This post was last modified: Jul 18, 2019 at 6:32 AM by Aidan.

So I've decided now is the time to get into Pokémon and I've been fucking around with fan games.
I played some other one called Zeta but it was kind of half-assed and falling apart in places even though it was fun.
Anyway, now I'm playing this one called Reborn. I'll be dumping occasional updates about it in this thread.

This game releases episodically, but each release is just a longer version of the previous. Episode 18 completes the main quest, but leaves much of the post-game unfinished.


There are six trainer models. I picked the cutest. This is a few hours into the game (not 30, I left the game open while I was doing other shit).
Quick story recap, Reborn City is the biggest shithole ever, but they want Pokémon trainers to come revitalize the economy. This chick shows up but I don't think they had any houses for sale so she spends 24 hours a day kicking ass and taking names. I'm on a boss battle right now.


Here's the team of ass-kickers i brought in. This game is beyond fucking hard for a Pokémon game, so I had to make this team specifically for the boss after dying about a dozen times. I also spelled Cheshire wrong but fuck off


This is a poison gym basically so lo and behold his Pokémon are poison types. It's absolutely imperative that I send Chesire out first here. I tried about six or seven others before settling on putting him in front, and on that attempt I won.
The corrosive mist is part of a system unique to this game called terrain effects. Normally terrain effects are lame because they do something supremely boring like give you +20% evasion or something, but the effects in this game are elaborate as fuck. They tried to consider what would physically happen in that terrain, from certain attack types being enhanced down to individual moves having bonus effects. I lost my shit when I found out using Cut in a forest drops a tree on the enemy for extra damage.


Chesire is fighting a Skrelp, which is such an ugly piece of shit that I genuinely thought it was a fan design. It's a real Pokémon. Skrelp is poison and water type which fucked me over hard when I opened with my fire-type Sassy. This Skrelp has a Focus Sash or Band or some shit which means it can't be one-hit KOed. To get around that, Chesire uses Fake Out to do a tiny bit of damage while causing Skrelp to miss a turn. Then Chesire killed him next turn.


Next up is this fuck, Croagunk. Croagunk looks like he downed an entire bag of edibles. He's also poison and fighting type, and both of those are weak to psychic. I can understand how martial arts would be inferior to psychics but why poison? You can't read poison's mind.
Anyway, Chesire blasts the fuck out of him with Psybeam and sends him to the great dispensary in the sky.


This Skuntank is kind of a bitch. Poison and dark typing means it's only weak to ground moves, and I do not have a single one of those on anyone I've caught so far. He also loves to spam Flamethrower, for some reason. I guess you're meant to assume he's farting and then lighting the fart on fire like Wario or some shit. Anyway Sassy is resistant to fire so he doesn't have to worry about that.
Speaking of, Sassy gets to exploit part of the terrain effect here. In addition to powering up poison and water moves, and causing the poison status every turn, the corrosive mist can actually be ignited by fire attacks. They do 50% extra damage in this terrain. Sassy spams her best fire attack every turn and beats the Skuntank. Unfortunately the game got a lucky crit on him and then he died from poison the next turn. Fuck you, I didn't want the XP anyway.


In comes Mareanie, which is an absolutely shit name, and one of my favorite team members Ray the Flying Squirrel. Ray's ability Static lets her paralyze fuckers on contact. Mareanie is water type so Ray's electric moves thoroughly demolish her. I guess I could've used Ray to take out the Skrelp too, but Ray doesn't have enough damage output to reliably kill two fuckers while poisoned.


This Nidorina kind of sucks compared to the other shitkickers on the team. It has the same typing as Croagunk so it also takes quadruple damage from Psybeam. How a quadraped with no fingers or toes learns martial arts I have no clue.


This Crobat is a massive bitch and is basically the final boss of this encounter. He doesn't always come out last though, so I was lucky to have a perfect climax here. There's not even anything special about him, he just has assloads of defense and the terrain boosts his damage like crazy. About half of my team dies in one hit to this fuck, and the ones that don't end up dead aren't strong enough to actually hurt him. I specifically picked McGruff here, with the move Flame Burst, for this fight. Certain moves can actually destroy terrain on activation, either switching to a different one or prompting a special effect.


Flame Burst fucking detonates all the mist in the room and kills both combatants. If the fight went on another turn, the next Pokémon would've been hurt by the flames from the explosion. Poor McGruff sacrificed herself so the rest of the team could get that W.


That's it for this Trainer Log. I'll shit out another one when this game gets really hard again, so probably in five minutes.

This post was last modified: Jul 18, 2019 at 6:19 AM by Draku.

That sounds really cool actually, terrains in the game are actually pretty exploitable by this point now that they've built on them a lot but having it be that in-depth and have a lot of unique move interactions is rad.

