Pokemon Silver Skies part 5
Oct. 14th, 2024 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marchionessofmustacheWe're back! Let's make our way to the next gym!
Not as much happens in this one, so hopefully it will be a shorter entry...?
Now that Goldenrod City's gym is completed and we're able to get rid of the wiggly tree, we're now able to travel WEST of the wiggly tree, which puts us on the path forward!
I did head back into Goldenrod real fast to get a haircut, then we headed out to Route 37 to head toward our next destination. On the way we met Sunny of Sunday, who gave us the Magnet. Not going to be useful, but funny that I happen to be in the right place at the right time for these people like I was in Gold.
Nothing was particularly eventful on the road; it was a very short route since we already went through so much to unlock the path here. Irvine did get put to sleep, and I made the most of the ruleset by battling a wild Pokemon and using up turns until he woke up (I just didn't have any awakenings and didn't want to walk all the way back to Goldenrod through Route 35 and stuff). I mean, he didn't gain exp from the battle, since we ran afterward, so it's still within the rules :)
And a few short moments later, we're in Ecruteak. Everything here has a "traditional Japanese" feel to it, and I love how they give a little more character to the cities, which all felt a bit generic in the first games.
When we go into the Pokemon Center, we're greeted by Bill, who explains that his time capsule development is finished, which allows trading Pokemon with the past. This was basically the excuse to let you trade with Pokemon Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. But the "problem" is that you can't send things like moves or Pokemon that didn't exist in the past -- it would cause the computer in the past to crash. Not that it would create some kind of time paradox or anything. Just break the computer.
But that leads to an interesting point -- these Pokemon newly discovered in the Johto region literally didn't exist three years ago according to this concept. He doesn't say you can't trade Pokemon that weren't discovered, but he explicitly says you can't trade Pokemon that didn't exist. It's not just that they're indigenous to this region or that they're newly discovered... they actually didn't exist at all only a few years ago. This means Pokemon are a VERY rapidly-changing thing. Or it could mean that people just didn't realize they existed until now -- not that they didn't exist at all. So people in this young world are going to talk about them as if they just ... somehow started existing in the past three years.
And maybe the reason the computer would break down would make sense with that, too -- the computer systems are designed to transfer Pokemon data, but the computers in the past wouldn't be able to handle data that didn't exist at the time. Not because the Pokemon didn't exist, but because the programming to handle said Pokemon didn't exist because they had yet to be discovered by humans. So it's the data that doesn't exist, not necessarily the living beings themselves...?
... I don't know; it's getting harder and harder to make excuses for this "lore" when it's really just a matter of making excuses for advancements in the gameplay and they put little effort into it actually making sense because honestly for 99.99999992835% of the enjoyment of the game it doesn't NEED to make sense.
Anyway, wandering around Ecruteak City we learn of a few interesting things. There's a dude who "smells a conspiracy" about the Lake of Rage and the recent outbreak of a Gyarados swarm there. We learn about a Dance Theater where there are beautiful Kimono Girls who are also Pokemon Trainers, and there are two towers in the city that were said to be the roosts for legendary Pokemon, but the western tower burned down and now the Pokemon have left. Strangely like no one talks about the Pokemon gym here...?
Oh, we also find a book called "History of Ecruteak." It talks about the Pokemon roosting in the towers, but also about three Pokemon that 'raced around town' that were said to be born of water, lightning, and fire. But when they could no longer contain their massive power, they ran off into "the grassland." Now, is the "history" of Ecruteak like 2 years old...? Did these Pokemon come into existence, live here, become written into the annals of history, and disappear in the past couple years...? It really has to be that the computer data didn't exist, right...?????
Also a cute little note -- there are little shoes in the genkan of the houses here. What a cute little detail~!
Oh, we even learn that the Pokemon responsible for the beacon at Olivine Lighthouse has fallen ill. And there's an old man who said when he was young, the sky suddenly turned black because a huge Pokemon that looks like a 'bird and a dragon' blocked out the sun. I'm assuming he's referring to either Lugia or Ho-oh -- probably Lugia because Ho-oh doesn't look like a dragon. But at the same time, this confirms that the Pokemon had to have been around more than 2-3 years ago. Unless this guy SUDDENLY got old in the past couple years, and everyone else in the town has amnesia or suddenly grew up from babies in the last 2 years to not have witnessed it...
Maybe Bill just misspoke when he said that you can't trade Pokemon that "didn't exist," and he meant to say that the data didn't exist.
This is what I'm going with...
Anyway, the first thing we do here is head into the western tower, which is the one that burned down. Here we meet Silver who again talks about hating the weak and how he's going to become the greatest Pokemon trainer by finding the legendary Pokemon from Ecruteak. Well, there are FIVE of them apparently, so good luck, buddy! Though he speaks about it as if there's only one -- my guess is a translation error having to do with how Japanese handles (or doesn't handle lol) plurals. I guess instead he could be talking exclusively about Lugia, but... that would be strange.
Oh, and outside the tower there is a sign that says "Please stay away, as it is unsafe." Now, everyone followed the rules and only battled in the grass in the park. Why are there people in the tower here?! It's just a few firebreather trainers, and one of them says he was in there "in secret" so I guess not everyone in the Pokemon world is as obedient as I thought, hahaha.
When I finished fighting one of them, he turned greyscale...? Definitely a weird glitch.
After roaming around and falling through the floor a couple times, we come across three strange creatures that "light up" when we approach them and then run away. I don't think it's ever explicitly explained, but these are the three Pokemon that were written about in the history book. Triggering this little event starts one of the most obnoxious new concepts that gen 2 brought to Pokemon: roaming Pokemon. Now these three Pokemon will randomly select a place to be, and they'll become a wild encounter there. Every time you enter a building or change routes, it will re-randomize which location they are in. And there's no way to tell where they are, so you just have to like... HOPE you run into one. And then when you do, it will flee. It will retain whatever damage and status conditions you inflict on it, however, between battles, but once it flees, it again resets where it is, so you have to HOPE you run into it again... I don't know if once you encounter it once you can search for its area in the Pokedex or not. Even if you can, it's completely random where it is, and if you try to go find it, it will just move, so... your best bet is to enter a building, walk to the nearest route, check and see if it's there, and if it's not, repeat the process until it is. VERY VERY OBNOXIOUS.
BUT -- it does feel insanely satisfying to finally catch a roaming Pokemon.
We try to go to the other tower, which is called Tin Tower, but there's a building before it where they stop anyone who doesn't have Ecruteak's gym badge. Strangely Tin Tower has a name but the burned-down tower didn't have one.
So our next stop before heading into the gym is the Dance Theater. There's not a TON here, just a few audience members and the Kimono Girls. There's a guy here who says he'll give us something nice if we're able to defeat all of them in a Pokemon battle. So we just go up onto stage while they are dancing and have battles with them, because that completely makes sense.
Each of the five Kimono Girls has a different evolution of Eevee -- including the two new ones introduced in this generation, Espeon and Umbreon. Now, the evolution for these require use of the friendship mechanic and the day/night cycle from the real-time clock, which didn't exist in the generation 1 games. But lore-wise, why did no one ever get an evolution like these before...? I mean, surely even despite the game mechanics not existing, people had friendship with their Pokemon and there was day and night. You're not going to tell me that the concept of days and nights was born in the past 3 years, too, are you?
Though it could be that Eevee is just an incredibly rare species of Pokemon, and no one had even had the CHANCE to get close to one yet. There is exactly one in all of Kanto, and even the data for its three previous evolutions hadn't been recorded by even the biggest Pokemaniac, Bill. Only their appearances were known, but nothing else was known about them. So perhaps just the other evolutions and Eevee in general were so rare that no one ever saw one until recently.
As we fight the Kimono girls, I mostly use Irvine and heal him with Fresh Water, hoping that he'll get more and more friendship points so he can finally evolve. There wasn't much to say about these fights -- Irvine used Mud-Slap a couple times then Headbutted them down.
Next up, we head to Ecruteak Gym, where the leader Morty is waiting. The trainers in the gym here fight with ghost-type Pokemon, which are not terribly scary.
In fact, there's kind of a cheese strat here. The ghosts prioritize using a move called Curse which cuts the user's HP in half to curse the opponent, which drains a lot of their HP every turn (more so than poison or Leech Seed). The problem with this is that the curse is not treated as a status effect, and it goes away when you switch out to another Pokemon.
So if you just switch back and forth between Pokemon, the AI will choose what to do at the moment of its turn rather than before the turn as if you were playing against a human opponent. So it sees that a new Pokemon is there and unafflicted with the curse, and it will use Curse again. So basically you can just swap Pokemon back and forth until the ghosts sacrifice themselves.
Medium Martha, the final trainer on the way to Morty, though (omg I just realized his name is MORTY because of MORT like DEATH) used a different strategy -- she actually used the move Mean Look first, which makes it impossible for the opposing Pokemon to escape the battle. Now Curse is guaranteed to work! It did scare me a bit, but Mud-Slap was thankfully super effective and the ghosts' defenses were super low, so we didn't take too much damage from the curse before defeating each with Irvine, and then when we could use Squall (you can swap out once the opposing Pokemon that used Mean Look faints), his Bite attack could down the ghosts in a single hit.
Morty's Pokemon actually did the stupid Curse thing, so the first two were easy to beat. Then he used his 'ace' Pokemon, Gengar. It would use Hypnosis, and once your Pokemon was asleep, use Dream Eater. Dream Eater is terrifying, especially from a Pokemon with such high Special Attack, and probably would have knocked out any of my Pokemon in one hit. I started out with Rinoa, using Stun Spore and Leech Seed, then swapped over to Irvine after she fell asleep to start smacking it with Mud-Slaps, hoping that its accuracy would get low enough it would never get a Hypnosis in, and we could wither it down. Well, this worked.
Then the last Pokemon he sent out was a Haunter that strangely did not know Curse. Instead it knew a slew of fairly useless moves, especially since ghost-type moves don't affect normal-type Pokemon. So Irvine was able to just sit there and not get hit. It did use Spite which lowered the PP of his moves, though. But the real problem here was that it used Mean Look and trapped Irvine into the battle. And like ghost moves don't affect normal Pokemon, normal moves also don't affect ghost Pokemon. And our only attacks were Mud-Slap and Headbutt. We already used up most of our Mud-Slap on Gengar (we only have 10 to start with!) and then Haunter used Spite which killed off the rest of the PP, so we only got one Mud-Slap in.
So our only option was to run out of PP on all our moves and end up using, yet again, Struggle. Struggle is typeless so it will affect any Pokemon at a regular rate... though it is based on your Attack stat. Because Haunter was able to steal Mud-Slap from us, it lowered Irvine's accuracy to its lowest, and because in running through our PP of Charm and Flash, we minimized Haunter's attack and accuracy... we ended up in an almost-stalemate of each using Struggle on each other and constantly missing or doing next to no damage. Of course, I had Fresh Water, so I was able to outlast. In all, I spent about 15 minutes fighting Haunter this way.
But the important thing is that I won. Morty says that he was training to see the future, and if he could beat us, it might push him over the edge so he could see a future where he meets one of Ecruteak's legendary Pokemon. But we won, and instead, he says he is envious that we've traveled around and had so many experiences with our Pokemon. Kinda sad for Morty, to be honest.
Finally, to end our little journey for today, we go back to Tin Tower where we're finally allowed in. I want to note that all the towers in this game have the wobbly pillars in the middle. Did they just... not care to design something different for the other towers? Or are all the towers here supposed to be made out of gigantic Bellsprouts...? You think they could at least have just 'turned off' the animation for the pillar in the other towers... I'm not even going to try to explain this one away. They're just all Bellsprouts. I don't care.
Inside the tower, we get to a guy guarding the stairs going up. He says if he had the same item as the legendary Pokemon, it may cause it to return. That item is a Rainbow Wing. And then we can't proceed. Came here for nothing...
So, yeah, that little ending was uneventful but at least we defeated Morty, and now we can Surf outside of battle...! We taught Surf to Laguna and I'm ready to backtrack to all those places I took notes on... or on second thought, I think I'll wait til we get Fly. I don't want to go all the way back to the very beginning of the game just to Surf and find out there's nothing there or I also need Strength or something like that.
Speaking of going back, there was an item hidden behind a Strength boulder in the burned-down tower. Gotta take a note of that one!
Not as much happens in this one, so hopefully it will be a shorter entry...?
Now that Goldenrod City's gym is completed and we're able to get rid of the wiggly tree, we're now able to travel WEST of the wiggly tree, which puts us on the path forward!
I did head back into Goldenrod real fast to get a haircut, then we headed out to Route 37 to head toward our next destination. On the way we met Sunny of Sunday, who gave us the Magnet. Not going to be useful, but funny that I happen to be in the right place at the right time for these people like I was in Gold.
Nothing was particularly eventful on the road; it was a very short route since we already went through so much to unlock the path here. Irvine did get put to sleep, and I made the most of the ruleset by battling a wild Pokemon and using up turns until he woke up (I just didn't have any awakenings and didn't want to walk all the way back to Goldenrod through Route 35 and stuff). I mean, he didn't gain exp from the battle, since we ran afterward, so it's still within the rules :)
And a few short moments later, we're in Ecruteak. Everything here has a "traditional Japanese" feel to it, and I love how they give a little more character to the cities, which all felt a bit generic in the first games.
When we go into the Pokemon Center, we're greeted by Bill, who explains that his time capsule development is finished, which allows trading Pokemon with the past. This was basically the excuse to let you trade with Pokemon Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. But the "problem" is that you can't send things like moves or Pokemon that didn't exist in the past -- it would cause the computer in the past to crash. Not that it would create some kind of time paradox or anything. Just break the computer.
But that leads to an interesting point -- these Pokemon newly discovered in the Johto region literally didn't exist three years ago according to this concept. He doesn't say you can't trade Pokemon that weren't discovered, but he explicitly says you can't trade Pokemon that didn't exist. It's not just that they're indigenous to this region or that they're newly discovered... they actually didn't exist at all only a few years ago. This means Pokemon are a VERY rapidly-changing thing. Or it could mean that people just didn't realize they existed until now -- not that they didn't exist at all. So people in this young world are going to talk about them as if they just ... somehow started existing in the past three years.
And maybe the reason the computer would break down would make sense with that, too -- the computer systems are designed to transfer Pokemon data, but the computers in the past wouldn't be able to handle data that didn't exist at the time. Not because the Pokemon didn't exist, but because the programming to handle said Pokemon didn't exist because they had yet to be discovered by humans. So it's the data that doesn't exist, not necessarily the living beings themselves...?
... I don't know; it's getting harder and harder to make excuses for this "lore" when it's really just a matter of making excuses for advancements in the gameplay and they put little effort into it actually making sense because honestly for 99.99999992835% of the enjoyment of the game it doesn't NEED to make sense.
Anyway, wandering around Ecruteak City we learn of a few interesting things. There's a dude who "smells a conspiracy" about the Lake of Rage and the recent outbreak of a Gyarados swarm there. We learn about a Dance Theater where there are beautiful Kimono Girls who are also Pokemon Trainers, and there are two towers in the city that were said to be the roosts for legendary Pokemon, but the western tower burned down and now the Pokemon have left. Strangely like no one talks about the Pokemon gym here...?
Oh, we also find a book called "History of Ecruteak." It talks about the Pokemon roosting in the towers, but also about three Pokemon that 'raced around town' that were said to be born of water, lightning, and fire. But when they could no longer contain their massive power, they ran off into "the grassland." Now, is the "history" of Ecruteak like 2 years old...? Did these Pokemon come into existence, live here, become written into the annals of history, and disappear in the past couple years...? It really has to be that the computer data didn't exist, right...?????
Also a cute little note -- there are little shoes in the genkan of the houses here. What a cute little detail~!
Oh, we even learn that the Pokemon responsible for the beacon at Olivine Lighthouse has fallen ill. And there's an old man who said when he was young, the sky suddenly turned black because a huge Pokemon that looks like a 'bird and a dragon' blocked out the sun. I'm assuming he's referring to either Lugia or Ho-oh -- probably Lugia because Ho-oh doesn't look like a dragon. But at the same time, this confirms that the Pokemon had to have been around more than 2-3 years ago. Unless this guy SUDDENLY got old in the past couple years, and everyone else in the town has amnesia or suddenly grew up from babies in the last 2 years to not have witnessed it...
Maybe Bill just misspoke when he said that you can't trade Pokemon that "didn't exist," and he meant to say that the data didn't exist.
This is what I'm going with...
Anyway, the first thing we do here is head into the western tower, which is the one that burned down. Here we meet Silver who again talks about hating the weak and how he's going to become the greatest Pokemon trainer by finding the legendary Pokemon from Ecruteak. Well, there are FIVE of them apparently, so good luck, buddy! Though he speaks about it as if there's only one -- my guess is a translation error having to do with how Japanese handles (or doesn't handle lol) plurals. I guess instead he could be talking exclusively about Lugia, but... that would be strange.
Oh, and outside the tower there is a sign that says "Please stay away, as it is unsafe." Now, everyone followed the rules and only battled in the grass in the park. Why are there people in the tower here?! It's just a few firebreather trainers, and one of them says he was in there "in secret" so I guess not everyone in the Pokemon world is as obedient as I thought, hahaha.
When I finished fighting one of them, he turned greyscale...? Definitely a weird glitch.
After roaming around and falling through the floor a couple times, we come across three strange creatures that "light up" when we approach them and then run away. I don't think it's ever explicitly explained, but these are the three Pokemon that were written about in the history book. Triggering this little event starts one of the most obnoxious new concepts that gen 2 brought to Pokemon: roaming Pokemon. Now these three Pokemon will randomly select a place to be, and they'll become a wild encounter there. Every time you enter a building or change routes, it will re-randomize which location they are in. And there's no way to tell where they are, so you just have to like... HOPE you run into one. And then when you do, it will flee. It will retain whatever damage and status conditions you inflict on it, however, between battles, but once it flees, it again resets where it is, so you have to HOPE you run into it again... I don't know if once you encounter it once you can search for its area in the Pokedex or not. Even if you can, it's completely random where it is, and if you try to go find it, it will just move, so... your best bet is to enter a building, walk to the nearest route, check and see if it's there, and if it's not, repeat the process until it is. VERY VERY OBNOXIOUS.
BUT -- it does feel insanely satisfying to finally catch a roaming Pokemon.
We try to go to the other tower, which is called Tin Tower, but there's a building before it where they stop anyone who doesn't have Ecruteak's gym badge. Strangely Tin Tower has a name but the burned-down tower didn't have one.
So our next stop before heading into the gym is the Dance Theater. There's not a TON here, just a few audience members and the Kimono Girls. There's a guy here who says he'll give us something nice if we're able to defeat all of them in a Pokemon battle. So we just go up onto stage while they are dancing and have battles with them, because that completely makes sense.
Each of the five Kimono Girls has a different evolution of Eevee -- including the two new ones introduced in this generation, Espeon and Umbreon. Now, the evolution for these require use of the friendship mechanic and the day/night cycle from the real-time clock, which didn't exist in the generation 1 games. But lore-wise, why did no one ever get an evolution like these before...? I mean, surely even despite the game mechanics not existing, people had friendship with their Pokemon and there was day and night. You're not going to tell me that the concept of days and nights was born in the past 3 years, too, are you?
Though it could be that Eevee is just an incredibly rare species of Pokemon, and no one had even had the CHANCE to get close to one yet. There is exactly one in all of Kanto, and even the data for its three previous evolutions hadn't been recorded by even the biggest Pokemaniac, Bill. Only their appearances were known, but nothing else was known about them. So perhaps just the other evolutions and Eevee in general were so rare that no one ever saw one until recently.
As we fight the Kimono girls, I mostly use Irvine and heal him with Fresh Water, hoping that he'll get more and more friendship points so he can finally evolve. There wasn't much to say about these fights -- Irvine used Mud-Slap a couple times then Headbutted them down.
Next up, we head to Ecruteak Gym, where the leader Morty is waiting. The trainers in the gym here fight with ghost-type Pokemon, which are not terribly scary.
In fact, there's kind of a cheese strat here. The ghosts prioritize using a move called Curse which cuts the user's HP in half to curse the opponent, which drains a lot of their HP every turn (more so than poison or Leech Seed). The problem with this is that the curse is not treated as a status effect, and it goes away when you switch out to another Pokemon.
So if you just switch back and forth between Pokemon, the AI will choose what to do at the moment of its turn rather than before the turn as if you were playing against a human opponent. So it sees that a new Pokemon is there and unafflicted with the curse, and it will use Curse again. So basically you can just swap Pokemon back and forth until the ghosts sacrifice themselves.
Medium Martha, the final trainer on the way to Morty, though (omg I just realized his name is MORTY because of MORT like DEATH) used a different strategy -- she actually used the move Mean Look first, which makes it impossible for the opposing Pokemon to escape the battle. Now Curse is guaranteed to work! It did scare me a bit, but Mud-Slap was thankfully super effective and the ghosts' defenses were super low, so we didn't take too much damage from the curse before defeating each with Irvine, and then when we could use Squall (you can swap out once the opposing Pokemon that used Mean Look faints), his Bite attack could down the ghosts in a single hit.
Morty's Pokemon actually did the stupid Curse thing, so the first two were easy to beat. Then he used his 'ace' Pokemon, Gengar. It would use Hypnosis, and once your Pokemon was asleep, use Dream Eater. Dream Eater is terrifying, especially from a Pokemon with such high Special Attack, and probably would have knocked out any of my Pokemon in one hit. I started out with Rinoa, using Stun Spore and Leech Seed, then swapped over to Irvine after she fell asleep to start smacking it with Mud-Slaps, hoping that its accuracy would get low enough it would never get a Hypnosis in, and we could wither it down. Well, this worked.
Then the last Pokemon he sent out was a Haunter that strangely did not know Curse. Instead it knew a slew of fairly useless moves, especially since ghost-type moves don't affect normal-type Pokemon. So Irvine was able to just sit there and not get hit. It did use Spite which lowered the PP of his moves, though. But the real problem here was that it used Mean Look and trapped Irvine into the battle. And like ghost moves don't affect normal Pokemon, normal moves also don't affect ghost Pokemon. And our only attacks were Mud-Slap and Headbutt. We already used up most of our Mud-Slap on Gengar (we only have 10 to start with!) and then Haunter used Spite which killed off the rest of the PP, so we only got one Mud-Slap in.
So our only option was to run out of PP on all our moves and end up using, yet again, Struggle. Struggle is typeless so it will affect any Pokemon at a regular rate... though it is based on your Attack stat. Because Haunter was able to steal Mud-Slap from us, it lowered Irvine's accuracy to its lowest, and because in running through our PP of Charm and Flash, we minimized Haunter's attack and accuracy... we ended up in an almost-stalemate of each using Struggle on each other and constantly missing or doing next to no damage. Of course, I had Fresh Water, so I was able to outlast. In all, I spent about 15 minutes fighting Haunter this way.
But the important thing is that I won. Morty says that he was training to see the future, and if he could beat us, it might push him over the edge so he could see a future where he meets one of Ecruteak's legendary Pokemon. But we won, and instead, he says he is envious that we've traveled around and had so many experiences with our Pokemon. Kinda sad for Morty, to be honest.
Finally, to end our little journey for today, we go back to Tin Tower where we're finally allowed in. I want to note that all the towers in this game have the wobbly pillars in the middle. Did they just... not care to design something different for the other towers? Or are all the towers here supposed to be made out of gigantic Bellsprouts...? You think they could at least have just 'turned off' the animation for the pillar in the other towers... I'm not even going to try to explain this one away. They're just all Bellsprouts. I don't care.
Inside the tower, we get to a guy guarding the stairs going up. He says if he had the same item as the legendary Pokemon, it may cause it to return. That item is a Rainbow Wing. And then we can't proceed. Came here for nothing...
So, yeah, that little ending was uneventful but at least we defeated Morty, and now we can Surf outside of battle...! We taught Surf to Laguna and I'm ready to backtrack to all those places I took notes on... or on second thought, I think I'll wait til we get Fly. I don't want to go all the way back to the very beginning of the game just to Surf and find out there's nothing there or I also need Strength or something like that.
Speaking of going back, there was an item hidden behind a Strength boulder in the burned-down tower. Gotta take a note of that one!
