Part 15: Dynamite Pretty Gal! (HGSS)

Update 12.5: Dynamite Pretty Gal! (HGSS)

Pokemon Fwend! *thumbs up*



It's time for more remake content and before we see how wonderful the Gym Leader is, let's see what kind of changes Goldenrod City has, including this Marill?



: That's where your Pokémon can put on Accessories to dress up and take pictures! By the way, here is the Fashion Case! Did you say you want it? I knew it! This is a present from me!



: I should get going. See you!

Goldenrod City



Well, this is definitely new. That was Ethan, btw, he pops up on occasion to give us items or teach us stuff. The reason I haven't mentioned him until now is he is as notable as you'd expect. But this is the way they put DPP stuff in these games.



Hell yeah! Let's join the mafia!



Alright, alright, let me get into character. EVERYONE GET ON THE FUCKING GROUND OR I BLOW THIS TEN YEAR OLD'S BRAINS OUT!



This is a cool little feature we'll see more of later.



It's a nice little way to catalogue our journey.



: If you dress up your Pokémon here, make it a sight to behold! Then I will even hand a picture of one in the other room! You will do this, won't you?

Guuuuuuuurl, they're gonna look faaaaaaabulouuuuuuus.



Hmm, I wonder. To have the best effect, I should probably use something with all four limbs and the less willing, the better!



Perfect



This is exactly like the Visual Round part of Super Contests. I believe we even start with the same base Accessories. So we'll have to work around our limited number. Note Croconaw is using its DP sprite to maintain compatibility when mixing records.



Now that's what I call gaudy.

"Oh, but it needs to have a title!"

Hmm, let's see...



: I put your photo up right here. It just looks so perfect there!



Ah, so beautiful.



: This is a drawing for Accessories. You never know what you're gonna get.



Well we do need some more.



: .................. .................. ...... You win!



Cool. In DPP, you'd have to win the Normal Rank Tough Super Contest in order to get that Accessory. You can get nearly all of them from this man, as well as the various Backdrops. Good luck!

Poke Mart

"Welcome to the Daily Drawing Corner!"

: You can try for $300, and we have wonderful prizes! Would you like to try it?

Aw man, hope we get something good!



: Wow! You've got yourself the no. 2 prize! Please take it.



Ehh, okay, that's not too bad. But that number one prize is a real good one.



Alright, fine, I don't wanna spend all my money...

"Or No. 3, a Berry!"

The daily raffle has some amazing prizes, but it's a grind to actually get them. The number one prize is basically a really good TM, starting with Shadow Claw on Monday, to Flash Cannon, Charge Beam, Drain Punch, Facade, Silver Wind and Dragon Claw on Sunday. That's pretty damn good. The only TM that can't be found anywhere else is Facade, but this lottery allows you to get some fantastic moves much earlier.



The trade is worth it, as we'll see later.



And here on the far left corner, is somewhere completely new and completely pointless.

Global Terminal



The Global Terminal allows you to trade with players around the world, as well as a host of other features. And they're all completely non functional since the servers have been shut down. As of writing, the servers have been closed for nearly two years due to being owned by GameSpy, who had a number of multiplayer services. The company was acquired by Glu Mobile in 2012, so they had to shut everything they had down. It sucks that the services shut down, but the current online service, Nintendo Network, is wholly owned by Nintendo, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon.



The main draw of the Global Terminal is the GTS, letting you trade and search for Pokemon all around the world. It's pretty fantastic, if clogged with all kinds of shitty, impossible trades. But that's because all the worthwhile ones were lapped up long ago. There's no point searching for something, just offer up something for something else and if it's reasonable, it won't take long for a trade.

"Rankings?"

Next, we have a feature of the VS Recorder (oh yeah, Ethan gave that to us just before Violet City, yawn), letting you see the highest ranked battles and trainers of the world by popularity. Woo. Now let's take the teleporters to the other floors.



The second floor contains the Box Data and Dress Up Data. As you'd expect, it allows you to upload and view pictures of people's PC boxes, or view and upload how you've dressed up your Pokemon in the Photo Gallery we saw earlier. It's a shame it's all gone now, there's was a lot of creative stuff on there.



Finally, the third floor is where you upload battle videos via the VS Recorder, as well as download and view videos made by other players. And that's everything the Global Terminal has to offer, which can be quite a lot, if online stuff is your thing. Otherwise, you probably don't miss it all that much.



Alright, it's now Gym time. Let's do this.

Pokemon Gym



The Gym has remained more or less the same, though it's made use of the series transition to 3D, so the "puzzle" is to find the way into the center area. It's a bit hard to show from screenshots, but the Gym in both versions has the design of a certain fairy Pokemon. Hmm, I wonder what it is...



Alright you crazy sonofabitch, let's do this.



: Everyone was into Pokémon, so I got into, too! Pokémon are super cute! You want to battle? I'm warning you--I'm good!

Gym Leader Battle



Like before, she's not fucking kidding. What she said at the start was how we need to complete the radio card quiz to even enter the Gym, as she's unable to solve the quiz without your help.






Okay, so as you can see, Whitney's team is basically the EXACT SAME. Same moves, same Pokemon, cause why fix what isn't broken? There are a couple of slight differences, the most immediate is both Pokemon are one level lower, though that doesn't make a huge difference. Or it might. Who knows in number games like these, eh?



The Clefairy is as notable as ever, though you might get unlucky with Cute Charm, Doubleslap or Metronome, so it might be the most annoying thing about this fight. But sure enough, it's Miltank time.




One new, annoying, addition is it's now holding a Lum Berry. This isn't a huge game changer, but it means you have to waste a turn to get rid of it. Using Hypnosis was pretty dicey: if it missed, well, Wol is two shot by Stomp and it would still have its Lum Berry.



But so far, all according to plan. Taking down Miltank is very similar to GSC, you need to have a strategy in mind and most of what worked last time will do so again, with one big exception. Due to its ability Scrappy, it's no longer stuck using Rollout against your Ghost type, so keep that in mind.



You might think that using up two of my team to just simply put it to sleep seems like a terrible idea, but they both get knocked out real quick, so it's time for the big guns to come out.



Unlike the main LP, I don't have many ways of lowering stats, but I can give myself some free turns with Sleep and then lower its defenses enough to make my moves hurt. So Muscle is a great temporary addition to the team.



It even lives on 1HP like a fuckin' champ.



Oh this ain't good. I need to finish this battle, fast!



Uhh, is that a 2HKO? It better be! Another advantage you have over Whitney, compared to last time, is she's still using the same stats and moves, whereas your Pokemon have improved movepools and stats compared to GSC, so the fact that Bite is physical in this game is REALLY helping right now.



That was pretty damn close, but like before, everyone pulled together to secure the kill.



Oy vey, let's cut to the chase.



But that's not all.

"to the National Park."

: You should go try it, since you're so good at battling with your Pokémon!"

We'll be going into that later. Ahahahahahahahaha (why do I want to 100% every Pokemon game I LP...)



But for now, we've beaten one of the hardest fights of the series. So, obviously it's not that hard, guys, you just need to have the perfect strategy to counter her and just get really lucky! It's easy, I mean, I've NEVER found her difficult, you guys just aren't trying hard enough, ehehehe. But, anyway, we're not done with Goldenrod City just yet. Next update is gonna be a little... different.