Pokemon Conquest Part #3 - A Conquer North

Part 3: A Conquer North

We'll probably be starting a lot of updates on the way to recruiting a new guy. We need all the Warriors we can get!

Ravine

Takayori Yoshida was a retainer of Motochika's father, Chōsokabe Kunichika (Sir Not-appearing-in-this-game). And that's all we've got. Look there's only so much info about certain peeps, alright?

Sure this might be slightly overkill, but hey might as well bring as many as you can if you can spare the slots. Spread the exp.

Surprise, surprise, Magikarp isn't too tough to take down.

Cave

There's nothing else to do this month, so uh, let's go fight some wild Pokemon.

...it wasn't worth it. I won't be doing that again.

Ransei

Last month of the year, so many more guys to recruit. Seriously, we need to find all 200 Warriors eventually.

Ravine

So how do you train up Pokemon that don't have an attacking move? Well, very carefully. But seriously, you just keep using it and take damage and yeah you'll get there eventually.

This energy boost through Mood Maker is only temporary, so it's not a way to get a permanent fix.

Fukudome Norishige was a vassal of Motochika's and son of Chikamasa, the vassal of Motochika's from last update.

What are we gonna do with all these darn Warriors? Hopefully something soon!

Tani Tadasumi was a senior retainer of Motochika.

Yeah we can totally tell what's going on in there. If you guessed Piplup using Bubble on Tepig, then you were correct.

Mission success, good job B team.

Ransei

It's Violight time. Tachibana Ginchiyo was head of her clan and being the only daughter of Tachibana Dōsetsu, she became head after his death. She married Tachibana Muneshige to continue Dōsetsu's line and defended the Ōtomo clan in the Battle of Sekigahara.

Tachibana Muneshige was Ginchiyo's husband, having been adopted into the Tachibana and retainers of the Ōtomo clan. He was a samurai and daimyō during the Edo period and eldest son of Takahashi Shigetane.

Harada Takatane is definitely an important figure in this period, but his fairly large page is only on the Japanese wiki. So oh well!

Ōtomo Sōrin was the head of the Ōtomo clan and one of the few to convert to Christianity. Close to Hideyoshi, he convinced him to intervene in Kyūshū against the Shimazu Clan.

Takahashi Shigetane (known as Shōun in his early years), was a senior retainer of the Ōtomo clan and father to Muneshige. He held out against the 50k strong army of the Shimazu with just 763 men for 2 weeks, but eventually committed suicide.

It's a tough place for Water-type and Flying-type Pokemon... Ground-type Pokemon are the best choice... But Grass-type Pokemon are also pretty strong against electrical attacks.

The heck is a Ground type?

Invasion

Hmm. I was wondering what you'd be like... And I have to conclude that you're no match for me and my Shinx.

Ha...

What's wrong?

You. You're a child. Talking like that to a Warrior before you've even done battle.

Fine! I'll stop talking and demonstrate my power on the battlefield instead!

You tell 'em, Oichi.

VS Violight

Our clan... Famed throughout Ransei for our Electric-type Pokemon... We built this place! It is a place in which to do battle! We do not intend it as a haven for the likes of you, Azai!

Christ that Shinx has some range. This map doesn't have much to it, but our opponents are pretty tricky since we don't have super effective damage, so I'm glad the map is a bit quiet.

Jigglypuff is loving this.

Nice Lullaby activation, but, hmm, as good as Darumaka is (and it's amazing), it can be a bit tricky to get it in the right space to attack.

Some good damage. Shame the Shinx barely holds on, but next turn we'll get her. Good to sleep the Starly too.

Wu-oh. You might be wondering what the coloured buttons are for. Press on them and the coloured metal tiles on the opposite side will become electrified. I was worried the AI would press it and just have a load of free damage. But they didn't.

Annoying, but it should be fine. Jigglypuff should be able to get through this, probably.

Alright, bit of a bad turn, but we're good.

Uh oh. Now lightning will randomly drop, which would be pretty bad if it hit Darumaka.

Okay Jigglypuff needs to calm down with this singing before she starts putting us to sleep.

Oh yeah, here's a real easy demonstration of something to keep in mind. If you attack a Pokemon from the back, you'll do more damage than if you attack from the side, which does more damage than if you attack from the front. Simple, right? And since all the big guys are asleep, let's take out this Panpour.

SHIT

Well that sucks, Darumaka could've really torn through the enemy, but super effective damage is nasty, especially when you can't avoid it due to the map layout. Oh well.

Hah, they attacked each other to get to Jigglypuff. Thank god it's a damage sponge.

Also it doesn't matter if it's the left side, or the right side, it still equals the same damage. But now we can knock out Pichu. Levitating and Flying Pokemon are great to do this with.

Oh yeah, have you been counting the turns? Well it's turn 16, which means we can't recruit anyone anymore unless it's through super effective damage. I could've taken out Ginchiyo last turn, but I was trying to take out Panpour to save Darumaka. You saw how well that worked out. I like to think I'm alright at strategy turn based games, but I'm gonna screw up here and there.

