So. My only surviving pokemon are Flare with twenty HP and Irin with one, but I’ve made it to the elitest of the elite!

Now to turn around and go buy some herbs, because we’re still doing the thing where the best healing items in the games are relegated to some random corner of the map and not the place next to your ultimate fight.

I think I’ll play through with my intended team, then if I lose I’ll pull out Groudon in a rage. I sacrifice my sceptile for this…and come to think of it, I think I’ve always been pretty unimpressed with my starters this region. I wrecked my swampert sticking HMs all over it, and I raised up my blaziken to evolution and then forgot it while evolving other pokemon. My sceptile actually seems pretty cool, so I’d take it, but, perfect Lucki team! Plus unless I kick off Saurius I’ll have two grass types.

L48 Silver
L41 Raiden
L44 Saurius
L46 Irin
L41 Flare
L47 DESTROYER OF LIFE

All but the last are sitrus berried up. I think I’ll only use the revival herbs between fights, but I’ll turn the experience share back on.

Okay now I’m ready. Going through the doors brings me to an extremely long bridge with lots of flowers and sand and another building at the other end. It feels like it’s trying too hard.

I enter, triggering a cutscene.

Welcome, challenger! I’m Sidney of the Elite Four.

And…then back to normal. Having the battle trigger immediately would at least be legitimately different, while the cutscene is really just an inconsequential puff. Fine, I’ll talk to him.

I like that look you’re giving me. I guess you’ll give me a good match. That’s good! Looking real good! All right! Let’s get down to the kind of battle that can happen only here in the Pokemon League!

I lead with Saurius. He leads with a L50 mightyena. Ah, for once I’m not overleveled! Saurius gets hit by swagger but pulls off leech seed. Then sucker punch followed by a failure to use fly, then Mightyena crunches him but he manages to fly. The swagger-boosted fly gets Mightyena down to a bare sliver, then the leech seed finishes it off.

Next is a L52 absol, who, I am reminded, can learn arial ace. Saurius survives the move and manages to paralyze the absol with a body slam. I fly, and Saurius’ harvest kicks in, giving him another berry, he faints the absol, then harvest activates again at the end of that turn.

For some reason, Sidney thinks it’s time for his sharpedo, which probably means ice move but let’s keep going anyway. L50 I order a leech seed, expecting to need to switch out, and instead it just crunches Saurius back to a sliver of health. Another harvest and another devoured sirius berry help out there, but not enough to survive the next crunch.

Raiden! Because as funny as it is to send Flare out, I might actually need him here. I order discharge and the sharpedo faints.

Next is a shiftry and hm, that would seem to be the thing I need Flare for! It then uses fake out. Next turn, it outspeeds Flare and nearly faints him with feint attack. He fire fangs it to the red, but obviously won’t survive another move…except that for some reason Sidney uses full restore? So he gets off another fire fang before being fainted. Hm. Sorry, Silver. Neither Raiden nor Irin can handle this type combo. Ice beam it!

Silver barely survives the leaf blade to finish it off with ice beam.

Last pokemon is a cacturne. Dammit. Luckily they’re slow enough that Silver’s actually able to get off another ice beam before taking a needle arm to the face. Irin, Raiden, Irin, Raiden… Irin’s got critical hits on her side, let’s try her. The cacturne’s down to the red…but naturally Sidney uses a full restore. But! Night slash crit gets it below half health. Just do that again!

She doesn’t. On the other hand, the cacturne really isn’t doing much damage, so whatever. Another night slash finishes it off.

Well, how do you like that? I lost! Eh, it was fun, so it doesn’t matter.

If you’re trying to annoy me, it’s working.

Well, listen to what this loser has to say. You’ve got what it takes to go a long way! Go on to the next room and challenge your next battle.

Your praise means nothing to me.

Next area is another long bridge, this one with purple wisteria flowers hanging like a curtain, followed by enormous lilies that look like they’re a bad hologram and are partly see through. I seriously can’t tell if it’s the game being badly designed or if they’re really well designed to look like they’re actually holograms in the game world. Then when I continue it triggers a ghost effect thing to light the windows. Huh?

I enter to find Phoebe doing some sort of exercise or something. While I admit that actually, being in the elite four seems like it’d be insanely boring, I don’t want to be thinking about NPCs hanging out in empty rooms all day. It’s kind of a distraction from the whole climax of the game thing.

Hahaha! shrieks Phoebe with a demented grin, having clearly lost it. I’m Phoebe of the Elite Four.

The scene changes to see she’s still rocking but now we’re angled to see her ass as she almost exposes it with each bend.

I did my training on Mt. Pyre. While I trained there, I gained the ability to commune with Ghost-type Pokemon.

The angle changes to the front, a vast improvement even if it’s getting increasingly bizarre how she won’t stop moving and now I’m thinking about that weird bouncing of dogs with distemper seriously what is up with this, is she just super super nervous or what.

The bond I developed with my Pokemon is extremely tight. Com on! Just try and see if you can even inflict damage on my Pokemon!

Sorry, Phoebe. I think I have like one normal type attack and that’s because I needed strength to do things. Oh, and I think I may also still have rock smash on Flare too.

Anyway, not sure what to make of Phoebe. I actually think she’s got a nice design when the camera isn’t angled up her skirt, but while it makes perfect sense you could like ghost pokemon without being goth, I like the themed trainer look.

Well, anyway. I lead with Saurius and leech seed. She leads with a L51 dusclops and curse. Dammit. I try finishing him off, but then she uses another full restore. And right then, when I realize I should just switch out already, Saurius gets below half health from the curse and eats his sitrus berry. Dammit, Saurius, now when I swap your harvest won’t work!

I go to Irin. Dusclops uses its free turn for future sight, allowing Irin, the only survivor from last battle and so the only one I couldn’t heal, to get a bit of health back. She then shreds the dusclops and levels.

I switch back to Saurius, intending to fly out of the future sight, only for the sableye to remind me they have fakeout. Considering that was like all I did with my sableye, you’d think I’d remember… Luckily, it turns out switching out doesn’t impact harvest…but then the sableye just faints him anyway. Right. Let’s try Flare. Lava plume! Well, it gets almost half the sableye’s health and causes a burn, only for the sableye to show theyv’e got more tricks this generation and smacks Flare with his own attack stat. Not sure if that’s halved from the burn or if since Flare isn’t burned it’s full power. Fire fang? Sableye faints.

Raiden then levels off Flare’s hard work and gets the option of learning wild charge. Hm. 90 power recoil move, nope.

Next up is a L51 banette, who Irin’s out again to deal with. A single night slash finishes it off. Also, disappointed it didn’t mega evolve. I guess elite four don’t get to do that. She follows with a L53 dusknoir, who manages to survive a night slash but only uses thunder punch rather than an actual fighting move that might’ve managed to knock Irin out. She uses night slash again and it’s over.

Irin levels and “wants to learn razor wind”. As I said last let’s play, can anyone tell me how the fuck this move is supposed to be used? It can’t be a terribly conceived unusable move with zero value or they wouldn’t keep including it in new pokemon’s movesets, right? Right???????

Phoebe sends in her final pokemon, a L51 banette, and again a single night slash finishes it off.

There’s definitely a bond between you and your Pokemon, too.

Yeah, fear works wonders.

I didn’t recognize that fact, so it’s only natural that I lost.

This sort of wording comes up a lot in the games, I feel, but if you stop to think about it…does it mean that if she’d realized my bond, she’d have been able to win? Or that it’s poke-law to just immediately give someone with a bond whatever they want so the loss is the punishment for trying to fight them at all?

Yup, I’d like to see how far your bond will carry you.

Can someone please feel a little bitter about my crushing them? Especially when we’re talking about a battle where only one pokemon fainted, and only two others were even injured – and not even badly?

Go ahead. Move on to the next room, she says, with a grin that covers her face.

Next up is snow bridge. Well, actually, there’s no snow on the bridge, just clumps of snow that either melt on contact with it or phase through.(Sure looks like phasing.)

Approaching the building makes a snowy wind blow, then the door opens and sprays snow over the bridge, then that turns into ice, but not the sort you can slide around on.

(Also, just checked and nothing happens if you try to backtrack, you just hit an invisible wall. Where’s a disembodied voice admonishing me as a coward, dammit?)

Anyway, in I go!

Welcome. My name is Glacia of the Elite Four. I’ve traveled from afar to Hoenn so I may hone my Ice-type moves.

I wonder what her region of origin is. Do they say?

But all I have seen are challenges by weak Trainers and their Pokemon.

In fairness, you’re the third in the string, and in theory, the elite four is supposed to grind down players. Possibly the issue is just Phoebe and Sidney cripple people long before they reach you.

I wonder what you will show me.

Groudon, if you do well enough.

What a relief it would be if I could, for once, have a serious battle against an opponent.

Wow now I really want to pull out Groudon. Have her lament her wish as she realizes that this battle is not only a difficult challenge but actually serious in the sense of actually mattering – and yet, the monster and the legendary it controls can’t even be slowed by her best efforts.

She leads with a glalie, L52. I, uh, forgot to swap Saurius with anybody else, so here we are. Well, leech seed and try to die with dignity, Saurius.

The glacie, faced with an opponent that has a 4x weakness to its type, uses hail. Well, if that’s how it’ll be, let’s go into phase two of the plan with fly. Glacie uses ice shard but it’s not enough to faint him, and while in the air harvest activates, then again after Saurius lands. Between that and leech seed, he’s now almost back to full health. The glacie, meanwhile, is below half. It uses another ice shard, again fails to faint Saurius, fly knocks it out, the hail stops, and Saurius harvests yet another berry.

Glacia decidees to follow with a froslass, whose stats I just checked into while I was thinking about gendered pokemon so I know she’s got the same or worse stats as a glalie except in speed, and glacie already outsped Saurius due to tropius being just slowpoke in disguise. So yeah, keep battling, why not. You’ll either get off another leech seed or you won’t.

Froslass used blizzard, so next up, Flare! She uses confuse ray, he fails to use lava plume. Let’s try fire fang. Ominous wind nearly faints Flare, but he manages to nearly faint Froslass in return. Glacia uses a full restore, Flare uses another fire fang to do the same thing, Glacia uses yet another full restore so I try a lava plume and get a burn this time. Now that there’s an actual status ailment to full justify the use of full restore, Glacia decides not to bother with healing items and order another confuse ray instead. Flare actually wins!

Next up is a L54 walrein, so wow no it’s Raiden’s turn to earn his keep. Two thunderfangs and paralysis later, it uses sheer cold. Welp. Irin? Night slash takes it down. Glacia then sends out another froslass, L52. Not sure how you thought this would be a good idea against something that just used night slash. Hail followed by night slash and fainting. Really, what was that even. It’s followed by another glalie. God, you’re from another region and you still only use these guys?

The glalie makes me waste a night slash with protect, then uses freeze dry to almost but not quite faint Irin. She uses her final night slash to get out a chunk of HP, then is fainted by another freeze dry. How about you, Flare?

Glalie decides the proper response to that is yet another hail. Flare knocks him out with a lava plume, then decides it’s time to learn flare blitz. Ooh, that’s actually a hard one. I generally hate moves with recoil, BUT it’s a physical attack. Right now my physical fire move is fire fang, which never seems to manage a flinch or a burn. I’ll try it out. Besides, it’s in his name plus it’s fitting to order Flare to beat himself up for me.

You and your Pokemon… How hot your spirits burn!

Definitely Flare’s does.

You and your Pokemon… How fiercely your spirits burn!

Lady why are you repeating your end-battle dialogue in your post-battle dialogue, and why is it slightly different? Why would someone bother to change it but only change one word? Is it like someone was supposed to move the dialogue and tweak it, but then never got around to replacing the other section like they were told to?

My icy moves pale in the face of such all-consuming flames. Advance to the next room. There you will learn how fearsome the Pokemon League can truly be!

Well, she did a bit better than Phoebe. Three pokemon fainted and Flare at half health. Still, Groudon remains hopping ominously at the bottom of my team, still unused.

Onwar HOLY SHIT WHAT

Okay, now the bridge is over lava. As ridiculously expensive as the previous bridges over void and weirdness must have been, LAVA. And it’s still the same bridge despite the fact it must need to be made of totally different materials to possibly still be holding up.

I guess maybe the weird look of the flowers is meant to be on-purpose hologrammy and the answer is all of this is holograms.

Yeah, a bunch of fire columns just arced over the bridge and then other ones went into the emblem above the door to light it and definitely, definitely holograms.

It’s….grouchy captain man! I don’t remember you.

I am the last of the Pokemon League Elite Four, Drake the Dragon master! In their natural state, Pokemon are wild living things. They are free. At times, they hinder us. At times, they help us. For us to battle alongside Pokemon as partners, do you know what it takes?

Pokeballs?

Do you know what is needed?

Pokeballs.

Spikybox: If you don’t, you will never prevail over me!

But I’ve got pokeballs.

Oh hey, his sprite has a bare chest. It really doesn’t make up for the whole Phoebe thing, but at least the men are getting slightly objectified too.

He leads with a L53 altaria. Still got Saurius in front. I order a leech seed, it uses arial ace which, surprisingly enough, doesn’t even get him below half health so I guess I’ll try fighting. He naturally survives the second arial ace and manages to fly, followed by harvesting another sirus berry. Fly turns out to do basically no damage, though, so let’s swap for…I guess Raiden? He won’t be useful against most dragon pokemon, and he’ll resist the first arial ace.

And yup, he does enough that the leech seed can almost heal him up. He uses dischange and Altaria responds with a critical dragon pulse that almost but doesn’t quite faint him. I order a thunder fang to finish Alteria off, but Drake uses a full restore. Time to thunder fang and hope it flinches to death, I guess?

Oh, thunder fang paralyzed Altaria instead. Then flinching. Raiden is now almost back to full health from the leech seed. Of course, he’s already used his sitrus berry, so it’ll be harder to recover from any move…like the dragon pulse Altaria just used, putting him back down again. He tries another thunder fang and the alteria finishes him off. You know, let’s try Saurius again, now that Alteria can’t hope to outspeed him. Fly! And Altaria was paralyzed anyway. Then the attack missed, but Altaria was just paralyzed again and leech seed finished it off. Victory!

Also, Groudon’s now L50 and for some reason thinks he should be learning bulk up. No.

His next pokemon’s a L53 kingdra, so I go with Irin. I try out psycho cut, which doesn’t quite do half damage. But it uses yawn, so switching time. Silver! You maybe resist some of its moves, and your ice beam can do regular damage.

And it just uses yawn again. Back to Irin, then. And dragon pulse. Sitrus berry gets her back to half health. let’s try bite. Hm, about as effective and surf just took her out, dammit. Silver! Arg, Drake used another full restore. And ice beam doesn’t do nearly as much damage as bite did, despite Silver being two levels above Irin. It’s almost like refusing to let your pokemon evolve is a dumb idea.

Speaking of dumb ideas, how about mirror coat?

It just yawns at me. Arg, Saurius! Use leech seed!

It uses yawn again. Back to Silver! Right into an ice beam. I try mirror coat, it uses yawn. So back to Saurius, who gets a dragon pulse in the face instead of yawn. Yes! Now, survive ice beam.

Saurius does not survive ice beam. Back to Silver. He uses ice beam, it uses yet another yawn. I switch to Flare. Another yawn. Back to Silver to get hit by surf. This time it uses dragon pulse, nearly fainting Silver. His sitrus berry does not allow him to survive the next hit. All that’s left is Flare, and the only move he has that isn’t horribly disadvantaged is bite. Plus, he’s at half health. One surf faints him.

Well. Groudon? Let’s lava plume just to prove a point.

Drake sends out his L53 flygon. It confuses Groudon, a wise move, then uses earthquake. Groudon is now below half health. Dammit, Groudon! Another earthquake finishes him off. I lose.