SS Anne time!

Ah, the quality AI. It’s sad to think we haven’t improved from this in a whole decade.

Pikachu’s attack is great, so it’s good to keep something physical on the movelist. It’s not until second gen with the light ball that it’ll be anything decent in the special attack front.

Not nearly enough water pokemon on the ship.

As you can see. You’d think Pikachu would be able to sweep through SS Anne, but nope.

The battles are also a bit more boring overall, because a number of characters originally had pikachus and those were removed from everyone else’s team.

Well, time to retreat and heal. For some reason, you can no longer do it on the ship and have to trek all the way back.

I think this is the room that I’m supposed to be using for that, in fact.

Luckily, Pikachu’s still fine with me despite my running my team into the ground solely because I was too lazy to take the time to head to the pokecenter before now.

FINALLY.

The biggest issue with using a variety of pokemon is how so many of them take forever to get proper moves.

And some learn those moves too late to ever be useful.

It was so exciting when my paras first learned leech life, because back in Mt. Moon, that move was great – the zubat would prolong battle by stealing your pokemon’s HP, and while paras doesn’t have supersonic, it does have status options. But leech life is far too weak to do you the slightest bit of good by this point.

While this is frustrating, it’s the sort of frustrating I kind of like – you can leave it, or find an item to use up, or retreat to dump items and then come back. It’s not a major mechanic, but it does force you to make a decision and rash ones can screw you over.

Ah, fearow. I think part of my love for them is that they’ve got huge wings. The pidgey line are just generally big round birds, while the fearow have slimmer bodies with giant wings.

GOD DAMMIT.

I hate selfdestruct more than anything. Stop stealing my exp!

Welp, time to heal again. I’ve cleared everything in the ship except one final battle…

And now, for that final battle.

As you can see, he’s just not that impressive.

And his eevee still hasn’t evolved.

That’s one area eevee is lacking as a starter. In the original set, your rival’s team shows clearer progression by having the second stage evolution show up, then the third once he’s gotten really strong. Here, it’s just going to be eevee until it isn’t.

Pikachu is far too happy about this.

Oh, right, I just cleared my pack exactly enough to get the new goodies.

Problem solved.

The whole scene replays if you exit and reenter without getting the cut HM.

Yeah you told me that already and apparently you’ll be back to vomiting after I leave. Still, somehow the boat will manage to get out of the harbor.

Goodbye forever, cruise ship.

Note the lack of Pikachu. I’m apparently standing on it.

Well, now that I have cut…

And one pokemon that can use it (that was close) it’s time to enter.

Your thoughts, Pikachu?

Right then.

They really should’ve given these guys additional dialogue, especially since they must have known plenty of people who’d already played the first set would play these and it’d come up.

As you can see, for some reason Surge’s dialogue is completely new while still saying basically the same stuff. As Brock and Misty are much more important characters, it’d unclear why he’s the one to get this treatment.

Well, that wasn’t particularly memorable, but I did reenact part of the anime there by accident.

Which means, of course…

This is definitely the best done of the three starter gifts.

And apparently I’m the only one with a thunderbadge around, or at least the only one who bothers talking to her. Going by the gyms themselves, Gary and I are the only ones to get any of them, so perhaps she really has no other options, and that’s why she hands it right over when I ask again.

Assuming you mean “keep it in a box forever”, sure!

Well now. Team’s about equal level again. Time to go check out Diglett Tunnel.

Luck is on my side today!

And Pikachu approves of my capturing yet another of its brethren.

I don’t have the pokemon needed for the trade beyond (forgot to get an extra clefairy) so I’ll skip the rest of the tunnel for now.

Quick stat comparisons: