Back to this again!

And back to Saffron.

Before I go anywhere, let’s pick up a TM.

Maybe he’s a relative of Sabrina? I mean, it makes sense it’d be genetic and that’s how it went in the anime. Personally I just assume people with names like this are charlatans, even in a setting where psychic powers exist.

For some reason this place isn’t blocked. I assume that’s some sort of error.

It doesn’t exactly take psychic powers to work that one out.

Here, as so many other times, no one considers just how confusing these sort of attack names are going to make writing fanfic.

Anyway, it’s a pretty good move.

Which is the stat determining defense against the move. Additionally, since the special stat is the god stat, odds are any pokemon you’re fielding relies on special attacks, and those are crippled at the same time. Bulbapedia informs me that in the first generation, the odds of it doing so are a hefty one in three.

When you consider that this has a power of ninety and 100% accuracy, you start to wonder just how accidental psychic dominance was in these games.

Anyway, into Silph now.

Silph’s lobby has two linked pools. This was yet another source of speculation, because you can’t actually reach the water to surf or fish there. I remember one code involving the SS Anne truck and/or getting past the statues in the Safari Zone where you used strength to uncover a stairwell that led here somehow, and supposedly there were dratini in here, which I didn’t much care about because it’s not like they’re really that hard to get in the Safari Zone. There might have also been pikablues.

Anyway, I thought this was a pretty cool idea. Silph is rolling in dough, right? And they like the sort of ostentatious displays that are giant pools of water taking up your bottom floor. So why not also stock the pools with dratini?

Seems the receptionist has fled. I guess unlike my lazy avatar she jumped the counter, because as you can see, there’s no evidence any part of that opens. I wonder if her job is more or less boring than all the other receptionist people so far? If nothing else she probably has to field the dratini pond questions.

They also have an elevator, but who cares about that.

I’m not really sure. I came here to get a badge and this guy was rambling about Team Rocket and stuff in front of the gym. I figure if I kick you out I can continue with the pointless battles to figure out who’s best.

How does that work, exactly? Is the idea that if they can take over the company completely now, they can withdraw their overt presence with no one the wiser? It seems that’d work better if you left the rest of the town alone. Or is Team Rocket basically a company and this is whatever passes for legal in a world where kids carry around elemental doom monsters? That would explain why no one else seems interested in intervening.

Here, an innocent scientist appears to be coded as a trainer…

So it’s not just the black guys you’ve got to worry about, the scientists are on their side. And, apparently, don’t realize that everyone in town already knows about the takeover.

Huh, I just realize I don’t have any idea how many people know. It’s known to the people in the pokecenter, but other buildings are blocked. The other two that aren’t, TM guy and the not-a-real-gym, appear unaware. So, maybe most of them don’t have any clue.

Is that a requirement to work here? Maybe it’s how they weed out workers. Must be able to memorize nonsense layout with teleportation pads, previous experience at insane lab a plus.

Let’s try one out.

Now I’m elsewhere!

See that door? In addition to the teleporters, there are locked doors, so many of the areas can only be reached by teleporting until you get a key card to open the door.  One area has no door at all and is teleport-only.

I got so confused when I was playing this. I ended up going over every inch of the place again after I found my way to the boss just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. This was unnecessary. Aside from that one area, everywhere else can be reached by card key.

What makes it really confusing is that you often teleport only to find you have the option of teleporting again to still another place, until you lose track of where you started. The fact this place also has far more levels than any previous area makes it even more confusing.

Already? Or is this just in the sense that any outsider is a problem?

Fucking scientists. I remember this guy in particular tends to faint one of my pokemon if I forget and don’t swap out one immediately. I was always really bothered by it because I tended to be very obsessive about not wasting experience. That’s also why I don’t like to raise pokemon I’m just going to replace, they’re taking away experience that could go to another pokemon!

It’s the best dungeon in the game!

It’s very confusing, but mostly because there’s so much around. It’s hard to actually get stuck, and the wandering in circles thing is a lot less annoying without random encounters.

That said, who the hell designed this place?

If this were a more serious videogame and required explanation, I’d say that either they’d just invented these pads and the guys in charge had put them around for a last bunch of testing, or that everyone got their own  pad as a perk of working there and they were all over the place because people were using them for stupid things. (Also, at this point something about how the pads don’t work over long distances because otherwise everyone would use them to jump home and back instead.)

Given the whole Lavender thing, you do have to wonder at how many rockets have a cubone.

As opposed to the low-tech ones.

I mentioned this earlier with Bill that it’s not clear how this sort of thing is different than the pokeball and item systems. One answer is that it isn’t, the transporters are just a cheap mass produced version.

How does this fit with Bill working on still another kind?

Well. There’s still no clear sign of how much time has elapsed. Perhaps Bill was finishing work for this project.

Hmmmm…

Maybe the issue was that because of how fast they work, they were glitchy, with the signal easily garbled? Maybe they need one sender and one receiver, if both are trying to send and receive you end up with a hideous fusion. That also explains how Bill ended up fused and why he had a program all ready for fixing it, he was testing simultaneous transfer.

Then again, that seems like too dangerous a side-affect for them to have jumped straight to unrestricted teleport pads everywhere. So, either Bill was trying to fix it for efficiency reasons or something but they already have a workaround of some sort of delay where the two pads only activate if the second says it’s clear, or Silph likes to use its workers as guinea pigs.

I was about to say the second option is pretty ridiculous, but half the battles in Silph are with scientists who’ve defected into Team Rocket, clearly Silph isn’t winning Employer of the Year.

Anyway. After the first time, my method of getting through Silph is simple.

Go to the fifth floor.

See that passage behind the guy? It’s inaccessible from here, because even if you draw him out for a battle, you have to walk across the teleport pad and he’ll reset back to his former location when you return.

I was very frustrated by this, and set out to find another way to access the passage.

The game designers have a clear grasp of gamer players, because my child self’s first reaction was OH NO! ANOTHER TELEPORT PAD IN MY WAY THAT WILL RESET HIM AND I’LL NEVER GET TO THE PASSAGE! A second later I realized that wasn’t how it worked, but that’s how much the previous bit had shocked me.

As soon as you start to think about it, it’s weird how they know you’re around but can’t seem to send anyone to actually attack you. But whatever, I like hearing myself be underestimated.

I feel more emphasis should be on the size of Team Rocket, since obviously the individual grunts aren’t going to be impressive. The bit in the second gen where the statues triggered grunts to come attack you was excellent. Mostly they talk like they think they’re scary individually, though, instead of that you’ll be inevitably worn down by the tide of evil.

Anyway, this is what you get for navigating the not-really-a-puzzle.

Next time: Opening doors.