Somehow, I survived and got through Youkai Mountain. The rocket lady I found and beat up was all too happy to lead me to the exit when I threatened her with MsSunshine. Apparently this group called "Team Rocket" was in the mountain looking for fossils to revive gods from. That doesn't make sense. Nevermind that gods are unlikely to have fossils, assuming such things exist, but how, exactly, are they expecting to find fossils in a place like this?
Well, whatever. I'm out of here now and I think I need to find an Eirin's Center quickly. I think some of these puppet bites may be infected...
Route 4 Puppets: Chen, Momiji, cCirno (Ice)
, Medicine, Shizuha, cMinoriko (Grass)
, cShizuha, Minoriko (Grass)
. Level range is generally 18-22 with cCirno appearing at level 16. Everyone's favorite nineball can be found here. You'll want to catch this before going on to Ice Lake. Minoriko is another case where I found the evolved form first. Though, at least this time I thought to get screenshots of the chibi.
Route 4 has had a few interesting changes. There's an interesting
variety
of trees
for one. They're purely aesthetic. Yes, even the berry trees. I sure as hell don't need anything from them. I have more than a few complaints about this game, though I suppose the aesthetic isn't one of them.
You can also find the Roar TM
, or rather "SC" for "Spellcard", on Route 4. You'll want to make absolutely sure you're done with Route 4 before leaving, though. This
is why. You can't come back here. As you would also find out soon enough, you're also out of luck if you need to grind anywhere after going beyond this point. In one way, this can make things challenging. In another way, it could potentially make things flatout impossible. If no strategy you can come up with using your available puppets and items can beat your rival in the upcoming battle, as well as beating the trainers on Nugget Bridge, you basically just lost. Period. Though I'm sure it would be very rare that it could happen, it could. Which means this is exceptionally assholish.
Fortunately, you don't need to worry too much. In fact, here's that rival battle now.
Rival's Puppets: ExAya Lv.47 (Flying/Normal), ExChen Lv.45 (Ground), ExReisen Lv.48 (Psychic), ExFlandre Lv.46 (Dark/Fire), ExSanae Lv.50 (Grass/Water).
More than half this fight is spent fighting his ExAya. Originally I tried using Athena, but both puppets just came painfully close to one-shotting each other. Realizing BucketTank was pretty much a guaranteed win, I sent her out and engaged stalling tactics. After that, the battle runs pretty smoothly with ExFlandre being the only slip up where I accidentally picked Metal Claw instead of Mud Shot. Even her ExSanae was easy to beat this time around thanks to ExWriggle. All in all, an easier battle than her Rocket Grunt counterpart from the last chapter was. After the battle, she gives me a... frozen frog?
Eh, more useful than the Fame Checker at least.
Anyway, what was I thinking? Here I am battling the rival when I have yet to even show off Ice Lake! As you can probably tell
from
these
images
, it's quite a bit different from Cerulean City. For one thing, there's a lake. Also, there's more berries here
, though they were all empty for some reason.
After battling Karen, I stop by the Eirin's Center to heal my puppets and talk to this guy.
Either this form of perversion is perfectly acceptable in Gensokyo or someone decided to just start calling all puppets "lolis". Given how much time I spend in dark, sadistic dungeons, a change like this wouldn't surprise me. Hell, I'm surprised I haven't emerged into a post-apocalytpic wasteland yet!
Anyway, lots to do before battling the gym leader here. Firstly, I think I'd like to clear a path to at least a spot to grind if not go all the way to ZUN. So lets start with Nugget Bridge.
- Bug Catcher Cale is the first of the trainers here and you fight this one in a double battle. He had an ExCirno, ExSunnymilk, ExStar S, and ExLunachild. Athena pretty much swept this battle. Yep. It definitely didn't almost turn out badly, nope. I mean, if it did, my team would probably look like this afterward.
(Goddamn double battles...)
- Number 2 is Lass Ali. She had an ExMystia, ExMinoriko, and ExShizuha. BucketTank beat ExMystia easily enough. Physical attackers will need a ground or rock-type attack before they can even think about challenging BucketTank. ExWriggle takes out the other two.
- Number 3 won't be easy, and it's Youngster Timmy. Timmy had an ExChen and ExMomiji. Almost turned out badly when I forgot Momiji's ability is Guts and had BucketTank burn her. Oops. Guts is an ability that increases physical attack power by 1.5x when inflicted with a status effect. In the case of burning, the usual half-attack effect of the burn is ignored.
