite Four. However, this comes with the added benefit that it can be distributed to any Generation 3 title rather than exclusively Ruby and Sapphire. If you accomplish this task, you can receive your Celebi:

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

Celebi; Lv. 10

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Confusion, Recover, Heal Bell, Safeguard

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

I'm kind of surprised we don't have this option in the US. Celebi is so prominent in the story of Colosseum and yet its only appearance is when you use the Time Flute. 

In addition to the Celebi, this bonus disc could also be used to receive a second special distribution: A Pikachu holding a Light Ball

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

Pikachu; Lv. 10

Item: Light Ball

Ability: Static | Moves: ThunderShock, Growl, Tail Whip, Thunder Wave

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

Now I think that pretty much covers the rest of the cleanup. I unfortunately do not own the Bonus Disc so I can't receive my Jirachi. I suppose I can now go into detail about my thoughts on this game.

I absolutely love Pokemon Colosseum! The story mode is such a unique perspective on the darker side of the world of Pokemon. Cipher feels like a genuinely threatening organized crime syndicate, and yet they also weren't afraid to get a little silly with some of their characters. Miror B. is probably one of the most memorable characters in the entire Pokemon franchise for me. The music is incredible as well! There are many tracks that will randomly pop into my head even when I haven't touched the game in months. The Shadow Pokemon mechanic is such a unique concept that encourages the usage of a much wider variety of pokemon than just your six favorites. The limited selection of pokemon may seem like a downside, but I think it's intentional that most of your options are generally considered rather sub-par pokemon. This encourages you to use these particular pokemon which you can find much more use for here. 

I just cannot gush enough about the Story Mode of this game, so I'll think I'll stop myself before I start writing a whole essay breaking everything down. As for Battle Mode, it's definitely less than ideal. It's basically all the less interesting parts of Pokemon Stadium without any of the flavor. It feels so much more like a side mode that leeches off of ideas designed more for Story Mode. It's just not as exciting, though I will acknowledge it's really nice that you can exchange coupons for prizes that can further help you to build better competitive teams for future challenges. The lack of rental pokemon is pretty disappointing, though, and the level restrictions feel a bit too strict for the level 50 tournaments. I'm really not sure why they bothered with that considering they clearly do have functioning level scaling in Mt. Battle. All the level 50 limitation does is severely limit your options. You have to be very careful about leveling in your playthrough of Ruby and Sapphire if you want to be able to use the same pokemon in the level 50 colosseums here and it really just doesn't seem worth the hassle. It's not like you get anything worthwhile for clearing the colosseums, there's no Doduo or Dodrio tower, now ultimate final boss with Rayquaza or anything like that, and no Round 2 mode either.

Now, remember back when I mentioned having a theory about the development for this game and Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire? Well, I think it's time to go on and explain my ideas on that subject. I'm thinking that Pokemon Colosseum may have begun with the idea to create a Pokemon Stadium Ruby and Sapphire for the GameCube utilizing the GBA-GCN Link Cable instead of a Transfer Pack. As ideas for how this would work were passed around. Perhaps the original concept looked more like Pokemon Stadium 2, a Gym Leader Castle featuring the Hoenn Gyms, a Stadium mode featuring multiple different tournaments, perhaps even the functionality from Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire allowing you to play Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire as well as store data in a Pokemon Box Network. Eventually, however, it was decided to create Genius Sonority. With the creation of a new company to handle the title, perhaps there were a lot of developers eager to flex their creative muscles who wanted to incorporate a story rather than stick to the typical formula for Pokemon Stadium. From there, they decided to first build a Story Mode and retroactively include elements from Pokemon Stadium after the fact. At some point, the idea to include Johto Pokemon which at the time were no longer available since you couldn't transfer pokemon forward from Gold & Silver and at the time there were no plans to remake Gold & Silver either. This might have also been before Emerald was considered, so at the time it was probably considered that this GCN title would be the only way to obtain these pokemon in Generation 3. 

On that note, I think I made a bit of an error when I first introduced this game. I said that this game was critically important for completing the National Dex in Generation 3, but that's actually untrue. Apparently, as I mentioned in the previous post, Ho-oh isn't needed for National Dex completion as recognized within the game. You can get the National Dex diploma with or without Lugia and Ho-oh. They're treated like Mythical Pokemon. In addition, all the pokemon you can snag here in Colosseum can also be caught or otherwise obtained in the postgame of Pokemon Emerald. I thought there would be pokemon exclusive to Colosseum in this gen, but apparently Ho-oh is the only one. Still, Colosseum is extremely useful for Pokedex completion and will cut out a lot of monotony in completing the Gen 3 national dex. While it may not be required, it will certainly be something you want just like Stadium and Stadium 2, though for different reasons for that.

Anyway, if I had to guess, the realization that Genius Sonority's idea of a "3D Pokemon Game" didn't quite line up with Game Freak's expectations out of the project, that was their reasoning for creating Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire as a separate title to add the assistant functionality from Stadium into the modern generation, but Stadium 2 definitely handled it better than Pokemon Box did.

Well, that's all speculation. I have no clue how much truth there is to that theory of mine, but with how many similarities you can connect between Stadium and Colosseum, I think the idea to bring Stadium to the GameCube was definitely there to some extent. 

I think I've said all I need to about my thoughts on this game. I was really excited to start this project and now am pretty sad to see it go, but I'm also excited to move on to the next game!

Next time, we'll be coming full circle and starting up the very first remakes in the Pokemon Franchise!

[Aura]

Pokemon LeafGreen Version

That's right, we're already returning to the main series titles once again! This time, we'll be playing through a "new" adventure in Pokemon LeafGreen! We've already come full circle and wound up right back where we started with the remake of Pokemon Green now on the GameBoy Advance! Surely you've noticed by now that Kanto pokemon have been suspiciously missing from the selection of pokemon available in Pokemon Colosseum? That's because this game was developed alongside Colosseum with the express purpose of giving players the opportunity to obtain pokemon from the Kanto region that are otherwise unobtainable in generation 3, as well as to modernize the old and dated mechanics of the Gen 1 titles.

With the jump from Generation 1 to Generation 3, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen bring with them all-new compatibility with Ruby and Sapphire, which means over 200 additional pokemon can now be brought to the Kanto region and, of course, all of the original 150 pokemon are catchable here as well alongside some extras that were also previously unobtainable, but that's getting a bit into spoiler territory. What you pokedex completionists out there need to know, is that these games are critically important for Pokedex completion in Generation 3, so don't sleep on them!

Anyway, this is GameFreak's first attempt at making a remake and it really shows in certain places that they really weren't sure what direction they should take. Should they try their hardest to keep the game as faithful as possible to the original, or should they go all out and modernize everything? Ultimately, it seems they focused primarily on remaining as faithful as possible to the original. Most of this game's new content is found within all new areas that you'll never have to, or may not even be able to, visit during the main story. Again, I don't want to talk too much about this stuff until we get to it, but this game is much more expansive than the original Red and Green.

Of course, there's also all sorts of changes that are inevitable with the jump in hardware. As you can immediately tell just by the intro, the graphics are completely overhauled to look closer to the ones in Ruby & Sapphire, although the environments from Kanto aren't nearly as varied, so the game ultimately fails to look as graphically impressive in my mind. Again, they took a very safe approach when reimagining Kanto which unfortunately holds the game back in a lot of ways, I think, but they try to make up for this by adding a lot more detail to the game to help make the pokemon world more fleshed out. I'll try to note these details as they come up. Even with the safe decisions, Red and Green were a fantastic experience so I'm excited to delve into their remakes!

