Part 39: That's a Wrap (FRLG)

FRLG Part 5: That's a Wrap

Canyon Entrance




While we're nearly done with the Sevii Islands, there's still a fair few things left to do in this game.



What's that? I don't act the way I look? Heh, that's a part of my strategy!



Canyon Entrance is a pretty small area, but there's some cool Pokemon to find.



Little elephant baby




(JON) When I'm with EVE, it feels like we could never lose.



(JON) When I'm with EVE, it doesn't feel like I've lost! When I'm with EVE, I feel giddy whether I win or lose. It's magical!



Onto the main attraction.



My darling NYA, together we could win!




We are really getting up there in levels.



I think I'm going to need much more seasoning and tutoring under LEX... ...so, LEX, please, may I stay with you like this?

I seem to have been too careless... I think it was a good experience for NYA. You have my gratitude.



The Tanoby Key is an interesting little cave. Can you solve the puzzle?



Just start from the back and you'll be just fine. Now let's get some real good Pokemon from this area.



That was the easy mon to catch.



Larvitar is at a much lower level, so keeping one alive to catch is... tricky.



Just gonna ignore that smashable rock if I can.




You're a master at this. You see them every so often, TRAINERS with awesome POKEMON who have no idea what to do. Before training POKEMON, TRAINERS themselves need to grow up.



But it's also not bad to aim for the top with a partner. Even BRUNO... he trained with a fellow by the name of BRAWLY before.

Deepest lore. Also a Fame Checker entry.




Few strong trainers around since they only have the one Pokemon.



Huh? Something's not right... The way I am now, I may have to hold off on TRAINER TOWER...



Oh hey it's the thing to evolve Poliwhirl and Slowpoke. Man this is late.




If we had a Dragonair on our team, it would nearly be ready to evolve!




Take it back now y'all.




Ahahahaha! There, you're all chipper now! Lucky!



Well that's a different way of healing our Pokemon. The Lucky Punch isn't usually obtainable unless you get lucky (hah) with wild hold items. It boosts Chansey's crit ratio by two stages, which is pretty useless. The Lucky Egg is, as you'd expect, what wild Chansey have a chance of holding.



What's at the very end of our Sevii adventure? It better not be disappointing!




I'm getting owned.



I said I wanted to paint an old building. So CLIFFORD brought me here.



My, how extraordinary. Ah, so you are studying POKEMON on your own... yes, you certainly are quite the extraordinary person, indeed.



There's a lot of small ruins dotted around, but we'll head to the main one.



I'm not much good in battle. I hear there are other ruins like the one here. Might they be the resting places of other mystic POKEMON?



So now that we've solved the Tanoby Key, what exactly will we find here?



Ah but of course. In each of the seven Tanoby Chambers, you can find different letters of Unown at different encounter rates. All 26 Unown can be found this way across the Monean, Liptoo, Weepth, Dilford, Scufib, Rixy and Viapois Chambers. If you think those names are a bit weird, they're a combination of various flowers and the numbers one to seven. So we've got anemone, tulip, pea, daffodil, hibiscus, iris and poinsettia, respectively. Now obviously I worked that out myself instead of just looking it up.



Each chamber holds 5 Unown letters each, though Weepth has 4, aside from the first and last chambers, seemingly containing A and Z only. Well that's because there are two brand new Unown letters in this generation! Woaaaaaaaaah! With a 1% encounter rate, you can find the ? Unown in the Monean Chamber and the ! Unown in the Viapois Chamber. This, uh, is not a way to introduce a new Pokemon form. There is zero reward from obtaining all the Unown in this game, so I'm not gonna bother. The O Unown is also a 1%, while the E, K and B Unown are 2% encounters. Good luck you piece of shit!



That was uncalled for. You didn't have to be so rough. The TANOBY RUINS date back at least 1,500 years. But it's a baffling mystery as to why it was built in the first place.



And there we go, we have explored all of Sevii! There's still a few things left to do, so we'll be heading back to mainland Kanto. There are a couple things to do in the postgame, but they're not all that great.



