All the Pokemens

[Aura]

Battle Frontier

We're nearing the end of the Battle Frontier! Only two facilities remain! Today, we'll be taking a look at the one I've been dreading the most out of all of them: The Battle Pyramid!

Battle Pyramid

The Battle Pyramid, much like the Battle Dome, is easily identifiable by its name alone. It's the giant pyramid in the northeastern corner of the facility! And if you can't tell by the music alone, I can now personally attest to the fact that this is by far the single most stressful facility in the entire frontier so far! And I seriously doubt that the Battle Tower is nearly as rough. That said, I'm not so certain I would say it's the most difficult facility. I still think the Battle Dome was more genuinely challenging, but having only gone for Silver Symbols, perhaps my opinion would change if I continued further on. After all, if a challenge requires a lot of luck, it's naturally going to get exponentially harder the longer you have to maintain your winning streak. And this one certainly has a layer of luck to it.

Once again, there's no double battle category, so you've gotta be prepared for a mix of both. Double Battles are rather rare in the pyramid, though, so you're not likely to run into them. Be prepared primarily for Single Battles! Once again, here's the link for the bulbapedia page!

This facility hosts the "Battle Quest," which is a sort of simulation for a single-player adventure that tests your resource management skills, specifically focusing on the importance of items. In order to take on the challenge, you have to choose three pokemon that aren't carrying any held items. You'll also have to leave your bag behind. That's right, you have venture forward with nothing but your three pokemon and whatever moves they know! Well, that's not entirely true.

 

In place of your bag, you'll be given a Battle Bag. This bag is significantly smaller than your ordinary bag and only contains one pocket for all of your items. It can only carry 10 different items, though items of the same type can be stacked together.

 

When you first get your Battle Bag, you'll find a Hyper Potion and an Ether inside of it. On subsequent challenges, any items in your battle bag at the end of your previous challenge, as well as any held items your pokemon happened to have (if there's room for them in the bag), will be found in the Battle Bat at the start. So even if you're on the final floors, think twice before using all your items haphazardly.

As for the actual challenge of the Battle Quest, the premise is actually very simple. You're navigating seven floors of the pyramid's maze which is filled with wild pokemon and trainers. Each floor is incredibly dark but, similarly to Dewford Gym, the light will grow brighter for every Wild Pokemon or Trainer you defeat. On each floor, you'll be looking for a bright blue warp tile to advance to the next floor. What makes this stressful is the fact that there is zero auto-healing. No rest floors or trainers who heal you after battling them, nothing of the sort. It's essentially the Battle Pike but it only has all the rooms you never want. The only way to recover your HP or PP is to use the items you find while navigating the maze, so PP conservation is a must! This makes every single miss, big hit, and especially KO, hurt that much more than any other facility. Each floor is also quite massive as well, so depending on your luck, you could be trapped on a single floor for a long time. Thankfully, if you talk to the trainers you defeat, they'll give you hints such as how many items or trainers remain, or, most importantly, which direction from them the exit can be found. Your goal is to conquer the pyramid by reaching its peak!

In the lobby, next to the PC, is a Hex Maniac who will give you a warning of what sorts of hazards you're going to face in the next round of the Pyramid. What she says is important to take note of because she'll hint at the types of problems you're going to be dealing with across the challenge because I've yet to mention the most frustrating part of the Battle Pyramid: The Wild Pokemon are mostly incredibly fast and consequently difficult to flee from. What's worse, the pokemon only get tougher the further you get. You're going to want to make sure your lead pokemon is either extremely fast or is capable of taking some hits from the types of pokemon you'll be dealing with.

I personally recommend having a versatile bulky pokemon, a fast pokemon, and a pokemon capable of healing itself. The latter will help you avoid relying too much on items and the moves SoftBoiled and Milk Drink can even be used as Field moves to split one pokemon's HP with others. Your fast pokemon can be used to escape from fast opponents, but never underestimate the speed of the pokemon here. You might find yourself wasting several turns in a row trying to force a flee. If you're really desperate to escape a battle, a Fluffy Tail might do the trick! And naturally, your bulky pokemon can always take some hits and get some quick KOs. Always nice to have! Abilities like Natural Cure and moves like Heal Bell are also really nice as long as you have pokemon that can use them effectively.

I don't recommend pokemon that are too reliant on their held items or utilize complicated setups like Spikes or Baton Pass. Most of the battles you'll be dealing with here are only against one pokemon. The only exception being if you happen to catch the attention of two trainers at a time and enter a double battle, and, of course, the Frontier Brain himself. I think from my suggestions, you can already tell who I've brought with me during this challenge, but let's go over them now!

As for tips on actually navigating the floors, I strongly recommend a very systematic approach. Each time, I start by making my way to the southwestern corner of the floor. Then, depending on whether I hit the south border or west border first, I'll start walking along the border in the direction I've seen the least of. The importance here is to cover as much ground as possible. This refers to your light as well! When wile pokemon are this much of a problem, every step counts! Try to position yourself so that every tile at the edge of the spotlight is revealing a new tile with each step forward. The borders of the map are perfectly square, so you don't need to keep them in view, just the tile in front of them. Also keep in mind that you don't need to see the entire tile, as long as you can see any part of the tile, you're good. The exit tile is extremely hard to miss. In an ideal world, you could just walk in a straight line from your good position, but in practice, you're constantly going to be bumping into walls and having to go off course left and right. Try to choose a path that covers the most ground with as few steps as possible and try to remember the path you've taken. The floors are procedurally generated, so don't worry if you see a bunch of walls in a familiar pattern. If you see a trainer you've defeated before, though, that might make a difference. The important thing here is to avoid covering ground you've already covered.

Whenever you defeat a trainer, always talk to them. They might point you in the direction of the exit! In which case, quickly adjust your search treating that trainer's position as the new border opposite to the direction they pointed. (For example, if the trainer says the exit is to the west, treat that trainer's position as the new eastern border and stop searching anything to their east. You know you won't find the exit there so searching is a waste of time unless you really want items... you'll quickly find, though, that such a strategy really isn't worth it. 9 times out of 10, you're better off prioritizing the exit).

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

 

My Team:

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

 Toll (Metagross); Lv. 60

 

Item: None

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Rock Slide, Explosion, Meteor Mash, Earthquake

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

 Cancer (Starmie); Lv. 60

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Rapid Spin, ThunderBolt, Hydro Pump, Ice Beam

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

 Cat (Blissey F); Lv. 60

 

Item: None

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Thunder Wave, SoftBoiled, Seismic Toss, Counter

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

Challenge 1

"I see a shower of sparks...

...and in it, I see your pokemon strugging with paralysis..."

Here we're going to run into a bunch of electric types. You may want to consider bringing a Ground-type for its immunity to Thunder Wave.

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

Floor 1:

 

Plusle, Minun

The first floor was filled with Plusle and Minun which are fairly tough to flee from at their later levels. Note, these aren't an exhaustive list of the pokemon available on any given floor, these are just the pokemon I happened to encounter on each floor. I got the feeling the encounters do differ between floors as tougher pokemon tend to appear on the higher floors more frequently while the pokemon from the earlier floors seem to stop appearing. Since I don't know the exact encounter rates, I'm just sharing the pokemon I ran into.

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

Floor 2:

 

Minun, Pikachu

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

Floor 3:

  

Electabuzz, Pikachu, Vileplume

Yup, even though the Hex Maniac told us they saw a shower of sparks, not every pokemon is going to be an Electric type. Thankfully, Vileplume is pretty slow, so I'll gladly take any encounters against them! If you do choose to battle them, though, you can naturally expect to risk a Stun Spore.

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

Floor 4:

 

Vileplume, Electabuzz

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

Floor 5:

 

Manectric, Vileplume

Manectric is pretty fast and usually requires me to take it out with Toll's Earthquake. If you don't have any Cheri Berries by this point, youo may want to consider using Fluffy Tails to avoid them. If you do find yourself paralyzed, I recommend giving your pokemon a Cheri Berry to hold rather than healing it directly. This will make it slower for battling purposes for a turn before it eats the berry, but it'll guarantee that it never actually gets stopped from attacking and you'll avoid simply getting paralyzed again until the next time you choose to attack or fail to escape. Paralysis doesn't appear to affect your ability to flee, either.

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

Floor 6:

 

Manectric, Jolteon

Now they're doubling down on pokemon that are near-impossible to flee from!

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

Floor 7:

  

Breloom, Manectric, Jolteon

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

It seems the devs are quite aware of how rough this challenge is because, for clearing even the first challenge, you're awarded with not 1, but 5 BP! This isn't exactly my favorite facility, but it just might be the best place to grind for Battle Points...

Of course, as mentioned before, the contents of your Battle Bag and any held items are saved for your next quest. So here's what I had at the end of my first challenge:

 x 2   x 3   x 4  

Hyper Potion (2), Ether, Fluffy Tail (3), Max Revive, Revive (4), Cheri Berry, Shell Bell

The Shell Bell was especially nice for Toll as it helped him heal off a lot of extra HP without having to bother Cat for it. In addition, the Max Revive was an incredibly lucky find! Regular Revives, too, are extremely nice as they can effectively double as Full-Heals by letting your pokemon faint and reviving them. Though I really don't recommend making a habit of utilizing this strategy since they are best used to revive a pokemon that went down to an unfortunate circumstance such as an unexpected crit. Fluffy Tails are incredibly helpful for getting away from scary opponents, though you generally don't want to get too used to relying on them as you'll only find so many.

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

Challenge 2

"I see poison...

...And, I see your pokemon suffering from the effects of poison."

Poison is a very scary status effect inside the pyramid. Try to use Poison or Steel types that don't have to fear the possibility of having their health drained by poison. In the labyrinth itself, also seek out Pecha Berries.

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

Floor 1

  

Roselia, Gulpin, Seviper

I should probably mention, throughout the beginning of this challenge, I'd been trying to avoid using Earthquake as much as possible, assuming it would be useful for the latter floors. I actually recommend doing the opposite, however, because you'll soon come to find that Earthquake isn't nearly as useful there as you might think and I found myself starved for PP for my other moves instead.

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

Floor 2

 

Butterfree, Skarmory

The fact that these Skarmory know Toxic have me a bit skeptical that these are legitimate wild pokemon...

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

Floor 3

   

Ludicolo, Butterfree, Seviper, Skarmory

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

Floor 4

  

Ludicolo, Skarmory, Seviper

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

Floor 5

  

Skarmory, Crobat, Ludicolo

Crobat is the first of the particularly problematic wild pokemon for me. Toll hasn't had to worry about much at all this whole time being a Steel type immune to the effects of Toxic and other Poison attacks. The biggest threat has been Seviper's Glare. However, if you fail to flee against Crobat, he likes to trap you with Mean Look, forcing you to take him out. That's not a pleasant situation if you're running low on PP for Rock Slide...

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

Floor 6

   

Ludicolo, Gengar, Skarmory, Crobat

Gengar is by far the worst wild pokemon to run into. At this point, you'd better pray you stumble across the exit quickly because these guys are terrifying! Not only are they immune to Toll's Earthquake thanks to Levitate, but they also know Night Shade which can completely bypass my defenses! They're also incredibly fast and difficult to flee from. These things were the source of 90% of my panic while going through these last two floors and they are far too common for my liking, so you can't rely on Fluffy Tails to keep them satisfied, either.

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

Floor 7

   

Ludicolo, Crobat, Gengar, Skarmory

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

Thankfully, I managed to make my way through! Though not without having to use one of my revives on Toll because he happened to walk into a Counter from a trainer's Slakoth...

 x 2   x 3   x 3  

Hyper Potion (2), Ether, Fluffy Tail (3), Max Revive, Revive (3), Dire Hit, Shell Bell

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

Challenge 3

"I see bright red flames...

...and I see your pokemon suffering from burns."

A scary one for me, indeed. Especially knowing ahead of time that this is the challenge where you'll be facing off against the Frontier Brain. A burn on Toll could be detrimental since it relies so heavily on its offensive power, so I decided to put Cancer in the lead since Cancer, at the very least, can resist fire attacks and cure its own Burn with Natural Cure. That still doesn't mean this will be a walk in the park, though.

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

Floor 1

   

Ninetails, Growlithe, Vulpix, Magcargo

Right away, Ninetails is a tough foe for even Cancer to flee from! Thankfully, I'm capable of getting away when it's at lower levels, but this is not a good precedent.

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

Floor 2

  

Magcargo, Ninetails, Weezing

Weezing had me terrified. I was afraid one of them would end up Exploding on me. I can't confirm that they don't have Explosion or Self-Destruct, but none of them used either of those moves on me when I failed to flee from them, so it's possible they simply don't have them? It's also just as likely I got extremely lucky and just didn't have to bare witness to such a horrible occurance.

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

Floor 3

Ninetails

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

Floor 4

Ninetails

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

Floor 5

 

Medicham, Weezing

Medicham are particularly threatening for Cancer. Even with the resistance, Hi Jump Kick can still deal a lot of damage if it hits and these guys can be surprisingly fast!

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

Floor 6

  

Houndoom, Weezing, Dusclops

Don't EVER fall for the trap of trying to fight a Dusclops. These things aren't fast at all so they're pretty easy to flee from, but their Pressure ability will cause long-lasting damage, especially this late in the challenge. Houndoom is essentially Nintetails 2.0. It's faster and stronger. I frequently found myself using Fluffy Tails or switching to Cat to take them out. They can deal some terrifying damage if left unchecked.

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

Floor 7

  

Weezing, Dusclops, Houndoom

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

 x 2   x 2    x 2  x 3 

At the end of my third challenge, this is what my Battle Bag looked like! It could definitely look better, but the real treasure was what was on my pokemon!

I'd managed to get my hands on a Choice Band! How did I get ahold of it? Well, I just happened to run into a trainer with a Kecleon that was running that cute little Choice Band Trick strategy to lock me into an attack. This actually benefitted me in the longrun, however, because this essentially traded my Shell Bell for a Choice Band! Item steals are permanent here in the Battle Pyramid, so this means the Choice Band was for keeps! I gave this Choice Band to Toll in order to help it deal some extra damage because it'll definitely need it in this upcoming battle!

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

When you reach the pyramid's peak the third time, it seems that somebody beat you there! But that's okay because all you have to do is battle him to take his place as the conqueror of the pyramid.

Vs. Pyramid King Brandon

Brandon is perhaps the most unique of the Frontier Brains. On one hand, you're usually going to be starting from some sort of compromised position. Maybe your pokemon are low on HP, suffering from a status condition, or just don't have any good held items. This is all par for the course, but the game does make up for it. Since the Battle Pyramid comes with a special bag, this is the only facility where you're allowed to use items in the battle against the frontier brain. However, you're limited to whatever you happened to scrounge up along the way. Under the circumstances, this is one major exception to my standard "No items" rule since the items you're allowed to use are rather self-contained, in limited supply, and can't be used anywhere else. This is certainly the place you're expected, and encouraged, to use them.

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

Regirock, Lv. 60

                    

                    

I led off with Toll and immediately opened up with a Choice Banded Meteor Mash! Regirock barely hung on and was able to come back around with a couple of Earthquakes to take Toll out. Unfortunately, that choice band was pretty short-lived...

                    

                    

With Cancer, all I needed with an Ice Beam to blow Regirock over. He wasn't going anywhere!

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

Regice, Lv. 60

                    

                    

The strategy here is pretty standard Legendary Golem stuff and I could see right through it. No chance in hell was I leaving Cancer in here.

                    

                    

I retreated into Cat while Regice went for Thunder to attack Cancer, the Thunder ended up missing anyway, but that was still a risk I wasn't willing to take with Cancer. From here, Cat used Thunder Wave to slow Regice's attacks and began pummeling away at it with Seismic Toss.

 

Just in case, I did go ahead and drop a Max Revive on Toll, who should be able to handle the rest with ease thanks to its Choice Band, just in case. I wasn't about to end up back at square one all over again.

However, thanks to her incredible Sp. Defense, Cat was able to overcome Regice using only Seismic Toss.

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

Registeel, Lv. 60

                    

                    

I opened up with a Thunder Wave against Registeel to slow it down as well, but it read this and took the opportunity to get a solid hit in with Earthquake which did about 1/3 of Cat's HP. I went for Counter the next turn, but again, I was read and Registeel went for Iron Defense to build up its defenses. At this point, I started to go for Seismic Toss to nullify his defense boost by reducing his HP. Registeel did have a Leftovers, but it wasn't healing nearly fast enough. Still, Registeel was able to overcome me in the end with a mixture of Toxic damage and Earthquake in spite of my attempts to stay alive with SoftBoiled.

                    

                    

Cancer was still rarin to go, though, and Registeel was looking pretty low on health. With a special attack, I could get around his increased defense, so I went for Hydro Pump and managed to get the KO!

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

 

And with that, the Pyramid King Brandon was dethroned and the Brave Symbol was mine! We now have 6 of the 7 symbols of the Battle Frontier! Our time is almost up already! It's actually almost scary to think about...

MVP: Cat

Now, this might come as a surprise to you considering so much of this facility was me talking about how useful Toll and Cancer were in various situations. I hardly ever talked about Cat doing anything except for helping out against Brandon himself. (Even then, Toll certainly could've been more than enough without Cat). So how did Cat earn the MVP slot? Well, Cat was my primary source of healing! Like I mentioned earlier, SoftBoiled is a field move which I can use to take HP off of Cat and give it to Toll or Cancer whenever necessary. Without Cat, I would have to rely on my Hyper Potions if I ever wanted to heal which would've meant taking far more uncomfortable risks to get the most use out of the 200 HP the potions recover. With Cat's SoftBoiled, however, I could heal up a little over 50% of Toll's maximum HP with a single use keeping him alive and myself in a much more comfortable position. Without Cat, I'm not sure I could've made it to the frontier brain at all this run since I would've been using Hyper Potions much more frequently and otherwise wouldn't be able to heal above 50% HP thanks to a Revive. Cat also really helped deal with some particularly awkward pokemon like Houndour and a particularly obnoxious trainer's Minun which actually wound up KOing Toll twice. The first due to a crit and the second due to me simply underestimating its speed and the damage its ThunderBolt could do. So yes, I definitely don't think it's a stretch to list Cat as the MVP this time around!

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

Woo! Yes, I can definitely see how this facility is considered a nightmare and I'm inclined to agree. I can only imagine how rough this can get when going for the Gold Symbol... But, we can finally put this facility behind us and look toward our final destination. There's only one more facility remaining and that is none other than the classic Battle Tower!

[Aura]

Battle Frontier

This is it! We only have one symbol missing from our Frontier Pass. The only facility we haven't been to is the only one we've technically been to before. I'm of course referring to the Battle Tower!

Battle Tower

The tower itself has been massively expanded from the one we've seen in Ruby and Sapphire. It was already huge before, but this one completely dwarfs all of the other facilities!

The reason for this expansion is quite clear once you step inside. There are now four completely separate formats here at the Frontier's Battle Tower. The Single, Double, and Multi-Battle formats all have their own receptionist now. In addition, there's the new Net Battle format which allows you to link up with a friend and battle co-operatively against the tower in a series of Multi-Battles.

Just like before, the Single Battle format requries you to enter with three pokemon, Double requires four, while Mutli- and Net-Battles require you to enter with two pokemon. However, if you're after the facilitiy's Frontier Symbol, you're unfortunately limited to just Single-Battle format. The Frontier Brain will not challenge you during Double, Multi, or Net Battle challenges.

The battles themselves are simple, honest-to-goodness, no-tricks battles. There's no gimmicks, no hints, no special rules, and you heal after every battle. Just enter with the pokemon you want to battle with and try to fight your way through a round of seven battles! This is by far the most straight-forward facility in the Battle Frontier, so I'm actually rather glad to have saved it for the last. It's definitely the most stress-free since there isn't nearly as much chance of getting screwed over like there is in most of the other facilities. Plus, by this point, I'm pretty familiar with the movesets of the pokemon I'm going up against, so it should be pretty straight-forward.

Of course, the biggest change from Ruby and Sapphire is that you're no longer rewarded with random items for clearing rounds, just Battle Points which can be exchanged for any item of your choosing! In Single Battles, you'll gain one BP for each round you've completed. (That's 1 BP for round 1, 2 BP for round 2, etc. capping out at 15 BP. Defeating the frontier brain, as always, will add an additional 10 BP to your reward.

There isn't much to this facility, but if you'd like the bulbapedia page anyway, here it is. It shares a page with the Battle Tower from Ruby and Sapphire, so you'll need to scroll down a little bit to get to it.

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

 

My Team:

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

 Beast (Slaking M); Lv. 60

 

Item: Choice Band 

Ability: Truant | Moves: Shadow Ball, Aerial Ace, Double-Edge, Brick Break

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

 Toll (Metagross); Lv. 60

 

Item: Lum Berry 

Ability: Clear Body | Moves: Rock Slide, Explosion, Meteor Mash, Earthquake

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

 Cancer (Starmie); Lv. 60

 

Item: Cheri Berry 

Ability: Natural Cure | Moves: Rapid Spin, ThunderBolt, Hydro Pump, Ice Beam

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

Round 1

Battle #7: Triathlete Leslie

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

Primeape Lv. 60

                    

                    

Leslie led off with a Primeape which I knew from experience loves to go for Counter. Thankfully, Beast has a lot more horsepower behind his attacks than Toll thanks to his Choice Band. With a Double-Edge, I was able to take out Primeape without fear of getting Countered!

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

Hitmonchan Lv. 60

                    

                    

This was an off turn for Truant, so I retreated into another pokemon capable of battling more efficiently.

                    

                    

Strangely, Hitmonchan went for Detect on the off turn, so the switch actually turned out to be free. I took the opportunity to bring out Toll. From here, Hitmonchan blocked Toll's Meteor Mash with a Detect, but strat would only get him so far. Toll's next Meteor Mash did connect but barely failed to KO Hitmonchan, granting him the chance to counter and take Toll out.

                    

                    

Hitmonchan's HP was low enough that it wasn't worth wasing Beast's free turn to chip away, so I brought out Cancer instead. With an Ice Beam, Hitmonchan was down.

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

Seadra Lv. 60

                    

                    

An unfortunate victim to type coverage. With a single ThunderBolt, Seadra was down before it could even attack.

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

Round 2

Battle #14: Bug Maniac Corey

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

Illumise Lv. 60

                    

                    

With a Double-Edge, another free KO for Beast.

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

Scyther Lv. 60

                    

                    

Of course, there's no sense in keeping Beast out on his off turn.

                    

                    

Toll switched in on Scyther's Double Team, which was rather awkward. He set up Swords Dance the following turn and I missed due to his evasion. Thankfully, on the third turn I was able to take him out with a Rock Slide despite him setting up a second Double Team.

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

Venomoth Lv. 60

                    

                    

And Venomoth was very short-lived, going down immediately to Toll's Rock Slide.

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

Round 3

Due to the simplicity of this facility, much like the Battle Dome, you have to clear 5 rounds as opposed to the standard 3. However, unlike the Battle Dome, this does actually mean significantly more battles. Since this one is so much simpler than the others, though, it's really not a big deal to do more battles.

Battle #21: PokeFan Jaren

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

Quagsire Lv. 60

                    

                    

I'll give you one guess how this one went.

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

Shuckle Lv. 60

                    

                    

And again, I went for the switch.

                    

                    

Shuckle locked himself into Rollout, so it was entirely helpless at this point. A Hydro Pump from Cancer was all I needed to take it out.

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

Ninetails Lv. 60

                    

                    

Likewise, Ninetails couldn't hold up to the raw power of Cancer's Hydro Pump.

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

Round 4

Battle #28: Lady Salma

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

Walrein Lv. 60

                    

                    

I didn't want to inflict too much Recoil damage to myself with Double-Edge, just in case, so I went for Brick Break which unfortuantely didn't quite KO Walrein. This gave Walrein a couple of free Curses to set up, but it wasn't quite able to get enough bulk to protect itself from my next available Brick Break.

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

Gyarados Lv. 60

                    

                    

With another Turant turn, Beast retreated once again.

                    

                    

Cancer switched in on a Hydro Pump which ended up missing anyway, so I went for ThunderBolt for the free KO!

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

Snorlax Lv. 60

                    

                    

Hydro Pump didn't do nearly as much as I would've liked, but I suppose that's to be expected against a Snorlax. I hit him with two Hydro Pumps in a row, each dealing a little under 1/3 of his HP. Both times, he went for Curse and I could immediately tell where this was going. I didn't like that one bit. I anticipated that on the third turn, he would go for Rest to avoid getting KO'd, so I retreated.

                    

                    

My read was correct, but Snorlax did have a Chesto Berry, so it wasn't a totally surefire win now. He also had two layers of Curse set up, so my hits weren't going to do a whole lot. With that in mind, I went for Explosion which would at least bypass half of Snorlax's fortified defense.

                    

                    

Snorlax's Shadow Ball didn't affect Beast who took Toll's place, so I was able to immediately follow up with a Double-Edge to finish the job. Thinking about it, this pair of pokemon have quite a lot in common, don't they?

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

Round 5

As you make your way to the end of Round 5, another attendant enters the room and whispers something to yours. Your attendant then announces to you that the Salon Maiden is on her way and that she will be your next opponent. Once the maiden arrives, she introduces herself as the Salon Maiden Anabel and opens up quite rudely by suggesting that what she's heard about you "doesn't seem attractive in any way," I'm not entirely sure what she's trying to imply there, but listen sweetheart, I just want my symbol!

Vs. Salon Maiden Anabel

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

Alakazam Lv. 60

                    

                    

To start with, I went for a Shadow Ball to OHKO her lead Alakazam. An easy lead!

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

Entei Lv. 60

                    

                    

Entei was a bit scary to run into immediately following Alakazam! Since it was my Truant turn, and I was Choice Banded into Shadow Ball, my best choice was to retreat.

                    

                    

The most obvious choice to retreat into was Cancer, though this wasn't necessarily a free switch. Entei could have any number of powerful physical attacks he could've simply taken Cancer out with here, but I was leaning on the idea that he might go for a STAB attack. Instead, he went for Calm Mind which was a little awkward but much preferred to the Double-Edge I was fearing. The following turn, I hit it with a Hydro Pump which nearly KO'd him. He went for Calm Mind again, but his HP was low, so I went for ThunderBolt in an effort to finish him off. ThunderBolt actually ended up doing much less than I expected, even with the two layers of special defense from Calm Mind. Likewise, Entei's Fire Blast did a healthy chunk of damage to my Starmie in spite of its resisted typing. I went for another ThunderBolt and got the KO, but Cancer had seen better days.

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

Snorlax Lv. 60

                    

                    

Always a terrifying force to be reckoned with, Snorlax. I wasn't going to make the same mistake I did in Round 4, so I retreated right away.

                  

                    

Toll ended up switching in on a Shadow Ball rather than a Curse or any other sort of set-up move. I went for Meteor Mash and dealt a decent chunk of damage against Snorlax while it continued to go for Shadow Ball. One more Meteor Mash and I was able to secure my victory!

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

 

Upon defeating the Salon Maiden of the Battle Tower, I was awarded the Ability Symbol!

MVP: Beast

There was rarely a situation where Beast couldn't reliably one-shot the opponent. While I never really got backed into a corner, if I had, I was confident in knowing Beast was still raring to go with only a little chunk of recoil damage out of his HP at any point. I was worried that he'd be less useful without Earthquake, and while that's partially true, Double-Edge is all he really needs. Brick Break and Shadow Ball are really only there for the situations where Double-Edge can't be used. Either due to the foe's typing or some other restriction. The Choice Band is a lot of fun to use and it's more satisfying on a pokemon you're already going to be frequently switching out anyway. I'm really glad I got to use that Choice Band Slaking in the Battle Factory because I probably would've passed off the idea of a single battle Slaking completely otherwise!

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

So, we're now officially done with the Battle Frontier! Next time, I'm going to spend a little bit of time wandering around the Battle Frontier to cover a few last-minute things, but we're done stressing about the Frontier Brains and the Symbols. I'm more than satisfied having gotten the Silver Symbols. While I certainly do believe I could get the Gold Symbols, I'll be the first to admit I can't expect to get them all in a timely manner and I'm honestly rather antsy to get to new projects. Still, there's a few promises I need to keep regarding the generational cleanup.

I will say, though, that since I decided to commit to the Battle Frontier, I think I'm actually going to pass on my initial idea of going back and showing off all the Pokemon Contests. It just... really doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun when I can't participate at my very best without the necessary berries to make the best pokeblocks. I have already covered every rank of Pokemon Contest through Ruby version, so I hope nobody is disappointed by that decision! If anybody has any objections, then I might go through all the Contest categories, but, like I said, I'm really just antsy to finally move on to a new game. We're so close to Gen 4 I can almost taste it! But, I've said it quite a few times, there's still a pretty hefty project between then and now that we're gonna have to tackle, and I honestly expect it to take about as long as Emerald as a whole.

Anyway, next time we'll be making our way back through the Battle Frontier touching on some smaller things here and there. And then we've got our generational cleanup which will, as always, mostly revolve around collecting pokemon for the pokedex and whatever completion bonuses that entails! So no, we still can't quite kiss the main series goodbye just yet!

[Aura]

Battle Frontier

      

      

So, we've defeated all seven Frontier Brains and earned all seven Silver Frontier Symbols! We aren't actually met with a whole lot of fanfare for this, but it's a great feeling all on its own! It's not a particularly easy task, so surely there must be some tangible reward, right?

Well, yeah, aside from the many BP you've accumulated over the roughly 150 BP you've accumulated over the course of your challenges, there is one direct reward for getting all of the silver symbols.

If you visit Scott's home in the north of the frontier and show him your Frontier Pass, he'll be excited to see that you've ammassed all the symbols!

Your reward is an extremely rare berry: The Lansat Berry. This berry will increase a pokemon's critical hit ratio when it's low on HP. It might not seem like much, but this is the only way this berry can be obtained in gen 3. If your battery is working, make sure to plant this berry so that it never gets lost! On the flipside, if your internal battery is dry, don't you dare plant this thing!

      

Now, let's say, unlike me, you had the patience to grind out until you've managed to obtain all seven gold symbols!

Well, you psychopath, bring your Frontier Pass over to scott and he'll reward you with a Starf Berry instead! This berry will increase a random stat when your HP is low... I'm really not sure how practical of an application this is. It seems like, the majority of the time, you would much rather know exactly what stat would increase so that you can better utilize it.

 

So, yeah, these rewards are actually super underwhelming. If you're low enough on HP to eat your Lansat Berry, you're more than likely not going to get that crit off unless you build your entire set around critical hits. Keep in mind, if you're holding a Lansat Berry, you're not holding a Scope Lens unless you're using some convoluted double battle strat using the move Trick. What's even more confusing about these rewards is that these berries aren't even the best there is for PokeBlocks. They're great, mind you, but the best berries for PokeBlocks come from e-Reader functionality. Even excluding the e-Reader berries, there are also the rare berries you can obtain from the Berry Master's wife each day which are over twice as good as these and focus on individual contest stats.

So, these berries aren't that great for PokeBlocks and are situational at best for battles... yeah, I've got nothing else to say. They're actually really disappointing rewards all things considered. But hey, they're rare! Think of them as trophies to represent your accomplishments! At least video game fruit never rot!

 

That's not all, though. If you recall, in Ruby and Sapphire, you could earn a Silver and Gold Shield for getting a win streak of 50 and 100 respectively at the Battle Tower. These shields could be used to decorate your base. Well, that still holds true here as well! Though you don't get the shields from the receptionist at the Battle Tower anymore, Scott will be more than happy to reward you with your trophies for your accomplishments!

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

Now then, before we let go for the day, let's take one final trip around the Battle Frontier and check out the alternative formats at each facility where they're available! I'll also give my final thoughts on each facility as we go through them!

Right off the bat, every facility features at least two divisions in each format it offers: Lv. 50 and Open Level. We're only going to be focusing on Open Level simply because I prefer it. In Level 50 divisions, certain pokemon, namely Dragonite, Tyranitar, and Salamence are banned by proxy simply because they evolve above Lv. 50. Tyranitar and Salamence in particular are pretty prominent pokemon in the metagame and I've already described how Salamence and Skarmory are pretty much the only pokemon that hold Metagross back from being completely OP.

For each facility, I'm going to give all alternative formats a shot, but I'll only play to my first loss or my first battle against the Frontier Brain. (Spoilers, I don't reach any frontier brains this way).

Battle Factory

Alongside the Single Battle format, the Battle Factory offers a Double Battle format. It operates exactly the same as the Single Battle format, though it has the potential to flow a bit smoother by nature of being able to take out two opponents in one move. The pokemon you select from are the same regardless of format, so try to keep potential double battle strategies in mind as you select your rental pokemon. Maybe you wanna pair up Protect and Earthquake, Explosion and a Ghost type, perhaps even Will-O-Wisp on Guts, ThunderBolt into Volt Absorb, or some fun Skill Swap or Trick strategy. This is perhaps the best playground to test out quirky strategies! While I was taking on the Double Battle format, I was able to make it right up to battle #20 where I lost to some especially unfortunate matchups.

Even though the Battle Factory was really frustrating to actually get through due to how much luck was involved, when it comes to casually playing, it's really nice being able to try out a bunch of weird pokemon movesets without having to train them up yourself. It's also really nice that this facility is basically free for anyone to participate in regardless of how strong their pokemon are!

Battle Palace

The Battle Palace offers a Double Battle format, but I seriously do not recommend it. Your pokemon's targets are chosen based on their nature alongside their choice of attack. Some natures prefer to attack the opponent with more HP while others prefer to attack the opponent with less HP. While I'm sure you could strategically build a team around these, to me, it just seemed to add an extra layer of luck onto an already pretty heavily luck-based facility. Ironically, though, I did manage to get pretty far in this facility just because Toll kept exploding alongside Buzz's Substitute. Eventually, though, my pokemon fell short before even finishing the second round.

All in all, I really don't see much enjoyment in this facility. While it is really satisfying to land the right attacks at the right time, it mostly just seems to boil down to two strong pokemon wasting turns staring at each other. Battles end up getting drawn out much longer than I'd like and, depending on RNG, a single challenge can take a long time to end. It especially feels bad when a long battle ends in a loss. Consequently, because of the luck aspect, a lot of victories often feel undeserved as well. Often I've won just because the opponent used some dumb move, or nothing at all, four turns in a row or something like that. The only way to improve your odds are fairly brainless ideas: Bring big pokemon with big attacks and then mash A. The more I think about it, I have to say, this is probably my least favorite facility in the entire frontier.

Battle Arena

The Battle Arena offers no alternative formats. It's strictly Single Battles here.

This facility shares some of my complaints with the Battle Palace in that it really just emphasizes the small-brain strategy of bring big pokemon with big attacks, but it's significantly less luck-based which makes it significantly better to me. The AI really doesn't seem to understand the gimmick very well, though. Often they would just spam Protect and take themselves out by decision. However, the pressure to use more offensive strategies wasn't really noticed much by me. It's already the dominant strategy in this meta to just go all-out with powerful attacks and that's what I've done throughout the entire frontier, my approach here was more or less the same except my opponents were penalized for using more defensive builds. Perhaps this facility could be improved if it better emphasized the use of well-timed support moves, but the decisions are based too heavily on damage output to allow you any sort of support-based strategies. I will say, the lack of switching was an interesting layer that really made me think about the order I entered my pokemon in and it definitely emphasizes using really well-rounded pokemon. I found it incredibly cheap, though, that Greta's final pokemon was a Shedinja. They knew very well what they were doing. Make sure you come prepared!

Battle Pike

The Battle Pike also doesn't offer any alternative formats. Single and Double battles are both accessible in any playthrough.

This facility is a very strange one. I love the aesthetic and I've always found this facility to stand out the most to me, personally. The giant seviper is such a memorable image. To this day, I still remember the trailer shot of it on the game's TV spot way back when this game was first released. The facility itself, though, I found to be incredibly nerve-wracking but with very little actual consequence. Battles are shockingly rare here, the only time this facility is particularly worrisome is if you know you're going to battle the Pike Queen herself. Even when you're forced into a battle against a Trainer, they usually only have one pokemon against your three and there are even safeguards in place to ensure you don't end up in a double battle if you only have one pokemon left. The fact that battles are so incredibly rare makes you question why this facility is even at the Battle Frontier in the first place. Still, it's an inoffensive facility. It's very simple and probably the easiest facility to get the symbols for. Perhaps in earlier builds the facility was planned to be a lot more luck-based but they toned it down after receiving complaints.

Battle Dome

The Battle Dome does offer a Double-Battle format! Much like the Battle Factory, it's basically the same as the Single-Battle format. Enter with three pokemon and choose two. Like the Battle Factory, I honestly think I would recommend the Double-Battle format here if you're interested in quick wins. Having all the active pokemon on the field at once lets you immediately assess the situation with more information and you can often guarantee your victory within two turns. Just make sure the pokemon you enter together have good chemistry with their movesets!

All in all, the Battle Dome was definitely a very interesting facility, I'll give it that. The quick battles were a nice change of pace, especially in the Double Battle format. It did somewhat call back the feeling of choosing your three pokemon out of your full team of six, but two pokemon is kind of an absurd limitation when you get down to it. There's not a whole lot of weakness coverage you can manage. So once again, it mostly just boils down to throwing in your two strongest pokemon and hoping for the best. Still, there is a layer of strategy in looking at your opponents' team and I especially like the touch of checking the moves they used to win each round so that you can accomodate earlier for potentailly unexpected moves like Counter.

Battle Pyramid

The Battle Pyramid doesn't offer any alternative formats.

Fuck. This. Place. I said it before and I'll say it again, the Battle Pyramid is by far the most stressful facility to venture through. It's definitely more along the lines of what it feels like the Battle Pike was trying to accomplish. I have never hated wild pokemon more than I did venturing through the massive labyrinthian floors of the pyramid in search of a single blue tile that could be literally anywhere. The trainers don't let up, either. They're usually pretty weak, but when you stumble across just one that hits you with Counter, explodes in your face, or gets you with an unexpected status ailment, it could completely destroy your entire streak. However, there are things to enjoy. I love the concept of the Battle Bag progressively getting better and better items as your win streak grows. It makes it all the more exciting to find a rare item like a Choice Band or Max Revive. These items become treasures that you'll gleefully hoard until you have no choice but to use them. So, while there was an ever-present feeling of dread while playing through this facility, I have to say there were aspects that I really enjoyed, and defeating the Pyramid King was a huge burden off of my shoulders. I can honestly say no other facility is quite like it. For that, I can at least say I find this facility more interesting than the Battle Palace.

Battle Tower

Finally, we have the Battle Tower which has not one, but three additional formats alongside Single. Double, Multi, and Net format.

In Double Battle format, you enter with four pokemon rather than three. This is pretty telling as to why you can only battle the Salon Maiden in Single-Battle format. None of the Frontier Brains ever use more than three pokemon at a time. Anabel has no fourth pokemon for her silver or gold challenge, so she can't appear in a format that requires her to use four pokemon. Anyway, unlike the other double battle formats, this one I seriously don't recommend. You do get an additional BP each round for doing Double Battles instead of Single Battles, but the tradeoff isn't really worth it. The opponent having four pokemon really just slows things down tremendously. While the number of pokemon does allow you to cover your bases a lot better, these battles take a long time as it is, so you're going to end up not wanting to use any particularly complex setups like Spikes or Baton Pass. Still, I did stumble across a shockingly solid strategy involving Buzz, Toll, and Beast. The AI often feels pressured to attack Beast who can guarantee a KO on whatever pokemon is likely to target Buzz. From there, I can usually get a free Substitute, Swords Dance, and Baton Pass outta there, or go on the offensive with Silver Wind. Then, on Beast's off turn, I can switch him out for Buzz and have Toll go for Earthquake. It's not uncommon to even be able to have two Substitutes set up at the same time with this strat! Regardless, though, most of the time I preferred to go on the all-out offensive just in the interest in saving time. By the time I reached Challenge 5, I stopped battling. This is the point where I would have battled the Salon Maiden had I been in the Single Battle category, so I figured it was a good place to end my run.

Image pulled from Serebii

In Multi Battle format, things get a little bit more interesting, but a little less fun, in my opinion. You enter with two pokemon and then get introduced to the Battle Salon in this format where you can talk to other trainers and learn the pokemon they're using and one move each of them know. You'll then choose the trainer with the pokemon that best compliment your own, and then move on and see if you win the 7 battles together! These multi battles function just like the one where you teamed up with Steven at the Mossdeep City Space Center. I think you can see where the problems start to arise. Your partner is essentially playing the Battle Factory, their pokemon often don't have a cohesive strategy with each other, and your partner has rocks for brains.

There is one notable aspect about the Multi Battle format that I was incredibly curious about. NPC trainers didn't have back sprites, so... how would they show up in battle? Well, they certainly found a solution...

Image pulled from Serebii

At the start of each battle, you're met with this... almost creepypasta-esque shot. Instead of back sprites, it shows your mirrored front sprites which just feels... off. That might be partially because the perspective is all screwed up this way on top of the fact that it suddenly feels like you and your partner are staring... at the camera, rather than your opponents. Like I said, creepypasta-esque. 

Anyway, as you can imagine, having a braindead AI partner battle alongside you isn't exactly the most appealing situation when you're already complaining about Double Battles taking a bit too long. You're basically attacking 2 opponents with half the offensive power. It can be cool to see new pokemon you wouldn't use yourself, but if you're interested in that, you'd probably have more fun at the Battle Factory. You do, however, gain an additional two BP over the Single Battle format in Multi Battle format, so that is certainly a plus.

Then there's the Net Battle format which is the only one I couldn't do for obvious reasons. It definitely beats Multi Battle, but I honestly can't imagine many people getting together with their friends to... battle AI opponents together. No, if I'm with a friend, I'm probably going to want to battle them directly. But, maybe there's some pairs of siblings that got along enough to give this mode a shot.

Of course, let's not forget about the primary use of the Battle Tower, though! Everybody's favorite Gen 3 glitch! Well, except for mine apparently because I had no idea it existed until a handful of posts ago: The Cloning glitch!

 

 

 

 

 

It's a very simple process, just all but one arbitrary pokemon into the PC, and attach any items you wish to duplicate to any pokemon you wish to duplicate. I can imagine most people would want to duplicate Legendaries, shinies, and other pokemon that can't simply be bred for. You could also use this as a measure to guarantee you don't permanently screw up your EV training.

Anyway, once your pokemon are stored in the PC, make sure you have enough open spaces in your party to withdraw them all (ideally 5 at most at a time, but you can do this with 6 if you're willing to permanently lose a pokemon in the process), then exit from the PC and save your game. This will save the status of the PC along with your party and bag.

Next, go back into the PC and withdraw all the pokemon you wish to clone. Make your way over to the receptionist for Link Battles and she'll ask if you want to save your game. Say "No," and turn off the game. What happens is, the game actually preemptively saves some of your data regardless of your response in order to save time in the communications process. The data that gets saved includes your current party and the items in your bag. So, if you restart the game at this point, you'll appear in front of the receptionist and your party will still have the pokemon you withdrew, but since the PC hasn't been saved since your last manual save, they will also be left untouched right there in the PC storage! Congratulations, your very first time paradox!

If you really want to clone a whole bunch of items, you can store them on a bunch of pokemon and do this same process but withdrawing items from pokemon in the PC alongside any pokemon you might want to clone. Since the bag is saved along with the party, the items, too, will duplicate when you reset the game! If you fill up your PC with pokemon, you can clone up to 420 items at a time! This is an easy way to get Rare Candy to level pokemon up to Level 100, Infinite Money, faster berries, unlimited TMs... it almost feels like cheating. Well, okay, it undoubtedly is cheating, but that probably wasn't stopping everybody and their grandmother from doing it to max out their pokemon's potential without having to spend hours at Mt. Battle every time they wanted to train up a new pokemon.

So, you might have noticed something. My discovery of this glitch actually calls into question a lot of things I previously turned down on the notion that it would "just take too much time." Namely, Pokemon Contests, the Orre Colosseum in XD, and the Lv. 100 Colosseums in Pokemon Colosseum's Battle Mode... I also rather shamelessly exploited the MissingNo. glitch back when training for Pokemon Stadium and Stadium 2.

Suddenly, I have this tool that lets me multiply TMs, Rare Candies, Vitamins, and even Berries for free. The sky is really the limit. I should be delighted, but at the same time, I've actually put a lot of honest, hard work into training up just the six pokemon I currently have and I'm quite proud of that fact. Unlike previous gens, pokemon I train up here are going to forever be accessible for future generations. In addition, the developers seem to try really hard to remove cloning glitches like these wherever they can making them much harder to come by as we progress in the series. Any decision I make here is going to forever impact the rest of this thread. If I decide to exploit this glitch, I really have no reason not to go back and cover all the stuff that I've missed up to this point. In fact, it would be significantly easier to get my hands on a new Earthquake TM thanks to the ability to duplicate rare candies and pump up a Linoone, then clone it six times.

I recongize that this glitch is a significant part of the competitive scene back in the day, but I really just don't think I want to exploit it. Thinking critically on it, I don't like the implications and I especially don't like the idea that it might get me lazy on creating new competitive teams for future gens since I can just clone pokemon from Emerald and transfer them up. I want to make sure I go through the rigamarole with each gen so that I can cover the general strategies you can use to train up your pokemon each time. I want to be able to distinctly note where things are better and where they're worse with each gen and I just don't see myself having that ability if I have access to level 100 pokemon for free right here. This does mean sacrificing access to some content now, but I think that's for the best. We really aren't missing out on much and I'm honestly just saving myself a bunch of headache and monotony with making all of this come together at the end of time. Like I said, I'm really excited to just move on with the series.

All that said, I don't want to leave you guys completely in the dark about the kind of content we're missing out on here. So, next time I'll briefly touch on the remaining challenges at the Orre Colosseum in XD and the rewards you can get before finally switching over to the generational cleanup!

[Aura]

Pokemon Colosseum

So, before we jump ahead into the generational cleanup, I want to briefly revisit Colosseum and XD as we cover the remainder of the competitive elements that I won't actually be touching. Of course, to start with, let's call back to Pokemon Colosseum! Back then, we went through all of the Colosseums with a Lv. 50 limit in Battle Mode. Well, now it's time we take a look at the Lv. 100 colosseums!

As I said before, this is essentially Gen 3's Prime Cup. Regardless of the level of your pokemon, your opponents will all use Lv. 100 pokemon and there are no banned pokemon, meaning all legendaries including your prized Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza are all legal. As are any mythical pokemon you may have obtained and other banned pokemon from previous gens like Lugia and Ho-oh or Mewtwo. This is pretty much the only way a single player can get competitive use out of these pokemon, so I figured it was worth at least mentioning. That said, you're stuck grinding your pokemon all the way to Lv. 100. Keep in mind, this game was released before even FireRed and LeafGreen. So the item duplication and pokemon cloning glitch didn't even exist until quite a while later. You were absolutely expected to just grind out to Lv. 100 using, what, Colosseum's Mt. Battle that caps at Lv. 60? Yikes.

So, just like the Lv. 50 Colosseums, we have two Lv. 100 Colosseums, one of which is exclusive to the Lv. 100 division: The Tower Colosseum, and another which is hidden with ?'s, but you can probably take a wild guess as to what is hidden behind those ?'s. Naturally, in order to unlock the later, you'll have to clear both the Single and Double Battle formats for the Tower Colosseum.

Note, for the reasons stated in the previous post, I am not actually going to play through the content we cover today. I am merely summing up what the experience might be like for anyone who may be interested.

Tower Colosseum Lv. 100 [Singles]

      

Round 1: Teacher Lagron | Lanturn, Ninetails, Meganium, Umbreon, Milotic, Jumpluff

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

      

Round 2: Bandana Guy Kaler | Starmie, Breloom, Heracross, Electrode, Flygon, Machamp

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

      

Round 3: Cooltrainer Vanhub | Alakazam, Rhydon, Ludicolo, Gyarados, Regice, Sceptile

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

      

Round 4: Rider Porta | Ninjask, Gorebyss, Dodrio, Tyranitar, Heracross, Typhlosion

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

      

Round 5: Supertrainer Lagin | Latios, Metagross, Salamence, Shedinja, Suicune, Wobbuffet

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

      

Round 6: Supertrainer Garvon | Rayquaza, Latias, Slaking, Raikou, Crobat, Miltank

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

      

Semifinal: Rich Boy Guyit | Kyogre, Scizor, Kingdra, Swampert, Raichu, Ampharos

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

      

Final: Supertrainer Hufnak | Groudon, Vileplume, Shiftry, Blaziken, Flygon, Walrein

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

Tower Colosseum Lv. 100 [Doubles]

      

Round 1: Hunter Kolot | Tyranitar, Togetic, Gligar, Cacturne, Swampert, Starmie

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

      

Round 2: Rider Pulink | Suicune, Heracross, Swellow, Typhlosion, Walrein, Jirachi

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

      

Round 3: Chaser Chotle | Hariyama, Rayquaza, Rhydon, Sceptile, Milotic, Gyarados

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

      

Round 4: Hunter Bigon | Sneasel, Ninjask, Metagross, Granbull, Ursaring, Salamence

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

      

Round 5: Cooltrainer Rask | Slaking, Alakazam, Dodrio, Espeon, Raikou, Crobat

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

      

Round 6: Supertrainer Codel | Dusclops, Electrode, Regirock, Golem, Registeel, Regice

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

      

Semifinal: Supertrainer Buril | Groudon, Shiftry, Houndoom, Entei, Jumpluff, Flygon

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

      

Final: Supertrainer Grang | Kyogre, Miltank, Kingdra, Ludicolo, Manectric, Shedinja

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

Orre Colosseum Lv. 100 [Singles]

For completing both Single and Double battle formats at the Tower Colosseum Lv. 100, you unlock the Orre Colosseum's Lv. 100 counterpart! This is the ultimate test of skill in Pokemon Colosseum. The final battles in this colosseum even have a special remix of the Champion theme from Ruby and Sapphire to showcase this fact. Expect a lot of adversity yet, keep in mind that this game came before FireRed and LeafGreen and all the pokemon are forced to adhere to the limitations of Ruby and Sapphire's competitive scene. This means that you have the upper hand thanks to move tutors available only in FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald! With extra type coverage options available to you, this shouldn't be too terribly tough compared to anything we've been through before.

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

      

Round 1: Chaser Ethor | Miltank, Ninjask, Cradily, Hariyama, Espeon, Suicune

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

      

Round 2: Athlete Naga | Tyranitar, Cacturne, Gligar, Magneton, Flygon, Registeel

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

      

Round 3: Cooltrainer Moden | Dodrio, Milotic, Metagross, Jirachi, Raikou, Crobat

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

      

Round 4: Teacher Kaede | Swampert, Blaziken, Sceptile, Salamence, Gardevoir, Manectric

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

      

Round 5: Supertrainer Gravet | Ninjask, Ursaring, Starmie, Machamp, Gyarados, Wobbuffet

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

      

Round 6: Supertrainer Saya | Kyogre, Ludicolo, Kingdra, Electrode, Gorebyss, Regice

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

      

Semifinal: Supertrainer Shoo | Groudon, Shiftry, Vileplume, Houndoom, Entei, Regirock

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

      

Final: Myth Trainer Infin | Kygore, Slaking, Latias, Latios, Heracross, Rayquaza

Coupled with the champion music mentioned earlier, this is the same trainer you battle atop Mt. Battle in the 100 trainer challenge! Though his team is significantly tougher here with both Kyogre and Rayquaza to worry about along with Slaking and you better bet that Latios is holding Soul Dew.

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

Orre Colosseum Lv. 100 [Doubles]

      

Round 1: Rich Boy Venak | Skarmory, Swampert, Sableye, Shuckle, Regice, Umbreon

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

      

Round 2: Supertrainer Huron | Suicune, Rhydon, Swellow, Latios, Metagross, Walrein

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

      

Round 3: Worker Bomber | Miltank, Linoone, Latias, Crobat, Shedinja, Jirachi

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

      

Round 4: Cooltrainer Forgon | Dusclops, Flygon, Rayquaza, Salamence, Magneton, Altaria

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

      

Round 5: Rider Marley | Hariyama, Kingdra, Raikou, Sceptile, Starmie, Gyarados

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

      

Round 6: Supertrainer Okamoo | Ninjask, Togetic, Feraligatr, Heracross, Ursaring, Scizor

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

      

Semifinal: Supertrainer Shun | Regirock, Shiftry, Golem, Electrode, Houndoom, Alakazam

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

      

Final: Myth Trainer Inity | Latias, Latios, Kyogre, Salamence, Groudon, Slaking

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

Pokemon XD

So, our next step is in Pokemon XD where we'll be taking a look at our long lost Orre Colosseum rounds! I won't be detailing every single trainer this time around since there's 7 separate rounds each containing 4 battles. Of course, Round 1 we completed already. It's the one with Lovrina. Completing it rewards you with TM06: Toxic along with the title "Lovrina's Fan Club Member #1" which is displayed on your P*DA.

Orre Colosseum [XD]

      

Round 2: Cipher Admin Snattle | Electrode, Gengar, Muk, Glalie, Regirock, Regice

Snattle's team is entirely built around the move Explosion, so make sure you come prepared with something that can stall him out. Substitute can do wonders here. Switching in a Damp pokemon can also help out tremendously in jamming his turns.

Defeating Snattle rewards you with TM27: Return and the title "Orre Governor's Secretary Candidate"

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

      

Round 3: Cipher Admin Gorigan | Salamence, Granbull, Arcanine, Tauros, Hitmontop, Gyarados

Gorigan's team is all about heavy hitting. Most of his team knows Earthquake, but there's also a few STAB Hyper Beams to watch out for as well.

Defeating Gorigan rewards you with TM48: Skill Swap and the title "The Hexagonal Bolt of Friendship Holder"

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

      

Round 4: Robo Groudon Chobin

Chobin's team seems all about Baton Passing status boosts to pokemon with powerful attacks. Try to take out his Ninjask or Mr. Mime or start setting up, yourself. You'll regret letting him slide.

Defeating Chobin will net you TM36: Sludge Bomb and the title "Defeater of Chobin"

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

      

Round 5: Snagem Head Gonzap

As a neat touch, all of the trainers before Gonzap are Snagem Grunts including Wakin and Biden!

Anyway, Gonzap's team is all about powerful physical and special attacks with a mix of Hyper Beam and the ultimate techniques of the Kanto starters. Of course, always anticipate the Earthquakes and the like.

Defeating Gonzap nets you TM44: Rest and the title "Honorary Team Snagem Member"

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

      

Round 6: Cipher Admin Ardos

Ardos' team seems to be all about type coverage. Expect a variety of different kinds of attacks!

Defeating Ardos nets you TM47: Steel Wing and the title "Cipher's Biggest Enemy"

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

      

Round 7: Cipher Admin Eldes

Eldes' team seems to be structured around pairing Levitate pokemon with Earthquake users. The Levitaters also have solid type coverage in their movesets, so watch out! Thankfully, Soul Dew isn't allowed here, so neither his Latias nor Latios have it.

Defeating Eldes grants you TM02: Dragon Claw and the title "Eldes's Greatest Rival"

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

We're not done just yet, though. We've still got a little bit of content we haven't explored in Emerald that I don't plan to touch as well!

      

We may have battled all the Frontier Brains for the honor of their Silver Symbols, but we never even tried for their Gold Symbols! I still don't plan to, but I figured I should probably at least cover their teams!

Frontier Brains -- Rematch Teams

 

Factory Head Noland

In addition to fighting Noland for your 21st battle, you'll have to go through an additional 3 rounds against even tougher opponents in order to face off against him at his full strength for the Gold Knowledge Symbol. Just like his first challenge, however, his team is randomly selected from a pool of pokemon, so Noland has no pre-defined team. I suppose you might be able to assume that all of the pokemon in the Battle Factory are his own.

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

 

Palace Maven Spenser

After battling Spenser for your win streak of 21, you'll then need to go through three more rounds at the Battle Palace in a row to battle him for your win streak of 42 in order to earn your Gold Spirits Symbol.

  

His Crobat and Lapras this time are replaced by an Arcanine and Suicune. These are some especially dangerous pokemon, so this can give you a heads up on just how scary these battles can really get.

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

 

Arena Tycoon Greta

Again, in order to challenge Greta for the Gold Guts Symbol, you'll need to double your win streak from the Silver Symbol and face her for your 56th win in a row!

  

She ditches her Heracross and Shedinja for a Gengar and Breloom and she's got all sorts of fun ways to play mind games with you such as Gengar's Destiny Bond and Breloom's Spore. Being put to sleep is pretty much a death sentence in The Battle Arena. Remember that you lose two points if you fail to attack due to a status ailment.

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

 

Pike Queen Lucy

Unlike the previous facilities, getting the Gold Luck Symbol at the Battle Pike isn't as easy as simply doubling the requirement for the Silver Symbol. No, in order to ensure that you are indeed capable enough to earn your chance for the Gold Symbol, you have to make your way to the end of the turnpike 10 times before she'll reveal herself to you again! I suppose this was done intentionally to make her appearance feel more "random" each time if you're playing without a guide, but that's a pretty stark difference that might make the challenges of the Battle Pike become a bit more apparent over time.

  

Naturally, the Queen is going to keep her Seviper, but her Shuckle and Milotic are now a Steelix and Gyarados! She's definitely going for more of an offensive approach this time, though I've always feared Miltoic a bit more than Gyarados, myself.

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

 

Dome Ace Tucker

For the Gold Tactics Symbol, you're once again going to have to double your win streak from the Silver Symbol and you'll battle him in the finals for your 10th championship.

  

In this battle, his Salamence and Charizard are replaced with Metagross and Latias! That's right, Brandon isn't the only one allowed to use legendary pokemon!

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

 

Pyramid King Brandon

Speaking of Brandon, obtaining the Gold Brave Symbol, much like the Battle Pike, requires more than merely doubling your win streak. If you thought the Battle Pyramid was horrible already, just wait until you realize you have to get a win streak of ten in order to challenge the Pyramid King a second time.

Across these new challenges, the threats you'll be facing are: Pokemon that drain PP, Pokemon with trapping abilities, and pokemon with SelfDestruct and Explosion! With how frequently you encounter wild pokemon here, I honestly cannot even imagine making my way through all of these floors successfully. Make sure you prepare a lot of items ahead of time!

  

Anyway, Brandon's entire team is completely replaced this time around. Instead of the Legendary Golems, he uses the Legendary Birds from Kanto! Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. This could be a plus or a minus, but if you came prepared to face the Regis using a fighting-type attack, you might be sorely disappointed. But, this new trio trades that overwhelming weakness to fighting with a crippling weakness to Rock instead. Articuno and Moltres are both quad-weak to it. Just be mindful of their powerful attacks considering they'll probably outspeed you.

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

 

Lastly, for Salon Maiden Anabel's Gold Ability Symbol, You'll need to double your win streak to 70 wins in order to challenge her again. Friendly reminder that you can only challenge her in Single Battle format! Interesting to note, this 70 win-streak requirement means that you'll automatically have earned the Silver Shield in the process of reaching her. Once you do defeat her, you may as well go all out and try for that 100 win streak for that Gold Shield as well!

  

Anabel keeps her Snorlax but replaces Entei with Raikou and Alakazam with Latios. 

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

And, as far as I recall, that's all the content I intended to cover from the Single Player of generation 3! Next time, we'll get started on our Generational Cleanup by focusing on completing each game!

[Aura]

Generational Cleanup: Hoenn Pokedex

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

So, before we put the world of Gen 3 behind us, I think it's only natural we take a minute to complete the pokedex. I didn't have the patience for this in Gold and Silver mainly because of my fresh frustrations with the breeding process, but it feels far more manageable now that I've done a full playthrough of each game. This is also the earliest point from which pokemon can be transferred all the way up to the modern games! Well, that's a line that will probably be dated in the future as this requires the use of some online services that, no doubt, will eventually get shut down one day as technology evolves. But maybe they'll provide new ways to lift pokemon from old games then! But we're delving too much into the future, I want to focus on the now. Since these pokemon can stick with us for a while, I think it only makes sense to get a solid start on pokedex completion to help us out in our future endeavors. And where else should we start but the very beginning?

Now, I should go ahead and mention that, if I had the foresight for this, I'd probably have gone out of my way to complete the regional dex in Emerald, but I've already taken massive strides to do so in Ruby version, so that's where we're going to be starting from.

Now, in order to complete the regional pokedex, you'll have to have obtained every pokemon within it with exceptions for the mythical pokemon Jirachi and Deoxys. Naturally, your first step is to travel the world of Hoenn and catch every single pokemon you see. This isn't going to be enough on its own, but it'll get you the majority of the way there.

In order to accomplish this feat, your single copy of Ruby, Sapphire, or even Emerald isn't going to be enough. For Ruby or Sapphire in particular, you're probably going to want the other game and another GBA and Link Cable, or a friend with the opposite version who's willing to trade with you. Thankfully, you don't have to own all the pokemon at once, you just have to have owned them at some point. So you can feel free to trade your legendaries around and send them back.

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

Step 1: Wild Pokemon

Hoenn is a big region, so make sure you're running through grass, climbing mountains, exploring the depths of caves, smashing rocks, fishing, surfing, diving, etc. If you need help finding any pokemon that are missing, you can always look them up on Bulbapedia or my playthrough of Ruby.

  

Among the easiest to miss in the game are Chimecho, who can only be found on the summit of Mt. Pyre at 2% rarity, Bagon who can only be found in the depths of Meteor Falls, and Nosepass who can only be found by using Rock Smash in Granite Cave.

  

Pokemon that can only be found while Fishing in specific areas are also easily missed. Staryu can be found only in Lilycove City, Horsea can be found by fishing in the southern seas of Hoenn, and Corsola can be found by fishing at Route 128 and Ever Grande City. All three require the Super Rod and, personally, none of these locations are places I would normally think to fish at. Corsola in particular I would've thought to be found by diving rather than fishing but I didn't make the encounter lists.

Speaking of underwater, the last easily missable pokemon I'd like to note is Relicanth. Most of the underwater encounter tables seem identical on the surface level, just a bunch of Clamperl and Chinchou, so the 5% Relicanth in the underwater of Routes 124 and 126 might go completely undiscovered by you.

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

Step 2: Static Pokemon

   

Of course, if you haven't already, you'll also need to snatch up your Legendaries. Both Ruby and Sapphire feature the Legendary Golems and Rayquaza.

