The Road to Snowbelle City

The road to Couriway town brought me to an optional cave called the "Terminus Cave".  I took some time to explore the cave, coming out with a small fortune in random items, the TM for Shadow Ball (nice!), and a bunch of pokemon: Pupitar, Durant, Sandslash, Graveler, Gurdurr, and Torkoal.  When I reached the lowest part of the cave I met a character blocking a doorway who basically told me to come back when I have become the champion.  Nintendo must be hiding Mewtwo back there.

Just you wait...

When I reached the town, the Professor Sycamore found me and thanked me for killing his friend Lysandre.  Not in these words exactly but I could read between the lines well enough.  He then gave me the HM for Waterfall.  This is one item which I have been waiting nearly the entire game for because Nintendo is very good at teasing new areas to the adventurous.  "Hey, look!  A waterfall and several shiny items right out of reach, bet you can't wait to come back here, huh?"  Jerks.

He then battled me with his Venusaur, Blastoise, and Charizard.  I beat him handily, but it was still a fun battle anyways.  He ran off afterwards, congratulating me and mumbling something about a surprise.  Last surprise was a Bulbasaur, so I hope his next surprise starts with a C and breathes fire.

...

I meant Charmander.  I hope he gives me a Charmander.

The route ahead took me over a swampy gorge.  I didn't have to explore the swamp to cross, but I did anyways and caught a fucking Stunfisk.  No I don't mean a Stunfisk, I mean a fucking stunfisk because stunfisk is the most odious pokemon of all time.

As I crossed the bridge, three of the four Pokemon thieves appeared out of nowhere and challenged me to a battle.  I beat Serena's (the one who Nintendo was building-up to turn into my character's love interest in the game.  Looking back, glad that didn't happen) Delphox handily and Tierno (the one whose only trait is "likes to dance") only put up a slight fight (heh) with his Crawdaunt. 

The third battle was against Tierno (the quiet one) and it was actually quite difficult.  He had a Raichu, a Florges, and an Aerodactyl.  The first two of these were easy enough to beat, but his Aerodactyl outsped everyone in my team, including Pikachu, so I didn't even have the chance to attack before many of my pokemon were knocked-out.  In the end, I stalled it to death with Hippowdon using Yawn while Leech Seed took its health down.  Maybe Yawn/Roar/Earthquake/Toxic isn't the set to be running on this guy...at least not in-game.  I'll change it soon.

I made it to Snowbelle, the town of perpetual winter and bad ice puns, and found that the gymleader, Wulfric (the most Northern-sounding name of all time) had gone into the nearby forest to train.  I guess the path ahead is through the greenery!

Current Squad:

GRENINJA/Froakles/lvl.46
VENUSAUR/Venus/lvl.45
FLAREON/lvl.45
SCRAFTY/Scrappy/lvl.44
HIPPOWDON*/Leviathan/lvl.44
AERODACTYL/Scarydactyl/lvl.46

On Rotation: Lucario, Gardevoir, Skrelp, Pikachu, Haunter

Surfin' Route 12

YES, MEGA-AERODACTYL.  YES, MEGA-AERODACTYL.  YES.

What a hugely powerful pokemon.  A bit over-designed though, what is the deal with adding ridiculous amounts of spikes to a pokemon and calling it a day these days?

 I am actually worried if I just beat the game already.  If the Mega-Evolution Guru is to be believed, I am the only Mega-Evolution user (the Mega-Evolution Descendent or something dumb like that) and as a result, Mega-Aerodactyl is going to go on a rampage throughout this game. 

What is more is that I have already found items called "Venusaurite" and "Ampharosite".  I think I should just be given the game-winning trophy now, as Mega-Aerodactyl is just a monster...and Mega-Venusaur?  I can't even...
____________________________________

The road to Courmaline City was long and hard (heh, heh), but started, as all difficult journeys do, with a ray of sunshine:  A trainer gave me his Lapras as a gift (happy days!).  After this, I was able to test out my brand new HM: Surf on a huge expanse of water and ended-up in an area called "Sea-Spirit's Den". 

Seems I got my hopes up too easily though because the Sea-Spirit's Den was a single-room cave with nothing at all in it--no pokemon, no hidden items, nothing.  This actually reminded me of a similar room I stumbled upon while I was lost in the Reflecting Cave--a big room where you would normally find something like a Lugia or an Articuno.  Needless to say this will be an important site...later...Probably going to be where some Water-legendary is going to be found (since we know Nintendo just loves throwing around the legendaries in their recent games).

After quite the journey, I found myself in Courmaline City, which, apparently, is right next door to a power-plant--a fact that every person in the town was quick to remind me of while musing about how someone should go and check it out since there is no power in Paris--erhm--Lumiose City.  I've been out of Lumiose City for at least two weeks--and no one's even checked to see if the lights are still on in the Power Plant?

My rival Serena told me to meet her in front of the gym for a battle (incidentally, it was a grass-type gym)--and since I was ready this time, I took my Flareon and burned her sorry Quilladin to the ground.  Revenge was so sweet.

Current Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.28
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.28
FLAREON/Hotfoot/lvl.26
FLOETTE/Pixie/lvl.27
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.28
AERODACTYL/Scarydactyl/lvl.29

On Rotation: Kirlia, Pikachu, Hippopotas, Lucario

Korrina's Punchy Pokemon

So, giant tribute to the greatness of our Lord Lucario aside, there was really nothing to the Tower of Mastery--it was just a huge room with a spiraling staircase that I wasn't allowed to ascend.

Time to earn a gym badge!

The Shalour City Gym was a Fighting Gym inside a skate park, and while a fighting gym may have been a huge problem in my Pokemon White playthrough with my massive weakness to Fighting types in my team, I came into this gym with a certain amount of swagger and confidence.

Gymkiller Squad #3: The Punch-Takers

 

Scraggy - Intimidate coverage to soften the blow of her physical pokemon
Floette - Fairy type resistance against Fighting attacks.
Kirlia - Confusion plus a double resistance to fighting moves.
Flareon - Fire Fang's possibility of Burn is too tempting not to bring in.
Ivysaur - Poison Typing resists fighting attacks, Leech Seed + Sleep Powder are my friend.
Aerodactyl - For cleanup/suicide revenge-killing.

I made note of all of the level 28+ pokemon running around in the gym and I realized just how under-leveled my squad was--which I guess is the tradeoff for being able to rotate more than six members in and out of the team.

After I beat all four trainers in the gym, Gymleader Korrina jumped down from the ceiling to challenge me in the center of the room, announcing her appearence as if she were the special guest star on some weird pokemon sitcom.

Normally I wouldn't make note of this, but Korrina is just so...weird.  I have no clue what her personality is--I'm not sure if they're going for "over-the-top" or "thinks she is a movie star" or "flashbacks of her service in the Great War"--but she just comes across as kind of bonkers.  And that helmet is definitely not helping her out.

I was sure my strategy of cycling Scraggy in-and-out of battle to continuously intimidate opponents (lowering their attack after each switch-in) while tanking hits with my fighting-resistant pokemon was a winning one.  She led with Mienfoo and after lowering her attack with my Scraggy, I switched to Pixie to take hits and use Fairy attacks to whittle it down.  This is the point where I was introduced to the attack "Power-Up Punch", which raised Mienfoo's attack with each hit.  DAMN, time to change strategies.

I barely took out Mienfoo with Floette and Korrina next sent out a high-level Machoke to clean-up Floette and Scraggy.  Scraggy was able to lower the Machoke's attack enough to survive exactly one hit before being taken out by another "Power-Up Punch", and Kirlia was able to cripple the Machoke before falling to yet another Punch.  This, of course, prompted Korrina to use a Hyper potion. DOUBLE DAMN.