As for my personal feelings toward the game, even though Sapphire was the first pokemon game I could call my own, LeafGreen was my second and, for a while, I did prefer this game because of its simplicity. I've probably played through both of these games far more times than I can count. Not to mention, hacking tools are aplenty, so I also have lots of fond memories of making amateur rom hacks to change the random pokemon I could encounter and such. I used to know these games like the back of my hand. We'll see how well that knowledge holds up today!

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

As we go ahead and start up a new game, we're met not with Prof. Oak's introduction to the pokemon world, but rather a note from the developers! This message provides us with some basic information about how to play the game and the basic controls as well as how to open a help menu that can help you with finer details... This should probably make it obvious that this game is very clearly designed to be a sort of "baby's first Pokemon game" experience. You'll find that many of the changes revolve around making this game more accessible to people who have never played a Pokemon Game before which can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. However, I think it can get a little ridiculous with how much it explains to you.

After reading through the welcome message from the developers, we're now met by Prof. Oak who now introduces us to the world of pokemon and gives us his opening spiel before giving us our character creation options, and this is where one of the more significant changes from Red and Green are introduced:

 

We can now choose between playing as a boy or a girl! With this, Red finally has a female counterpart just like Kris for Gold and May for Brendan!

Since we're playing LeafGreen, I figured I should probably go with the girl and name her after her canon name: Leaf.

Of course, we also get to name our rival, who I decided to name "Green" after his Japanese name. So, our heroine is Leaf and her rival is Green!

In traditional Pokemon fashion, our character is shrunk down to her overworld sprite as we're sent off to begin our adventure in the Kanto region!

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

Just like the original game, we start out in our bedroom. The SNES has now been replaced by a regular NES. I'm not sure if this is a joke about Red and Blue being old, or if it was jsut a genuine mistake, but I found it pretty funny. Before we go downstairs, if we check our PC, we can find an item inside!

Everyone who knows the ins and outs of Pokemon knows to check the PC for a free potion! But, what's that?? Yes, FireRed and LeafGreen finally introduce sprites for every single item in the game! Before this, the Trading Card Game and the occasional appearance in the anime was the only way we could have any idea of how certain items looked. Even then, not every item would appear in these places. Back when these games were new, this was such an exciting detail! I'll try to make it a point to share the sprites of new items we find going forward.

Our mother acknowledges that all girls grow up with a desire to see the world and tells us that Prof. Oak wanted to see us.

Pallet Town

Ah, now isn't that music nostalgic? As you can see, the world is almost 1:1 identical to how it looked in Red and Green.

Here's another image for comparison. There are some notable differences, mostly in detailing and tiling, but you wouldn't notice most of these changes if you hadn't played the originals ina  while. If you continue to compare the maps between the original and remake, you'll find that, in general, many of these areas are slightly redesigned to look a lot cleaner here thanks to the capabilities of the new hardware. There's much less ugly tiling, generally more space, and a lot of significant areas are more centered than before. 

If you press L, the game will bring up the previously mentioned Help menu. The amount of detail this menu explains things in is bizarre to me. It gives off less of a "baby's first pokemon game" vibe and starts to cross over into "baby's first rpg" territory. It provides extremely broad advice on what to do if you get stuck in certain positions but rarely actually goes into detail about anything in particular. Depending on the situation you're in, the Help menu might look a little different. For example, if you bring it up in the middle of a battle, you'll find tutorials on battling. Perhaps the most useful thing this menu will provide is a list of type matchups for every single type. I find it bizarre, though, that there isn't more stuff like this in here. Stuff that would actually be useful. With as much complexity as there is in Generation 3's competitive side, you would think that this Help menu could provide some insight to make the competitive side more consumer friendly. But nope, nothing in here mentions specifics about damage calculation, EV's, learnsets, or anything of the sort. Even if you're new to Pokemon, I honestly can't see this help menu being all that helpful period unless you've just never played an RPG, or even another video game before. If you find yourself getting annoyed by accidentally bringing this menu up, you can turn it off in the options menu when you inevitably go to increase the text speed.

Ah, and speaking of the options menu, I should probably mention that, as always, I'll be playing on Set mode, so I don't get free switches every time I take out an opponent. I find the game more interesting to play this way and it encourages you to raise more well-rounded pokemon and to play more beefy pokemon that can take hits rather than just a team of six sweepers.

We go next door, nobody is there, etc. etc. Everything plays out exactly the same as in Red and Green.

As we try to head up to Route 1, we're of course stopped by Prof. Oak who brings us back to his lab where we find Green and are given our choice of starter!

  

I've been thinking about the starters I wanted to use here for a while. Unfortunately, we don't have three games to play through this time so my choice isn't as simple as "All of them!" I'm unfortunately going to have to exclude one of these three. After thinking on it, I've decided that there are a lot of water types I still haven't used from Kanto that I want to try out. Plus, it's quite fitting to stick to the version mascots of FireRed and LeafGreen, just like I did with my original playthroughs of Red, Green, and Blue. So, Bulbasaur it is! I decided to name him Venus after my Bulbasaur from Yellow. Yes, I know it's male so the name doesn't quite work, but I think that makes it a little more interesting, doesn't it?

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

Venus (Bulbasaur M); Lv. 5

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Growl

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

Yes, that's right, probably the biggest change between the originals and these remakes, these games are built off of the framework used in Ruby and Sapphire. This means that pokemon share nearly identical learnsets, held items and abilities from Ruby and Sapphire are also present here, finally giving you access to abilities on so many pokemon who didn't previously have them. This actually retroactively improves many pokemon. In addition, the Dark and Steel types now exist, but since the main story is mostly confined to the Kanto region, the only pokemon that's directly affected by this are Magnemite and Magneton, but still, the move Bite is now a Dark-type attack among other similar changes like Karate Chop being Fighting-type and Tri-Attack gaining its famous secondary effect. All the moves from Generation 1-3 also return, so you can expect to see things like weather possibly affecting your team building options.

Of course, once we choose our starter, our rival chooses his own and immediately challenges us to a battle!

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

Vs. Rival #1

Now that's an exciting battle theme! Unfortunately, this game lacks a unique battle theme for the rival and instead opts for a generic trainer battle theme just like the original game. So sadly no original compositions, but it's still a good remix of the Kanto Trainer theme that gets stuck in your and my head every now and then whenever you think of Pokemon.

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

Charmander; Lv. 5

 

Right before this battle begins... it stops. Prof Oak interrupts us with yet another tutorial. Again, this is baby's first RPG territory as Prof. Oak explains things as basic as how the goal is to reduce your opponent's HP to 0 and how you should avoid your own HP reaching 0. If your HP gets low and you decide to use that potion you got from the PC, he'll even give you a tutorial about that! I really have no clue why they felt the need to be so heavy on the tutorials. Anybody with half a brain could figure this stuff out and anybody too young to understand these basic concepts on their own are probably also too young to be able to read. This is all stuff that easily could have been explained in the instruction manual if necessary, but I suppose this was the point where instruction manuals were starting to be seen as less important and you were starting to see more in-game tutorials. People complain about frontloaded tutorials in modern pokemon games but tend to forget about things like this. Thankfully, this issue doesn't persist throughout the entire game. By the time you pass the catching tutorial, the game's hand-holding eases up and you're trusted to explore more on your own.

