I visited ZUN. I regret doing so now. Maybe battling the gym leader will make me feel better...
In this installment, we grind. We grind a lot. Because instead of grinding a bunch of puppets to high level, I opt to grind thirteen puppets to level 50. But first, trainer battles! Route lists! New captures!
Route 5 Puppets: Chen, Mystia, Shizuha, Minoriko, cSakuya (Ice)
, cAya (Normal/Flying)
, Momiji, cCirno. Level range is mainly 23 to 26 but Chen appears at level 20, cAya (a fairly rare encounter) appears at level 15 and cCirno (an even rarer encounter) appears at level 14. cSakuya is actually fairly high in appearance. You'll still mostly run into nicely leveled, evolved puppets here, but cSakuya will appear with some frequency too. Which is great if you're looking to add one to your team. Sakuya is a defensive ice-type that becomes steel-type when she evolves. Since ice resists ground in this, this means ExSakuya is double weak to fire and weak to fighting, but that's it. Not bad. cAya, though I have no interest in raising her, is incredibly fast. If you need to outspeed anything, she's your girl.
There's no trainers on Route 5. In fact, aside from the daycare, there's not much of anything
save for the entrance to the underground path leading to Dragon Palace.
Moving on! Route 6 now, and there ARE trainers here. I fought some of them last installment. Here's the ones I fought while/after grinding:
- Camper Ricky is one of two optional trainers as he's busy chatting up Picnicker Nancy. Ricky has a LwSakuya and Nancy has ExSuika and ExNitori. You read that right, by the way. LwSakuya. If you have a fire-type, she'll go down pretty easily. Her movepool is actually kinda lame, yet annoying. She knows Preach, which is Metal Sound. Lowers special defense two stages. Sweet Kiss, which confuses you. Mind's Eye, which will raise her attack two stages, and Slash, her only attacking move. She's annoying, but easily beaten with fire attacks when your pokemon aren't hitting themselves in confusion at just the right time for her burn to lower her hp to just enough for Ricky to use a Full Restore and-ARGH! WHAT THE FUCK!? BUCKETTANK SHOULD HAVE ENDED THAT BATTLE FOUR TIMES! FOUR! Fucking confusion hax... Athena had to finish this.
- Against Nancy's ExSuika, more luck-hax shenanigans as her Suika manages to crit ExTenshi, then MsSunshine. She fails to KO Athena with Ancientpower, but that's fine since she got that lucky all-stat boost from it. Fuck these two got lucky. Still, Athena managed to get some luck of her own and critted with Thunderbolt to bring Suika down. ExNitori was up next. The ExPatchouli I was raising took her down nicely.
- Picnicker Isabelle, a trainer I THOUGHT I fought was up next. ExTenshi manages to take on her EAMystia and LwMystia singlehandedly. Yes, that's another advent touhou. Yes, that's another Last Word in the hands of a regular trainer. They're becoming much easier to take down, though. Even though my puppets are still Ex I'm not nearly as intimidated by Last Word puppets now. As the levels rise the difference in stats between one puppet and another becomes less noticeable, you see. Earlier in the game, a 10 level difference was death. As you saw last installment, however, I was facing things 10 levels higher than me quite regularly without much difficulty.
- Bug Catcher Elijah is one I avoided going into Dragon Palace. He had an A-Mystia that decided to take herself and ExWriggle down with Perish Song and Sparrow Song. Perish Song causes all active puppets to faint after 3 turns if they don't switch. Sparrow Song keeps the affected puppet from switching. A draw if you ignore my remaining five puppets. Speaking of puppets.
Route 6 Puppets: Momiji, Mystia, Shizuha, Minoriko, Aya (Normal/Flying), cAya, cTokiko (Normal/Flying)
. cTokiko only evolves to Ex, but is a stronger Ex than Mystia so I decide to raise her. Level range is mostly 20 - 26. cTokiko appears fairly rarely at level 11 or 12 and cAya, marginally more common, at level 16. Aya appears only at level 26.
On a final note, on any route with water you can find cHina
using an Old Rod. Note that's Chibi Hina, not a certain gatekeeper. Now that all that's done... grinding time. Shouldn't take as long as usual, though. But the only one that has to sit through this is me, so here's the results of my grinding:
- Yukari evolved into ExYukar
. She knows Psychic Flash (read: Psychic, a powerful psychic-type attack), Reflect, Light Screen, and Skill Swap. Skill Swap switches abilities with the target. Not expecting to get much use out of it.
- The cSakuya I caught evolved
as soon as she gained a level. Raised her up to level 50
. She's now an ExSakuya that knows Double Kick, Metal Claw, P Square (uses Assist's animation but is an 85 power ice-type attack), and Minds Eye.
- Tenshi, as you might have guessed, was further raised to an ExTenshi
. She now knows Earthquake, Iron Defense, Magnitude, and Rock Slide.
- Raised cCirno, replacing Alice. Alice's stats didn't seem all that great at Ex, but Cirno
is fairly speedy and has better special-attack. Here's her middle evolution.
ExCirno knows Hail, Ice Beam, Amnesia, and Double Edge.
- ExMedicine
◊ is raised further and now knows Poison Breath, Poison Bomb, Razor Leaf, and Stun Spore. Poison Breath is a weak, low-pp attack that badly poisons. Accuracy is the same as Toxic, so all it has over Toxic is some very minor damage while Toxic has 10 more PP than Poison Breath. If I had Toxic already, I probably would have kept that.
- Raised Athena
to level 50. Current movepool is Steal, Dragon Meteo, Thunderbolt, and Spore. So not much change from her, really.
- Obviously, raised the cPatchouli I caught. Here's Patchouli.
Here's ExPatchouli
. She knows Mana Charge, which is basically Calm Mind and raises her special attack and defense one stage, Flamethrower, Bubblebeam, and Psychic Flash.
- BucketTank continues to be a tanking bucket
, but her movepool still sucks. Replaced Spinning with Protect and she still knows Ember, Water Gun, and Will-o-Wisp. At level 50. This is just horrid...
- The cTokiko I caught earlier is now an ExTokiko
, replacing my ExMystia. Lacks Sing, but oh well. Sure I'll have better sleep-inducers later. She knows Metal Claw, Protect, Crush Claw, and Soar. Soar is basically Sky Uppercut, but now as a flying-type attack. 85 base power, 95 accuracy. Nice. Here's her normal evolution
.
- MsSunshine
hasn't changed much either. Knows Growth in place of Taunt, but still has Heart Break, Leaf Blade, and Face Slam for an attacking movepool.
- Finally, ExChen
. Chen finally gets a decent ground-type attack in Mud Bomb, which has 85 base power. Not bad. Her other attacks include Metal Claw, Poison Claw, and Crush Claw.
Naturally, all that grinding and using my Nazrin team as usual left me with a lot of free stuff. So I go to sell the SP Ups and Nuggets they found. That was when I finally got a look at the descrption for Noob Candies
. Read that. Did you read that? I hope you read that, because I definitely have something to say about that.
Drakuaza? Get off your fucking high horse. There's nothing special about grinding. It isn't tough, it isn't challenging, it doesn't make for a difficult game, it's work. Flat out work. It's the stuff you do in between actually playing the game. In a well-made RPG, you'll barely have to do any of this. Fighting the Random Encounters or, in a Pokemon game, all the trainers, will keep you reasonably close in level to any obstacle you might face along the way. No disruption in gameplay and you keep moving at your own pace. This was perfected in Black and White where you're given the Lucky Egg at just the right point in the game to balance things out. On top of that, the new exp formula rewarded more experience to lower leveled Pokemon so they can quickly catch up to the rest of your party. Using the Lucky Egg, you can probably make it through the newest pokemon games with little to no Forced Level-Grinding.
