Episode 15: Explode and Die

There's not much left to say about RBY. It's the first and most iconic game in the most popular media franchise in the world, it's like trying to find new things to say about the first Star Wars movie. So instead, I'm just gonna say some things that other people have already said before. I like how there's some nonlinearity in the middle part of the game here. I could've done Gym 4 before the Game Corner and Beast Tower, and I could even put it off for longer if I wanted. Having that little bit of open design helps to make each playthrough feel a little bit more personalized, which is important for Pokémon.

The man outside this gym is homophobic.

Also, this girl in the gym is transphobic.

These NPCs are literally back to back it's so funny. This does also confirm that Stella is actively nonbinary, rather than just left ambiguous. I kind of had a feeling/hope this would be the case, but honestly I wasn't expecting there to be any dialogue actually confirming this. Pretty hilarious that probably the only dialogue that mentions this is someone being hateful towards you, but oh well.

So, Grass gym full of lesbians. I guess you could argue this is just taking the subtext from the vanilla game and making it text, but I feel like whenever I've heard unfunny internet users make gags Erika's gym, they always go for the weed angle and not the lesbian angle. Maybe that has more to do with most of the humor well of Gen 1 being run dry back in the "LOL, MARIO DOES MUSHROOMS!!!!" era. I'm sure there's plenty of people drawing the obvious conclusion of "gym where only women are allowed" these days.

There aren't any new Starbies among the gym's trainers, just the usual Mosstons, Veilumbers and Weedimps you'd expect. Oddly, one trainer specifically mentions that they only use Grass Beasts, but another trainer's team was a Sackran and a Bagavond, neither of which are Grass. Bagavond is definitely in hindsight one of Sackran's two evolutions, but I'm still stumped on why they'd be here. Maybe this game just really doesn't have enough Grass types?

There were a couple new trainer sprites though, the Beauty from above and this Ranger, who I think is replacing the female Cooltrainer? Will the rest of the Cooltrainers still be in this game? Only God and Soul Valor know, and God probably has more important things to worry about.

Lisbeth, the Gym Leader, is described on the sign outside as "The rough, tough gardening buff!" So you can probably intuit her character design and personality just based on that.

Oh, and at this point I've fully come around on the Club Master battle theme for the Gym Leaders, by the way. I think I was just put off since I was expecting a high-energy track, with that being what the original game had. But I think this track fits normal battles just fine.

My prediction about Weedimp's final forms was incorrect (seems like Lucian is gonna have the Dark Soul one, I bet a different NPC is going to have the Holy Soul one), but I was correct that she'd have a more balanced team as opposed to a single standout ace. Unfortunately for her, all three of her Beasts got outsped by Tubi and one-shot by Falcon Punches. But I did do two whole dungeons I didn't need to do yet before fighting her, so it was sort of bound to end up like this.

On the upside, all three are new Beasts! Let's have a look.

With the Mega Drain TM (Nothing I cared much about could learn it) and the Pride Badge (I didn't even think anything of this name when I saw it in the list back then. But, lol.) in tow, we better head out and free Saffron City from Team Rocket's clutches. Seems like they're having a bad time if none of them want to leave their houses.

We're gonna be jumping around a bit in Silph Co. I fought every trainer, but most of them weren't very interesting so I'm gonna just be skipping around to the interesting bits. There is a unique music track here in the building, and it sounds so familiar, but I can put my finger on what it is. If anyone else plays this game and is able to identify what this song is, please let me know.

The Scientists don't use the Rocket battle theme, which is the case in the canon games later on but always bothered me there as well. Also, this guy is confused about my gender in the opposite way as the gym trainer from earlier.

In general, the Rockets here have a lot of the Slimogg and Zapodi lines, but in general I'd say there's a bit more variety in the Beasts they use than in the originals. Stranghost, Electrio, Cracture, Tearwulf, Slasher, Eggerot, Malevolos, Tomaroc, Trapestry, O'Grue, Embalmak, Convlusia, Warnado, Ardyhydra, Infestin, Slashopper, and Deathseer were all Beasts I saw at least once on the teams of the Grunts. This game's got a lot of designs that feel "evil", thinking about it now. And if you don't remember what all of them look like, well, I guess you're just not a real Star Beasts fan.

