Pokemon Silver Skies part 2
Aug. 24th, 2024 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheWe've arrived in Violet City!
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention last time that I told Mom NOT to save money. I want to keep it all for myself. If you want, you can have your mom "save money" for you -- part of all your winnings will go to her. It kinda functions like a bank system (if you white out, you lose a bunch of money), but she'll also spend your money on various items, including things useless to the adventure (but cute!) like dolls to decorate your room with. You can get some good items, like a Moon Stone, from this, but we're not going to be using Moon Stone anyway. So to keep all our money on us, we're not going to have her bank it.
Now that we've arrived in Violet, let's call Mom on the phone! We tell her we're in the city, apparently, and she mentions that Sprout Tower is there, and suggests we visit it. I'm going to try to call Mom every new town and see what she says. Might add a bit of extra fun little lore. We also call Elm, and he says that they discovered that the egg is indeed a Pokemon egg. How do they know this? No idea. But hey!
The telephone feature is a really cute and fun addition to Gen 2. You can register numbers of trainers you've defeated, and they'll call you and chat with you sometimes. They'll also sometimes ask for a rematch or give you a gift if you go and visit them again. I'm not collecting phone numbers this time around because I don't want to do rematches (not allowed per my rules), plus it gets kind of annoying having them call you over and over when you're wanting to progress in the game. But I do really like the feature. You also collect the numbers of major characters like Mom and Elm, and can call them for little tips and tidbits throughout the game.
As per Mom's suggestion, let's head to the north side of town to check out Sprout Tower.
This is a place where people (apparently a bunch of sages) gather to train their Pokemon. They also seem to really love Bellsprout, as almost all of them just have teams of Bellsprout. Bellsprout is Grass/Poison type, which ends up being neutral to Bug-type attacks, so we're able to use Leech Life on the relatively low leveled enemies here, not having to switch into Edea. Their Vine Whip also only deals 1 damage to Squall, since it's particularly weak against Flying/Poison.
Let's talk about Sprout Tower, though. Apparently this place has been used by trainers for a long time, and apparently the central pillar that holds the tower together is... a 100-foot-tall Bellsprout....?????? How did a Bellsprout even grow that large? Is it still alive? They don't explain this at all...
My guess is that the Bellsprout was from an ancient time when Pokemon were able to grow much taller, and it kind of fossilized itself into a tree-like shape, and people built the tower around it. Surely they didn't build a tower around a live Pokemon, right???
It does wiggle, though. The pillar is not solidly sturdy, and it sways around, especially when people are training. Apparently the wiggly nature of the pillar allows the tower to withstand earthquakes, as well! My guess here is just that a fossilized Bellsprout is not like, rock-solid, but more a soft vine-like texture?
Along the way up the tower, Squall hits level 6 and learns Supersonic. This is a big deal because we're now able to confuse opponents -- hurting themselves in confusion will deal much better damage than wimpy Leech Life, and it also prevents Squall from getting hit for a turn. The biggest downside is the accuracy is pretty bad (I think it's 50%) so it can take a few turns before we actually succeed in confusing the opponent.
This game in very handy for taking down Sage Li's Hoothoot. I went ahead and whittled it down with some Tackles from Edea (which aren't doing a lot of damage since she's not getting the opportunity to level up) and then relied on the confusion to take it down all the way. Leech Life was doing like 1 damage, so it wasn't really that helpful.
One downside to learning Supersonic, though, is that it has a ton of PP, and we're not able to easily get to use Struggle anymore. So we have to rely on the RNG to beat up the opponents now.
At the top of the tower is Sage Li who rewards trainers who can defeat him with HM05, the Hidden Machine for the move Flash. Flash was mostly useless in Gen 1, but the caves in this game are pitch black, and in this run, we're actually going to be using the move in battle. Sadly, Squall can't learn it, so we're going to have to go with Edea using Flash for now.
Before fighting Sage Li, we run into him finishing a battle with Silver. Li tells the boy that his fighting style is way too harsh, and he should treat his Pokemon better. Silver doesn't care because Li is weaker than him, so he couldn't possibly know what he's talking about. We learn (as we will hear many, many times) that Silver absolutely hates the weak.
And this is pretty much the extent to Silver. He hates the weak and wants to be the strongest. He doesn't develop at all beyond this, really. Well, kinda, he does say he 'starts to understand' what he's missing or something, but never fully comes around to saying he doesn't hate weakness, nor does he ever actually say he's going to treat his Pokemon better. And then he just kinda... stops appearing. Definitely the most disappointing rival character in the series IMO.
Anyway, we beat up Li and get the HM05, and then it's time to head out and see what else we can discover around Violet.
Around the western and southwestern side of the city is the Ruins of Alph. It's a "look and touch" tourist attraction of ancient ruins. In the research facillity (which is a tiny little shack), we can talk to some scientists and look at their documents to learn that the ruins are approximately 1500 years old, and the exploration and study of them only began just 10 years ago.
Many things about the Pokemon world suggest it's a very young world -- people are just now discovering basic things about Pokemon such as how they are born and how they evolve, and even the concept of the Pokedex seems to have been invented only 3 years ago. The society seems technologically advanced, though. It makes me wonder if there was some kind of apocalyptic event, and we're now living post-that and people are having to relearn everything, but still hang on to some technology. But instead of a ruined dystopia, this post-apocalypse is shown in a positive way -- humans are advancing and rebuilding thanks to Pokemon and technology, and the world is improving now. So we're seeing like, the post-post-apocalypse. Surge mentions being in war in both RGBY and GSC, and in later games they explicitly refer to a past war with more detail. So my guess is there was some kind of horrible warring times or other apocalyptic event that 'reset' parts of life for people, and then warring continued for a while, but now we're in the 'rebuilding and relearning' phase of life, where peace resides over the world for the most part. Everything, from the mafia, to whatever constructs of government seem to barely exist, is very young and new after this apparent warring time. In fact, the first games may take place only years after peace was established again.
Considering these ruins have been around for 1500 years, and people are only just now in their 10th year of investigating them, could about 10-15 years ago have been when peace was restored to the land?
Well, that's my theory anyway. In some ways, I wish they'd explore these ideas more thoroughly in the series, but in some ways, it's fun to be able to theorycraft and come up with your own ideas based on what bit of lore the game DOES give. I mean, in all reality, they probably just made up little bits of lore and chose numbers like "1500" and "10" without actually thinking about how it all fits together, but it's fun to try to puzzle together something coherent with what we're given anyway.
I plan to do these lore playthroughs (I explored the lore of Pokemon Red in my Pokemon Red Revenge run) for the entire series... eventually. So maybe we'll learn more and get to theorycraft further as I re-explore all the games. Though eventually we're going to get to alternate universes and timelines and crap to help 'explain' all the retconning with each new game lol.
Uhhhhh... anyway, Ruins of Alph. One thing I noticed is that there is a little bit of water on the south side of the ruins park, and it looks like there's some stuff beyond it, so I need to remember to come back here when I get Surf as well.
If we enter the ruins proper, we can talk to some people who talk about how the place feels ethereal. One guy mentions that ancient buildings are often tombs of kings. Is this a hint that perhaps some kind of king is buried here in the ruins? Or just one of those random 'fun fact' moments the games like to throw at us?
Part of the look-and-touch approach here is that there's an area with stone panels we can move around to solve a puzzle. Basically it's a little jigsaw, and thankfully there's a border around the outside so we can more easily see how it all fits together. The puzzle ends up being a picture of ancient Pokemon Kabuto.
Ah, yes, ancient Pokemon. The world must be quite old because there are fossilized Pokemon that are just being discovered. So I think that leans more into the apocalypse theory, too. I don't know how Legends Arceus fits into all of this (is it possibly pre-apocalypse?) as I haven't finished it, but I'm guessing there was a time before humans when the world was run by Pokemon.
Oh, man, this reminds me of some other theories I had where humans once were one with Pokemon or something, but something corrupted their nature, that I started coming up with in the DS era. I can't remember it all now, but it'll be fun to reach that point and see what I think then, having replayed all the older games...