Also actually hard Pokemon fangames are interesting since the main games are usually fairly limited on that front other than a choice few moments in Platinum and B/W1. I hope it's legitimately hard and not just bullshit, it seems like it's more on the legit side judging by this and the levels and all.

Breakdowns of Pogey battles are fun to read too, good post.

I did grind a little but it ended up being due to my own blinding stupidity rather than the game being unfair.
I knew I had caught an Espurr but it wasn't in any of my boxes so I figured I just hallucinated it. Then I went in with a bunch of other fucks and they were completely useless. Eventually I got bored of losing and went to check the daycare, where I found Chesire was inside and had gained twenty-five levels.

Cool

If you're looking for a different Pokemon fangame I recommend Touhou Puppet Dance Performance

Cool

If you're looking for a different Pokemon fangame I recommend Touhou Puppet Dance Performance

Actually a really good game tho

Okay SO there was a Bug gym before this but it was really fucking obnoxious and it ended with ten turns of me and the leader spamming healing items on our last Pokeys so I didn't bother recording it.
This next one was actually fun, though it was hard as dick (mine).


This battle is against Entity SHADE who is a ghost man or some shit. You can learn about his lore in-game but it's hard to take an edgy ghost story seriously in a game about magic cockfighting rodents. The relevant thing is that he likes ghosts and he lives in an abandoned factory, which adds short-circuit terrain to the battlefield. This terrain does a bunch of complicated shit like randomly amplifying or weakening electric moves, adding electric damage to moves like Gyro Ball and Surf, and making moves named Shadow/Dark/Night whatever do bonus damage.


Here's our team of shit-kickers. Ray is back from last time, and Desset has been around for a while though I couldn't use him in the Poison gym or he'd get annihilated in an instant. The rest are mostly new, and I trained up three dark types specifically for this fight. Shadow has seen a few fights and the other two fucks ate about 40 Rare Candies right before this battle. I'm a little worried about their general usefulness but at least they're super effective against ghosts.


Up first is a 30 year old married VCR repairman. Corey the Gengar is known for toxic forum posting, so I lead with a ground type for resistance. Half of Shade's team knows Thunderbolt too because he's a cheating fuck abusing the terrain mechanics, and Rocky is immune to that. He uses Shadow Ball here, which gets a boost because it's dark, I guess. Shadows should probably be weaker in the dark but oh well


Rocky has dick all special defense so she would normally die in one hit. I planned for that in advance and gave her a Focus Sash, letting her survive instant kills. Corey gets grounded here and is finally perma'd.


Banette is a plain Ghost type that just uses strong ass moves, so I bring in Shadow and hope to damage race her to death. Dazzling Gleam is "blinding" in this terrain, so it does an extra 1.5x damage on top of the double damage it does to a dark type. Fuck.


But instead of doing it again, or doing basically any regular move, Banette decides to use a move that Shadow resists. I thought gym leaders were supposed to have good AI? The only use of this move is to disable hold items, and Shadow wasn't holding anything. One more Bite and it's gg Banette


Up next is Rotom. I wasn't sure who to send out, since he's so beefy and capable of such high damage that it's basically a suicide mission. A lot of Shade's Pokeys are built for high defense and speed, since the terrain gives them a fat damage buff anyway. Here Rotom uses Discharge, which actually powers on the machinery to create a factory field. Factories mainly boost electric and steel moves, along with other dumb shit like making Technician boost 80 power moves. Our team is actually capable of abusing the terrain switch too: Rocky's Earthquake will shut down the machinery and Nuzlocke's Nature Power will turn it back on.


Using Discharge in the factory reverts us to short-circuit. Desset's strategy here was to lower Rotom's special defence with Fake Tears and then spam Draining Kiss to heal tank the damage. He's holding a Big Root to get more healing. By some fucking miracle he was paralyzed for four turns and never actually flinched. The prick gym leader has a Leftovers on Rotom AND used a hyper potion but it was not enough. Desset does not tolerate motherfuckers healing in his presence.


Next on the chopping block is Dhelmise, which is a grass/ghost type despite clearly being a big steel anchor. The main problem here is that its faster than most of my team, so I send out my fast as fuck dog, DOG. Despite being completely untrained, DOG was genetically gifted with near perfect stats all around. I could've used Fire Fang here, but I went with Beat Up because it's so fucking cool. All healthy Mons in your party come in for a dark type attack. Desset was still paralyzed so he sat out, but that's still 5 super effective hits on one turn. It wasn't quite enough to kill with only five hits, but DOG manages to barely survive the next hit and smack the grass anchor to death next turn.


Doublade here is as offensively focused as you'd expect of two living swords. Its seed activates on indoor terrain, and there's counterparts for the other terrains. In addition to the special defense boost, the seed auto-casts Magnet Rise to float Doublade over ground attacks. Technically that puts Rocky at a disadvantage, but she would've been split in half by Brick Break anyway.