Charmander's Scratch was hopeless against Venus' defences, so winning this battle was as simple as spamming Tackle.

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

After defeating Green, Venus leveled up and I gained 80P. Green leaves and I follow suit. With a pokemon by our side, we can now explore the next location!

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

Route 1

There isn't much to talk about here without any Pokeballs, but we'll battle our way through a couple of Pidgey and Rattata to make our way through. Surprisingly, you don't get Prof. Oak chasing after you yelling at you to avoid tall grass if your pokemon's low on HP or to return to your house to heal if necessary. It seems the heavy-handed tutorials are already starting to loosen up a bit. 

As we make our way through the grass, we can find a clerk who works at the PokeMart. He'll give us a free potion just like in the originals!

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

Viridian City

Here in Viridan City, we're blocked off by the old man who hadn't had his coffee yet. Yup, definitely still not drunk. If we go around up behind the trees, we can nab ourselves another potion. This time, the potion isn't invisible on the cut tree though, but rather completely visible and resting right behind it.

 

The Pokemon Centers in FireRed and LeafGreen were completely redesigned to look more like the ones in Ruby and Sapphire. This design is so much more convenient since the PC is right there as opposed to at the end of a long hallway. And if you check the PC Storage System here, you can find that, thank god, it uses Lanette's GUI from Hoenn rather than the horrible clunky menus of the original game.

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

This bit is actually being added in retroactively because I realized I forgot to note some of the unique wallpapers that are available in this game! While most of the wallpapers are identical to Ruby and Sapphire, the wallpapers under "etcetera" are actually unique!

   

From left to right, these are "Stars," "PokeCenter," "Tiles," and "Simple."

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

 

The PokeMart has seen a slight redesign as well, but it isn't nearly as significantly different as the Pokemon Center. Of course, it's here that we have to visit in order to receive Oak's Parcel.

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

We return to Pallet Town jumping down the ledges on the west side of Route 1 to make the return trip easier and deliver the Parcel to Prof. Oak. Green arrives shortly after us mentioning that Oak had something for him. Prof. Oak then gives us both our pokedex and 5 pokeballs!

PokeBall x5

The gift of 5 pokeballs is a nice touch. In the original games, you had to buy PokeBalls from the mart. In every Pokemon game since gen 1, though, the Prof. would give you five pokeballs to hopefully catch a full team of pokemon! With these pokeballs by our side, we can now get started on completing our Kanto pokedex!

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

Back to Route 1, there's two pokemon to catch here:

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

 

The first of these two is Pidgey, perhaps the most famous of generic bird pokemon. Pidgey is available here at 50% rarity which I believe is the most common encounter rate for it. I caught one and named her Skies. I'd yet to really come up with a naming convention for this playthrough, but ultimately decided that, since this game's story is heavily about researching pokemon and learning more about them, I'd name them after where you might find them or their behaviors. 

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

 

The other pokemon is of course, Rattata, who is also available here at 50% rarity. I caught her and named her Gather.

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

Route 22

West of Viridian City is Route 22. We're not going too far in here just yet for reasons I'll explain later, but I will dip into the first patch of tall grass.

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

 

Perhaps it might be surprising to you, but just like Yellow version, you can encounter Mankey here! If you started with Charmander, it's not a terrible idea to catch one of these to help you against first gym. I named this one Swing.

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

If you search hard enough here, you can find Spearow, but I didn't bother since you can find him more commonly elsewhere. But if you intend to pick one up for your team, it can be pretty helpful in an upcoming area!

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

 

Back in Red and Green, you were able to catch Nidoran M and F here, at more common rates in their respective games. But, for the sake of making Mankey more common here, it seems these two got cut from the encounter table. Don't worry, we'll be able to find them a little bit later on, but they aren't going to be helping us with the first gym at all.

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

As we return to Viridan City, we find that the old man has had his coffee and sobered- er, calmed down. He offers us a catching tutorial which, this time, is no longer optional and can only be viewed once. No MissingNo. glitch here, sadly. To be fair, MissingNo.'s bizarre behavior comes from pulling from undefined memory, so even if there was something similar in this game, its effect on the game would be unpredictable and potentially dangerous to your save file. Some things in programming you just have to ask the compiler.

Anyway, with access to the northernmost part of the town, we can visit the gym but, just like in the original, it's closed. The old man standing outside wonders who the gym leader is as the gym seems to always be closed.

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

Route 2

As we proceed North of Viridian City, we reach Route 2. There's nothing of particular note right here, we can catch two new pokemon here, but they're far, far more common just beyond.

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

Viridian Forest

Now that's really cool! Rather than just having a nameplate, certain areas in this game will have a portrait of the area to set the mood and capture your imagination. I really love this touch! Anyway, we're not going to explore Viridian Forest in its entirety just yet, so I won't post the map, but I will dip in real quick to visit the grass inside because there are a couple of pokemon we're interested in catching here.

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

 

Believe it or not, the first pokemon I encountered here was Metapod, which is only a 10% rarity in LeafGreen. I suppose you can consider it a soft version exclusive? Anyway, I caught it and named it Shield.

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

Metapod's counterpart, Kakuna, is only 5% rarity so it's only a 5% difference compared to Metapod, but odds are you aren't very interested in catching these guys out of the wild anyway since they only know Harden when caught in this way. Since they evolve from their predecessors at level 7, it's really not worth it at all to bother tracking them down, but if you happen to encounter one of them, you may as well try to catch it. Or, you could just take it out for some free Exp, but keep in mind their constant spamming Harden can be a bit of a time eater this early on. I like to use Venus' Leech Life to deal constant damage between tackles to ensure they go down as quickly as possible and to heal off any damage I've accumulated from other battles. If your starter knows any special attacks like Vine Whip, Ember, or Bubble, this is definitely the time and place to use them!

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

 

At 40% rarity here is Weedle, the prevolution to Kakuna. You'll typically want to watch out for their Poison Sting. It's not a bad idea to pick up some Antidotes from the store before exploring Viridian Forest because getting poisoned in the middle of the forest can be really annoying. Thankfully, Bulbasaur is part poison so Venus doesn't have to worry about that hindrance. Anyway, I caught a Weedle and nicknamed it Sting.

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

 

Now, I'll be honest, I definitely was not expecting this of all pokemon to take me forever to find. Caterpie is a 40% rarity identically to Weedle. This stands in contrast to how Weedle and Caterpie were soft version exclusives in Red and Green with one being 5% and the other being 45%. But the sheer amount of Weedle and Metapod I was encountering pretty much had me convinced that I was wrong. Venus had leveled all the way up to level 10 by the time I'd managed to encounter a single Caterpie. Grinding out here so long definitely was not my intention, but this is the location where Caterpie is at its most common so it's only natural to catch it here. I nicknamed it Leaves before finally leaving Viridian Forest and making my way back down to Route 22.

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

Of course, any seasoned Pokemon Fan knows that Pikachu can be found here in Viridian Forest, but only at an exceptionally rare rate at 5%. He can be found much more commonly elsewhere so unless you want one for your team, I recommend holding off on hunting one down. If you encounter one on your way through the forest, though, definitely try to catch it! Its Thunder Wave can be a huge help for catching wild pokemon and slowing down really fast opponents. Just don't expect it to come in much handy against the first gym.

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

Why Route 22? Well, of course, it's to do an optional boss fight!

As we pass by the first patch of grass on the way to the Pokemon League, we're stopped by our Rival who tells us the Pokemon League is up ahead and that there are some seriously strong trainers there. He tells us we've got a long way to go before we can even stand a chance there, and then decides to test how strong our team has become!

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

My team:

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

Venus (Bulbasaur M); Lv. 10

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Growl, Leech Seed, Vine Whip

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

Vs. Rival #2

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

Pidgey; Lv. 9

 

He leads off with Pidgey and loves to use Sand-Attack to reduce my accuracy. Other than that, he just spams tackle. According to bulbapedia, he also knows Gust but I've never seen him use that here. His Pidgey is at the level that it should know it, though. Anyway, I was able to brute force it and take Pidgey out in spite of my reduced accuracy and a few misses.

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

Charmander; Lv. 9

 

His Charmander is in a similar boat to Pidgey. Supposedly it knows Ember, but I've never seen it and he should be using it here since I'm a grass-type. Even after hitting him with a Leech Seed to damage in spite of my accuracy and reducing his attack with Growl, he still refused to use Ember, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that either he doesn't know Ember or his AI is scripted to never use it on Bulbasaur since Bulbasaur is typically seen as the "Easy mode" option. Anyway, thanks to Growl and Leech Seed, Charmander eventually got to the point where I'd start healing more damage than he was dealing, so I then started switching tactics to spamming tackle. After frequent misses, Charmander eventually went down, ending the battle!

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

You don't really get anything for winning the battle, just some prize money and the chance to advance further in this direction, but this fight is entirely optional and once you earn the first gym badge, this fight disappears. I recommend doing it because it can actually be a pretty decent challenge this early in the game, especially if you don't have Pikachu.

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

I'll be honest, my original intention was to reach the end of Viridian Forest and make my way back here to battle Green before taking on the first gym, but Caterpie took way longer to find than I expected so I didn't want to be too overleveled for this fight so I came straight here after catching Leaves.

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

If we progress further to the west, we'll find the Pokemon League Reception Gate. You can't proceed past the guard standing watch over the entryway unless you have the Boulder Badge, though, so you're turned away. This is definitely the place we need to go for our final challenge. As Green warned us, though, we have a lot of training to do before we're ready for the challenges that lie beyond this gate.

Next time, we'll be headed right back on track and explore Viridian Forest in its entirety!

[Aura]

Ah! I realized I forgot to make a pit stop in the last update, so I quickly made my way back to Pallet Town because, by going into your rival's house after getting the pokedex, you can speak to Green's sister Daisy and receive the Town Map. 

In Generation 1, I strongly discouraged doing this because, as a key item, the Town Map takes up inventory space and can never be sold or tossed. But I failed to mention that another one of the best additions to this game over the original is that the bag now has multiple pockets just like in Gens 2 and 3. There are only three pockets, this time around. Items, Key Items, and PokeBalls. You no longer have to constantly juggle all your key items around between your pocket and your PC, you can just leave them there! 

Even though the Town Map isn't particularly useful, there's no reason not to collect it this time around. I've just grown so used to ignoring it after so many Kanto playthroughs that it kind of escaped my mind.

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

Another key item I failed to mention is that, after watching the capture tutorial in Viridian City, the old man gives you the Teachy TV. This is another key item that's almost entirely useless.

As if the Help Menu wasn't enough, the Teachy TV serves as yet another list of tutorials. These are thankfully entirely optional.

 

Each category leads you to an instructional video hosted by a guy named PokeDude who walks you through the basics of battling and catching pokemon. Again, this is a feature I usually completely ignore but it's kind of cool to see at times since this PokeDude character isn't seen anywhere else in the game, and his backsprite is completely unique here. I wouldn't be surprised if some people had never even seen him before!

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

 

Viridian Forest

This is another area where you can really feel the emphasis on making areas wider and less cramped. Some patches of grass are rounded out to give the environment a more natural appearance.

   

You can find an antidote on the tree right here at the entrance next to the youngster standing under it. If you follow along the edge of the tall grass to the left, you'll also find a pokeball. You can find a potion in the grass on the far right side that was not in the original game.

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

As we explore this area, we'll start to encounter our first trainers! Naturally, that also means it's our first time encountering this trainer class: The staple Bug Catcher. As always, these are trainers who specialize in Bug-type pokemon. All the ones here just use Caterpie, Weedle, Metapod and Kakuna. 

You can see here that trainer classes are all given new sprites, even if they were also in Ruby & Sapphire, as seen when compared to the Bug Catcher sprite from R&S. Though the Bug Catcher design has remained relatively consistent, so perhaps you'll be able to see this with other upcoming trainer classes instead.

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

 

As you continue fighting your way through the forest, battling Bug Catchers and fending off the onslaught of wild Caterpie and Weedle, you'll find an antidote just sitting on the path and another potion in a little grove of trees. This little alcove was there in the original but there were no items there which was bizarre considering it's just screaming for an item to be found there. I wonder if there were any playground rumors about that back in the day?

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

Pewter City

As you reach the northern part of Viridian Forest, you'll exit out on the northern end of Route 2 before reaching Pewter City! Home to our first gym! In recent playthroughs, I've always made it a point to make a beeline straight for the gym. However, I've realized that hasn't really left us much time to relax and enjoy the new areas we reach and see what's going on in the town. There really isn't much to talk about here in Pewter City, but there is the museum!

Before going inside, you might want to feel around the area just west of the museum to find another hidden PokeBall roughly in the center of the light patch of grass.

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

Pewter Museum of Science

Inside the museum, there isn't anything too spectacular. Everything in here is mostly identical to the original game.

 

The only point of interest here I'd say are the Aerodactyl and Kabutops fossils you can find on display on the lower floor. Unique sprites that are actually pretty cool-looking. It only costs 50p to get inside, so you may as well take a look around.

Other than that, there's also an old man on the second floor who humorously mentions buying a color TV just to watch the news during the moon landing even though the footage was black and white.

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

Pewter Gym

And here we have our first gym: The Rock-type Pokemon Gym lead by Brock: The Rock-Solid Pokemon Trainer. The music in gyms in this game, to my knowledge, is identical to the one in Ruby and Sapphire so it's not too terribly exciting. Rather than give you advice on type-matchups, since you already have the Help menu to help with that, the guide at the entrance will instead inform you about how the pokemon in the left slot of the team will be sent out first. He encourages you to try different leads to gain different advantages in the battle. Of course, we only have our one pokemon on our team, so order isn't exactly a factor at the moment.

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

The only trainer here is Liam, a camper. In general, they tend to use local wildlife in their teams as well as pokemon that would be helpful for camping. This one trainer is entirely optional, you can just walk around him if you think to try, though as a kid I actually had no idea you could do this. The way the wood is patterned on the ground just make me thing that you would be unable to walk on the dirt. For some reason I guess I just never thought to try. Either way, just like all pokemon games, gym trainers cannot be battled once you defeat the gym leader, so I always recommend battling all the gym trainers first.

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

My Team:

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

Venus (Bulbasaur M); Lv. 15

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Vine Whip

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

Yeah, that's not a typo. My Bulbasaur is already level 15. It's just a product of trying to catch that Caterpie along with only using the one pokemon this whole time. Don't worry, we should be coming up on our next addition to the team relatively soon.