- Number 4 is Lass Reli. She has an ExMinoriko and ExShizuha. ExWriggle to the rescue again.
- Number 5 understands true strength, it seems. Camper Ethan's only puppet was an ExKisume. Unfortunately, bucket lolis (does she still qualify as a loli?) are deathly weak to bolts of electricity.
- Finally, we face the mastermind of all this, Rocket Grunt Xavier.
This guy is not only a powerful opponent, but the battle is a double battle. My kryptonite, in other words. Of note in particular is his LwMima
. The ExLilyWhite is a pain, but of the annoying variety. High defenses, Toxic, and Protect.
Took me three tries to beat this guy, but I wasn't putting much effort into it. Why would I? I was able to get another Nugget with each loss and a free Leftovers. Of course, Leftovers are everywhere in this game and money is easy to come by. So I wasn't particularly upset when my third battle against him (the one the above screenshot comes from, in fact) came down to a 2 on 1 against his Lily White. I won and finally have access to Route 24 and Route 25.
Route 24 Puppets: cShizuha, cMinoriko, Mystia, Shizuha, Minoriko, cPatchouli (Psychic)
cCirno, cMedicine. Level range is all over the place, 8 - 23. You'll want to catch cPatchouli, by the way. Slow, physically frail, but even as a chibi she already has a whopping base 110 special attack AND defense. She basically shrugs off special attacks and hits back like it's nobody's business. Can be a bit hard to catch, though, since she has Teleport. But I'm sure you have something with a sleep move by now.
Route 25 Puppets: Minoriko, cNitori (Water)
, Mystia, Shizuha, cPatchouli, Medicine, cKotohime
. A PC-98 character in the wild already? Too bad she sucks. Her stats range from sub-par to decent, with not one base stat over 100 by EX. Her attacking movepool is fairly barren. Support movepool is better, not that she'll survive long enough to use any of it. She's also incredibly rare here. Spent FOREVER trying to find one. cNitori, on the other hand, is a good water-type that becomes water/electric by EX.
More about LwMima, she has an impressive base stat total of 680 with 145 of that in attack. The rest of her stats are fairly even, ranging from 100 to 120. I think she only has 95 base hp though, so her defenses are relatively lacking for a Last Word.
From here, I decide to go after the rest of the trainers and head for ZUN.
- Next to the bridge we find Camper Shane. He had an ExChen and ExKisume. Wriggle beats the Chen, Athena beats the Kisume.
- On to Route 25, we fight Youngster Joey. He has an ExMomiji, who Athena was pretty lucky to beat, and an ExWriggle that is beaten by my ExWriggle thanks to still having Growl in her movepool. The ExMomiji did have me worried though. Without a fighting-type puppet, they're pretty hard to take on thanks to BucketTank's lack of any powerful attacking moves. I sure hope I don't run into any Last Word Momijis anytime soon.
- Next we face Hiker Franklin, the first Hiker we've fought I might add. He had an ExMeiling and an ExYamame. BucketTank beats them both.
- Next is Hiker Noob. Interesting name... And it's a Double Battle. Fuck. He has an ExLetty, ExYamame, ExSuika, and F-Meiling. "F" stands for "Final" in this case as all these characters are based on Marisa Fantasy Red. Final puppets are like Last Word Puppets except they're usually critically lacking in some area. For F-Meiling, her special defense is practically non-existant. Beating him takes me two tries but in the second attempt a strategy of burn (BucketTank) and Growl (ExWriggle) wins out against his physical attackers.
Incidentally, have you noticed the doujin-inspired puppets in this are mostly Finals and Advents? Yeah, both based on Final Fantasy crossover doujins. Whoever did the original Touhoumon hack was clearly a Final Fantasy fan. Personally, this bugs me. There's TONS of Touhou doujins out there, so why base puppets solely on the Final Fantasy crossovers? Touhoumon 1.8 is a bit better about this, having a few puppets inspired by other sources like Black Alice and the MUGEN Hakurei Miko, but then Touhoumon 1.812 went and re-added all the Advent puppets. Sigh. I know Advent Cirno is popular, but why not just keep it to Cirno then instead of adding a whole bunch of alternate evolutions to puppets who ALREADY had two alternate evolutions? You know there's a whole bunch of puppets that have no alternate evolutions, right? You know, those PC-98 puppets that have only one evolution while almost every Windows character got at least three? Four in the case of puppets with Advent evolutions? While I'm not a huge fan of the PC-98 characters, I don't think it'd kill ya to give them some love for a change.
