Episode 14: Rocket Science

This has been quite an eventful day in Celadon so far, but there's unfortunately not really much to see in the Game Corner Hideout. The spinners don't move you any faster here, which is a bit of a drag. All the usual grunts are here an accounted for, with lots of Agahnoblins, Deathseers, Slimoggs and Needolfs. This actually made me check, and yes, Needolf is the evolution of Slimogg. I wouldn't have guessed that in a vacuum, to be honest, but it makes sense thinking about it.

These trainers also gave me a perfect opportunity to try out Tubi in battle, and see what's up with Falcon Punch. It's Flying type, has 5 PP, and I'd say the animation is appropriately climactic.

We did pick up a couple exciting TMs here. First was Horn Drill, which only Tubi could learn but I decided hey, why not. Not like I'm going to use Conversion. I wound up using Horn Drill exactly once, against a random Shochran just for fun, but it landed it. At Level 31, Tubi learned Thunder Wave, which I obviously taught over Horn Drill. All that said, Tubi had a 100% succes rate with Horn Drill. Pretty funny stuff.

We also got a TM for Hurricane, which was very exciting, and a lot of our team could actually learn it.

Out of these, Rowsdower was the one that had the move I most wanted to replace, so he finally lost Screech for Hurricane. Kind of crazy that he's had Screech ever since I caught him despite never having a physical move, only for it to finally get overwritten by the first one he's ever gotten. I did actually still get some small use out of Screech though in a couple fights, which was funny.

Giovanni isn't here! The boss of Team Rocket is a very dapper looking gentleman named Lucian. No relation to the Sinnoh Elite 4 member I take it.

His team consisted of a Scorphiro, who's shockingly annoying to take down when you don't have any Ground or Fire moves, a Charcold, who somehow survived a Rocky Dan Flash Cannon (at very low health but still, it was even super effective), and a Predatox, who's new. Looks to be Slimogg's final form.

While he's got a spiffy look to him, he acts more or less the same as Giovanni did, and coughs up the Silph Scope just as easily. So now we're back off to Beast Tower to go quell that rowdy ghost. On the way though, we've got a drink now, so why not swing by Saffron and see what's going on over there?

Saffron's got a very nice new tileset going on, complete with real roads and cars! It is still a Generation 1 hack, so the cars aren't like, moving. But they're there! That's a nice touch.

The city seems even more overrun with Rockets than usual, the only non-Rocket NPCs I've seen have been in buildings. That does however include my GOAT Mr. Psychic, who gives out a TM that's so much better than the one you get from Sabrina it's not even funny. And look at everyone that can learn it!

I wound up giving it to Zorotl, to give him some more Special coverage. This also gives it a functional difference from Vaporeon, which is nice because as-is that's basically all it was LOL. We obviously can't go into Sabrina's Gym yet, but the Fighting Dojo is open. Or should I say the Yin-Yang Dojo, which is what the sign out front says.

Practitioners of the Yin-Yang Dojo's fighting style seem to use the Dark type mostly, rather than Fighting. Lots of Agahnoblins and the Zapodi line. Some pretty tough cookies, certainly higher level than what we've been facing before.

An interaction I learned about in this gym is that, if you interrupt your opponent's attack with a Wrap, they can still use an item if that's what they were queued up to do. The Black Belts in this gym absolutely love using Dire Hits, so this came up a handful of times.

Beyond the obvious Hitmon replacements, there was one other new Beast here. I wish I could tell you much about it though, all it did was use Barrier once and then the trainer just used 2 Dire Hits on it. I think this game was advertised with "smarter AI", by the way. On the bright side, Zorotl learned Body Slam after this fight, which is exciting, and made me remember I don't think I ever used that TM. Oh well.

The master of the dojo of course uses our two options for gift Beasts. With the gym's Yin and Yang theme, you can guess the theme they follow.

This guy loves talking about "The light and the darkness... Separate they are weak, but together they are strong." Afterwards though, he only offers to let me take either the light or the shadow, which means they're gonna be weak. What the hell dude. Well if I'm getting swindled I might as well drop a save and check out both of the options.

Shadolos is a Ghost/Fighting type, and comes with Swords Dance, Shadow Claw, and Jump Kick, plus good stats everywhere except Special (which isn't even all that low either). This seems like it would be a great Beast to use on a team, but I'm not sure I love it quite enough to want to drop any of my existing squad.

I'm going to be going with Auraklos for my actual choice, since I'd rather have the Beast that embodies warmth and love than the one that will literally kill me if I stand close to it for too long. It's gonna live in the box, but I like it well enough. It's a Psychic/Fighting type, has pretty good stats everywhere except Attack, and comes with both Screens moves, which would be a bit cooler if they worked like they did in later games but it gives it some tanking power which is cool with this statline.

Oh, and in case you're curious, the two scrolls behind the Beasts read "If you must life to protect those you love, then lie with your love for them in your heart." for Auraklos and "Purity of heart matters more than purity of purpose." for Shadolos.

Well, with that little diversion out of the way, we can properly head back to Beast Tower. The wild Beasts were all just Stranghosts and a single Trapestry, but I imagine if I stuck around for longer I'd be able to find some more exciting ghosts. Handily, you don't actually have to walk back down the tower after you rescue Mr. Fuji, he just warps you straight to his house. A nice bit of QOL, but it did keep me from potentially seeing some more ghosts in the wild.

At the top of the tower, we get to the mist and the little ghost girl, which I guessed had something to do with Inoyu. I was very wrong!

I did want to catch this thing, but this is an uncatchable encounter. That's probably true of the Marowak in the original game too, but I don't recall ever really trying to catch that Marowak in the first place, since Marowak is kind of terrible in RBY, lol.

Evidently, this ghost actually was the ghost of a dead child, but she seemed to get calmed down after we beat the shit out of her. Or maybe this was her Star Beast which is also a ghost? No clue, not my problem. What is my problem is dealing with the Rockets up here. It's a couple uneventful Grunts... and Lucian! That's new, there was never really much of a boss here in the original game. Funnily, he still acts like a normal trainer where he notices you with a line of sight bubble and everything.

His team got some marginal upgrades, with Charcold evolving into Charkonro and a Weedimp joining the party. The biggest change is that he's now got Full Restores, which was a very rude awakening after I spent like 11 Wrap PP trying to grind down a Steel type. It even healed the paralysis! What a sham.

Well it's over now, Mr. Fuji is saved and gives us the Beast Flute. In his house there's a couple Beasts running around that the game helpfully gives us little splash screens for.

I do really enjoy all of the overworld Beasts showing you these screens, that wasn't a feature in the vanilla game if memory serves. The whole draw of this game is all the original creatures, so getting to see as many of them as possible in as many situations as possible is really nice. Like. I've got the Water starter and Varik's got the Grass one, there's a real chance I wouldn't have gotten to see Embrain's final form if not for here. It's cool that this gives me that chance.

Oh right, I still need to go beat the Celadon Gym. I better do that.

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