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Alrighty, now we've only got three slots left! One for Battle Tower + Dome Set 1 and 2 for Battle Arena Set 2!Explopyro posted:Fyi, that Shedinja set is probably going to fail horribly in the Arena, especially if you leave Protect on it (Protect is expliicitly penalised but setup in general is a bad strategy there). Maybe swap Protect out for Aerial Ace, or even Agility. Good call, I'll swap in Aerial Ace. I'm fine to use whatever, I did beat the Gen 4 Battle Frontier with thread submissions as well, so I beat the Battle Hall with a Slaking, the first set of the Battle Tower with a Delibird and the second set of the Battle Arcade with a Ditto. I'll be perfectly fine. Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 00:32 on May 5, 2018 |
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May 5, 2018 00:20
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Um geez, not the Frontier again. Well I'm not going to send Mawile in there, considering she did poorly last time.... So instead have something that I don't know if it will work or not! Pokemon: Granbull (Nana) Item: Chesto Berry Gender: Female EVS: (172 HP, 252 ATK, 84 Speed) Ability: Intimidate Nature: Adamant Shiny: No Moves: Return, Shadow Ball, Rest, Attract
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May 5, 2018 00:25
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Time for choice 2 if Swampert isn't allowed, I guess! Epoch the Aerodactyl (Male) @Choice Band EVs: 252 Attack / 252 Speed / 4 HP Nature: Jolly Ability: Rock Head Shiny: No Double Edge Rock Slide Earthquake Hidden Power (Flying) Battle Tower/Dome Set 2
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May 5, 2018 00:40
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One more submission left! Woah!
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May 5, 2018 00:48
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Bruce the Breloom Ability: Effect Spore Stun Spore Mach Punch Giga Drain Leech Seed Dunno about items and such. Whatever.
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May 5, 2018 01:48
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That's just the kind of attitude we need to transition into the fact that I can't put this off any longer! Thanks for all the submissions everyone! Now to actually beat the fuckin thing...
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May 5, 2018 02:29
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Crosspeice posted:That's just the kind of attitude we need to transition into the fact that I can't put this off any longer! Thanks for all the submissions everyone! Take your time, the Frontier is in fact pretty hellish.
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May 5, 2018 02:31
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Onmi posted:Norman beats the everloving poo poo out of Ruby, he is as brutal to his son as he'd been built up to be, having no qualms physically beating him. Viz sure, um, tried to censor that.  Agh, lightning! Ruby is slipping away from my grasp...
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May 5, 2018 04:05
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Sometimes you just have to punch your son in the face. With lightning.
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May 5, 2018 05:46
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Good luck weathering the Bullshit Frontier (and I hope our submissions serve you well!). Hopefully it won't end up being quite as painful as it always is for me. I really wanted to like the Emerald Battle Frontier: loads of effort clearly went into it, and a lot of the facilities are really creative and sound like they'd be quite fun on paper (come on, they even threw in a Roguelike mode! This should be awesome!). And I liked the idea of a more challenging mode, because the main game content in Pokemon games tends to be rather easy. But it just ends up being so gruelling and punishing that any fun there could be quickly gets sucked out of it, at least in my opinion. I've never completed it without at least some savestate abuse. There's also just something that makes battle facility battles feel qualitatively different to anything else in the game, and to my mind not in a good way; I'm not sure if it's the lack of experience/money gain (even though at this point you don't need them) making it feel like there's no progression, or something else... On the other hand, this was the first game to have a Battle Factory and that one was honestly a pretty good idea. There are still moments when it can feel unfair (especially if the RNG gives you lousy choices for your team), but I suspect that's just the human tendency to misinterpret randomness rather than the game actually being biased against the player.
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May 5, 2018 06:00
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limeicebreakers posted:Viz sure, um, tried to censor that. Yeah Viz's releases have a lot of that. There's a time in GSC where Crystal is down in the dumps due to failing to catch Suicune, and her mother see's her lost in her funk and gives her a smack across the face in a "Pull yourself together" sense. This was changed to a "Deathly stare" 
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May 5, 2018 06:10
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I kind like the glare better??? She just disapproved so hard it knocked Crystal backwards.
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May 5, 2018 06:30
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Explopyro posted:Good luck weathering the Bullshit Frontier (and I hope our submissions serve you well!). Hopefully it won't end up being quite as painful as it always is for me. I'm honestly surprised the rental style wasn't just integrated into every battle tower after BW2 added a rental-type mode into even the PWT. Especially after gen 7 dropped triple & rotation, leaving battle tree with just singles, doubles & multi.
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May 5, 2018 06:39
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Regice nickname can be Regis, for the low-effort pun. I realized I have 4 EVs left over, so throw them into defense. Good luck!
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May 5, 2018 07:06
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BrightWing posted:I kind like the glare better??? She just disapproved so hard it knocked Crystal backwards. That's a bit too anime, especially considering how Arcanine and Cubone are also reacting to the slap, and Arcanine especially is clearly reacting to pain. That kind of censorship needs a bit more effort put into it to be convincing, then again, censorship is bad to begin with so being terrible at it is fitting, I guess.
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May 5, 2018 17:28
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Sometimes you just have to punch your son in the face. With lightning.
