Climbing the Underground Space Castle

As I started my journey up the tower to the obvious final boss stage to fight "N" and his giant space pigeon Reshiram, I came across the six sages.  Each one of these stepped forward and told me a useful or not-so-useful life tip: "All mistakes that are not prepared for are other mistakes," "Wisdom is the forsight of knowledge," "An apple a day makes the world go blind,"...

What a dumb game, I can't be the only one who thinks that this is just stupid, right? Right?...guys?...

I thought this would be a six-versus-one battle (which would have been fun), but I was surprised when I got instead a cutscene: all eight gymleaders showed-up to back me up.  Full disclosure: this was pretty cool--which is weird because everything else in the past hour of playing time has sucked.

It turns out that Team Plasma's big plan has always been to sabotage the PC system to release all of the trainers' pokemon.  *INSERT SLOW CLAP FOR GENUINELY CLEVER PLAN*.  My only question is why they needed the Dragonite skull from the museum at the start of the game--or all of those pep rallies--or the underground space castle build next to the pokemon league.  Surely this is the sort of plan that should be executed "Ocean's Eleven" style (with a cool Frank Sinatra tune playing in the background)?  I am very disappointed in Nintendo for not casting George Clooney as "N" and Brad Pitt as "Ghestis".

Here are things I found on the way to the top:

CREEEEEEEPY

-N's creepy ass pedophilia room -->
-A pokemon storage PC
-A pokemon center

This is clearly the worst evil lair ever.  Ghestis even cheered me on!  He wished me luck!  Who the hell writes these characters, this incessant coddling is too much!

As I made it to the top, N called for his "Hyper-Pigeon" Reshiram to battle me--Reshiram broke through the wall to get in, which must end-up costing Team Plasma a lot of money in the long run on renovations, and Zekrom appeared out of the orb I was carrying.  Okay game, I see where you are going with this.

I fought Zekrom, but apparently killing him doesn't do anything and you are REQUIRED to catch him. UGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH, FIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNE!

Oh, by the way, I got rid of that dumb Psychic type since he was only good at sucking and dying.  Picked-up Rufflet from the PC.


Current Squad:

The Elite Four (in no particular order)

Every team has its own feel to it.  Some teams are build around type synergy, some teams around setting-up one particular pokemon for a sweep, and stall teams (my favorite) are based upon wearing down your foe from passive effects.  MY team's strategy is currently to overpower my opponents through a combination of heavy hitters and infinity healing potions.

So, I made my traditional $100 billion purchase of HYPER POTIONS and REVIVES at the pokemart and it came time to fight the Elite Four!

The cool thing about this installment in the series is that the Elite Four are all of comparable difficulty and level--and that you can fight them in whatever order you want.  This is fresh and provocative and brilliant and all sorts of fun, expensive words.

Noticing that I have yet to--and will most likely never--address my glaring weakness to FIGHTING pokemon, I chose to battle Marshal the fighting champion first (so that if I screwed up I could just rage quit to my pre-battle save).  I was surprised when the battle went by easily--and even more surprised that the brand-new psychic type that I evolved from Elglelym (or whatever the hell his name is) was totally useless.  He was KOed on turn 1 and I decided not to waste the revive on him.  As far as I'm concerned it's now a 5-pokemon team.

Next I fought Grimsley the Dark trainer (as opposed to his brothers "Grim-Darkstein", "Mr. Darknessburg", and "Admiral NotSoNiceGuyManGuy") and won handily.  Apparently, Red, Scrappy, and Tusks are the anchors of my team of "powerhouses that lack finesse".  There was really no challenge in these supposed champions, and they yielded without any problems.

That is the thing about the pokemon world though--a gymleader or elite four champion is meant to yield to a trainer of sufficient strength and skill.  Gymleaders in the Pokemon world are trainers who exhibit and display the strengths and skills that a candidate on their journey for the championship is meant to have at that point in their training.  They are basically the final exams of the Pokemon world, meant to test your skill at the badge level at which you challenge them.  As a result, a
challenge at the Rank 1 "BOULDER LEVEL" (against Brock) requires a certain knowledge of type resistances and overcoming defenses.  Since this is the most basic level, it is typically very easy and Brock, despite being a trainer of obvious skill and experience, has the job of yielding to a trainer of sufficient skill and foresight.  As a kid I always wondered what fighting Brock would be like if you could fight him at the Rank 8 "BOULDER LEVEL" (as my last gymleader).  Would he be such a pushover?  I bet he would have a super-powerful Rhydon with some crazy move like BLIZZARD to trick up grass types who think they get a free pass.

These four were easy and I beat the Psychic trainer Caitlin and the Ghost trainer Shauntal handily.  From here I went on to battle Alder and, surprise, surprise, N was there and he beat me to it so I'll be battling him instead.  Seems like Black and White version isn't done ripping off the previous games after all!

Current Team: