marchionessofmustache

So, there was a lot of running around in Pokey. Rock Tunnel is very long, and then there's a bunch of routes and crap everywhere... basically nothing too noteworthy. After a LOT of running around though, the good stuff happens.

We arrive at Celadon City which opens up a LOT of stuff. Firstly, we can grab some nice TMs here.

We get Horn Drill for MAILLET, which I thought we were going to have to learn by level-up, because I forgot there was a TM for it. So now there's no reason to keep him as Nidorino, and we can use our other Moon Stone to evolve him into Nidoking.

On the department store rooftop, we can give the annoying sister a Fresh Water and she'll reward us with the TM for Ice Beam, which gives BAKULA a really important move to his arsenal.

Also using Fresh Water, we can bribe the guards outside of Saffron City to let us in, finally giving us access to Mr Psychic's house, where we can get the TM for Psychic, making BARON into a powerhouse.

We could go right away making use of Psychic and Ice Beam to obliterate Celadon's grass-type Gym and get the TM for Mega Drain, a really useful move for RICKMAN, giving all four of our current members huge buffs. But first, access to Saffron means we can go to the fighting dojo! Psychic makes quick work of everything here (and everything in the game, honestly), and our reward for defeating all the trainers in the dojo is...

KOBAYASHI, our fifth member in the party! He's named after Naoki Kobayashi, actor/dancer/model known most as a dancer. For his theme, I wanted to basically pick Pokémon that looked like they'd be good dancers, hahaha. Hitmonlee is a fun choice for this, because his long legs look like he'd be great at break dancing. It also fits Kobayashi himself because he's quite tall and has long legs, too.

Oh, and since we're powering everyone up with new moves, we're also able to use the shiny new TM for Mega Kick that we got at the Celadon Department Store, too! New moves all around!

Despite the Celadon Gym being a place for BAKULA and BARON to get tons of levels up, KOBAYASHI made his battle debut here against Erika's Tangela. I would have used BAKULA's Ice Beam, but he got severely injured in the first fight with her Victreebel.

And I actually got caught in a balance issue that I mentioned before, but with the computer abusing it against me. There are a few "wrapping" moves that cause a little bit of damage while causing the opponent to be unable to move, rendering them helpless. They continue for 2-5 turns, meaning you'll get a decent bit of damage out of a single use. And if you're faster than your opponent... there's literally nothing they can do but sit and wait out a very slow death.

BAKULA ended up surviving because the computer just chooses actions at random, so after it annoyingly drained almost all of our HP with repeated Wraps, it finally put us to sleep instead. You can actually switch out during wraps (something that was changed in later games, but they replaced the "can't move at all" thing with "can't switch out" so you can still attack while being wrapped). But I really wanted to land an Ice Beam as my revenge. Sadly, I couldn't, and we swapped BARON in and fell it with one quick Psychic. We took out Vileplume the same way.

Because BARON got so much experience from fighting all the dojo members, all the channelers in Lavender's tower, and quite a bit of the grass Pokemon in Erika's gym, the levels are a little unbalanced for now. KOBAYASHI started at Lv30.

I should mention a big reason for this is the super unbalanced typing of the Pokemon. Ghost-type Pokemon are suppsoed to resist the Psychic-type, but all Ghost Pokemon in this game are also Poison-type, making them weak to Psychic-type instead. Grass and Bug Pokemon are also almost all Poison-typed, too, making so many Pokemon in the game weak to Psychic. Even things that aren't weak to Psychic, though, tend to have a low Special, since Special is like "the psychic stat" or something, making them pretty much also destroyed easily by Psychic-type Pokemon. You can EASILY go through this game with just an Alakazam or Hypno.

Oh, speaking of Hypno, I guess it's time to mention that we reached the evolution level for BARON and RICKMAN, so now everyone is fully evolved, except for our non-existant sixth member whom we have yet to meet.