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May 6, 2018 01:27
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Pokemon Adventures - Wally Wally is, as he is in the games, a sick child with some sort of lung condition. He initially hopes that Norman can help him catch a pokemon, but Norman goes to his parents and learns how ill he actually is and that his parents are taking him somewhere to recover. Norman can't guarantee Wally's safety and the world of Pokemon can be dangerous (As Norman well knows) and he doesn't want to bring Wally, who clearly can't take it (He was wheezing and clutching his chest from trying to catch a pokemon on his own earlier) into that world, and instead he should focus on getting better. Ruby, because he's of the opinion of "gently caress my dad" and because he takes a liking to Wally, gives him his Ralts on loan and leads him out to capture a pokemon, Wally's first capture is a Keckleon (To Ruby's disappointment, as it's ugly.) and Wally feels better from having actually pushed himself and made the capture. Before they can return though an earthquake rips through the area and Ruby falls to his apparent demise, Wally left with his Ralts. He knows Ruby's survived since Ralts can detect his emotions through its horn, so he decides to look after Ralts till then and grow stronger for his friend. We don't see Wally for a long time and the next time he does appear is at Pacifidlog Town, he's got a new respirator suit that features a face mask to help him regular his breathing, he's caught two more pokemon, evolved Ralts, and he can even fire pokeballs from his sleeve.  However this is right about the time Kyogre and Groudon are waking up, causing Hoenn to get rather loving ruined, as Wally spots a floating Pokeball containing Treeko, he uses his Cacturne to retrieve it with Needle Arm, along with the Pokedex. Aaaaand here's where things get strange. In the magazine release of Pokemon Adventures, Wally registered his name in the Pokedex, becoming the third holder. At the time it seemed there wasn't going to be an addition of an "Emerald" and they'd already established Wally's name as being 'Wally' So instead he wore all green, used green pokemon, and was Emerald in all but name... Until they released the volume version, changed it so he never registered his name, all so they could introduce... this rear end in a top hat.  I'm not going to do an Emerald breakdown, so I'll cover him in quick here... So at the end of the GSC arc they do a bookends bit with the opening of the GSC games and the radio show where Oak introduces someone unseen to the world of Pokemon, Emerald reveals that to be, well, Emerald. But Oak didn't let him have the Pokedex because of how young he was, and also because he was an rear end in a top hat towards Pokemon. Emerald lost his parents and grew distant from Pokemon and treated them more like tools, you could call him a version of Smogon/Competitive player incarnate, looking at Pokemon in terms of their statistics and moves and not, ya know, partners or living creatures. To the point he resents himself for winning a match by crying out for his pokemon to succeed. He's an rear end in a top hat. Emerald is just annoying, bratty, unlikable and portrayed as way too skilled for way little effort in comparison to all previous protagonists, we're also supposed to accept him as equal to Red in terms of battling and well... he isn't. Worst of all, he's the reason Wally isn't the third protagonist. And Wally is gloriously cool and seeing his growth and becoming healthier is super neat. Anyway, enough about the dweeb. Norman is there to witness Wally saving Treeko and asks if Wally wishes to train with him as he's in need of his strength at the Sky Pillar. Wally agrees and they travel to the Sky Pillar, his first task is to climb the Sky Tower alone, all 50 floors in a single run. Doing so evolves Treeko to Grovyle and gets Wally strong enough to reach the top, Norman gives him a Flygon (Notice his all-green team) and then starts training him in double battles. Wally's last moment is to assist Norman in reaching Rayquaza and waking the dragon up, before passing out from exhaustion. At the end of the series he'd return the Pokedex, Grovyle and Kirila (Who had evolved as well) to their respective owners and faded into the background. Wally doesn't have a big role, but he's still neat to see, and it's a pity they decided to make Emerald rather than use Wally. Onmi fucked around with this message at 08:30 on May 6, 2018 |
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May 6, 2018 02:30
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Yeah, Emerald was really kind of awful. The actual plot of his arc is him beating the Battle Frontier and maybe contributing something to battling Archie. Maybe. Oh, and a bit of setup for the Sinnoh manga with that manga-original villain that I can't remember the name of right now, but that was mostly handled in the FR/LG manga anyway. Anyway, the Battle Frontier is really not suited to a manga format. They just skip over most of it, with only the Frontier Brain battles being given any real attention. Wally's Sceptile comes out of nowhere with it being mixed in with the rental Pokemon at the Battle Factory for poorly explained reasons. Emerald has absolutely no problem with any challenge despite his freshly-obtained Pokemon and the whole thing feels rushed because, surprise surprise, it's the arc for a gen's third game and isn't all that long. The thing that probably stuck with me the most about the arc was that Emerald beats the Battle Palace without even being there, just because. At least it's accurate to the games in that way, because the Battle Palace is almost purely luck-based and by far the worst battle facility idea that Game Freak has ever had. Screw the Battle Palace.
