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:

How Do You Even BUILD a Hydraulic Castle?

Well, any suspension of disbelief or emotional involvement I've had in this game is now totally gone, killed, and burned.  This is just total nonsense.

As soon as I beat the Elite 4 and witnessed N put the finishing touches on his win against Alder, I was shown a cutscene of Team Plasma re-entering the story.  There is no way to describe what happened without losing something in the transition because I'm so shocked and confused at the absurdity of it all, so click this to see it yourself... Go ahead, I'll wait...

...

Apparently what their new, genius, totally-going-to-work-this-time plan entails is to build an underground castle beneath the Pokemon League HQ, then to have N become the League Champion (which somehow helps them in their hostile takeover), and finally to smash the castle up through the surface to take the League hostage.

This is something that has just happened.

Ignoring obvious questions like what ridiculous cost and time investment would go into building a castle like this (and inventing a new kind of hard-as-diamond substance that could withstand this kind of crushing force) as well as how the hell they have been able to do this without the people from the League HQ just looking out their windows to notice all the obvious construction equipment necessary for this undertaking, I still have to ask why building the underground castle would be preferable to just invading the Pokemon League in general?

The Greeks fought and won the battle of Marathon, they didn't build a pyramid next to the Persian camps and claim victory.  The English drove the French away at the Battle of Agincourt by shooting them with their bows, not by baking them a better cake.  Richard the Lionheart drove off Saladin's footmen at the Battle of Arsuf by sending in his cavalry, not by making a better science project than him.  You don't win wars by building castles and you can't take over the Pokemon League HQ just because you have a more impressive building!

Once again Team Plasma is caught throwing ideas at the wall and checking on what sticks.  I think I need to lie down for a bit...

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:

Reshiram

As soon as I left the building, I was met by the namby-pamby squad of Cheren and Bianca who went on about...something or other...I don't really pay attention to what they say anymore. Anyways, Gymleader Bryce decided to join us where he pointed out that there were ninjas hiding behind our backs...no clue how we didn't notice this without his help...

I had seen these ninjas before--they're N's personal guard and they call themselves the shadow triad--why are they called the shadow triad? Why, because they lack subtlety of course!

They told me to meet N at Dragonspiral Tower, which has now been hyped-up more than Y2K, and I gladly obliged.


Dragonspiral Tower is a fairly boring ruin which is populated entirely by two things: pokemon called Golette (which I caught) and Team Plasma. After battling twenty-something of the goons and reaching the top without breaking a sweat, I found N at the top with what must have been the most gigantic pigeon in the universe--which he revealed to be the legendary pokemon Reshiram whose only rival, apparently, is a pokemon called Zekrom, the yang to his yin.

Right before N flew away upon the back of Reshiram, he told me that I should definitely awaken the second apocalyptic legendary pokemon, Zekrom. Now let me get one thing straight--it is never a good idea to awaken a pokemon whose last appearance caused the world to be destroyed in a flash of hellfire--and this is a fact that I just assumed everyone else agreed with me on. But as soon as I met up with Alder, Bryce, the pimp of the year, and the namby-pamby squad, they seemed to be under the impression that it was a good idea to listen to the bad guys and awaken the god of destruction.

Regardless of whether or not a ten-year-old boy had the ability to control a being from beyond time and space whose every movement causes ripples through reality and drive people in futures for decades to come insane, I just thought that it was never a good idea to play right into the plans of the bad guys.

However, this is a pokemon game and it looks like its time for the whole Team Plasma ordeal to be taken care of, so its off to Relic Castle!

Current Squad:

...the Fu--

I saw a trainer with a new kind of pokemon that I wanted and found out it was nearby, so I immediately set off--but Bianca caught me trying to leave to do something constructive so she stopped me and forced me to go see a Pokemon musical with her and play dress-up with her Munna and my "Pinky"...I wish I could be making this up, I really do. Of course I dressed Pinky up in a bitching tophat and monocle because she's a playah.

Afterward there was this scene with her dad coming to take her home and her crying and stuff and something about how being different is a good thing but honestly at this point the situation is this: she took me to play dress up and I really just want her gone.  I was definitely rooting for the dad on this one...

In my exploration of Nimbasa City, I stumbled upon "N" who decided that he was into little boys and invited me onto the Ferris Wheel with him to "look for [Team Plasma] there"...yeah, sounds like a trap to me too.

But I have no control over my character at this point--most likely because he, like myself, is paralyzed with fear--so I follow him on, where he reveals that he is the king of Team Plasma and that he is going to beat the Pokemon Champion and that the only way for me to defeat him is to collect all the gym badges and beat him at the Pokemon League...because apparently all those other times I whupped his sorry ass (including mere moments before!) didn't count. Also, does this seem contrived or what?In my exploration of the surrounding areas--including some desert ruins, I caught Yamask, Maracacti, and Trubbish. Yamask is a ghost type with some potential so I gave "Pinky" the boot. Then I found the name rater and changed "A"'s name to "Deedoon" and it soon evolved into Tranquill. It evolved at a fairly arbitrary level too...like at 21 or 23 or something so I feel like it was just refusing to do so before I renamed it...Looks like my first squadmember has reached their highest evolution! At least I hope these other guys evolve...

Current Squad: