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

Enter the Fashion Police

After riding on a Rhyhorn to get to the Glittering Cave, I started poking around for the professor there who was supposed to tell me about Mega Evolutions.  This would be the fourth scientist I was sent to see about this along this crazy quest train, so my hopes were definitely not high that this would resolve my problem, especially considering that I was only sent to see this scientist, a paleontologist, because the Mega stones are technically rocks and fossils are also technically rocks.  Woohoo Pokemon logic!!!

In this cave, I found the villains of the game, Team Flare.

If Team Aqua was a caricature of a villain, then Team Flare is more of a caricature of a caricature of a typical pokemon villain, and I know this weird fractal statement makes little sense, but neither does Team Flare.  The first thing that the first Team Flare gangster said when I talked to him was that, "Team Flare's goal is to make it so we're the only ones who are happy [sic]".  It takes a seriously messed-up person to accept that they are the villain--and for Team Flare to flaunt this is even more hilarious.  At least this game doesn't have that insufferable nonsense plot about understanding others from Pokemon White version...or at least not yet...

I guess Team Flare's schtick is that they are a bunch of fashion enthusiasts who just happen to belong to a pokemon gang, so at least there is a reason for my character's friends and I to actively seek them out as some sort of crazy gang war (as we have already established that my character's friends are all Pokemon Thieves). But honestly from here I am a bit confused about what their motives would be.  Team Rocket was a true gang of thieves and smugglers, Teams Aqua and Magma each wanted to destroy the world because...well, just because...but Team Flare wants people to dress nicer?

In the end I found the professor who had no information for me about Mega Evolution at all.  He did, however, give me my choice between two Pokemon fossils for my efforts.  I guess if nothing else, this game is consistent with the previous titles.

Current Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.19
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.18
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.18
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.17
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.18
DODUO/Birdface/lvl.18

On Rotation: Hippopotas, Ralts

Too Many Pokemon!

I previously noted that it is important to have a variety of pokemon available to catch and add to your team early and then to funnel in new pokemon in an even and consistent way--something that Ruby and Sapphire had a serious problem with--but this is just plain comical.

So I caught Snorlax (cause I always catch Snorlax), found the game's pokemon breeding center, went through a cave, Bulbasaur and Froakie both evolved (into Ivysaur and Frogadier, respectively), I found a town, found a second cave, and along the way I caught Seviper, Drifloon, Zubat, Axew, Croagunk, Onix, Sandile, Helioptile, Hippopotas, Lunatone, Solrock, Machop, Cubone, Inkay, Illumise, Ducklett, Spoink, Absol, Mienfoo, and Wingull.  Of these, I briefly had on my team: Seviper, Absol, Mienfoo, Machop, Cubone, Onix, Croagunk, Axew, and Helioptile. 

...And then I realized that I was going absolutely bonkers with all the new pokemon: I was like a fat school kid on Macaroni and Cheese day (something I have years of experience at, as a matter of fact). 

Ultimately, I decided to just leave it up to my little brother to pick for me: welcome to the team, Hippopotas.


I was originally sent to the last town to ask about Mega Evolutions, and the people there sent me on my way to Ambrette town.  When I got to Ambrette town, I found the professor I was looking for and he told me to go piss off and explore the aforementioned "second cave" (only accessible by riding on top of a Rhyhorn).  He must have had an important meeting...or perhaps he just didn't like the idea of some snot-nosed kid asking him about things he has never heard of JUST BECAUSE he is a scientist.  Because all scientists know all of science...right?   

Hint: wrong


Current Squad:

FROGADIER/Froakles/lvl.18
IVYSAUR/Ivy/lvl.18
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.18
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.17
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.18
DODUO/Birdface/lvl.17

On Rotation: Hippopotas, Ralts

Escape from the Parfume Palace

The problem with the sidequests in Pokemon games is that they inevitably boil down to "find item X and rub it on slot Y" until the supporting characters tell you how smart you are.  Thus it is with my character and Shauna (the most insufferable of the Pokemon Thieves, whose only character trait is "being a girl"): sent to "find Pokeflute and rub it on Snorlax" until it wakes up.

Apparently, though, I had to find the king of the palace's poodle in the gardens first, so this quest went from annoying to infuriating real quick.