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May 6, 2018 03:04
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Snorlax (McSnore) @Leftovers @Male 252 Attack, 252 Sp. Defense, 4 Defense Brave Nature, Immunity Curse Return Body Slam Strength Battle Dome + Battle Tower Set 1
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May 6, 2018 03:32
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Emerald is the worst and I hate him and the fact they made him the same kid Oak was giving a pokedex to was just... awkwardly done. So end of GS chapter (180) was this, Oak happily giving a small child the new pokedex and it's all a cute reference to the opening of the games.  But because by the time they made Emerald and made him a jerk who was rejected from having a Pokedex (shown finally in ch 332) and since he already knew who Emerald was (he's an orphan in Crystal's care, who was working with the Pokemon Acadmey) he does the catty thing of about to hand him the pokemon, going "not", gives him a total dress down and it's all just a bit forced, so to speak. I'd show scans but the ones I could find were weirdly translated and poor quality so oh well. Oak does at least believe in second chances and temporarily registers him to the pokedex so that if he can learn to not be a jerk and find the pokedex once more he can have it. But still. A quick breakdown of the Emerald chapter's plot: The Battle Frontier is readying for opening and to commemorate it Scott & the Brains are there for the opening ceremonies. Emerald crashes in, demands to challenge the Frontier, makes everyone mad and are about to ban him for life until some other reporters misinterpret it as a publicity stunt and are interested in seeing the boy compete before it opens to the public. To save face they give Emerald 7 days to beat all 7 facilities. The actual challenging of the facilities is just set dressing but it does the usual Pokemon Adventures/Special thing of following details of the games to the letter for no real reason. There's a scene of Todd, yes the same one from Pokemon Snap, and a few other members of the press following along with Emerald's challenge as he goes through every single battle and room and getting board because he's going through the needed 140 battles to fight the brain. The battle pike has 4 pages devoted to its gimmick of maids giving you hints for the next rooms. Part of the climax is climbing the battle tower and they make sure to devote a page to everyone battling through the 100 floors. Aside from Tucker's challenge, where he brings in a boat of challengers, all the challengers are holograms because all the trainers in the real Frontier speak in all caps. The reason Emerald is doing this is on orders from Crystal & Oak. Guile Hideout (Archie, if you'll remmeber from Omni's earlier post) has taken a bunch of pokemon from across the land and put them in the Facility's cpu trainers pokemon pools so they can go berserk. Emerald's job is to get those pokemon out, free them of mind control by using soils of their homelands to calm them down, and then the big thing is the REAL reason for both of them being there: Jirachi is set to wake up in this exact 7 day time period. Archie wants it for kyogre reasons, Emerald wants it because Oak & Crystal need to fix this mess in addition to stopping Archie:  At the end of the FRLG arc, Sird turns Red, Green, Blue, Yellow & Silver to stone while trying to capture Deoxys. Emerald himself doesnt really care. Ruby & Sapphire are also brought along for other reasons but they're not in on the plans and generally not that important. Anyway Guile catches Jirachi, summons a giant tidal Kyogre that will threaten to destroy things, some brief battling hapens, Emerald makes his big Character Development speech which resonates with Jirachi enough to free the other pokedex holders, they stop Archie, free all his pokemon and everyone's starter pokemons use the elemental hyper beams (& volt tackle) to destroy the Kyogre, the end. The final wish jirachi grants before going back to sleep is "Many people coming to the battle frontier!" also through all this Emerald is best friends forever with Latias & Latios because why not. Latias even turns into a human form like the 5th movie 
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May 6, 2018 04:07
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I have one question to all of this: why is Red shirtless when he's turned to stone?
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May 6, 2018 04:43
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AradoBalanga posted:I have one question to all of this: why is Red shirtless when he's turned to stone? Gotta show off those rock hard abs 
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May 6, 2018 04:49
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AradoBalanga posted:I have one question to all of this: why is Red shirtless when he's turned to stone? His battle with Deoxys involved his shirt getting destroyed
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May 6, 2018 05:32
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Don't forget the part where Emerald literally pisses on Ruby when they come into the arc
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May 6, 2018 05:48
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AradoBalanga posted:To be fair to Norman, he is the only father character (of the protagonist, that is) we see in the games, so giving him a discount Heihachi Mishima personality (to use Verant's rather apt comment about Norman's parenting) is at least something more than the games usually bother to give. It's not the best thing, but given how flat the games usually make Gym Leaders out to be (one character trait, and not much else), I am fine with PokeSpe Norman to an extent. But I'll admit, the extreme tough love attitude definitely gets taken to ludicrous lengths, such as Slaking beating Ruby with a goddamn staircase. Alas, it seems that having a protagonist's father be alive is too much even for the manga, so he has to get killed off since this franchise is mostly allergic to fathers. He got better. BlackPersona posted:Don't forget the part where Emerald literally pisses on Ruby when they come into the arc Sapphire too. Epicmissingno posted:Yeah, Emerald was really kind of awful. The actual plot of his arc is him beating the Battle Frontier and maybe contributing something to battling Archie. Maybe. Oh, and a bit of setup for the Sinnoh manga with that manga-original villain that I can't remember the name of right now, but that was mostly handled in the FR/LG manga anyway. You're thinking of Sird. And to be fair, the Battle Palace is all about letting your Pokemon battle without giving them orders, so that's not exactly an unfair way for him to earn the symbol. That said, Emerald is pretty lame, yes. Which is baffling, considering that Yellow, who is also a PokeSpe OC, manages to be much better. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 06:33 on May 6, 2018 |
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May 6, 2018 06:14
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:He got better. Yellow had good villains to bounce off a decent length story that afforded her time to grow and expanded upon the conflict and scope of Kanto as a region. More than that, she is easily slotted into a place that Red, Green and Blue didn't already fill, had great respect for her seniors and had been shown on screen in the Viridian Gym arc. Emerald basically tries to be both Yellow and Red mixed in with early Silver He's a genius at battling and he can recognize a Pokemon's "Birthplace" and calm them down, but he's a cold rear end in a top hat who doesn't care about Pokemon for anything more than battling. And his big emotional crux is forced, his arc happens to quickly, and his treatment of Ruby and Sapphire endears him to all of no one.
