Part 2: Telnor Town

Hello everyone and welcome back. As you hopefully recall, last time we escaped from the Cult of Darkrai. So let's continue to put the past behind us and move on by entering the game's first town.



: Mew.

I'm not making a portrait for Mew.













Mew hands us a flute and disappears back into whatever nega-zone that legendary pokemon live in.



So how long of a pause is three ellipses? Is it long enough to be awkward? I'd repeat that line about text boxes full of dots indicating flatulence, but that would make the Torren region the most methane-filled place in the pokemon world.



Eighteen dots between two text boxes. That's long enough that most people would have moved on by now.







I get the distinct impression we shouldn't be shouting our partnership with Mew from the rooftops.







Damian is one of our designated rivals for this game. He's a nice boy, but none too bright. Earnest but dumb.









The game doesn't harp on it, but Amy here is an amnesiac. That Gengar ate most of her memories. But it's okay, this is video game amnesia. So she doesn't have any of the actually debilitating side effects commonly associated with memory loss. Indeed, losing her memory has made her into the protagonist of a pokemon game, leaving her the single most competent person in the region by a long shot.













I'd like to think that someone's first reaction to seeing a barefoot little girl stumbling out of the woods with messy hair and wearing a cultist jumpsuit would be to ask questions, not invite her to help clean up the town. Apparently it's a common occurrence.



Now that we have control, we can explore. We'll go into the pokemon center later, but it's over to our left. Story progress is in the building to the right, and there's people to talk to all over.



the one here.

venues.

Bigger pokecenters have multiple floors and let you buy new clothes or change your hair. While playing Pretty Pink Princess Dressup was among my favorite parts of XY and SuMo, this game doesn't do the makeover mechanics well. You're better off installing Saint's Row 2 and playing dressup in that than you are here.

I'll cover this more in depth later when we actually get to the first big pokecenter.





We'll be putting these to good use. So far I've spent a lot of time being down on the game, but one thing I have to give the developers credit for is the selection of wild pokemon available. Official games wish they could be as good as Insurgence is for availability. You could conceivably "catch 'em all" in this game provided you have a high tolerance for bullshit.

The Lake Trio legendaries are locked behind the ultra-hard, postgame, bonus superboss fight against the devs. Their pokemon have hand picked movesets, beneficial natures, useful abilities, perfect IVs, are fully EV trained, and are all the maximum level of 120.

There's absolutely no way in hell I'm doing that.



Another thing I appreciate. This is the only tutorial we're gonna get. The devs are smart enough to realize that if you're playing a pokemon fangame, you understand the basic mechanics enough to not need hand holding.



This old lady likes the Augur.









I think we're supposed to feel bad for Damian here. However, this is a fangame, its world is dangerous as hell. So his parents are being somewhat reasonable given the circumstances!





Keep on keepin' on, technology dude!



many different things.





It's a mega evolution. Its base stats increase to 498 with 83s flat across the board. If we don't pick Eevee as a starter (there's a choice) then we can't get its mega stone until postgame. We can't breed for one until just before the second gym at the earliest if we get lucky, and all the way until after the 7th gym if we're unlucky.

This lucky break is the Friend Safari feature. However it requires 1) Insurgence's online servers to actually cooperate and not crash the game and 2) a vanishingly miniscule chance on top of that. We will very likely not find an Eeveelution for an extremly long time. As of the time of writing, connecting to the online servers crashes the game 100% of the time.



This nice blue haired fellow gives us some free potions.

type.





like!

They're all competitive teams. One's baton pass, two are weather teams, and the last is a Trick Room team. It's as obnoxious as it sounds.



We probably could go in the lab right now, but I don't know what sort of havoc that will play with scripting. So let's just follow Damian into the town hall instead.



This is the building to the right of the pokecenter.



Wow, rude.







I'm showing this off to point out the upper left corner of the screen. You see that little diskette? That's me mashing the quicksave button. Insurgence's developers, despite having funny ideas about difficulty, are sane human beings who recognize that quality of life improvements don't necessarily "dumb the game down".

So I can mash the quicksave key like a caffeine-addled baboon and be no worse for the wear. We don't have to ever use the save option in the menu. Indeed if we do save manually, the save screen even tells us to not forget about quicksave, and even says how to use it.

Sure the game is ball-bustingly difficult at times, but they ultimately want you to succeed and even give you the tools to do so. I still struggle to call it "good" because there are a lot of questionable decisions along the way, and some of the surprise "fuck you"s have left me bitter.



For what it's worth, we're no longer a bald alien floating 6 inches behind our hair and clothes.



Anyway, let's move on with the plot.

too.

I believe the correct term is "volunteered," as in "Damian volunteered me to help."









: Oh...





one of the caves in the forest.









Skipping liberally through this section. You're not missing much.











We're being tasked with babysitting Damian. The weird plot about Damian being inept and unable to breathe on his own without being reminded will never come up again. I don't get why it needed to be included in the first place, but sure.



I cut out a bunch of text boxes in that and you still got the gist of what was happening. Insurgence is wordy as fuck. All you missed was the evil stepmother acting petulant and completely undermining my earlier point about her being somewhat reasonable. (She seriously says "He won't, though." as though she absolutely has to get the last word in.)







Damian's not-mother is no longer speaking with red text and is instead instructing us about local geography.





Do you think all pokemon labs look alike for a reason, or does everyone else just copy Oak's lab from RBY which had a wall of rack-mounted servers separating the front and back halves?

: Listen, Professor... These pokemon... they're freaks.











: Umm... hello?

into the forest safely.

I'm starting to think that Damian's stepmother had a point. This man here is incredibly, nonsensically dangerous and was in the middle of talking about how much bad shit he's done in his life. Damian thought that was a perfect opportunity to talk over the adults and be like "HI POKEMON PLZ."

in the wild.



Moving on, the man in the fedora recognizes how to turn the situation to his advantage.

: Put them on the table.





: So you two are in need of a pokemon?
: Yes, ma'am.
: I see.











Damian is definitely the "goodie two shoes" kid. The one that went crying to adults when one of his friends said "heck" or "shoot."

"Delta Species"?

I accidentally press yes.

: Well, I haven't...















Skipping text...









So our choices are a fairy princess, an edgelord, or a ninja squirtle. So guys just bold your choice and...



Nope, just kidding. See, the thing about Delta Types is that they're either really good or really terrible with no middle ground. They use the exact same base stats as the species they're a derivative of. So with Charmander or Bulbasaur that get a lot of special attacks and stats to match, you can coast through the first part of the game.

Delta Squirtle is Dark/Fighting, and there are several trainers with Machops in and around the first route. It's also primarily a special attacker, but now it has two types where the overwhelming majority of moves are physical.

Delta Bulbasaur on the other hand has the exact same typing as Gardevoir. In fact, we can find both a Ralts and a Pancham before the first gym battle. As far as I know, Giratina is the only Ghost/Dragon in existence. Plus, y'know, Charizard is finally getting his due and getting the much coveted dragon type. Even if it does make him a bit overpowered.



We can change names pretty much at will, so my shitty nicknames don't really matter in the long run.









Dracolich has 2 levels on Squirtle, but we don't have any supereffective moves.



Squirtle does, and is not shy about using them. We start off at a disadvantage, but it's not insurmountable.



Twister has a chance to make opponents flinch, so that's what wins us the fight.



Gym someday?







Damian runs out.

: Amy, can I talk to you for a moment?









Alright, that's enough for now. This update has drug on longer than I thought it would.

NEXT TIME: We start catching some stuff and grind on wild encounters in the forest.