Part 24: My Morning Tea is Kicking In
Update 25: My Morning Tea is Kicking InPostwick - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
Yeah, love? I’m in the middle of shearing, but they’re not going anywhere. What’s up?… Oh?… What did I tell you? 
…
Professor Magnolia's Laboratory - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
Hello, hello, Gloria! You feeling better?… Ask away!… Hmm… Can’t say I know her very well, but I do know Piers is completely devoted to her. He’s such a sweetheart! It’s been too long since we lost contact, I can’t thank you enough for getting me his number.…… Well, I THINK he’s too nice a guy to try and hunt you down……
Wyndon - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
… I can’t take TOO long, but I have a moment while my coworker cools down. You sound pretty perky, did something happen?…… You know, I probably should’ve seen that coming, but I suppose I just wasn’t paying enough attention. Congratulations!
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Gym Lobby - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
…Hop, I already told you, don’t worry about it. We talked after you bolted and, we have a date in Hammerlocke the moment I get the Fairy Badge!…… Did you have something need to tell me? I’m all ears.… You sure? I’m always willing to listen, you know that. … Good, because I’m too busy thinking about my girlfriend … All right, mate. Talk to you soon, and best of luck! Gym time 
Before we go toe to toe with Opal at last, we have someone to talk to!
Is love in the air, or is it just this Pokéball? Here, try it out and see for yourself!The Love Ball helps you catch Pokémon… Of the opposite gender of whatever Pokémon you have out
. I’m not sure whether to be amused or insulted.Fairy is my weakest type. It came out during Gen 6, long after I stopped playing, and mechanics are foreign to me. I’ve been avoiding playing with a type chart open because of the sheer cheesiness of it all, but I’ve actually had to consult it in order to stand a chance. I am good at Pokémon
! Plus, my team as it stands is nearly devoid of Poison and Steel moves outside of Dietrich, and since those are Fairy’s only weaknesses, I might be in a bit of a bind. I did a little bit of adventuring on the side to pull together a few things. We’ll see if it ends up mattering.Speaking of which…
Gym - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
See, I’m looking for a successor to take on the role of Gym Leader here. So my Gym mission serves as an audition of sorts, too. Oh, don’t worry. It’s simple enough. All you need to do is battle my Trainers and answer the questions they ask along the way. Think carefully before answering, though, child. If you get the wrong answer, the stats of your Pokémon will be lowered. Oh, but if you answer correctly, your Pokémon will get a stat boost. Just think of it as a little Fairy-type Pokémon magic to make things interesting. Now, I want you to go all out. Show me what you can do!And there you have it; in one paragraph, Opal made my commentary on this Gym nearly irrelevant. In short? The entire Gym is a quiz show.
Here’s the format for our lucky contestant:
Gym Trainer Annette: …Gym Leader.
We get three Trainer fights in a row, without breaks; the only true endurance match in the game thus far. So to speak. Partway through the fight, each interrupts you with a question:
This first question is a lowball; both are right. I’ll choose Poison here because that’s the type I’ll use against most of the local Pokémon (spoilers!)
The trainers fight you one by one, each interrupting you during combat by demanding you answer some question. Some of the answers are obvious; one asks you what the previous Trainer’s name was, for example. Others…
Screw you, lady. But they ultimately aren’t all that scary; we don’t even get a Gym complete screen after we finish. Time for the lightning round.
I’ve gotten a good look at how you handled those quizzes. The last part of the mission is me… Let me have a look at how you and your partner Pokémon behave!Pokemon Sword & Shield - Gym Leader Battle Music
She opens with the most incredibly British floating bong I’ve ever seen. I was counting on riding the Poison weakness all the way home, but I forgot that Weezing’s inherent dankness makes it Poison-type–
Yes, she interrupts combat to ask you more questions. Since Weezing is Fairy/Poison, Poison does normal damage, so I just hammer away at it for a couple hits until it falls. Next up is Mawile, which I BELIEVED was partially Steel type, which I ALSO believed was weak to Fire. So I brought out Bruce and had him show off his signature move (he picked it up when he evolved)...
Which then missed. And it only has five PP
! I tried again…
And I was right
! It went down in one hit. Next up comes her Togekiss, her second to last. So my plan was throw out Dietrich–
The music changes tone through Gym Leader fights to amp you up as you reach the end (see the link above). This question interrupted the track and jarringly reverted it to the earlier, darker theme until I answered it. OPAL
!My plan was to throw out Dietrich, hit the Togekiss once with a normal attack, then Dynamax it to seal the deal… Which in retrospect probably would have wasted a turn of Dynamax. Instead, my Poison attack Poisoned the enemy and I just took the opportunity to heal Dietrich a bit while it choked itself to death. She’d still taken some substantial damage, so I switched her out for Chairman, who I’d given a Poison attack while adventuring earlier.
Did a lot less damage than I hoped
The funny thing about all that production? It wasn’t very effective. It did some damage AND healed it too – but not enough to keep up with the damage Chairman could put out. So this point, my strategy was pretty much to have Chairman absorb the layer cake’s G-Max moves and, whether or not she ended up biting it, have someone else clean up the wreckage. Turns out, Chairman was just tough enough to survive all those hits, despite…
… That. My first time through, I picked 88 because “I bet she’d appreciate honesty
”. No. Anyway, the moment their Dynamaxes wore off, Chairman polished Alcremie off, ending the fight.
Not bad, not bad at all. Still, not what I’m looking for… Oh, don’t worry yourself about it, child. It’s just a matter of my preference. I’ll find the next Gym Leader elsewhere. In fact, I’ve already got an idea about where to look. Too bad about the audition, but here’s a Fairy Badge for your efforts.
Of course it’s no good to disrespect your elders, but old folk like me should also know when it’s time to step out of the spotlight.I think the game has a theme is trying to get across. Do you think the game has a theme is trying to get across? Anyway, we scraped past another knockout again; even taking Type weaknesses into account, that Alcremie would've just pasted Dietrich. But once again, I managed to take down a Gym Leader without casualties.
For context, I remember regularly losing two or three Pokémon out of six in earlier games to Leaders. I almost never lost outright, even the first time I ran into them, but they didn’t fold like this. I’m not sure I’d call Pokémon games HARD, per se. If you didn’t grind, they could be deeply challenging, but the mechanics encouraged grinding even more heavily than most JRPGs (you end up leaving a lot of debris behind you when you try to catch them all). If you were willing to sink some time into, say, scouring the last Route for new Pokémon and kitting yourself out with an appropriate team before hitting the Gym, it didn’t really matter how tough they were because you could just pound them down with bigger numbers. In fact, it’s part of why Pokémon games stand out from members of the genre; while grinding inevitably gets boring, no matter what game you play, Pokémon rewards you for grinding by giving you rare Pokémon to hunt for and objectives to achieve instead of just making you bang your head against random enemies. It’s a brilliant way to extend gameplay
Still kind of grates how easy this game is.
Ballonlea - Pokémon Sword and Shield OST
I’ve got a few errands to run in Hammerlocke. Care to join me for the journey? If you’re headed for the next Gym Stadium, you’ll need to get to Hammerlocke, too, after all. Do I have a choice? Of course you do, dear.……… 
Fine, I’ll call us a skytaxi.…
………………… What? Oh, don’t mind me. Merely enjoying your discomfort. 