At this point, I was staring at a Machoke with a +5 boosted Attacking stat (which is the same as if his attacks were at 3.5x strength) with only Flareon, Ivysaur, and Aerodactyl.  After Flareon was unable to burn the Machoke with Fire Fang, and Korrina used yet another Hyper Potion, I realized it was Aerodactyl or bust.

In the end, it was Aerodactyl and NOT bust, as Scarydactyl took out the (now fully-powered at +6 Attack) Machoke in two hits.  Her final pokemon was Hawlucha--and not Lucario as I expected (since she had Lucario with her both times I saw her in the past). 

At the end of the match, she gave me her badge and tried to make what I think was a joke about how she has to re-evaluate her life after her loss to me.  I'm not sure if this is a just poor attempt at humor or Nintendo/Gamefreak taking irony to the highest possible level--with their eye-rolling eyes coming right out of their heads due to self-aware camp.

She told me to battle her again at the Tower of Mastery.  Since I have already kicked her ass on two separate occasions, I am kind of getting sick of this charade.

Current Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.27
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.26
FLAREON/Hotfoot/lvl.25
FLOETTE/Pixie/lvl.23
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.24
AERODACTYL/Scarydactyl/lvl.26

On Rotation: Pikachu/Hippopotas/Kirlia

Rocky Road...Heh Heh

On my way back through Ambrette Town I resurrected my two fossil pokemon from the Sail Fossil and the Old Amber to get Amaura and Aerodactyl.  Normally I would take the adorable Amaura over Aerodactyl because I am a five-year-old girl at heart, but I always wanted a team with an Aerodactyl since Red version, plus I wanted a flier.  So I tearfully (or not so tearfully) condemned Amaura (along with Doduo) to join the legions of pokemon in my PC, never to see the light of day again.

Route 8 to Cyllage City was a cliff-side beach, and the only pokemon I were able to find were from fishing (Luvdisc, damn) and from using Rock Smash (Dwebble, also damn).  I finally got Ralts to evolve into Kirlia, and, not to be outdone, Flabebe evolved into Floette.  This is fortunate because they were both really starting to fall behind in terms of reliability, but tough on me because I was THIS CLOSE to cutting my team down by one.

After screwing around with the Item-Finder looking for buried treasure (of which, I was surprised, I found TONS) in the sand, I finally found the city--a city built into the side of the cliff overlooking the shallow seas (and I apologize for that absolute monster of a sentence).  I have to applaud the geography of this game--as Nintendo is DEFINITELY taking advantage of the 3DS' unique ability to put images discernibly into either the foreground or the background of the screen.

But enough of that nerd talk, let's fight some pokemon.

Exploring ahead I caught a Golett and of course I caught an Eevee, forcing me to make yet another ridiculously hard team decision.  It's a good thing you gain exp by catching pokemon in this game cause I don't think I've defeated a wild pokemon since Viridian--erhm--Santalune Forest.

In the end, I chose Flareon and promised myself that this would be the last pokemon I would put into my squad without taking someone else out first.

The advantage to having nine pokemon on rotation in my squad (ten if you count my HM slave/pickup whore: Zigzagoon) is that as soon as I found out that Cyllage sported a Rock-Type Gym, I immediately deposited Hippopotas, Pikachu, and Flareon in preparation for the upcoming match.  Pikachu is historically bad against Rock types (technically Ground types, but I'm not taking any chances), Flareon is outright weak against rock attacks, and Hippopotas' ability to generate Sandstorms strengthens all Rock pokemon on the field (ouch).

And with my team of Rock-destroyers handy, I set off to challenge the Gymleader Grant, the Rock Jock.

Rock-Destroyer Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.19
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.20
KIRLIA/Empath/lvl.20
FLOETTE/Pixie/lvl.20
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.18
AERODACTYL/Dactyl/lvl.20

On Rotation: Flareon, Pikachu, Hippopotas