Based on the responses, and after some consideration myself, I think I'll take the gyms in order. I'd have to level grind to go out of order anyway for the most part. That's not to say I won't be taking advantage of this game's non-linearity, I'll just be taking the plot itself linear while taking advantage of the freedom to catch certain touhous, get certain items, etc.
Like this item.
The Good Rod, in Fuschia City. I always found this to be an odd spot for it, personally. I mean, the most logical route, to me at least, was always to go to Lavender after Celadon. And then I'd go to Fuschia from there. Which means I'd get the Super Rod before the Good Rod, thus rendering the Good Rod obsolete before I got it.
And what next? Well, you read the title right? That's right, we're going to check out the Safari Zone.
Don't expect me to find any of the requested touhous here, though. You see, while some Touhoumon-game Safari Zones would just have rare touhous or PC-98 characters, this one has... the novelty characters. The weird characters.
Safari Zone Area 1: Tori (Normal/Flying)
, Kedama (Normal)
, Ayatori (Normal/Flying)
, Hatatori (Normal/Flying)
, Fairy (Normal)
, Pyonta (Bug/Flying)
, Mimi-Chan (Flying/Fire)
. Level range 5 - 20.
Yeah. Weird. Let's see if I can clear up a few of these...
Tori is basically a Ditto. Can breed with anything. Has decent speed but the rest of its stats suck. On another positive note, though, it learns some amazing attacks at pretty low levels. Namely, Aeroblast at level 27. Tori, as well as the rest of its kind, appear to be "normal birds" based on the bird touhou characters. Tori without any suffix appears to be Mystia.
Kedama is another Ditto, one with pretty average-looking stats. 70's and 80's across the board for base stats. It does, however, get Transform and actually has a better shot at being able to use it than Ditto. Well, than Ditto used to have any. That 5th gen Dream World ability Ditto gets was way overdue. Anyway, Kedama also learns Sketch which could make it a bit interesting breeding-wise. Not sure what kind of moves, if any, it could pass down though. I'd think it could pass down TM's at least. The character itself is a mook from the PC-98 games. Either that, or something you really don't want to see without a warp wire handy.
Ayatori has the same stats as Tori, is NOT a ditto breeding-wise, and has almost the same movepool. Gets Extremespeed at level 35, though.
Hatatori is mostly the same as Tori, but special stats and physical stats were switched. Like Ayatori, not a Ditto. Learns Psychic at level 27. Would figure it'd at least learn Psycho Boost at some point but no such luck...
Fairy is just a fairy. Like in any Touhoumon game, it can evolve into either Daiyousei, Lily Black, or Lily White depending on the attack and defense. Attack higher = Lily Black, lower = Lily White, equal = Daiyousei. Unlike in other Touhoumon hacks, however, she actually has FIVE possible evolutions. With a Thunderstone she evolves into Kodaichan, a mon based on a fairy that appeared in the PC-98 games, and with a Fire Stone she evolves into the ghost-type Zombie Fairy.
Incidentally, according to the actual wiki for this game, the stat-based evolutions are meant to be totally removed in an upcoming update to Touhoumon Blue and Touhoumon Green. Instead, the Fairy would evolve to Daiyousei by Leaf Stone, Lily Black by Moon Stone, and Lily White by Sun Stone. Neat. Wiki here.
Next we have... Pyonta. No, really, in this hack you can get Pyonta, Suwako's hat, separate from Suwako herself. It even has an EX form. You can catch its EX form in one of the Safari Zone areas, but its the only touhou I didn't find. Only notable stat is speed, which actually drops a bit when it evolves into a pretty cool Bug/Fighting-type. There's something pretty dark about this, though, which I'll show you later when I get a certain item. Yes, something dark aside from the tohodex entry...
Finally we have... umm... Mimi-Chan. I'll be honest here, I was pretty much introduced to Touhou through Touhoumon. When I first played through Touhoumon I knew next to nothing about the girls. Back then, THIS was the touhoumon that made me go "WHAT THE FUCK!?" Yeah. Not much to it, really. It has a powerful 150 base speed and attack, the rest of its stats are unusable, and it knows Explosion. It explodes on things and that's about it. It's pretty good at that, at least. The... "character" is from Marisa's ending of Phantasmagoria of Dimension Dream.
