Thought I'd make a small update today. Partially because I'll be grinding a fair bit to get all my available puppets up to speed, partially because I'd like to cut down on the length of my next installment by not including this bit of stuff I did pre-grinding.
Firstly, before I did anything I decided to check out Route 16. As much as I could anyway, you can only access about 3/4ths of Route 16 prior to getting the Pokeflute. The other 1/4th contains a buncha bikers, which I'll have to go beat up later.
Route 16 Puppets: cChen, cMomiji, cKeine, Chen, Satoko (Normal). Thought I had a picture from my one encounter with Satoko but guess not.
So, yeah, another Hanyu-style random puppet pops up. And since the spelling is correct for this one I can confirm that she, too, is from Higurashi. Which means that Hanyu's appearance wasn't a reference to Alice's Tea Party, not that such was likely anyway. I personally doubt Drakuaza would read something so light and fluffy. What do I mean by that? Well... you'll probably see within a few installments now.
Anyway, seems we're in full-on, random crossover with Higurashi.
And speaking of random, here's
a sign
I found
in Hakugyokurou
. What.
Anyway, back to Route 16. Battle a young couple here, Lea and Jed. They had ExLily W and ExLily B. Salem and Anonymous beat them pretty damn easily.
Back in Hakugyokurou, I pick up the coin case
so I can grab some new puppets from the Game Corner. Some I'll be using immediately. Some, including the one that costs 9999 coins, I will not.
Starting from the bottom we have... this thing!
It's a star. It evolves into either Ruukoto or Mimi-chan. Basically just a PoDD thing that evolves into one of two other... Po DD things. Ruukoto is completely unremarkable, Mimi-Chan is only good for exploding on stuff. Why do these these things exist? They're in other Touhoumon games too and suck just as much there. If you were playing a game with a LOT of double battles then a Mimi-chan or two might be useful, but even the randomly added double battles in this version don't make her worth it.
Next is Chibi Satori
, who you might recall becomes something of a Wobbuffet without the ability that made Wobbuffet so dangerous to begin with. Not that you need a trapping ability in-game. The AI rarely switches. She's added to the "potential trainee" list, though she won't be included in this grinding run.
Chibi Kanako
is another potential trainee, having an interesting typing and a defensive stat array. Electric/Grass has pretty decent coverage. At least until you run into a grass-type.
Chibi Elly
is an odd one. Pure fighting-type in this version, she gets VERY high attack but the rest of her stats aren't anything to write home about. At least she gets a STAB physical move. She seems like a pretty random choice to put here, though. Then again, her theme song became a fairly popular meme and, for better or worse, this hack is not above including memes...
Which is more than we can say for the last puppet here, Chibi Flandre
, who happens to be the one who costs 9999 coins to obtain. As of EX, she's a pretty... "meh" puppet. Base 130 atk, 120 s.atk, 90 speed, Fire/Dark. Frail, slow sweeper basically. Lucario has the same speed as her, but Lucario has Extremespeed and isn't regularly going up against opponents for whom a stat with a score of 100 or less is considered low. On top of that, Flandre's typing - heck, even her signature moves - suggest a special sweeper, but her attack is higher.
The final nail in her coffin, though, is her special ability: Insanity. In most Touhoumon games, Flandres can have either Intimidate or Insanity. Insanity increases physical attack power by 1.5x, but at the cost of 20% accuracy. It's the equivalent of getting STAB on an attack like Earthquake, which is nice, but then the accuracy reduction effectively means you're getting 80% of that. It's not a bad trade off really... on the physical end, at least. Since the power boost only applies to physical attacks, though, it means she gets a 20% accuracy reduction on her STAB attacks... and no bonus. I think she might actually be worse off than EX-Rumia. They both desparately want physical Crunch at least.
Of course, that all becomes moot if you evolve her to Last Word anyway. Last Word Flandre has either Speed Boost or Intimidate. Since it sets her up for a sweep, I'd go with Speed Boost personally. If I was using Last Words. Or Flandre.
Also while I'm still in this city, I decide to buy a Water Stone to evolve one of my puppets later. Now that I've got that, and I have Fly, I decide to withdraw my old Mystia and teach her Fly.
First stop is Heaven City, where we pick up the Old Amber
. I'm honestly not sure what puppet we get from this in this game. In the regular Touhoumon games you get Dolls, which can evolve into either Shanghai or Hourai. In this, Dolls don't evolve so I'm assuming you can't get them at all. Old Amber is obtained the same way as always, cut down a bush to get to a side area of the museum.
From Heaven City, go down to Route 2 and cut down a bush here to get to the house at the Yamame Cave exit. Here we'll be making a trade with this guy.
He wants a Chibi Alice, which I just happened to have lying around. Make the trade, sending the chibis through Glitch City
to do so. In return for the Chibi Alice, we receive a Chibi Sanae named Slaya
. Slaya? Really? I mean, I don't think my nicknames are the best, but Slaya? That name is especially irksome for other reasons I shall divulge on a later date.
And now, just for fun, let's rematch a few trainers. I'll make note of particularly interesting rematches here from routes 9 and 8. I didn't mention this before but when you rebattle trainers they will often have new puppets or increased levels. One girl on Route 6 had this
for example. F-Aya has a base stat total of 620, with 255 of that going to speed. That's the highest a base stat can go, by the way. She can basically outspeed anything in the game.
- On Route 9, rebattle Picnicker Alicia who has... a level 26 chibi Rin.
Weird. No points for guessing how that goes.
- On that same route, Camper Chris now has... a cRumia
and cMarisa?
What's going on here?
- Picnicker Caitlin has a solitary LwRin now. Wait a sec... didn't she have two ExRins and a Last Word last time? Terra beats it down easily and I'm feeling a bit of deja vu.
- Let's try Lass Megan on Route 8 again! Last time this was a painful double battle. This time around? Single and with much, much weaker puppets.
Of course, it's pretty obvious what's going on here. While most trainers got no change whatsoever, the ones that were supposed to get increased levels/new puppets actually got weaker. Why? Because Drakuaza either forgot or was too lazy to change the rosters for trainer rematches. So they get the puppets they would have had in the original ROM, which would be either Touhoumon 1.53 or Touhoumon Aqua+Yui. Did he really just think people wouldn't notice or something? I mean, surely anyone who'd play this hack is going to use the Vs. Seeker to grind as soon as they get it instead of grinding off of wild puppets?
No, wait, silly me. Anyone that'd actually play this kind of ROM hack... cheated for Rare Candies. Not that I expect many people played this. Or played it past Death Forest...
Anyway, as of posting this, I'm actually well into my grinding. Spent the weekend breeding puppets because those were a pain in the ass and now I'm grinding those very same puppets. Once I've got them up to speed, grinding the rest shouldn't take long. So time to get back to work so we can continue slogging our way through this hack!
Next installment, my puppets will all be grinded up to level 80. I'm expecting the battle against Link after to be a rather quick, one-sided beatdown.
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