I found the dog and played the "Farfetch'd game" (to catch a trainer's pokemon by chasing it around) from Pokemon Silver version and found myself watching fireworks with Shauna.  I have no clue where these events fit in logically with one another, but rest assured that they were all mandatory and definitely related to my quest to catch all the pokemon.

At this point, Nintendo once again tried to shove its stupid characters in my face with its terrible, terrible writing by having Shauna say that she was really happy to watch the fireworks because "[she] has never watched fireworks alone with a boy before."

NO, I reject this.  I will not accept a crappy love story on top of your crappy regular story.  I have to go lie down.
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I sarcastically alluded to the fact that Pokemon White and Y are both terrible in terms of character development in a few previous posts and I want to clarify my feelings on this matter.  I recognize that the best Pokemon game of all time, Pokemon Red version, was similarly plagued by "disposable character syndrome". 

Want to know if your game has DispCharSynd? Try to describe your supporting cast in any way without describing their job or their physical features.  If your only description ends up being something like "has a dog", "likes to dance" or "closet homosexual", then your character is shallow and useless and if it were a marine in "Aliens", it would most certainly be one of the ones that are killed off early and easily.

The thing is that Red version ALSO didn't have a real plot.  This was a game written back in the days where the entire story was told in the booklet that comes with the game--and the rest is made up by the player.  White Version and Y version, however, are given considerably less slack in the story and character-development areas of the game simply because they TRY too hard in these areas.  If White version took some time off pushing its hamfisted message of Pokemon suffrage into your face every 5 seconds and instead focused on letting you, the player, run the story, it could have gotten away with having odious and inconsequential characters, but since it spent so much time banging-on about its plot, the cast members were too easily exposed for the cardboard cutouts that they were.  The result is that you have presented a roller coaster and populated the entire thing with cardboard cutouts of "Winnie the Pooh".  Not necessarily a bad ride, but perhaps a little distracting and you have the constant feeling of shame and indigestion.

Exploring *cough* Totally Not Versailles *cough*

I remember reading something in passing a few months ago about how Pokemon Y's "Kalos region" is based loosely on France in the same way that Pokemon White is based loosely on the Unites States (namely New York).  This is the kind of thing that you forget about until it starts to stick out, and then it becomes all you think about and it changes your perception of the game.


Just two weeks ago, I came back from a brief excursion to France to attend the wedding of one of my sweetheart's cousins (note apostrophe placement).  I say this because realizing that I am playing a game about a place that I have visited in real life must be up in the top ten most disorienting things I have ever done (of course, right behind staying up for an entire week and also behind eating 7 McDonald's double cheeseburgers).

So here is the "Parfume Palace", a nearly exact copy of the Castle Versailles if the Castle Versailles was made of cartoons.

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I was sent here to recover the PokeFlute to wake up a Snorlax who fell asleep on the road.  I guess this means that Pokemon X and Y are definitely going to stay true to established "Pokemon lore"

I have the strange feeling that Snorlax don't exist in the wild as animals.  Rather, they exist as features of the terrain in any given area.  Every road in the pokemon world most likely has some statistical likelihood that they will, at any given moment, grow a Snorlax out of the ground in order to become blocked.  Maybe the cement they use contains some weird mineral called "Snorlaxium" or something and here is where my digression really starts to fall apart.

After arriving at the Parfume Palace and exploring every room of the Parfume Palace and playing around in the hedge gardens of the Parfume Palace I realized that I hadn't done any actual pokemon battling in over a quarter of an hour.  Usually this is no big deal but I am of the opinion that if you're playing Pokemon and more than 20 minutes go by without fighting any pokemon then you're officially doing it wrong, so I left and started exploring the surrounding grasslands where I caught Sentret, Oddish, Kecleon, and Gulpin in order to remind myself that I was playing a game and not something that could be confused for a game like a dishwasher. 

Normally I would take-up Sentret immediately over Zigzagoon for my team (since it's another favorite of mine) but I am really only keeping Ziggy for the free items I get from his ability "Pick-Up" at the moment.

Current team:

FROAKIE/Froakles/lvl.15
BULBASAUR/Bulby/lvl.15
SCRAGGY/Scrappy/lvl.15
FLABEBE/Pixie/lvl.13
PIKACHU/PikaPi/lvl.16
DODUO/Birdface/lvl.15

On Rotation: Ralts, Pickup...erhm...Zigzagoon

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