Episode 23: I'm a Genetic Freak, and I'm Not Normal

After a quick stroll and swim through the Badge Check Gate, it's time to make our way through Victory Road. Victory Road is kind of a hilarious concept, honestly. They make 0 attempt to justify its existence in-world. It's an RPG, so it needs a final dungeon, naturally. So now you have to spelunk through a dangerous cave in order to get to the Super Bowl. That rocks.

Among the trainers here is mostly the dialogue you'd expect, although one does mention someone "calling himself Varik passed through here" which is another odd mention of his name being what he "calls himself" rather than his actual name. Is that ever going to amount to anything? Probably not, so draw your own conclusions I guess. There's also someone who says there's some kind of Dragon hiding in the cave, and they're "giving it a wide berth." This is particularly funny, because, you can see it through the wall on the same screen as the NPC that mentions this.

In the new Beast department, we had seen the final forms of Embrain and Quincy several times before now, so I was wondering when if ever we'd get to see what Mr. Bungle would've become. Luckily, a trainer here in Victory Road had a team with each of the final stage starters.

I'm sure some folks were disappointed when Mr. Bungle was unceremoniously removed from the team in favor of Tubi, but my decision is vindicated after Tubi was able to cleanly one shot Jellyhelly with a Falcon Punch. That's a direct comparison point right there. Sorry to all Mr Bungle fans, but the numbers don't lie.

My team started to get pretty beat up close to the end of the dungeon. I didn't have the foresight to stock up on healing items before venturing in, so I expended my stock of Super Potions pretty quickly. Not helping this were the Level 45 Balisades that insisted on showing up even when using Repels, since I was leaving with a Level 44 Beast at the time. With that in mind, I had no intention of seeking out the Legendary in this cave with my weakened squad. That is, until I literally stumbled upon it by accident. Well, I might as well then.

"The dragon stirs, disturbed by your presence. Before you stands a creature out of legends, the dragon that predates all other dragons. You can feel it. It is your destiny to tame this BEAST. The legendary dragon, ALVARIS. She eyes you warily, awaiting your next move. Get ready!" I have to say, the prose when you encounter one of these stationary encoutners is such a nice touch compared to the original games. Unfortunately, it is not actually my destiny to tame this thing, as I soon learned.

I led with paralyzing it, of course, and then a couple nice hits put it into very low health. At this point I decided to just chuck balls for a bit, and if my team got too roughed up I'd just give up. That plan was thwarted pretty quickly though: In RBY, if you have particularly low chances of catching something, the ball will just straight up miss the target and you'll get special text telling you to weaken it more first. Somehow, despite this seemingly perfect scenario, that's what happened here.

Maybe it wanted me to put it to sleep or freeze it or something? I've got nothing. Either way, I'm out of here I have better things to do.

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