Though it's not a Legendary, you do have another one-of-a-kind pokemon in the form of Beldum. While it's not quite as special and is in fact capable of breeding with Ditto, you can't catch it anywhere in the wild, so make sure you pick it up from Steven's home in Mossdeep City.

  

 

Your choice of starter and fossil also very much matters in Ruby and Sapphire as you only get one choice of the set. Additionally, if you're limiting yourself to just Ruby and Sapphire, you may also want to preemptively trade over a starter you and your friend/other save won't be using before starting a new game. Otherwise, even with two playthroughs, you still won't be able to complete the pokedex. The starters in particular are a pretty tough hurdle here. Make sure you get different fossils in each playthrough, too!

If you want to make pokedex completion easier with a friend, there's a common trick where both players start a new game, one catches 5 pokemon to serve as trading fodder, and then both players play up to the point where they can trade. Then, the other player simply trades over their starter and starts a new game. You repeat the process until the first player has two of two of the starters, and one of the third. Then, on the last new game, instead of trading over their starter, catches two pokemon to trade for the other two starters. In the end, both players should have all three starters!

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

Step 3: Version Exclusives

Even after catching all the wild pokemon available to you, you've probably still noticed some prominent gaps in your pokedex. The majority of these are likely due to version exclusivity!

      

Pokemon you might be missing in Sapphire version include Seedot, Nuzleaf, Mawile, Zangoose, Solrock, Latios, and Groudon

      

While in Ruby version, you'll probably be missing their respective counterparts: Lotad, Lombre, Sableye, Seviper, Lunatone, Latias, and Kyogre.

Now, you may look at Emerald's available pokemon and think you're set there, you might want to think again. Emerald does accomodate for most version exclusives from Ruby and Sapphire, but it has its own set of pokemon that are excluded and only available in Ruby and Sapphire.

     

Wild Pokemon missing from Emerald version include Surskit, Meditite, Medicham, Roselia, Zangoose, and Lunatone. While most of these pokemon are available in either Ruby or Sapphire version, the presence of both Zangoose and Lunatone as excluded pokemon means you still cannot complete the regional dex without both Ruby and Sapphire...

That is, unless you factor in one final step. You may have noticed something familiar about this line of pokemon.

     

Edit: BulbaArchive's repetoir of Pokemon XD sprites seems to be acting up really strangely. I'm gonna leave these here for now because, while they appear to be broken links, if you actually follow their url and paste them into your browser, they should load fine.

That's right, every single one of these pokemon can actually be obtained in Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness! One perk of Pokemon XD is that it allows you to complete the pokedex using only Pokemon Emerald and consequently cutting back on a lot of the back and forth trading. It's conveniently only a list of 6 pokemon, too! So you can fill your team with trading fodder and send them all over at once!

Whatever game you're completing the pokedex in, you're going to need to do some trading to get the version exclusives you're missing. In my case, it was the version exclusives from Sapphire I had to trade over.

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

Step 4: Filling in the Gaps

Even after getting your version exclusives, there's of course still going to be gaps in your pokdex. The remainder of this should be pretty simple, however. For some pokemon, namely baby pokemon, you'll need to breed for! For others, namely pokemon with special evolution methods, you'll need to evolve into!

Thanks to the way I played through Ruby, most of my pokemon that evolve by levelup are already evolved and added to the pokedex. I won't detail that whole process, but long story short, for any pokemon you need to evolve by levelup, you can trade them into XD and grind them up at Mt. Battle! This was mostly necessary for our Anorith and starter pokemon. Before you go crazy with evolution, however, make sure you don't already have the evolved forms in another game. It could save you a lot of time with grinding. For example, Salamence and Rhydon can both be snagged as Shadow Pokemon in XD while Metagross can be snagged in Colosseum. These pokemon take quite a while to levelup, so it's definitely a great time saver to simply trade these already fully-evolved pokemon over.

You'll also need to breed any fully evolved pokemon traded over to get their baby forms. I recommend sending them into Emerald to speed up the process using Ditto and Slugma.

  

Of course, there are some baby pokemon in the Hoenn pokedex you'll always need to breed for. Note that in order to breed for Azurill, you'll need to give one of its parents a Sea Incense to hold or the egg will merely hatch into a Marill instead.

Note: Wynaut is a similar situation to Azurill, except with Wobbuffet and a Lax Incense, but you can hatch a Wynaut from the egg given to you by the old lady in Lavaridge Town. Wynaut can also be caught in the wild on Mirage Island if you're lucky enough to find it.

Finally, you have your special evolutions: Pokemon that evolve under very special conditions.

 

You'll need a Leaf Stone to evolve Nuzleaf or Gloom into Shiftry or a Gloom into Vileplume,

 

A Water Stone to evolve Lombre into Ludicolo and Staryu into Starmie,

A Thunder Stone to evolve Pikachu into Raichu,

A Fire Stone to evolve Vulpix into Ninetails,

  

A Moon Stone to evolve Skitty into Delcatty or Jigglypuff into Wigglytuff,

 

And a Sun Stone to evolve a Gloom into a Bellossom.

Note: While you can easily get repeats of standard evolutionary stones from the Shard Hunter west of Mossdeep City, Sun and Moon Stones are much harder to come by. You might want to use your Thief TM to steal them off of wild Solrock or Lunatone in the appropriate version.

  

Kadabra, Graveler, and Machoke evolve into Alakazam, Golem, and Machamp respectively upon trading.

  

Seadra and Clamperl have trade evolutions that require held items. To evolve Seadra into Kingdra, you'll need to let it hold a Kings Rock which you can get from Mossdeep City. You can also get duplicates from Pickup (at levels 11-30 in Emerald), as a prize from the Battle Tower/Frontier, or by using Thief on a wild Hariyama at Victory Road.

Clamperl can evolve into Huntail or Gorebyss by trading while holding a DeepSeaTooth or DeepSeaScale respectively. You get your choice between these items when you return the Scanner from the wrecked ship to Capt. Stern at Slateport City. Much like fossils, make sure both playthroughs get different items from Capt. Stern as you only get one or the other!

Milotic, the oddest one out, is obtained by maxing out its beauty. I covered this way back when I covered pokemon contests, so I won't go into too much detail about it here. But basically, try and make sure your Feebas has a nature that likes Dry food and feed it a lot of strong blue pokeblocks.

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

Of course, once again, I can't stress enough how important it is to make sure you don't already have these pokemon on another save file before doing any evolving. You can save a lot of time and resources by only evolving the pokemon you need to and trading over the pokemon that are already evolved. For example, I had Coconut the Ludicolo from Sapphire, Regen the Starmie from Leaf Green, Yellow the Raichu, Ivory the Alakazam, and Blue the Kingdra from Fire Red, Toll the Metagross from Emerald, as well as Love the Delcatty, Intimidate the Salamence, and Carrie the Rhydon from XD, I was able to save quite a lot of resource management in the process.

Once you've got all your evolving and breeding out of the way, you might need to do a little bit more grinding to finish off your pokedex, but in the end, you should have a complete regional Hoenn Pokedex of 200 pokemon seen and 200 caught!

What do we get for our efforts?

Well, if we take our Pokedex to Prof. Birch, he says... thank you. Lovely. That is, in Ruby version. We'll talk about our reward in Emerald when we get there, don't you worry. But what a disappointing result for everyone who put in the effort to complete the pokedex when it was just Ruby and Sapphire!

Of course, there is a slightly more significant reward waiting for you. Remember the Game Director at the Cove Lily Hotel in Lilycove City? Well, probably not, but he asked us to return to him if we ever completed our pokedex! So let's make our way there! Speaking with the Game Director, he'll be impressed by our completed pokedex and reward us with a diploma!

Note: Not my own screen, this is pulled from Bulbapedia.

It's been a while since we've received one of these! Unfortunately, we don't have any GameBoy Printer to hook it up this time, so simply speaking to the Director to see it again will have to do.

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

Of course, the Hoenn Pokedex isn't the only pokedex we have to fill out here in Gen 3. Next time, we'll be filling out our Kanto Pokedex in LeafGreen version!

[Aura]

Generational Cleanup: Kanto Pokedex

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

For the first time, we have a generation with more than one regional pokedex! In this post, we'll cover my process for completing the pokedex in LeafGreen version! The requirements here are much the same as the Hoenn Pokedex in Ruby and Sapphire: You just need to have obtained all 150 pokemon at some point, not necessarily at the same time. The mythical pokemon Mew is also excluded from requirement. Since you only have the original 150 pokemon to worry about, I'd say the Kanto Pokedex is by far the easiest to complete. Probably the most complicated pokemon to obtain are the ones that require trade evolutions like Gengar.

Like Ruby and Sapphire, you're going to need both versions, Fire Red and Leaf Green, in order to complete the Kanto Pokedex. Notably, as long as you have a copy of Ruby or Sapphire, though, it's also possible to complete the Pokedex in specifically Leaf Green version if you also have a copy of XD: Gale of Darkness. For this and one other reason, I strongly recommend completing the pokedex specifically in Leaf Green and not in Fire Red.

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

Step 1: Wild Pokemon

Once again, our first step is to catch up all the wild pokemon in the game. In this particular case, things get a little more wild, no pun intended. You don't actually need to catch every wild pokemon in the game as a large handful of pokemon available in the Sevii Islands only contribute to your National Dex. We're not quite there yet.

In my initial playthrough, I've already gone through and caught all the pokemon available in the game's wild.

  

Not many wild pokemon come to mind as being particularly tricky to catch, though Chansey is definitely a huge footnote to that claim. It's only available in the Safari Zone where you'll find it most commonly in the Northwestern area at 4%. Keep in mind that using Bait, you can not only make it less likely to flee, but easier to catch due to an oversight in the game's programming! (this only applies to Chansey since its escape rate is so high). If that's too rough for you, though, you can always leave Chansey behind and trade for the one from XD!

Tauros and Kangaskhan are also only available at extremely low encounter rates in the Safari Zone, but they also can be snagged as shadow pokemon in XD!

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

Step 2: Static Pokemon

Kanto is home to quite a lot of static pokemon compared to Hoenn.

   

Of course, you have your legendary pokemon which are pretty standard fare. Note, only Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Mewtwo are necessary for Kanto pokedex completion. The Legendary Beast that roams Kanto in the postgame is only relevant for the National Dex.

In addition to the legendaries, you also have Snorlax which is found both west of Celadon City and South of Lavender. You only need to battle one of these two to complete the game's story, so even if you failed to catch it, you do still have a chance! Much like Chansey, though, if you happened to miss out, you can always get it from XD!

Though you can catch Lapras in the wild at Icefall Cave in the Sevii Islands, it's much easier to obtain from Silph Co. There's an employee in the room where you battle your rival that will give you one as a thank you for fighting for the company. In the original Red and Blue, this was the only way to get Lapras.

 

You also have your choice of Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan after clearing the Fighting Dojo, but thankfully this decision doesn't carry nearly as much weight as it did in Gen 1. You can simply breed your choice and evolve Tyrogue into the other in the postgame.

Eevee is also a pokemon that is a lot less contentious thanks to the modern features of the third generation. It used to be that you had to carefully plan out what you wanted your Eevee to evolve into because you could only get one. But now that you can simply breed it with Ditto, you don't even need to trade to get the other evolutions of Eevee! Just breed away and stuff their faces with evolutionary stones!

 

The same can't quite be said for the fossil pokemon Omanyte and Kabuto, however. You and your friend will need to plan ahead on which fossil you each need to get in Mt. Moon. One person needs the Helix Fossil for Omanyte and the other needs the Dome Fossil for Kabuto. This is the only way to get these pokemon in the entire generation, so it's critically important!

Of course, don't forget to also revive Aerodactyl from the Old Amber!

  

And of course you also have your three starters to deal with. Once again, if completing the pokedex with your friend, you'll probably want to start your adventure using the three starter trick I described in the previous post. Unfortunately, having the three Kanto starters on one team doesn't quite have the same appeal to it with the existence of Yellow making it pretty standard fare. Regardless, make sure you have access to all three of these pokemon!

   

In Fire Red and Leaf Green, in-game trades are far more prevalent and important for pokedex completion. The in-game trades in Ruby and Sapphire, for the most part, were entirely optional and often extremely obtuse. Here, however, these trades are 100% required if you want to get any of these pokemon.

    

In order to obtain the rare pokemon Farfetch'd, Mr. Mime, Lickitung, and Jynx, you'll have to trade a Spearow, Abra, Slowbro or Golduck (depending on which one is available in your version), and Poliwhirl. Make sure you double down on these pokemon so that you can get these in-game trades through and still be able to complete your pokedex!

Perhaps the trickiest of all the static pokemon is Porygon, who can only be obtained as a prize from the Game Corner! In Fire Red, Porygon costs a whopping 9999 coins! But it's only 6500 coins in Leaf Green, though it comes at a lower level. That's a-ok by me! This is the primary reason I recommend completing the pokedex in Leaf Green as it simply saves you a ton of time and/or money to get Porygon here.

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

Step 3: Version Exclusives

Version exclusivity is always the greatest hurdle for pokedex completion. The easiest solution is usually simply to have the opposite version.

         

In Leaf Green, you'll be missing Ekans, Arbok, Oddish, Gloom, Psyduck, Golduck, Growlithe, Shellder, Scyther, and Electabuzz; All of whom can be caught in the wild in Fire Red version. Some of these pokemon will need to be evolved further.

         

In Fire Red, you'll naturally be missing their respective counterparts: Sandshrew, Sandslash, Bellsprout, Weepinbel, Slowpoke, Slowbro, Vulpix, Staryu, Pinsir, and Magmar.

      

     

Curiously, the majority of these pokemon are obtainable thanks to Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness either as Shadow Pokemon or, in the case of Sandshrew alone, wild pokemon. In fact, there are onlyt wo version exclusive families in Fire Red and Leaf Green that can't be obtained in XD: The Oddish family and the Slowpoke family. This leads to an unfortunate realization when you recognize that Oddish is actually rather common in both Ruby and Sapphire, immediately dismissing that as a concern, but Slowpoke is significantly rarer, only appearing in Leaf Green version. This means that it's actually possible to entirely complete the Kanto Pokedex with just Leaf Green, Ruby or Sapphire, and Pokemon XD, but if you're trying to do so in Fire Red, you'll need a copy of Leaf Green no matter what. It's... an incredibly unfortunate inbalance between the games that I can only assume was a mistake on the developer's part. I'm sure they probably meant to ensure that both Fire Red and Leaf Green had an important pokemon excluded but failed to factor in the Hoenn region.

But yes, for this as well as the ease of access to Porygon, I can definitely say that Leaf Green is the superior version for pokemaniacs like myself!

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

Step 4: Filling in the Gaps

"Filling in the gaps" this time around is a much more simpler process. As breeding didn't exist in the first generation, it mostly just boils down to evolving your pokemon. No breeding is technically mandatory, it's just a useful tool so that you can simply breed any evolved pokemon that get traded over to you to get their previous forms. All baby pokemon are outside of the Kanto Pokedex, even baby forms of Kanto pokemon like Pichu and Igglybuff.

In addition, since we have the Hoenn Pokedex already complete, we can keep things even simpler by trading over a lot of our already fully-evolved pokemon from there! The same resource-saving advice applies here, only evolve the pokemon you need to and trade in as many evolved pokemon as you can to minimize the grinding! Ultimately, between the Hoenn Pokedex, my playthroughs of Fire Red and Leaf Green, and the Shadow Pokemon of XD, there were only a handful of pokemon I actually had to evolve to finish off my pokedex.

  

Nidorina and Clefairy both needed a Moon Stone to evolve into Nidoqueen and Clefable respectively. Moonstones are in rather limited quantity, but if you find yourself needing more, you can steal them off of wild Clefairy 5% of the time... that's... 5% of every Clefairy encounter. Clefairy itself is still, at most, 6% rarity.

 

Growlithe needs a Fire Stone to evolve into Arcanine. Fire Stones are easily obtainable in the Celadon Dept. Store here. In fact, this is where they're easiest to get across the entire generation, so feel free to exploit the heck out of these games if you need a lot of stone evolutions.

  

Poliwhirl and Shellder require a Water Stone to evolve into Poliwrath and Cloyster respectively. Just like the Fire Stone, Water Stones can be purchased freely at the Dept. Store in Celadon.

 

Weepinbell requires a Leaf Stone to evolve into Victreebel. Can you guess where you can get unlimited Leaf Stones? That's right, the Dept. Store!

  

Finally, you have the poster children for stone evolution: Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon which naturally require a Water Stone, Thunder Stone, and Fire Stone respectively to evolve from Eevee. As previously mentioned, you can simply breed to get all three, but all that breeding can be circumvented simply by careful planning between Fire Red, Leaf Green, and XD. I evolved my starter Eevee from XD into a Jolteon so that I could evolve the ones from Fire Red and Leaf Green into Vaporeon and Flareon, saving me a few rounds of hatching eggs.

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

 

Of course, I wasn't totally free from the requirement of breeding. In order to get the earlier forms of Charizard and Blastoise in my pokedex, I needed to send them into Emerald to breed for a Charmander and Squirtle real quick.

In the process, I also went ahead and did the only trade evolution necessary for completion of the Kanto Pokedex: Trading Haunter in order to evolve it into Gengar!

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

   

In the end, there were only four pokemon I actually needed to do any sort of grinding to evolve. I sent Camp the Charmander, Foam the Squirtle, Seafloor the Omanyte and Deep the Kabuto into XD to train up until they were all evolved into Charmeleon, Wartortle, Omastar, and Kabutops respectively before sending them right back into Leaf Green!

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

So, with all this out of the way, we finally have 150 pokemon seen and 150 caught in the Kanto Pokedex! Prof. Oak is greatly pleased by this when we ask for his rating, but we once again don't get much of substance. Our trainer card does gain an additional star, however, leveling up to a Copper card. We'll go into more detail about these mysterious trainer card stars in a little bit.

Once again, your most tangible reward for pokedex completion will be received from the Game Director himself in the Game Freak office of Celadon Mansion. With your pokedex completed, speak with him and he'll show you your Diploma for completing the Kanto Pokedex!

Once again, a cute little Diploma, but you really can't do much with it. You can just look at it. But it's nice to have the game acknowledge all your hard work!

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

We are nearly done with our generational cleanup! I keep saying how excited I am to move on to the next gen and how we've got some big games in between, but as always, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Next time, we'll be taking on the hefty challenge of completing not just the Hoenn Dex in Pokemon Emerald, but finally consolidating all of our efforts into a fully completed National Pokedex! Just a heads up, the next post might take a little while as I'll be catching a ton of trading fodder to get all of these pokemon transferred all the way up to Emerald. It's a shame Pokemon Box Ruby and Sapphire is such an expensive treasure. I'm really hurting for that game right about now...

[Aura]

Generational Cleanup: National Pokedex

Well, I can't believe we're finally here, but we're truly at the very tail-end of the core generation 3 experience! As such, there is no time better than now to consolidate all of our efforts into one ginormous push to complete the National Pokedex!

In order to complete the National Pokedex, you'll have to have 380 pokemon registered in your pokedex, excluding the mythical pokemon Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, Deoxys, and the elusive legendaries Lugia and Ho-oh. All other pokemon are required, no matter how rare and missable they are.

Naturally, in order to complete the National Pokedex, you'll have to have all of the pokemon from the Hoenn and Kanto pokedexes, so it's only natural to have completed those two first. As such, it is a strict requirement to have, at the very least, Pokemon XD, Leaf Green, and Emerald in order to complete the National Pokedex. For convenience's sake, it's also highly recommended you also have access to Pokemon Colosseum as it'll save you a lot of time in obtaining some of the rarest pokemon in the gen. If you do not have a copy of Colosseum or XD, completing the National Dex is technically possible using only the main-series games, but it will require the combined efforts of Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red, Leaf Green, and Emerald. Accross all five of these titles, every single pokemon required to complete the national dex is obtainable without hacking or utilizing any event-exclusive items.

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

Step 1: Complete the Regional Pokedexes

This is pretty straightforward. Following the process filled out in the previous two posts, it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to complete the Hoenn and Kanto Pokedex. It's everything in between these pokedexes that get a little bit trickier. However, you're going to run into an inevitable issue once you've completed this task. Your completed pokedexes are spanned across two games. There's no way to simply mix records and download your friend's pokedex data, so you're going to have to do some mass migration.

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

Step 2: Mass Migration

Remember Pokemon Box Ruby & Sapphire and how oddly rare this game is? Well, if you happen to be the lucky owner of a copy of this title, the migration process is as simple and painless as it was using Pokemon Stadium 2. All you need to do is meet the minimum requirement of pokedex progress before you can withdraw pokemon deposited from other save files. So, once you have your regional pokedex completed, simply drop the remaining pokemon you need for the National Dex into Pokemon Box and withdraw them and you're good to go! Additionally, Pokemon Box is incredibly useful for storing away all of those pokemon stuck in the PC you aren't actively using. Keep in mind that there are 380 pokemon in the pokedex excluding the mythical pokemon, and the Gen 3 in-game PC storage system only has 14 boxes that hold 30 pokemon each. That leaves you with only a single box and a little bit of free space at the bottom of another to store the rest. Long story short, without external storage, it's gonna get real cluttered real fast. Make sure you set aside enough room to hold all the pokemon you need.

Thankfully, like the regional pokedexes, you don't have to actively have all of the pokemon at once. You just have to have owned each pokemon at least once. So you can save some space by trading some of the pokemon you don't need anymore away, but I'm a bit of a hoarder when it comes to video games. I like to keep large collections of things. I want my entire pokedex right there in my PC! I had to make some accomodations, but I was able to leave room for the 386 total pokemon and still store the extras that I wanted to hold onto. Namely, my ditto collection and competitively-trained team.

If you don't have Pokemon Box Ruby and Sapphire, your pains don't stop at just a bunch of clutter, though. Once you've cleared out that huge amount of space, your next task is to... fill it up. How are we gonna do that? We are going to painstakingly trade every single pokemon over one by one. That means, once again, we've gotta gather some trading fodder.

But that's a lot of money. There are 200 pokemon in the Hoenn Pokedex, so we need roughly 180 pokemon we're willing to trade away? Well, if you don't care about keeping all of the pokemon together on one save file, then you can simply swap the pokemon around to not only save some time but even complete the National Dex in multiple games at the same time! But, if you want all the pokemon on one save file, then we're gonna need to work some magic here.

In case you can't tell, this step is by far where the majority of time is spent in completing the National Dex, especially if you completed both regional pokedexes in other games... big mistake on my part, for sure.

To start with, you should already have one, but since I completed my National Pokedex in Ruby version and not Emerald, I don't; You're going to want to get yourself a Magikarp!

 

Specifically, you're going to want two! A Male and a Female. Even better if you can trade one of them in from another game. I think you can see where we're going with this.

If you thought we were going to exploit the service of the sweet old couple at the Day Care for our pokemon smuggling ring well you'd be dead right! We've got around 270 eggs coming in so it's time to get breeding!

So, why Magikarp, and why such a specific method of obtaining them? Well, I'm using Magikarp because Magikarp is the easiest pokemon to breed and hatch in the game. If you have yet to notice, different pokemon have different breeding rates and a different number of steps it takes to hatch their eggs.

As for the process of obtaining them, I believe I've covered this mechanic before, but the chances of a pair of pokemon breeding depend entirely on how much the like each other. You can tell how well they like each other by speaking with the old man at the fence when he doesn't have an egg.

If two pokemon are incompatible entirely, he'll say they prefer to play with other pokemon more than each other. They'll have a 0% chance of laying an egg.

If the old man at least says "they don't seem to like each other much," don't fret, because they'll still have a 20% chance of laying an egg each cycle.

So, how can you find pokemon that like each other? Well, it's entirely dependent on their OT and Species. Pokemon of the same species like each other more, and pokemon with different OTs like each other more. So, if you have two pokemon that are compatible, a male and female of the same species who were originally obtained by different trainers, they will have the greatest chance (70%) of laying an egg each cycle. You'll definitely notice the difference with the frequency you get eggs! It can actually almost be intrusive at times as you try to withdraw your pokemon only to find in the time it took you to walk up to the desk, another egg has been laid and the old lady will tell you her husband wanted to see you.

     

Of course, with all of these eggs, we're going to want our Magcargo friend again to help us hatch those eggs! Magikarp may hatch quickly, but we've got a ton to go through! Let's get ready for a ton of laps around those trees and dashes from Verdanturf to Route 118!

Once we've obtained our army of Magikarp, it's time to trade away!

And, really, that's basically it! Once you've completed this step, all that follows is to simply trade over any pokemon that you're missing. But, of course, I'll be going into detail about where you can get some of the pokemon you may be missing.

   

An small tip that I came across while going through this process; if you want to trade a pokemon like Kadabra, Machoke, Graveler, or Haunter but don't want them to evolve, you're going to have to give them an Everstone to hold. It's odd, but for one reason or another, trade evolutions cannot be cancelled like normal level evolutions. The only way to stop these guys from evolving is to not let the evolution start in the first place.

Why would you not want them to evolve? Well, being able to trade not just the final stages, but the middle stages too, minimizes the amount of grinding you'll have to do in the end. 

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

Step 3: Catching 'em all

Naturally, you're probably going to have to repeat the steps for filling in the blanks in the Kanto or Hoenn Pokedex here. Odds are you didn't have a full living dex in either of those games, so you'll probably need to breed the pokemon that are fully evolved in order to get their earlier forms and evolve them again to get their middle stages where applicable.

For this post, I'm going to assume you already have your Hoenn and Kanto Pokedexes completed, so there's no need to detail any of the tougher pokemon to obtain there. We're primarily going to be focusing on the in-between pokemon we've yet to address.

The majority of the pokemon you're missing are going to be pokemon from the Johto region. These pokemon can all be obtained from various sources across Gen 3.

This is where Pokemon Colosseum and XD shine brightest! Thanks to these games, you can easily trade over all of the pokemon you need to finish off your regional pokedex. All you have to do is snag them as Shadow Pokemon and purify them before shipping them off to ol' Hoenn. But let's say you don't have access to these games for a bit. How else might you complete the National Dex?

From Fire Red and Leaf Green, a healthy number of National Dex pokemon can be obtained from the Sevii Islands. Keep in mind, there are version exclusives here that weren't relevant for the Kanto Pokedex.

  

The FireRed exclusives include Wooper, Murkrow, and Delibird. They also include Skarmory, but Skarmory is already required for the Hoenn Pokedex, so it's not necessary to catch here.

   

The LeafGreen counterparts once again outshine FireRed in terms of importance as Mantine is not required for the Hoenn Pokedex and thus, much more easily missable than its FireRed counterpart: Skarmory.

Among the most easily missed pokemon in Fire Red and Leaf Green is Dunsparce who is only available on the isolated cliff on Three Island. You'll need to return here after obtaining the National Dex in order to find the tunnel completed, similar to the Desert Underpass in Emerald.

  

Now for the elephant in the room... the Legendary Beasts. Without Pokemon Colosseum, the only way to get these three is through Fire Red and Leaf Green where... ONE will spawn and begin roaming the Kanto region depending on your starter (Squirtle for Raikou, Bulbasaur for Entei, and Charmander for Suicune). If you thought the three-starter trick would save you some tedium with completing the National Dex, you've got another thing coming. Yes, you're going to need to make it all the way through not just the game, but the postgame a whopping three times in order to get all three of the Legendary Beasts! Even with a friend's help, someboody is going to have to play through the entire game twice to get all three of them. If you plan to complete the national dex with no gamecube help, I recommend not only having one friend in on the quest, but two to save time with this. Just make sure to correlate who's getting what pokemon. Also, keep in mind that Roar glitch I mentioned before. I highly recommend using the Master Ball to catch these slippery demons.

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

As for Emerald, the world expands in many ways after obtaining the National Dex in which you can obtain the majority of the Johto pokemon you're still missing. Namely, the Safari Zone's new areas are home to most of the pokemon that were supposed to appear through the Altering Cave events. They also include Wooper and Remoraid, but this isn't enough to remove the necessity for FireRed and LeafGreen.

 

The Battle Frontier is also home to a couple of important pokemon, namely Sudowoodo, who can be found as a static encounter in the southeastern corner of the frontier, and Smeargle who can be found in Artisan Cave at the end of the surf path just beyond.

    

     

Finally, you've also got all your Johto misfits that weren't a necessary part of pokedex completion for either Kanto or Johto. More or less, these are just Johto pokemon related to evolutionary families that aren't native to the Hoenn region since Fire Red and Leaf Green's Regional Pokedex stuck strictly to the original 151.

But even after all this, you still have some holes in your pokedex, no? Well, you might be pained to hear what I'm about to say next...

The Legendary Beasts are not the most painful part of completing the National Dex without help from the Gamecube games. Not in the slightest.

  

I say this because you are, of course, missing the three Johto starters even after all of your troubles. So, is that just it, then? Are you doomed to never have access to these three pokemon and have your national dex quest ended abruptly just before the finish line? Well, it depends on your perspective on what it means to end your quest, but no, you aren't entirely hopeless... you're just not going to like the answer.

The first thing you want to make sure you've done is complete your Hoenn Pokedex specifically in Emerald version. That step is simple enough, but the real horror begins soon after.

You see, Pokemon Emerald offers a better reward than just a diploma for completing the regional pokedex.

It's a bit odd as calling him over the PokeNav won't offer you any hint toward this reward, he'll simply rate your pokedex the same way he did in Ruby and Sapphire, but if you return to Prof. Birch's Lab in Littleroot Town after having completed the Pokedex and speak with him in person, you'll find three pokeballs on his desk. That's right, Prof. Birch will reward you with another starter: Your choice of the three Johto starters!

In case you didn't catch that, let me write it again. Your choice of the three Johto starters.

Your. Choice.

Only. One.

So, if you're looking to complete the National Pokedex on your own with just your two GBAs and collection of Pokemon games... that's a major yikes for you. You're not only going to have to play through the entire story and postgame of Fire Red and Leaf Green three times, but you're also going to have to complete the Hoenn Pokedex in Emerald three different times in order to get all three Johto Starters.

I hope you can see now why I've emphasized the importance of the Gamecube's help. So allow me to touch on how each of these games helps in your pokedex completion efforts.

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

Pokemon Colosseum helps tremendously with the completion of the pokedex.

  

Thanks to this game, not only are Raikou, Entei, and Suicune all readily available simply by trading over all at once after a single playthrough of the game, but more importantly...

  

...so are all three Johto Starters! Well, more specifically, the middle stages, but you can easily breed for their first stages. It definitely beats completing the pokedex three times!

In addition, this game provides all the pokemon you need to be able to complete the National Pokedex alongside the first four games in the gen: Ruby, Sapphire, Fire Red, and Leaf Green. As an added bonus, you can also snag Metagross and Typhlosion here so that you don't have to grind for so long to fully evolve Larvitar and Beldum.

Finally, though not necessary for the game to recognize your NationalDex as complete, you can get Ho-oh as a completion bonus! It's a very nice trophy to have!

Pokemon XD offers benefits in some rather unexpected areas. Namely, it offers earlier stages of pokemon offered in Colosseum, which can help minimize grinding. Unfortunately, it can't outright replace Colosseum in usefulness as it can't offer the Legendary Beasts, but it does offer the best place to grind in generation 3: Mt. Battle!

  

You can get the first stage Johto starters here as well, all with unique moves, and you don't have to start all over like you would in Emerald, but that still involves climbing Mt. Battle three whole times so it's only better than Emerald's method. You're still better off just breeding the ones from Colosseum if you're only interested in the pokedex aspect.

This game does offer a lovely alternative to a lot of the tougher pokemon to catch, and also allows you to obtain Salamence without grinding for it as well.

And let's not forget: Lugia! We went through all the effort of purifying it, so we'd damn better actually keep it around!

So, while XD doesn't have nearly as many benefits for National Dex completion as Colosseum, recall how useful it is in conjunction with Emerald and Leaf Green to complete the regional pokedexes. That in and off itself is a huge boon to your National Dex progress! Sprinkle in a little Colosseum and you've got yourself a complete National Dex with just four games!

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

So, with that whole process out of the way, we've finally completed the National Pokedex. The majority of our time was spent just breeding and hatching Magikarp and then trading them all off, but we eventually got there!

As for our reward? A diploma, of course! What else is new? But, having our National Pokedex complete like this puts a smile on my face! Just another childhood dream I've managed to bring true over the course of this series!

 

If you're curious, here's what the NationalDex diploma looks like in Ruby and Sapphire [Left] as well as Fire Red and Leaf Green [Right].

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

I think we've got one more post about Gen 3 core games. It's not going to involve any actual gameplay, but I'd still like to at least cover what those stars are all about on the trainer card and how you can get them all in each game. I don't intend to actually go through the process of doing so myself, I'll just be covering how to do it.

[Aura]

Generational Cleanup: Trainer Card Levels

We've come a long way across generation 3, but still, when we check our trainer cards, none of them have full stars. That's because there are actually still some long-term achievements we have yet to make in each of these games.

If you're unaware, this is a new mechanic introduced as early as Ruby and Sapphire in which your trainer card appears a different color and with a different number of stars depending on what milestones you've reached over the course of the game. 0 Stars gives you the normal trainer card (green in Hoenn, Blue in Kanto), 1 star gives you the Bronze card (a light brown in Hoenn, green in Kanto), 2 stars gives you the Copper card, 3 stars for silver, and 4 stars for gold.

So, how do you get these stars? Well, the exact requirements actually differ from game to game.

Consistent across all of the games, however, is that you're probably going to notice your first star after defeating the Elite Four and entering the Hall of Fame for the first time.

Likewise, your second star is also earned by completing the game's regional pokedex. The last two, however, vary from game to game.

 

Ruby and Sapphire

In order to earn your third star in Ruby and Sapphire, you'll need to complete the second floor of the Lilycove Museum which means mastering all five Pokemon Contest types. Predictably, this is much easier with a working internal battery. This achievement will also award you with the Glass Statue.

Your fourth star is obtained by getting a win streak of 50 at the Battle Tower. This will also net you the Silver Shield.

It's important to note that, while I'm labelling these as "1st - 4th", the stars can be earned in any order. All that matters for your trainer level is how many you've amassed.

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

 

Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green

In FireRed and LeafGreen, you not only earn a star for completing your regional pokedex but also one for completing the national pokedex as well! This was the first game to really push you to do so, after all. It makes sense, too, as at the time of this game's release, it was the first period in which completing the National Pokedex was actually possible in Gen 3.

Of course, this has to be ruined by the requirement for the final star which demands you reach a high score of 200 jumps in the Pokemon Jump minigame, and 200 berries in Dodrio Berry Picking. This is extremely unfortunate. What an odd requirement for trainer card completion, to require multiple players to participate.

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

Pokemon Emerald

The requirements for Emerald's stars are very similar to Ruby and Sapphire's. For your third, you'll also need to master all five contest categories and fill out the paintings in the Lilycove Museum.

And, yes, to get your fourth star, that'll take getting all seven gold symbols at the Battle Frontier. A significant challenge increase from the gold stars of Ruby and Sapphire!

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

So, like I said before, I'm not going to be doing any of these in actual gameplay. As you can tell, they're clearly meant to be long-term goals and not something you grind out to do in a marathon like this. That said, I wouldn't say any of these are particularly unachievable, though the Gold Symbols of the Battle Frontier is certainly no free feat. I would say Fire Red and Leaf Green are the easiest games to max out your trainer card level, but you'll need a friend and wireless adaptors in order to do so.

And, with that, I do declare that we are officially over with the core 3rd Gen experience! In our next post, we're finally going to return to the transitional period between gens as we prepare for the fourth generation!

It's honestly really sad to leave Gen 3 behind. Unlike Gen 2, I really didn't run into any extremely frustrating limitations outside of the limited-use TMs. Much like Gen 1, while parts of this Gen definitely felt like they were dragging on, I don't recall ever feeling particularly bored at any point. Even the areas I recalled being tedious weren't nearly as bad as I remembered them.

The Hoenn Region as a whole is absolutely beautiful. I really don't think there's anything quite like the natural variety of the land in the rest of the series to date! Well, except for its own remake, of course. I love the themes of the region emphasizing ecological preservation. There are so many iconic set pieces and extremely creative towns and cities, and the gameplay has never been smoother!

And, while I gave Fire Red and Leaf Green a lot of trouble for what I perceived as squandered potential, it is undeniably an objective upgrade from the original Red and Blue. The environments here I wouldn't say are quite as iconic to me as Hoenn, and there were a lot of odd design choices, but I genuinely can see why a lot of people cite this as their favorite pokemon game. At the end of the day, it's the simplicity of Gen 1 with the more modern conveniences of Gen 3. It's an easy Pokemon game to just pick up and play.

And let's not forget about Orre! While it is rather small compared to the main series regions, the story contained here was unlike anything ever seen before or since in the main series as well! I'll never forget the thrill of snagging a new Shadow Pokemon in the middle of a trainer battle and purifying them by working closely with them.

It's also a whole new take on a Pokemon Region with lots of old, run-down areas rather than fancy new locations with pretty builds and new technology. It also had some truly menacing, yet quirky, villains at that. 

Well, I suppose that's enough reminiscing. I think it's finally time to say goodbye to these regions and look ahead to the new projects on the horizon! We're stepping back into the realm of spinoffs next time, starting with a rather simplistic game... hopefully I won't have as many issues with it as I did with other games of the genre...

[Aura]

Pokemon Trozei!

Released in Japan on October 10th, 2005, was Pokemon Trozei! This is the start of a brand-new series of puzzle games set in the Pokemon universe! I'm sure you might recall how frustrated I've gotten with puzzle games in the past of this thread, so I'm hoping this game isn't going to overstay its welcome, but from what I gather, it's a very simple premise.

I'm not really sure how I'll be pacing myself while playing through this game. I've never played the game before so I really have no clue what to expect going in. It may take a few posts before I come up with a good, consistent stopping point. I don't know if I should do a stage per post, or if perhaps the game is divided into areas/worlds that I should play in one session. All I know is that howlongtobeat says this game takes around 8 hours to finish, so I can't imagine it'll take too terribly long.

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

Starting from the title screen, we can see that we have a few options to select. It looks like there are some multiplayer options we'll probably be skipping over, an Endless puzzle mode, but our main focus is probably going to be on Adventure mode, so let's jump right in!

Right off the bat, this game has a very interesting aesthetic for its intro cutscene! It's something unlike anything I think we've seen in the pokemon series so far, and it certainly wasn't expected! The use of neon colors and silhouettes calls more stylistic games like Persona 5 and DanganRonpa to mind, which I really like! I wasn't expecting an art style like this from a Pokemon Puzzle game.

We receive a transmission from Professor P. which also introduces the name of our protagonist: Lucy Fleetfoot!

Professor P. tells us that a group called the Phobos Batallion have been stealing pokeballs containing pokemon from all over the world and that he needs our help rescuing them! I guess our role is like some sort of James Bond-style secret agent?

Lucy changes into her uniform and dashes off to the SOL Base to learn more about her mission!

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

 

With that, we're brought to the world map where we only have one option to interact with, so let's head to the SOL Base!

 

Inside, Professor P. offers more detail about our mission. He tells us that it's going to be difficult to infiltrate the Phobos Battalion's warehouses and steal every single pokeball back, so he provides us with a tool that'll make the job much more do-able!

This machine is the Trozei Beamer!

 

The Trozei Beamer is capable of scanning pokemon still inside their pokeballs and to transfer the pokemon from the pokeball to the SOL Base, leaving the empty pokeball behind. When you really think about it, it's kinda like the Snag Machine!

  

Of course, it's not quite the same. In order to transfer pokemon, at least four of the same kind of pokemon have to be grouped together. Oddly specifically, they have to be at least four in a row. Having multiple of the same type of pokemon together allows the scanner to more easily lock onto the pokemon's position and transfer them accordingly.

Going through this process, we can rescue pokemon from the warehouses without having to physically transfer all of the pokemon!

...let's just not question the ethical dilemmas this sort of device proposes.

Seriously, though, this is a pretty wild stretch to add a plot to what otherwise seems to be a pretty standard puzzle game. I'll reserve my judgment, though, and assume the game's "story" isn't exactly meant to be taken seriously and all this silliness is more for comedic effect. Honestly, I wasn't expecting much of a story at all, so I suppose I really can't complain!

 

After giving us our Trozei Beamer, Professor P. invites us to the lab nextdoor to practice with it. In case it isn't obvious, this is our tutorial stage!

 

The gameplay is pretty standard puzzle-game fare. Your goal is to clear the screen by transferring all the pokemon away using the Trozei Beamer. You use the DS stylus to swipe a row or collum in a particular direction. Pieces are affected by gravity, so if there's an empty space below them, they'll fall into place. Likewise, it seems that moving up is fairly difficult since the pieces will merely fall back down.

Once you've cleared the screen, that level will be cleared and you'll advance to the next! This tutorial stage has 5 levels, though I'm not sure if that number will be consistent across all stages in the game.

 

Level 2 shows that you can line up more than four pokemon at once to transfer them all at once!

 

The third level shows off one of the more unique aspects about this puzzle game: The play area wraps around! If you slide a piece off to the right, it'll show up on the left!

  

Similarly, level 4 shows that the pokemon will wrap around to the top of the screen if pushed off the bottom as well, this seems like it'll probably be quite important for setting up chains like this one!

  

The final stage, Level 5, introduces the pokemon Ditto which works as a wild card! Ditto can transform into any pokemon it's adjacent to, allowing you to transfer pokemon when there aren't enough of them around. 

 

Upon clearing the practice stage, we've successfully Trozeid Wooper, Solrock, and Ditto and also earned a Prize Coin! I'm not entirely sure what these mean, but I assume we'll be filling out a Trozei pokedex and collecting prize coins from each stage in the game. I don't know if these Prize Coins are just a completion requirement or if they can be exchanged for anything, but them's the brakes for a blind playthrough!

 

After clearing the practice stage, Professor P. discovers the location of our first Secret Storage facility from the Phobos Battalion. I suppose we already have our work cut out for us next time!

I'm not really sure what to expect out of this game, but it does seem like I'll be taking a break from long play sessions for a little while, which I'm more than thankful for! So, next time, we'll be taking on the first real level of Pokemon Trozei and seeing what the real game is like!

[Aura]

 

Secret Storage 1

It's our first time infiltrating one of the Phobos Battalion's Secret Storage facilities!

  

We're intorduced to another brief comic-inspired animation as Lucyb reaks into the facility and boots up her Trozei Beamer! Again, I really love the animation style of the game, but today we should finally be getting into some real gameplay!

 

As the screen fills up with Pokeballs, the top screen displays a list of rare target pokemon you'll want to keep an eye out for. (The screenshot on the right is actually from later in today's playthrough, I just didn't realize this list woudl disappear before I tapped the screen so I didn't get a shot of it).

It looks like here we're going to have to keep an eye out for Butterfree, Venomoth, and Ludicolo! However, our main goal is simply to Trozei 50 pokemon and earn 5,000 points in total.

And this is unfortunately where I come to be cruelly reminded that I'm... still not very good at all with these puzzle games.

 

I do ultimately clear the stage by Trozeing 50 pokemon, but they're all pretty common ones: Paras, Tentacool, Porygon, Natu, Sunkern, and Ditto. I didn't trozei any of the rare pokemon, and my score isn't nearly close to 5,000. Clerarly, there's something I'm not doing quite right. You'll notice I didn't get a Prize Coin for clearing this stage, so I assume I need to get 5,000 points within the 50 trozeid pokemon. I'm not sure we're gonna be going for all of those, it depends if they unlock anything substantial or how difficult they prove to be.

One difficulty I consistently found myself dealing with is that, thanks to the definitely legitimate hardware I'm using, it's actually qutie difficult to tell where the bottom screen ends and the top screen begins in the heat of the moment, so I constantly found myself accidentally swiping the wrong row while trying to interact with the top screen. I might mess around with displaying the screens side by side instead, but I worry having them disconnected will ruin the intended aesthetic. I could also try to put a barrier between them, but I honestly hate the way that ugly border looks... maybe I'll play around with the settings next time and see what I can do.

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

 

I suppose we did well enough to clear the first stage, though, because Professor P. congratulates us and we've unlocked the very next secret storage level!

In addition, two more SOL Lab stages have become available, so let's check those out first! Maybe they can provide some useful tips!

Sol Laboratory 2

  

Sol Laboratory 2 reveals a pretty interesting mechanic that I definitely thought I'd noticed during that first storage level. Once you form a Trozei, you'll enter a fever-style Trozei Chance period during which you can trozei pokemon by just connecting three. You can extend this period further by connecting more pokemon together. If you connect a pair of three, the amount needed reduces further to only require paris of two! This is definitely extremely important for building up large combos and racking up lots of points, so it's good that I finally understand this mechanic.

 

The second level focuses on the importance of sliding pokemon upwards. They can't float in place up there, but they can temporarily occupy the spot which can be enough to trozei a horizontal line of pokemon!

  

Level 3 introduces another new mechanic: Your reward for lining up more than four pokemon is not just more points: You'll also be rewarded with helper Ditto which effectively serve the opposite role of garbage blocks from typical Puzzle games. They reward you by making further combos easier to set up rather than making combos more difficult for an opponent. That's not to say garbage blocks aren't going to be a thing in this game. I honestly don't know if they will or not, but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

Level 4 is trying to get you to think about the screen wrapping. If you trozei multiple sets of pokemon at once, you do get a multiplier for each group! Once again, very important for building up points!

 

Level 50 is a simple test of the skills learned here. Lining the Solrock together sets off a chain that takes advantage of Trozei Chance and builds a combo up to our victory!

 

I was able to Trozei the pokemon Metapod, Wooper, Shroomish, Solrock, and Ditto and earned another Prize Coin for clearing this tutorial! I figure we may as well move onto the next one as well!

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

Sol Laboratory 3

  

The first level in this stage actually caught me by surprise! It reveals that you can actually start swiping pokemon around druing the countdown to give yourself a head start on setting up your combos! With this in mind, you can complete this Trozei of Solrock the moment the stage begins! Just keep in mind that the pokemon won't actually trozei until after the countdown ends. You can use this to your advantage to set up multiple trozeis at once.

  

The second level is strangely simple. I'm not really sure what you're meant to get out of this one besides more extremely basic combo practice, but there it is, I suppose.

  

Level 3 emphasizes the importance of remembering pokemon can be stacked vertically. It's much more difficult to do compared to horizontal stacking, but you don't wanna miss out on big combo opportunities like this one!

  

Level 4 actually had me rather perplexed for a little while. I genuinely had no clue how exactly i was supposed to line up five Solrock the way the game was telling me before I realized what I was supposed to do.

  

As it turns out, when you bump a pokemon up into trozei territory, it'll float there briefly, giving you a chance to extend the line further. So, by pushing the Solrock on the left up a little bit, I could form a line of 4, then I could push the one on the right up as well to extend the line to 5!

After doing this, all the pieces fell into place with ease.

  

This one is a little odd. It says it's a little complicated, but it tells you exactly what to do. All you need to do is swipe the one stray Solrock down, then line up the Wooper. I suppose it means that this large combo is complicated to set up or recognize in an actual game. To be fair, i definitely don't have enough wit about me to put something like this together with any sort of time pressure.

  

In the end, we were able to trozei Metapod, Shellder, Magikarp, Wooper, Snorunt, Wingull, Shroomish, Solrock and Ditto! We also earned another Prize Coin!

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

Now then, let's check out some of these menu icons here.

  

The little encyclopedia button on the bottom left brings up your Trozei List. This list shows all the pokemon you've seen or trozeid, and which levels they appear in. It's essentially your pokedex and it seems to contain every single pokemon from Bulbasaur to Deoxys! It does not seem to include Munchlax or Bonsly, though, which it seems like Game Freak was trying to push into everything around this time to promote the next generation.

The other button, the picture of a crown, is a high score table across the various modes in the game. There's no point in looking into this very much.

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

Alright, so now that we know a bit more about this game, I wanna play through this first stage again and see if I can't reach the prize target of 5,000 points and earn the prize coin from this level. It's the first stage, so surely it's nothing too difficult, right?

 

Well, for what it's worth, I did manage to get a Butterfree to appear...? That's something, right?

Once you pass your final trozei chance, the stage is cleared and you get a basic clear bonus of 20,000 that counts down for every pokemon remaining on the screen.

Once again, though, I failed to actually trozei any rare pokemon and just wound up with Paras, Tentacool, Porygon, Natu, Sunkern, and Ditto. The same set of pokemon as before. I don't think I quite understood the mode yet, this one was more experimental. I didn't realize just how restrictive only being able to trozei 50 pokemon would be. I was focusing mainly on lining up lines of 5 and building up chains with trozei chance, but didn't pay much mind to how many different lines I was stringing together that weren't parts of any combos.

 

I did the level again, this time a bit more more knowledge. I was able to get a bit closer to the 5,000 goal and even managed to trozei a Ludicolo! ...Which I honestly had no idea I'd even done?

So, here's the thing. I do like Puzzle games, but when I say Puzzle games, I typically mean games more like Portal or Zero Escape where you have to methodically explore your environment and problem solve. I like puzzles where you can freely tinker around with things at your leisure to see what works and what doesn't. I really don't like puzzles where each move has a consequence and can't necessarily be undone. It adds an extra layer of stress that I really don't enjoy. Pile that with the time pressure of things like junk blocks and the like, typically makes games like these rather unpleasant for me. I realize that's a personal thing, but it's a big contributing factor to why I'm just not very good at these kinds of games: I just don't find them enjoyable enough to want to practice them. If I'm playing a game like this, I generally prefer being limited by a static timer than a number of moves and the like. It might seem like that would add more time pressure on me, but honestly, I just find clearing blocks wherever I can much more appealing. It's really overwhelming to me to have to analyze every single part, especially when one new pokemon falling into the wrong place could jeapordize my entire combo chain.

A big part of what causes me to fail these levels is that I struggle to see the entire puzzle as a whole. I generally focus on lining up one set of pokemon and end up with tunnel vision causing me to completely miss the other pokemon that also need to be lined up. This often results in me either overlooking an unexpected obstacle, accidentally moving other pokemon in the combo out of their row or column, or even accidentally moving a pokemon into a line of four without even noticing and breaking a part of my combo. This sort of thing is just incredibly difficult to me.

That said, I do realize that this game doesn't actually have a static timer, so perhaps I don't have to move so quickly. Maybe next time I'll approach this game with a slower mindset and see if I can't wrap my head around it better. But for now, I don't expect to be going for any of these prize coins and instead just focusing on clearing each level by Trozeing the correct amount of pokemon. I realize there might be next to no challenge in doing things this way, but I feel like I'm gonna end up resenting the game if I try to force myself to get all the Prize Coins. I dunno, I'll defintiely try to improve over the course of the game. Maybe we'll do a loop 2 or maybe we'll drop this game once we get to the end. We'll have to see what it's like when we get there. But next time, we'll move on to Stage 2.

[Aura]

Secret Storage 2

  

By Stage 2, I think I was able to better wrap my head around how the game works. I still don't think I'm very good at setting up combos intentionally, though. It's really difficult to line up a bunch of different pieces and, admittedly, I forgot to add a screen gap to differentiate between the top and bottom screens. I've just changed the setting for that now, so next time we should be good to go. 

I came to realize today that combos only go off if they line up on the bottom screen specifically, so it's even more important than I thought to make sure they're clearly distinct from each other like on actual hardware.

...I mean, of course, I am playing on actual hardware, I'm sure you're aware. Anyway...

I was able to get some pretty solid combos in Stage 2 and earned the prize coin! I'm still not quite used to setting up combos during the countdown, though. I keep wanting to wait for the countdown to stop before I do anything.

The pokemon I trozeid here were Sandshrew, Magnemite, Horsea, Spinarak, Corphish and Ditto, of course.

 

Secret Storage 3

Of course, immediately following the completion of the second secret storage, the third is discovered!

  

Thanks to setting off a decent combo this time around, I was actually able to get a really solid combo to end things off, allowing me to really tear up the floor and get a nice clear bonus!

 

Once again, I didn't trozei any of the rare pokemon, but I did earn my Prize Coin!

The pokemon I trozeid were Voltorb, Larvitar, Taillow, Numel, Zangoose, and Ditto.

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

 

As we complete our third secret storage stage, Professor P. discovers that the Phobos Battalion is operating a machine called a Phobos Mobile that is used to gather and transport the massive number of pokeballs and asks for us to infiltrate the machine.

Phobos Mobile No. 1: Phobos Train

  

Upon entering the stage, we are met with yet another comic-inspired cutscene where we infiltrate the train and are met with a general of the Phobos Battalion: General Buzz! And I've gotta say this music is actually really rad. (Reminder that you can click the title of each level to listen to the music, that is, assuming the YouTube video hasn't been taken down as OST vids tend to be.)

 

So, we have our first battle-type level against General Buzz!

 

It plays out pretty much exactly as you would expect out of a battle-type stage in a puzzle game. General Buzz will occasionally launch trash objects into your play area to jam your combos. As you set off your own combos, he'll be temporarily stunned and won't be able to throw any junk at you. As far as I can tell, though, there doesn't actually seem to be anyway to eliminate the trash. I assumed including them in a trozei would break them, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It seems these trash blocks are here to place more time pressure on you. The longer it takes you to trozei 100 pokemon, the more junk will pile up, making it more difficult to clear space and putting you at greater risk of running off the top of the screen.

  

In the end, I was able to overcome Buzz's trash and defeat him!

I rescued the pokemon Bulbasaur, Caterpie, Oddish, Ariados, Roselia, and Ditto in the process, but didn't really come close to the prize coin score of 8000. 

 

We've successfully defeated General Buzz and freed the pokemon from the Phobos Train!

 

The general swears revenge to us before his retreat!

We watch as the Phobos Mobile crawls its way to the volcano in the Northwest area of the map, showing us that this world is significantly larger than what we could see until now.

A new secret storehouse appears to the north of us as well!

We can now tap on the arrow on the top of the screen to head to the north.

 

And from there, we can tap the arrow on the left side of the screen to move to the west if we wish to replay the Phobos Train stage in search of any of the pokemon we've missed. I think we've picked up on a pattern now! So, I think the next few posts we'll try to play through until the next Phobos Mobile, or perhaps tutorial stage, shows up. I'm willing to guess that fourth SOL Lab is probably going to give us tips on how to deal with Phobos Mobile stages a little bit better.

So, next time, we'll be moving on to Secret Storage 4 and exploring what the game has to offer next!

[Aura]

 

Secret Storage 4

Moving on to the north, we have Secret Storage 4! I'm kinda running out of things to say for these individual stages. I do have a divider between the screens now and it definitely helps tremendously! However, I am still running into... er... definitely official hardware issues. This game would definitely be much easier to play with a stylus instead of... y'know, "official hardware". 

I could play this game the way I did with Pokemon Dash, but I don't think it should be too difficult to get to the end like this, but I do struggle with the game missing my inputs when I try to click and drag. Maybe it's interpreting my clicks as taps sometimes? Whatever the case, if I were playing normally, I probably wouldn't have any issues.

Anyway, Secret Storage 4 features the rare pokemon Swellow, Crobat, and Sudowoodo.

On completion, I'd Trozeid PIkachu, Nidoran M, Ledyba, Lotad, Surskit, and I'm starting to wonder if I should even be mentioning Ditto every time.

 

Curiously, two types of levels opened up after I cleared Secret Storage 4. There was the expected Secret Storage 5, but also this new type of level called "Huge Storage 1". Curious about the new type of level, I decided to check it out. This could be something large enough to consider a checkpoint for future posts.

 

Huge Storage 1

As it turns out, Huge Storage is really just what its name suggests: a larger secret storehouse. Instead of the typical 100 pokemon, I have to trozei 200 in order to clear the stage!

 

Other than that, and some minor aesthetic differences, it's just another generic level. This one features the rare pokemon Porygon2, Haunter, and Pichu. I do appreciate the longer playtime, though, as it really allows you to practice working with combos better! I still don't think I'll ever quite get the hang of it, but I definitely feel like I've improved!

By the end of the stage, I'd Trozeid Vulpix, Bellsprout, Ralts, Azurill, Volbeat, and Ditto.

 

Secret Storage 5

We didn't unlock anything special for clearing the Huge Storage stage, so we're back to Secret Storage 5! Here we can find Golbat, Xatu, and Skarmory!

I managed to Trozei Kakuna, Magikarp, Marill, Aaron, and Electrike.

 

Secret Storage 6

Following Storage 5 is Storage 6 with Vibrava, Piloswine and Farfetch'd.

In the end I managed to gather Krabby, Exeggcute, Phanpy, Elekid, and Breloom.

 

Upon clearing Secret Storage 6, the satellite picks up on the location of another Phobos Mobile!

  

Before we're able to continue, however, Professor P. announces that they've located an especially rare pokemon: Dragonite who can be found at the Phobos Jet! He transferred the information to our Trozei List so that we know where to find it in the future.

And, indeed, if we check out our Trozei List, Dragonite is right where we'd expect to see him: #149!

 

Phobos Mobile No. 2: Phobos Jet

  

We are once again treated to a similar cutscene to the Phobos Train's as we kite our way into the Jet and get ambushed by General Avery! It's pretty clear where this is going so let's get down to it!

 

We'll of course have to Trozei the pokemon here, keeping an eye out for the rare ones while General Avery tries to disrupt us!

  

Alongside simply dropping junk tiles from the top, General Avery disrupts you in some other ways as well. Sometimes he'll shine a bright light at the board that turns all of the pokemon's faces into silhouettes. Far more obnoxious, however, he'll also toss garbage at the board fromt he side, forcibly knocking one of your rows to the side and potentially stopping you from setting off combos you've set up. This battle actually proves to be quite obnoxious and I actually nearly lost at one point due to pieces stacking up too high and his aggression toward the end.

Thankfully, like with General Buzz, you can stop General Avery's interruptions by entering a Trozei Chance, allowing you to scrounge together some quickly improvised combos!

 

In the end, while I certainly didn't get a very good finishing bonus, I was able to come out on top over Avery!

I rescued Noctowl, Ledian, Murkrow, Pelipper, and Swablu. Unfortunately, no Dodrio or Dragonite. Professor P. did warn that it was no guarantee I'd even be able to find Dragonite, let alone Trozei him, so I certainly can't expect to have gotten him first try.

  

Avery displays his love of the word "meddle" before retreating to the base of the volcano just like Buzz. It looks like we've got three more Phobos Mobiles to go. If the remaining generals are going to be as obnoxious as Avery, though, things might actually get pretty difficult soon!

And once again, we've got more Secret Storage to go through. Next time, we'll be clearing out more storehouses while we search for our next Phobos Mobile!

Real quick, I do have to say that I'm actually enjoying this game far more than I expected to going in. So far, the game really doesn't seem nearly as challenging as I expected it to be. That might all change soon, but I can see this game genuinely being a lot of fun on a DS, just flicking the rows and columns around with the stylus.

Story-wise, even though you definitely can't expect much, I actually do really dig the game's aesthetic! I love the use of color and the bizarre character designs. It reminds me a lot of the kinds of western cartoons that I remember watching around this time period as a kid. I compared the game's super spy theme to James Bond in the beginning, but at this point I think I'm getting more of a Kim Possible vibe which, again, I'm definitely here for. I'm actually genuinely curious to meet the remaining Generals and see the rest of the Phobos Mobiles! It's a sense of intrigue I definitely didn't expect to emerge from a puzzle game like this of all things.

[Aura]

  

Secret Storage 7

Since there's not much to say about these, and they're starting to become rather numerous, I'm gonna go ahead and start skimming through most of these secret storage stages a bit faster. Secret Storage 7 contains the rare pokemon Kingler, Electabuzz and Mr. Mime. I was able to trozei Slowbro, Drowzee, Scyther, Wurmple, and Azurill.

 

After clearing Secret Storage 7, Secret Storage 8 and Huge Storage 2 opened up. I decided this time to go to the smaller one first.

  

Secret Storage 8

Secret Storage 8 features the rare pokemon Graveler, Raichu, and Shuckle. I was able to trozei Metapod, Magby, Baltoy, Snorunt, and Spheal.

Upon clearing Secret Storage 8, Secret Storage 9 is uncovered.

 

Huge Storage 2

Before moving further, though, I wanted to clear out Huge Storage 2. Here, we have the rare pokemon Croconaw, Hypno, and Delcatty.

 

I was actually able to successfully trozei a Hypno! It was during this stage that I noticed something about these rare pokemon that make them especially difficult to trozei. I had a Croconaw appear in my play area as well, but if you don't trozei it within a limited amount of time, it will disappear! So not only are these pokemon rare and, typically one of a kind, but you also have to trozei them quickly! It seems your best bet is to line them up with Ditto during a large combo, so make sure to keep lots of similar pokemon grouped together so that it's easy to build combos if you're after those rare pokemon! I'm not sure if anything in particular triggers them to appear, or if they simply appear randomly like any other pokemon, but the limited number of trozeis you're allowed to make in each stage makes them incredibly difficult to hunt for. You might have to play the same level over and over in order to even find all of them, let alone trozei them successfully.

Upon clearing Huge Storage 2, Secret Storage 10 opened up!

 

Secret Storage 9

Of course, I wasn't about to start doing these stages out of order, so next came Secret Storage 9! Here, we have the rare pokemon Omastar, Grovyle and Nidoqueen.

 

The pokemon I trozeid were Weedle, Meowth, Omanyte, Smoochum, and Dustox. Whiel I didn't get any rare pokemon, I did manage to earn a prize coin!

 

After clearing Secret Storage 9, the next Phobos Mobile is discovered: The Phobos Drill! But we'll get right back to that after we finish up Secret Storage 10.

 

Secret Storage 10

This stage features the rare pokemon Kabutops, Magmar, and Golem.

  

This one was an especially bizarre stage. I'm not really sure if this particular stage is special or something, but the rare pokemon were appearing here far more frequently than they normally do. They were basically appearing as often as any common pokemon, meaning it was pretty easy to trozei Magmar and Kabutops. This also further emphasized, however, just how much more difficult they are to trozei since they kept appearing and then disappearing shortly after. I suppose if you stumble across one of these frenzies, you've gotta be quick with your trozeis! As for the common pokemon, I was able to trozei Paras, Skiploom, Dunsparce, Milotic, and Barboach.

Phobos Mobile No. 3: Phobos Drill

  

We infiltrate the drill where we encounter General Grock! Once again, we'll have to face off with him!

 

The rare pokemon in this stage include Camerupt and Aggron!

I didn't really notice much of anything that really stood out to me. I failed to get a screenshot, but Grock does have the usual junk attack as well as the light attack from General Avery. Grock's signature ability, though, seems to be this one where he slams a junk tile onto your board from above. As far as I can tell, I don't think this does anything special other than fall faster? Maybe it replaces regular tiles or bumps rows around or something, but it was nothing intrusive enough to my current playstyle for me to really notice all that much. Honestly, I definitely found Grock to be significantly easier than General Avery.

  

Once again, there were definitely some close calls here and there thanks to junk tiles piling up, but I was eventually able to take Grock out with some solid combos. The pokemon I trozeid along the way include Zubat, Diglett, Geodude, Onix, and Trapinch. I even successfully earned a prize coin!

I will mention that what I honestly thought was the hardest part of this stage was the fact that Geodude, Onix, and Diglett all have very similar colors, so it was really easy to mix them all together in the heat of the moment, making it fairly difficult to line up four in a row without being extra careful. During the bright light segments where everything appears as a silhouette, Trapinch, Zubat, and Geodude all also share very similar appearances. It's easy to tell them apart when everything's still like this, but when you've got the time pressure of pieces piling up on you, it's a lot harder to discern them!

  

On defeat, Grock provides us with a little bit of insight onto the Phobos Batallion's plan. Their leader, Baron Phobos, is finally name dropped and he explains that the stolen pokemon were supposed to be gathered at the foot of the volcano where all the other generals have retreated to.

 

With that, like the others, Grock, too, retreats with the Phobos Drill to the base of the volcano to join his defeated allies.

 

After this, the first Secret Storehouse in the south-west quadrant of the map finally opens up. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say we're gonna find a Phobos Marine here. In addition, the fourth SOL Lab finally opens up! So next time, I suppose we'll take a look at whatever this last lab has for us and start digging our way into the fourth corner of the world!

[Aura]

 

SOL Laboratory 4

Starting off today, I decided to head on over to the newly unlocked SOL Laboratory 4 to see what new information it might have for us. What I was met with was a warning that the stages were going to be significantly harder going forward. To prepare you for this, this set of puzzles no longer offers any hints and expects you to figure out the solution to each puzzle on your own.

  

The solution to this first stage is pretty simple, merely slide the first column down so that the Solrock and Wooper are lined up while the Metapod falls from the top of the screen and right onto the stack of three.

 

The next level asks you to bump the Solrock up a row and hold it in place so that you can clear the Solrock fall into place, then the Shroomish, then the Wooper and Metapod.

 

With our third level, things are a tad trickier. You'll need to first swipe the lone Solrock below off the bottom of the puzzle so that it falls into place from above and the Wooper are aligned, then you'll have to swipe the row of Solrock to the right to wrap the other lone Solrock around to join its brothers. Then, as the chain grows, the Wooper and Metapod will be cleared out as well.

  

In the next one, you'll need to swipe the bottom row to the right so that the Metapod are grouped together, and keep swipe again so that the Shroomish line up. As the Shroomish trozei, the Metapod should follow in chain, causing a domino effect where the Wooper and Solrock fall into place and finally Magikarp as well.

  

And for the final puzzle, a significant portion of the puzzle is alreaady solved. You've just gotta be careful about how the puzzle resolves. You'll want to bumpt he two Wooper off the bottom of the screen so that the Ditto and Shroomish are on the bottom row. Then, simply slide the column of Solrock down so that all four are on the bottom screen and they trozei. The Magikarp will fall into place from the top of the screen. The Ditto will be used for the 3-pokemon chain and the rest should be paired off in groups of two.

 

Upon clearing SOL Lab 4, I'd trozeid Metapod, Magikarp, Wooper, Shroomish and Solrock and earned another Prize Coin.

 

Secret Storage 11

Secret Storage 11 comes with the rare pokemon Tentacruel, Poliwhirl, and Golduck.

 

Part of the rise in difficulty at this point of the game is the larger number of different pokemon we're going to start encountering. In this case, just by clearing the stage, I trozeid Pidgeotto, Sentret, Marill, Sunkern, Gligar, Cascoon, Carvanha, and Relicanth! Strangely, I suppose Relicanth isn't treated like a rare pokemon here.

  

After clearing Secret Storage 11, we unlock not two, but three new areas! Including one new type of stage.

Naturally, I'm gravitated toward this strange new stage first. It's called Mr. Who's Den.

  

Mr. Who's Den

As we approach the Den, we find a treasure trove of pokeballs! As it turns out, they're collected by this kleptomaniac Dr. Who who has grown obsessed with their ball shape despite strangely not knowing anything about pokeballs at all. I suppose he just likes the way they look!

  

He explains that he collects the balls from the giant machines that have been mobilizing recently, but he expresses interest in the prize coins we've collected, so he strikes a deal. In exchange for a prize coin, Mr. Who will allow us two minutes inside his den where we can trozei to our heart's content! This is more the type of mode that I was after! It sounds a lot more fun to me, personally!

 

Mr. Who's Den

So, after paying our Prize Coin to play in the den, we're met with a slightly different aesthetic. Instead of just 5 collumns, we're met with seven, making the tiles a lot smaller and allowing for a lot more on screen at a time. You'll find a large variety of pokemon here and since you're only limited on time and not number of trozeis, you'll probably want to trozei like crazy to get as many new pokemon as you can! I'm not sure if it changes every time, but the rare pokemon here in this case were Shelgon, Quagsire, and Wynaut.

  

After your two minutes are up, that's it! No more trozeis! I was able to trozei a decent variety of pokemon: Rattata, Sentret, Skiploom, Aipom, Mantine, Surskit, Plusle, and Corphish!

Mr. Who's Den will also keep track of your highest score, but you won't earn any prize coins for any milestone in point value. I'm not certain if Prize Coins are a limited resource, but I don't yet see any evidence to the contrary, so I think I'll hold off on spending any more here. But it's worth noting that, if you want to play again, you'll need to cough up another Prize Coin. It seems pretty clear, though, that this is definitely the intended use of Prize Coins.

 

Secret Storage 12

With Mr. Who's Den behind us, it's back to the grind as we go through Secret Storage 12 where we can find the rare pokemon Whiscash, Azumarill, and Gardevoir.

 

Along the way, I trozeid Tauros, Spinarak, Chinchou, Qwilfish, Mightyena, Zigzagoon, Ninjask, Illumise, and Ditto.

 

Upon clearing Secret Storage 12, Secret Storage 13 and Huge Storage 3 are both unlocked! It's starting to get a little overwhelming! And yeah, we did unlock Secret Storage 14 before Secret Storage 13. I'm not really sure why that ended up happening, but I definitely want to do 13 first, so let's head there!

 

Secret Storage 13

Secret Storage 13 features the rare pokemon Lanturn, Starmie, and Kingdra

 

On clearing the stage, I was able to trozei Tentacool, Tangela, Remoraid, Stantler, Seedot, Nincada, Gulpin, and Numel.

 

And on clearing Secret Storage 13, we're able to uncover the location of our next Phobos Mobile! But let's not get ahead of ourselves, here, let's take a look at the other storage areas first.

 

Secret Storage 14

Now this is the location where the difficulty spike is clearly evident. You can already see that we're having to clear 250 trozeis and our target score is 30,000 points!

This happened to be another stage where rare pokemon appear more frequently. This makes them easier to trozei but the stage itself a lot harder to beat. Coupled with the faster pace of these later levels, I actually wound up losing this stage on my first attempt!

  

Thankfully, there isn't a whole lot of penalty for losing and you can simply try again. You even get to keep all of the pokemon you've trozeid! With that in mind, if you find an especially rare pokemon, it might actually be worth it to sacrifice your entire attempt at clearing a stage just to trozei the one pokemon. In this case, I was successfuly able to trozei the rare pokemon Dragonair along with Shellder, voltorb, Scyther, Furret, Mantine, Skitty, Wailmer, and Spinda.

  

On my second run through the level, I was able to stay on my toes and even trozei some more rare pokemon!

  

More specifically, I was able to trozei Seaking along with the cast of characters I'd trozeid in the previous attempt.

Upon clearing Secret Storehouse 14, while I don't unlock any new stages, Professor P. alerts that the rare pokemon Gyarados was found at the Phobos Submarine! So we'll want to look out for him when we get there, but there's still one more level between then and now.

  

Huge Storage 3

600 trozeis!! Yeah, this game wants to make it very clear it isn't messing around anymore. On top of faster speeds, this behemoth of a level is asking for a lot of pokemon to be trozeid.

  

Now, while I wasn't able to win on my first try, I was able to trozei all three of the rare pokemon in one go: Kecleon, Clefairy, and Marowak. This meant I could dedicate the rest of my efforts into merely clearing the board as much as I could going forward, which is a good thing because I game overed... a lot. I definitely expected to reach a point like this in the game. It happens in just about every puzzle game out there: A sudden difficulty spike where the game crosses the threshold between relaxing, casual fun to a stressful hellhole of ridiculous expectations. 

I haven't exactly kept it a secret that I suck at puzzle games, because I really suck at Puzzle games. At least, Puzzle games that expect you to think on your feet like this one. Every time I play them, I reach a point where the game likes to rub it in my face how slow of a thinker I really am. But, here's hoping the game doesn't get too unbearably difficult going forward. I am nearing the end of the game, after all.

 

Eventually, after several tries, I was able to clear the stage!

  

In the process, I was able to trozei Kecleon, Clefairy, Sandshrew, Mudkip, Lotad, Slakoth, Whismur, Sableye, Zangoose, and Corphish and even earned a Prize Coin!

 

Phobos Mobile No. 4: Phobos Sub

  

It's here where we encounter our next Phobos General: General Aquarella!

 

And, good lord, can I tell you that this stage was a fucking nightmare.

 

Aside from dropping trash tiles on you, General Aquarella has two special attacks. Of course, there's the flashing light effect they've all had since General Avery, but her special ability is effectively a combination of General Grock and Avery's. Which, combine dwith the intensely high speed of the game at this point and the high number of pokemon you need to trozei, is a whole clusterfuck of overwhelming obstacles that you're expected to handle on a moment's notice.

Like Grock, she'll launch a junk tile into your play area, bumping one of your tiles off the edge of the screen. But unlike Grock, she does this from the side rather than from above, which makes it work more like Avery's gust of wind that simply forced a row to swipe to the right. The destructive force of replacing one of your tiles with a trash tile is obnoxiously intrusive on top of knocking your whole row out of position, potentially just before you were about to trozei a group of pokemon, even. Since you only have 5 columns to work with, it's much easier for this attack to knock a pokemon that was part of your strategy right off the grid! It was pretty simple to avoid this from happening with Grock since you have so many rows, but you'll be hard pressed to confine your chains to the leftmost four columns. And considering the game's increased speed, you also have to watch how tall your columns are getting while you're enduring attacks at a much more constant rate than ever before! The increased speed also means Aquarella isn't stunned for nearly as long as the other generals and your trozei chance period usually feels like it ends before it even begins! Also factor in that you have 8 different pokemon, not even counting the rare ones and junk tiles, to work with in your restricted space.

On the plus side, I was able to discover that Junk tiles actually can be cleared! You just have to Trozei them with Ditto. Since the Ditto is still being rescued, I suppose this should count toward your goal as well, so I suppose clear up garbage tiles wherever you see them!

It took several, several tries to clear this stage and I was about to rip my hair out of my head. But I was eventually able to defeat Aquarella, but my wrist was certainly aching by the end of it. If my predictions are correct, then I expect we have really only two more boss stages like this. I do expect them to be harder, however, so here's hoping they aren't... much harder...

Seriously, I've gotta say that I really can't overstate just how impossible these games feel to me when they get difficult like this. It genuinely feels hopeless at times where I just start to leave things up to luck because I genuinely cannot think of all the things the game expects me to think about in the moment. It's the same reason I can't really get good at Fighting games. Thinking on the fly just isn't my cup of tea. It stresses me out when I realize how much information I need to process in how little time, especially when one wrong move can never be taken back but inaction is punished even harsher. I want to take my time and relax with puzzles, I don't quite appreciate a fire being lit under my butt.

  

Upon clearing the stage, I trozeid Poliwag, Seel, Goldeen, Staryu, Dratini, Totodile, Corsola, and Luvdisc. I was even barely able to win a Prize Coin! Needless to say, missing Gyarados and Vaporeon was the least of my worries at the moment.

  

Upon defeating Aquarella, the mentions that her boss is developing a secret weapon at the volcano before retreating toward it, leaving room for only one more Phobos Mobile at its base! Hopefully we can march onto the end of the game without too much trouble.

And finally, our first stage in the northwest quadrant is open, allowing us to make our way ever closer to the volcano. Next time, it's back to some secret storehouses which will probably give us a taste of how tough our last general will be.

[Aura]

 

Secret Storage 15

We're rapidly approaching the end of the story! But of course, we've still got more storeage houses to go! Secret Storage 15 contains the rare pokemon Machoke, Electrode, and Lickitung!

 

I was able to trozei Kakuna, Chansey, Larvitar, Silcoon, Surskit, Spoink, Feebas, and Snover.

 

Upon clearing Secret Storage 15, we unlock Storage 16 and 18! Once again, unlocking these stages weirdly out of order, but let's try to do them in order with Secret Storage 16!

 

Secret Storage 16

Secret Storage 16 contains the rare pokemon Mankey, Swalot, and Muk!

  

On clearing the stage, I was able to trozei Poochyena, Wurmple, Nuzleaf, Breloom, Aron, Plusle, Tropius, and Chimecho! I was also able to earn a Prize Coin!

 

On clearing Storage 16, we unlock Storage 17 and Huge Storage 4!

 

Secret Storage 17

Storage 17 contains the rare pokemon Hitmonchan, Flareon, and Blissey.

 

The pokemon I freed were Weedle, Pidgeotto, Doduo, Exeggutor, Ledyba, Masquerain, Shroomish, and Duskull.

 

Upon clearing Storage 17, we've uncovered the location of our final Phobos Mobile, but we want to go through the remaining storehouses first.

 

Secret Storage 18

Storage 18 contains the rare pokemon Slowbro, Arbok, and Donphan

  

I was able to rescue Arbok alongside Fearow, Meowth, Drowzee, Horsea, Misdreavus, Magby, Lombre, and Clamperl.

And for clearing Secret Storage 18, you unlock storage 19.

 

Huge Storage 4

Since we unlocked it first, I figured we should go and take on the Huge Storage next. Here, you can find Psyduck, Loudred, and Wigglytuff.

 

Due to the pretty massive ask of clearing 700 Trozeis combined with the difficulty spike, I actually had quite a lot of problems with this stage. It took several tries to clear it. In the meantime, I was able to rescue Loudred and Psyduck!

 

Alongside those two, on my successful run, I also rescued Squirtle, Ekans, Nidoran M, Venonat, Linoone, Electrike, Minun, and Carvanha.

And after clearing Huge Storage 4, we unlock yet another Secret Storage stage! Hooray!

 

Secret Storage 19

Jumping into Storage 19, you're met with a scary sight! The pokemon pile up really fast right away, causing the game to start out in "panic" mode! When the stage starts like this, you've gotta scramble to string together some combos ASAP or you could lose right away!

In addition to starting in panic mode, this stage is also a "frenzy" stage where all the rare pokemon appear very frequently, so even though you start out in a panic state, it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to get all the rare pokemon here.

I wasn't successful in completing the stage on my first try, but I was able to rescue Weezing!

  

In my successful try, I also freed Persian alongside Magnemite, Magikarp, Delibird, Elekid, Treecko, Shedinja, Mawile, and Spheal!

I also earned my 11th prize coin!

 

Secret Storage 20

We've still got one more storehouse and, like 19, Storage 20 starts out in a panic state. This one isn't a Frenzy stage, but it still lasts for 500 trozeis so it's pretty likely you'll at least see some of these rarities. The rare pokemon being Espeon, Umbreon, and Blaziken!

  

Since it wasn't a frenzy stage, I found it a bit easier to complete the stage! I was able to rescue Espeon alongside Pikachu, Chikorita, Cyndaquil, Skiploom, Smeargle, Smoochum, Illumise, and Seviper! No Prize Coin, though.

 

Phobos Mobile No. 5: Phobos Walker

Our final Phobos Mobile is the Phobos Walker!

  

It's here that we'll run into our final Phobos General: Bang Boolum! He's not too fond of intruders on board the Walker, so of course he's gonna put up a fight!

 

Now, I've gotta say, though this stage is very tame when it comes to gimmicks, Bang Boolum doesn't actually have too many terribly intrusive abilities. In fact, he really just operates similarly to General Buzz. However, he does have the flash effect and, coupled with the types of look-alike pokemon and the incredibly fast speeds the game is operating at, that flash effect on its own can really make you want to tear your hair out!

The board starts out incredibly low, only giving you three layers. You might think that's a bit friendly as it gives you a lot of space to set up, but it's actually more of a limitation than anything. For one, it discourages you from setting up any combos during the countdown. Even if you can line up four in a row, the odds of you getting a three-in-a-row combo as well are not likely! You're better off waiting a bit to set off a larger chain. But that's where you come across the other reason your field looks like this.

 

Because I'm not even joking when I say it takes less than 5 seconds for that board to turn into this one. I don't think I've ever really been able to capture just how fast and chaotic this game has gotten to this point, but I literally cannot keep up with it by this point in the game. Let's not forget that your trozei chance has been reduced to a matter of frames at this point. We are once again in that territory where my progress really just feels like blind luck.

And then you have that flash effect. While most things are way faster, of course the flash effect isn't gonna go away any faster, so it hurts a lot more. Especially on a stage that looks like this. In the head of the moment, Teddiursa looks just like Medicham and Snubbull, Makuhita looks like Heracross, Tyrogue looks like Machop... and you have anything but time on your side. There's no waiting it out, you've just gotta be careful and make sure you're lining up the right pokemon. You would think it's easy to notice, but recall that I said it's a matter of frames before you lose your trozei chain. 

To emphasize just how difficult this stage is, let me mention that I'd been playing this game from 11 to 4:30 today and about 50% of my time was spent just trying to clear this stage. It was a nightmare. Again, I can't stress enough how difficult these games are for me, and how stressed out I get when things are this hectic. It was genuinely a miserable experience for me.

Across my many, many failed attempts, I was able to free the rare pokemon Hitmonlee, and honestly, I think this ended up making things even tougher for me. It seems as though once you trozei a rare pokemon, it begins to appear as commonly as the common pokemon, meaning it's just yet another pokemon to get in the way of your combos. Its nearly spherical shape makes it easy to mistake for a junk tile under the flash effect as well, so that's always fun.

 

After many, many failed attempts, I eventually came to discover something even more horrifying than everything else the stage has piled up on you. Not only do you have to reach 400 trozeis, but once the remaining count gets low enough, if you don't continue your combo chain, Bang Boolum is capable of recharging, increasing the number of trozeis you have to clear in order to finish the stage! This means that no tonly do you have to finish the stage, but you also have to finish it with a high combo chain!

Now, I'm gonna be honest. This stage definitely defeated me. It walled me too much, just as I kind of expected going into this game. I really, genuinely, do not find this type of game enjoyable in the slightest when it gets difficult like this. However, I also don't want to end up resenting the game just because it gets difficult at the end and I'm forcing myself to play it to completion. I actually ended up tapping into something that is rather taboo for this thread, which is why I felt the need to be super transparent about this: I used a cheat code.

Specifically, I used this Action Replay cheat code:

94000130 000002ff
02207f44 00000100
02207f74 00000100
02207fa4 00000100
02207fd4 00000100
02208004 00000100
d0000000 00000000

With this code, on any stage, you can press R to replace the fourth row with the first common pokemon available on the stage, giving you a free Trozei. Now, I could've just spammed the R button and gotten an infinite Trozei combo, but that just sucked all the fun out of the stage and felt extremely dirty to me, even dirtier than just using the cheat code as a tool. So, I decided to add some limitations to the use of this cheat.

First of all: Using the cheat is basically just me admitting defeat with this game. I really have no shame in admitting that because, again, it's just not the type of game I care to perfect. Am I robbing myself of any satisfaction of overcoming a difficult challenge? Honestly, no. To me, this isn't like cheating to skip through the Battle Frontier or anything like that. This was just a point in a game that I was genuinely not having fun and was really stressing me out on a day that I also needed to work on a programming project for class, which is stressful enough as it is. While I don't think stress is too heavy on me at the moment, I don't want to set a precedent to where I'm gonna start giving myself an aneurism over this stupid thread every time I wanna do something mildly difficult. At the same time, though, I'm rarely ever going to resort to a cheat code in this thread. This is one of the few exceptions because it's a genre of game that have made peace with the fact that I'll simply never be good at. Not because it's impossible for me to get better, but just because I simply don't see the value in getting better at it. I'm just not the target audience for the game and that's okay.

My main reason for wanting to do this was simply because, with how frustrating I found this stage, after several hours of playing and still only being able to reach below 100 trozies remaining once, only to find out that my work gets undone at the end... I thought it was really clear that if I forced myself to keep playing the way the game intended, with my opinion on puzzle games in the way, I knew it would only lead to me genuinely resenting the game and... I just don't want to resent this game. I've genuinely enjoyed a lot of what I've seen and played so far and I really don't want to allow my personal frustrations with puzzle games get in the way of my enjoyment of the game. From the very beginning, this game was surprisingly charming and inventive utilizing a genre that I personally thought didn't have a whole lot of room for innovation.

Puzzle games are a fascinating breed and I don't inherently hate them, I just hate how difficult they can get. But I understand a lot of people genuinely love a good, challenging puzzle game and don't get as stressed out as I do, or at the very least, they love the rush of a chaotic puzzle. I wouldn't want to knock the game down just because I don't like these types of challenges. And so much of the rest of the game was still accessible to me, and I think that's praise enough. Normally I hit a wall like this about 75% through the game's story, so it's impressive that I haven't gotten walled until now, I think.

Anyway, as for how I'm limiting my use of the cheat, I'm only allowing myself to use it to stop myself from dying. I'm not allowing the use of it to perpetuate a chain endlessly or anything like that. Obviously, this is a rather arbitrary limitation, but it keeps my score feeling more genuine. More or less, the intention is just to simulate me being... a bit faster to recognize the patterns I need to recognize, and a bit faster at piecing them together. It was also to reduce the genuine panic I'd feel whenever I was late-game and about to lose. It would basically cause a shut down and I'd be unable to think clearly at all. 

Ultimately, the idea was just to keep my score from being artificially inflated to a ridiculous degree. I just wanted a modest, realistic score even if I had to cheat to get through the stage. I was even careful to choose a code that would give me a common pokemon. (Tyrogue, to be exact). The codes for row 1, 2, and 3 all spawn in rare pokemon and I wasn't about to cheat to get one of those guys added to my trozei list.

Basically, I still wanted to get the genuine gameplay experience, I just didn't want to have to deal with the stress and consequence of failure. I realize that might sound like quitter talk, but at the end of the day, I like Puzzle games to be relaxing, not stressful. If it takes a cheat code to enjoy the game more, then sobeit. All it takes is admitting that I'm just not interested in getting better at the game than I currently am. For what it's worth, I definitely do feel like I've improved dramatically from where I started! So it's not like I haven't given this an honest attempt. There just comes a point where I no longer feel like I'm improving and instead just feel like I'm getting bullied by the game, and I don't take too kindly to that feeling.

  

So, while it's a bit of a hollow victory, I did finally clear the stage, freeing Heracross, Teddiursa, Tyrogue, Makuhita, and Medicham. I also earned a prize coin! Again, I didn't use cheats to inflate my score, I just used it to stay alive. Realistically, it seems near impossible to complete this stage without getting the Prize Coin, so I really don't feel shame in obtaining it in this way. Let's be real, it's not like I have any intention of using them anyway.

  

Upon defeating Bang Boolum, he reveals that the his boss' secret weapon requires a large amount of energy, and that the Phobos Battalion harvests this energy from the pokeballs they've stolen.

 

With that, the Walker makes its way to the volcano to meet with the other four Phobos Mobiles.

It's at this point...

 

We are finally introduced to Baron Phobos himself: The leader of the Phobos Batallion!

 

He announces that he hasn't been able to harvest enough energy for his plans, but that he had a backup plan from the very start!

  

By absorbing the remaining power from the five Phobos Mobiles that have all strategically retreated to the volcano, Baron Phobos is able to initiate the final steps of his plan: To launch his secret weapon: The Phobosphere!

  

The Phobosphere emerges from the crater of the volcano, floating up into the sky!

  

With the Phobosphere in position, all Baron Phobos has to do now is charge up the Phobo-Ray and he'll be able to take over the world with its destructive power!

  

Alongside the Phobosphere, we also discover a fifth huge storehouse and SOL lab! It's a bit of bizarre timing for this, but I suppose we'll be doing these two stages first before jumping into the Phobosphere.

Do I intend to cheat on the Phobosphere as well? To be honest, I do expect to, but I'm going to give it a fair, honest shot before I resort to playing baby mode.

[Aura]

 

SOL Laboratory 5

I really don't think this stage is necessary, but since it's here I suppose we've gotta play through it. SOL Laboratory 5 here is full of tougher puzzles than the ones in Lab 4. Most of these are built around combos that require multiple swipes to pull off. At this point, this sort of thing kinda comes naturally, so while I failed a couple here and there, there wassn't anything too demanding. I'm really not sure why they felt the need to include this here of all places.

  

It's really just a matter of keeping like pieces in convenient patterns so that they're easy to connect quickly.

  

 

The other puzzles were all pretty much the same, just with varying degrees of compexity. It was just a matter of playing around with the pieces until something worked and I never failed a puzzle here more than once.

 

Huge Storage 5

Of course, we also have our final Huge Storage stage to play through as well! As expected, this one, too, starts off in a panic state. It features the rare pokemon Jolteon, Metang, and Wailord.

  

During my playthrough of the stage, I was able to trozei Wailord along with Charmander, Abra, Porygon, Mareep, Girafarig, Lombre, Castform, and Bagon.

 

Phobos Secret Fort: Phobosphere

And finally, we have our final stage: The Phobosphere. A giant space station that resembles a massive Lunatone (to parallel SOL's Satellite which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize was designed after Solrock).

  

This final stage plays out more or less just like any of the Phobos Mobile stages. We infiltrate the Phobosphere to find the pokemon being used to keep the fortress afloat and get to work with our trozei beamer!

 

As you can expect, Baron Phobos' stage is by far the hardest in the game. To start out, you only have a single row of pokemon to work with, so absolutely no chance of setting up any combos during the countdown. And, of course, you've gotta clear out 500 trozeis to clear the stage!

 

To give you another sense of speed at this point of the game, this screenshot was taken less than a second after the stage began. You are faced with a constant barrage of pokemon the entire time, so you'd better be prepared to destroy your DS's touch screen with your stylus!

 

And it wouldn't be a Phobos battle without the interruptions! Baron Phobos has two attacks. Of course, he, too, can cause the flash effect. Thankfully, the pokemon in this stage all have pretty distinctive silhouettes so it's not as damning as Bang Boolum's. His other attack, honestly, isn't nearly the most intrusive in the game. Every once in a while, a mechanical claw will extend from the left side of the screen and snatch one of the pokemon from your play area. Another claw will extend from the right side and put a junk tile in its place. While this could potentially disrupt a combo setup, the random nature of the replacement makes it far less obnoxious than Aquarella's obnoxious row shifting.

But don't let that ease you into a false sense of security. This stage is still obnoxiously difficult by nature of the sheer number of trozeis alone.

But eventually, I was able to prevail against him, with a little help from that aforementioned cheat code to protect my sanity.

I will say, though, that I feel a bit better after watching a video of this battle on YouTube. I've realized a significant part of my challenge with this game is that I'm playing with a mouse instead of a touch screen. A lot of my inputs get eaten and I often end up clicking the wrong rows and columns. Watching a video on YouTube shows me that I definitely should be capable of lining things up a lot faster than I am with a mouse. Maybe I should've played this on my phone after all... either way, the fact that I was able to get as far as I did without the use of cheat codes using just a mouse, I'd say, is pretty impressive in retrospect!

  

In the end, I was able to Trozei the rare pokemon Metagross along with Gastly, Koffing, Grimer, Unown, Slugma, Houndour, Lunatone, and Beldum. And I earned a Prize Coin. Again, I'm not sure how exaclty you would even clear thsi stage without having reached the target score. The large combos are basically a necessity to even survive!

Upon clearing the final stage, Baron Phobos is shocked to have been defeated. The Phobosphere no longer has enough energy to stay afloat and ends up falling back down into the volcano. Reacting to the sudden shift, the volcano erupts, launching the Phobosphere off into the depths of space! Professor P. thanks us for our efforts and congratulates us on a job well done! The credits speed by and... we're met by a scary notification at the very end.

 

Yes, as soon as the final boss is defeated, your progress is reset to the very beginning of the story and you are permanently locked into hard mode! Your save data will carry over, including any pokemon you've trozeid and prize coins you've earned, but all of the stages will have to be unlocked again. This also means you can earn more prize coins by clearing the stages a second time.

I'm gonna go ahead and say right now that I have absolutely no intention to play through the game a second time on Hard Mode, but I will dabble in it a bit next time to show off how it differs from the initial playthrough. So next time, we'll do just that!

[Aura]

 

Adventure Mode -- Hard Mode

 

Hard Mode is essentially exactly what you think it is. There really aren't very many changes at all. The map is simply reset and you can get more Prize Coins by clearing them again. There are some notable changes, though, but nothing too major.

 

For one, all of the SOL Laboratory stages behave the way the late-game labs play. No hints toward their solution, but the puzzles do seem to be the same.

 

Alongside retaining your prize coins, your Trozei List progress is also retained. Any pokemon you trozeid in the previous playthrough will remain trozeid here, you'll just have to work your way back up to get more chances at trozeing the ones in the later parts of the game. The pokemon themselves aren't any different, though, everything's still in the same place.

The main difference for Hard Mode just seems to be the number of trozeis required to clear the levels, and points required to earn prize coins. Other than that, I suppose it's probably faster than normal? 

While it might be a bit disheartening to see all your hard-worked progress gone on the world map, clearing story mode for the first time does bring you one step closer toward unlocking the game's ultimate reward which we'll cover in the end of the post.

In the meantime, why don't we check out some of the other modes this game has to offer? Adventure is only one of four main gameplay modes, so let's check out Endless!

 

Endless Mode is exactly what you probably expect it to be. It's... well, endless Pokemon Trozei! You can start on any level from 1 to 20, the higher level you start at, the greater of a bonus you'll receive for your score.

  

In Endless Mode, you'll be met with an endurance round of level after level. As soon as one level is completed, the pokemon from the next level will begin to appear. Thanks to the constant, uninterrupted flow, you can collect a lot of rare pokemon through this mode much more easily than in single player.

  

  

  

Indeed, I was able to sample a massive helping of pokemon through just this one playthrough. You're gonna get a lot of Ditto, so this mode is especially good for trozeing the rare ones that appear here. Unfortunately, not every pokemon can be obtained through this mode. The rarest pokemon, most notably legendaries, only seem to appear in Adventure mode as far as I can tell.

 

After playing in Endless Mode for the first time, your scores will be recorded on the game's leaderboard which can be accessed by tapping the crown button next to the Trozei List button.