To abuse this fuck's ridiculous attack stat, Nuzlocke uses Foul Play, which is the RPG equivalent of smacking someone with their own arm and yelling "stop hitting yourself!" It would've done a fuckload anyway, but I get a miracle crit and take this dude out in one. Shiny Nuzlocke was blessed at birth for this very moment. (this game gives shinies ~80 times more often than regular pokemon)


Mimikyu is scary as fuck. Being part fairy means I can't abuse dark moves, and her strategy is to spam attack buffs until she does like triple damage to everything and one shots my whole team. She is also, of course, fast with high defense, and her Disguise means she ignores damage from the first hit. Nice touch picking the shiny color, though.


It doesn't ignore effects though! Ray Nuzzles her, breaking the disguise and causing paralysis. The plan here was to use Encore so Mimikyu is forced to cast buffs over and over instead of hitting me. Unfortunately I spilled my spaghetti hard and kept using Encore instead of hitting her. Not really sure what the fuck I was thinking.


Ray fucken dies due to my crippling incompetence so I bring out DOG again. With another KOed party member, Beat Up only does four hits, which amount to like 10% damage because fuck me. However, a last second miracle happens and the terrain cuts Mimikyu's Thunderbolt damage in half, letting DOG Beat her Up again for the victory.


And that's that! Ghost man helpfully turns on the lights and hands over a badge. This was a hard battle, but I had to beat it twice for the recording, so the tactics in play must've been sound. I'll be back next time there's a battle I don't waste 5 lemonades on (fuck the bug gym).

the amount of terrain stuff this game plays with is nuts going off of this, swapping them with non-terrain specific moves and whatnot. pretty cool if hard to initially know about. i like the terrain specific hold items too, seems like it would enable interesting strategies

i see that this game has just as much of "randomly throw the win" AI as normal pokemon does!

Gonna have to try this out - it's a magical thing that we can reuse good Pokemon engines to pretend the series never got bad

Gonna have to try this out - it's a magical thing that we can reuse good Pokemon engines to pretend the series never got bad

yeah i don't intend on playing any more official pogey games but there are lots of fan made ones that are extremely high quality. this game has every existing pokemon with all their moves fully implemented, and it's actually hard enough to make the player think

the amount of terrain stuff this game plays with is nuts going off of this, swapping them with non-terrain specific moves and whatnot. pretty cool if hard to initially know about. i like the terrain specific hold items too, seems like it would enable interesting strategies

i see that this game has just as much of "randomly throw the win" AI as normal pokemon does!

the terrain stuff is my favorite mechanic. it actually fixes a lot of the problems i have with regular pokemon because it changes the flow of battle as you progress through the story. instead of being bored as fuck wandering through a cave, you're trying to figure out how to break down the cave walls to do bonus damage and shit.
there are items that explain what each field does so you're not completely lost. usually you can find them in the area with that effect, but the game withholds some when it wants to surprise you


Here's the Field Readout for ashen beaches, the terrain in our next gym battle. Lines with an asterisk can be selected to read more detailed information. I'm not going to transcribe all this shit when you can easily Google it, but this gives a decent look at what the terrains do.


The entire surrounding area is considered ashen beach, but the effects mostly pertain to this martial arts dojo. Martial artists train body and mind, so fighting and psychic types get a boost.


Leader KIKI specializes in fighting types. This battle is a lot simpler than the last ones. Her team is built for all-out offense, and the best strategy is to hit fast and hit hard. I don't know why there's part of a Pokeball in her cut-in; it doesn't appear in her other sprites.


Our team is a mix of old and new. The game specifically tells you to use psychic types, so I brought along a big brain goth gf. Sassy has digivolved since we last saw him, so he'll provide additional mind-fucking if necessary.


First up is Desset, who just uses HP drain moves every turn as usual. You might remember strength appearing on the field effects read-out: the "pure focus" gives it an extra 50% psychic damage. Machamp punches not only with his fists, but with his mind. Desset shrugs it off and kisses him to death.


Amy Lee's psychic move also gets a boost, but regular "focus" isn't as damaging as pure focus I guess. It's still more than enough to melt Toxicroak's brain.


Gallade can be a little scary. He's part psychic so Amy Lee can't toast him as easily, and he likes to buff his attack to hit very hard. Moves that involve wind, like Ray's air slash, kick up ash that lowers accuracy. The game warns you that Kiki is prepared for this, and most of her mons will resist the effect, but not Gallade.


The game is a cheating piece of shit and Ray misses while Gallade has no problem fucking her up. Cool.


Lonely fairs a lot better and takes him down. Fell stinger is a cool move that gives +150% attack if it kills. I keep Ray in so he can abuse that on the next Pokey.


And it ends up being completely useless. Gems are dumb items that make a move do a bunch of extra damage once and then explode. I would never use one, but the CPU can sure abuse them. Lonely gets smoked without accomplishing much.