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

Pewter Gym Leader Brock

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

Geodude, Lv. 12

 

Vine Whip si 4x effective here, so I'm able to take out Geodude on the word go as the Stadium announcer would have enthusiastically shouted. This leveled me up to 16.

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

Onix, Lv. 14

 

Next was Brock's ace, Onix, who also shares a 4x weakness to Bulbasaur's Vine Whip. Once again, winning is just a matter of using Vine Whip. It did manage to outspeed me, but insult to injury, his Bind wound up missing. Not that it would have affected anything as Bind is much less dangerous for a solo team in this generation as it was in Gen 1. 

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

 

And with that, Brock is defeated and we've earned our Boulder Badge! Alongside the Boulder Badge, we also get TM39: Rock Tomb!

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

Uh-oh, we don't have a TM pocket in our bag! Does that mean this TM is going to start taking up space in our items pocket again? Nope! Thankfully, inside our bag is a helpful key item called a TM Case which stores our TM's within our Key Items pocket instead. I'm not really sure why they felt the need to make this distinction, but anything is better than shuffling all our TMs around. 

Generation 3 does have sprites for all of the badges we receive, but unfortunately I find it difficult to gather the sprites individually online. It probably wouldn't be too difficult to recreate the sprites myself but I'd really like to use the assets from the game for the sake of keeping it consistent with the other sprites and to show the evolution of the game's artstyle over time. 

Anyway, with the Boulder Badge in our possession, we can now use the HM move Flash outside of battle and the attack of all our pokemon gains a slight boost. Brock recommends we go to Cerulean City to continue with our gym challenge.

Now, I did make this battle out to be a joke and, honestly, it really is. Sure, I was a bit overleveled, but in this game, Bulbasaur learns Vine Whip at level 10 rather than 13 like in the original, so you're much more likely to have it by this point in the game. In addition, even if you start with Charmander, they have made multiple adjustments since the original titles to make this fight easier. Charmander now learns Metal Claw at level 13, giving it a coverage option against Rock-types if you're willing to grind out a bit for it. In addition, Mankey can also be caught on Route 22. Mankey knows Low Kick by level 6 and Karate Chop at level 11. Whereas the original required you to get a bit more creative using Status moves to your advantage. I'm honestly not really sure which approach to this I prefer. Both of these approaches require a new player to get familiar with a part of the game they may not have been totally familiar with yet. However, I think I have to give the point to the original. I think Viridian Forest does a good enough job of introducing you to type matchups with Charmander having the advantage over all his foes, while Pikachu is strong against Pidgey, Fearow, and Squirtle but resisted by Bulbasaur. There isn't a whole lot of incentive to use status moves up to this point in the game, so I think having the gym leader force you to use them is really important, especially considering Charmander is generally considered the "Hard Mode" option. 

Still, it's interesting that this new approach requires you to think critically about the types of pokemon that are available to you and possibly rethink your choices of pokemon up until this point, but I don't like that it seems to encourage the idea of just grinding your pokemon out until they learn a new move, especially when there's no in-game resources that tell you if or when a pokemon will learn a certain attack. Unless I raised one myself, if I saw a level 13 Charmander with Metal Claw, I probably would have assumed somebody had just used a TM on it.

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

  

Also, since Venus grew to level 16, he evolved into Ivysaur after the battle was over! With our first gym behind us, next time we'll be heading toward Mt. Moon!

[Aura]

Route 3

As we make our way past Pewter City, we're stopped by an Aide of Prof. Oak who wasn't there in the original game! He gives us a pair of Running Shoes! Thank God this feature wasn't forgotten between the games! We no longer have to slowly trudge along! And it's a good thing we've got it now because we're going to be doing quite a bit of back and forth on this route.

 

Not far at all into this route, you'll be reintroduced to more trainer classes. This time, the Lass and Youngster. These classes are male and female counterparts to each other and are perhaps the most generic trainer classes out there. They tend to specialize in common pokemon. Lasses usually have a preference for cute pokemon while youngsters typically prefer cool ones. You'll also find some more Bug Catchers here. Not sure what exactly they're doing here, though, since there aren't any bug pokemon to catch here. I guess this is just a cool place for trainers from Pewter to hang out and battle.

If look real carefully at the area sandwiched between two ledges near the entrance of the route, you'll see a dark spot in the grass. This is a new addition to FireRed and LeafGreen. It marks a hidden Berry!

If we drop down to inspect it, we'll find an Oran Berry. Berries are a lot rarer in this world, so you may want to hold onto them rather than use them up. There's unfortunately no way to plant them, though. That's exclusively a Hoenn thing.

Just like TM's, when you get a Berry, it'll be added into a new Key Item called a Berry Pouch, so this, also, will not take up valuable inventory space in your items pocket.

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

Not too much further, you'll find some tall grass which of course means new pokemon!

 

This is the first of many areas where the Pokemon Spearow is at its most common: 35%! Odds are, you're not gonna have any trouble finding one here while looking for one of the rarer pokemon. I named mine Hunt.

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

 

Nidoran F is our first soft version exclusive! It's available at 14%, but in FireRed, it's only a 1% rarity. I named mine Field.

It's counterpart, Nidoran M, has the opposite rarities. 1% here in LeafGreen but 14% in FireRed. Needless to say, there's no reason to suffer through trying to track one down at 1%. It's also made much more accessible elsewhere, so don't stress over this exclusivity issue.

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

 

Our rarest target pokemon here is Jigglypuff at 10%. This is the only route Jigglypuff can be caught at, so it's worth going out of your way to find it. Just be wary that it can be encountered as low as level 3, so make sure you have a means to catch it. Venus has Leech Seed to slowly reduce her health and Sleep Powder to put her to sleep and make her much easier to catch, but if that's not an option for you, I recommend using a Weedle's Poison Sting and Pikachu's Thunder Wave. Between Jigglypuff only knowing Sing at such a low level and its Cute Charm ability, it can be a little annoying to catch, but play it safe and it shouldn't be too difficult. I named mine Serenade!

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

Just north of Route 3 is Route 4 where you'll find a Pokemon Center just outside a cave entrance. I won't post the map of this area just yet since it includes the part on the other side of the cave, but there are no trainers here so there isn't much to worry about.

In the north-west corner just west of the Pokemon Center, you'll find another hidden berry: A Persim Berry!

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

Inside the Pokemon Center, you can purchase a Magikarp from the salesman for 500p. The joke is that you just got conned with a pathetic pokemon that can only Splash, but with some perseverance, you can have the last laugh when this evolves into a powerful Gyarados. If you're not planning to use Gyarados on your team, though, I don't recommend this purchase. You'll find an abundance of Magikarp on your own later on in your quest to complete the pokedex.

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

Mt. Moon

We have finally arrived at Mt. Moon and above all else, we're going to finally catch our first party member right here and now! You can probably make an easy guess which pokemon that will be.

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

Scope (Zubat F); Lv. 8

 

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Leech Life, Astonish

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

That's right, we've been passing up Flying types left and right because this is the one I wanna use for my team this playthrough! It was honestly a pretty tough choice, I also really wanted to use Fearow who's gotten shafted quite a bit, but I felt Zubat was a bit more significant specifically to FireRed and LeafGreen because, in Generation 2, Zubat gained a new final evolution! For this reason, I wanted to use at least one pokemon with a Johto Evolution to show off the very strange way FireRed and LeafGreen handles these pokemon. I thought Crobat might be the best choice since he kind of got shafted, just like Fearow, previously in my Gold playthrough. The big problem with raising Zubat, as you can probably tell just by looking at that moveset, is that it really lacks an offensive presence at such a low level. You really have to babysit this thing in order to get it to go anywhere, but don't underestimate it just because it's weak now!