Oh well, while we're on a spree might as well knock out the Panpour.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. While I could've recruited him next turn with Carnivine, they'll show up again, probably.

Interestingly, Ginchiyo doesn't say anything if Muneshige is knocked out before her.

Oh yeah, accuracy drops, my kinda jam.

All of that damage was undone. Lovely.

Thankfully we hit, but man that 67% is miserable.

Ugh, no more please. I suppose bringing 4 guys didn't help, but I do feel that bringing 6 makes the game too easy. But then bringing 4 can be a bit tedious, so I dunno. Maybe 5 is the magic number? Maybe this is still the early game and I'm overthinking it.

Alright, just bird guy left.

I need to bring Sewaddle to every fight.

Oh thank god. Let's never speak of this again.

Even if one of your guys faint they don't miss out on link, thankfully. But yeah, that could've gone a lot better. I was too hesitant to start with and didn't prioritize knocking out peeps before the end of turn 4. Oh well!

Long Day

You don't mind?

No. My conscience is clear. This battle did not bring shame upon our family name. We protected our honor, and that is all that matters.

Whimsical Time

You... We keep bumping into you...

Looks like you've captured a lot of kingdoms now... Surely you're not trying to run them all by yourself?

...?!

B-But Lord Azai is the Warlord, the leader of our army...

Being a Warlord is about more than just doing battle, you know. Now, you can choose what goes on in your kingdoms in your absence... Or instead, you can delegate control of a kingdom to another Warrior.

Tsk. I think searching for Warriors and Pokemon is more important. Much more important!

Ha! You two never think ahead. You won't get anywhere unless you develop your army. ...But it's up to you, of course. Just be sure to give it some thought!

Thanks tutorial trio (can I make that a phrase?)

Ransei

Alright, delegating is pretty easy, dunno why we needed the trio to tell us about it. Training increases the link between Warrior and Pokemon. Slowly. Remember that this will only apply to Warriors that have not used their turn when the month ends.

Search gives you a chance to just get a new Warrior at random, or for your Warriors to find new Pokemon. Warriors have a max Capacity and I'm kind of a purist of Perfect Link or bust, but you could get lucky with what you get.

Finally Develop increases the Energy of your army and gives you gold. Uh, hell yeah that's the best option. Free Energy and Gold? I'm not doing anything else with these guys, so they might as well stay in good fighting condition and pay for themselves why they're at it.

We didn't get much, since everyone kinda used their turn. Our army still has lots of room to grow after all.

New Year! There isn't anything that occurs at this time. Yet. But the year doesn't mean anything, just a way to track how long you've been going.

With this new month of delegation, now we can get something very important that the tutorial trio don't even mention for some reason.

Ravine

Y-Yes?

Try and find the perfect partner for every one of your Warriors! Move adjacent to a wild Pokemon, and you will be able to select Link.

We can finally get our Warriors the proper Pokemon they deserve.

Warrior and Pokemon have warmed to each other a little. The better your timing when you press that button, the closer the Pokemon and the Warrior will become... When a Warrior becomes a close enough to a Pokemon, they will form a link. If you go on to win the battle, you can take those Pokemon with you. Now then, let's try linking with Magikarp.

This minigame is simple enough. When the orb hits the circle, press A. That's it.

How easy to link with a Pokemon depends on the Pokemon, so Magikarp is really easy to link with. You're able to press A multiple times on an orb if you're fast enough, though if you miss you'll be sent back slightly.

Once you successfully link with a Pokemon it disappears from the field, making it an interesting tactical decision if a wild Pokemon is giving you trouble. You can only link with one Pokemon per Warrior during a battle.

Ransei

A match made in heaven. If you're not cheating and using an online guide like I am, you'll know you've got the Perfect Link when they comment on it afterwards. The gold symbol above a Pokemon doesn't mean it's a Perfect Link, it could be a 90% max link or so.

Remember to switch your Pokemon afterwards. Also, you can Link so long as you have Capacity, something that each Warrior has a different amount of. You can't just delete Pokemon whenever, annoyingly, you'll have to go over your Capacity to get rid of a Pokemon, so that's another reason I'll just be sticking with Perfect Link Pokemon.

So now we've got everything we'll be doing on a monthly basis, most of which I'll be cutting out, you'll be glad to know. Basically at the start of each month I'll be checking each kingdom to see what new Warriors have appeared and what wild Pokemon are around. I'll then check the Gamefaqs list of Warriors we have to see if we have any potential Perfect Links and then recruit the new Warriors. And then take over a Kingdom or something boring, whatever.

Let's get grandma her floating venus trap.

Fukubara Sadatoshi was a retainer of both Motonari and Terumoto.

Ravine

Starly has some mobility on it, but it won't stop me recruiting that Meowth, we need our gold!

