Star Beasts Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Wrap

Episode 12: Linking the Fire

MILDLY EMBARASSING PROGRAMMING NOTE: The bug I talked about a bunch in the last episode is, I've been informed, a vanilla RBY bug. Not sure why I never knew about this before since I've done multiple full playthroughs of Gen 1, maybe I just never paid attention since I knew the types of everything already, maybe the way the types are distributed just made the bug come up less, probably a combination of both. Either way, it's just a visual bug and doesn't affect gameplay, but for the rest of the series I'm going to talk like I think it does. Not sure why I didn't assume it wasn't a bug from the vanilla game in the first place, to be honest, but I figured I should let you all know either way. See here for more info on this glitch.

Lavender Town is the only place in the game that I've seen so far that keeps its original overworld music. I suppose that's fair, it's pretty iconic to the Lavender Town experience. It even plays in the Star Beast Center and Mart here.

*the center where the lavender town theme plays. i bet it's this thing's fault.*

The NPCs talk about similar stuff to what you'd expect for Lavender Town. "Hand on your shoulder" girl is still around, Mr. Fuji's place is still here, you know the deal. There's one real big time NPC to talk to though, and that's this unassuming looking man in the Star Beast Center, who lets us know that the Mart here happens to sell Souls that let certain Beasts evolve.

*normally selling souls is a bad thing but i guess it is lavender town it's probably just a normal cultural difference*

That sounds to me like a one-way ticket to evolving Rowsdower. Indeed, the mart does stock Dark Souls, as well as another item called the Holy Soul. I decided to buy one of each, the Dark Soul for obvious reasons, and the Holy Soul just to check it won't let us evolve any of our team. It won't, but I'd bet we can use it on whatever we revive from that Angel Soul fossil. Double up on souls. For now though, the Dark Soul is the star of the show.

Rowsdower was already incredibly powerful, Super Fang was a great tool to have and Thunderbolt two-shot most things it had to go up against, plus Dark let it hit most things at least neutrally with STAB. With this BST bump I think it probably puts him over Rocky Dan as the most powerful member of the team. Pretty wild to think about.

*"It has an endless hunger for light. It devours light until all you can see is its body, glowing ominously."*

I'm just a huge fan of this whole line in general. Love the designs and I love the flavor progression of "little dog that eats batteries" to "monster that consumes all light". That also makes the Dark typing make a lot more sense, lol.

We're not going to be able to finish ~~Pokémon~~ Beast Tower right now since we don't have the Silph Scope yet, but we might as well fight all the trainers to get some experience. Inside there's a new tileset, and an NPC on the first floor mentions her deceased "Sabrantis", so there's another name to note down. There's also another fight against Varik here, and he's acting awfully gloomy.

*for the record before this he was like "what are you doing here?" and after this he said "just shut up and fight me."*

For his first Beast out I was expecting to see Tomaroc again, but instead we've got what's probably the final form of Roc. Level 25 for that would be a bit surprising though, maybe he just swapped it out for a different Flying type. Or maybe we sent that bird to hell back on the S.S. Anne and that's why he's so mopey.

*imagine being the guy who gets put on the team because the last guy died*

Gryphern here was actually a real pain in the rear, it kept Sand Attacking every turn, which made Wrap not especially viable, so I just swapped around until it used something else, and then took it down with the last Beast that was in when that happened. He also added a couple more Beasts to his team. The first one here is definitely not Litwick. This little stinker had both Minimize and Smokescreen. Nice evasion team bud.

*i hope this one was from the vast fame game and just predates litwick, that'd be funny*

And the second is almost certainly the evolution of Sillish, who put up a lot more of a fight. The Peeker was able to get a Thunder Wave off, but immediately afterwards got poisoned by a Poison Fang. Poison is really good at countering Wrap, so Toby Kebel had to come in and finish the Wrap job. Even then, Harlefinn was able to land a 5-hot Doubleslap that did half of Toby's health. Those unevolved stats are really starting to come back and bite him, hopefully he evolves soon.

*another great name on this one. these devs are really good at naming clown creatures i guess*

Continuing a theme from his previous battle, Varik's levels seem very low here. His Majivish is only level 20, and his highest level Beast is Lawncrete who's 25. This feels like a mistake more than an intentional design choice, to be honest, especially considering the last gym leader a whole ass dungeon ago had a Level 27 ace.

Right at the end of this battle, we get two big updates to the team. First, The Peeker learned Crunch, which I taught over Shadow Claw. With that, I think The Peeker's moveset is pretty much complete for the rest of the game: Crunch, Wrap, Thunder Wave, and Mach Punch. I'm glad Mach Punch has been actually useful, since it's funny to have one holdover move from back when The Peeker was hands and not a dog. More importantly though, my wish for Toby Kebel came true much sooner than I was expecting.

*toby kebel has evolved into toby kebels*

As was foretold by the first time I laid eyes on Drakelet and thought "that name sounds a lot like a Dragon type", Ardyhydra is Dragon/Poison, and has some pretty solid stats to boot. At the same time, it learned Dragonbreath, which I decided to teach over Poison Fang: Toby's primary purpose is Paralysis-Wrapping, and Poison isn't a great offensive type even with STAB. Bubblebeam is too important for coverage against Rocks, so I decided to just rock with a single STAB move. According to the Stardex, this is Drakelet's final evolution, which is a little disappointing but I think we'll be fine.

*"It can supposedly survive almost any injury, as long as one of its heads remains intact."*

Well, celebration time's over, Varik's gonna talk about his dead parents now. There actually is unique sad music for this dialogue, which is a nice tough. He caught a Ghost in the tower, but it reminded him of his parents and he got sad. He tells me to tell my mom I love her. I will try to do this whenever I'm back in Pallet Town, but I'm not confident there's going to be unique dialogue for it.

The rest of Beast Tower is ghosts and Channelers as ever. The Ghosts look like this:

*honestly i was like 50/50 on if the ghosts would have new sprites or not*

And the Channelers look like this:

*the original sprites in this game have never disappointed*

The Channelers, being possessed, have new dialogue that has that ROM hack charm. "COME WITH ME TO HELLLLLL!", "Kill….. Must…… KILL!". "This place…. Will be your GRAVE!", they're just playing the hits really. Some of them are at least funny though, like this NPC who has, tragically, forgotten what pizza is. Or perhaps never knew at all. I feel at least equally bad for this Channeler as I do for Varik.

*pretty easy to guess but yeah the first line ends with "BLOOD FOR THE SAUCE!"*

The one who just says "Zombies!" is still here, thank goodness, as is the one who just says "Ke- ke- ke- ke!" Or something similar, you can't expect me to remember the exact wording. She actually did have her post-fight dialogue changed though, it now says "I freaking love making weird animal noises!" This is probably the first piece of comedy dialogue in this game that actually got an audible laugh out of me. Good bit.

If you want Ghost Star Beasts though, we've got plenty. I'm just gonna run through them all in a row. I have arranged them all in order, with captions intended to be sung to the tune of "Modern-Major General", for your enjoyment.

*this is the very model of a ghost type for a channeler, its selling points compared to gastly are, in broad strokes granular*

*way back in pewter city i had guessed a joltybara ghost was hiding in that plushie, i was right, it looks like it's the host*

*a person in the pokemart said there's a beast that's paper-like. however, it's named "trapestry": maybe it evolves from this tyke*

*verbeden is a fire type although it's got a sword of steel, leeghoul's a steel/ghost type, though, its designers didn't know the deal*

*i guess that vast fame's artists really liked to draw their ghosts with swords. i checked its type, and thankfully this doesn't join the steel type hordes*

*this "bagavond" looks like the merchant from a roguelike rpg. it looks like i just beat a stage: i get an upgrade out of three.*

*hey wait a second, this one's trapestry, leeghoul's its own star beast. i guess i have no proof of that, but still, it looks that way at least.*

in hindsight leeghoul isn't even paper, it just looks like that. i think that all the ghosts are mostly single-stage with decent stats. but still in matters, visual, mechanical, and hand allure, this stranghost is the model of a ghost-type for a channeler.

Okay, that last one was a stretch I'll admit it. But you try coming up with stuff that rhymes with "channeler". And look at this thing, those are some pretty alluring hands.

A couple of the NPCs up to this point have been mentioning "mist" gathering in the tower. At the spot where Marowak was in the vanilla game, we get some pretty length flavor text that furthers this build up of mist as being important. The full line is as follows: "The mist in the room coalesces in front of the staircase. It takes the form of a ghostly little girl. Suddenly, her flesh begins to fall off her face. She turns towards you, letting out an ear-piercing shriek. GIRL: BE GONE FROM THIS PLACE!"

Judging by Inoyu's Stardex entry, it's already pretty strongly associated with Ghosts, and is obviously a creature made a pure mist, so that's my guess as to what's going on here. For now though, we've reached the end of what we can do at Beast Tower.

Just a couple quick notes from Route 8 before we get to explore Celadon City. Rocky Dan tried to learn Hyper Voice, which is a pretty good move in a vacuum but I'm kind of a big fan of my current moveset. I think the only things I'd want from it now are a better Rock move and Explosion over Selfdestruct, if possible. From another fight, I never really appreciated how annoying Zapodi was going to be to fight as an NPC's Beast, missing one Wrap means you're eating a Super Fang for half of your health, which really softens you up for the rest of the team. Another NPC let me know that Weedimp evolves with a split evolution depending on whether you use a Holy Soul or a Dark Soul. My guess would be we'll get to see one or both of these final forms in he Grass gym, Erika had baically two aces in RBY so having both would make sense as a counterpart to that.

*unrelated is there actually an official term for a trainer's "ace" or is that all just fanon*

There is one new Star Beast on this route, from this Nerdette who bragged about how much better she is at writing fan fiction than me.

*i'll have you know that i wrote about half of one chapter of a beastieball fanfic that i never published, so eat that*

*i know what a mandolin is and i'm pretty sure it isn't this*

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