 

The other two main modes, as their icons indicate, are multiplayer modes that take advantag eof DS Wireless Communications to allow you to play with your friends. These modes are Pair Trozei, which allows you to play cooperatively, or Trozei Battle which allows you to send your pokemon over to your opponent's play area by trozeing them.

You might notice that both of these modes mention a thing called "Trozei Mini," well, this is a rather ingenious game mode where you can effectively send a demo copy of the game to anybody who doesn't have a copy of their own through DS Download Play. Once this demo is downloaded to your DS, you can play it for as long as you want until you turn the system off. I can't find much information on this mode, but from what I gather, this allows you to play Endless Mode as well as participate in the two multiplayer modes. You can access this mode by clicking the button with the wireless communications icon on it.

This feature allowed anybody with a DS to get addicted to the game as long as they had a friend who could hook them up. If you really liked it, you could buy the full game to be able to work toward completing your trozei list and experiencing the game's charming adventure mode!

 

The button with a coffee mug will bring you to the Agent Cafe where you can adjust some small settings. You can view the "Agent Card" of anyone you've communicated with, and you can customize your own Agent Card.

This Agent Card defaults to pulling your DS system settings, but you can customize the name and message to anything you want, independent from your system settings, and... wait a minute, who changed my legitimate DS Hardware's settings to the default settings for DeSmuME!?

From what I gather, each Agent Card will also come with a rare pokemon you've seen or trozeid, and a picture of where it was located. If you receive a friend's Agent Card, the rare pokemon from their photo will add that location's information to your trozei list so you can find it more easily. This is especially helpful for legendary pokemon which normally only reveal their locations through random pings from Professor P.

Another interesting mode here that's rather ahead of its time is Espionage Mode. This can be seen, interestingly enough, as a predecessor to the 3DS's Street Pass functionality! While Espionage is underway, your game will use wireless communcations to check your surroundings and automatically download Agent Cards among other information from any other players who are also using wireless communications. I wonder how active this community was back in the day...

The final button, and probably one I should've covered from the beginning, is the options menu which you can access by clicking the button with the wrench on it.

  

You can set your handedness, allow the game to check for friends using PictoChat (do people even remember PictoChat these days? What a fun little toy that was), and you can even reset your Trozei Adventure if you've grown frustrated with the difficulty and just want more coins. As mentioned, resetting your adventure data will not affect your trozei list, prize coins, and rankings, it'll just affect the accessibility of levels. I'm unclear if this will reset the difficulty to easy as well, but from what I've gathered online, you are permanently locked into Hard Mode once you clear easy mode.

Finally, you can delete your ranking stats in various categories, or altogether. 

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

And that's Pokemon Trozei! It looks like we're already finished! I'm honestly very glad I made that exception for the cheat code here because I definitely would've been far more burnt out on this game by the end if I hadn't allowed it, and that most certainly would've given me a much more bitter attitude toward the game. But when you play this game casually, it really is a lot of fun to just line up pokemon and watch the combos go! Often, it really doesn't even take a whole lot of thought to set things up, especially on the easier levels. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really dig the game's western Saturday Morning Cartoon or Comic Book aesthetic, and the soundtrack was surprisingly catchy as well! The game would most certainly be a lot more fun with a stylus instead of a track pad, but I was committed by the time I realized how much of an issue that would prove to be. Even though I never got super into puzzle games like this one, I can honestly see myself genuinely enjoying this game if I actually had it as a kid. I probably would've been surprised by the game's story as well. It's a shame the marketing led me to think the game was nothing more than a standard puzzle game.

Anyway, with Pokemon Trozei wrapped up, next time, we'll be onto our next game! And this one's the big doozy of a project I've been hyping up pretty much since the beginning of Generation 3. Am I overexaggerating how large of a game it is? I'm honestly not sure, but I've definitely never played it to this extent. I suppose you can say this game is a bit of a mystery. I might need some rescuing!

[Aura]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team

Released on November 17th, 2005 in Japan were two Pokemon crossover spinoff titles that would grow a rather large fanbase, to the point where a case could be made that the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series has grown to become the most famous Pokemon spinoff in the entire franchise!

Pokemon Red and Blue Mystery Dungeon are a crossover between, as its name suggests, The Pokemon Company's Pokemon franchise and Chunsoft's Mystery Dungeon franchise. Pokemon is certainly not the only popular franchise to see a crossover with Mystery Dungeon, but I think it's definitely the most popular, to the point where I had absolutely no clue Mystery Dungeon was its own independent franchise until fairly recently in my life! 

In case you're unaware, the Mystery Dungeon series is an RPG series which focuses on exploring procedurally generated "mystery dungeons" while fighting monsters, managing resources, and seeking the staircase to the next floor. In a way, you can draw parallels with the Battle Pyramid in Pokemon Emerald. Of course, the biggest thing that sets the Mystery Dungeon franchise apart from other RPGs is its unique battle system that focuses more on positioning and range. The dungeons exist on a grid and are explored in an overhead view. Every action you take is a turn: Movement, using an item, attacking, resting, etc. Each turn, everything on the entire floor will be able to make an action, so you might find yourself stumbling into lots of wandering enemies.

As you can imagine, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is, well, Mystery Dungeon with Pokemon mechanics! What exactly does that mean? Well, we'll have to play the game to find out!

Before we start, though, I want to mention how I'll be handling this. Obviously, there are two games released side by side, and both of them are rather sizeable games. You could make a case for the fact that I should be expected to play both of these games, but I'll be rejecting that case. Pokemon Red and Blue Rescue Team are very similar games with identical stories. While they do contain some version differences here and there, the differences between versions aren't nearly as significant here as they are in the main series. I will cover version differences as they come up, and I'll probably dedicate a post after I finish Red Rescue Team to briefly touch on more technical differences between Red and Blue Rescue Team, but for the most part, the two games are more or less identical.

So, why am I playing Red Rescue Team? Well, the short answer is simply that it's more convenient. I own a copy of Red Rescue Team on the GBA from my childhood already. I do think Blue Rescue Team is most certainly the preferred experience between these two titles, but I simply down own a copy of it. That said, both of these games are available for purchase on the Wii U's virtual console, so as long as the Wii U eShop remains open, these games can still be purchased on virtual console to this day! Under most circumstances, I would probably purchase Blue Rescue Team on the Wii U and just play that, but as I already have a copy of Red Rescue Team and the version differences aren't particularly notable, I figured I'd go ahead and play that instead.

In addition to being more convenient, Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team was also released after the DS's launch, presumably a product of having started development before Chunsoft received knowledge of the GBA. Consequently, Red Rescue Team is the final Pokemon game to be released on the GameBoy Advance, so I figured this would be a nice sendoff to the GBA.

Personality Quiz

When you first start off the game, you're presented with a curious dream-like environment. A disembodied voice will begin speaking to you, the player, and you'll be presented with a quiz asking various questions to gauge your personality. The questions you're asked are randomly selected, so questions you receive might be different from mine. I figured it would be fun to list off the questions I was given and what my results were!

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Q1: Have you ever made a pitfall trap?

Yes | No

I've never gone hunting or anything of the sort (unless you count fishing,) and it seems like quite a lot of work to make one. So no, no pitfall traps have ever been made by me.

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Q2: You receive a gift! But you don't know what's in it. You're curious, so what do you do?

Open it now | Open it later | Get someone else to open it.

I'm wondering if there's some depth to this question I'm not processing. I suppose it's a good tell for my personality, though, because once the gift touches my hands, you'd best believe I'll be opening it right away unless there's a specific reason not to like a Christmas gift or specific instructions. I'd always respect those, but since this seems to be a random gift with nothing more, then yes, I won't hesitate to see what it is!

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Q3: Do you like to fight?

Yes | No

I definitely don't like to fight. If there's a conflict, I'd much rather find a more reasonable way to resolve things than using physical force. Perhaps to a fault, honestly, as I'll often give something that I want up in favor of taking the more passive route. I just don't enjoy bringing harm to others.

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Q4: Grab a digit on your left hand with your right hand. Which one did you grab?

Thumb | Index Finger | Middle Finger | Ring Finger | Little Finger

When I reached over to grab my other hand, I found that I instinctively went for the ring finger. I suppose it makes sense in hindsight as I used to wear my class ring on my right hand and I'd fidget with it on occasion. I guess there's some subconscious part of my brain that urges me to reach for the ring finger over the others.

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Q5: There is a bucket. If you get water in it, how high will you fill it?

Full | Half | A little.

This might be a bit of a peculiar response, but allow me to share my reasoning. I think it's a rather context-sensitive question. The fact of the matter is, water weighs a lot and I am very conscious of that fact. Therefore, with no other context, I will usually be cautious enough to not fill a container all the way with water to avoid the risk of being surprised by the weight when I move to lift the bucket, spilling all the water, and making a mess! That said, with some added context, I might be more likely to fill the bucket all the way. Am I carrying water a long distance? Was I just told to fetch a bucket of water? In either of these situations, I'd be much more likely to fill the bucket as much as I can leaving only a little room to avoid spilling as I carry the bucket. I suppose the question doesn't say anything about actually carrying the bucket at all, but I also suppose it says something about my personality that that's where my mind immediately went, isn't it?

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Q6: Do you laugh a lot?

Yes | No

It might come as a surprise to some people, but I actually laugh a lot in real life. Even though I consider myself to be highly analytical, I can also see humor in a lot of things. It's more than just a coping mechanism, I think. I try my best to make light of any situation to avoid getting overwhelmed, but I also think it can do wonders in diffusing tension with other people as well. Granted, sometimes it has the opposite effect and causes people to think I'm not taking things as seriously as I should be. Laughing is just a pleasant way to break the silence as it can get people around you interested in whatever made you laugh in the first place. Make a funny observation, let out a little chuckle, and then point it out. It'll usually get a shared laugh between me and my friends. There's always room for some silliness in your life!

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Q7: You're bungee jumping for the first time. Since it's scary, you decide to test the jump with a doll... and the bungee cord snaps! Will you try to make a jump anyway?

Yes | No

Once again, I wonder if there's nuance to this question I'm not picking up on because... Hell no! It'd be hard enough to convince me to go bungee jumping in the first place, let alone after seeing the cord snap! You'd have to throw me off yourself!

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Q8: Your country's leader is in front of you. How do you speak to him or her?

Speak calmly | Speak nervously | Whatever!!

Yikes, getting political now, huh? Well, I think it's best to just stray away from that side of things... Let's just say the US isn't exactly the best it's ever been politics-wise at the moment. Regardless of what I would say, I definitely think I would be rather nervous in saying anything at all. I'd like to say I'd speak calmly as I do consider myself a very laid-back person, but I know from experience I'm not exactly a social butterfly. Beyond just my own social anxiety, this is a man who holds a lot of power, so whatever I say needs to be important and well thought-out. If I say the wrong thing, I could sway either convince him to agree with something I was wrong to advocate for, or I could completely fail to convince him of something I believe in and push him further away from my ideas. That's a lot of pressure for anyone, I would think!

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Q9: Are you a boy or a girl?

Boy | Girl

It's still funny to me that people often confuse me for a girl based on my profile picture and the types of characters I like to roleplay as, but I am a boy irl, and I don't plan to see that change anytime soon.

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You appear to be the calm type. You're capable of giving advice to friends with worries. You don't like to fight. You're a warm, kindhearted person who cares. You must have many friends who look up to you. However...

you may also be somewhat gullible... as well as a little careless... and even a little sloppy. You might want to keep those points in mind.

A calm person like you should be...

The Pokemon Mudkip!

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Before we move on, let's put it in reverse a little bit. What just happened? Well, this is honestly one of the coolest parts of the game to me. After presenting you with a personality quiz of 9 random questions, the game then matches your personality to a Pokemon nature and associates that nature with a pokemon! That pokemon will be the pokemon you happen to start the game as!

While I think cracking open the hood of how this mechanic works kind of damages the magic of playing through the game with a starter that's supposed to represent yourself as a person, I do understand the fact that some players might just wish they could choose their favorite from among the options, so I'll dabble in it just a little bit.

               

Your starter pokemon can actually be one of 16 different pokemon as a result of this quiz. These pokemon include all of the starter pokemon (including Pikachu and Eevee), alongside a few odd ones out like Meowth, Psyduck, Machop, Cubone, and Skitty. Machop, Meowth, and Cyndaquil can only be male while Eevee, Chikorita, and Skitty can only be female.

As mentioned before, each pokemon is correlated to a different nature. With the exception of the gender-exclusive pokemon, each pokemon is associated with two natures. Your nature and gender will both factor into the decision on the pokemon you are. It can be tricky to get your chosen starter, though, so you'll have to be strategic in answering the questions. Each question rewards different points that go toward different natures. There are a total of 56 questions in total of which only 8 are chosen. (Your 9th question will always ask your gender) I won't go into much more detail about this, but here's a guide from GameFAQs if you would like further information.

If you'd like to take the quiz yourself, I actually found a fun site that compiles all of the questions at once! Perhaps you can get your definitive answer and share your results in the thread? I'd love to hear! You can take the quiz here.

Personally, I think you really should just stick with what the game gives you. There are quite a few factors in place to discourage youf rom just brute forcing the test to get the results you want. Namely, you can't actually skip the intro until you have a save file on the system. If you don't like your starter, you'll have to watch the intro every time you do the quiz again and, with only 8 questions chosen every time, you're not very likely to get many familiar questions. Depending on the chosen questions, it might not even be possible at all for you to get the starter you want as well! It's all set up to really emphasize that you put your trust in fate.

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Now then, after your starter is decided, you're then given another choice. This time, you'll be choosing a partner to aide you in your adventure!

         

Your choices of partners are a bit more limited, unfortunately. You can only choose one of the starters from Gen 1 - 3, and Eevee is not counted here, unfortunately. In addition, your partner cannot match your type, so my options are limited even further.

      

So, which of these did I decide to go with? Well, I ran a few ideas through my head. Ideally, you'll want to choose a partner that can compliment your weaknesses, or whose weaknesses you can cover. I ran through a few ideas but ultimately decided one pokemon would be the best fit for me.

I decided to go with Charmander and gave him the name Kindle.

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As the real game begins, I awaken in a forest clearing where Kindle, worried for your well being, is trying to get me to respond. I'm shocked to find myself suddenly existing as a Mudkip! I have no recollection of anything before waking up, but I know being a Mudkip isn't quite right. Kindle tells me I'm a bit odd and asks for my name, to which I respond "Aura."

Our interactions are rather short-lived, however, as we soon hear a cry for help from a Butterfree nearby. Butterfree tells you that her son was just playing in the woods when a fissure suddenly opened up and swallowed him! Her son is lost in a place of danger and she isn't strong enough to go in for help, so of course, we spring into action to come save the day!

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Tiny Woods [B1F-B2F]

And it's here where our adventure begins! Tiny Woods is an extremely short dungeon with only some minor foes here and there. We'll go over the intricacies of gameplay later on, this is just an extremely brief dungeon to get you familiar with the basics which I've already covered. You can move with the control pad and use the A-button to attack. Your basic attack is a weak, typeless attack which doesn't do much more than what it says on the tin. It should be enough to take out any opposition you face here in this dungeon. But, if you feel the need to use more power, you can use the B-button to bring up the menu and use one from the moves you know. These moves are going to be stronger than your basic attack, but are limited in PP usage. In Mudkip's case, I only know Tackle and Growl. Tackle is about doubly as strong as the basic attack and can consistently OHKO the enemies here.

  

Wild Pokemon: Pidgey, Sunkern, Wurmple

Since this is a tutorial dungeon, the foes you'll encounter here are all incredibly weak and will go down to just two basic attacks. They'll go down even quicker if you move strategically so that you and your partner can attack them both at the same time. The largest threat you'll face here is Wurmple and that's mainly because of String Shot which can slow you down and give extra weight to each of your moves.

If you explore around a little bit, you might find some Poke! This is the game's currency, again, we'll go into more detail about what it can be used for but, well, I probably don't need to tell you that you want to collect as much money as possible.

Your main goal on each floor is just to navigate the maze of halls and rooms until you find the staircase that leads to the next floor. Once you find the stairs, though, it's up to you whether you want to take them ASAP or go out of your way to explore as much of the current floor as you can.

Tiny Woods B3F

   

Wild Pokemon: Pidgey, Sunkern, Wurmple, and Exeggcute

 

Items: Oran Berry, Pecha Berry

On the third floor, in addition to the pokemon from previous floors, you can also find Execute down here as well. Still nothing particularly notable, though.

You can also find some items! At the moment, you'll have to carry items in your hands. You can only hold one item at a time in your hands, so that means only a maximum of two items. If you happen to find any more that you can't carry, you might want to eat it instead of simply passing it up. You can do so from the menu, just by selecting at feet while standing on the item, or accessing the item in your hands from the item menu.

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On reaching the final floor of the dungeon, you'll find Caterpie alone in the depths of the woods. From here, the dungeon has been cleared and Caterpie is safely escorted out of the Tiny Woods!

 

 

Back outside, Butterfree is overjoyed to be reunited with her son and offers you a hefty reward of berries which are almost a bit too much to carry! Butterfree and her baby Caterpie head off toward town.

Your partner then asks if you have anywhere to go. Since you can't remember anything, you suppose you don't, so he offers to let you stay at his place.

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Kindle led me to... his house?? Yes, it's a bit odd but even though this is supposed to be Kindle's House, the house is actually designed based on the player character's starter, not your partner's. This one happens to be if your starter is a Water type. It resembles a dam!

 

If you're a grass or fire type, the house will look like these. A turnip and a furnace respectively.

The normal types, as well as Pikachu, have this chestnut themed house.

And finally, the odd ducks Machop and Cubone get this stone hut.

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On arrival at the house, Kindle tells us he was really glad we were there to help him and that he felt like he couldn't have saved Caterpie without your help. I kind of doubt how genuine that claim is, but I'll give it a pass for now. He follows up by asking if you want to form a Rescue Team so that you can help more people just like Caterpie. Of course, we accept his offer and form our new team.

 

And thus, Team Promise was born, founded by Aura and Kindle.

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With that, we turn in for the night and rest up, as we've got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.

 

 

And if you're curious, this is what the interiors of the grass (top-left), fire (top-right), normal (bottom-left) and rock (bottom-right) interiors look like. It's still pretty hard to imagine a Charmander living in this water-themed house, but I suppose there are stranger things in the world.

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Well, I'm excited to get into the thick of things, but unfortunately, I think tomorrow's gonna be a pretty tutorial-heavy day. Still, I'm excited to buckle down with this game for the next while. I hope we can get comfortable with the format of these posts because we're gonna be here for a looong time.

Regardless, next time, we'll be taking a look at what exactly it means to be a part of a Rescue Team!

[Aura]

As we wake up from our adventure the previous day and step outside, we find Kindle laying at the doorstep asleep! Has he been there all night!? I suppose he's quite an advocate for privacy, then. Or perhaps he's just not too fond of his own water-themed house.

Anyway, today is our first official day as a Rescue Team! The first thing Kindle does is check the mail where we receive our rescue team kit! This kit includes a rescue team badge which we can use to escape from a dungeon, warp pokemon in need out of the dungeon, and it's simply proof that we are an offical rescue team! Not that that seems to mean much considering we were able to become one literally overnight. Other than that, we also receive a toolbox which we can use to store our excess items so that we don't have to carry everything in our hands. The toolbox can hold up to 20 items at a time, though some items can stack together and only take up one slot. Finally, we receive a copy of Pokemon News which is a magazine that can provide simple tutorials and free items if you read it. I haven't read this first issue yet, though, because the game kinda pushes you forward.

Immediately after checking the kit, Kindle turns back to the mailbox to see if there are any rescue requests, but is disappointed to find that there are none. Not to say that he expected there to be any, as our names hadn't really gotten out there yet. That is, until...

A Pelipper flies in from the east and delivers another letter straight to our mailbox! We go to check the letter and it seems to be an actual rescue request!

The request is from a Magnemite who mentions that a magnetic pulse from Thunderwave Cave suddenly pulled two of his friends together! Now they're stuck together and two Magnemite aren't enough to form a Magneton! It's honestly a bit of a silly predicament, but it does kinda beg the question of what it's like for these Magnemite to evolve, huh?

Of course, upon receiving this request, we drop everything to head out to Thunderwave Cave!

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Thunderwave Cave

 

When we first arrive, we find the two Magnemite who sent us the letter. They tell us their friends are stuck on the 6th floor of the cave, so it's looking like this adventure is going to be a little bit longer than the Tiny Woods.

Thunderwave Cave [B1F - B2F]

  

The pokemon you can find on the first and second floors are Rattata, Nidoran F, and Poochyena. Be wary of Nidraon's Poison Point! You should have a Pecha Berry from Butterfree, but Poison can actually be rather deadly in this game if it goes unchecked!

       

The items you'll receive here are consistent throughout the entire dungeon: Poke, Gravelrocks, Apples, Cheri, Oran, and Pecha Berries, as well as Blast and Sleep Seeds.

Gravelrocks and seeds are a new type of item for this game. Gravelrocks are a very versatile throwing item that can be used to hit any enemy on screen as long as there isn't a wall in the way. It can be a great option to pressure a foe to approach into attacking range, or to pick off an enemy that's running away. Gravelrocks can stack and they're quite common, so you can easily amass hundreds of them, so don't be shy about throwing them if you're an awkward distance away from an enemy.

Seeds are usually a more offensive variant of berries. For the most part, these seeds can be thrown at enemies to apply various effects to them. The Blast Seed explodes, dealing a chunk of damage, while the Sleep Seed, as its name implies, put the opponent to sleep.

Lastly, we have the apple, which doesn't really have any effect besides filling your belly. If you've been thoroughly exploring every floor throughout this game, you might have seen the notification "getting hungry..." pop up. Yes, one of the signatures of the Mystery Dungeon series is a hunger mechanic that urges you to get going before you starve. Every action makes you hungrier, some more than others. You'll start to take damage instead once your belly is empty, so you'll want to keep items like Apples around to eat whenever that happens. Other items like berries and seeds can fill up your belly slightly alongside their effects, but apples are definitely the way to go for a substantial difference.

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The pokemon here are much tougher than the ones in Tiny Woods, so you might feel a lot more pressured to use your other moves. At this point, I finally learned Mud Slap, though, so I have an additional move to use. And, since this is otherwise going to be a rather short post otherwise, I figure now is a better time to go over some of the basic strategies you'll want to get in the habit of doing in order to save some frustration in later dungeons.

First of all, hunger and PP are some of the most important resources in the game. You won't last long once you get hungry and running out of PP for your attacks can be devastating against the game's tougher pokemon. Try to avoid using PP where it's unnecessary, unless it's to avoid taking damage. Try to get a feel for how long it takes to KO each pokemon with your basic attack to judge how necessary your attacks are. Additionally, be extra careful of your movement. Avoid moving unnecessary spaces because it will only waste hunger. If you hold the R Button, you can lock yourself into moving diagonally so you can avoid accidentally moving horizontally or vertically first. This is incredibly helpful not just for conserving your belly, but also for positioning against foes. Which brings us to my next point.

Don't mindlessly approach enemies. While nothing is too dangerous yet, you'll want to pick your battles. Some enemies can be especially annoying. They might be able to inflict status problems, obnoxious abilities, or otherwise devastating attacks.

If you choose to engage a foe, positioning is key. You usually want as many of your allies as possible to surround your foe. They can't walk through you, so it is ideal to corner them or wall them off from their exit route. With only one partner, it isn't too difficult to position everyone strategically, though if you have three or four, it can be a bit more difficult.

Likewise, you want to avoid battles with multiple foes at once. If you need to, you can retreat into a hallway so that you can fight multiple enemies one on one rather than all at once.

Finally, factor in the range and secondary effects of your moves. Your basic attack only reaches the tile in front of you, and Tackle is just a stronger variation of that. But don't assume all attacks are like this! Much like how some moves can hit multiple opponents in a Double Battle in the main series, some moves can attack from a wider range! Additionally, some, like Mud Slap, can even cut through the corners of walls! If nothing else, it can also help just to growl at your foes as they approach to reduce the damage they can inflict against you. Just be wary that, even though they might not be in the range of your attacks, you might still have to watch out for theirs! Don't assume you're safe just because they're a couple of tiles away.

If you ever find yourself low on HP, you can rest up by holding B and A together. This will waste some of your belly, but your HP will recover at a slow rate. Just remember that other pokemon will be moving while you're resting, so watch out for enemies that aim to ambush you. I really wouldn't rely on this method of healing. In most cases, I think you're better off just seeking out an Oran Berry.

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Thunderwave Cave [B3F]

   

This floor introduces Voltorb who can paralyze you with Static. My Mud Slap is enough to make quick work of them, though.

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Thunderwave Cave [B4F - B5F]

  

It's here that the paralysis is much more likely to occur. Plusle is even capable of just straight-up using Thunder Wave!

 

This is also where we encounter our first version exclusive pokemon! In Red Rescue Team, you'll be dealing with Plusle, while Blue Rescue Team gets Minun instead.

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And finally, on B6F, you'll find the two Magnemite that are stuck together!

   

 

We escort the Magnemite out and the four Magnemite are grateful for our help!

  

They'll reward us with 500 Poke, a Reviver Seed, and a Rawst Berry!

The Reviver Seed is exactly what it sounds like, and it's an incredibly useful tool to carry with you. As long as you have a Reviver Seed in your toolbox, any pokemon that faints can be revived instantly. This is especially important for you and your partner because if either of you faint, your adventure is over and you'll have to retreat! But the Reviver Seed can prevent that from happening.

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And once again, after a long day of adventuring, we make our way to our home to rest up for our next day of questing.

[Aura]

As we wake up the next morning, we head outside to check the mailbox for any new requests!

Unfortunately, we have no letters to speak of. This is a little saddening, but as Kindle mentioned yesterday, it's not really too surprising. We've only just begun as a rescue team and there's only so many people who even know who we are! In fact, we were pretty lucky to have already gotten a direct request yesterday! With that in mind, it's time to look into Kindle's original idea to get our name out there. At his suggestion, we head east of the house toward Pokemon Square!

Pokemon Square

This is the central commercial district for rescue teams! Many peace-loving civilians take up residence here and there are a variety of stores available. At the moment, only four are open.

The first store is the Kecleon shop! This shop is run by two Kecleon brothers: A normal green one and one of an especially rare purple color! You wouldn't be alone in assuming that this was simply a shinky Kecleon, but in truth, shiny Kecleon merely have a blue stripe instead of red and a slightly different shade of its other colors. This is an entirely different color pattern altogether! My only assumption as to why he looks like this is linked to the reason that shiny pokemon don't actually appear anywhere in this game: The pallets simply aren't the same as Ruby and Sapphire. Perhaps this strangely-colored Kecleon is colored the way a shiny pokemon's colors would be decided in the main series. That is to say, I think this Kecleon was meant to be a shiny pokemon, but they just couldn't get the pallets to work properly.

   

The green Kecleon sells more generic items like apples, berries, gravelrocks, and seeds among other items that are useful for a variety of purposes.

 

The purple Kecleon sells much rarer items including TMs and orbs that offer various powerful effects!

The stocks of both stores are constantly changing, so you'll want to check in on them frequently. You'll especially want to check in with the purple Kecleon, as you can get some powerful tools! TMs function just as they did in the main series. You can use them to teach a move to any pokemon that is compatible with said move. Orbs are items that have various effects when used. Some of them can warp you, your teammates, or opponents around, some can launch enemies away, some let you escape from dungeons, the list goes on.

I did go ahead and purchase an Escape Orb. It's always nice to have these because they can help get you out of dangerous situations. I also bought a Sleep Seed as it can be useful for certain foes...

The second store that's currently open is Felicity Bank! It's run by a Persian who will guard your money with her life. By storing your money here, you don't have to worry about losing it if you die in a dungeon. I haven't spoken about the consequences of death, but... well, let's just say we'll be covering that real soon.

The third store available to us is the Gulpin Link Shop! Here, you can link your moves together so that they can be used back to back in a single turn! For example, I could link Mudkip's Mud-Slap and Growl so that he uses both moves to do some damage and reduce the foe's accuracy as well as attack. Try not to just link moves all willy-nilly, however. Once two moves are linked together, you can't use one without the other. And remember that PP Preservation is actually quite important in this game. Once one of the two moves runs out of PP, the link between the moves will break. You can also manually delink them here.

The final store available to us, though not much of a shop, is Kangaskhan Storage! Here, you can store the items you aren't using to withdraw later so that they don't clutter your inventory and that you can bring only the items you need!

  

In the center of the Square, you can find the locals usually discussing the latest gossip. You might pick up on some foreshadowing here and there by speaking with them.

Just north of here is Whiscash Pond. There isn't much here at the moment, but you can find Whiscash at the base of the waterfall! He's merely expressing concerns about the fissures that have been opening up lately and his worries about the children falling in, much like what happened to Caterpie. Hopefully, though, if it ever happens again we can come to the rescue!

To the south of the square is a peculiar building that is currently closed. We'll have to come back here later on.

Finally, at the edge of town, overlooking a cliff on the east border of the island, is Pelipper Post Office. The post office itself is an area we'll explore later as well. More importantly for us today, though, is the Bulletin Board! This is where rescue requests with no particular team in mind are posted! At our current rescue team rank, we're only allowed to accept low-level rescue missions, so we only get missions with a difficulty rating of E.

You'll only find requests for dungeons that you've explored already. So far, there seem to be two different types of missions: Rescue missions and item hunts. For rescue missions, you'll have to find a pokemon on a given floor of a dungeon. Once you find them, you can speak with them and use your badge to help them escape. For item hunts, you'll simply need to explore the dungeon in search of a particular item somebody lost or needs. Once you've completed a rescue mission, you can escape the dungeon along with the pokemon for free.

You'll have to make sure that you not only take the missions from the bulletin board, but that you also accept them from the missions menu. It's an odd middleman of a task, but the mission objective will not appear and you won't get credit for clearing the mission unless it's accepted first.

Since there appeared to be more missions for Thunderwave Cave, I decided to grab them all and headed off to Thunderwave Cave to take on the challenge.

After you've completed any missions, you'll meet with the pokemon you rescued and the one who posted the request in front of the bulletin board and they'll deliver whatever rewards that were promised. You can get some fairly useful items in this way!

Most notably, I was able to get my hands on a Max Elixir!

In case it's not obvious, I'm not going to detail my experience with these requests too much. They're really not much to talk about. You just go to the dungeon, do the thing, then leave.

After a day of completing missions, we return to our base for a night of rest.

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As we sleep through the night, we find ourselves met with a rather familiar dream sequence.

Mudkip is sleeping alone in the center of the screen and sleeping. He mentions that it feels like he can hear someone speaking to him, but he can't quite recognize them. A strange rumble occurs suddenly in our dream and cuts it short.

We wake up a while later to find a Dugtrio in our house! Dugtrio appologizes for having woken you up so early, but explains that the earthquake from the previous night caused quite a stir. He also explains that he (they?) is quite frantic after a Skarmory had snatched up his son and carried him off toward the peak of Mt. Steel. This sounds like a rescue request if I've ever heard one! Let's go!

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

Mt. Steel

At the entrance of Mt. Steel, Dugtrio will inform us that the summit of the mountain is on the 11th floor. But this dungeon is actually quite a significant jump in difficulty from before.

