A Dirty Little Horde

Full Disclosure:  this post took a little long to get out because I got a bit lost in Lumiose City.  It's not like it is hard to navigate, it's just really really big and I'm one of the brand of gaming scum called "completionists" who have to do and see everything before moving on.  The thing is the city is not even all unlocked yet.  By this, I mean that AS PER USUAL, the game has invented some arbitrary reason why certain streets or routes are closed.  This time, it is because the power is out in the northern part of the city.  At least the reasoning in this game totally makes sense, I remember one time when I was a kid where there was no electricity in my town and I also couldn't walk around...outside...in broad daylight.

No, wait, that's right, that never happened and never would.

I made my way to the next route and my next pokemon-catching spree, where I picked-up Doduo for the active team.  It was an obvious choice between him and Farfetch'd, despite the fact that Farfetch'd (and Lickitung, for that matter) is something of a closet favorite of mine.

The Gang of Pokemon Thieves

Here, I met-up with two "supporting cast" characters of the Gang of Pokemon Thieves (my "friends"), Tierno and Trevor.  Tierno is a big guy whose only character trait is that he likes to dance (something that the game will remind you of incessantly), and Trevor's only character traits are that he is shy and smart.  Glad to have such deep and thoughtful characters this go-around!  Go Team!


Trevor gave me some Honey (and I'm glad that I resisted leading with the obvious misleading pun "Trevor gave me some sugar") to smear all over my body (okay, that line got just as creepy just as fast) to attract hordes of pokemon in tall grass.

Once again, completionist scum that I am, I had to try this out, wherein I was set-upon by five Scraggy.  "Awesome!" I thought, "time to add my favorite pokemon from white version back into my team!"

Let me preface this next point with a revelation about my play style: I hate to miss with a move.  As a matter of fact, I have never had a pokemon with the moves Fire Blast, Thunder, or Hydropump, because I would rather sacrifice the extra power for perfect accuracy (all of these moves have a 70% hit rate, and I use instead Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, and Surf respectively). 

For me, there has never been anything as terrifying as this: seeing all five Scraggy use Sand Attack on me in one turn.

This is bad enough--but then it just got worse, after my move missed, they all used Leer.  At this point I snapped and awoke several hours later in strange surroundings.

Honestly, this was one of the toughest matches I've had, or at least the most frustrating; the gang of Scraggy decimated my squad while I whittled their number down.  In the end I was reduced to just Flabebe (and tears, can't forget the tears), who I found out has a type advantage with Fairy over either Fighting or Dark (the move was super-effective against Scraggy, but Scraggy is Fight/Dark, so I'm not sure which type it was strong against) and was able to capture one of the Scraggy for my team. 

Feeling good about myself, I made it to the next town, Camphrier Town, where the guy I was supposed to talk to about "Mega-Evolutions" there told me to leave.  Obviously, it was time to call it a day.

Current Squad:

FROAKIE/Froakles/lvl.13
BULBASAUR/Bulby/lvl.13
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.11
DODUO/Birdface/lvl.10
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.11
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.5

On Rotation: Ralts, Zigzagoon

The Good Kind of Tough Choices

I ended-up spending a lot more time than I expected screwing-around in the Route 4 hedge maze getting a feel for this new fairy type and I still haven't decided on whether I prefer Ralts (who was on my main team back when I played Sapphire Version and has always been a sleeper favorite of mine) or this Dandelion thing I just caught.  Ralts is a known commodity, but Flabebe, as I have found after fighting the scores of Combee that inhabit Route 4,  is something of a Special Defense Tank.  I have always been more of a fan of stall-teams, probably because I'm such a huge pussy, so having a Special Tank like Flabebe is fairly fulfilling for me.  For now I'm just going to keep a seven-pokemon rotating roster until I decide I'm tired of something.  These kind of tough choices are the good kind, I feel.

Professor Sycamore as he appears in Pokemon Red

As soon as I made it to Glitch City (Lumiose City), I met up with Professor Sycamore, who immediately challenged me to a battle.  I was expecting a battle against three magnemite or maybe a
Porygon, a Grimer, and a Cubone (These are typical pokemon carried by a "Super-Nerd") or something weird like that, but he surprised me with Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle.

