Electrium-Z in hand, we can head over to Route 12... and find the Trial Barricade is still up. What gives?
It is a long walk from Malie Garden to Route 11. In part because the only way for the player to get onto Route 11 is on the west side of town (as the Murkrow flies, we're only like fifteen metres away), but still. I don't see how this is any of her business. Oh well, it's volunteer work, you get what you pay for.
Let's go check on on this garden.
...Although, I'm sensing a boss, let's team up.
After not getting a proper chance to shine against Vikavolt, this will be Sturm's real chance to make an impact. This is a nice fight to have Sturm in specific around for.
Dottie has a similar story of being well matched to our opponent's skillset.
I'll be honest, I don't have much concern we'll need to use too many other party members, so Cranky and co are here for that good EXP. Trainers give more than Totems, so that's a pretty major factor for hangers-on.
Some of them, like K9, have good reason to be here.
I'm not 100% sure if Zapple is one of them, though.
And Woodstock is only a good option because Woodstock ignores such matters.
...With that said, 41/41 Defences, you really need to evolve. Zapple has 39, and she's squishy.
We've just stepped in and already there's an altercation ahead. And no sign of the Volunteer.
...What does it say about everyone involved here that I'm siding with Skull on this one?
Let him do it, guys. Kukui loves saying the number four.
I mean, they probably only have one Pokemon each. Four turns would be considered a bad showing. At the very least, he does actually say he'll use moves that hit all opponents in a Battle Royal.
...Also, who's the fourth guy?
The Grunts take him up on his offer, because they are incapable of deciding not to do something when they are capable of attempting.
Wow, way to make them feel worse, guys.
...Come to think of it, what have Skull been up to other than heckling Kukui here? I see no evidence of an attempted theft of any kind.
Ah. There we are. Looks like we got what we asked for.
The hangers-on turn to him in shock, while Kukui seems completely unperturbed.
Strangely, you'd expect for there to be silence when Guzma appears. No, the Skull encounter theme plays untouched until this moment, but Guzma does have a personal encounter theme and it starts now. As much of a paper tiger as Team Skull is, and how clearly their theme communicates that... Guzma's theme is actually as scary as they want to be.
Say hello to the biggest, the baddest, and the rudest member of Team Skull, its vaunted leader.
Kukui has absolutely no fucks to give.
Guzma gets a little bit fazed, but quickly covers up with bravado and boasts about the upcoming fight.
This boasting only goes as far as to show the fight starting- it makes no claims that Guzma is going to be the unquestioned winner, although his tone does suggest he means to convey that impression.
This is certainly a line, and one that makes a large impact in the fandom consciousness- almost certainly because it appeared in Guzma's reveal trailer (side note, can we acknowledge the absurdity of that phrase?). In hindsight, however, knowing what we have seen from the Kiawe sidequest? Guzma would've aged out of the Trial Captain role by now.
He's not talking about never achieving his dream of being a respected pillar of the community. He's talking about the equivalent of never being a prefect in his old high school. And while the anime built on the relationship between him and Kukui, there is no further indication these two characters have history in the games- when Guzma says "fellow" here, he could simply be referring to the idea that both Guzma and Kukui have attempted to be Trial Captains and failed.
Guzma walked away from his failure to be a Trial Captain having learned the lesson that this is a failure of the Trial system, and his plan to rectify this is to destroy it. We learn this because he is projecting this same belief onto Kukui.
Where Kukui and Guzma differ, however, is that Guzma believes there is no need to replace it with the Pokemon League system, thinking instead of simply installing himself at the top. This really highlights his petty beliefs and helps him come off clearly as the villain in this conversation.
Kukui's refutation starts simply: He didn't even want to be Captain to begin with. Presumably, Guzma associates Captaincy with strength, and this view doesn't really mesh well with people who refuse the position.
This is, presumably, talking about Hala at full power, not Hala as he appears in his role as the Grand Trial of Melemele. We are far beyond that team, and could probably take him with Sturm if we rematched that team.
Pokemon battling is a two-part system, with preparations and execution. Some people do well when designing a team, but the best-designed team in the world won't win if the Trainer doesn't have a good head on its shoulders when it counts. The problem with the games is that there is no reflection of this mechanic: In the heat of the moment, when it counts, there is nothing you can do to change what you've set up in preparations. This works out much better in the anime, when you can gloss over a few more of the rigidly defined rules, but this sort of thing is more of a weakness of video games as a medium than anything particularly bad in Pokemon.