Hitmonlee loves to spam this obnoxious move. The Banette from the last gym also used it, but this time it actually knocks an item away. Without her spoon, Amy's psychics do a bit less damage. I don't know if you permanently lose the item or what but I'm pretty sure that's the only spoon available right now. Even without it, she easily mind crushes this dumb Chad.


This Lucario can fuck you up. He buffs himself like crazy and then spams Aura Sphere, a move that sucks in Smash Bros gets powered up when he's at low health. Luckily fighting types don't actually resist fighting moves, so McGruff the crime dog punches his fellow canine into a soft mush.


Telluric seeds are the outdoorsy counterparts to synthetic seeds. This gets Medicham "pumped"...


...boosting her critical hit chance. Rest well pup


Sassy comes in to clean house. It looks like he resists all of Medicham's attacks, so she resorts to a desperate stall for time.


Sassy responds by setting her on fire with his mind for the win. Overall I didn't find this battle too difficult. The game tells you which attacks to use before the battle, which is a bit weird since you're already four badges in at this point. I also had a lot of strong psychic types to abuse the terrain and type advantage.


And there's our ba-

Ah okay, if the game is good at actually explaining the terrain and whatnot to you beforehand that's good shit. Also I was going to wonder why you explained what Gems are when those are in the main games but I guess they did get super cut down after B/W.

Also yeah, that battle seems oddly simple compared to the rest so far, but there is a CLIFFHANGER

Ah okay, if the game is good at actually explaining the terrain and whatnot to you beforehand that's good shit. Also I was going to wonder why you explained what Gems are when those are in the main games but I guess they did get super cut down after B/W.

Also yeah, that battle seems oddly simple compared to the rest so far, but there is a CLIFFHANGER

just making sure they're readable even if you haven't played pokemon in a while. better to over-explain than under

Resolution of the cliff-hanger: she passes out and I don't get a badge.


Speaking of not getting badges, I didn't get a badge from the poison fuck either so now there's another poison gym. This one uses the wasteland terrain, which basically means they're standing on a poison swamp. The main gimmick is that the sludge interacts with attacks; moves named "mud" deal additional poison damage, and entry hazard moves like stealth rock fall into the sludge and get shot back up with a more powerful effect.


Wasteland Punk AYA just got the job today and she is not happy about it.


Here's our squad of fucksmashers. Snow Miser here is just around because he looks cool. Basically everyone is holding an item that boosts an element by 20%.
I mentioned last time that the game uses the "high-level Pokeys ignore you until you get a new badge" thing from the older Pokemon games. Ostensibly that was done to force you to make your own team and progress through the story, instead of either grinding or getting your buddy to trade you a level 99 Alakazam to fuck the game up. But since we didn't get a badge last time, my level cap is still 45, and some of the team already passed it last gym. I went and bought about four common candies for this gym leader. Levelling down in a video game feels deeply wrong, like seeing a baby driving a car.


AYA insists on a double battle which fucking sucks because I can't switch out as easily and the enemies always spam moves that hit everyone. Amy Lee and Sassy come out first to abuse psychic weaknesses yet again. One has a twisted spoon and the other has odd incense, two items that are 100% functionally identical. Damage variance decides to dick Sassy over; previous attempts had him one-shotting the Nidoqueen. She responds by fucking Sassy up with some butt stomp attack or something, idk double battles are hard to narrate


Sassy gets benched and Rocky comes in to fuck shit up. The purply SNES water texture is a move called Sludge Wave. In this terrain, the sludge on the ground gets swept up for bonus damage. Aya has this move on half her team and loves to spam this shit. The upshot is it deals friendly fire damage and takes out Nidoqueen for us.


Salazzle dies to one psychic attack so I don't even bother showing him. In response, Drapion punches Amy Lee in the head and she goes down. I swear every fucking gym leader has someone with Knock Out and it's getting pretty fuckin old. I did find out you get the item back though; the game isn't complete bullshit.
Earthquake prompts this wibbly-wobbly message. Shrek's swamp is so dank and slimy that it suppresses the earthquake to a quarter of its damage. Drapion took a super effective hit there and it did like 10%. Fuck.


Venusaur uses nature power, which becomes gunk shot in this terrain, with a power boost and the ability to inflict a status ailment. It's completely random, and I've had it inflict freeze before. What the fuck is in this swamp that can freeze or electrocute people on contact


I brought Lonely along for the sole purpose of doing karate on Drapion, but he accomplished fuck all and died ignobly. Rocky gets a lucky roll on rock blast though!


At this point I want to be super cautious, partially because we're not doing very well and partially because I had to rerecord this like four times. Ray comes in and immediately volt switches out, so I can get a bit of safe damage in.


