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...

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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:

Back into the Fire

I feel that it is noteworthy to state that coming back to a previously-saved pokemon game after being gone for a month or more is like running the 800 meter at a track meet after weeks of sedentary living--sure you kind of get the gist of what you're supposed to be doing, but in the end, most of your technique is just a lot of flailing around and the rest of it is just plain wrong.  And being thrown right-into the march through "Victory Road"?  Now that's just painful...

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As a whole the trek to the top of that mountain came through as something of a haze to me and I can't quite remember actually getting through it.

Like the day after a truly amazing party I found myself standing at the exit to Victory Road with a team barely alive anchored with a newly-evolved Haxorus (who must have evolved from "Tusks", Fraxure, somewhere along the line).

Similarly I found that Elgyem, that weird useless alien I adopted because I thought I needed a useless Psychic type, had evolved into Beheeyem, another weird looking pokemon with a forgettable name.

Off to my destiny! To the Pokemon League HQ!

Current Squad:

Scrafty Dealings with Gymleader Iris

I have a big list of things I don't like about Team Plasma, but perhaps the best way to illustrate this is to change numbers 1 and 2 to "nonsensical plans" and to read this over and over while pouring live beetles into your pants. I was so sure that the final battle with Team Plasma was going to happen--I literally have the Pokemon Zekrom in my item pouch (in "dark stone forme") and the legendary Reshiram has been awakened--there should be a final battle I need to be fighting right about now, right?

In typical Team Plasma style, N and Ghestis decided to play the hurry up and wait game and now that side-story has kind of just died out. I'm not sure if its over in the anticlimax of the century (with me getting the "dark stone" as a sort-of nuclear deterrent in the pokemon equivalent of the cold war) or just being held-off for the moment, because when I arrived in Opelucid City, the gymleader Iris and her older boyfriend (or is is uncle?) Drayden--who have been hyped-up to be experts on Dragon pokemon as well as legendaries--told me they had no clue what I should do--and that I should just continue with the whole getting badges thing.

Gymleader Iris was a pushover--and carried a "Haxorus", which the pokedex has identified as the final evolution of my Fraxure. Thanks for the spoilers Iris...

The reason Iris was such a joke was because of my new pokemon. As I was leaving for Opeculid City, Bianca challenged me to a battle which "Scrappy" the Scraggy won all alone--despite being several levels below each pokemon on her team. Afterwards, Scraggy evolved into Scrafty at level 39, who is seriously awesome. He might look a little crazy at first, but let him grow on you--he's really cool--and amazingly powerful.

With the Team Plasma ordeal either solved...or not...it is time to travel north to Victory Road...

Current Squad:

Zekrom No Findings Please, Cannot Finding Zekrom

In a shocking twist, it turns out that Zekrom suffers from "princess is in another castle" syndrome as the journey through the Relic Caslte was a colossal waste of time--he was not there. At this point, it is obvious that no one in the entire universe has any clue what is going on--and Team Plasma's success in awakening Reshiram HAS to be attributed to blind luck...honestly: they were probably trying to do something completely unrelated (because who would want Reshiram? Its ugly at best) and just played it off as being part of their plans all along. I'm reminded of Team Plasma's mission to steal the Dragonite skull from the museum (a million gyms ago) and how fruitful that turned out for them... So the "Zekrom or Lack-Thereof Award" goes tooooo the Relic Castle! Congratulations and thank you for wasting my time!

However, the trip DID reveal a few things about Alder--apparently he's more of a washed-up champion than a legitimate somebody. The Plasma sage named Ghestis (another one of those characters who the art directors started drawing and just never stopped), the guy with the laser-eyepiece from the opening video, revealed that after Alder became the most powerful trainer in the world, his favorite pokemon got sick and died and he hasn't battled since. Honestly I like this turn of events--it brings some much-needed drama to the scene--and also it hints of some kind of back story besides the expected "I worked real hard to train the pokemons and I made it".

Ghestis said that the "dark stone", the dormant Zekrom, was not there, but that we definitely need it in order to defeat N. At this point, Alder muttered something about not liking it that we had to play into Team Plasma's plans in order to defeat them. This was quite the shock to me because we were already doing just that by coming to the Relic Castle to awaken Zekrom just like N asked us to not an hour earlier. I'm not asking for much, but a little consistency from moment to moment would be nice.

After leaving the castle, I was immediately called to the museum in Nacrene City. There, Gymleader Lenora (the normal-typed gymleader) presented me with the very item I had been scouring the Relic Castle for.

I'm not sure why Nintendo figured that they should withhold that item from me for an extra 3 minutes. I mean, nothing else happened between me not having the dark stone in the Relic Castle and me getting it in Nacrene City...except I had to withdraw Deedoon to allow me to FLY there. Was it really necessary to do this?

The way it was presented it seemed like they just happened to find this incredibly important item just lying around somewhere--like they found this "dark stone" at a flea market. So many of the events in this game just seem to be lucky breaks, this is completely ridiculous!

So after finally finding the dark stone, and a lengthy conversation with everyone involved (whom I have nicknamed Team Pup-in-Suds to counter Team Plasma) the pimp of the year basically says, "so...now what?"

My thoughts exactly...

Current Squad:

Krookodile Evolved into...What?

Let me say that I have never been in this position before.

I've always wondered who it is that names the pokemon--and today that answer was revealed to me when my Krokorock who I nicknamed "Krookodile" evolved at level 40. There is nothing more ridiculous than seeing the message: "Congratulations! Your KROOKODILE evolved into Krookodile!"
Apparently, I named the pokemon of this generation. I'm impressed with his strength...now if only he could just learn Earthquake...

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: