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marchionessofmustacheSo, after kind of talking about Pokémon recently, I decided to go back and play the games doing some little challenge runs. The first one is not much of a challenge, because the first game is so buggy and weird, and challenges I've tried before have ended up impossible or just not fun at all.
So I'm playing Blue Version and my only real "challenge" is that I can't gain EXP from wild Pokémon, putting a cap on EXP so that I'm only limited to the EXP gained from the various trainers in the game. Since you can't rematch in this game, that means there's only so much EXP to go around.
I also planned out my team ahead of time, and I'm not using a traditional starter. I did let the rule slide at the beginning to get my "new" starter to Lv6, which is where your normal starter would begin.
If I actually continue these (which I never do) I'm going to plan the teams ahead of time and try to apply the same six nicknames fittingly. Which means sometimes choosing the monsters based on who fits the nickname better rather than just who makes for the best team, but generally trying to create a decent team anyway.
Something I also want to do is actually distribute the Hidden Machine moves amongst the Pokémon in the party, so that goes into the planning, too. That way I don't have to swap out to HM Slaves to get stuff done. For this Blue run, there's no one who can use Fly, so that's a bit... cumbersome, but the encounter rate is pretty low in this game, and I'm not going to be worrying about catching Pokémon except for the ones I want, so hopefully it won't be too troublesome.
So I'll update my progress here~~
The first part of the game is pretty simple. I started off with a Nidoran named Maillet (named after Robert Maillet). I wanted a big, hulking, monstery Pokemon named after him, so Nidoking works pretty well. I also had to fit at least one member in the team who was able to be captured early enough in the game that I could catch them before any trainer battles.
Having only Tackle and Leer is kind of annoying, but almost all of the trainers in Viridian Forest just use Weedles, who only have Poison Sting, and Nidoran resists that, so it's just a matter of taking one damage at a time while waiting for Tackle to knock them out.
Next is the Jr Trainer in Brock's gym, who has Diglett and Sandshrew. It's interesting that it's a Rock-type gym, but the sole understudy has no Rock-type Pokémon. Also this is the "lightyears is distance not time" kid.
I had to use a Potion against Sandshrew, but otherwise it wasn't any trouble. Then I went all the way back to the route to the Indigo Plateau to fight the limited-time battle against the rival (whom I named Nico). He only has a Pidgey and Squirtle at this point (I intentionally chose Charmander at the beginning so he'd choose Squirtle, as it seemed the easiest to deal with for this party).
Then we had the big trouble, which was Brock. I'm also not allowing cheesing by defeating some Pokémon in a trainer's party then blacking out so you can fight them again for extra EXP. So I have to defeat Brock all in one go.
Basically this boiled down to buying as many potions as I could, spamming them when HP got low, and praying for critical hits against Geodude. I got kind of lucky with Geodude because near the end of the battle it just used Defense Curl over and over even once its defense was maxed. I stopped using Horn Attack and went for Tackle so I could save PP for Onix, since I was doing 1 damage with every attack anyway. That made the crits a little weaker, though.
Onix was next, which was a little more annoying but went a bit faster. Onix often uses Bide, Brock's signature move, which allows it to take damage for a few turns and then counter with twice as much damage afterward. So I took this time to use Leer six times to minimize its defense.
The annoying thing here was that I kept getting critical hits. That sounds like it should be a good thing, but crits in this game work so that they do double base damage and ignore changes to defense. This was great on Geodude who raised its defense to maximum, but Onix's defense was so low thanks to Leer that critical hits actually did less damage than regular hits because it ignored the 6-stage-lowered defense.
Maillet's speed was a bit higher, which was nice, because I could easily avoid doing damage during a Bide this way. Things got scary at the end which it used Screech twice, lowering Maillet's own defense by 4 stages. It was dealing almost 50% max HP damage to Maillet, so I was having to use a potion every turn just to stay alive. There was only enough money for a few potions, so I was running out. I got lucky and Onix used Bide again instead of attacking, so I was able to take out the last bit of its HP before it could counter with the end of Bide with a couple Horn Attacks.
I also went to the museum. I'm trying to run around and talk to everyone and stuff since every time I replay these games anymore I kinda skip that, and I haven't really seen stuff like the museum since I was a kid and playing this for the first time. I even tried to leave Pewter prematurely so the kid would drag me to the gym and I could hear the cute little tune.
At the museum, there's a fossil exhibit, and they have strangely an Aerodactyl and Kabuto but not Omanyte. The space exhibit contains "MOON STONE?" and a tiny rocket model or something. There's also a girl here saying her "Daddy" is going to give her a Pikachu and while I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be her father, it makes me think she has some kind of Pokémon-capturing sugar daddy or something.
So I'm playing Blue Version and my only real "challenge" is that I can't gain EXP from wild Pokémon, putting a cap on EXP so that I'm only limited to the EXP gained from the various trainers in the game. Since you can't rematch in this game, that means there's only so much EXP to go around.
I also planned out my team ahead of time, and I'm not using a traditional starter. I did let the rule slide at the beginning to get my "new" starter to Lv6, which is where your normal starter would begin.
If I actually continue these (which I never do) I'm going to plan the teams ahead of time and try to apply the same six nicknames fittingly. Which means sometimes choosing the monsters based on who fits the nickname better rather than just who makes for the best team, but generally trying to create a decent team anyway.
Something I also want to do is actually distribute the Hidden Machine moves amongst the Pokémon in the party, so that goes into the planning, too. That way I don't have to swap out to HM Slaves to get stuff done. For this Blue run, there's no one who can use Fly, so that's a bit... cumbersome, but the encounter rate is pretty low in this game, and I'm not going to be worrying about catching Pokémon except for the ones I want, so hopefully it won't be too troublesome.
So I'll update my progress here~~
The first part of the game is pretty simple. I started off with a Nidoran named Maillet (named after Robert Maillet). I wanted a big, hulking, monstery Pokemon named after him, so Nidoking works pretty well. I also had to fit at least one member in the team who was able to be captured early enough in the game that I could catch them before any trainer battles.
Having only Tackle and Leer is kind of annoying, but almost all of the trainers in Viridian Forest just use Weedles, who only have Poison Sting, and Nidoran resists that, so it's just a matter of taking one damage at a time while waiting for Tackle to knock them out.
Next is the Jr Trainer in Brock's gym, who has Diglett and Sandshrew. It's interesting that it's a Rock-type gym, but the sole understudy has no Rock-type Pokémon. Also this is the "lightyears is distance not time" kid.
I had to use a Potion against Sandshrew, but otherwise it wasn't any trouble. Then I went all the way back to the route to the Indigo Plateau to fight the limited-time battle against the rival (whom I named Nico). He only has a Pidgey and Squirtle at this point (I intentionally chose Charmander at the beginning so he'd choose Squirtle, as it seemed the easiest to deal with for this party).
Then we had the big trouble, which was Brock. I'm also not allowing cheesing by defeating some Pokémon in a trainer's party then blacking out so you can fight them again for extra EXP. So I have to defeat Brock all in one go.
Basically this boiled down to buying as many potions as I could, spamming them when HP got low, and praying for critical hits against Geodude. I got kind of lucky with Geodude because near the end of the battle it just used Defense Curl over and over even once its defense was maxed. I stopped using Horn Attack and went for Tackle so I could save PP for Onix, since I was doing 1 damage with every attack anyway. That made the crits a little weaker, though.
Onix was next, which was a little more annoying but went a bit faster. Onix often uses Bide, Brock's signature move, which allows it to take damage for a few turns and then counter with twice as much damage afterward. So I took this time to use Leer six times to minimize its defense.
The annoying thing here was that I kept getting critical hits. That sounds like it should be a good thing, but crits in this game work so that they do double base damage and ignore changes to defense. This was great on Geodude who raised its defense to maximum, but Onix's defense was so low thanks to Leer that critical hits actually did less damage than regular hits because it ignored the 6-stage-lowered defense.
Maillet's speed was a bit higher, which was nice, because I could easily avoid doing damage during a Bide this way. Things got scary at the end which it used Screech twice, lowering Maillet's own defense by 4 stages. It was dealing almost 50% max HP damage to Maillet, so I was having to use a potion every turn just to stay alive. There was only enough money for a few potions, so I was running out. I got lucky and Onix used Bide again instead of attacking, so I was able to take out the last bit of its HP before it could counter with the end of Bide with a couple Horn Attacks.
I also went to the museum. I'm trying to run around and talk to everyone and stuff since every time I replay these games anymore I kinda skip that, and I haven't really seen stuff like the museum since I was a kid and playing this for the first time. I even tried to leave Pewter prematurely so the kid would drag me to the gym and I could hear the cute little tune.
At the museum, there's a fossil exhibit, and they have strangely an Aerodactyl and Kabuto but not Omanyte. The space exhibit contains "MOON STONE?" and a tiny rocket model or something. There's also a girl here saying her "Daddy" is going to give her a Pikachu and while I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be her father, it makes me think she has some kind of Pokémon-capturing sugar daddy or something.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-06 12:36 am (UTC)Yeah, I think the game is phenomenal for what it was. It's only super broken in hindsight. But I guess I'm more surprised how none of these seemingly-glaring flaws stood out much back when it was new XD
no subject
Date: 2019-02-06 02:11 pm (UTC)