Unfortunately, this also means Fearow is unfortunately going to have to go a bit longer without its time in the spotlight, by no intention of my own! I'll definitely try and make a point to use him in a future title! 

  

  

Now that we've caught this pokemon, there's something else I want to point out as well. Eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed with other pokemon that could be found in Hoenn like Geodude and Jigglypuff, but FireRed and LeafGreen brought with them new sprites for all the pokemon, just like Gold and Silver did with each other! New sprites are always something really exciting to a pokemaniac myself!

Zubat is available in the entrance here and this is also where it's most common in the game at 69% (Haha, funny number). As for the other pokemon available here, they're all available more commonly deeper in the cave, but if you really want to catch them...

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

 

Geodude can be found here at 25% so if you're interested in getting one on your team ASAP, it shouldn't be too much of a chore to catch him here. Odds are, you'll probably find one coincidentally just by exploring the first floor. I did, caught it, and named him Earth.

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

 

Paras and Clefairy can also be caught here at 5% and 1% respectively, but this I absolutely do not recommend, especially for Paras. Just a little bit deeper into the cave and you'll be able to find Paras much more easily. As for Clefairy, 1% rarity is always painful to track down and while Clefairy isn't found much more commonly, you can still find it at a slightly more manageable rarity deeper inside as well.

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

 

Mt. Moon -- 1F

Comparing Mt. Moon's map to the original, you'll quickly find that this is another design philosophy that went into remaking the world of Kanto: The caves were redesigned to be much more practical in design. Back in Red and Green, it wasn't uncommon to end up in a wide open area where you couldn't see any walls around you. Because of this, there was rarely a way to guarantee you've thoroughly explored the cave without going back and forth across the same tunnel 2-3 times. But here, you can see that the paths have been shrunk down a bit so that, if you walk in the center, you'll usually have a wall visible on either side of you so that you know for a fact that you can see every bit of land that's explorable.

Of course, the sand is also a nice touch. It helps you to more easily orient yourself if you happen to get lost and also just adds a splash of color along witht he springs dripping form the walls.

If you head around the corner to your left as you enter, you should find TM09: Bullet Seed where the TM for Water Gun was originally. You may be able to use this to your advantage to make the Geodude in this cave easier to deal with if you're training a Charmander. You can teach it to a Paras you catch here, but by this point, you probably already have Metal Claw on your Charmander. Still, it's a bit more accurate, so maybe you prefer a slight consistency boost? Yeah, Bullet Seed isn't nearly as helpful here as it was in Ruby & Sapphire. Then again, neither was Water Gun. It's the thought that counts, I suppose?

You can get a Parlyz Heal just north of here as well. This might come in more handy than you expect here. Paras isn't too difficult on its own, but its Stun Spore can make following battles a chore, especially if you're trying to raise a Zubat like me. In fact, I'd even suggest you might want to go back and buy some extra Parlyz heals from the mart in Pewter if you find yourself getting annoyed with paralysis.

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

Once you're done exploring the west wing, going back across the entrance to the east wing, you'll quickly come across a ladder that leads down into B1F.

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

Mt. Moon B1F

There isn't much to talk about here, it's mostly just a transitional area between floors. But...

 

Paras is available at 100% down here! I named mine Parasite.

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

Making your way down the linear path leads you to a small area on B2F.

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

Mt. Moon B2F

Down here, you'll find yourself coming face to face with your first Team Rocket Grunts! These rotten adults tend to lean toward Poison and Ground pokemon as well as Ratata. They particularly have a fondness for Zubat, Koffing and Sandshrew along with their evolutions, so be prepared to fight a lot of those going forward.

You can find a Star Piece in this small room. This part of the floor is mostly isolated from the rest of it, but that doesn't mean you can't find those remaining Wild Pokemon here!

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

 

This is where I took a break to hunt down Clefairy, the little angel from space. Well, as the rumors say, anyway. I named her Star.

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

Back on the first floor, making your way down south, you'll find a SuperNerd. These trainers tend to specialize in Electric- and Poison-types, but this one in particular is actually significantly more difficult here than in the original since his Magnemite is now a Steel-Type meaning it resists most early-game attacks. If you started with Charmander, you'll actually have a small advantage here, but it's not too hard to brute force the Magnemite's defences.

If you keep exploring the southeast part of this cave, you'll find a Rare Candy! It's always a good idea to hold onto these so that you can get better use out of them later on when leveling becomes much harder.

You'll also be able to find an Escape Rope not far from this Rare Candy, which will allow you to easily escape from the cave and heal at the Pokemon Center in case of an emergency.

The next ladder we find on 1F will lead us through yet another small hallway on B1F before bringing us back to another small chamber in B2F with yet another Rocket Grunt inside.

This guy's guarding TM46: Thief, more notably, a Dark-type attack! It's not very strong, but it allows you to steal held items. In single player, this is permanent! You can get some really valuable items using this move, though its low power might discourage you from actually using it over other Dark-type moves. Also, keep in mind that Dark is a special type, so pokemon with low special attack are even less likely to be able to use this move effectively.

If you check the rock in this room, you can also find an Ether. Another item I recommend saving for more difficult times later on, but if you're starving for PP, it's not too terribly dire to hold onto these.

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

Moving right along, in the last segment of the first floor, you'll find a Hiker. A trainer class known for specializing in Rock-types as well as the occasional Machop.

If you go a little bit past this ladder, you'll find a Moon Stone. A very valuable item that can be used to evolve a handful of pokemon! You're going to want to pick these up wherever you can find them. There are only a few that you can find in the overworld and, though they are renewable, they're still extremely rare.

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

Finally, going down the stairs here and on the other end of this section of B1F brings you to the main part of Mt. Moon's B2F and the last stretch where you'll find Team Rocket sprawled all around searching for rare fossils.

If you head straight north, you can find a revive which will wake one of your fainted pokemon up and restore half of their HP!

  

One notable change I can point out here is that the Rocket Grunt who once had a rather threatening Raticate now only has a Rattata and a Sandshrew, making him far less memorable this time around.

As you make your way through this floor, you'll eventually find a set of stairs. Before you go up these stairs, you'll want to check the alcove to your right where you can find a Moon Stone hidden on the rock.

 

Once you get your Moon Stone, head up the stairs and you'll be challenged by a SuperNerd who is afraid you'll steal his fossils. Once you defeat him, you'll get your choice of the Dome Fossil or Helix Fossil. Bear in mind that you only get one of these and the other will never become accessible again. You'll need to trade to get your Fossil pokemon's counterpart. I went with the Helix Fossil. 

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

After claiming your choice of fossil, the rest of the dungeon is just climbing your way through some more brief hallways until you're finally met with the sunshine on the other side of Route 4!

Route 4

Before we get ahead of ourselves, you might want to stop by the two BlackBelts at the northern plateau just outside the cave here. These two are actually Move Tutors! They'll teach your pokemon Mega Punch and Mega Kick! This is a new feature in FireRed and LeafGreen intended to make up TMs that were available in Red and Green but not in Gen 3. These move tutors work just like TM's. They'll teach a move only once to a single pokemon, but that move can be passed down from a Male Pokemon to its offspring by breeding, if the move can be learned by the hatching pokemon.