Mt. Steel [1F-4F]

   

For the first four flours, you'll be running into Spearow, Baltoy, Zigzagoon, and Aron. The pokemon here are a lot more powerful than the ones in Thunderwave Cave, though. You may have been lulled into a false sense of security. If you get Pecked by a Spearow, it can easily do about half of your health! I actually got caught off guard at some point during this dungeon and was KO'd unexpectedly. You seriously do not want to overestimate your standard attack. It's next to useless, only slightly better than the move Struggle.

              

Once again, the items you can obtain here are consistent across the entire dungeon: Poke, Gravelrocks, Orange and White Gummis, Cheri, Oran, and Pecha Berries, Blast Seeds, Max Elixirs, Blowback, Escape, Hurl, Petrify, Switcher, and Warp Orbs are all available here as well. We've got some explaining to do.

 

The gummis are another new item type. They come in a variety of colors all corresponding to a particular pokemon type! The Orange Gummi correlates to the Fighting-type while the Whitee Gummi correlates to Normal-types. What does this matter? Well, we'll cover their usefulness as soon as we get one that matches the type of a pokemon we have, but for now, we'll probably just stash these guys away.

There are a bunch of new orbs to cover as well.

The Blowback Orb launches an attack in a straight line, knocking any pokemon it hits backward. If they hit another pokemon, both pokemon will be damaged. Otherwise, they'll be slammed against the wall and take damage that way. Be warned, you can potentially damage your own pokemon with this orb, too, so be careful about how you use it!

The Hurl Orb will hurl a pokemon through the air toward another pokemon.

The Petrify Orb, as its name implies, petrifies all enemy pokemon in the room. This will render them temporarily unable to move, making it easy to either get away or position yourself better.

The Switcher Orb allows the user to swap places with another pokemon in a straight line. If used strategically, you could save yourself some hunger or get out of a sticky situation. Or, you could use it to trap an enemy between yourself and your partner. Just keep in mind only the user and the target will swap positions. The same applies to any other orbs that modify position. This can be potentially dangerous as you can be separated from your partner with no way to assist them if they're in danger. Keep in mind, also, if they faint, it can end your adventure.

Finally, the Warp Orb will warp the enemies in the room to random locations on the floor. Once again, this item is great for getting yourself out of perilous situations if you find yourself surrounded.

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

Mt. Steel [5F]

     

Starting on floor 5, you'll no longer run into Spearow or Baltoy. Instead, you'll find Geodude, Meditite and Tyrogue! Even though Tyrogue is just a baby pokemon, you definitely do not want to underestimate either of these foes. It's a pretty solid rule of thumb in general that, if you see a new pokemon, it's probably too tough to take out with your standard attack unless you've been grinding. Don't be afraid to use your moves!

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

Mt. Steel [6F]

Starting on floor 6, the dungeon's tileset changes completely! Yes, this will happen from time to time. Unfortunately, Bulbapedia and Serebii both only seem to share screenshots from the first floors of the dungeons, so I can't guarantee I'll be able to show this off every time. But, I was able to find this image from lparchive.org, so hopefully it won't go down unexpectedly anytime soon.

    

With the more rocky tileset, we also say goodbye to Zigzagoon in favor of another... actual Steel type: Beldum! Take Down is actually rather menacing, even from an otherwise fairly weak pokemon, so make sure to take it out quickly!

Mt. Steel [7F - 8F]

     

On the final two floors of the dungeon, you can potentially run into Pinsir!

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

Mt. Steel -- Summit

 

 

 

As we finally reach the Summit, we find Diglett stranded on the ledge across a giant chasm. As we move to approach him, though...

 

 

Skarmory swoops in from above and stands in our way! Skarmory explains that he has no intention of letting Diglett go free because he accuses the Diglett of causing the Earthquakes that have been plaguing the mountain recently, making it incredibly difficult for Skarmory to rest.

Obviously, that argument won't do, so it looks like we've got our first boss fight on our hands!

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

Team Promise

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

Aura (Mudkip M); Lv. 8

Item: Oran Berry 

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Tackle, Growl, Mud-Slap

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

Kindle (Charmander M); Lv. 8

Item: None

Ability: Blaze | Moves: Scratch, Growl, Ember

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

Vs. Skarmory

 

The battle here was rather unfortunate... I decided to open up by throwing that Sleep Seed I saved up for the next boss! Only... I messed up a bit and accidentally ate the seed instead of throwing it...

yyeeeah, the menus aren't exactly the most intuitive thing in this game, but that's admittedly entirely my own fault for not paying much attention, even if I think the design is rather bad. Anyway, this lead to an especially unfortunate situation where I opened this boss fight up by... immediately cracking open my Sleep Seed and knocking myself out. Needless to say, falling asleep in the middle of a boss fight... isn't exactly the way to go. I didn't last very long.

So, those consequences of death? Yeah, they're pretty harsh. You lose all of your on-hand money as well as a handful of items from your toolbox. Of course, you also get kicked out of the dungeon so you'll have to start over from the beginning. Any money in Felicity Bank and Items in Kangaskhan Storage are perfectly safe, though, so make sure you keep your valuables stored away!

...I happened to... not... use Felicity Bank, so I just lost literally every penny I had on the save file...

There is one way around this harsh penalty for loss, but I've opted not to explore that just yet. I figured since this is so early in the game, I'm really not losing a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. It's just gonna make things a little awkward for a short period of time.

So, I climbed all the way back up to try again. This time, both of my teammates reached Lv. 10 and Mudkip learned Water Gun! From this point, the boss fight was really simple. I seriously don't think the sleep seed was necessary in the first place, as Skarmory went down before ever even beginning to exert any real pressure on us the second time around!

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

 

 

 

After defeating Skarmory, we can finally speak with Diglett who is too scared to move from his spot. We try to get over to him, but due to the giant chasm between us, it's really difficult to get there.

 

 

 

It's then when the Magnemite we helped before come to the rescue! They arrive side by side and help to carry the Diglett to safety!

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

 

  

 

Back at the base, Dugtrio is overjoyed to be reunited with his son! After a bit of humor about Diglett making a comment about his feet and the kinship Magneton felt with Dugtrio being two trios of pokemon, it seems everyone is happy in the end! Well, except for Skarmory, but fuck that guy!

As everyone begins to leave, Kindle stops Magnemite and asks if he wants to join the rescue team. After all, without Magnemite, we couldn't have gotten to Diglett! He asks for Mudkip's input so, of course, I agree. However, when it's observed that Magnemite doesn't really have a place to stay, he regretfully has to decline the offer which is, admittedly, rather sad, isn't it? Perhaps we'll have to make some adjustments soon in order to help our rescue team grow...

[Aura]

The night after our episode with Skarmory and Diglett, we have yet another dream. Once again, we can sense the presence of another pokemon.

Their from can be made out but we still can't recall anything about them...

Once again, we awaken in our room with more questions than answers.

As we head outside, we tell Kindle about our weird dreams and he brings up the idea that, maybe they're related to our life as a human? Maybe these dreams can give us more information about how we became a pokemon. Regardless, Kindle suggests that we should look into making arrangements for other members to join our rescue team. So, together, we head into Pokemon Square.

Pokemon Square

As we return to Pokemon Square, we find that there is a new shop that is open now!

This store is the Wigglytuff Club! Run by, you guessed it, Wigglytuff! Wigglytuff offers access to locations called Friend Areas! You can buy access to a Friend Area to set up a camp in that area for teammates! She'll give you two friend areas for free to start off: Wild Plains and Mist-Rise Forest!

If you have a friend area a pokemon is compatible with, they will be able to join your rescue team and will set up camp at their favorite friend area! You can think of them as kind of like PC Boxes in a way, but it's a bit more involved. You can actually go and visit each friend area to speak with the allies you've recruited and have them join you for your next expedition. We'll go into more detail about how to actually recruit new members soon.

Each Wild Area also comes with really pretty art! I'll try to showcase them whenever I earn a new Friend Area.

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

Wild Plains

Wild Plains is the first of these Friend Areas you'll unlock. It's home to many basic field-centric pokemon.

  

Of the pokemon we've been able to encounter so far, Rattata, Poochyena, and Zigzagoon can all stay here.

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

Mist-Rise Forest

Mist-Rise Forest is exclusively home to early-game Bug-type pokemon like Caterpie and Weedle. No pokemon we've encountered yet can actually stay here, however.

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

 

As Wigglytuff is granting us access to these free friend areas, Magnemite and his friend from before arrive to request that she also give us the Power Plant friend area so that he can join the rescue team! Wigglytuff whimsically agrees and grants us access to a third free friend area as a special offer!

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

Power Plant

The Power Plant contains... exactly the types of pokemon you'd expect: The generic electric types that you've almost exclusively encountered in Power Plants across the main series.

 

Among the pokemon we've encountered so far, Voltorb and Elekid can stay here.

Of course, Magnemite can also stay here, but there's no reason to point that out considering he's about to join our team!

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

New Member:

Sonar (Magnemite); Lv. 6

Item: None

Ability: Magnet Pull, Sturdy | Moves: Tackle, Metal Sound, ThunderShock

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

Sonar here is actually our first chance to demonstrate that pokemon with multiple possible abilities in the main series actually have both abilities at the same time! Most abilities translate pretty directly to Mystery Dungeon, but some of them relate to mechanics that don't exist. Magnemite's Magnet Pull, for example, normally prevents Steel-type pokemon from switching out. In Mystery Dungeon, Magnet Pull instead allows Magnemite to have a 12% chance of immobilizing a steel-type pokemon that attacks it.

From now on, though, we'll need to recruit our party members ourselves! I'll try to take note of which friend areas each new pokemon stays in as we run into them in the dungeons going forward.

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

As we make our way out, we run into a commotion in the center of the square.

  

We find a Jumpluff pleading with a rescue team to take her request to rescue her friend, but the Shiftry is unsatisfied with the reward she's offering and refuses to help.

Lombre explains to us that Team Shiftry is a highly-ranked rescue team, but Shiftry only accepts requests with high rewards. Unfortunately, Jumpluff doesn't have the money. Perhaps we should step in... that is, until...

  

  

An even higher-ranked rescue team arrives. The top team, that is: Team A.C.T. is essentially the authority on rescue teams. As soon as Alakazam insists Shiftry accept the mission due to being the ideal team for the job because of the high winds his leaf fans can generate, Shiftry finds it impossible to say no. So, his team set out on the mission.

Team A.C.T. starts to walk off past our direction before...

 

 

Alakazam stops and turns to look at me. Charizard asks him if something's wrong, but Alakazam shrugs it off and the three continue moving further.

Ominous...

As we go to leave, the camera pans down to reveal that we're being watched by a suspicious Gengar...

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

The next day, we step outside of our home to check our mailbox! Only...

 

  

The Gengar from before, along with a Medicham and Ekans, approach us and immediately start ravaging our mailbox! They insist that they're a rescue team as well. They refer to themselves as Team Meanies and they operate in a very different way from most rescue teams. They steal requests from other teams and bully their clients into giving them greater rewards. Under the guise of a rescue team, they can get away with a lot more shady behavior, and their ultimate goal is world domination! Those are pretty grandiose plans, but... are these guys really all that? They seem like jerks, but they don't come off as much more than schoolyard bullies just yet. Compared to Team A.C.T., I find it kinda hard to believe these guys could even come close to their ambitions of dominating the world. But, we probably shouldn't underestimate them, I suppose.

More importantly, these guys just raided our mailbox and stole all of our rescue requests! What's worse, they ran off, so there's no way we'll be able to find out where they went. We'll have to be wary of them from now on, I suppose. Instead, we're just going to have to make ends meet with more generic rescue requests.

In the meantime, we can go check out all our Friend Areas that we just purchased! It's fun to look at them all and run around in them! Plus, you might notice you actually have a few more than you expect. More specifically: You should have two others that seem to have come out of nowhere! In my case, these two areas were...

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

Mt. Cleft

This friend area is home to some particularly rare pokemon that live in the mountains.

Among the pokemon we've met, Aron can stay here!

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

Peanut Swamp

Peanut Swamp is home to a bunch of muddy water- and ground-type pokemon. None of the pokemon we've encountered yet can stay here.

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

So, as it turns out, these Friend Areas are ones you actually have access to from the very beginning of the game! The ones you get are decided by which pokemon you started with and chose for your partner. Mt. Cleft is where Charmander stays while Peanut Swamp is where Mudkip stays. I'll try to mention whenever we purchase a new friend area if any of the starter pokemon can get it for you for free.

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

So, how do you decide which Friend Areas to purchase? There's a lot of them, and you only have so much money to start with. Well, I like to pinch my pennies a bit and hold out on buying Friend Areas until just before I'm about to set out on an expedition. In this case, we don't have anything better to do for the next few days besides gathering together rescue requests from the bulletin board and mailbox, so this is a good time to go back to older dungeons and collect some of the pokemon we've missed out on before!

So, over the next few days, I just completed some requests including another new type of mission: A delivery mission. It's sort of a combination of a rescue mission and a treasure hunt mission. You'll need to bring an item to the client on a specified floor, nothing more to it. Try to bring the item into the dungeon with you so you guarantee you have it, but keep your eyes out for extras along the way. I believe they'll always request an item that can be found in the dungeon.

Before heading off to Mt. Steel to complete some missions, I went ahead and purchased some Friend Areas I knew pokemon there would respond to. Keep in mind, not every pokemon can be recruited, and not every pokemon's friend area is even available for purchase yet! Some are also more expensive than others. In general, I try to purchase the more expensive ones first.

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

Mt. Deepgreen

This is another friend area that's home to some more generic mountain-dwelling pokemon.

Geodude can stay here.

In addition, if you started with Cubone, this is one of the two friend areas you'll begin with.

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

Overgrown Forest

The Overgrown Forest is home to rarer forest-dwelling pokemon.

Pinsir can stay here!

And if you started with Treecko, or Treecko was your partner, you'll start with access to this friend area!

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

Safari

Before moving on to doing missions from Thunderwave Cave, I got the Safari friend area where many pokemon found in the Safari Zone can be stay!

Nidoran F from Thunderwave Cave is available here.

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

So, while we're completing all these missions, how exactly do we recruit these pokemon? Well, as with everything else, there's a bit of nuance to it. First, your squad caps out at 4, so you have to make sure you have an empty slot in your party. Then, you have to KO the pokemon you want to recruit. Lastly, you'll need to ensure that your lead character is the pokemon that delivers the final hit and that you are standing within a range of two from the target. Finally, if you have the appropriate friend area, only then will you have a percentage chance of that pokemon deciding they want to join you. When this happens, the pokemon will not dissappear on being KO'd like normal, but instead you'll be prompted by a message that says they want to come along.

There's still more, however. You'll also need to keep that pokemon alive until you either escape from the dungeon or reach the end. Only then will it set up camp in the friend area you prepared for it.

Needless to say, the process is a bit convoluted and leaves no guarantee that you'll ever even get the pokemon you're after. It may take several trips through a dungneon to get the results you want. Strangely, it's actually impossible to recruit pokemon in Tiny Woods even if you have the appropriate friend area. It seems there's a flag in this dungeon that intentionally restricts wild pokemon from joining you.

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

Eventually, after clearing several missions, our rescue rank upgraded to Bronze level and we were able to expand our team somewhat!

New Team Promise Members:

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

Scout (Zigzagoon M); Lv. 11

Item: None

Ability: Pickup | Moves: Tackle, Growl, Tail Whip, Headbutt

Pickup works slightly differently in Mystery Dungeon, but I can't say its effect is particularly unexpected. It seems that, every so often, rather than pulling an item from a pre-determined table based on the pokemon's level, an item that would normally appear on the floor is simply rolled to appear in the pokemon's hands. You'll get a notification whenever an item is found, so you don't usually have to worry about missing it.

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

Steel (Aron M); Lv. 8

Item: None

Ability: Rock Head, Sturdy | Moves: Tackle, Harden, Mud-Slap

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

Light (Voltorb); Lv. 4

Item: None

Ability: Static, Soundproof | Moves: Charge, Tackle

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

 

As we leave the house the next morning, we find Caterpie outside! He's returned to us with another request! He mentions that his friend Metapod was playing in the woods with him but got lost, so he wants us to go into the woods and find Metapod!

 

  

Of course, who would be listening in on this conversation but Team Meanies, who immediately assert to Caterpie that they'll take the job instead, because they're sure they could be rewarded handsomely. Caterpie is incredibly bothered by this because he doesn't have any money, but Team Meanies insist that they can get payment from his mother and even suggest that they'll have Caterpie join their gang as well! They rush off to take on the mission, so we'll have to run off immediately as well to save Metapod before them so that they can't pull their tricks on him!

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

Sinister Woods

  

We first arrive at the entrance and, for the first time, we aren't told what floor the dungeon ends on. So, we'll just have to charge in without knowing!

Sinister Woods [1F]

  

The first floor contains Swinub, Oddish, and Sudowoodo.

Swinub requires a friend area we don't have access to just yet.

Oddish can stay in the Jungle, and Sudowoodo in the Overgrown Forest.

                    

Items available in this dungeon are, yet again, consistent throughout the entire dungeon. Poke, Apples, Blue, Brown, Clear, Gold, Grass, Green, Orange, Pink, Sky, White, and Yellow Gummis, Cheri, Oran, Pecha, and Rawst Berries, Blast and Reviver Seeds, Max Elixirs, as well as Blowback, Escape, Hurl, Luminous, Radar, Scanner, Switcher, and Warp Orbs.

Blue gummis correlate to the water type, Brown to Ground, Clear to Ice, Gold to Psychic, Grass to, well, Grass, Green to Bug, Pink to Poison, Sky to Flying, and Yellow to Electric.

This is the first time most of these gummis become accessible, and it's the first time I got a gummi of one of my active pokemon's types, so I suppose I should start talking about IQ now. IQ is actually very straightforward. As a Pokemon's IQ increases, they'll gain access to special IQ skills. Some of these affect how the AI controls the character, but some of them affect other things like allowing your pokemon to catch items thrown at them, or travelling over different kinds of terrain. IQ skills can be turned on or off from the menu. Only a maximum of 12 skills can be stacked at the same time, but some skills conflict with others and cannot be active together.

What does this have to do with gummis and types? Well, Gummis increase your IQ alongside decreasing your hunger. The amount of IQ each gummi increases depends on the type of the pokemon that ate it. The greatest boost comes from eating a gummi that represents one's own type. So, if Mudkip eats a blue gummi, it'll get the best results from the gummi. However, the second best option is to give a gummi to a pokemon that is weak against its type. For example, you could give the Blue Gummi to a Geodude. From there, type matchups determine the strength of the Gummi. But what's most important is that, to get the best results, always give the gummi to a pokemon of its own type.

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

Sinister Woods [2F]

   

The second floor adds Sunflora into the mix. However, Sunflora cannot be recruited period.

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

Sinister Woods [3F]

    

Sentret begins to appear on the third floor! It requires Thunder Meadow to be recruited.

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

Sinister Woods [4F]

     

Starting on the 4th floor, Swinub stops appearing and, instead, you'll find Silcoon and Cascoon. These two pokemon don't do much of anything and mostly just sit in place hardening, occasionally using their basic attacks to get some weak damage in, but usually you can take them out for some easy Exp since they don't seem to move at all. Interestingly, they can be recruited with the Mist-Rise Forest, but... their chance of recruitment is actually in the negatives, meaning you will never be able to successfully get one of them to join you. What could this mean? How could it differ from Sunflora who simply can't be recruited? Well, we'll get around to that sooner or later, but for now, you can consider these guys unrecruitable. Just know that some pokemon have negative recruitment rates.

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

Sinister Woods [5F]

   

Once you reach the 5th floor, the dungeon doesn't change much aesthetically, but the leaves overhead do get a lot thicker, dimming the halls of the dungeon and making it more difficult to see. That's right, this is our first instance of a dark floor. On Dark floors, you'll have a small spotlight in which you can see any items or enemies. Outside of that spotlight, you won't be able to see anything but the terrain. If you're not careful, especially with a large party, you might be surprised by an attack from the darkness! Try to keep strong pokemon in the front and back and weaker pokemon in the middle while walking through hallways.

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

Sinister Woods [6F]

    

On Floor 6, we've got Shroomish whose Stun Spore can actually be incredibly devastating if they catch you off guard. Try to pick them off from a distance if you can, or use orbs to get them away. They can be recruited with the Mushroom Forest friend area.

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

Sinister Woods [7F]

   

Starting with floor 7, we start to run into Linoone which are actually incredibly strong this early on. Be extra careful when approaching them as you won't be able to KO them very quickly. They're unrecruitable. Ledyba, on the other hand, can be recruited with Mist-Rise Forest!

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

Sinister Woods [8F - 9F]

    

The 8th floor introduces Wooper and Scyther. Wooper can be recruited with Peanut Swamp while Scyther needs Overgrown Forest. Be wary of Sycther's Focus Energy and Quick Attack combo! Quick Attack has a range of two and allows Scyther to get a sizeable chunk of surprise damage in!

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

Sinister Woods [10F]

      

The 10th floor introduces Hoothoot, Slakoth, and Exeggcutor. Hoothoot requries Flyaway Forest while Slakoth requires Energetic Forest. Energetic Forest isn't obtainable until the postgame but it is the friend area of Pikachu, Meowth, and Skitty. So, if you start with any of those three, or select Pikachu for your partner, you can get access to Energetic Forest early! Exeggcute, though, is unfortunately unrecruitable. Exeggcutor can really ruin your day with Confusion and Hypnosis. Confusion is an incredibly dangerous status condition in Mystery Dungeon. Rather than putting you at risk of failing to attack and damaging yourself until you switch out, Confusion can cripple even your ability to retreat. When you try to walk, you'll move in a random direction. When you try to attack, you'll attack in a random direction. While confused, you can even hurt your allies or support your enemies. It's usually for the best to just get away if you end up confused. Falling asleep can likewise be just as scary. You'll become a sitting duck while your allies have to fend for themselves! If you get attacked, you'll wake up immediately, but that doesn't matter if they don't attack you and just go for your weaker teammates.

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

Sinister Woods [11F]

    

On the 11th floor, Ledyba and Wooper are gone and you'll be running into the more obnoxious foes more frequently.

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

Sinister Woods [12F]

   

Scyther is gone on Floor 12.

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

Sinister Woods -- Depths

On the 13th floor, you'll finally reach the end of the dungeon.

  

  

And it's here where you'll come across Team Meanies. Right away, I opened up by throwing a Blast Seed at Gengar. He's got some obnoxious attacks that'll make you want to deal with him first. Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that orbs don't seem to work in boss fights. I tried to use a Petrify Orb, but the orb was merely wasted. I suppose it makes sense in hindsight, it's just a little unfortunate the item is actually consumed even if it doesn't actually do anything.

Anyway, Gengar's Levitate ability actually makes him incredibly awkward to battle for me as it protects his weakness to my Mud-Slap. Thankfully, there's a concept that hasn't really come up yet, but as it turns out, damage is calculated slightly differently in this game. STAB attacks actually seem to do more damage than super-effective attacks. So, Water Gun will almost always do more damage than even a super-effective Mud Slap. Keep this in mind when choosing your moves.

All three of your opponents here are actually really obnoxious. Gengar likes to pelt you with Curse, Spite, and Hypnosis to drain your health and render you helpless. All the while, Ekans likes to immobilize you with Wrap while reducing your stats and poisoning you with Leer and Poison Sting. His Bite can also be fairly menacing. Lastly, Medicham is a bit lower level than the others, but it likes to confuse you with Confusion. Ultimately, I think it's best to focus your efforts on taking out Gengar because he's able to cause the most damage the fastest. Then you can single out his lackies. Odds are, Medicham will go down before it's able to become threatening, and, in my case anyway, I was able to start reducing Ekans' HP with Mud-Slap in the end. With his accuracy rapidly decreasing, he couldn't connect Wrap anymore, so it became an easy win from there.

  

After the battle with Team Meanies, Metapod emerges from the trees and explains that he was so afraid that he just staid still and hardened his shell. But now that he's with us, we were able to rescue him and bring him back!

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

 

 

Finally back home, Caterpie is overjoyed that his friend is safe and sound. Though we don't get any payment, Kindle and I are more than happy to have saved Caterpie and his mother the hassle of having to deal with Team Meanies over this. I have a feeling this won't be the last we see of those guys...

[Aura]

 

The next morning, we're met with a surprise visitor: Jumpluff! Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the one that was rescued. Something must have gone wrong...

Jumpluff tells us that Shiftry hasn't returned from his rescue mission and Jumpluff is growing incredibly worried. This news is incredibly surprising as the mission itself didn't seem all that dangerous, especially for someone as strong as Shiftry. It's a bit unnerving, but we decide to take the request to follow up on Shiftry at Silent Chasm. Of course, we're going to want to stock up a bit first.

And by prepare, I mostly just mean buying some new friend areas.

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

Jungle

The Jungle is home to most of the more generic grass-type pokemon like Oddish.

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

Ravaged Field

Ravaged Field is a place where fierce hunters can call home.

Spearow can call this place home.

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

With some arbitrary inventory management, it's time to head out to the Silent Chasm and see what's in store for us!

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

Silent Chasm

 

As we first arrive, Jumpluff tells us his friend is trapped on the 10th floor, but also warns that there are rumors of a monster in the area. Normally this would just be chalked up to hearsay, but considering Shiftry hasn't returned, it seems to add fuel to the speculation. Kindle doesn't respond to well to this news and starts to fake a stomachache. While I certainly wouldn't think there's any turning back from this point, Kindle begins to feign a stomachache to come back another day. Perhaps he thinks we should take some more time to prepare? Either way, I try to play along with him but the jig is up when Jumpluff points out that we haven't... actually had anything to eat that could've caused us to feel sick. So, Kindle swallows his fear and we start our journey!

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

Silent Chasm [1F-3F]

Silent Chasm is actually a rather standard dungeon throughout. It's even shorter than the Sinister Woods! 

    

The first three floors contain Farfetch'd, Teddiursa, Weedle, Yanma, and Gloom. I probably don't need to warn you about Weedle's Poison Sting, but Teddiursa is the main threat here you want to watch out for. He can soak up quite a bit of damage and dish it out as well. Plus, Teddiursa's Lick can paralyze you which can leave you in an incredibly uncomfortable situation if you're unlucky.

Farfetch'd can be recruited with the Wild Plains, Teddiursa with Mt. Deepgreen, Weedle and Yanma with Mist-Rise Forest, and Gloom can set up camp in the Jungle alongside Oddish, however it has a negative recruitment rate, so, as for now, it's essentialy unrecruitable.

                    

And the items are still consistent across the board. Throughout the dungeon, you can find Poke, Power Bands, Special Bands, Gravelrocks, Apples, Blue, Brown, Gold, Gray, Purple, Red, Royal, White, and Yellow Gummis, Cheri, Oran, Pecha, and Rawst Berries, Blast Seeds, Max Elixirs, and Blowback, Esccape, Hurl, Radar, Scanner, Switcher, and Warp Orbs.

 

The Power and Special bands are what you'll mostly want to keep your eyes peeled for. These are held items that will increase the power of your physical or special attacks respectively.

   

Among the gummis, we do have some new ones. I believe the new gummis include gray which correlates to Rock-types, Purple which correlates to the Ghost type, Red which correlates to Fire, and Royal which correlates to Dragon.

This dungeon also introduces you to our first tile with difficult terrain. Specifically, water! So, throughout the game, you'll occasionally run into different types of ground tiles that only certain kinds of pokemon can navigate. The lead pokemon will get hungry faster while navigating this terrain, so you don't always want to utilize it. However, it can give your team a significant advantage if you can freely stray off to the side and surround an opponent. In general, pokemon that are Flying-type, have the Levitate Ability, or just naturally hover above the ground, can navigate difficult terrain no matter what. In the case of water, water-type pokemon like Mudkip can navigate it as well. However, you want to be careful when utilizing this ability of your leader. Remember, you want to make sure you stay close to your allies in case they end up in danger. Most of the time, your entire party won't be able to stay close to you. You can, however, set tactics for your allies to avoid battle or wait where they are while you roam off exploring. I haven't really covered Tactics yet, but they're very useful if you aren't satisfied with your ally simply following in your footsteps and, using them effectively alongside their IQ abilities can give you an edge in battle as well if you notice an ally isn't doing much to help.

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

Silent Chasm [4F]

   

The fourth floor drops Teddiursa and Farfetch'd in favor of Dustox who is unfortunately unrecruitable.

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

Silent Chasm [5F]

     

5F adds on Growlithe and Poliwag who require the Ravaged Field and Tadpole Pond friend areas respectively. Be wary of Poliwag's Hypnosis!

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

Silent Chasm [6F]

       

6F adds on Spinarak and Trapinch to the mix. Both of these pokemon require friend areas we don't have access to yet to recruit so you'll need to look elsewhere. Be wary of Trapinch's Arena Trap which can immobilize you if you attack it!

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

Silent Chasm [7F]

       

7F drops Weedle in favor of Paras who requires the Mushroom Forest friend area to recruit.

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

Silent Chasm [8F]

     

On the 8th floor, you can say goodbye to Dustox and Houndour.

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

Silent Chasm [9F]

     

And on the 9th floor, Yanma is replaced with Beedrill who is unrecruitable.

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

New Team Promise Member:

Radio (Yanma M); Lv. 13

Item: None

Ability: Speed Boost, Compound Eyes | Moves: Double Team, Quick Attack

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

   

It isn't too long before we reach the depths of Silent Chasm when we find Jumpluff. Thankfully, Jumpluff is okay, but Shiftry is in the back.

 

   

We move to approach Shiftry, but he warns us to stay back and forget about him, that we need to get away! Of course, we don't heed this warning, prioritizing a fellow rescue team. It's part of our mission, after all! But as we move to get closer...

   

The Legendary Pokemon Zapdos swoops in to block our way! We prepare for a boss fight, but Zapdos isn't interested in fighting us. Instead, he takes Shiftry and flies off toward Mt. Thunder, leaving us behind. Well, for now, we can bring Jumpluff back, but it's clear we'll need to plan a rescue operation for Shiftry as well.

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

 

 

Returning home is rather bittersweet. The Jumpluff are happy to finally be reuinted, but we're worried about what to do about Zapdos. We ask the Jumpluff what happened and Jumpluff explains that Shiftry whipped up a powerful gust of wind to free him, but the wind went on to tear through a thunder cloud from which Zapdos emerged!

  

 

 

As we're talking, it seems our conversation is overheard by Team A.C.T. who, upon hearing about Zapdos' involvement, immediately offer to go and rescue Shiftry. We offer to go with, but Alakazam initially declines this offer. He explains that Zapdos is far too powerful of a monster for us to handle, to which Kindle objects. The other two members of Team A.C.T. try to dissuade us, but we perservere! Finally, Alakazam acknowledges our courage and allows us to come on the rescue mission, but he warns us again about how strong Zapdos is and that we must be sure that we are prepared before we head out toward Mt. Thunder.

For now, though, I think it's time for a good nights' sleep. We can start making preparations tomorrow. We definitely don't want to keep Shiftry waiting too long!

[Aura]

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team

Alright, so what's going on here?

Well, the plot's about to start thickening in Mystery Dungeon and, since we're still at the beginning when things are still simple, I've put a bit of thought into how exactly I want to approach this project. It's a very unique case for the thread so far. As described, I was originally planning to just do Red Rescue Team and briefly touch on the mechanics unique to Blue Rescue Team in a cleanup section. However, as I've been playing through Red Rescue Team, I've come to understand that these games, much like the main series, are designed for friends to play concurrently. They are rather lonely to play on your own and you miss out on a lot of the fun concepts the game was designed around.