Such as the fucking roaming legendary. Let me tell you how much of a goddamn hassle this mon is. Now I did cheat to encounter it so I could even get it into the Pokedex so I could properly track it, but going in and out of the Pokedex to see where it is takes a long time. See, the Pokedex doesn't track your previous position, no matter what you start at Bulbasaur. There's also no way to skip to the bottom of the dex like in RSE, so to look at where it is, you need to scroll all the way down. Since I had speedup, it was quicker than going to the Rare tab in the Pokedex category to find it that way. Which dog you encounter depends on your starter, as the dog will have a type advantage against it.



Then I had to find the fucking thing. It took me FORTY MINUTES to encounter it ONCE. Kanto is a severely unfriendly region to hunt roamers, since there's so many buildings to go through in order to get to one area. Sure, you might think you can bounce between Saffron and a nearby route, but the doggies do not play nice at all, they constantly jump between two areas endlessly and jump across the map a lot more often than I think they should do. It's very frustrating and it's the worst roamer hunt in the series, beating out XY by a good margin.



When you do encounter Entei or Raikou, you should use the Master Ball immediately. See, the roamer in this game is a little bit completely glitched. Since they use their Crystal movesets, only Suicune doesn't have Roar, which makes it much easier to catch. Because... if Entei or Raikou use Roar, they're gone from the game. Forever. You'll need to load a previous save to get them back. What the fuck. Also, just to put the icing on the cake, in RS and FRLG, when a roaming Pokemon is caught, only the last 8 bits of the Pokemon's IVs are transferred, so a roaming legendary can have a normal HP IV of whatever, but Attack is capped at 7 and every other stat will have an IV of 0. Thankfully roamers can be obtained in other ways, but seriously, these Pokemon are not worth the hassle.



Now that we've done the gem quest, we can get Mewtwo.

VS Mewtwo




It's still incredibly powerful, so try not to get wrecked.



Thankfully it decided to play nice this time.

Pokemon League



Alright, here's something really cool: FRLG were the first games in the series to have Elite Four rematches! Woaaaaaaaaah! This is actually really cool and any game that doesn't have it is just a poor shell of a game.



I, LORELEI of the ELITE FOUR, have returned! You know how it goes. No one can best me when it comes to icy POKEMON.



Seems pretty normal so far.



But levels have increased and there's some cool new additions to their team. Obviously I won't be going over them in exhaustive detail, you can play the games for yourselves! Admittedly I'm not huge fan of these games, I actually prefer the originals to them since they're slightly more fun to play (very slightly grant you), but they're still solid Pokemon titles, still a 7/10, the lowest grade I'll give a Pokemon game.



Big Bruno time.



Not much has changed, since we've already seen Hitmontop.



Since everything is pretty high level, might as well use up the remaining Rare Candy we've collected over the journey.



Since they're only using Johto additions... Agatha hasn't really changed much.



Hey Batman.



Lance has a lot of Dragonite and they're all very dangerous.

VS Champion Green



The final fight against Butts!




He's made some nasty additions to his team, but we should be fine.



Haha, just kidding we're fucked.



That's a high level starter, hot damn.



But with enough healing and paralysis, we've beaten the game again! Woo! We don't get anything for it, but it is super cool to go through.



This is the final state of our team compared to how it was at the end of the Yellow LP. They've come so far, I'm so proud of them!



All that's left is to complete the Pokedex. Oh look at that, we've nearly done it.



Here, let me take a look. The amount of progress you've made on your POKEDEX is: 151 Pokemon seen and 151 Pokemon owned.



Hmm, that's not a big a celebration as I expected. Well I know where I can go for a better reward.




Much better. Completing the Kanto Pokedex nets us a neat Trainer Card star. Note that you don't need to obtain Mew for this, nor do you need Lugia, Ho-oh, Celebi, Jirachi or Deoxys to get the National Pokedex diploma.



And now we've completed the National Dex! It was a bit tough, but I managed it. I'll probably do it again one of these days. Hm? It feels like I skipped something. Ah, probably nothing.