Anyway, once we put the pieces together, a hole opens up in the ground and we fall back into the ruins. But now "there is a strange presence" and the other people are gone, and we are able to run into a mysterious type of Pokemon called Unown. I think this, along with shiny Pokemon, are the first examples of Pokemon of the same species having different looks/forms. There are actually 26 different variations of Unown, matching each letter of the English alphabet. Not much information is given on them, though. They remain much a mystery for the entire game. But they do match the 'writing' on the wall. Could it be that they evolved from the ancient writing? Or did people develop a writing system based on the Unown? Hmmm, which came first?
We're not going to be bothering to catch any Unown, though, since that's outside of the scope of this playthrough. Maybe the Pokedex entry will have some more insight, but we're not gonna see that for now. I think after this playthrough, I'm going to resume my Pokemon Yellow Dexrun, and then do a Dexrun of Crystal, so we can learn more about the Pokemon themselves.
With that, there's not much more to the Ruins of Alph. There's almost no gameplay necessity to this area -- in fact, it's completely optional to even visit here, and you don't gain much of gameplay value at all (Unown is a worthless Pokemon to fight with). This place exists solely to add lore and flavor to the world, which I think is really great. That's one of the things I love about Pokemon -- the world feels so alive and colorful. It's not just dungeon after dungeon with an eventual final boss. It feels like a living, breathing world.
There's one last little place we can go -- to the west of town there is a "wiggly tree." It's blocking the path west and south (which seems to be limiting the amount of people who come to visit the ruins, someone said). The tree wiggles and dances when you poke it. A nearby guy tried to snap it with a punch, but failed. How do you break a wiggly tree?!
That reminds me of another aspect of the Pokemon world -- while vehicles such as cars seem to exist (there's a cargo truck in Pokemon RGBY, and you arrive on a moving truck in RSE, for example), people... don't really seem to use them. Well, there doesn't seem to be much infrastructure for them. In later games we actually find more vehicles and roads proper, but these areas seem very underdeveloped for such things. The only thing we get close to a 'road' is Cycling Road, which is more just a bike path placed on a hill. So even if we wanted to drive, where would we even do it? Everyone just walks everywhere. There is a magnet train, though, and a high-speed boat, but those are only used to travel between entire regions with a single line, and they don't even run every day.
People do have access to Dig, Teleport, Fly, and Escape Rope, though, so there are some more 'magical' ways to travel.
And I may be wrong but I can't remember a single airplane in the entire series.
But since traveling without a Pokemon is so dangerous people don't even touch grass, there has to be SOME way people without Pokemon get around, right...? Honestly, I think that's just an oversight of the writing, but it would be interesting to know how people move from place to place in this world, other than just walking while being escorted by their Pokemon.
But yeah, we can't seem to do anything with the wiggly tree, so our only destination left is Violet Gym, where the leader Falkner uses the same type as us -- Flying!
We now have access to the move Flash, which lowers the accuracy of the opponent. This combined with confusion is the only thing saving us through these battles -- we start out by sending in Edea, having her Flash until she faints, then sending in Squall to confuse the opponents. Leech Life is not very effective against the Flying type, so we're relying almost solely on self-inflicted damage from confusion to defeat the fairly high-leveled birds here.
Just before getting to Falkner himself, I was only a few EXP away from level 12. This is where the regret from letting Edea soak up that tiny bit of Weedle experience in the last post comes into play. If I had only a few more points, Squall could have leveled up to level 12 and learned Bite, which would have made a big difference in the fight with Falkner.
Well, it wasn't TOO bad anyway. He just has a Pidgey and a Pidgeotto. We took out Pidgey with just Squall, relying on the confusion. Then for Pidgeotto, we had Edea come in and Flash. I think she got 2 in before fainting to Pidgeotto's Gust. And then thankfully, those two Flashes caused it to miss quite a few times while battling Squall. And thankfully, too, Squall hit level 12 after fighting Pidgey, meaning we were able to Bite Pidgeotto. Eventually, the confusion and biting wore it down, with its lowered accuracy and confusion causing it to miss a lot of its attacks, and we were awarded the ZephyrBadge.
And with that, I saved the game, and will continue next time! Hope you enjoyed reading all my stupid theories!