Additionally, as with most spinoffs, it's rather difficult to find screenshots of the various dungeons and the like.

So, ultimately, I decided I would go ahead and start playing Blue Rescue Team, not after, but alongside Red Rescue Team. The idea here being that I'd go in with a completely different team and possibly observe how certain challenges might differ if you started with different pokemon.

 

What was that I said about no emulation? What are you talking about? This is legitimate hardware!

Of course, in all seriousness, I figured that since I'm already playing Red Rescue Team, all this does for Blue Rescue Team is give me a better visual aid than the sprites and screenshots I've been stealing from Serebii and Bulbapedia. Otherwise, I'd just be playing Red Rescue Team alone.

Much like the main series games, I decided to highlight the differences between these playthroughs by choosing the opposite gender. This way, even if I got the same nature through the personality quiz, I would still get a different pokemon. In this case, I got the pokemon Totodile! It seems the game really likes giving me Water-types. I decided that Bulbasaur would be a nice compliment to Totodile. I named her Nature.

Pretty much the only difference for your is the color of the border around the textbox. This border is blue for a boy and pink for a girl. The dialogue itself mostly seems unchanged. Even Attract and Cute Charm work regardless of gender! How progressive! As for version differences, the game still is mostly displayed on one screen with the top screen being used for a convenient HUD during gameplay. It's pretty clear from the get-go that this game was not originally designed with the DS in mind, as most of the DS functionality feels like an after-thought. There are some small things here and there. For example, you can tap on menu options instead of scrolling down to them in order to select them.

 

So, just like with Red Rescue Team, we wake up in the Tiny Woods having transformed into a Totodile this time instead of a Mudkip. I named myself Allia.

It isn't long at all before we're sent off into our first dungeon. Here, the DS mechanics are a bit more involved. For starters, options that are normally available in the menu are now available in a hotbar of panels along the bottom of the screen for easy access. More useful, though, is the top screen which provides detail at a glance on all of your party members. You'll now know at a glance which of your party members requires immediate assistance when something goes wrong. It's a very handy tool! Otherwise, in order to even look at their HP, you'd have to navigate the admittedly confusing menus.

Another detail is that you can tap on any tile on the lower screen and your character will automatically move there. I don't find much use for this mechanic, however, because it kind of takes a lot of control away from you. It's kind of important to be in precise control of which tiles you step on, especially in later dungeons as see eventually.

I have yet to mention it, but yes, the map is overlayed over the screen in both versions of the game. I believe you can adjust it so that the map only appears if you press Select, which also turns the screen black so that you can see it more clearly. A lot of people don't like this map overlay and would prefer the map to be on the top screen or simply off by default, but I actually quite enjoy the map overlay. It allows you to keep track of your exact location and keeps you alert when an enemy walks on screen.

I do believe you can adjust the settings so that the map appears on the top screen instead of the HUD, but I think displaying information on the team is far more useful. You can also turn off the map overlay, but then you have to manually check it periodically to see if a pokemon is sneaking up on you. It's much more seamless if you just get used to playing the game with the overlay on. So, I apologize if you find it annoying to look at, but this is just how I like to play the game.

  

Anyway, the story goes on, Nature and Allia form the Rescue Team Recover and their story, too, begins alongside Team Promise! Unfortunately, since I'm still a Water-type, our house still looks identical to Mudkip's.

  

I spent a few hours last night playing catch up with Team Promise.

In the Sinister Woods, I also recruited Charisma the Sudowoodo!

 

And in the Silent Chasm, I was able to recruit Chum the Farfetch'd as well.

  

Just as before, Zapdos kidnaps Shiftry and brings him to Mt. Thunder.

And we've finally caught up with Team Promise, where we're met with the ultimatum of preparing for our first serious mission at Mt. Thunder.

I think it goes without saying that, from this point forward, I'm going to be using Blue Mystery Dungeon as my primary info dump, but I'll occasionally update you guys on how Team Promise is doing as well. I want to have two save files that are at relatively the same point in the story because of a key mechanic if we end up dying again in either story.

So, now that we're caught up, let's focus on some new stuff! Of course, with new starters means new starting Friend Areas!

Beau Plains

With Bulbasaur comes Beau Blains! A friend area it shares with Chikorita.

Rub-a-Dub River

Totodile comes with Rub-a-Dub River which is home to a handful of river-dwelling pokemon.

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

Mushroom Forest

I also bought Mushroom Forest, where Paras and Shroomish can stay.

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

Thunder Meadow

  

Lastly, there was Thunder Meadow which is where Sentret can stay along with Plusle, Minun, and some other pokemon associated with thunderstorms.

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

Unfortunately, without having started with Charmander, we no longer have access to Mt. Cleft, so we'll have to wait for a while before we can buy that area. Mudkip's Peanut Swamp is actually quite expensive. All in all, it seems we got the short end of the stick when it comes to free friend areas this time around. I suppose them's the breaks when it comes to letting fate decide your starting team.

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

Now that we've finally caught up to Team Promise, let's start getting ready for our adventure into Mt. Thunder, shall we?

We would be wise to heed Alakazam's warning to take some time to prepare for our adventure. In fact, at this point, we have just the place!

 

If we head just south of Pokemon Square, we'll find this oddly-shaped building: Makuhita Dojo! This place has a handful of mazes themed around different types. Essentially, these are controlled, bite-size mini mystery dungeons which you can enter as many times as you like.

Each Maze is 3 floors long with a boss fight against three tougher standard enemies on the third floor. The second floor features limited visibility just like parts of Sinister Woods, and difficult terrain like deep water. Unfortunately, pokemon from the Dojo cannot be recruited, at least, with one exception, but we'll go over that exception a while from now.

In preparation for our expedition to Mt. Thunder, we'll be taking on all of these mazes today!

 

Water Maze

Don't be disturbed by the water on the floor, it's just decorative here. Only the deep water restricts your movement.

The Water Maze is populated only by Poliwag. Their Hypnosis can be a bit dangerous so be careful in your approach.

  

The boss is three Poliwag fighting together.

 

After you clear a maze, it'll be highlighted in green and a star will appear next to it! None of these mazes are particularly tough, so it will take no time at all to finish them all!

Grass Maze

 

The Grass Maze prominently features Exeggcute and Sunkern. These two are incredibly low-level, though, so they're basically a joke.

   

For the boss floor, Shroomish and Cacnea join the fray! I forgot to take a screenshot of the formation, though.

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

Electric Maze

Voltorb is the prominent foe throughout this dungeon.

   

For the boss fight, two Electrike and two Voltorb will join forces.

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

Fighting Maze

 

Tyrogue and Meditite are prominently fought throughout this one.

  

Hitmonlee joins alongside them for the bossfight. While Tyrogue and Meditite are weak, Hitmonlee is incredibly strong! Be prepared for some nasty hits!

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

Flying Maze

The Flying Maze is stuffed full of Pidgey that'll all go down to simple standard attacks with no problem.

  

Doduo and Farfetch'd join in for the boss fight, notably stronger but still notably weak. the flying maze is a joke all around.

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

Poison Maze

Even if Nidoran F's Poison Point gets to you, the dungeon is so short that you're probably not gonna feel much pain from it. 

   

Stronger Nidoran M join in the boss fight, but are also still not much stronger.

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

Bug Maze

  

Surprisingly, the Bug Maze I found to be one of the more challenging ones. Beedrill could get some decent damage off if it could connect a lot of hits from Fury Attack. Of course, Weedle's String Shot is obnoxious as it can give your opponents extra turns. Pinsir can also get some nasty damage off with Focus Energy.

  

The boss fight is simply all three of these pokemon together at once.

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

Rock Maze

 

The Rock Maze has a bunch of Geodude and some Sudowoodo sprinkled in. I haven't mentioned it yet, but Sudowoodo likes to just sit still, pretending to be a tree, so it's real easy to gang up on.

  

In this boss fight, though, a Pupitar joins the fray and Sudowoodo is a lot less passive. Still, nothing too terribly difficult.

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

Dark Maze

The Dark Maze is filled with low-level Poochyena.

   

The Murkrow that join in with them for the boss fight aren't much tougher, either.

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

Steel Maze

 

Aron and Beldum will be faced throughout the Steel maze.

   

Likewise, the boss fight will be comprised of two of each. Neither of them are capable of much.

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

And with that, we've cleared all of the Mazes that are available to us! In case you can't tell by the tone of this post... this isn't exactly the most effective way to train. The pokemon here simply aren't strong enough to be worthwhile grinding against. I think your time is better spent completing Rescue Missions for the time being. That said, Makuhita does promise a reward for anyone who is capable of clearing all of his mazes, so perhaps there's more to come as we unlock the, hopefully, more challenging mazes later on. For now, though, I think we're pretty prepared to hit the road! Maybe we'll do another round of rescue requests.

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

Team Recover

  

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

Allia (Totodile); Lv. 14

Item: Special Band 

Ability: Torrent | Moves: Leer, Scratch, Rage, Water Gun

Rage works significantly differently in Mystery Dungeon than in the main series. It isn't an offensive attack at all! Rather, the move simply gives you the "Rage" status which increases your attack every time you're hit with an attack.

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

Nature (Bulbasaur); Lv. 15

Item: None

Ability: Overgrow | Moves: Poison Powder, Leech Seed, Growl, Vine Whip

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

Charisma (Sudowoodo); Lv. 15

Item: Pecha Scarf 

Ability: Rock Head, Sturdy | Moves: Rock Throw, Mimic, Flail

[Aura]

So, yesterday we trained up a bit to prepare for our first large expedition toward Mt. Thunder! Today, we'll be following along both Team Promise and Team Recover as we journey toward the mountain's summit to rescue Shiftry from the clutches of the legendary Zapdos!

 

Mt. Thunder

When we first arrive, our partner is curious as to whether or not Team A.C.T. have already gone inside. Regardless, we should head on inside and see what we can do!

Mt. Thunder 1F

One thing that might become pretty clear early on is... Mt. Thunder is incredibly challenging compared to what we've been through so far. This is the first time I'd say the game starts to get somewhat serious, but it's by no means the toughest it's going to be.

   

Starting with the first floor, we have a few pokemon that can be a little annoying. Get used to dealing with Electrike. You didn't think you'd go through Mt. Thunder without getting paralyzed a few times, did you? There's almost no point in even bringing Cheri Berries because you'll be getting paralyzed a lot. Pecha Berries are always nice to have, though.

Weedle, I believe is our first recurring pokemon from a previous dungeon. Nidoran M, like Nidoran F, requires the Safari Friend Area. Electrike requires Thunder Meadow, and Cacnea needs a friend area we don't have access to yet.

                        

There are quite a few nice items to keep your eyes out for while climbing the earlier parts of this dungeon, so keep your eyes peeled for them. The items here include Poke, Gold Ribbons, Power and Special Bands, Gravelrocks, Apples, Black, Blue, Brown, Clear, Gold, Gray, Orange, Pink, Red, Sky, White, and Gold Gummis, Cheri, Oran, and Pecha Berries, Blast Seeds, Max Elixirs, Link Boxes, and, most significantly, several TMs which can contain some incredibly useful moves!

In addition to the Power and Special Bands, you can also find a Gold Ribbon which doesn't do anything, but it can sell for a nice sum of money.

  

I do believe this is our first time seeing Black, Clear, and Sky Gummis. Black Gummis are preferred by Dark Types, Clear are preferred by Ice Types, and Sky Gummis are preferred by Flying types.

Lastly, there are the TMs which can contain many moves. They work much the same as in the main game. If you want to teach a TM to a pokemon in your active party, simply use it from your item list, then select the pokemon you want to teach it to. The TM will then be replaced with a Used TM which no longer has any functionality and, as a trash item, cannot be stored in Kangaskhan Storage. However, if a pokemon in your party happens to know the move Recycle, you can restore the TM for reuse! If you don't have Recycle, however, considering you can't store the Used TM, you're probably better off just discarding it. A little litter never hurt anyone!

Anyway, the TMs available in Mt. Thunder include Aerial Ace, Attract, Brick Break, Bullet Seed, Dig, Facade, Frustration, Giga Drain, Hidden Power, Rest, Return, Roar, Safeguard, Secret Power, Shadow Ball, Shock Wave, Taunt, Thief, Torment, and Toxic.

Even if nobody in your team is capable of learning a move from a new TM, you might want to hold onto it for the future just in case. You never know when it might come in handy!

Lastly, there are Link Boxes which essentially work like a portable, and free, version of Gulpin's Link Shop. But it's only good for one use, so make sure you make the most out of it! You might be able to use this to make up for some lost Links due to PP consumption, or to go ahead and link moves from a new recruit!

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

 

Mt. Thunder [2F - 4F]

    

Starting with the 2nd floor, you can start to run into Pidgeotto who, like most evolved pokemon, has a negative recruitment rate.

In addition to having a challenging array of strong enemies, each floor in this dungeon is significantly larger than previous dungeons. You might actually have a hard time locating the stairs at times, so make sure you bring some food just in case! As a general tip for navigating large, complex floors, any time you arrive at a fork, try to pick the direction that leads toward more open space according to the map. Also, try to look ahead (while wasting as little belly as possible)  and watch for the subtle patterns in the ground that line the walls. They can tell you if that patch of ground on the other side of the wall is just a corridor or an actual room. Always go for rooms anytime you see them, and don't bother exploring corridors that don't lead to a large enough area to house a room. It'll probably just lead to a dead end and not only waste your belly but also potentially trap you against enemies in pursuit.

And on the note of enemies, try to avoid combat as much as possible. Sometimes the presence of a tough foe might be enough to reasonably persuade you to choose a different path. Sometimes it might be wise to rest with B+A while you want for a strong pokemon to pass by before you start advancing forward again.

On Floor 2, I was able to obtain a new recruit!

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

New Team Recover Member:

Spear (Nidoran M); Lv. 12

Item: None

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Double Kick, Focus Energy, Leer, Peck

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

In addition, on Floor 4, I found a Power Band which I gave to Allia, and moved Allia's Special Band down to Nature.

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

Mt. Thunder [5F]

   

5F introduces us to some more pokemon that are surprisingly tough and yet more status conditions we're being threatened with! Beedrill and Electabuzz can't be recruited, and Stantler requries the Energetic Forest, which you can only have at this point in the game if you started with Pikachu.

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

Mt. Thunder [6F]

   

With the sixth floor, Pidgeotto is replaced with Ampharos. Again, Amphararos cannot be recruited.

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

Mt. Thunder [7F]

    

Floor seven adds Gligar into the mix! Gligar is surprisingly pleasant, though he does come with a risk of poison. Then again, perhaps I'm a bit bias having two teams with Water-type leaders in a dungeon themed around Electric pokemon. Gligar can be recruited with Mt. Deepgreen.

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

Mt. Thunder [8F]

     

Floor 8 brings the total of Electric types up to three by introducing Manectric into the chat. Surprising no one, Manectric cannot be recruited.

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

Mt. Thunder [9F]

    

The ninth floor drops Beedrill and Electabuzz, but adds Growlithe who can be recruited with the Scorched Plains. If you started with Cyndaquil or Torchic, you'll have Scorched Plains for free. Of course, Growlithe here means we can add Burn to the list of status conditions we're at risk of.

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

Mt Thunder [10F]

   

Finally, on the 10th floor, Stantler no longer appears, so we just have to deal with the other four.

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

 

And on Floor 11, we'll reach Mt. Thunder's Mid Point. This is a safe haven you'll be happy to know will be a recurring mechanic throughout the rest of the game. At these midpoints, your entire party will be fully healed, PP and all, and you can create a permanent save at the Kangaskhan statue in the center of the room. Because of this, you really don't have to stress too terribly much about how much PP you're using in the beginning of the dungeon. It's only the latter portion where you'll need to be sure you're conserving PP for the boss.

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

Mt. Thunder Peak [1F - 2F]

As you reach the peak of Mt. Thunder, the music changes to a more foreboding mix of the song in which the bell tolls for thee. It really makes you feel like you need to prepare for the looming menace who will follow soon.

    

Though the second part of the dungeon has a different name, the pokemon you find are the same.

              

The same can't be said for the items, though this list of items is incredibly cheap compared to what was on the first 10 floors. You can only find Poke, Brown, Clear, Grass, Gray, Orange, Pink, Red, Silver, Sky, White, and Yellow gummis, Oran Berries, Blast Seeds, and Max Elixirs.

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

 

When we arrive at the Summit, we find that Team A.C.T. hasn't seemed to arrive yet. Nature stands at the ready to call Zapdos out.

 

But when Zapdos finally arrives, Nature's nerves are quite shaken. Zapdos certainly has an intimidating aura about it.

 

Vs. Zapdos

Nature takes a moment to regain her composure before standing up to face Zapdos head on... unfortunately putting herself in a rather vulnerable position for the start of our boss fight.

 

I haven't gone into too much detail about it yet, but if you haven't gotten used to utilizing Tactics, you're definitely going to want to play with them here. Zapdos' attacks are incredibly powerful, especially its Thundershock! You're going to want to be tactful about who approaches, who retreats, and who hides behind who. You'll also want to be mindful of everyone's positions. It can be quite hectic with everyone acting on their own, but it doesn't do you much good in a boss fight like this to have everyone bunched up around you.

You'll want to start by having everyone surround Zapdos and hopefully weaken Zapdos a bit with some status moves, whether that be applying status conditions, reducing his stats, or buffing your own. Keep in mind, Thundershock is Zapdos' most dangerous move, so you're probably better off not actually reducing its attack so that it's more likely to go for its weaker physical attacks. 

Naturally, being a Water-type, I had Allia spend most of the time standing back and pitching Gravelrocks toward Zapdos. That is, until Charisma was able to use Mimic to copy Zapdos' Thundershock and trigger a lucky paralysis! From there, we were all able to gang up on it with our strongest attacks for the win!

 

That was certainly an incredibly terrifying battle. I did lose Charisma at one point, but thankfully had a Reviver Seed to keep him around. Zapdos' Thundershock was enough to take out just about any of us in combination with even the slightest amount of damage from any other source. You can probably imagine that getting paralyzed by this thing is an especially terrifying experience! But, with some tactical retreats and a little bit of luck, he can be overcome!

  

Shortly after defeating Zapdos, Team A.C.T. arrives on the scene! Zapdos seems to charge up for another round, but Charizard steps in to take over. At which point, Zapdos decides there's no point in continuing the fight.

 

Zapdos promises he'll return to fight us at his full strength next time but, for now, he'll return Shiftry.

  

Charizard commends your skills, to which Alakazam points out just how suspicious my strength is for a normal Totodile. He suggests that you aren't a pokemon at all, at which point your partner breaks the news for you.

 

Naturally, Charizard and Tyranitar are both incredibly shocked by this news, but Alakazam, having sensed it before, is of course unphazed.

   

After asking Alakazam if he knows anything about how I transformed into a pokemon, Alakazam confesses that he has no idea, but suggests we meet with a pokemon named Xatu at the Hill of the Ancients. Xatu's ability to see across time should certainly be able to help us! So, with our next destination set, it's time to make preparations for our next trip!

  

At this point Charizard points out that it's clear Alakazam is withholding information from us, to which Alakazam responds by suggesting there may be something incredibly unfortunate about our past. For our sake, he would rather keep his suspicions secret until he can investigate further into the matter.

Just what does Alakazam know? We can't be too sure just yet, but it's certainly not very heart-warming.

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

  

Now let's check in with the Red Rescue Team: Team Promise! To my surprise, I found this dungeon to be significantly harder with Team Promise than with Team Recover. Not only was I lower level, but I found a lot more of my attacks to be missing, resulting in far more frequent damage and status conditions.

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

New Team Promise Member:

Darts (Gligar); Lv. 12

Item: None

Ability: Sand Veil, Hyper Cutter | Moves: Sand-Attack, Poison-Sting

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

Near the end, I was able to recruit a new member in the form of Gligar!

   

As for the battle against Zapdos, the general strategy was still the same, but thanks to Darts' Poison Sting and Sonar's SuperSonic and Thunder Wave, it was a lot easier to get some damage in on Zapdos. Even though I was still missing quite frequently, Sonar proved himself to be a tremendously useful asset to taking out tough bosses.

[Aura]

After defeating Zapdos, on starting the game again, you'll find a portrait of the legendary bird at the bottom of your save file when you next start up the game. Defeating Zapdos is a pretty big milestone in the game, but it's most certainly not the last challenging boss fight we'll be facing throughout this game. As you can probably imagine, it's just one of many boss fights against legendary pokemon.

When we wake up, our partner meets with us at the door. They've put in the research to find the location of the Hill of the Ancients, which they found to be at a place called the Great Canyon.

  

Unfortunately, things are a little bittersweet for our protagonist here. Let's not forget our own position. We were kind of roped into this whole rescue team business, but we can't forget that we had a life as a human before this point. We have so much here that really doesn't feel earned. We just turned up one day, no idea what we were like as a human, but then we met this total stranger who turned out to be a great friend, willing to put in so much effort to fight for us when we really never belonged in the first place. It seems odd to be so bittersweet about it, all things considered, but when you consider the fact that finding out the truth to our past might mean going back to the way things seem before, about possibly suddenly having to leave one day... 

From the way Alakazam stopped to look at us, coupled with the fact that all of these disasters started showing up, and then we suddenly turn up? A human transformed into a pokemon? And we don't remember anything about our life before? Could that correlation really be a coincidence? The Earthquakes? The Fissures? The magnetic pulses? The stilled winds? The great tension suffered by Zapdos and Skarmory? When you consider that we might be related to all of these disasters, you have to imagine just how harsh that reality might be to accept.

...Do you even want to find out the truth at that point? This friendly pokemon has been by your side, doing so much for you, and is so happy to do so.

 

Your partner's response is well-intended, but it really only makes the situation more of a burden when you consider it. For all you know, you could be the cause of everything that's wrong in this world, and if that truth comes to light, it could completely destroy this pokemon's life if he continues to stand by you... And without you, they're pretty directly showing they won't be happy by having lost you...

If you thought this game was just going to be a silly, light-hearted adventure about a couple of pals beating up bad guys and rescuing people in need, you're in for a lot of unexpected emotional moments. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series is quite well known for its more emotional aspect.

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

Before we move on with the story, I want to set up some things. We struggled quite a bit with Mt. Thunder, and I think we're in a period of calm, so I think this is a good time to lay back a bit and do some smaller missions rather than setting out for the Hill of the Ancients so soon. We've got a tough dilemma ahead of ourselves, so let's focus on what we have right now.

 

Now that we've grown a fair bit and had to forget some moves, you may notice a new menu option added next time you go to link moves at Gulpin's Link Shop, "Remember". Yes indeed, this shop also doubles as a move reminder! With a cheap upfront cost, you can freely remember any moves your pokemon may have forgotten, along with freely linking and delinking the moves you currently know as you please. At some point, Nature apparently failed to learn the move Sleep Powder. I'm not sure when this happened, perhaps I was mashing through textboxes and accidentally chose not to learn it. Either way, this is a great learning opportunity, isn't it?

 

I wound up deleting Nature's Growl for Sleep Powder. In addition, I decided to link together the moves Leech Seed and Poison Powder. It's nice to be able to set both of these moves to go off at the same time since they can build up damage. In addition, all status effects can be layered in this game, so Sleep Powder can be incredibly useful in combination with these moves as well! But, Sleep Powder has its useful ness in a different range, so I opted not to link it with the rest.

As for Allia, I decided to link together Leer + Scratch + Rage. This is an incredibly useful combination of moves. Leer can reduce the target's defense consequently increasing the damage from Scratch, and then Rage can penalize them for attempting to counterattack by boosting my attack if they land a hit. In addition, if I find myself surrounded, it can help me deal a wider sweep of damage.

After this visit, I went to do some quick Rescue Missions and Team Recover finally reached Bronze Rank!

 

Along with our new rank comes a new type of mission that arrived specifically for us in the mail: An escort mission. These are arguably the most challenging missions in the game, but also offer the greatest rewards.

 

On an escort mission, your client will enter the dungeon with you. They can join even if you already have four party members. Just be mindful that the larger your party, the more difficult it is to precisely control everyone's position which you'll quickly find to be incredibly important when taking on these missions. For that reason, I usually like to leave any additional team members at the camp and enter the mission with just our main protagonists.

One of the first things you'll notice about our client is that... they're level 1. In this case, we're lucky enough that it's an Ampharos, so it has some decent bulk to it. But it's still incredibly low level. It won't be dealing any damage if it gets in a fight and, more often than not, it's a single hit away from being KO'd anyway. And if your escort gets KO'd, it's an instant game over, just like a normal party member. In other words, you're going to need to babysit this guy. And if you thought for a minute you could simply have your escort stay in a safe place with your partner standing guard over him using tactics while you go off searching out the stairs, you've got another thing coming. You can't access this guest's tactics or moves menus. Meaning not only can you not tell it to get away or to avoid combat, but they might also pick fights you have to deal with, too! I've had escorts wake up sleeping pokemon with Growl while I was trying to slip by peacefully, causing the pokemon to attack and nearly end my whole career! Things get especially scary when you factor in moves like Quick Attack that can hit from a range of two or more tiles! That can be detrimental if either your escort or an enemy pokemon has a move like that. And attack range is only going to get more absurd as we go on....

Your goal with the escort mission is to escort your client to whoever they wanted to meet with. In this case, the Sudowoodo on the eighth floor!

Along the way, you might notice, I also recruited a new team member! There were also quite a few others I managed to recruit.

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New Team Promise Members

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Scurry (Sentret); Lv. 6

Item: None

Ability: Run Away, Keen Eye | Moves: Scratch, Defense Curl

Run Away is actually more of a hindrance than a beneficial ability in this game. If a pokemon has Run Away and its HP drops below half, it'll immediately become scared and retreat, regardless of what its tactics are set to. In some niche situations, it might help automatically keep your pokemon from being KO'd in a bad position, but more often than not, I think you'll find it just causes your low-HP teammate to further endanger themselves by separating from the pack while you're still dealing with the threat that pressured them in the first place.

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

Ribbon (Nidoran F); Lv. 4

Item: None

Ability: Poison Point | Moves: Growl, Scratch

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Signal (Ledyba); Lv. 7

Item: None

Ability: Swarm, Early Bird | Moves: Tackle

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Pluck (Spearow); Lv. 4

Item: None

Ability: Keen Eye | Moves: Peck, Growl

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

Roast (Houndour); Lv. 11

Item: None

Ability: Early Bird, Flash Fire | Moves: Leer, Ember, Howl

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

Each of these pokemon were recruited across many expeditions. Why was I doing so many expeditions? Was I grinding out for the next rank? Well, not really. That is, not intentionally, anyway.

The truth is, I have a bit of a gripe with the way this mailbox system works. You see, as your partner explains in the beginning of the game, you can indeed receive mission requests in your team base's mailbox. There are only four slots here, so you'll need to clear your mailbox pretty regularly. The problem, of course, is that clearing missions means a new day, and a new day means new mail, and new mail means, you guessed it, more missions. As a result, this becomes a seemingly endless cycle of back to back missions, often in dungeons you just left from.

"Why is this a problem?" You might ask, "Isn't having unlimited missions available to you at any point and time good??"

To which I say, "yes and no." Yes, it's good to have an unlimited supply of missions available to you so that youc an choose to do them whenever you like, but, we already have a bulletin board at the Pelipper Post Office for that very purpose! And it has more slots so it's much more likely you'll find missions with better rewards! If they just wanted more missions available to you at a time, why didn't they just make the bulletin board have more room?

I wouldn't take so much issue with this odd game design choice if it wasn't for the fact that it's also odd in-universe. That's not to say that it's odd for people to deliver rescue requests specifically to our team, especially as word spreads about our work. But what about the implications of what the game seems to expect you to do: ...ignoring those requests? 

On the bulletin board, ignoring a rescue request doesn't have any in-universe consequence. If you don't want to do it, you can leave the request there for some other rescue team who needs the rewards more. But if you ignore missions from your mailbox, isn't that kind of implying that those pokemon never get the rescue they need? All in all, it feels like there's an in-universe social obligation to help the people who send rescue requests to your team. But with the massive abundance of them and no way to delegate tasks to those weaker team members of yours, doing every mission that shows up in your mailbox is incredibly exhausting and potentially frustrating if you happen to get a bad escort mission, or a item delivery mission that asks for something you don't actually have or are willing to give up. And yet, I just feel bad not completing the mailbox missions as they come.

I think the mailbox really should've remained nothing more than a PKMN News machine and a plot device to receive narrative-focused rescue requests, like in the beginning of the game. I just don't like the way the mailbox is handled.

But, in the end, Team Promise did reach the Silver Rank! We're also a bit stronger, a bit larger, and, thanks to the rewards from the many missions, I was able to save up a hefty sum of money. One escort mission even rewarded me with a TM for Dig which is actually significantly more useful here than in the main series.

Dig does work very similarly to the main series. You dig underground for a turn and then pop up the next turn. The big difference here is just how much more significant "a turn" is in this game. This can often be seen as a better alternative to throwing a gravelrock at a pokemon two tiles away. Simply use Dig while they're approaching and they'll almost always draw into range. The only downside to dig is that it can't be linked with other moves, likely due to its two-turn nature. Now, I'm sure Dig still leaves you vulnerable to Earthquake, so it isn't flawless, but it can definitely make a difference!

I also bought the TM for Facade from the Kecleon Shop. Both of these TMs I gave to Allia. Dig replaced Leer, and Facade replaced Scratch. Unfortunately, Facade only works with poison and burn, but it's still overall better than Scratch! It just doesn't have as much PP, unfortunately. Of course, I made sure to link up Facade and Rage once again!

Of course, I wouldn't be spending any money on TMs if I didn't purchase all the remaining Friend Areas first!

Flyaway Forest is a place where Forest-dwelling flying type pokemon like Hoothoot and Murkrow can call home.

The Decrepit Lab is home mainly to Psychic-types and pokemon related to science like Ditto and Porygon.

Mt. Discipline is a camp for fighting-type pokemon, as can be easily deduced just by looking at it.

Transform Forest is a peculiar area. The rock in the center is actually really pretty as it changes colors while you're exploring. Transform Forest is home only to Eevee and its many evolutions. I say this area is peculiar because... you can't actually recruit Eevee until the post game unless it was your starter. In which case, you would have this area for free from the start of the game. It perplexes me that this area is available so early in the game, and for so cheap, when you can't make use out of it until so much later. It's not like no other starter pokemon offers a postgame-only friend area for you! 

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

Speaking of evolution, you may have noticed some peculiar oddities about some of the pokemon in my party.

By this point in the game, both Allia and Nature should be high enough level to be evolving, but... neither of them show any signs of evolution at all. You might also recall that every evolved pokemon up until now has either been unrecruitable, or had a negative recruitment rate rendering them effectively so. There's a reason for that: Evolution... is a bit more complicated in this game. There's an extra step you'll need to take in order to evolve the pokemon on your party, but it's not possible to do until the postgame, so for this main story, you'll just have to ride it out with your puny starters!

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

Well, with all that, I think we're good for the day. We've climbed all the way to Silver Rank, so I suppose now is as good of a time as any to just give up on the endless task of emptying my mailbox. Next time, we'll actually try advancing the plot!