ANYWAY! Back to beating up everyone in our path.
- Picnicker Kelsey is apparently a fan of rabbits. Her puppets are ExReisen and ExTewi. ExLilyB and MsSunshine take care of them respectively. Yawn.
- Youngster Dan is next and has nothing but an ExKisume, which Athena promptly fries.
- Camper Flint challenges us to a double battle with an ExMomiji and ExWriggle. Will-o-Wisp and Growl ruin their day.
- Urk. Hiker Wayne had one puppet, an EA-Letty. That's an EX-Advent-Letty. Yes, the Advents get Ex-forms in this hack. Unfortunately for her, she's Ice/Steel and Athena just recently learned Dragon Meteo, a fire-type attack. EA-Letty melts quite nicely.
- Lass Haley is our last obstacle before getting to ZUN. Athena beats her ExShizuha but then loses to her... ExMystia!? The heck is with Athena and getting beat up by Mystias!? ExWriggle and BucketTank end up finishing the job.
When we finally meet ZUN, he seems to have a rather... interesting problem.
The dialogue does seem to support the theory that they're referring to all puppets as lolis, but that doesn't make this conversation any less weird. Anyway, we help ZUN out and return him to normal. He gives us an S.S. Ticket as thanks. With that out of the way, time to move on.
- Oh wait, seems there's one more trainer
here. This Youngster, whose name escapes me, had an ExRumia and ExKisume. I've explained why ExRumia sucks already, so I shouldn't have to explain why she loses to my ExWriggle so easily. Athena beats his Kisume.
Having beaten all those trainers, I'd like to point out that my team is in the low-to-mid-forties at this point while all the puppets I've been facing have been 50+. And most of these fights are still no problem.
Now that that's over and done with... I'm still not facing the gym leader! Instead, I think I'll try my luck against this guy.
If I beat him, I get access to Route 5, Route 6, and can try to push for Dragon Palace (read: Vermillion City). A chance to do some Sequence Breaking in other words.
...Oh me and my big mouth. This guy is leading off with an ExWriggle and a LwMomiji. This thing's attack power is simply incredible and, naturally, I can't burn it. So I opt to burn everything else while using Growl. Yes, it's a Double Battle. To make things worse, he has an ExChen and an ExYuugi. Both of them have incredibly powerful Earthquakes that cost me the match once. When I try a second time, the match comes down to the wire.
Well, aside from the fact that his LwMomiji had its attack power drastically reduced by then. It's still a long battle after that, but ExWriggle manages to take everything Momiji throws at her and, in the end, manages to win. I get the SC Dig for my trouble and free access to Route 5 and Route 6.
I'll cover the specifics of these two routes in the next installment, with one exception: Route 5 is where you find the Daycare Center.
You can breed your puppets at this one, too, unlike in the regular Fire Red. Don't ask me how that works. And there's a Rumia and Remilia wandering around in there for some reason.
On to Route 6, I deal with two more trainer battles before reaching Dragon Palace.
- Bug Catcher Keigo. All he had were an ExSunnymilk, ExLunachild, and ExStar S yet I still had some trouble thanks to constant paralysis. Really starting to hate those fairies.
- Finally, face the oddly named Camper Miko. He had an ExYuka that was taken out in one hit by ExWriggle. Grass and Dark types are both weak to bug, you see, so Wriggle is kind of her achilles heel. His next puppet was an ExHina that used Protect and nothing but Protect. What a pain. ExChen beat her. Eventually.
And after getting by the remaining trainers without a battle, we're finally in Dragon Palace. I decide to pick up a few things. First, the old rod, obtained here
. It catches Chibi Hinas and that's about it. Next, get the Bike Voucheur from this nutcase.
Poor Reisens. Finally, and most importantly of all, we get this
in the Eirin's Center. With the VsSeeker in our possession, we can now grind up against trainers instead of wild puppets! Much more exp there.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie to you. If you decide to try out this ROM hack, be prepared to grind. A lot. I swear these kinds of hacks wear their grind like a badge.
Next installment I'll take on the gym leader of Ice Lake and go into a bit more detail on routes 5 and 6 when I go back for the puppets and what not.
Finally got to Ice Lake. It's as cold as you would expect such a place to be. Ran into Karen there and managed to beat her again. She was much easier than that Team Rocket woman. When I beat her, she told me to go see some guy named ZUN and gave me a frozen frog. What does any of this have to do with anything, I wonder? Maybe she's just lost her mind...