Ukita Naoie was a daimyō of the Bizen province. He was originally homeless after his grandfather was assassinated, but was taken in by Urakami Munekage. He eventually sided with Hideyoshi.

No more heroes, let's get out of here.

Ransei

We're about to take on Chrysalia, but let's quickly do a password now that we can Link with Pokemon!

This is something we'll make more use of later (oh boy will we), but there's a couple cool things we can do for now. Passwords take one in game month to apply, so since this is the earliest we could use a password, this is the earliest we can activate it. Anyway, bug time.

Fire-type, Flying-type, and Rock-type Pokemon will be pretty effective there... But Grass-type and Psychic-type Pokemon will probably find it tough going.

Let's see how this one goes.

Invasion

And little Pineco just gets more adorable every day! Ohh!

LORD YOSHIMOTO!

Your opponent in battle is to be Azai!

Azai? Is that the one who's been expanding his territory in the north? Or the other one? Ohh, it doesn't matter. As long as they want to play Pokemari with me, I don't care who they are!

Lord Yoshimoto...

Come, Azai! To the battlefield, where we shall play Pokemari to our hearts' content!

VS Chrysalia

Let's fight this, uh, interesting character.

This is a pretty fun map, with Pokemari balls around everywhere and other secrets hidden in the ground. There are shishi-odoshi on this map and while they don't scare away wildlife like they usually do, they instead cause a Pokemari ball to fall from the sky in a random spot.

Imagawa Yoshimoto is as interesting as his character looks. He was a very powerful daimyō and diplomat of the Tōkaidō region and attempted to become Shogun by marching the capital with Tokugawa Ieyasu. But after many victories, his army was sloppy and a small force by the Oda clan was able to infiltrate the village of Dengakuhazama and kill him. His crazy appearance is due to his counterpart being a fan of Noh (opera featuring masks and dance) and Waka (a type of classical Japanese poetry)

Imagawa Ujichika was Yoshimoto's father and became head of the clan at a young age, after killing Oshika Norimitsu, who didn't reliquish control when Ujichika became of age. He was a capable leader and strengthened the Imagawa before dying of illness.

Sessai Chōrō was Yoshimoto's uncle and served as his military advisor and commander, despite no real experience or training. His secured a peace treaty with Takeda Shingen and began advising Tokugawa Ieyasu, but eventually died of gout complications.

Ōkabe Masatsuna was a vassal of Yoshimoto, with other info locked behind the JP wiki. Fun stuff.

Asahina Yasutomo was a pretty famous officer of the Imagawa Clan with a long JP wiki page to his name.

As you'd expect, you can hit the Pokemari balls with attacks and send them in one direction and out of the map. Oh we'll be making use of this.

Ahah! Along with the balls, there are also hidden switches that activate fencing. Similar to the pits in Greenleaf you don't know they're there unless you step on them. Yeah, that does suck, doesn't it? Unlike the pits the fencing will return if you step on the switch again.

Quick to Poison, I see. Like the main series, you lose a small bit of health each turn. While Toxic isn't in this game, Poison Fang is, so getting badly poisoned is still possible.

Beautiful. The balls do typeless damage, so they're real nice if you can get the AI to line up.

Poor idea to poison the status healer guy that can also hit you really hard.

Are you fuckin kidding me?

Old guy on the move!

I need to get used to the enemies not getting blocked by themselves. Even with one of them in fencing doesn't change that, you can move through your allies no problem, but I just mentally block that for some reason.

Shit. You activate traps before you can attack, so if the animation doesn't immediately go off you know you're fucked.

That's some damage, baby.

Alright, only 3 left, hopefully we can defeat them quickly.

Ow. Since we've been pretty enthusiastic about using the Pokemari balls, we're kinda running out. I wanna hit them some more, dammit!

This thing has a lot of HP, so I don't think we'll beat it in the 4 turn limit.

...wow the AI is such a dick.

That was a lot of build up for not much damage.

That's annoying, but I only brought you to register you, so whatever.

Well we can ignore the Sewaddle until we can recruit it with Darumaka. Since we don't have a super effective move on our Warlords, we can't recruit Yoshimoto anymore. A real shame.

Top 10 anime battles, the endless feud of Eevee and Spheal.

Not that Yoshimoto would want to be recruited anyway... his skill is one of the few that actually has a negative effect for some reason. Just use Oichi, man.

No recruitment for you, guess I should've brought Carnivine.

Easy enough to get you, since Darumaka is ridiculous. Shame it's not Rikyū's perfect link.

Alright, last one. If you could stay still forever that would be great.

Nice damage. Darumaka's still poisoned, but it's hanging in there.

Will you stop healing!!! It's like I'm facing a Gym Leader again, christ.

Guess I'm just in endless Pokemari hell.

Yup

This seems like a terrible idea and you're right, multi-hit moves and jaggy abilities really hurt. But Jigglypuff has the HP to survive juuuuuuuust fine.