In the sourthern part of this area, you can also find a dark spot in the grass marking a Razz Berry. What use is a PokeBlock ingredient here in Kanto? Well, we're just going to have to wait and see, aren't we?

There is some grass we can go ahead and look into, but considering we just got through an entire dungeon, I think it's best to seek shelter and have a rest for now.

Cerulean City

Once we hop down the ledge on the eastern edge, we are homefree and can make it into the next town: Cerulean City! Next time, we'll explore this area and check what pokemon we'd missed out on in that grass back there.

[Aura]

Cerulean City

While we're here in Cerulean City, why don't we look around town? Many NPC's in the Pokemon Center are talking about Bill, the Pokemaniac known for his incredibly rare pokemon collection. People are spreading some pretty nasty rumors about him, but one man at the desk suggests they're probably just jealous of his collection.

 

Just like in the original, in the house next door to the Pokemon Center, you can trade a Poliwhirl for a Jynx. We're not going to have the chance to make this trade for a while, but it's good to keep in mind because Jynx can be a really powerful asset.

In the house in the northeasternmost part of the city, there is a man who will tell you about the effects of each of the 8 badges of Kanto. Some add a small multiplier to a specific stat while others allow traded pokemon up to a certain level to obey you. This is actually an aspect of the game that's changed here from the original. More specifically, there was a glitch related to these stat boosts called the Badge Boost Glitch that I was actually unaware of when I first played through Gen 1. Long story short, any passive multipliers applied to your pokemon, including stat boosts from badges as well as stat cuts from status ailments like Burn or Paralysis, would be reapplied every time your stats changed. In other words, a 1.5x multiplier would be applied a second time if, say, your opponent uses growl or you used a move like Agility. This could obviously be exploited very easily. If your opponent is burned or paralyzed, you could tank their speed further by using moves like Growl and Leer while you could also rapidly boost your own badge boosts by rapidly spamming moves like Agility or Swords Dance. Needless to say, this was fixed by Generation 2 and so is naturally no longer present here in Generation 3.

In his backyard, you can find a hidden Rare Candy by feeling around the flowers.

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

Next door to this house is a new NPC who will give you a special key item: The Powder Jar! This leads us into Kanto's answer to PokeBlocks in generation 3 which... isn't really all that interesting. It's also a feature I've never been able to play and that holds true to this day. You see, Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen were initially packaged with a wireless link cable which many of its features rely on. Unfortunately, later versions of the game were no longer packaged with this device and that's the version my brother and I got as kids. I could go out of my way to order a couple online to gain access to these, but it's not really necessary.

Anyway, I bring up the wireless link adapters because this Powder Jar is tied to a minigame called Berry Crush. This doesn't seem nearly as exciting as making PokeBlocks in Hoenn, though. Rather than being a timing minigame, it was just a button masher. From what I understand, each player throws a berry into the machine and mashes the A button. Depending on the berries used and how well everyone does, you'll gain a varying amount of Berry Powder which is stored in your Powder Jar. Berry Powder functions very similarly to the volcanic soot from Ruby and Sapphire to the point where I'm pretty confident in saying the Powder Jar is even just a reskinned counterpart of the Soot Sack and uses the same code for its functionality.

If you bring your Berry Powder to the man who gave you the Powder Jar, you'll be able to give him the powder so that he can make medicine out of it. This is FRLG's way of introducing you to the medicinal herbs introduced in Gen 2, but more importantly, you can earn vitamins to increase your pokemon's EV's, but each one costs 1000 units of berry powder so it'll take a while to get any meaningful return out of that. 

In order to play Berry Crush, you'll need to join up with other players in the Union Room which requires a wireless adapter in order to enter. It's located on the second floor of any Pokemon Center.

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

The last point of interest here in Cerulean City is the Bike Shop. Here, we can purchase a bike for 1,000,000p! Okay, obviously, we don't have that much money and we never will. But that's not nearly as painful as in the original because we still have our running shoes!

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

Now that we're done with Cerulean City, I wanna backpedal a bit to Route 4. There's actually something here that I actually forgot about in my haste to get to Cerulean City.

There's actually a hidden Great Ball somewhere near the exit of Mt. Moon. Unfortunately, we can't get back up there from where we are, so it seems we're stuck without it. That's a shame because it'd be useful for catching an upcoming pokemon.

For now, though, I'm more interested in catching a new pokemon for our team!

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

Burrow (Sandshrew F); Lv. 6

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Scratch, Defense Curl

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

Say hello to our new teammate, Burrow! This is actually a bit of a last-minute change as I was originally intending to use Diglett for my team in his place. However, Sandshrew is admittedly a pokemon I've been interested in using and it's not available in FireRed. That's right, this is a version exclusive, just like in the originals! This isn't where Sandshrew is most common, but its 25% rarity isn't too tough to deal with if you're interested in adding one to your team.

Its version exclusive counterpart in FireRed version is Ekans who is unfortunately unobtainable here, so if you're interested in raising one of these guys for your FireRed team, you can pick it up here, but otherwise you might have a slightly easier time finding it later on.

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

With that out of the way, let's return to Cerulean City! Normally, I would take on the Gym right here and now, but since we just caught a new pokemon, I'd like to get Burrow some more exp. So instead, we're actually gonna go ahead toward Bill's House at Cerulean Cape. Of course, as everyone knows, heading up north, we'll be met by none other than our rival!

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

My Team:

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

Venus (Ivysaur M); Lv. 23

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

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

Scope (Zubat F); Lv. 20

 

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Leech Life, Astonish, SuperSonic, Bite

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

Burrow (Sandshrew F); Lv. 6

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Scratch, Defense Curl

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

Vs. Rival #3

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

Pidgeotto Lv. 17

 

I led off with Scope who was able to get a few lucky flinches with Bite, allowing me to take out Pidgeotto with relative ease.

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

Rattata Lv. 15

 

Rattata came next and nearly suffered a similar fate. However, thanks to Quick Attack, it was able to take out Scope before I could take it out.

 

Since Borrow was still freshly caught, I didn't want to risk Rattata getting a KO with something like Hyper Fang, so I just brought Venus out next to finish off Rattata.

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

Abra, Lv. 16

 

Green's Abra at this point infamously only knows Teleport, so this is free exp.

 

Needless to say, I wasn't going to pass up on this opportunity to get Burrow in on the action!

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

Charmander, Lv. 18

 

Once again, obviously, I wasn't going to be leaving Burrow out right here.

 

With no better options, I retreated into Venus. He just used Growl to lower my Attack, so I went for the first opportunity to use Sleep Powder and put him to sleep. I then hit him with a couple of Razor Leafs to finish the job.

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

After defeating Green, he tells us that he visited Bill's house and saw his amazing rare pokemon collection and added pages to his pokedex before walking off.

In the original, that was the end of this interaction, but here, he comes right back and gives us an item! This is the Fame Checker, a key item he says has no use to him because he doesn't give a hoot about others, but that a chatty gossip like you might be able to find some use for it. Kinda rude, not gonna lie.

This Fame Checker is a bit of a strange item. I guess its purpose is to help you stay familiar with significant characters.