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May 6, 2018 08:35
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I am remembering why I stopped reading around Diamond and Pearl. The scans online past Emerald's arc are a complete mess being poorly scanned, Out of order, and done by like three or 4 different translators. I may have to eventually pick up the Viz box for DPP. Plus most of the sites I seem to go to stop somewhere during Black and White.
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May 6, 2018 14:19
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Part 29: The Battle Factory Battle Factory Welcome to the first of four Battle Frontier updates, since I can record this straight away and it's the only facility most people play cause they're scrubs.    The favorite battle style appears to be free-spirited and unrestrained. First, we will hold your POKEMON for safekeeping. You may then choose from our selection of POKEMON. We'll go over what scientist dude was talking in just a moment, but here's the main draw of the Factory: you don't have to grind for hours making the perfect Pokemon, you can just use the same Pokemon used in the Frontier! This is a super fun way to battle, as well as learning what kind of Pokemon you'll be facing in the Frontier. Spoilers, because it's Gen 3 and this is GF's first attempt at a massive battle facility like this, the sets used for a lot of Pokemon are, uh, interesting. No Physical/Special split really sucks!    You've got important information on all three pages, so it's a fair amount to keep track of to make sure there's no funny business. I'll just be showing the moves, since you can probably guess the ability in most cases and you don't remember what most natures do. It'd be weird if you did. First up is a mixed Rapidash, since, being Gen 3, a lot of Pokemon still have awful movesets, so they had to get creative in a lot of cases.   Not bad, but nothing too crazy either. Since we're at the start, we're not seeing the good stuff right off the bat. There are A LOT of Pokemon in this facility between both Level 50 and Open Level (60-100).   Two pretty good choices here. Like most battle facilities, setup sweepers are your best options, though using stuff like Swords Dance and Dragon Dance is better than using Calm Mind and Bulk Up, for instance. I'll try using fast and hard hitting Pokemon whenever possible.   While not amazing, I think we've got a pretty good set up. So let's get to battling!     Good start. We've got a fair few battles to get through in this facility and there's a lot of trainers to fight. Like a lot a lot. Different trainers appear at different battle streaks and have a set pool of Pokemon they draw from, depending on their class. In other facilities. In this one, trainers have completely random Pokemon that matches the specific group you're in, but more on that in a minute.   Like always, unless you have a resistance or immunity chilling in the back, switching in these facilities in a really bad idea. Better to just do as much damage as you can and then get a safe switch in. As always though, you'll have to play this by ear, there's never one perfect strategy to these places.   So since we're doing Open Level (which translates to Level 100 for this facility), all the Pokemon we'll be encountering will be from Group 3, the big main group you expect from this place, while Level 50 will slowly build up to always being Group 3. Containing all fully evolved Pokemon that don't appear in Group 2, each Pokemon has a minimum of 4 sets it can appear with, though some Pokemon, usually ones with large movepools, can have 8 sets, with Dragonite and Tyranitar having 10 sets. All legendaries you can use in here have 6 sets, with the Latis having 8. We'll go over the other groups when we encounter them during the Level 50 challenges.   As you'd expect, the first set a Pokemon can have is usually the worst and most typical set you'd expect, while the fourth set has a pretty good strategy and type coverage behind it. As we go up in streaks, like with Gen 4's Battle Factory, we'll encounter better Pokemon to use, but also stronger Pokemon to face.   You get some cool stuff from the start, like this Synchronize Lum Berry Espeon, but we'll be waiting for the good stuff later on.   Again, like with Gen 4's Battle Factory, you get interesting info on your opponent before you battle them. However, this info you get is a lot more vague and in the case of no type favouritism (which has no bearing on anything since everything is random in this place), all the info given can be useless unless you know what the hell he's talking about. Get used to this, btw. The second statement is determined by what moves the opponent has, but only a good chunk of moves are counted and split into seven different categories.  Oh yeah, these Frontier updates are basically really long Side Notes, so sometimes we'll have to strap in and go over what the hell is going on. Moves can be counted twice if more than one Pokemon has and when enough moves get counted in a category's threshold (three for the first four and two for the last three), then the corresponding statement is given, with those lower down given priority. If three or more categories go over the threshold, then it's given a special statement.  Because of how many moves are in each category and how vague the statements are, this info is basically useless, I paid no attention to it during my streak and you should do the same. This does crop up more in the Double Battle streak since there's an extra Pokemon to add on, but if you get a heads up on the type, great! Otherwise, just mash past these useless textboxes.   If you liked the look of one of your opponent's Pokemon, then you can trade it! But you need to be paying attention during battle to see if it's a good idea, since you get no additional info when you go for the swap. Hopefully we'll get a Pokemon in the next battle we'll want.   Now that's what I'm talking about! There are certain Pokemon that you should always go for when they pop up, since it makes this facility much less of a headache. Though you have to actually survive the encounter with them.   Well this isn't going amazingly so far, but you never know.  