I had another encounter with that Link guy. Just who is he, anyway? He doesn't seem very important, but I keep running into him everywhere...
Oh. Hey. There's a Team Rocket Grunt guarding a random poster here.
This is not suspicious at all. I'll battle him anyway though.
In all seriousness, has anyone ever really stopped to think about this plot point? I mean, Team Rocket was never known to be the sharpest knives in the drawer (GSC especially seemed to go out of their way to make Team Rocket seem like utter buffoons) but this was probably the point where you realized just how stupid they really are. Sure, the thief hiding in plain sight in the victim's backyard was one thing, but here we have a grunt guarding a poster with a hidden switch behind it. If he wasn't there guarding it, there'd be no reason to suspect there was a switch there. In fact, if he wasn't there, there would be no reason to suspect Rocket Game Corner of being connected to Team Rocket!
Actually, guess the "Rocket" in "Rocket Game Corner" is a bit of a tipoff too.
...Know what? Forget what I said. Intelligence is just low in general among the NPC's of the Pokemon World. Anyway, pretty sure I'm supposed to be battling someone here.
Yeah, I'm battling this guy.
Rocket Fabio. Interesting name, but I'm sure that's not the last grunt I'll come across with an interesting name. Fabio has a LwReimu and LwMarisa that are actually only in the high 70's level-wise. Easy battle for Thief and Salem, in other words. Even in Touhoumon Insane, the grunts end up lower leveled than the local trainers.
After beating Fabio, we check out the poster.
Now we can get into the Rocket Hideout! Man, does this bring back memories! I mean, sure, nowadays I could practically run through this place blindfolded, but back when I was a kid I used to get lost in here! Heh, I just couldn't follow those arrow-thingies. Even in Lunatic I'm pretty sure this place remains unchanged, and it'll be nice to play through a NORMAL dungeon for a...
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!?
It's dark! It's rainy! It's ANOTHER GODDAMN FOREST! Under the Game Corner! What!? Gah! Only Drakuaza could turn the Team Rocket Hideout into another forest! "Hidden Youkai Forest" it's called. Joy.
On the bright side, Drakuaza's bullshit dungeons are far less bullshit than the bullshit dungeons he blatantly copied over from Touhoumon Lunatic. I didn't think to get screenshots, but trust me. There's nothing to this. The floors are small and the mazes have maybe one or two misleading paths on each floor but they're easy to spot if you have a picture available.
There's grass here too, but I doubt there would really be... wild...
puppets?
...
I... don't even have words right now. It's the glitch pokemon. 'M' and Missingno. In Touhoumon. Why? My guess is this is supposed to be some "clever" attempt at tying into the name of the romhack by including "pokemon" that are often thought of as eldritch abominations by the Pokemon fandom, thus inducing insanity through their very presence.
Or maybe Drakuaza is just a douche and said "lawl let's just throw in the glitch pokemon because why the fuck not!" Whatever. Catching them.
Let's start with 'M'... who has a rather interesting ability
. Normal/Flying type, Wonderguard copy for an ability, permanent 1 hp. Only electric, rock, or ice-type attacks will hurt it though, aside from indirect damage. It's a Shedinja, basically. A Shedinja with 186 base attack and fewer weaknesses. I'll be adding one of these to my team. The ability alone means this thing's potential utility is off the charts. Incredible base attack is just gravy. Dex entry is a bit odd though.
Missingno is much less notable. It has a rather high attack score as well, but the rest of its stats suck and it doesn't have nearly as useful an ability. It just has Damp, which prevents pokemon from using Self Destruct or Explosion. Joy. I catch one anyway just for the heck of it. It's Dex entry is even weirder.
Anyway, let's make our way through the rest of the hideout - I mean, forest - now.
- Almost make it through the first area before finally running into Grunt Kopilot. He leads off with a level 78 ExWriggle and follows up with LwChen. Thief and Accessory take these two easily. Nothing else really of note on this floor.
