I am so far ahead of what I’ve posted right now, it’s unbelievable… Parts 4 and 5 contain no less than four videos and three evolutions! (This was originally one whole part, but given how it was just as big as Part 3, even before I had put the videos in, I decided to split it up.)

Part 4

With Fantina out of the way and another badge in my case (which really looks out of place now…), I can get out of this hellhole and keep going towards my next goal, which I don’t really know what it is. I noticed that your rival no longer stops you as you try to leave (aww, and I saved just beforehand especially), and the hiker no longer tries to pawn off a Happiny egg onto you (in fairness you did get a free Togepi and Eevee!). So, off through the gatehouse… crap, WTFH is there. Nip back out before he notices I was even there! Crap, I guess he did see me…

What surprised me even more was that as I was coming into Solaceon Town, there he was again, ambushing me. I was like “Dude, we just battled – you’re not seriously wanting to battle again?”, but thankfully it was more of an annoying meeting rather than a battle. Had no idea what he said, but I do know he was mentioning the Solaceon Ruins (because they’ve changed around a couple of things).

There were more important matters, though. Leaf was getting quite levelled up, and was getting quite close to the point where I wanted to evolve it. So, it’s time to head off to the secret locat-… ahh, fuck it there’s only one place accesible right now that I can to evolve it – and that’s Eterna Forest. Yes, I will be evolving it into a Leafeon!

Skip the next hour or so (or however long that bus ride into town was), and Leaf is now levelled up to the perfect point, and is now evolved. (The perfect point was Level 29 – therefore he learned Bite as an Eevee, and Synthesis as a Leafeon). Gardenia was standing in front of the Old Chateau as usual, but unfortauntely it seems that an English-language copy of Sapphire does NOT spawn Haunters (and Gengars in that special room)…

Evolution: Leaf -> Leafeon

Ride back to Solaceon, and now tackle the Lost Tower, if only to see what you can get there… Which turns out to be nothing at all. It looks a lot fancier now, eerie and dark. But it has some annoying fog on the upper floors, which we all hate, especially when you wouldn’t have Defog at this stage… Returning from the disappointment, it’s time to go see another “famous” place, those Solaceon Ruins.

Now I don’t get why there is so much emphasis places on the ruins in this game. Contrary to popular belief, the Unown are there from the start – I bumped into my first one in the room after the Ruin Maniac (and if I remember correctly, top right, bottom left, top right, top left, top left, bottom left – although I need to confirm). You then get a little load of items as well as the usual Unown spelt sentences. Although the game cart is Japanese, the words are spelled out in… Japanese. Shit. Yea, nothing big here, only HM05 – which you actually really don’t need to get through the game.

Time to get out of this dump and keep going around this little loop in Sinnoh. One thing that did strike my mind was that all those “farmer” trainers seem to have dumped whatever they had and picked up Ponytas (or a Rapidash, in one case), which means no more 6 Bidoof trainer Moo-Moo Milk now comes in packs of a dozen in the Cabin Café thingy as well, for easy purchasing!

Evolution: Togek -> Togetic
It’s about time is all I have to say…

Route 215 definitely cleared smething up for me: of all the in-battle animations, a good few of the weather-based ones have changed, no matter how slight they are. Hail now actually looks like ice crystals falling, instead of snow (which I got via Togek’s Metronome). Another major change I saw, if you remember the last two trainers on the route, who before used to be very tough (or at least they were for me back in Diamond), are now easier. They do have more Pokémon but they’re not insanely over-levelled or uber-powerful.

Veilstone City

The city of stone (and not of veils), now looks more stone-y. All the old “platforms” appear quite smooth, as if the stone was polished and buffed to a shine. If you think back to English-language versions of Diamond and Pearl, there was a guy in the middle of town who spoke in a foreign language (I presume Japanese!), and he asked you an arbitrary question. Lo and behold, guess what he speaks in this game? English

Q: Hello, Trainer! Do you love Pokémon?
If answer is Yes: Excellent! So do I!
If answer is No: I don’t think so!! You travel with your Pokémon gaily!

