Here we go again, another episode of Guub kills stuff and gets his stuff killed in return.
In case it isn't obvious yet, this is a Nuzlocke Pokémon run, which means a lot of stuff but the most important one is: If one of my guys faints then it dies, I can't use him/her again for the rest of the run.
What a beautiful duwang bridge...
I always go over the rules in this part, just so that anyone who starts reading from here can understand what is currently going on in this run.
Nuzlocke runs usually have these three rules...
- If one of your Pokémon faints then it's dead. You have to put it in a Box or release it.
- You can only catch the first Pokémon that appears in every route or city.
- When all of your team members die it's Game Over.
...But sometimes people add more to suffer more have a more difficult time. Unless they're me, I stick to the main three rules.
I start off from where I closed the game last time, after beating the 4th gym leader Elesa of Nimbasa City.
I go right into a Pokémon Center to stop my team from bleeding any more and to spend all of my hard earned pokedollars in a bunch of healing stuff for my journey, so that I don't have to go back to a Pokémon Center every 15 minutes.
Potion seller! I'm going into battle and I need your strongest potions!
Because it's inconvenient to go back and forth all the time. Besides, this helps me cheat win fights by spamming healies healing and praying that my enemy runs out of PP before I run out of HP.
Anyway, after my shopping spree is completed I move towards the next route, because it's been 1 day since Cheren has challenged me to a Pokémon battle he decides to do so right as I step into Route 6.
This is like the fourth time we fight and you still haven't knocked out one of my guys...
The story demands we meet the Pokémon Champion of this region after beating Cheren, and it also demands that Cheren have a heroic BSOD about what a Pokémon journey is all about.
I myself do not have these questions, as my only goal is getting to the end without my entire team dying, so I don't really have to wonder about this stuff.
Elesa does me a favor and lowers the bridge that connects to the next city with a Pokémon gym, which also lets me see yet another cutscene that was probably made with the intention of showing how cool the graphics of the Nintendo DS are in this game.
If you really think about it these cutscenes don't add anything to the game aside from "Dude look how cool this stuff is!"
The bridge itself is a small straight route with not much of interest in it, the important part is the city next to it...
The soundtrack here is really good! Go look up Driftevil City on youtube, I swear you won't regret it!
Driftveil city, also known as the grooviest city in all of Unova, also known as that one city with the Texan guy.
Did I mention the soundtrack here is great?
It doesn't take long for the plot to rear its head in here, simply walking towards the center of the city makes the gym leader ask us to deal with Team Plasma.
You know, the evil guys that aren't really evil? Mostly a public nuisance? Those guys, yeah.
You. Yes You! The 13-15 year olds! Wanna fight some criminals!?
Once I'm given the freedom to walk around I start beating some kids for their lunch money and to train my team, I also go around the place looking for another Pokeman to add to my team, preferably an Ice type so that I can easily kill dragon types and so that I don't get rekt by the dragon gym later on...
My capture software decided to be an ass around this part and it didn't save some cool pictures I took. Thankfully, I was capable of replicating some of them, like this one for example:
I named this one VanillaIce, after a Vampire from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and also, apparently, an American Rapper.
Now the Vanillite in this screenshot isn't the same one I found, this one is male and VanillaIce is a female, but I'm just using this pic to show you what I caught.
VanillaIce enjoys walks in the park and freezing people to death.
It's going to take a while to get her up to speed though...
I found a guy, around the same place I caught Vanillite, that gave me a Rocky Helmet, which made me remember that I have items on my bag that I'm supposed to give to my Pokémon.
After gearing my guys up I continued to goof around and fight some people, until I got tired and decided to continue the plot.
Team Plasma is currently hiding inside a very cold warehouse building, which has a lot of workers inside of it that for some reason aren't even trying to look for them. Why does everyone in this world leave stuff like this to children?
It's very cold here...
Surprisingly, no one here uses ice type Pokémon. Instead they use a weird combination of Timburr, Pansage/Panpour/Pansear, Timburr, Gurdurr and Timburr.
There's also some skating puzzles that make me wonder how the hell these people get anything done if the floor is so slippery that you can't even walk right.
And finally there's a giant open storage container in the end that, to the surprise of no one, has some members of Team Plasma hidden inside.
Peak villain competency ladies and gentleman.