Vine whip becomes this utterly gut-busting meme reference!AHAHAHAHAHA gET IT? BVIne? I know what that is
RIP ROCKY


He's at low health from before but I bring Sassy in so I never have to see that vine whip text again


Dragagle is AYA's last Pokey and she can be pretty scary. This takes Sassy out and leaves us at a final two-on-one.


But by sheer dumb luck I had Snow Miser out and he was using ice ball on the Venusaur last turn. Ice ball gets stronger every time it's used, and this shitlord is already weak to ice so it fucking shatters him into space dust.


Fuck you Wasteland Punk AYA, I had to do it four times.


In addition to ruining this woman's career on her first day, we actually get a badge for once and the plot can continue.

I was going to say that the fact that you don't get badges for everything means that there's more unique content and that's really cool, but then you mentioned the level limit thing being stupid in this which makes it sound ridiculous instead. The fact that they included a level-down item means they knew it was an issue too. What the fuck.

>Freezing Gunk Shot

That sounds terrifying, jesus.

>At least I won't have to deal with this again.

She was referring to le vine meme, clearly.

I was going to say that the fact that you don't get badges for everything means that there's more unique content and that's really cool, but then you mentioned the level limit thing being stupid in this which makes it sound ridiculous instead. The fact that they included a level-down item means they knew it was an issue too. What the fuck.

there's still an assload of content. there's actually a gym leader for each type, not counting the times you get cucked out of a badge. from what i've gathered, the game is based off a forum RP and they included all the major characters as opponents.

i'm kinda conflicted on the soft level cap. pokemon players love to grind past any problem and this prevents that, but the margin for error is way too thin. i can't imagine any first time player managing to keep their whole team under the level cap.
it was extra shit on that poison gym too because it's in the middle of fucking nowhere and i had to backtrack through the whole area to buy the level-down candies. i ended up getting like 12 so i wouldn't have to worry for a while


Today we battle Beauty Queen SERRA, the ice gym leader. She's super hot so she built her entire gym out of mirrors. Mirror terrain is based around accuracy and evasion: boosting those stats increases your crit rate, and you can end up shattering a mirror in your face if you miss an attack.

Did she dye her hair the same color as her floor, or design her floor the same color as her hair?


This crew is probably going to be the core team from now on, because I don't want to fuck around with EVs any more than I have. We swapped out Rocky for McGruff so I could do more fire damage.


"Who shalt this fractured power wield?"
They tried to be artsy by splitting the text into two boxes. This Glaceon isn't too tough, but she shows off a lot of the gimmicks that SERRA's other Pokeys explot to much greater effect.


Aurora Veil works on mirror terrain, lasts eight turns and boosts evasion when you use it. That's what her health looks like after one flamethrower. I probably could've one shot her with a little luck.


Sassy finished the Glaceon off with flame charge, which is less powerful but gives him a nice speed boost. This message confused the shit out of me the first time I saw it.


But of course it's Alolan Ninetales! She's the first big problem on Serra's team: she boosts her special attack and then spams Dazzling Gleam, which can't miss in this terrain and reflects off the mirrors for big bonus damage. It's really lucky she came out second so Sassy could take her down quickly. On previous attempts she's taken out more than half the team.


Speaking of luck, Sassy gets a nice crit here and downs Ninetales in two turns. It usually takes him three, and that's with a super effective move on one of my strongest Pokeys.


Jinx is much less of a problem. Usually she comes out before Ninetails, but I guess the AI wanted to try taking Sassy down right away. This is another terrain effect: certain projectiles can bounce off the mirrors when they miss, rolling their hit chance again. Flamethrower is one of those moves for some reason! Jinx goes down in one shot.


Up next is an Alolan Sandslash, one of Snow Miser's cousins. I would've liked them to one on one here, but SERRA's Sandslash knows brick break and Snow Miser has a quadruple weakness to fighting so fuck that. She's good in the mirror match, hahahahahahaha


Near the end, SERRA starts exploiting the terrain even harder. Froslass gets an evasion boost from her Snow Cloak ability and one from her hold item, so she's basically a dodge tank at this point.


Sassy does not miss a single time and kills her in two shots. Unfortunately, the hail takes out his last bit of health right after Froslass goes down. He had a hilariously lucky run though, never missing once and critical hitting one of the bigger problems in the fight.


I bring in McGruff to keep exploiting the easy fire weakness, but her last mon is actually neutral to fire. Beauty Queen SERRA comes in at the last mon to remind you that yes, her Pokémon are ice type. She was apparently lounging on the floor for the entire fight, lazy prick.


The synthetic speed boosts evasion two stages, so Aurorus is as much of a dodge tank as Froslass was. So not at all in practice, but a lot in theory.


Aurorus isn't weak to fire, but she is doubly weak to being punched a million times by a black belt (-wearing) crime-fighting dog.