Gaily? WTF? Whatever… Picked up something quite handy in the department store’s new basement floor – Lava Cookies. In this 4th gen, they changed the mechanics of your bag so that there was no limit to the amount of items you could carry, in any pocket. Which made the need to go out and always buy Full Heals because you could save more room in your bag was thrown out, and instead you could get the individual healers (Antidode, Awakening, Parlyz Heal, Burn Heal, Ice Heal). But, with the advent of the Lava Cookie being so readily available, you can now chuck out all the individual items (costing between $100 and $250 a piece I think), and pick up a bunch of Lava Cookies. They’re only $200 each, which is sort of an average of the individuals, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than the $600 for a Full Heal!

OK, I ranted on a bit too much there, let’s go onto Route 214, but not before heading to a guy in a house near the Pokémon Center to get a free Porygon. Yes, you don’t have to blow 5000-9999 coins to get one, you get it for free!

Current Party: Empol (Lv37), Garch (Lv27), Leaf (Lv30), Togek (Lv28)

I haven’t gone to thrash Maylene yet, mainly because I don’t feel like it until I get the rest of the routes out of the way, so that I can go back and beat herself and Wake in quick succession (which also means I can record them both in one night!), and I need to go pick up something first. An annoying thing about the Route 214 grass, is that 7 times out of 10, you’ll find a Graveler… But you can get lucky once in a while, find the gender you want first time round, get it in two balls, and most importantly avoid it using Roar!

New Pokémon acquired: Doom, the Houndour (Lv22)

Yup, party member number 5 is the Dark/Fire Houndour. Platinum added a hell of a lot of new Fire options, in comparison to the Ponyta/Chimchar choice of D/P. Firstly, Ponyta gets Flame Wheel, it was lacking a reliable Fire-type move until it got Flare Blitz at Level 60 (all it had was Ember around 16, and Fire Blast around 35-40) – and then you can also choose to take on a Houndour, Flareon, and I think something else.

Something that did surprise me while heading along this route:

Evolution: Doom -> Houndoom

Yea, that was quick… Other than that, the Restaurant still offers you several double battles per day, but you do have to deal with the gay opening times. And all the other stuff, blah blah blah.

Pastoria hasn’t changed at all with the exception of a billboard in front of the Great Marsh that you can stand behind and look like a Croagunk. Yea, they really made the effort here… However, WTFH is here and he’s blocking the way into the Pastoria Gym for now. Git. Now excuse me twenty minutes or so while I go scour the Underground for some more Heart Scales, since Pastoria is the location of the Move Relearner, and I have some moves that need relearning. More specifically, Togek needs Magical Leaf, which it normally “learns” at Level 1. I would also throw Razor Leaf onto Leaf (ba-dum-tish…) but I have better plans and movesets in mind that I could use that Heart Scale for. Free super-effective negating berries are still available though

May as well go full circle and complete the trip around back to Hearthome. The marshy ground has been changed to a more black colour rather than the brown of before, but now if you look closely enough you can see there are some slightly darker patches. It’s those patches where you will get stuck and have to wriggle around to get out from. At least now you can avoid them. The only other change is to the mansion with the Trophy Garden. The top half of the boundary wall is now a wrough-iron fence, and there a lot more maids running around. A cool new bit is the “maid battle” scenario, where you can battle five maids, one after the other. I’m not too sure if it really is worth it, given when I first did it, they all had a single Clefairy, starting at Lv25, and increasing two levels each battle. And there wasn’t even a reward for completing it!

With the round trip-and-a-half (continuing all the way back around to Veilstone again) complete, the story insisted that the next Gym to challenge would be Maylene’s. Dawn as ever stalking you, was waiting in front and said something or other, but then Crasher Wake came out of the gym, singing merrily to himself (that I could only tell by the musical note icons in his speech) and pissing off back to his own Gym. And no, that did not make WTFH get out of the way in Pastoria, so I guess you absolutely HAVE to deal with Maylene first. Sigh…