(Oh and random aside -- Gastly's Silver sprite is really cool, much cooler than the Gold sprite. That's a cool thing about GS, each Gold and Silver had different sprites for each Pokemon. Overall, I've been liking the Silver sprites more than the Gold sprites, but maybe it's just because they're refreshingly new after playing so much Gold...)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention last time that I told Mom NOT to save money. I want to keep it all for myself. If you want, you can have your mom "save money" for you -- part of all your winnings will go to her. It kinda functions like a bank system (if you white out, you lose a bunch of money), but she'll also spend your money on various items, including things useless to the adventure (but cute!) like dolls to decorate your room with. You can get some good items, like a Moon Stone, from this, but we're not going to be using Moon Stone anyway. So to keep all our money on us, we're not going to have her bank it.
Now that we've arrived in Violet, let's call Mom on the phone! We tell her we're in the city, apparently, and she mentions that Sprout Tower is there, and suggests we visit it. I'm going to try to call Mom every new town and see what she says. Might add a bit of extra fun little lore. We also call Elm, and he says that they discovered that the egg is indeed a Pokemon egg. How do they know this? No idea. But hey!
The telephone feature is a really cute and fun addition to Gen 2. You can register numbers of trainers you've defeated, and they'll call you and chat with you sometimes. They'll also sometimes ask for a rematch or give you a gift if you go and visit them again. I'm not collecting phone numbers this time around because I don't want to do rematches (not allowed per my rules), plus it gets kind of annoying having them call you over and over when you're wanting to progress in the game. But I do really like the feature. You also collect the numbers of major characters like Mom and Elm, and can call them for little tips and tidbits throughout the game.
As per Mom's suggestion, let's head to the north side of town to check out Sprout Tower.
This is a place where people (apparently a bunch of sages) gather to train their Pokemon. They also seem to really love Bellsprout, as almost all of them just have teams of Bellsprout. Bellsprout is Grass/Poison type, which ends up being neutral to Bug-type attacks, so we're able to use Leech Life on the relatively low leveled enemies here, not having to switch into Edea. Their Vine Whip also only deals 1 damage to Squall, since it's particularly weak against Flying/Poison.
Let's talk about Sprout Tower, though. Apparently this place has been used by trainers for a long time, and apparently the central pillar that holds the tower together is... a 100-foot-tall Bellsprout....?????? How did a Bellsprout even grow that large? Is it still alive? They don't explain this at all...
My guess is that the Bellsprout was from an ancient time when Pokemon were able to grow much taller, and it kind of fossilized itself into a tree-like shape, and people built the tower around it. Surely they didn't build a tower around a live Pokemon, right???
It does wiggle, though. The pillar is not solidly sturdy, and it sways around, especially when people are training. Apparently the wiggly nature of the pillar allows the tower to withstand earthquakes, as well! My guess here is just that a fossilized Bellsprout is not like, rock-solid, but more a soft vine-like texture?
Along the way up the tower, Squall hits level 6 and learns Supersonic. This is a big deal because we're now able to confuse opponents -- hurting themselves in confusion will deal much better damage than wimpy Leech Life, and it also prevents Squall from getting hit for a turn. The biggest downside is the accuracy is pretty bad (I think it's 50%) so it can take a few turns before we actually succeed in confusing the opponent.
This game in very handy for taking down Sage Li's Hoothoot. I went ahead and whittled it down with some Tackles from Edea (which aren't doing a lot of damage since she's not getting the opportunity to level up) and then relied on the confusion to take it down all the way. Leech Life was doing like 1 damage, so it wasn't really that helpful.
One downside to learning Supersonic, though, is that it has a ton of PP, and we're not able to easily get to use Struggle anymore. So we have to rely on the RNG to beat up the opponents now.
At the top of the tower is Sage Li who rewards trainers who can defeat him with HM05, the Hidden Machine for the move Flash. Flash was mostly useless in Gen 1, but the caves in this game are pitch black, and in this run, we're actually going to be using the move in battle. Sadly, Squall can't learn it, so we're going to have to go with Edea using Flash for now.
Before fighting Sage Li, we run into him finishing a battle with Silver. Li tells the boy that his fighting style is way too harsh, and he should treat his Pokemon better. Silver doesn't care because Li is weaker than him, so he couldn't possibly know what he's talking about. We learn (as we will hear many, many times) that Silver absolutely hates the weak.
And this is pretty much the extent to Silver. He hates the weak and wants to be the strongest. He doesn't develop at all beyond this, really. Well, kinda, he does say he 'starts to understand' what he's missing or something, but never fully comes around to saying he doesn't hate weakness, nor does he ever actually say he's going to treat his Pokemon better. And then he just kinda... stops appearing. Definitely the most disappointing rival character in the series IMO.
Anyway, we beat up Li and get the HM05, and then it's time to head out and see what else we can discover around Violet.
Around the western and southwestern side of the city is the Ruins of Alph. It's a "look and touch" tourist attraction of ancient ruins. In the research facillity (which is a tiny little shack), we can talk to some scientists and look at their documents to learn that the ruins are approximately 1500 years old, and the exploration and study of them only began just 10 years ago.
Many things about the Pokemon world suggest it's a very young world -- people are just now discovering basic things about Pokemon such as how they are born and how they evolve, and even the concept of the Pokedex seems to have been invented only 3 years ago. The society seems technologically advanced, though. It makes me wonder if there was some kind of apocalyptic event, and we're now living post-that and people are having to relearn everything, but still hang on to some technology. But instead of a ruined dystopia, this post-apocalypse is shown in a positive way -- humans are advancing and rebuilding thanks to Pokemon and technology, and the world is improving now. So we're seeing like, the post-post-apocalypse. Surge mentions being in war in both RGBY and GSC, and in later games they explicitly refer to a past war with more detail. So my guess is there was some kind of horrible warring times or other apocalyptic event that 'reset' parts of life for people, and then warring continued for a while, but now we're in the 'rebuilding and relearning' phase of life, where peace resides over the world for the most part. Everything, from the mafia, to whatever constructs of government seem to barely exist, is very young and new after this apparent warring time. In fact, the first games may take place only years after peace was established again.
Considering these ruins have been around for 1500 years, and people are only just now in their 10th year of investigating them, could about 10-15 years ago have been when peace was restored to the land?
Well, that's my theory anyway. In some ways, I wish they'd explore these ideas more thoroughly in the series, but in some ways, it's fun to be able to theorycraft and come up with your own ideas based on what bit of lore the game DOES give. I mean, in all reality, they probably just made up little bits of lore and chose numbers like "1500" and "10" without actually thinking about how it all fits together, but it's fun to try to puzzle together something coherent with what we're given anyway.
I plan to do these lore playthroughs (I explored the lore of Pokemon Red in my Pokemon Red Revenge run) for the entire series... eventually. So maybe we'll learn more and get to theorycraft further as I re-explore all the games. Though eventually we're going to get to alternate universes and timelines and crap to help 'explain' all the retconning with each new game lol.
Uhhhhh... anyway, Ruins of Alph. One thing I noticed is that there is a little bit of water on the south side of the ruins park, and it looks like there's some stuff beyond it, so I need to remember to come back here when I get Surf as well.
If we enter the ruins proper, we can talk to some people who talk about how the place feels ethereal. One guy mentions that ancient buildings are often tombs of kings. Is this a hint that perhaps some kind of king is buried here in the ruins? Or just one of those random 'fun fact' moments the games like to throw at us?
Part of the look-and-touch approach here is that there's an area with stone panels we can move around to solve a puzzle. Basically it's a little jigsaw, and thankfully there's a border around the outside so we can more easily see how it all fits together. The puzzle ends up being a picture of ancient Pokemon Kabuto.
Ah, yes, ancient Pokemon. The world must be quite old because there are fossilized Pokemon that are just being discovered. So I think that leans more into the apocalypse theory, too. I don't know how Legends Arceus fits into all of this (is it possibly pre-apocalypse?) as I haven't finished it, but I'm guessing there was a time before humans when the world was run by Pokemon.
Oh, man, this reminds me of some other theories I had where humans once were one with Pokemon or something, but something corrupted their nature, that I started coming up with in the DS era. I can't remember it all now, but it'll be fun to reach that point and see what I think then, having replayed all the older games...
Anyway, once we put the pieces together, a hole opens up in the ground and we fall back into the ruins. But now "there is a strange presence" and the other people are gone, and we are able to run into a mysterious type of Pokemon called Unown. I think this, along with shiny Pokemon, are the first examples of Pokemon of the same species having different looks/forms. There are actually 26 different variations of Unown, matching each letter of the English alphabet. Not much information is given on them, though. They remain much a mystery for the entire game. But they do match the 'writing' on the wall. Could it be that they evolved from the ancient writing? Or did people develop a writing system based on the Unown? Hmmm, which came first?
