Time for the gym!
First, to the clothes store to get outfits for the gym!
Oh dear lord. Okay, so there’s some other color versions of my green t-shirt. And a halter top. A very small halter top. And a belly-bearing parka. And you can’t wear an actual shirt under it.
But there’s also other jeans, which look nice.
Current team:
L19 helioptile
L20 fletchinder
L19 honedge
L19 swirlix
L24 riolu for exp drain.
L27 kirlia who same.
Gym looks cool. No one else’s name is on the pillars, again. Failrivals are fail.
Rock types are great, aren’t they? gushes helper advice guy. Weak to Steel, Water and all kinds of things! Way to undercut my coming victory, asshole.
If you walk around to the back, there’s a waterfall and some seats and if you sit in the seats the camera angle changes so you can watch the waterfall. They just put so many great little things in this game.
Only those with a noble spirit can try to take on the challenge of the Cyllage City Pokemon Gym.
Really? I thought anyone could just try. Also, noble is sounding a bit sketchy of a word choice.
Hey, is steel weak to psychic now? Because my honedge just almost got knocked out by a psywave and I’m pretty sure psychic resists itself, doesn’t it?
One of the people claims the gym is a fun puzzle. Going in a line isn’t a puzzle. I mean, the climbing has some fun animations, but it’s not a puzzle.
To the gym leader at the summit. It is pretty.
I’ve been waiting in eager anticipation! What have I been waiting for? For a worthy challenger to appear! It’s quite an achievement to have climbed all the way up here. Very impressive, actually!
Okay, you know what’d have been nice here? If you had bigger climbing sections and some sort of strength meter where you’d slip back down if you were too slow, then it’d be a challenge and therefore an accomplishment.
I have a feeling that our battle will turn out to be worth the wait! I hope you’ll show me that your skill as a Trainer surpasses even mine.
God dammit how I am supposed to want to crush you and prove my superiority if you’re not even trying?
Only two pokemon jesus christ.
L25 amaura
L25 tyrunt, that’s probably the jaw fossil huh?
Well, mostly my team flails around, but Riolu kills everything.
You have proven to be a wall that I am unable to surmount!
Try having something that doesn’t instantly die to fighting.
There are some things that seem out of reach no matter how hard you try. However, it’s important you never give up–no matter the opponent or the odds. I could tell from our battle that you and your Pokemon understand that. To commemorate such an impressive show of teamwork, please accept the Cliff Badge!
I feel like maybe this was considered for the first gym but they changed their mind?
With the Cliff Badge in your grasp, you should have no issues working together with Pokemon up to level 40. This even applies to Pokemon you’ve recieved from oher people in trade. And that’s not all. You also get…this!
And then rock tomb TM. Explains it.
Now that you’ve become a master wall climber and conquered this Gym, it’s time you thought about how to apply your skills in other areas!
You’re right, the wall climbing thing would be nice to include in other areas.
Think about how you can improve yourself, as well as the Pokemon that are always by your side.
I’m already trying to handicap myself, actually.
When you find the answer, that’s when you’ll truly be able to smile!
And let’s check in with the advice guy.
Looks like our Gym Leader wasn’t much of an obstacle for you! Good job and all that!
So is the idea that now each one of them are different.
We’ve gone and engraved your name on those mysterious statues there!
-__-
Right then, onward. I see weird stones, and some guy talking about weird stones, and hey, eevee! Hey eevee. I’m going to catch you to breed with my other eevee so they’ll all know bite.
My brother says that this is a travesty because eevee are supposed to be rare, but he’s barely played the games. I’m not sure yet, I can see the point to doing things differently. Especially now that you need eight whole eevee to get the whole set.
Snubbull.
Speaking of easier, though, god, what happened to the catching algorithms? I mean, I agree that the fifth gen ones were abominable given the fact I could never even catch a damn metang, but I keep getting pokemon just by throwing pokeballs at them.
It has an active, playful naure. Many women like to frolic with it because of its affectionate ways.
Also, now it’s fairy type. Maybe they should just get rid of normal type.
Some dumb tourist talks about how the stones are definitely absolutely positively just regular stones. Yes game I got it from the other guy.
A few years back, this really strange dude named Colress told me that these big stones emit some kind of special energy.
Not sure how I feel about the games being connected like this. I mean, on the one hand it’s nice to see a developing world, but on the other, I liked that this game seems more scaled back, and the best way to do that is a clean break. Someone else referenced whoever the professor was who believed pokemon released energy on evolution, who I think was gen 4.
Also, Colress was a huge disappointment in the end, so I don’t like being reminded of him.
Golett.
The energy that burns inside it enables it to move, but no one has yet been able to identify the source of this energy. But they can identify it’s a ghost type…
And hey, it’s redsuit team!
Stop right there! I remember you! You’re the one who foiled our Fossil-finding plans!
I was just walking, you chose to fight me!
And now you’re here, standing around these stones. Do you have any idea what they even are?
I assume that just walking will resolve that issue as well.
Of course you don’t! You know nothing about the legend of 3,000 years ago that says… Wait, what does it say?
Dammit! For a second there I thought he was going to realize it’s dumb to tell me why they’re important.