You've finally completed the POKEDEX! It's magnificent! Truly, this is a fantastic feat! Wroooooooaaaaaarrrr! Thank you, FUGURI! Sincerely, thank you! You've made my dream a reality!




Wow, as easy as that. With the National Dex done, we get another Trainer Card star, meaning there's only one left to get. So where is it? Oh yeah... the Joyful Game Corner.



So here's a, uh, totally legit save I found on the internet that's beaten the Joyful Game Corner in order to obtain the final star. So unless you have friends... that play these games, then you won't be getting this star either. Also this is what the last level stickers look like, since I would be very worried if you got them in your own games. Like with Emerald, there are various statistics to go on the back of the Trainer Card. There are, in order, Hall of Fame Debut, Link Battles, Pokemon Trades, Union Trades & Battles and Berry Crush. The space at the bottom is your team if you use the printing machine in Celadon Game Corner. With the Trainer Card fully filled in... uh, what else is there?



You are! You are FUGURI! We were just talking about you! We were talking about how an incredibly good TRAINER appeared. And that someone is you! You're so cool! So, we decided that we'll become your FAN CLUB! We all hope you'll keep battling and show us how cool you are. That way, maybe other people will become fans just like me. I'll always be cheering for you! Go, FUGURI, go!



Oh! Oh, yeah! Can you autograph something? How about my shorts?



It brings back sweet memories of my own long-lost youth. May you continue to find success. You have a fan in me!

Well that's cute.There's a fan club in Saffron that you can visit after you beat the game to get some new fans. Now for the last thing to go over and complete: the Fame Checker.



Seeing it reminds me of a sweet little girl I met while travelling. She was gently grooming POKEMON... she was a little angel. That little girl's name... I think it was DAISY.



You... you're not GIOVANNI's kid, are you? No, that can't be right! GIOVANNI's kid has red hair. You don't have any reasons for bugging me. Leave me alone!



There are some tricky entries for the Fame Checker, but aside from just looking at a guide, chat to everyone, including some new NPCs in the postgame, as well as bookcases for cool trivia. With that, we're done and our reward are some cool messages to read from the various characters. That's it for the FRLG stuff, so, uh, yeah, get going. Later!



PROF. OAK: They do so because they can see the love and trust you have towards POKEMON. Never forget that.

DAISY: While I was comfortably enjoying my tea breaks, you've grown very skilled and powerful. I hope you'll remain a good rival to my little brother.

BROCK: In this big world of ours, there must be many tough TRAINERS. Let's keep training and making ourselves stronger!

MISTY: I'm going to keep training here at this GYM. When I get better, I'd love to hit the road and travel.

LT. SURGE: Hey, kid! You electrified me in our battle! I didn't know that there were gutsy TRAINERS like you. It made me change my mind about you!

ERIKA: I am so glad that there are strong TRAINERS like you. That awareness alone inspires and motivates me to try harder. Please visit me again. Zzz...

KOGA: You and I, we must both set our sights higher and work towards meeting our challenges. Now, I must go train my daughter.

SABRINA: The love you have towards your POKEMON... it was a power that was never bested by my psychic power.

BLAINE: My fire POKEMON! They'll become even more powerful! And now, a quiz. How many kinds of FIRE-type POKEMON are there?

GIOVANNI: There is nothing that I wish to say to you. I will concentrate solely on bettering myself, and none other.

LORELEI: I needed to thank you for your help. But that has nothing to do with our battles. You'd better watch out next time!

BRUNO: The super power of your POKEMON and you I've experienced myself. Next time, maybe I should show you how to train yourself.

AGATHA: When you grow older, don't you dare go soft like that coot OAK! Be like me and keep battling on!

LANCE: I'm considering going back to my hometown. I want to retrain my DRAGON-type POKEMON and strengthen them. I'd like to invite you to my hometown one day.

BILL: Hey, there! CELIO had nothing but praise for you. Hearing that makes me happy. When you catch some rare POKEMON, come show me, okay? Promise!

FUJI: Instead of hoping for the happiness of just your POKEMON... ...can I get you to wish for the happiness of all POKEMON?