And that's that! Evasion is a really shitty thing to base a boss fight around, and this whole run-through is pretty much the perfect representation of that. The previous attempt was a lot more interesting, but I missed a few key hits in a row and lost half my team. This attempt, I didn't miss once and only lost a Pokey due to fucking hail damage. There were a few other interesting plays to be made: Alolan Sandslash also gets an evade boost in this terrain and can do a lot of damage with metal claw, and Lonely had a lax incense and rock smash to do basically the same shit. Rocky could've also used earthquake to break the mirrors and save us from a lot of bullshit. But in the end, luck triumphed over skill and strategy.


Here's our trainer card to show our progress. I play the game in turbo mode so the timer is way off, but you can see our current badges, as well as the fuckload of blank spaces we still need to fill.

Yeah, a badge for every type AND having multiple gym fights per type sounds insane. That's tons of content, much more than GF would ever put into a game nowadays. I like that.

> i'm kinda conflicted on the soft level cap. pokemon players love to grind past any problem and this prevents that, but the margin for error is way too thin. i can't imagine any first time player managing to keep their whole team under the level cap.

I have never ever grinded in a Pokemon game and this one seems like you'd be doing it less to boost levels and more to make up new teams for specific gyms since they're rougher, but being aware enough that the badge shit is a problem that you include an item to soft-circumvent the issue is ridiculous. The pacing on raising the cap should be better paced or the game should just soft-reduce Pokemon levels instead of have an obedience mechanic, similar to forced level 50 fights in the cartridge games.

>Evasion-based gym battle

Oh fuck that nonsense, the gym battles in the real games based on gimmicks like that are by far the worst ones not just out of RNG but in that like this fight, they're either really rough for no reason or super easy for no reason or if you specifically circumvent their cheese. The mirror terrain seems neat though I like that other than the evasion crap.

yeah there's tons of shit to do. most areas have a decent few side quests too

what i would've really liked is just scaling the xp. if i'm ten levels low and leveling for a boss, give me like triple experience, and if i'm over-leveled give me like 10%. that's the ideal solution for single player games imo. this game does have online trading though so that might've factored in

what i would've really liked is just scaling the xp. if i'm ten levels low and leveling for a boss, give me like triple experience, and if i'm over-leveled give me like 10%. that's the ideal solution for single player games imo. this game does have online trading though so that might've factored in

What's weird is that Gen 5-onward has this feature, so if this game doesn't, that's an insanely bad call.

what i would've really liked is just scaling the xp. if i'm ten levels low and leveling for a boss, give me like triple experience, and if i'm over-leveled give me like 10%. that's the ideal solution for single player games imo. this game does have online trading though so that might've factored in

What's weird is that Gen 5-onward has this feature, so if this game doesn't, that's an insanely bad call.

there is some xp scaling, but there's nowhere near enough to make leveling fast or make grinding prohibitively difficult. also i can't get the lucky egg or xp share for another couple areas.
at this point i've hacked infinite rare candies in and i just shove them down my dudes' throats until they stop dying in one hit. i'm sure there's some perfect team composition that lets you coast through the game without needing to manage levels, but outside of monitoring type coverage i'm mostly recruiting who i like.


Quick catch up on the story: Erica has illegally adopted a group of edgy orphans and is on the run from the fuzz, but still has a passing interest in being the very best there ever was. She escapes to a commune hidden far from civilization's reach, where her family is repeatedly accosted by radical eco-terrorists attempting to steal her crystals. One of her charges is coincidentally the next gym leader, so they battle on the lawn to pass the time.


Prodigy NOEL should probably invest in some Zzzquil, jesus kid get some sleep


I said I wasn't going to add new Pokeys but I was fucking lying: meet Jack O the dead pumpkin. I was sorely lacking in ghost type shit and the last dungeon was really hard so she's coming along for a while.


I have to avoid dealing too much damage right away, or Porygon-Z's petaya berry will activate and boost his attack to frankly irresponsible levels. The terrain makes fire attacks do 50% more damage, so Sassy tears through this thing quick. This game seems to really love fire types. I could actually set the field on fire with McGruff's flame burst, but that would damage my team too and I didn't think it was necessary.


The grassy terrain is simple but interesting. The grass heals anyone touching it by about 6% each turn, and is soft enough to suppress moves like earthquake and magnitude, among others.


Since we're outside, the current weather affects the gym battle. I ended up randomly getting hail, but it has interesting synergy here since it cancels out the healing from the grass. Previous attempts had some of NOEL's Mons surviving with single digit health only to die from the hail. Sassy fries this 5 minute Pokémon model next turn.


Here's a Swallow I guess! The lucky prick gets a crit here, and he's actually stacked for damage so it hurts Ray pretty bad. For some reason he's holding a flame orb, so he usually ends up burning himself to death. Ray is electric type though and ends up taking him down in one discharge.


Fuck this Cinccino holy shit. First, almost everyone on NOEL's team has hidden power - fire. This Cinccino also knows bullet seed and rock blast, and has the ability that makes them always hit five times. That type coverage fucks up nearly all my Pokeys. It's also holding a King's Rock, so if it can't hit super effective, it'll nearly always cause flinch and chip away with the terrain-boosted bullet seed. I've literally had five dudes come in and all die without getting a hit in.


So I decide to forgo even hitting him. This feels a little cheap, but in this situation it's fighting bullshit with bullshit. Cinccino accepts the murder-suicide pact and ends it with the soft kiss of a bullet (seed).


This Bewear isn't too tough to deal with! Amy Lee can exploit his psychic weakness pretty easily. It knows stomping tantrum, which is only possible through a fucking breeding chain, but it means Sassy can't last too long against him. He also likes to ice punch! Rest in peace angry bear


I don't really have anything to counter this Girafarig, but my team is doing so well right now that I take the Zap Brannigan approach. Amy Lee gets a little flirtatious here. Unfortunately, Girafarig isn't into goth gfs and only gets confused.


The result is an utter massacre. I'm not really sure why I brought Snow Miser; I knew pretty much every enemy had hidden power - fire. Oh well! .


Sassy comes and burns him to death. I probably should've done that from the start.


Wow it's a fucking Clefable never would've expected to see you here. His elemental seed activates on this terrain, giving a small defense boost and activating ingrain for a bit of bonus healing. I was hoping to use the hail to cancel this out, but it looks like the game couldn't handle that many status effects popping at once and just gave up? I didn't see any visual change on the health bars anyway.


In addition to the standard moveset of repeatedly jacking up his defense and eating its own unborn young, Clefable likes to summon the Death Star to give us the ol' Alderaan goodbye. In my last attempt, this Clefable survived for like twenty turns and slowly chipped his way through three of my Mons. It was annoying as shit, especially since NOEL has three hyper potions and he dumps them all here. This time I'm not going to get worn down. Desset has been lowering Clefable's special defense every turn. When it finally gets to -5,


he drops an Endeavor and tears through almost 90% of Clefable's massive health bar. I almost never get to use this effectively, since Desset is slow as shit, but he actually out-speeds his opponent for once here. Unfortunately, an orbital cannon strike takes Desset down right before his moment of glory.


Sassy comes in at the end and toasts this prick for a quick win. Relatively speaking. This was kind of a weird gym leader. Most of his team are glass cannons, so as long as you can hit them as hard as that hit they hit you, things go by quick. Then there's the two sticking points. I pretty much organized my entire team here just to handle Cinccino and Clefable. I'm sure there's other strategies that are less gimmicky and suicide oriented, but this still worked out fine.


NOEL has a doll that he talks to out loud in public. Erica considers sending him back for a refund (or exchange of equal value).


Conveniently again, one of the other raggamuffins is qualified to officiate the match, so we take home another badge here! Somehow this is fine, but I didn't get a badge when I beat the fighting gym leader in her gym in front of like a dozen people! Nice!

That's some great gym badge logic, there.

>For some reason he's holding a flame orb

Swellow's ability, Guts, gives him a stat boost for having a status.

Oh great, the devs remembered that Cinccino is the king of cheese strats. I fucking hate that shit and King's Rock on multihit moves is just unfair. Good on you for using cheese right back. Nice Endeavor, I like how this game does make you get crafty at times and actually pull out the stops like that. Every enemy team member having HP Fire is kind of interesting from a difficulty standpoint but it's also not really that fair to the player, either. Not sure if I like that sort of absolute minmaxing.

>For some reason he's holding a flame orb
Swellow's ability, Guts, gives him a stat boost for having a status.

whoops lol
he never got a chance to use it any attempt, his bitch ass would always either die in one hit or die from the burn

Oh great, the devs remembered that Cinccino is the king of cheese strats. I fucking hate that shit and King's Rock on multihit moves is just unfair. Good on you for using cheese right back. Nice Endeavor, I like how this game does make you get crafty at times and actually pull out the stops like that. Every enemy team member having HP Fire is kind of interesting from a difficulty standpoint but it's also not really that fair to the player, either. Not sure if I like that sort of absolute minmaxing.

they really love to railroad you into certain team compositions. i had to dump everything weak to fire for that gym leader, and i've been doing pretty much the same thing for the rest. it does make you vary your approaches more, but i wish they'd diversify the movesets instead of just making it an auto-lose if you're weak to x type.

at least it's fun to abuse the terrain bullshit right back. the gym leaders almost feel like final tests centered around the one terrain type, especially when you have a few battles beforehand in the same area. you slowly figure out how it works and then you need to master it to get the badge. there are a lot of rival fights that have a proper even spread of types but i'm not showing those because i'd have way less to say.


This one took a while because there was a giant fucking forest maze and I got so lost I stopped playing for a bit. Anyway here we are in Grandmaster RADOMUS's castle, which is also a gym. RADOMUS is rich and smart, so he obviously loves chess.


