Pokemon SoulSilver - Team Rocket, Bugsy, and Round 2 With ASSCOCK

^ Douche.

And so, the journey continues. First thing I did after handing Faulker his ass was head to the ruins, which are a fun little sidequest type thing, though it appears that you need Surf to do anything there besides catch Unown. I caught one and named it ‘INOWHOUR!!‘ and then, as per the genius idea of @Canon2D, caught another one named ‘UNOWNWSHER‘ (sadly, character limit denied the full effect, but still fun.) Those Unown were all I caught between then and now, because I have a plan to only catch Pokemon that I will want in my ‘finalized team’, so rather than train other Pokemon that I will just put away in the future, I will just build up the ones I have now that I plan to hold on to.

Before I even reached the cave to head for the next town, I managed to hatch my Togepi egg and named my Togepi ‘Railgun.’ As it would happen, Railgun was extremely easy to level using the start-and-switch method, but there was one hilariously awesome chance encounter that made it easier. With Togepi at level 6, I happened upon a hiker who started with a level 4 Geodude, and I decided to pull a Metronome on it. I happened to get Petal Dance on my first roll – a highly powerful grass move that not only killed Geodude in one hit, but continued for multiple turns to kill his level 6 and level 8 Geodudes as soon as they left the Pokeball. Railgun leveled twice – that, my friends, is what I call absurd luck! So Railgun entered the party easily as he rapidly gained levels.

Both in the Unown ruins and the cave I realized something very important – caves are a hundred times less boring and dreadful than they were in the old games. I always hated all cave dungeons in Pokemon because they were ugly as sin and had ridiculous encounter rates with the same god damn Zubats and Geodudes in every cave. However, the new game has lightened up the experience by making the caves much easier on the eyes, to where it honestly doesn’t feel like some miserable brown wasteland. This is definitely a big help to the game.

After the cave is the first encounter with Team Rocket, whom we learned was disbanded 3 years ago by the legendary Red, but now has regrouped. Fighting them in the well is kind of pointless, but at least it gets a plot moving. After that was Bugsy’s gym, which was far more interesting!

This was the coolest gym ever. When you walk in, you are met with a massive pit, with a bunch of planks laid across it in some sort of formation. On your side of the pit, attached to the planks (which are also all covered in spider webs) are three GIANT Spinarak (not sure if they are supposed to be real or machines, but OMG). What happens is, you stand on a Spinarak, and it crawls along the planks, following a kujibiki formula of movement:

These things. Thought they were called kujibiki, couldn't find any info, have no idea.

Each ending is either the path forward or an opponent. After moving forward, there’s a second one, only this time it’s one spider and there is one blue plank and one red plank, and switches in different locations – you have to ride the spider to get to the switches, activate them to cancel the planks correspondent to their colors, and then ride to the boss. It’s a lot of fun.

Now, before I entered Bugsy’s gym, I was thinking of cutting FIZZBITCH (Hoothoot) loose from my team, because her flying and psychic abilities hadn’t proved very advantageous and her defense is shit (I miss the total tank that is Pidgeotto!) but I figured she’d make a comeback being useful in this gym. Instead, in a surprise turn of events, I ended up dominating the gym with Railgun, whose much more powerful psychic attack did in with the mostly poison-oriented bug types in a flash.

I managed to lose to Bugsy the first time because some of my Pokemon were hurt and I did not anticipate Scyther. Also, Bugsy is a PUNK BITCH. Bad enough he likes to heal Scyther incessantly, but he ruthlessly spammed an attack called ‘U-turn’ which I’d never even heard of before. What it does is let Scyther attack for a damn good spot of damage and then instantly be switched out with another Pokemon. The other two were a Metapod and Kakuna, obviously meant to absorb damage with their great defense, though that part of the technique was admittedly not very effective. Not that it mattered because Scyther’s damn U-turn still did in with my team. When I came back, after letting Railgun give him what-for, the hilarious irony was that I had to finish the match with Rocky and BOSS NIGGA – the rock and grass type I’d been scared of bringing out in an all-grass gym. FIZZBITCH was useless, unable to damage Scyther much, as well as having piss-poor defense and dying in 1 hit from U-turn.

^ ASSCOCK.

After the match, I went to the Pokecenter and deposited FIZZBITCH into the box, along with Fuuko-chan the Ghastly who wasn’t doing much and starting to be underleveled. This, however, was a mistake, because I didn’t realize that I’d be ambushed by ASSCOCK as soon as I tried to leave the town. At first I was confident that I could win our 3-on-3 match, but then I met Bayleaf. First of all, I knew this already, but Razor Leaf will without fail KO Rocky and BOSS NIGGA in one hit, period. And sure enough, there was no chance of Railgun lasting out against it either, especially because Bayleaf was level 18 and my guys were all 15. My ass was cleaned off – so I went back and got the others.

However, the chances still seemed slim of victory. There was no reason that a Ghastly and a Hoothoot should have any effect on Bayleaf – but oh, did I forget about status effect attacks! FIZZBITCH proved victorious – is what I wanted to say, but in fact when my Hypnosis + slowly chipping away health with Peck strategy was just about to prevail, Bayleaf woke up, full healed it’s ass with Synthesis, and then Razor Leaf’d FIZZBITCH into oblivion before Hypnosis would work again.

No, as a matter of fact, it was Fuuko-chan who took down Bayleaf because of the most evil but brilliant technique that I’d forgotten about – Curse. In exchange for half of it’s hit-points, Fuuko-chan put a curse on Bayleaf that takes out huge chunks of life per turn, meaning that as long as I lasted out the match, Bayleaf was guaranteed to die. The other Pokemon he carried were nothing, though that damn Bayleaf was still powerful enough that I had to finish the match with Rocky as the sole survivor of the ordeal. Sad, because Fuuko-chan was most deserving of the level-up.

So in the end, I still find FIZZBITCH rather useless, but there’s no reason not to keep her as added backup when bad situations like that one come up. Not going to go out of my way to level her, though. Fuuko-chan, though, has a promising future, in that Curse really comes in handy for big battles. Depending on the way things look, she may become a main-stay member of the team!

On to Goldenrod – for this part, I will do some serious mountain training. The third gym leader has always been the biggest pain in the ass to me on every play-through thanks to that god damn FUCKING MILTANK, so I want to be ready this time. So far, I seem to be carrying on the Ash Ketchum legacy of loosing every gym battle at least once >_<

Current party:

Rocky (Onix) lvl. 16 – Attacks: Rock Smash, Tackle, Rock Throw, Rage <- Solid party leader with great defense and offense but beware certain elements

BOSS NIGGA (Totodile) lvl. 15 – Attacks: Scratch, Bite, Water Gun, Rage <- Still the insanely overpowered, way too easily leveled backup

Railgun (Togepi) lvl. 15 – Attacks: Sweet Kiss, Yawn, Extrasensory, Metronome <- Surprise heavy-hitter with surprisingly good defense

FIZZBITCH (Hoothoot) lvl. 13 – Attacks: Tackle, Uproar, Peck, Hypnosis <- Currently appearing useless, not a mainstay member

Fuuko-chan (Ghastly) lvl. 12 – Attacks: Hypnosis, Lick, Curse, Mean Look <- Under-leveled, but potential mainstay member thanks to Curse.