- Almost get through the second area but run into Rocket Grunt Sammy. Five puppets. Double battle. Leads with F-Meiling and ExRumia. I lead with Thief and Green. After taking out F-Meiling, switch Thief for Accessory. LwChen comes out next. Green goes down after using Voodoo and getting hit by a Shadow Ball. DarkKnight comes out and takes down ExRumia. ExFlandre replaces her but loses to DarkKnight as well. Chen finally goes down to Accessory. DarkKnight lands a strong blow on LwRemilia with Superpower, but thanks to Intimidate she survives. Accessory finishes her with Miracle Wind. Fairly easy for a double battle. Aside from this battle, nothing of note on this floor either.
The third floor is where things finally get interesting, only not really. Basically, this floor is just like Oni Tunnel, only not nearly as frustrating. Invisible walls, yeah, but again the path is fairly straightforward because Drakuaza is too lazy to make an actual maze. Not that I'm complaining about this, but I'll cast whatever stones I can pick up anyway.
- Sensing a pattern here as I find yet another grunt at the end of this area. Grunt Fernando. He has an ExRumia, ExMomiji, and ExPatchouli. Rumia survives a Thunderbolt only to sacrifice herself with Memento. Momiji goes down easily to a Master Spark. Or at least, that's what I'd like to say only Thief manages to miss. Twice in a row. With 90% accuracy. Hate luck. DarkKnight cleans up.
We're onto the final floor now and not only is it not dark, there's no maze. Hell, I can only see one grunt battle and it's completely optional. So let's battle him anyway!
- Battle optional grunt, Grunt Rolf. Thief almost goes down to his ExMomiji thanks to yet MORE accuracy issues with Master Spark. When did this become so inaccurate? DarkKnight then takes out his ExWriggle. These trainer battles aren't just easy, accuracy hax aside. They're boring.
After the battle, Rolf complains about dropping a stone and even swears.
Yeah, that random "FUCK" really added to this. Sigh. Hate hacks that try to act mature by throwing in random swearing or trainers threatening to kill you. Ironically, I'd be willing to chalk this up to a clever pun if he had even more swearing.
Turns out he dropped a Moonstone.
Couldn't have wanted it very badly then.
...Okay, trainers threatening to kill you is one thing. But this? This is taking it to a whole new level.
Was that REALLY necessary, Drakuaza? Am I actually supposed to feel threatened by this? Because I don't. In fact, please excuse me while I go beat up the rest of the pathetic Rockets in this place.
After making that boast, I find two female grunts and a glitch awaiting me.
Sigh. Let's just get this over with.
- Grunt on the left is... Rocket Admin Suigintou!?
What!? Oh, even better. She has legendary puppets. Eh, they're nothing compared to that H-Kirisame. 700 - 800 BST. Higher than a Last Word, lower than a "Hell" or whatever the S-Puppets are supposed to be. Thief takes down Shingyoku
, her first puppet, with little trouble. Another Shingyoku next. And then another. Different forms, basically. Shingyoku replaces Suicune, Entei, and Raikou as the puppet you find in the wild post-game. Form depends on your starter. The forms are named after which character is in the center for the sprite: Orb, Priest, or Priestess. Green takes out the second
Shingyoku and sacrifices herself to curse the third. They're all "???" type, by the way. So no STAB attacks, no weaknesses, no resistances, and no immunities. Basically, no threat. Accessory beats the third after powering up with Mana Charge. Forgot to get a picture for this one, but this was the priestess form.
Now that the battle is out of the way... why the hell is Suigintou in this hack AND part of Team Rocket? I've never watched Rozen Maiden, mind you, but I've been around the internet enough to be able to spot one of the main characters from the series. Woulda spotted the Higurashi characters sooner, too, had it been Rena I ran into first. Anyway, I just don't get this. Their presence doesn't add anything, nor does replacing "critical hit" and "super effective" with random quotes from Bayonetta add anything. Or the random presence of wild puppets based on Higurashi characters.
Anyone starting to see why I consider playing through this comparable to a bad fanfic now? It's like I'm reading some 13-year-old boy's Darker and Edgier Crossover Touhou fic. Only he somehow learned how to hack roms and turned it into an increased difficulty romhack which, like many such hacks, tend less toward difficulty and more toward padding the game out and adding elements that are frustrating rather than challenging.
I'll spare you another spiel on why forced level grinding doesn't make for a more challenging gaming experience since I'm pretty sure I've covered that in full already.
Anyway, I'm getting off track here and we have another Rozen Maiden character
to beat up. On that note, a quick bit of research shows Suigintou was the antagonist in Rozen Maiden and Shinku was the protagonist. So why the hell are they BOTH part of Team Rocket? Oh screw it, logic's pretty much taken a vacation at this point...
- Shinku, like Suigintou, is packing legendary puppets. First, Kongala.
Fighting/Ghost. Good stats, especially attack. Thief manages to survive a Slash attack to 2HKO with 5 Elements. Kikuri
, a psychic-type, is next. She's defensive. Easy win for Green. A lucky crit with Aura Beam makes it even easier. Yuugenma's
next, a specially-offensive dark-type. DarkKnight answers this one quite easily, outspeeding it and hitting it with STAB Superpower off of 180 base attack. Funny, you'd expect more of a challenge from 700-800 BST puppets. Especially when your strongest puppets hit only 600 BST at most. Oh well.
After beating both dolls, the glitch shifts.
Guess I can go through now?
Coming up on the boss and... wait, that sprite!
It couldn't be... Hina? She gives some spiel about the world being rotten and asks if I know why she's doing what she's doing. Would be nice to know what she's doing. Really, I'm only here because I know from playing Pokemon that I'm supposed to be here. I can't even say it's "because the plot says so" because I don't have a goddamn clue what the plot even IS at this point. Am I missing some important piece of dialogue here where someone tells me what Team Rocket is up to? Because apparently it's not committing random crimes anymore. Whatever, beating her up now.
Ah, nevermind. This woman
kinda resembles Hina but definitely couldn't be her. Just the same name. Hina leads with LwChen. Send out Accessory and have her use Mana Charge, then start attacking with Miracle Wind to get some stat boosts. LwSuwako is rather conveniently next, easy win for Accessory. ExYumemi
is next. She's Ice/Fire, which means she's weak to Water, which means she goes down to Miracle Wind.
DLwHina comes out next. She's basically as strong as a legendary despite being Dark Last Word. Why? Because you can actually evolve a Hina all the way to Dark Last Word. Most DLW's have base stat totals over 1000. She's poison and dark, leaving her weak to ground and steel. Mixed offensive puppet. She manages to take down Accessory with a crit Poison Bomb. Salem takes revenge.
ExMedicine follows and manages to take down Warmage with Poison Bomb, which poisoned her, followed by Protect spam. Well that was rather annoying. Thief finishes her off. LwSuika is her final puppet now. Green goes out and hits her with Voodoo and manages to survive the battle that follows, wearing Suika down with the curse and finishing her with ManiacLaugh. It's a steel-type attack for whatever reason...
Hina spouts off the details of her plan after we beat her. Blah blah blah world is rotten
and she wants to create a world without humans. She doesn't even back up this claim, just says the world is rotten because of us. Why? How about something to back up that claim miss definitely-not-the-curse-goddess-Hina?
If this WAS supposed to be the actual Touhou character, then this plot would make even LESS sense. The majority of the fantasy creatures in Touhou rely on the continued existance of humans to continue existing themselves. For the basic youkai, tormenting humans one way or another is basically their reason for existing. For the gods, humans are (usually) their source of faith and without faith they wither away and die. Youkai are another potential source of faith but, as mentioned, their existance kinda ties in to humans too.
Basically there's no reason why any non-human in Touhou should want to get rid of humans. Except maybe Medicine, but there's a reason I named mine Banette. Even Medicine's hatred of humans seems to be exaggerated though. Case in point, out of all the characters that come into contact with her, it's only Tewi that seems to suffer for it. I think a human could actually hold a perfectly reasonable conversation with her if she wasn't always so eager to show off her poisons. But showing off is pretty much expected of youkai...
I've gone on another tangent again... anyway, we're done here. Beat up the rockets, got the Silph Scope. All that's left to do now is go beat up the gym leader. But before we do that, I have a few more puppets I want to raise.
Comments