Yeah. The PC-98 games were weird in a cartoonish sorta way and only got "slightly" more serious as the games went on, until EoSD decided to try to put a shonen-style twist on things solely because ZUN had gotten into Jo-Jo's Bizarre Adventure thus why everyone suddenly had "Manipulation of whatever" abilities. Seriously, go look up the endings for Highly Responsive to Prayer or Story of Eastern Wonderland...
Safari Zone Area 2: Fairy, Evil Eye (Dark)
, CUnzan (Fighting/Ghost)
, Fairy, Ghost (Ghost)
, Hoshizako (Normal)
, SendaiMiko (Normal/Fighting
, Utsutori (Normal/Flying)
, Mimi-Chan. Level range 5 to 28.
Evil Eye is another common enemy from the PC-98 era, and normally it's just flat out useless. In this hack, however, Evil Eye can evolve into one of two midbosses from the PC-98 era. Both weird winged mirror things. Evil Eye itself is still pretty useless, but the evolved forms are neat.
Unzan is... the cloud thing that Ichirin uses to attack with. Yeah, you can catch it separate from her. And good GOD is it broken. Decent enough defenses, good hp, good speed, a whoppin' 150 base special attack, and base 90 attack with PURE POWER for an ability. Pure Power doubles its attack score. I think I read somewhere, though, that it's not actually supposed to be catchable in the Safari Zone and the next version of Touhoumon Blue has it removed. Damn powerful in its evolved form though.
Ghost is yet another common PC-98 era enemy. And for some reason they ALWAYS evolve into Youki, Yuyuko's ex-gardener. Steel/Ghost when it evolves. The soccer reference in the tohodex entry is a reference to Touhou Soccer, a game which from what I can tell is popular more for the over-the-top special attacks than the actual gameplay. The special attacks reference Super Robot Wars too, I think. In that game, Ghost is one of the standard team members.
Hoshizako is yet ANOTHER oddball PC-98 era enemy. As weird as the PC-98 games were they at least had a more interesting variety of enemies. Hoshizako is the standard enemy in Phantasmagoria of Dimension Dream. Useless in this form, but evolves based on stats. Greater attack evolves into Mimi-Chan above. Greater defense evolves into Ruukoto, a character from Reimu's ending for that game. I'm just disappointed catching this thing didn't give me invincibility...
SendaiMiko is the first thing here, aside from maybe the fairy, to look like an actual Touhou character. Yet, she isn't, technically. She's a fanmade character. Specifically, a MUGEN character. Reimu's ancestor that kicked Youkai butt with her bare hands rather than charms and talismans. Danmaku? Screw danmaku! You stop that incident right this instant or she's going to smash your face in!
... Anyway, SendaiMiko has good speed, defense, and attack. Same ability as Reimu herself.
Finally, we have the last of the toris, Utsutori. This one actually swaps the usual decent speed for decent special attack. It learns Flamethrower at level 23, Fire Blast at level 27, and Overheat at level 31. Also this one, for some reason, IS in the Ditto egg group. Go figure.
Safari Zone Area 3: Evil Eye, Pyonta, Utsutori, Kedama, Hoshizako, Mimi-Chan. Level range 5 to 22. Nothing to see here, move along.
Safari Zone Area 4: Tori, Ghost, Kedama, Hoshizako, Fairy, Evil Eye, CNamazu (Water/Ground)
, Pyonta, EPyonta (Bug/Fighting), Mimi-Chan.
Namazu. It's the giant catfish from Meiling's storyline in Touhou 12.3. Water/Ground is almost always a decent tanking mon. That's especially true when the mon in question has base 200 hp and defense! Holy crap! On top of that, it has Thick Fat which further reduces damage from fire and ice attacks. Yeah, this thing you'll want to break out the status ailments for. Or a strong grass-type. It's not quite broken but speaking from a competitive point of view, it'd pretty much be the only wall you need.
EPyonta is the fully evolved form of Pyonta, as mentioned before. I didn't catch one of these, though. After I caught CNamazu, I didn't really have anything left to even make the attempt.
Also while I was in the Safari Zone, grabbed the Gold Teeth (along with everything else that wasn't nailed down) and the Surf
HM. After leaving the Safari Zone I then traded the Gold Teeth for the Strength
HM. Can't use them out of battle but they're both decent attacks. Strength is good for a normal-type to learn, especially now that it has a 70% chance of increasing attack in this ROM.
Seriously, not only did the creator remove the need to use these things but he actually made them worthwhile to teach to your touhous. Cut is now a steel-type attack with 70 power, Flash is Psychic with the same, Rock Smash has 70 or 80 power with the same chance of lowering defense. Nothing overpowering, but enough that they're useable in-battle.
Move relearner is available in Fuschia next to the pokemart,
by the way. The creator of the hack wanted him available earlier apparently. Kinda neat.
Anyway, since I've decided to do the gyms in order, time to leave Fuschia and head back. Have a few touhous to pick up along the way anyway.
On the way out of Fuschia, I end up getting the EXP Share
. No tohodex requirement, just "Hey, want this EXP Share?" "Oh, sure!" and then I got it. I tried that with the Item Finder guy near Vermillion next, but he still wanted me to catch 30 touhous. And apparently most of my Safari Zone catches didn't count because they're National Dex. Lame.
While I'm back in Vermillion, might as well grab the Bike Voucher.
I don't know whether his obsession now being over a Reisen instead of a Rapidash makes it less creepy or more.
Now to get some of those touhous! On Route 11, catch a CMomiji
and name her Canada. Momiji has AMAZING attack, decent speed, and good physical defense. She was REALLY upped in this hack. Special attack is pretty much non-existant now, not that she cares.
Then, in Yamame's Cave I grab a CSatori
and name her... err, him since mine is male apparently... Satoko. Satori is pretty much a Wobbuffet, only without that one ability that makes Wobbuffet so broken to begin with. Decent attack stats, but much better defensively. Speed is low. Can't learn ANY TM's so she has to rely on Mimic or Third Eye, which is basically Mirror Move, to actually make any attacks.
Head to Cerulean next, though to do so I had to beat a trainer with a level 16 CAya and a level 16 CHatate to get here. Satoko's Counter helped a fair bit with that but it was still kinda hard. Also, note the daycare.
You can breed here now instead of the Sevii Islands. Another thing the creator wanted available earlier. Unlike with Touhoumon Insane, though, the islands are still accessible in this.
And up here... no tree, no wall, no nothing.
Nothing keeping you from leaving Cerulean. In fact, once you get Koga's badge, you can Surf to Cerulean Cave
if you're feeling brave. The touhous there are still very much leveled for the post game, though there's one rarely found chibi there I want to grab later. Still, kinda neat that you don't have to wait until the post game. In fact I think you can get any non-legendary touhou before facing the Elite Four.
Move over to Route 4 here and catch myself a CReimu
now, which I name Raymoo. I explained Reimu's stats in the first post.
As you can see here,
we're also not cut off from returning to Mt. Moon like we usually are in the Pokemon games for... some bizarre reason. If you actually wanted to go back to catch anything in Mt. Moon normally you'd have to go all the way to Vermillion and backtrack through Diglett's Cave to do so. Whose bright idea was that, GameFreak?
Take a brief trip into Mt. Moon to catch a touhou that a friend requested, CSuika.
Everyone's favorite drunk oni! And this one doesn't suffer from... well... more on that later, actually. Anyway, most of Suika's stats range from average to low, save for her hp and attack. Her high hp makes up for her not-so-high defenses, and her attack is a very nice base 130. Fighting/Rock type. I name her Melon.
Before leaving Cerulean, just one last thing to grab. My bike.
Now, finally, take a long, uneventful trip back to Viridian Forest. I go through Yamame's Cave since there's no trainers that way. Once I'm in the forest, I grab a CMarisa
and name her Athena. Why Athena? Because the last Athena was replaced by a common Thief. Marisa is another one whose capabilities I went over before.
Now we have a full team, and now we're finally back in Viridian as well. So, next installment, I'll probably tackle the first rival battle, Brock, and then Mt. Moon. Which brings me to something else about this hack...
You see, this freedom we have isn't just a mere gimmick. This hack actually holds many, many secrets. Some secrets you might miss if you take the linear route. Some you might miss if you take a non-linear route. I THINK I've found all the secrets and I'll likely be at least getting the touhous and what not related to said secrets, but that brings me to my closing question for today.
Since it might be kinda spoilery to do so, anyone object to me actually showing the secrets themselves? I know at least one person has actually started playing Touhoumon Blue since I started this LP, so if anyone actually playing this now would prefer to find said secrets themselves then I'll just show what I found and maybe give a vague idea of how.
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