Also he's a cosplayer for some reason? The Mad Hatter outfit isn't his default; he specifically put it on for the battle. RADOMUS is a psychic gym leader, and the chess board actually counts as his terrain. Fitting of its namesake, the chess terrain is simple in theory, and super fucking hard to deal with in practice. Moves that seem to relate to intelligence and strategy - Calm Mind, Nasty Plot, Fake Out, and so on - are boosted, and they made the ability Queenly Majesty boost your damage, even though the leader doesn't use a Tsareena.


The strategy here is less about using the terrain to my advantage and more about not getting fucked by it. I wanted to bring Sassy to defend against all the psychic attacks, but that ended up being completely unworkable so I benched him. I brought Charlie Brown because one of RADOMUS's mons is weak against steel. I don't end up using a single steel move in the winning run.


But it turns out Charlie Brown is really useful for other reasons! Sucker Punch and Nuzlocke's Foul Play drop the Reinculus before it gets an attack out. I was a little pissed off when I found out this was a double battle, but with the proper set-up it's very abuseable. It might've actually been more difficult as singles.


So the AI is tuned to murder anything it can with extreme prejudice. Letting Charlie Brown take a hit in the first round directs all attention to him, so he can use dig and avoid both attacks. They also won't target mons that are invincible for a turn, so he could spam this and be pretty much unstoppable as long as his partner survives. Nuzlocke spends his turn dunking on Malamar.


Fuck fuck fuck shit shit shit
This Slowking basically decides if I win or lose. His first action is nearly always trick room, and Radomus's team is slow as fuck. The chess board terrain makes trick room last eight turns. If he lands it, about half my team becomes useless. You could probably abuse it right back with an even slower team, but I'm too lazy and dumb to bother with that. Charlie Brown and Nuzlocke focus fire and take him out before he gets a turn.


I decided to try one of these seeds, since all the leaders seem to love them. Synthetic seed on the chess boards gives a special attack boost and magic coat. Desset is the only real physical attacker in the group, so he takes it. The boost helps him merk Malamar with a kiss of death, and Nuzlocke finishes off Gallade.


This is Gossip Gardevoir, a recurring side character and RADOMUS's strongest Pokey. She also comes packing a synthetic seed, and immediately uses calm mind to crank her damage the fuck up. Neither of these two can hit her weakness, but she's such a huge threat that they focus fire on her anyway so she can't wipe my whole team.


This is the other chess board effect, and the thing I spent the whole fight trying to work around. A few attacks, notably psychic and strength, knock chess pieces around. The chess pieces deal an additional hit of rock damage. Pokémon with abilities like adaptability and anticipation take less damage from chess moves, but confused Pokémon and those with abilities like oblivious or simple take double damage. Slimer actually started out with oblivious, but there's an item that changes abilities in this game, so now he has anticipation. I'm eternally grateful for quality of life features like that.


The chess move yeets Desset from full health. That's pretty shitty, but the Metagross could also one shot him with meteor mash, so this actually ended up helping in the long run. Snow Miser doesn't take much damage from it, and she's in perfect position to finish off Gossip Gardevoir. On a previous attempt I used metal claw in this exact same situation, and the 10% miss chance triggered right before I could kill her. This time I go for shadow claw instead. XOXO


Eventually Snow Miser falls, but not before wearing down the Metagross to near death. Slimer and Rocky are here to spam earthquakes, but Rocky is actually weak to earthquake and I didn't want to risk some dumb one in a million chance of killing my whole party with self-damage, so they just do regular attacks. It's not very effective, but it gets me the badge.


Here's Grandmaster RADOMUS's battle sprite. He reminds us of his gimmick one last time and forks over some cash...


as well as a badge, and a copy of trick room as a constant reminder of the suffering he caused. I had to retry this battle a shitload of times, slowly refining my strategy or changing up my team composition with each attempt. Apparently that was all pointless though since my winning run was the one where I didn't follow the plan at all. I'm not sure what the moral here was.


Doesn't really matter though, as long as I get the W.

This post was last modified: Aug 3, 2019 at 8:18 PM by Draku.

>terrain that boosts boosting moves

God jesus that sounds fucking terrifying. Calm Mind being Gen1 Amnesia is absurd.

>Slimer actually started out with oblivious, but there's an item that changes abilities in this game, so now he has anticipation. I'm eternally grateful for quality of life features like that.

That's in the main games too, but it's much harder to get a hold of and is a postgame-only item even though you can get a limitless amount (with a lot of effort). Putting it in the main game is a good call because you can get memed hard by wild Pokemon ability RNG.

I agree with you that this battle seems like it would have been way harder if it hadn't been doubles, but that's probably why it was, because that tier of boosting moves without the ability to double attack a mon sounds even more ridiculous.