If we open it up, we can see a few familiar names. Prof. Oak, Green, Daisy (Green's sister), Bill, and Brock. Scrolling to these names will bring up a list of six objects or NPC's that provide insight on what that character is like. After talking to an NPC, they get registered in the Fame Checker. Ultimately, though, it's kind of a useless item. Maybe it'll be interesting to you if you don't know much about these characters, but it really doesn't provide a whole lot of information.

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

     

Just north of Cerulean City is Route 24 AKA Nugget Bridge. One of the more memorable locations in Kanto to me. Here, you'll face off against 6 required trainer battles.

At the end, there is a member of Team Rocket looking to recruit trainers who manage to defeat all five trainers before him. He'll give you a Nugget and offer you an opportunity to join Team Rocket, but naturally you refuse and he challenges you to a battle himself.

Just north of the bridge, you'll find TM45: Attract!

Other than that, another interesting spot is the tall grass here where we can find some new wild pokemon!

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

 

The first of these pokemon is yet another version exclusive: Bellsprout! Just like Sandshrew, Bellsprout is a bit more common elsewhere, but he's not too terrible to pick up here at 25% if you're looking for one for your team. I managed to find one while looking for my main target here, so I went ahead and caught it, naming it Root.

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

Bellsprout's version exclusive counterpart found only in FireRed version is Oddish!

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

 

Our main target here, however, is Abra. Abra is only available in two locations and perhaps it would have been easier to catch him later on, but I figured I wanted to train up Burrow so I may as well be productive while doing so. The difficult part about catching Abra, as any seasoned pokemon fan knows, is that its only attack is Teleport, meaning it instantly flees from battle on the first turn. Your best bet to catch this thing is to either put it to sleep or just throw a pokeball at it first turn. You can also hope for a flinch, just keep in mind it could potentially have Inner Focus which prevents flinching, or paralyze or confuse it, but keep in mind it could potentially have Synchronize which will in turn paralyze you and even then it's not a guaranteed chance. While I could make things easier on myself by having Venus in the lead and just use Sleep Powder to put it to sleep, I have a minor issue in that I'm trying to raise up Burrow, too. Thankfully, I was actually able to catch the first one I found with a PokeBall at full health! I guess it's a pretty lucky day, huh?

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

 

In addition to catching Abra, in the process of searching for it, Scope evolved into a Golbat!

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

Route 25

The pokemon in the grass here are identical to the ones on Route 24. But if you continue past them, crossing back onto Route 24 on top of the ledge, you can find a Pecha berry in the grass! Now that we've been introduced to Berry Crush, the game's going to start throwing berries at us a lot more consistently.

Among the trainers gathered around here, you can find another trainer class, the Picknicker, which is just a female counterpart to the Camper.

If you're clever about how you approach the trainers in this area, you'll be able to move one of them out of the way so that you can move around behind them and grab TM43: Secret Power! Otherwise, you'll need to come back here with Cut if you fail to get it now.

 

There are also some more hidden berries here, another Oran Berry and  Bluk Berry.

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

Finally, at the end of this trek, we've made it to Bill's House at Cerulean Cape.

If we enter inside, though, we'll find... a Clefairy? If we go to talk to it, we find out that it's none other than Bill himself who has somehow transformed himself into a pokemon while experimenting with a transporter he's been developing. This is kind of a terrifying result the more you think about it, so it's best just... not to. Instead, we'll just help him transform back.

As thanks for our help, he gives us the S.S. Ticket which we can use to board the S.S. Anne in Vermillion City!

   

If we leave and come back in, though, there's actually something that I had no idea about until my brother pointed it out to me today, but you can actually check Bill's PC to see this famous collection of rare pokemon that's been so hyped up. As it turns out, it's just Eevee and its three evolutions. Huh. I mean, they are admittedly pretty rare since Eevee is a one-of-a-kind pokemon, but it's not exactly all that impressive to have them all. Then again, in Generation 1, I suppose it was a different story. Getting all three Eevolutions was quite a daunting task there. Unfortuantely, with Eevee being a one-of-a-kind gift pokemon, adding it to your pokedex really doesn't help you track it down at all.

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

At the cape, there's a shortcut back to Cerulean City where I want to make one last pit stop before the gym to hopefully help Burrow be a bit more useful here. If we head up to the house that once had the police officer blocking the entrance during an investigation about a robbery that involves Team Rocket, it seems the scene is no longer closed off and we can go inside to see the ruined house. It turns out a grunt had stolen a Dig TM from the house.

 

If we head out back, we'll find that very culprit and we'll battle him to get that Dig TM back! If we try to return the TM to the hiker who had it stolen, he says he doesn't need it anymore as he taught the move to his pokemon without it but lets you keep it as a thank you. I went ahead and taught this to Burrow along with the Rock Tomb TM we got from Brock. I've got more copies of this TM than I know what to do with in this gen, so it's not going to hurt wasting one of them. Same with Dig.

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

Cerulean Gym

Finally, we've arrived at what I was originally intending to be our very next stop. Oops. We're a little bit overleveled once again, but this wasn't exactly going to be a terribly difficult gym for us either way.

The Guide at this gym this time just offers us advice on how to deal with Water-type pokemon which is kind of lame considering the Help menu exists already.

In this gym, we're introduced to another new trainer class, the Swimmer! Like always, Swimmers specialize in water-type pokemon but are always found swimming in the water as opposed to on the land. 

This gym also has a Picknicker, though once again both of these trainers are completely optional.

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

My Team:

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

Venus (Ivysaur M); Lv. 24

 

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Tackle, Sleep Powder, Leech Seed, Razor Leaf

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

Scope (Zubat F); Lv. 22

 

Item: None

Ability: Inner Focus | Moves: Wing Attack, Astonish, SuperSonic, Bite

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

Burrow (Sandshrew F); Lv. 16

 

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil | Moves: Scratch, Defense Curl, Dig, Rock Tomb

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

Cerulean Gym Leader Misty

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

Staryu, Lv. 18

Misty's pokemon like to use Water Pulse in this game which has a pretty annoyingly high chance of confusing you.

 

I led off with Venus and was able to take out Staryu pretty easily with Razor Leaf.

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

Starmie, Lv. 21

 

If you're unprepared, this Starmie can actually be pretty devastating. Thankfully, I was able to deal a significant chunk of damage with Razor Leaf. At this point, I tried to put it to sleep in an effort to test the limits of Burrow.

 

Unfortuantely for Burrow, Starmie woke up pretty easily and took her out with a Water Pulse.

 

I then brought Scope out to finish the job with Bite for the victory!

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

 

For winning this battle, I was awarded the CascadeBadge and TM03: Water Pulse, which she encourages you to use on an aquatic pokemon. This can have more power on a water-type, but it's also a fantastic coverage option for a lot of pokemon, especially with the chance of confusion. Lots of different pokemon can learn it, so you might be surprised!

Anyway, unlike Brock, I'm actually pretty confident my overleveling did play a factor here. While this battle isn't too terribly difficult, I don't think it's really supposed to be so easy, either. Anyway, The Cascade Badge allows pokemon up to level 30 to obey us even if we're not the original trainer and also allows us to use the HM Cut outside of battle! Next time, we'll be making our way toward Vemillion City! Going forward, I'll try to be extra careful about not overleveling. I really don't like being higher level than my opponent's pokemon unless I'm doing some sort of challenge run.