So this Salamence may have nearly completely swept me, but hey, we beat it.   gently caress. There's gonna be around 250 battles total to get all the Gold Symbols in this place. We lost at battle TWO. Good start.  Now that we've got the basics done and did a run to, uh, manipulate the RNG, let's actually do this.   It's always a shame when one of your Pokemon is missing good STAB, since that's usually what you need in a given situation, so Exploud is here to save the day.   So you might be surprised to learn I'll be abridging a lot of the battles we'll be going through, so I'll be showing off what someone we picked up can do, or something interesting that happened. The usual stuff.   Not the move I expected, but the AI has never been that amazing at the start of the streaks.  You should always pick up Marowak when you see it, since every set has a Thick Club.   Because seriously, look at the damage. On both sides. Ow. As you'd expect, every Pokemon has 255 EVs in two stats, or 170 EVs in three stats, as well as a set nature. You might think since we're solely seeing Pokemon from Group 3 they'll all have max IVs and all that? Well, no actually, the Pokemon you face are linked to your streak in the Battle Tower, so if you do this facility first, then every Pokemon you face will have 3 IVs max (aside from Trainer 7 who's upgraded to the next set, so they have 6 IVs). Otherwise, if you get to battle 100 for everything, then all Pokemon in the Factory will have 31 IVs from the start. This, however, does no apply to your Pokemon, they gain IVs as you go through the sets like normal, but if you trade a Pokemon, they'll have 3 IVs. It's not a huge deal, feel free to trade away, until you get up to the higher streaks.   Ludicolo is also a good pick, having a great typing and real good type coverage most of the time.   The interesting sets and the interesting AI make these early battles pretty, well, interesting.  In recognition of your wealth of knowledge and keen intelligence, we award you these Battle Point(s).  I don't know why they try and deal with the fact you can get 1 Battle Point, it looks super dumb. Also don't use square brackets if you type that out, since that's the strikethrough bbcode!       Here's our second batch, not bad, if physical in literally every way (bar one).     I think we'll be just fine, these two Pokemon are just BEASTS.   A few ups and downs, but man this team was fun, just blasting fools every which way. I mean, we have Megahorn on Heracross! Madness.   And that's one way to end the second streak. Pretty fun, but nothing too crazy happened, I don't think I swapped once.  Right, let's see some movesets of the third kind.       Hmm. I think the word for these is: meh? Sure, it's not awful, but these are some weird sets, man.   Endure, Reversal and Salac make for a real nice combo, but not using Normal STAB is a bit suspect. Ah we'll be fine.  It doesn't always work out though.   That's pretty nasty. Or it would be if it wasn't the foe's last Pokemon.   We struck fuckin gold with this Heracross. LOOK AT THAT SET. It's so beautiful I could cry.  That's right, Meganium has an Endure Flail Salac Berry set. Neat. Well anyway, it's the end of the third stre-   Oh, my... sorry to keep you waiting. I have a message from this facility's boss, the FACTORY HEAD. He says, "We're going to do it! Come here right now!"  Now this is a bit early. While Gen 4 was pretty rigid in when you faced the Frontier Brains, Gen 3 has a lot more variety, so you only need to wait until the 21st battle before fighting the Frontier Brain! Let's do this!!!   "which is why I'm the FACTORY HEAD!" I had a look at your Battle Swap data. You seem to have the right idea, but you're still square in your head! Listen up, okay? Knowledge isn't only about reading books or doing desk work. Just doing that sort of thing... it may as well be useless! You have to experience things with your heart and your body, understand? I'll take you on under the same conditions as you. I'll be using rental POKEMON, too! Shake out every last bit of your knowledge and bring it on! VS Frontier Brain   Factory Head Noland/Datsura From knowledge, and Datsura (moonflower) and data.  Our first Frontier Brain can be real tough, or a massive pushover, it all depends on what Pokemon he has, which could be any Group 3 Pokemon with their third set. This is a pretty bad start for us.   He's got a pretty interesting Skarmory, with Fly, Curse, Toxic and Rest, holding a Chesto Berry. An important note is gender and abilities are random, so you could get lucky with that, or not at all.   We need every advantage we can get against this guy, 3v3 singles does not offer much room for mistakes.   Good job there, what's next?   Raichu is a cool choice, with Thunder, Iron Tail, Rain Dance and Attract with Static and a Cheri Berry. We should expect some lightning bolts in a moment.     Thankfully we have a Ground type, so this won't be too tough.   Alright, he didn't have anything hugely scary, as this Muk has Sludge Bomb, Thunderbolt, Flamethrower and Ice Punch with a Lum Berry. If you remember your stats right, Muk has a 65 base SpAtk, so, uh, yeah.   Let's use Heracross again and finish this up. Battle Factory    Next time, I'll come after you hard. No holds barred, understand? You keep up your studies! "seven matches in a row!"  Alright, we got our first symbol! Only 13 left to go...       Now we're getting to the good stuff. Sure, the fourth sets aren't perfect, but most of the time they're pretty drat solid, so I'm happy with them.   While Houndoom is super frail, it's also super powerful, so hell yeah, let's use doom doggy.   It can take down Water types pretty easily, especially if they use Ice moves for some strange reason.     Unsurprisingly the other two are also amazing, so this streak went by in a flash. We've got some powerful mons, so it's great fun using them.  Fifth streak go!       Ooh, legendaries are gonna start appearing, so this is gonna be fun. That's its third set in comparison to everyone else with their fourth set.  Not as crazy as the last streak, but still pretty good.     This Wailord was a nightmare. I think I just stalled it out of Rests.   This Ludicolo is pretty, heh, COOL!  Let's steal it.   