Several fights ensue, easy stuff that gave my team a million exp points it was difficult but my guys managed to win here.
More plot happens. Team plasma gets arrested until they're suddenly not arrested anymore, Ghetsis shows up again and then I can challenge the gym. Yay!
Being the bad Pokémon player great Pokémon master that I am, I challenge the gym immediately without grinding!
This gym's mechanic is elevators.
...Yeah, that's it. Elevators.
Lady you're stealing my thunder.
This gym has some elevators that can go up and down, but sometimes they can only go down and other times they can only go up.
The goal here is to get to the elevator that can go to the bottom floor where Clay, the gym leader, is.
The general strategy here was to use Wotr (Palpitoad), but I ended up using Cacti (Maractus) instead, with extremely satisfying results...
Imagine if you had a Cactus as a Baseball bat and now imagine you're beating a Pokémon with said bat. That is what happens here.
Combining Cacti's Mega Succ Drain with the power of the Big Root item lets me boost how much HP Cacti can recover while using said move, which in turn lets Cacti kill things stronger than he is while also recovering a lot more health that what he's supposed to!
It's a great strategy if I say so myself. One I definitely came up with myself and did not stumble upon like an idiot!
The results are actually better than I thought they would be. Cacti manages to just... absolutely destroy everyone in this gym.
Welcome to elevator land! Population: 6. Watch out for the very angry Cactus running around!
Pictures don't do it justice man, I wish I had saved a gif of these fights somewhere, it's just crazy how he just kills everyone so easily while underleveled.
Cacti reaches level 30 with this strategy, the same level of strenght that Wotr has and also learns Giga Drain, which lets him get even more power! While Wotr hasn't done anything at all in this gym, Cacti essentially stole her screen time.
So far, it's been really easy! I wonder if the gym leader will be a challenge... Nah, not likely.
But because I summoned murphy, tragedy strikes...
This elevator goes really fast...
"You've done yee'd yer last haw boy!" - Gym Leader Clay... Probably.
Things seem to be going well with this fight! Cacti gets confused around it but the almighty cactus is unmoved by this and obliterates his opponent with ease.
Clay sends his next guy and I switch Cacti with Wotr, because I'm not stupid and Cacti can still end up killing himself because of his confusion.
And then Excadrill shows up.
Oh no.
Well now... uh... crap... Cactidon'tfailmenow!
Cacti almost dies.
Things escalated quickly!
Excadrill buffs himself up and kills Wotr before she can hit back, but she manages to do enough damage for Cacti to finish him up!
...Then Excadrill makes Cacti flinch and lose most of his health and tries again to make him flinch but then Cacti dodges it at the last second and manages to kill Excadrill!
Then Clay sends his last Pokémon which is kind of a dissapointment a Palpitoad that dies to Cacti's Giga Drain. It does 4x damage to it so... yeah.
I honestly thought that the run was over, jesus. Wasn't expecting Cacti to dodge that...
Yeah, you made that clear. Wotr is laying over there with an Excadrill shaped hole in her chest.
Then Clay gives me my badge.
Man, talk about a bittersweet victory...
After putting Wotr's dead body to rest in my PC I go get some milk.
Hello yes, I need three dozen milks. I must drown my sorrows in the bottle.
Once I'm done financially and physically ruining myself with all of those milk bottles and Wotr's funeral service I (reluctantly) continue with my journey.
...Until Bianca stops me because she wants to have a Pokémon fight.
So like... If you're my friend shouldn't you be not trying to kill my Pokémon?
The next route is weird. Very very weird.
There's these weird pink colored deer that take drugs and attack me all the time, a mushroom that tried to mug me...
...Then there's also a weird bug Pokémon that never stops following me. I caught one of them... But it sucks so I dropped his ball somewhere around here.
OH GOD. IT'S THE FLYING SQUIRREL DEMON AGAIN!
...Like I said. Very weird!
It's around these parts that I started to struggle with the Trainers though, so that means that I must grind my boys more...
Excuse me Mr. Scientist man! Do you know why the deer are drugging themselves around these parts?
I'll leave it here. I don't think a training montage is super entertaining to be honest, so I'll do that stuff off screen.
Really sad about Wotr though, that little guy didn't deserve what happened to it...
Anyway, thanks for reading everyone! Remember to stay safe!
- The boys that died:
RIP Wotr. I will always remember youuuuuu-