Oh, whatever! Who cares about all of that? It’s time for me to get some sweet revenge…with style!
So that’s the same time as the king. He must have gotten power with the stones. And then totally fucked up because apparently the war was a bloodbath anyway.
Anyway, victory is followed by the usual disbelief, but then he gets a call on his phone What the hell is the game even doing here?
Heh. Gotta love the Holo Caster! I can get updates on my mission in real time with this stylish device!
Also, again I wonder if this was meant to be earlier. If we didn’t know holophone guy was evil, this would be nice foreshadowing.
Whoever thought this ting up must have been one truly stylish individual, too!
…or maybe not, since now I’m confused again. Either they’re not getting their orders from crazyflamehair, or he doesn’t know he is.
He then “scrams with style” by walking away.
Hawlucha. What.
Although its body is small, its proficient fighting skills enable it to keep up with big bruisers like Machamp and Hariyama.
Okay that’s reasonable wait it’s the “wrestling pokemon”? I get the reference, but unless I’m very confused, doesn’t wrestling involve grappling and stuff?
And hm, blank slot after it in the pokedex. I’ll see if that fills in.
Kirlia’s finally evolving! I’ll miss you. You were a good exp sink.
To protect its trainer, it will expend all its psychic power to create a small black hole.
And yet, still replacing her.
Okay, so now my team is:
L23 honedge
L25 fletchinder who still hasn’t learned any decent moves
L23 helioptile who same
L27 riolu
L19 espurr
L21 pancham.
Emolga.
They live on treetops and glide using the inside of a cape-like membrane while discharging electricity.
Clunky sentence there.
Yanma swarm!
Its eyes can see 360 degrees without moving its head. It won’t miss prey–even those behind it.
I recall yamna evolves now, but I forget how. Is it one of those leveling-with-move things or what?
Then I fight a psychic trainer whose meditite does nothing but mind reader and detect.
Finally caught a houndour.
Around dawn, its ominous howl echoes through the area to announce that this is its territory.
Redsuit guy.
Can’t you see we adults are busy? Don’t interrupt our work, kid!
Are these guys really adults? They seem sort of teenish.
Someone else, just standing around ignoring the red suited nutjobs around her, says of the stones, People in ancient times must have been incredible! Hmm? Maybe I should say it was the Pokemon in ancient times that were incredible? It’s really sad that this game is so much better at being BW than BW was.
On to the next redsuited nutjob: You inspect the stones… I inspect YOU! I can’t seem to inspect the stones, though…
By the way, my helioptile has learned razor wind. Has anyone figured out what good this move is?
Strong you may be, but this stylish Team Flare suit would simply not look good on you. Aw… I like it when the enemy teams want to recruit me.
You know, hippopotas no longer has different colors by gender. I’m a bit disappointed, but if it means gender variation in general is gone, it may be a decent price to pay. Such a good idea, such terrible implementation.
Hey, nosepass. But it faints.
Sigilyph!
The guardians of an ancient city, they use their psychic power to attack enemies that invade their territory.
Still cool. Still no word on if these are some sort of robot thing.
My talonflame (fletchinder’s evo) is almost level 60 and it still hasn’t learned any good moves. It’s pretty much a dead weight unless I need to kill a fighting type.
Also! The clothes get better. But yeah, I don’t know who the fuck is responsible for the parka midriff, just WTF.
I’m noir now.
Acrobatics, steel wing, roost, brave bird, and flare blitz aren’t good moves? Granted, I prefer flamethrower for a fire type move which she didn’t learn on her own but the tm was easy to find. At least for mine, if it’s weak to fire talonflame killed it. Weak to flying? Talonflame kills it. Hell, steel wing + fire type = dead fairies.
I can’t edit my own comment so I do want to add that most all of those moves are learned lvl40+. Aerial ace and flame charge were enough to kill most things weak to flying/fire before that for me at least. I still quite like talonflame – a lot more then fennekin’s final form or litleo’s final form.
Does it really have the special attack to carry flamethrower? I have the TM, but I’ve been hesitant to delete another attack for that reason. I’m not crazy about flare blitz, but with roost it could be viable.
For me, it’s been good for stuff it’s super effective against but not too much else. I don’t understand why they didn’t add a physical fire-type move that was 70-90 base damage. They added a ghost one for gourgeist.
I might have lucked out because I got one with a nature that boosts it’s special attack so my talonflame’s special attack is actually higher then it’s physical attack. So flamethrower was a good life decision for me. There are a couple higher power physical fire-type moves but for some reason Game Freak is stingy with passing them around. Like blaze kick could sure be useful on flareon, rapidash, and talonflame but I doubt we’ll ever see it. The least they could do is buff flame wheel (and pass it around a bit).
Act’s character is the cutest and I’m copying her so hard.
Gender variation is still there. My female Pikachu has itself a notched tail.
Hippopotas is still different depending on gender. You may be confusing it with its evolution – Hippopotas just swaps the light and dark brown around, whereas female Hippowdon are black (and way more badass than the boring brown males).
Razor Wind is just a terrible, terrible move and always has been. I hear it references something from Japanese mythology or something, which might explain why the creators seem to be irrationally fond of it.
Also, Honedge is Steel/Ghost, not Steel/Psychic.
Oh yeah I just forgot that one evolves at all.
“Hey, is steel weak to psychic now?” I think they changed it so that steel doesn’t resist psychic (and dark?) anymore. Ghost doesn’t resist psychic either so you got hit with a normal psywave which can hurt.
“My brother says that this is a travesty because eevee are supposed to be rare…” They are rare. Crazy rare. I had to hunt mine on my own. At times I wondered if eevees were even in the game. Granted once I got all the ones I needed I would randomly find them in that spot easily (including a girl eevee!).
“Also, now it’s fairy type. Maybe they should just get rid of normal type.” I was pondering that too. Some of the new types make total sense but snubball felt like they needed to fill a quota of fairy types and just changed it. I was surprised pikachu wasn’t part fairy.
Really? It was the very first thing that popped out of the grass for me, and I ran into a bunch more.
Ghost never resisted psychic. Steels resistance to dark and ghost were removed. Steel still resists psychic but “Psywave” does damage to the users level (like seismic toss)
I keep thinking it’s psychic is the thing. It’s supposed to be possessed sword, but it seems like it’s telekinetically animated sword to me. You know, like bronzong?
re: wild eevees, well it makes sense that they’ve established themselves in the wild as an invasive species after the millions of lv. 1 eevees people breed and release hoping for a shiny one.
what gen did they introduce gender variation of sprites in again? 3? they made a bunch of retroactive minor changes that time, but going forward they seem to have gotten completely tired of it and there are only a couple differential evolutions or such per gen now. I think I would prefer if pokemon didn’t have a sex or gender at all and they just had “mating types”. or that you could have any compatible pokemon stand as the major parent (“mother”) and minor parent (“father”). there was even a line in XY from someone near the breeding center saying something like “an egg isn’t really an egg, it’s more like a pokemon cradle.”
HA, one of my pokemon was trying to learn razor wind and I was disgusted that it’s still a useless normal-type move, wtf. according to bulbapedia it’s a reference to the weasel yokai that rides on a gust of wind and cuts up your legs, which makes the move a disappointing travesty really. make it a steel-type future sight or something at least.
fletchinder/talonflame isn’t very remarkable except for its high speed and usefulness in babysitting eggs hatching. (flame body + fly)
But then the pokemon could be gay! Also, I think they like the limiting factor of needing a female, since there’s so many pokemon that have a hugely skewed ratio and it’s not in the other direction.
The worst part is every generation the move actually gets worse! It’s not that strong, and then they introduce more/stronger moves and a whole other type that resists normal and a move that can block any move, and then they keep inventing new variations on that one for more pokemon.
Gay agenda: 1. Obtain full legal equality 2. Go to IKEA 3. Smash the gender binary 4. Smash the gender binary in pokemon
Definitely, I hate seeing discussions about “zomg why are eevees 87.5% male, how do they survive in the wild??? BIOLOGY???” because I’m just like “shhhhhhhhh it’s a game mechanic shhhhhhhh”.
I’m not sure why there even exist any 2-turn moves that don’t block attacks on that dead turn, and even then.
No it’s obviously because they live in a bad environment where you need a hive setup to successfully raise young! A single female needs multiple other providers, and other females would be competing to get those resources for their own young, so most of a group has to be males who are invested in the offspring because they can’t be sure who actually fathered them. The first gen evolutions are to exploit their limited resources (and for vaporeon, colonize new areas) and then espeon and umbreon show up in any area where the major limiting factor has become other eevee packs.
Why it’s also true for all starters is beyond me though. Maybe they’re artificial pokemon and it’s some sort of faulty copyright protection.
Yesssssss, POLYANDRY MUAHAHAHA
Like Galapagos hawks, yesssssssssss.
I like Hawlucha’s Mexican luchador design, and one of them really got my team good once, but I haven’t bothered to train it yet since it doesn’t evolve and I already have two good fighting types. Yanma is level up with ancientpower. Pancham will only evolve if you have a dark type on your team (after lv 32? or somewhere around there). Helioptile is a thunderstone evolution.
Helioptile is a sun stone! You find one laying around somewhere obvious. Love my heliolisk.
Oh right, obviously, that’s what I get for trying to do this from memory.
I’ve heard the exp share gives 100% of the battle experience to all pokemon that participate, and all the other pokemon on your team get 50%. Each. It’s not distributed; it just automatically gives all non-combatants 50%. So… You’re actually not sinking any exp by having useless pokemon on-board. ^_^;;
It seems to hold true, but I usually have all six slots filled in, so I’m not the best person to confirm. I believe I got the information from Serebii.
Well, I sort of was by having one fewer actual teammate soaking up that experience instead, but yeah. It’s a shame.
I know I’m way late to this party, but snubbull is literally the fairy pokemon; it shares that as a species name with clefairy. I know this because it’s the only pokemon species name I ever remembered, simply because it seemed so weird.
Like, their original decision to call it that is WTF but not making snubbull an actual fairy pokemon would have been also confusing.