We're not going to be bothering to catch any Unown, though, since that's outside of the scope of this playthrough. Maybe the Pokedex entry will have some more insight, but we're not gonna see that for now. I think after this playthrough, I'm going to resume my Pokemon Yellow Dexrun, and then do a Dexrun of Crystal, so we can learn more about the Pokemon themselves.
With that, there's not much more to the Ruins of Alph. There's almost no gameplay necessity to this area -- in fact, it's completely optional to even visit here, and you don't gain much of gameplay value at all (Unown is a worthless Pokemon to fight with). This place exists solely to add lore and flavor to the world, which I think is really great. That's one of the things I love about Pokemon -- the world feels so alive and colorful. It's not just dungeon after dungeon with an eventual final boss. It feels like a living, breathing world.
There's one last little place we can go -- to the west of town there is a "wiggly tree." It's blocking the path west and south (which seems to be limiting the amount of people who come to visit the ruins, someone said). The tree wiggles and dances when you poke it. A nearby guy tried to snap it with a punch, but failed. How do you break a wiggly tree?!
That reminds me of another aspect of the Pokemon world -- while vehicles such as cars seem to exist (there's a cargo truck in Pokemon RGBY, and you arrive on a moving truck in RSE, for example), people... don't really seem to use them. Well, there doesn't seem to be much infrastructure for them. In later games we actually find more vehicles and roads proper, but these areas seem very underdeveloped for such things. The only thing we get close to a 'road' is Cycling Road, which is more just a bike path placed on a hill. So even if we wanted to drive, where would we even do it? Everyone just walks everywhere. There is a magnet train, though, and a high-speed boat, but those are only used to travel between entire regions with a single line, and they don't even run every day.
People do have access to Dig, Teleport, Fly, and Escape Rope, though, so there are some more 'magical' ways to travel.
And I may be wrong but I can't remember a single airplane in the entire series.
But since traveling without a Pokemon is so dangerous people don't even touch grass, there has to be SOME way people without Pokemon get around, right...? Honestly, I think that's just an oversight of the writing, but it would be interesting to know how people move from place to place in this world, other than just walking while being escorted by their Pokemon.
But yeah, we can't seem to do anything with the wiggly tree, so our only destination left is Violet Gym, where the leader Falkner uses the same type as us -- Flying!
We now have access to the move Flash, which lowers the accuracy of the opponent. This combined with confusion is the only thing saving us through these battles -- we start out by sending in Edea, having her Flash until she faints, then sending in Squall to confuse the opponents. Leech Life is not very effective against the Flying type, so we're relying almost solely on self-inflicted damage from confusion to defeat the fairly high-leveled birds here.
Just before getting to Falkner himself, I was only a few EXP away from level 12. This is where the regret from letting Edea soak up that tiny bit of Weedle experience in the last post comes into play. If I had only a few more points, Squall could have leveled up to level 12 and learned Bite, which would have made a big difference in the fight with Falkner.
Well, it wasn't TOO bad anyway. He just has a Pidgey and a Pidgeotto. We took out Pidgey with just Squall, relying on the confusion. Then for Pidgeotto, we had Edea come in and Flash. I think she got 2 in before fainting to Pidgeotto's Gust. And then thankfully, those two Flashes caused it to miss quite a few times while battling Squall. And thankfully, too, Squall hit level 12 after fighting Pidgey, meaning we were able to Bite Pidgeotto. Eventually, the confusion and biting wore it down, with its lowered accuracy and confusion causing it to miss a lot of its attacks, and we were awarded the ZephyrBadge.
And with that, I saved the game, and will continue next time! Hope you enjoyed reading all my stupid theories!
(Oh and random aside -- Gastly's Silver sprite is really cool, much cooler than the Gold sprite. That's a cool thing about GS, each Gold and Silver had different sprites for each Pokemon. Overall, I've been liking the Silver sprites more than the Gold sprites, but maybe it's just because they're refreshingly new after playing so much Gold...)