It looks like TM AI Mk. 1 was being worked on here at Silph originally, before being relocated to the laboratory in Celadon. Probably a good thing that the Rockets didn't get a hold of it, and a fun bit of world interconnectivity that also gives people a hint to go to Celadon and find this if they haven't yet.

Elsewhere, there's a Juggler. All his dialogue gave every indication that he's working with Team Rocket, he says "It's a long way to my BOSS!" when you beat him. But like, why? Why is he a Juggler? I don't understand. Maybe that's the joke.

As Jugglers are want to do, this guy loved swapping out his Beasts. This meant he actually got to take actions while being Wrapped, since the swap will always go before the next Wrap gets a chance to land. This didn't accomplish anything, but I guess it's more than most trainers get to do against Wrap. He also swapped into a new Beast, which is exciting.

Speaking of new Beasts, it's been like 4 new ones since we've seen another Steel type. Let's get another one of those in here. For old time's sake. Because I guess Veilumber is a split evolution.

Oh and by the way, assume that this entire dungeon is interspersed with frequent return trips to the Star Beast Center to restock on Wrap PP. I'm glad this place has the elevator to make that easy.

In TM news, we found Take Down, which is pretty embarassing to get this long after Body Slam to be honest. I guess it is technically higher Base Power but like. Come on now. Especially as compared to the other TM in this dungeon, it looks awfully silly.

Everyone on the team except for The Peeker can learn Earthquake, so I had to check the Attack stats of my team. Rocky Dan has the highest by a pretty significant margin, and the more I thought about it the less I was sure I was ever gonna want to use Selfdestruct. Flash Cannon and Rock Throw were usually good enough at dealing with anything Selfdestruct would hit for neutral damage that I didn't need it. Felt like I was just waiting for the perfect target that I just needed to absolutely destroy. But I don't know what I'd even be waiting for...

Well, I'm sure glad I held onto that. With the horrible fiend vanquished, we can now safely replace Selfdestruct with Earthquake. Incidentally, the trainer who had this thing was a lady Ranger who was trying to pretend she was a civilian in need of saving, but was actually working for Team Rocket. This makes her, as far as I've seen, the only female member of Team Rocket in the whole game. An inspiration to us all.

There's been a handful of folks around the office murmuring about a "fat man" guarding the door on the top floor, who's apparently Lucian's personal bodyguard. Sounds like we might be in for a little mini boss rush, between Varik, this guy, and Lucian at the end.

Just a couple last small things before we grab the Card Key and run into Varik again. Embalmak is, apparently, weak to Steel. That means it's either Ghost/Rock or Ghost/Ice, and I think Ice is a bit more likely. It would go some ways to explaining why all the dialogue in Beast Tower kept mentioning "Mist". That is an Ice move after all.

There's also this Scientist who says that he's a contractor, so he plays both sides.

Alright Varik, put up your dukes.

And now, for the tale of how Rowsdower absolutely ruined Varik's day. His levels are actually up to snuff this time, his ace was Level 40 which is actually a decent bit higher than my team, and the rest was basically on par.

Gryphern's out first, who barely lived a Thunderbolt and hit me back with a Flamethrower. Pretty cool if this thing is actually Fire/Flying, seems pretty likely since it did pretty good damage to Rowsdower (and Flamethrower isn't even a TM in vanilla RBY so this move would've have come from that). We're sitting at 29 HP right now, so in the moment I don't love the chances of Rowsdower contributing much more to this battle.

Harlefinn comes in next, which Rowsdower of course also outspeeds. This time though, we land the Critical Hit and it goes down in one shot. Afterwards Canghoulit comes out, and we outspeed with Bite and land a second Crit in a row! Rowsdower's obviously real fast, so with Gen 1 crit mechanics he's gonna land them much more often than other Beasts. But that's still an impressive performance so far.

Majivich comes out next, and while we do once again outspeed a non-critical Bite isn't enough to take it down. Somehow though, Varik thought it would be smart to go for Confusion againt my Dark type. There's a real possibility Majivich straight up had no other attacking moves, but whatever the case may be we hit another Bite and Majivich goes down with no trouble. After getting hit by one attack on the first turn we've successfully taken down 4/5 of Varik's Beasts with just Rowsdower. Unfortunately, that streak ends with his ace, Floratress. (Which is apparently not an evolution of Mosston, it's an evolution of Lawncrete. That honestly makes a lot more sense.)

Look at that damage, though! Remember when I gave Rowsdower Hurricane? This was the first time I got to use it, and it got this close to actually soloing Varik's entire team. What a performance from Rowsdower, just incredible stuff. In any case, Tubi came in and finished the job with a Falcon Punch.

The NPC in this room that gives you the Lapras has dialogue that seems pretty much unchanged from the original game, bar saying Star Beast and the name "Nocean" instead of Lapras. But it still ferries you across the water. Indeed, it's a very Lapras-esque creature.

The second battle in our gauntlet is the bodyguard we've heard so much about, who's standing in front of the door to Silph's President's office. It's... A Cue Ball. With two level 33 Needolfs and a level 33 Slobbix. I mean, the Slobbix is kind of interesting, it even barely lived a Rocky Dan Earthquake. But I still feel pretty let down considering no fewer than three different NPCs hyped this guy up to me.

Alright, no more screwing around, now it's time to actually take on Lucian.

This time Predatox was his lead, and I had Zorotl up. I went for Psychic, but evidently Predatox is Poison/Dark since it was immune. I no longer have moral high ground over Varik's Majivich. I tried to just go for Ice Beams to 1v1 it that way, but I both got poisoned by a turn 1 Sludge and then got a Special drop from Crunch, so Zorotl was destined to go down to this thing. Tubi was able to finish the job with a Flash Cannon on the rebound.

Charkonro is in next, and I went for a Falcon Punch even though I knew this thing was a Rock type. Really I just wanted to see how much it would do, since every other time I've used the move it's one-shotted its target. It did quite a good amount of damage for being resisted, but I did learn the move does have an actual downside: It's a flying type Hyper Beam. I'm more than fine with that though, I love RBY Hyper Beam and here I get to have STAB on it with a type that actually beats some stuff. And I didn't even need to grind for Game Corner coins to get it!

Charkonro didn't do anything to capitalize on this, just going for a Skull Bash. I swapped out to Rocky Dan since Flash Cannon wouldn't be neutral damage thanks to the type bug. In hindsight I definitely could've knocked it out, so I don't know why I felt the need to do this. In any case, I swapped out to Rocky Dan who wound up catching a Selfdestruct. It was a 4x resisted one though, so nothing to worry about.

Tearwulf came in next, and I had no idea what type this thing was yet. I just went for a Flash Cannon, but it only took one hit of a critical hit Double Kick to knock Rocky Dan into next week. That's gotta be STAB with that amount of damage. I threw out Toby Kebel next, who unfortunately caught a Growl on the turn I went for Glare, so my Wraps were dealing very little damage. I was able to get quite a few of them off, but I wasn't even able to knock it down to half health before I died to two Shadow Claws off two Wrap misses. Rowsdower wound up cleaning up afterwards.

Lucian's new ace is a new Beast: He's missing his Weedimp from the last fight, so this might be one of its evolutions that we saw alluded to before. Unfortunately, it anticlimatically got knocked out by one Rowsdower Thunderbolt. It wasn't even super effective, Rowsdower's just that incredible. Such a good boy, so talented.

Well, seeya in Viridian Gym bozo. We grab our Master Ball and head on our way.

Comments