But you, sir, seem to have gotten some strange idea in your head that having to grind somehow makes the game more challenging. It doesn't. Any idiot can level grind. I can grind. You can grind. Fucking CIRNO can grind. Hell, I'm betting even someone THAT stupid could eventually beat this game and still have barely any skill at Pokemon games. I've WATCHED people with little to no skill playing through supposedly harder ROM hacks of pokemon that do nothing but increase level. This is not a diffcult hack. This is a grindy hack. This is hardly any more difficult than the regular pokemon games. I had more trouble facing Ghestis last night in Pokemon Black than I had fighting this next gym leader. If I wanted to, if I had the patience to, I could be tearing this sorry hack of your's a new one. In fact, later on, I might just see if I can't find a way to utterly humiliate and dominate your pathetic excuse for endgame bosses.
Sorry about that. The attitude of people who make these hacks, thinking grind = difficulty, bugs the heck out of me. It's why I've taken to playing through this in the first place. I'm sure the next installment will give me plenty to talk about in regards to the creator anyway, so let's move on.
Entering the gym, we first have to face two gym trainers. All things considered, they're pretty easy at this point.
- Swimmer Luis is up first with ExStar S and ExCirno. MsSunshine and Athena take them on respectively without any trouble.
- Picnicker Diana had an ExNitori and that was it. MsSunshine takes this one on alone.
Now we're finally at the previously mentioned gym leader. Had a bit of difficulty against this one at first. But since Athena was JUST coming short of OHKO'ing her most powerful puppet, I gave her a few Rare Candies to put her up to level 54. Oh, sorry, should I have gone and beat up a few more puppets for those levels, wasting several more minutes of my life pointlessly grinding? If you said "yes" to that, Fuck you. We're wasting this gym leader.
Oh, wondering who this gym leader is? It's Cirno.
Starting off, we have ExSanae versus my ExMedicine. Medicine has this battle in the bag, pretty much. The one use of Poison Breath was to keep ExSanae in a health range that'd keep her from using a Full Restore. As a result, the next hit brings her down.
LwNitori is up next. Probably should have switched in Patchouli from the start and lost Medicine for that mistake. Then went on to stall war against LwNitori. When I finally decided to end it, she got a critical hit and ended it instead.
Seeing Patchouli go down must have awakened something in Athena as she suddenly goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, slaughtering the rest of Cirno's team. Ex? Last Word? Athena cares not for such words now. There's asses to kick, and she's the one to...
Oh, WHAT THE FUCK!? There's no way ExKomachi was faster than Athena! Last puppet left and it looks like she was carrying a goddamn Quick Claw, an item that lets the holder automatically go first 10% of the time. Wonderful. This one would have gone down in one shot too if not for that coming from out of nowhere. Sigh. Guess it balances out with ExEirin missing with that Aqua Blast. But then she proceeds to annoy me with confusion. BucketTank still gets off that much needed Will-o-Wisp, leaving it up to Yukari to correctly time a Psychic Flash so a Full Restore doesn't cause BucketTank's efforts to be in vain. I win, Baka Badge obtained.
On another note, remember that Murasa? Remember what I said about Nue a while back? Yeah, that Murasa is the same way. Stats are just as high as an Ex puppet. If it was an ExMurasa, Cirno would have effectively had three Last Word puppets.
On yet another note, what the hell was up with that gym leader sprite? THAT'S supposed to be CIRNO!? Ugh... her dialogue says "Cirno" but her sprite says "grimdark Cirno"...
Anyway, now that Cirno is beaten, we can continue on to Dragon Palace again. Few choices about what to do next. Scope out Route 11 and it's trainers, or go on the S.S. Titan and beat up the trainers there? In the end, I settle on Route 11.
Or at least, I would, but this is route 11: http://img862.imageshack.us/i/forestofmagic.png/
This dungeon wasn't even in the original Touhoumon Lunatic, by the way. That's right, we're going through a completely original maze-like dungeon put together by Drakuaza myself. I can hardly contain my excitement. Incidentally, this confirms that he inexplicably thinks these dungeons were a good idea too. I'm finding more and more reasons to hate this guy now.
Next installment, we'll tackle the Forest of Magic. But first, I'll be facing a very... interesting trainer. Rage. Slowly. Building.
Comments
