While it may not look like the notable battles are that close together when reading this, when you’re actually playing the game in your spare time and can only record them at home, they’re spaced out pretty badly! Oh and there’s a lot of Team Galactic in this one!

Part 7

One thing to not forget when going up to Snowpoint City – oh wait, hold the lesson one sec.

Egg hatching: Luca, the Riolu (Lv1)

Anyway, as I was saying when going to Snowpoint, you need to take the top end of Mt. Coronet to get there. The bottom end is used later on, for more important and legendary purposes. Speaking of purpose, I think it’s time someone got the Exp. Share. Or maybe the Soothe Bell… Soothe Bell would give happiness quicker, but given it’s not during the day (at least as I’m playing/writing this) getting the happiness up isn’t paramount. So, Exp. Share it is! (Only so far though, don’t want to miss more important moves that can only be learned by an evolution). And comiing from Eterna needs Rock Smash as well… * runs back to get HM slave *

Party so far: Empol (Lv41), Garch (Lv42), Togek (Lv42), Leaf (Lv41), Doom (Lv41), Luca (Lv7)

Since I have no idea what HMs I’m going to need down here (and since I don’t fancy going through it twice, given the fog) I’m going to leave Empol behind to bring my HM slave. It’s not like I don’t have others who can take out the wild Pokémon in the cave on the way… Besides, it’s an ideal Leaf and Togek training ground, since they have Magical Leaf and Aura Sphere

Turns out I will need to go back at some point, since I need Empol’s Surf to grab two of the items. Ah well, can’t have them all. On the way out, there’s another conspicuous square cave. This one has a bit of a blue tinge and a NeverMeltIce in the center. Beginning to see a pattern at all?

DON’T let it snow

Yup, it’s the snow route, meaning all battles have Hail falling throughout. And the Trainers themselves are just as annoying as the weather. First guy I battled on the route, had a wimpy U-Turning Ambipom, and a Porygon2 that just wouldn’t die and stop Recovering. And then when he did weaken half my team before going down, his Ambipom went and took out 5 of my team with Double Hit (one of them was the HM slave) meaning I had to stall to Revive Togek so I could Aura Sphere it’s ass. What a fucker…

Given my situation, it was alarm bells ringing like mad until I could get to the cabin just up the road. Doesn’t help when the game likes to put unavoidable Trainers in your way, and you have your wealking out first because at the time your entire team was still alive, he was well down the order… But thankfully crisis was averted, and I did make it to the cabin intact, only just.

These Trainers are pretty hard, and unfortauntely I’m only through the first batch. Now to tackle the major blizzard that is Route 217. One thing that is new, is that Maylene comes and says something to you, as she’s en route to Snowpoint (presumably). Whether she has a jacket on, I don’t know, because her sprite is still the same. It also makes me wonder what that girl in Snowpoint who used to say “aren’t you cold in just that scarf” will say now, since both Lucas and Dawn now have more “bulky” outfits…

Anyway, one thing I am doing here is going through the place with a fine-toothed Dowsing Machine. This place is full of hidden items under the snow, you just need to find them! And just because I’m getting the hidden stuff, doesn’t mean I’m not getting the visible stuff. Particularly HM07
(sorry, HM08 – you also get TM07 here, very confusing ) which is still hiding out by that cabin as before. I thought they’d have made it easier for people to find, but no….

The first thing you’ll notice on arriving on Acuity Lakefront is that it has been completely redesigned. The basic layout is slightly different, but most important is that you now need Rock Climb to get up to the lake itself. On first approaching the climbable wall, WTFH yelled down to me seeing that I was there. No idea what he said but I presume it involved sqaying I needed the badge. Not like I wasn’t planning to get it anyway! You’ll find Maylene in the Pokémon center. What she actually does there, I don’t know. She might do something, she might not (at least she doesn’t before the badge). Snowpoint Gym itself is largely the same, except the snowball “puzzle” is different. It’s less of a puzzle now, since you don’t need to take down all the snowballs to open your way to Candice. Probably to make it easier for people, since before it was quite a bitch to do…

Let’s get this thing over with.

(This was my second time battling her, the first time I only had room for 6:05 on my camera and I ran out. Breif synopsis: Froslass is fucking fast and Blizzard kills, especially when combo’d with her Abomasnow. Togek only just survived twice.)

Y’know Candice doesn’t seem to play much of a major role in the games. All she does is give you a Gym battle and give you access to the Snowpoint Temple later on. But enough about that, we’ve got to get to Lake Acuity! First step is to unfortunately put Rock Climb on someone in the team, since none of my HM slaves can handle it. So for now Garch will be burdened with a below-par HM move. Up to the lake, to find WTFH being beaten by Jupiter, before the pair of them run off. That’s it? All that work getting a Gym badge and wasting a moveslot to have them both storm out on me…?

Grrr, at least there will be time for revenge. All that will take is a quick trip down to Veilstone City. And no, I’m not going to walk all the way – * hitches ride on slave Starly *

Galactic Time!

Woo, it’s now time to kick Galactic’s butt. Or at least part of it. First order of business would be to get the card key thing, but strangely the grunt that normally clumsily drops it doesn’t have one this time round. Instead, after talking to him Handsome showed up saying he has a key and that he’d let me in down at the warehouse. Ah well, works either way. Inside though, nothing’s changed. Still have to battle and pick up items. OK, maybe the overall puzzle is slightly different. And OK, maybe it’s not completely the same.

Yes, one big change is this rather huge room where there are a lot, and I mean a LOT of grunts, waiting for a speech from their leader Cyrus – who arrives on the platform upstairs to motivate his troops! Still have no idea what he said. Through that room and it’s normal again, same grunts, same healing bed (although with a free hidden battle item present), and so forth. Up to Cyrus’ room to take him on man-to-…well I would presume boy given all the player characters are supposedly 10 as they start out.

Once defeated, unlike most others, Cyrus partially admits defeat. He tells you that you can take the warp tile to go find Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf in order to rescue them (pity you HAVE to). But you can have a little nose around his speech platform by taking the other one

Through to the laboratory we go. It seems that everyone working here was doing it out of fear and loyalty, rather than wanting to themselves (actually I’m still basing this on what I remember from Diamond and Pearl, so don’t quote me on that!). There’s still rather a lot of test tubes regardless… In the very end room are the three legendaries, with Saturn and Pluto by the screen. Talking to Saturn and he’ll say some crap, before fighting you again!

After Cyrus though, Saturn is nothing in comparison. He stepped out of the way allowing me to click the button and release the lake trio back to their homes. Cue another mini-speech from Saturn and we’re done. Pluto doesn’t say much (as he usually doesn’t) unless you specifically talk to him, and even then it’s some crap (or at least I think it is). Nonetheless, bad guys beaten for now, and so it’s time to deal with an even bigger problem on hand. Yup, Cyrus is off to Mt. Coronet again!

Current party: Empol (Lv43), Garch (Lv45), Togek (Lv46), Leaf (Lv44), Doom (Lv45), Luca (Lv14)