Of course, since we can use legendaries now, so too can the opponent.   We wanna grab them when we see them.   That sure is a Bug Catcher's Pokemon.   All the legendaries!!!   It is overkill, but we're done with streak five!  We're getting there. Sixth streak!       Now we've got a real mix of sets, from Clefable's third set, to Gengar's third of eight sets, to Gardevoir's first set, to Exploud's second set.  While it's not an amazing Entei, I just can't keep away from them.     I want to murder everyone who comes up with these sets.   Alright fuckin Brightpowder.   Oh man where did this Ludicolo come from? I am as surprised as you are.   I should keep a counter of how many times Focus Band activates. Ding!   And here we are, at the 42nd battle, it's our final fight with Noland. It's one less set compared to Thorton, so hey, we get let off easy here.   Hey, hey! How's it going? You keeping up with your studies? ...Oh? You've taken on a harder look than the last time I saw you. Now, this should be fun! I'm getting excited, hey! All right! Bring it on! VS Frontier Brain  Huh, being outsped by an Exploud. Interesting. Well this Exploud set of Overheat, Ice Beam, Thunderpunch and Extrasensory has max Speed, so it's not too surprising, since this Latios set doesn't have max Speed investment.   No point fainting when I know what it's gonna go for, so let's switch.  Who then outspeeds Exploud. Max Speed Entei baby!     We're not gonna get very far here, so let's use best pineapple. This Gyarados has Return, Earthquake, Dragon Dance and Rest with a Chesto Berry.   We should get rid of it before it starts using Return and wrecks us. A +2 Gyarados is nothing to mess with.   I think we'll be perfectly fine, since we were blessed with a punching duck.   Look at that crazy strategy, this would be bad if we didn't have anything to take out this mon in two hits.   But we can get it stuck in a Rest loop and deal with it from there.   Oh we're gonna play this game are we? This Manectric has Thunderbolt, Quick Attack, Flash and Roar with a Magnet.   Thankfully it's not using Double Team, so if Ludicolo goes down, either of our other mons can take it down.   Oh no, is this the end for Ludicolo?  Please, always have faith in SALSA. Battle Factory    Pfft, man! That's absolutely the last time I lose to you! We have to do this again, hey?  There we go, that's our first facility done! While I may have made that look pretty easy, I got lucky with the mons I got when it came to fighting Noland. If I didn't have that great rentals, or Noland had some nasty stuff, then you can get super screwed. Now it's not a huge problem for me, I'll be save stating all day erry day, but this is definitely a facility where you need to be a bit lucky. Still, it's a ton of fun and if you're gonna ignore the rest of the lovely facilities, then this is definitely one to play. Anyway, next time, I think we should go do some postgame, yeah? Crosspeice fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Aug 21, 2018 |
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May 6, 2018 21:37
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Since we kind of blitzed through the Emerald manga, how about taking some quick tour through the anime's rendition of the Battle Frontier? The Hoenn League wrapped up in June 2005, but DP was still in the works so it decided to take advantage of FRLG & Emerald coming out in the same year. Rather than head to a dedicated island for the Frontier, Scott built facilities all across...Kanto. Now Ash & friends can journey all around Kanto, name drop a bunch of old cities, visit a few old friends, see more Kanto pokemon and then tackle the Facilities. Kill 2 birds at once. Unfortunately the Kanto half of this equation is pretty lame and aside from Brock, Misty and a few other more minor things this could have been set anywhere. In general, each facility is pared down to basically being gym battles that may/may not have a gimmick to them. Challengers don't battle any other trainers, just going straight to the Brain. In Ash's case there is usually an unrelated misadventure prior to that, as anime does. I'd say this is probably for the best, but it is a shame they didn't do more to make them stand out.  The first facility Ash challenges happens to be the same as Crosspeice: Battle Factory and Nolan. He's also probably the most boring. Nolan in the anime is a fun loving inventor type, making things like automated tanks and biplanes. The factory in the anime is also shown to be a more literal industrial factory though you only ever see Nolan & his assistant in it. Aaaaand beyond one other thing we'll get to in a moment that's about it. Dude had 2 episodes to himself but was just kind of there. So they do actually set up The Factory's gimmick of rental pokemon. Nolan keeps a bunch of pokemon and asks Ash to choose whoever he wants to fight any of the random pokemon Nolan will choose. Could be fun to see Ash adapt to Pokemon he's never seen before; there was a filler early in the series of Ash being forced to use rentals in a pokemon exam and it was great. But, instead Ash insists he uses...  This random wild Articuno that Nolan healed from a wing injury & befriended. I suspect this is meant to mirror how he could use any Pokemon, including non-banned legendaries but it's weird he's not even using a Pokemon he owns for the challenge. More frustrating is Ash isn't using any rental Pokemon, he's using  His charizard. Which Nolan agrees to anyway, despite it not being part of the facility. Also Ash called in this Charizard without telling anyone so this is might presumptuous of you. The battle is 1 on 1 and it's okay, but why even bother with the set up if you're just going to do your own thing? Later battles are a bit more interesting in its battles and characters, so at least it's generally up from here.  Oh and Scott's a consistent recurring character in all this and is what kickstarted Ash doing this challenge. He's a cool dude with a cool car that he drives
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May 6, 2018 22:59
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Wasn't Ash forced to use Arbok, Weezing, and Meowth in that rental thing while James had to use Ash's Pokemon? 
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May 6, 2018 23:14
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Hobgoblin2099 posted:Wasn't Ash forced to use Arbok, Weezing, and Meowth in that rental thing while James had to use Ash's Pokemon? yes, and it was great. Ash even performed pretty well even if Arbok not being able to use wrap on Jolteon because it's spiky was stupid. A+ episode
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May 6, 2018 23:29
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Pokemon Adventures - Steven Stone At the pokemon league tournament previous to RS starting up, Steven Stone battles Wallace in the finals to determine the champion, and Steven lost, Wallace, not wanting to be separated from Winona, the woman he loved, gave up the title, leaving Steven crowned champion and the 4 runner-ups the "Elite 4" of Hoenn. Despite his unearned position as Hoenn's champion, Steven acts as something of the 'Big Good' of the region, well aware the Aqua and Magma are run by insane people, he from the start using Devon Corp attempts to craft several counter-measures to Operation: Wake up these two sleeping behemoth's and who knows maybe they'll make more water/land. Submarine-1 was his first attempt, as he figured if they could seal the Seafloor Cavern then there wasn't all that much that Magma or Aqua could do but stick a thumb in it. Failing that, he had a blind boy learn braille and gave him a fractured stone carving to track down the Regi's, if, after all, Magma and Aqua did succeed, they'd need something with firepower to put a stop to them... and seeing how the Salamance Incident cost them any chance of controlling Rayquaza they had to make do with what they could find. His next action was tracking down powerful trainers who could help stand against Magma and Aqua.  Sapphire was tasked to find him by Mr. Stone, but Ruby is actually the one who encounters him, with Steven helping evolve his Skitty and considering recruiting Ruby to help him fight Aqua and Magma, he decides against it because, and you'll find this hard to believe because it's Pokemon... but Steven recognizes that Ruby is 10 years old and is a little too young to be getting involved in saving the world. simultaneously making him the smartest and most reasonable human being in the Pokemon world and also completely thick. So you know that letter in the games you deliver to Steven and then nothing comes of it again? Well, as I said, Sapphire was supposed to deliver it to him, but he doesn't actually meet her until everything has gone to hell in a handbasket, With Kyogre and Groudon raging about, Sootopolis warped by the energy of two titans colliding, Sapphire is finally able to pass the letter on to Steven... which contains the missing contents of the stone tablet he tasked the boy to translate, the method of freeing the Regi's. Unlocking Regirock, Regice, and Registeel, he and the Elite 4 command the Trio in an effort to at the very least contain Groudon and Kyogre's battle while Norman fetches Rayquaza. However, as RS has frequently stated, trying to control legendary pokemon without capturing them is horrifically strainful on the body, and Steven is trying to control three at once for almost a full day. Eventually, it takes its toll and Steven collapses and dies.  He gets better. And I'll go over eventually how I feel regarding the RS ending when I do my final wrap up, so please hold out until then. In Platinum he shows up selling his Villa to Platinum so she can conduct her investigation of the island in Sinnoh, meanwhile he's gotten all the stones he wanted from Sinnoh and in the end, Steven is nothing more than a gigantic rock nerd. Which makes it funny of course that ORAS would happen and now he has to stop a giant rock from smashing into Hoenn. Steven represents the "Science" faction here, the group consisting mainly of Devon, who believe they can use technology, Hoopa's warping abilities, and the energy absorption technology to teleport the Meteor to another universe and make it "Someone Elses Problem" he's of course, in conflict with Zinnia, who represents the Draconids and kinda hates Devon because they maybe sorta killed Aster, see... we keep going back to Rayquaza in the end, 5 years before RS Devon was trying to control it so they could put a stop to any future Kyogre/Groudon fuckery, but creating a 'Jade Orb' doesn't come without sacrifice and in their battle to capture Rayquaza they kinda... killed her, and took several of the Keystones she had. The third faction is 'Nature' for the sake of being complete, that appears to be the Planet itself bringing back Archie and Maxie to revive Groudon and Kyogre and use them to destroy the meteor. Basically it's an excuse to bring back two Deader than Dead guys with their new designs (Before killing them again. Pokemon Adventures really hates Maxie and Archie) Steven, overall, is a pretty chill guy, he takes responsibility and he's trying his damndest to keep his stupid, stupid continent from being blown the hell up. To be clear he wasn't responsible for what happened with Zinnia, so much as Devon Corp as a whole was, but them's the breaks of previously-unintroduced plot tribes. They make things complex. I might devote a post to ORAS, all depends on if Crosspiece intends to cover Episode Delta in any way.
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May 7, 2018 02:05
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they really should have just caught the Regi Worked out great for Brandon who caught all three mostly off screen and uses them with relative ease
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May 7, 2018 02:19
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drat, you're pumping these out fast, Onmi. I also agree with opinions on Emerald, he definitely doesn't feel earned when Yellow is a much better character and a girl beating Lance with a Butterfree and Raticate is much more interesting than whatever the hell Emerald was using. Like the Battle Frontier is tough and the Frontier Brains are no joke and they kinda just gloss over it, it sucks. Steven and Wally are cool, I like both of their guys deal, but he still should've been Champion in Emerald, Wallace is just too much water too often and Steven has a much more interesting team. Wally has the Silver syndrome of cool character, poo poo team, but hey, that gets fixed. Also I'd love to do ORAS stuff, but no 3DS capture, so no go there. So talk about it as much as you want. Also, rannum, if you're gonna go over each Frontier Brain when they appear in the anime, I can put your posts in the OP.
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May 7, 2018 02:28
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Crosspeice posted:drat, you're pumping these out fast, Onmi. I also agree with opinions on Emerald, he definitely doesn't feel earned when Yellow is a much better character and a girl beating Lance with a Butterfree and Raticate is much more interesting than whatever the hell Emerald was using. Like the Battle Frontier is tough and the Frontier Brains are no joke and they kinda just gloss over it, it sucks. Emerald had 35 chapters and was based entirely around the battle frontier + jirachi. I think it ran at the same time as the FRLG saga which was also 35 chapters. I get the feeling they started to regret devoting specific sagas to the remakes and follow up games. Or just did not have the time for them. Platinum had 25 chapters, HGSS had 19 and boy oh boy could you feel it, ORAS was 22, BW2 was on hiatus as mentioned earlier and USUM didn't get its own thing at all. quote:
Sure, if you find them interesting enough. The plan was to talk about them as you fight them. Some of them don't have much to say but it's still fun to talk about the anime and how it tries to handle things.
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May 7, 2018 02:46
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Oh, we can talk about the Delta Episode? Excellent! Now I can talk about a little theory I've got that connects the main series and the Mystery Dungeon spinoffs. Just bear with me here. So a rough outline of the plot of the Delta Episode in ORAS is that there's a meteor heading towards Hoenn and the guys at the Mossdeep Space Centre want to transport it to another universe using Link Cable technology. You know, that thing that lets you connect with other games, i.e. other universes. In other words, first, we need to talk about parallel universes. I'm not sorry. And thus the Pokemon multiverse theory was thought up. My interpretation of this is that there are an infinite number of possible universes in which any possibility could happen, making every playthrough of every game, as well as the anime, manga and basically any Pokemon media, canon within the multiverse. That probably wasn't the original intention, since it was brought up to justify Mega Stones being in ORAS despite not being in RSE, but that doesn't matter right now. Anyway, a girl called Zinnia thinks this is a terrible idea because it'd just be passing the problem off to someone else in that alternate universe. Her solution is to go to Rayquaza and get it to blow the meteor the hell up. So you go and do just that, and the meteor turns out to contain Deoxys who you then fight and possibly catch. You're a trainer. That's what you do. This is all just a very rough outline, of course, but the important points are that the meteor contains Deoxys, it had the possibility to be sent to an alternate universe, and the Pokemon multiverse is a thing. So what can we extrapolate from this? Well, there is probably at least one universe where the meteor did, in fact, get transported to another universe. The plot of the first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon involves trying to save the planet from a meteor crashing into it, which just so happens to contain Deoxys. Either this was a natural occurrence with the same cause as what happened in the Delta Episode, or this is the universe where the meteor was sent in one of the universes where Zinnia fails to stop the meteor being transported. Of those two, I much prefer the latter because I like the idea of the plots being interconnected. In any case, this is probably just a load of nonsense brought on by lack of sleep and wishful thinking. Don't read too much into it. Epicmissingno fucked around with this message at 03:35 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 03:25
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I actually think the intent of the meteor going into another universe is to reference Deoxys' event island. It's why when rayquaza destroys the meteor, deoxys' weird triangle appears, moves in the exact manner you chase it, then emerges.quote:Filled with Pokémon and people like us. A world where maybe the evolution of Pokémon took a slightly different path, where Mega Evolution is unknown... A world where that war 3,000 years ago...never happened. A world where the ultimate weapon was never even built. And in that Hoenn of that world... What would happen if one day, out of the blue, a meteoroid appeared? Which would add a layer of irony to the entire thing: if devon's plan had succeeded, it would have been fine. Perhaps the transport procedure would strip away parts of the meteor, allowing for safe reentry? Birth Island itself might be the meteor. We're already sending it across dimensions, why not into the past as well, right?
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May 7, 2018 03:42
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rannum posted:they really should have just caught the Regi Dia(mond) learns from their mistake. rannum posted:I get the feeling they started to regret devoting specific sagas to the remakes and follow up games. Or just did not have the time for them. Pretty sure the manga writer has gone on record saying that he hates writing arcs for the remakes. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 06:51 on May 7, 2018 |
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May 7, 2018 05:43
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I really can't imagine what the Regis could possibly do against the likes of Kyogre and Groudon. It's a bit like bringing an old infantry shield to fend of a couple nukes.
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May 7, 2018 08:34
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Montegoraon posted:I really can't imagine what the Regis could possibly do against the likes of Kyogre and Groudon. It's a bit like bringing an old infantry shield to fend of a couple nukes. It was less "These things can fight Groudon and Kyogre" and more "These things can stop them from leaving Sootpolis and murdering everyone while Norman gets Rayquaza." They are, if nothing else, tanks.
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May 7, 2018 09:53
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