Part 2: Phenac City, Part One
Phenac City (2009/05/27)Phenac City: In Which We Acquire Our Tag-Along
Phenac City is an oasis-like city in the harsh region of Orre. Architecturally sleek compared to some of the other environments, it has a ambient safe feel to it. They're also pretty frivolous with their water usage, given the whole region's a desert, but if you've got it, flaunt it, I suppose.
Encountering the two persons we eavesdropped upon, back at the Outskirt Stand, one immediately challenges the protagonist to a battle, one won with ease.
And a quick explanatory interjection of Espeon and Umbreon's attacks.
After the battle, Folly recognizes the protagonist's toughness. He also seems to recognize something else about the protagonist, implying he might somehow be involved with Team Snagem. Sadly, the attention gathered by the battle causes them to flee into the desert, without their vehicle, where they will surely die. Well, it was nice knowing them, I think.
In their haste to escape, they abandon the "catch" they had with them, which we are forced to open. Seen here is our protagonist, attempting to escape this fate.
Sadly, it ends up being this girl.
We're allowed to nickname the female tagalong whatever (her canon name is RUI). To prevent heated debate about what we nickname her after, I decided to simply call her ♀.
She mentions something about a "peculiar Pokemon". To be honest, saying that really seems like an oxymoron. I used two weird fox-like things, one capable of telekinesis, the other with glowing rings on its body, to beat two loudly crying marshmallow bunnies.
Someone in-town mentions that we should see the mayor for advice. Politics has never been a useful thing in games, so I doubt they'll be ever to help us. Still, we'll be heading there... soon enough.
And here we are, being forced into escorting ♀.
I take the opportunity to show off a bit of the interior of the Pokemon Center, as well as its basement. Pokemon Centers are like the inns of most other RPGs; there's no cost to healing in them, except for time, and there are no time-limited events in this game, so...
Phenac City is also the only Pokemon Center in this game to have a basement. The function of this desk is to trade Pokemon between this game and the GBA games using a certain cable; this feature is disabled until the majority of the main game is beaten.
PCs usually function to allow for the movement of Pokemon and items between on-person and storage. However, this game ties in save functionality, forcing checkpoints in their locations, versus the "save anywhere" mentality of just about every other Pokemon game before and after it.
We'll be continuing to the Mayor of Phenac City in our next update, as well as seeing some of the other sights this city has to offer.