Updates: Fire type added

And it is at exactly this moment that I found out that Fairy Type Attacks are not very effective against Fire Type Pokemon (sigh).  I updated my chart to reflect this new data, but Flabebe still has not forgiven me for this oversight.


-----------------------------------------
I'm not quite sure if I was good all this year, but apparently Christmas came for me anyways: Professor Sycamore gave me my choice of his three pokemon.  I was thinking of picking up Charmander because I really wanted to see that Charizard in 3D, but I decided to stick to my roots and pick Bulbasaur--who was my very first pokemon ever.  I named him "Bulby".

Which brings up that question of what to do with my pokemon team--which is now made up of eight pokemon.  Bulbasaur, Froakie and Raich--I mean, Pikachu are non-negotiable and I'm still pretty high on Flabebe and Ralts...

Guess I have an eight-pokemon cycle for now!

My gang of pokemon-thieving friends arrived just after the battle so that Professor Sycamore could give us all a nice pep talk about following our dreams and finding others who have different views or some "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" nonsense like that. I really wasn't paying attention, I was too high on Bulbasaur at this point--which is a problem because I think he said something important about Mega-Evolving Bulbasaur in his monologue and I definitely missed it.  Hopefully this isn't going to be a problem (SPOILER: it probably is).

On the way out the door I met the obvious villain-du-jour Lysandre.  Why did I immediately identify him as the villain?  Because he said he wanted to save the world.  Only bad
guys say things like that, this is the first thing you learn at protagonist school.  I should have been intimidated, but who can be scared of a guy named Lysandre?  That's like being afraid of a guy named Lloyd!

Current Squad:

FROAKIE/Froakles/lvl.13
BULBASAUR/Bulby/lvl.10
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.11
BUTTERFREE/Felix/lvl.11
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.11
FARFETCH'D/Quacklin'/lvl.11

On Rotation: Ralts, Zigzagoon

Enter the Fairy

I knew before I started the game that there was a new pokemon type to be introduced--the Fairy Type, but the only other thing I knew about it was that it was meant to be a true counter to the Overpowered Dragon-Type.

The Only Dragon...

Quick Sidenote:  I always thought the Dragon Type was stupid and unnecessary, while all the other types seem to denote the pokemon's element or skills, the Dragon Type is just a description (okay, so Bug and Ghost are similar, but I always thought of Ghost as more of a "Magic" or "Spirit" type and Bug...well, fine, Bug type is dumb too).

I know dragon pokemon are popular and kind of cool-looking (for the most part), but I am certain that any of these pokemon with "Dragon" typing could just as easily be described by other types.  Plus, please explain to me what "Dragonbreath" actually is--and how it is different from "FireBreath" or "Hyperbeam".

So now there is Fairy Type.  Fine.  My idea for the past three generations was a new type called "TECH", which would include all the pokemon with artificial or cyber properties.  Retroactively, this would apply to Porygon, as well as possibly Magnezone, Genesect, Voltorb, and Electivire. I mean, this is no worse than the Ghost type, which only had two evolutionary lines before generation 3, or that damned Dragon type whose only members were the Dratini family and Kingdra that same game.

But no, Fairy type it is...another type where I'm not sure what the defining characteristic is.  I mean, grass pokemon channel nature, fire pokemon are hot, flying pokemon fly, and fairy pokemon...leap daintily from flower to flower?  What exactly makes a fairy pokemon?

---------------------------
I know I could just look up the answers, but because I am a scientist I want to figure out the Fairy Type's combat effectiveness by experimentation, so I made this work-in-progress chart to keep my results. 

I caught the new fairy pokemon Flabebe as well as Ralts, who was changed to Psychic/Fairy type--and removed Spewpa from my squad (becasue I only have room for one bug at the moment and Felix is my favorite).  Flabebe and Ralts are currently on rotation until I can decide which one deserves the spot more.

Current Squad:

FROAKIE/Froakles/lvl.13
BUTTERFREE/Felix/lvl.11
ZIGZAGOON/Ziggy/lvl.11
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.8
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.11
FARFETCH'D/Quacklin'/lvl.11

On Rotation: Ralts