The gym is rather meh. You fight people and then that makes this bridge appear. That it’s done with skates doesn’t make it better.

We get a dramatic entrance when I finally get to the gym leader area. Time for Lady Korrina’s big appearance! But then she just waits for me to be sure my team’s ready.

Honestly, fighting type? It would’ve been a challenge for the team I was using at the moment, with a rock/ice type and all those normal types. But I picked the fennekin at the beginning, plus all those other pokemon I’ve been raising and dumping off. I end up going with:

L25 inkay
L24 espurr
L27 fletchinder
L27 wartortle
L27 honedge
L29 pancham

Using my braxien just seems like overkill.

Well, let’s go.

Haha, I’m just messing around with you! I know, you’re rollin’ in the aisles, right? I already know you’re a strong Trainer, so let’s get this show on the road!

Oh god her sprite is just so terrible.

L29 mienfoo. What, really? That’s how high level the pokemon of the speedbump trainers were. And wow is inkay suited. It uses powerup punch, I use swagger, it knocks out half its health, then I reverse the stat changes in time for it to try to attack again. Then the gym leader uses two hyper potions until I get lucky with a critical hit. L32 hawlucha, unremarkable. L28 machoke vs my honedge. It tries to leer me to death. It isn’t very effective.

And…that’s it, apparently. Damn.

Espurr’s evolving! Meowstic! And that does indeed look very different from the one alt-me fielded.

Oh! I have been defeated! Alack, alay! Lady Korrina gave a terrible display! This is it. I must give up my title and admit that your strength far exceeds– Just teasing! But here’s your Badge. Boy, you’ll be rolling in ’em soon! And now I have the rumble badge, and pokemon will obey to L50. It seems to be specifying trading, so I guess your own still obey you forever. Also, I can now surf, if only I had that HM.

Then she says now I can climb the tower of mastery.

I’m sorry for sending you this way and that. I swear, I’m not giving you the runaround! Well, what are you doing, then?

You’ve done great rolling with the punches. So great I’d like to ask you a favor… Battle me again, won’t you? But this time, it won’t be just another Gym Battle… I want a battle between equals! As two Trainers who can use Mega Evolution! I’ll be waiting for you with Lucario at the top of the Tower of Mastery!

Yeah whatever.

Anyway! Meowstic is adorable – more so now, even. Also, she still doesn’t like me touching her ears. I think I like espurr’s weirder looks a bit more, though.

But anyway, back to the runaround. To the tower.

Apparently, Pinkie and stupid title were just standing here this whole time.

Oh! Korrina, I mean the Mega Evolution successor, is waiting for you at the top of the tower!

So up. At the first room, someone mentions that apparently a lucario was the first mega evolution. Then the next room makes this more obvious. Also, apparently the current guru is the descendant of the first guy. So how exactly am I figuring anything out here? Next room establishes the stalker professor hung out here to learn about it but decided to quit because he didn’t have what it took, whatever that was. Further suggesting I’m not figuring anything new out.

Oh well. The tower is very pretty.

Up top, there’s Korrina again, now with her lucario.

I really love this place! When I’m here with my Pokemon, looking at the wide-open sky above, all my worries disappear, and I feel like I can do anything! Thanks for coming all the way up here. It was decided that this must be the place where the Mega Ring is handed over. Something about making sure we never forget to set our sights as high as the sky.

See, generally I like all this tradition and stuff, but it just does not work with a plotline about discovering mega evolution.

And here it is–your very own Mega Ring! It’s in the shape of a bracelet, so it’s super easy to wear!

…the ring is a bracelet.

…fine. Fine.

So she suggests I try that out, sure it’ll work, but actually I haven’t gotten a blastoise yet.

Hmm? Lucario, what’s wrong?

Grrrooof! the lucario spiky-dialogue-boxes.

And yep, wants to go with me. She asks if it’s sure. It is.

I don’t know what to say… I’m a bit shocked that some traveling Trainer seems to have a stronger bond with you than I do…

It really doesn’t make any sense, does it?

Haha! well, she must be something special! So, whaddya say, Trainer?

I say that the game shouldn’t have given me early access to riolu if this was going to be a plot point.

Will you and Lucario battle against me and my Lucario?

Makes no sense but yeah absolutely. And she helpfully adds that both have the special mega evolution stone.

I can feel Lucario’s passion. Perhaps it’s just that it doesn’t want to lose to the other Lucario, but it may be that it’s just on the same wavelength as you…

Cutscene shifts. Ready, Lucario? Then a spikeybox scream of Let’s give it all we’ve got!

And now her sprite’s shifted to be somewhat better and her title’s shifted to Successor Korrina.

And then Serena touches her digivice and Lucario digivolves to a form with more colors. Korrina goes on about how amazing our bond is, which is to say the one on my side was slightly faster so it got the second hit, while hers did more damage in the one hit it did get.

And now I’m getting the choice of taking the lucario or not. Awkward! I totally don’t need it, and also I’ve already got one I just finished raising and then dumping, and it’s just weird to be taking someone else’s pokemon. But that’s what it wants, so…yes.

Interestingly, I get the option of nicknaming it, which would suggest what’s going on is different than getting a traded pokemon.

As long as Pokemon and Trainers have the kindness to care for each other and give each other courage, the world will be full of smiles!

Well, that sure was a thing.

You know, the comparisons to Digimon doesn’t just stop with the evolution. This game has been throwing pokemon at me, and I’ve currently got two and a half teams of new pokemon, plus all the old pokemon I raised with exp share. I currently have a whole box of evolved pokemon.

In the first Digimon game, you have a single creature that grows up, changes into different monsters based on how you raise its stats, and eventually grows old, dies and reincarnates as a baby for you to raise again. It’s completely dependent on you for care, and it’s actually a struggle in the early game to make sure you’ve got enough food for it.

But in Pokemon, you’ve always had the option of swapping around pokemon at will. Coliseum was the closest it got to really restricting your choices, and I felt a lot more attached to the umbreon and espeon I started with as a result. The original games made it hard to swap pokemon because the wild ones were usually so much lower in level (and sharing experience was far more difficult when you had to do it by swapping the pokemon in and out of battle, plus TMs being single use meant you couldn’t afford to use them unless you were sure you wanted that pokemon), so you ended up at least somewhat attached to your pokemon just by familiarity. Even BW, which made changing around your team incredibly easy, managed to accomplish some of this just by not offering many different pokemon. And BW2 did the special pokemon thing right with N’s zoroa, where you get it at a low level for a sane reason, it’s the only one in the game and it’s got an evolution off in the distance if you raise it.

This game is set up really well to let you bond with pokemon, but the rest of the mechanics don’t serve that at all. There are too many options, and then on top of that doing stuff like handing me a pokemon I’ve already raised, and out of the blue? The game just kept saying that for some reason, one of the two lucario thought I was great. Then it joins me. I don’t need it, I didn’t earn it, and all it does is make it so I didn’t get to find out mega evolution on my own, I get that handed to me too in the process.

(Really, the pampering mechanic belongs in BW. Being able to coddle my liepard would have let me keep her on my team longer despite her atrocious stats, and not having a million options makes having suboptimal pokemon seem less like deliberately punishing yourself.)

(But then, the problem of too many pokemon has been with us since at least the third generation, and even the second is pushing things. That’s why BW would have worked better for this, they blocked access to the back catalogue and left you with only the current pokemon, which made it manageable again. But that has its own problems for a series that’s based around getting all of them.)