And that's where you've lost me. Not necessarily because of your issue trying to tie in "the heat of the moment" moves, we can handle that... what part of the Island Challenge fails to accomplish this? The Island Challenge, if anything, is the greatest portrayal of finding the heat of the moment in the series thus far. In a Pokemon Battle against another Trainer, all are as equals, and no matter how many IVs, EVs, Natures and moves the devs give an enemy Trainer, the player can respond back with the same bite. Totem Auras and team synergy allowed by the Totem Pokemon and S.O.S. system encourage the player to actually hunt for the right moves.
At this point, though, I'm straying dangerously close to going on another rant about how Double Battles should be the norm in single player Pokemon games, and considering neither system currently on the table is employing that, we ought to move on.
Kukui then calls out Guzma's assertion that his bite's as bad as his bark, and tells him that if he thinks he knows better than Kukui, then he can prove that himself, here and now.
At which point he turns around and involves us in this conversation. The hell are you looking at me for, Kukui, Guzma's argument is with you!
I love how, when Guzma was told about the two kids on the Island Challenge messing with Team Skull, he thought the one to look out for was Hau.
This conversation is made even more hilarious since I'm playing as the girl- not just a very femininely-presenting girl, but a white girl. At this point, the Skull Grunts should be informing him that the more dangerous opponent is us, and Hau has gotten involved with them, like... twice? And he still tries to think we're Hala's grandson first. I don't think it's physically possible for me to look less like Hau, unless maybe I had a different hair colour or something?
This is a part of the conversation that really, really wishes Bethany could actually speak up for herself about her beliefs and experiences about the Island Challenge. Because as it is, not only is Kukui putting words in our mouth (which is rude and suspicious if it were only as bad as an adult man speaking up on behalf of an 11-year-old girl), but also Kukui is kinda-sorta chickening out of his own challenge of Guzma's bravado, and by putting words in our mouth, he is weakening his own argument.
Kukui. You're the one who challenged Guzma. You're the one who wants this Pokemon League. You're the one that Guzma's issues are tied to. What kind of an argument are you making by not being the one to back your own beliefs?
Thankfully, I'm not the only one getting mad at the absurdity of this situation.
Although again, I'm not sure how I feel being on Team Skull's side of this argument.
Guzma actually considers us as an opponent, and takes a moment to notice our Z-Ring. If he's going to get into this conversation, he's going to actually judge us on our merits: Which, again, is a courtesy Kukui sure isn't extending to him.
Guzma recognises that us not speaking up for ourselves weakens Kukui's point, and decides to ask us a question directly, so he can actually feel the correct emotion for this situation.
The responses to this question provided are "the Island Challenge is inherently strengthening" and "the Island Challenge reflects a part of me as a person that I might never have understood before"- and as a foreigner participating in a local custom, I quite like the latter as a response. Even if Bethany has never participated in the Gym Challenge of the Kanto region, she does know how it works- so, even in-universe, she's probably aware of the ways in which the Gym Challenge and the Island Challenge differ.
Guzma takes the wording of the response more literally, and scoffs as he realises that the best Kukui can pit against him is someone who doesn't believe in the Island Challenge. Someone just like the two of them, in his eyes, and someone who hasn't failed yet.
And we haven't finished our Island Challenge yet. Guzma has. Guzma has every confidence he can with this, and if Kukui is hiding behind us, then he's going to show Kukui just how much of a mistake that was.
This is a line that's very charming for Guzma's fans, because of how much of an overly-edgy braggart it makes him sound, but really, he's more right than he lets on. Guzma is destruction in human form.
He just doesn't comprehend why.
I haven't fully decided how charming it is, but Guzma actually has the same Skull flourish as any other member of Team Skull. It kinda helps his reputation as a boss that looks out for his minions- even if he's selfishly throwing them at a problem to make him feel better.
Anyway, the time has come for our first battle with the boss of Team Skull, Guzma. Fighting the evil team boss "early" is kind of a weird tradition- before now, there have been four evil teams whose boss challenged us at least once before the final confrontation (Team Rocket in RBY, Teams Magma/Aqua in RSE, Team Galactic in Pt, and Team Plasma in BW), and Guzma is the last one to date to participate early. Part of this is just the nature of SwSh and SV's villain teams not really being the sorts of teams where the boss would be expected to participate in the plot, but also the way villain teams have been working in general has been shaken up so greatly it's hard to get a solid read on just how notable it is we're fighting Guzma now.
Guzma has his own theme, separate from Plumeria's. While Plumeria's theme played the Team Skull battle melody in an actually threatening instrumentation, Guzma's focuses much more heavily on the bass. So much so I'm legitimately not sure if Guzma's theme is actually still a remix of Skull's theme or if it's own song. I do kinda hear both interpretations, though.
Golisopod (Ultra Sun): The shell covering its body is as hard as diamond. This Pokémon will do anything it takes to win.
Guzma's ace, which he prefers to send out as his lead, is Golisopod, the evolution of Wimpod. Golisopod has titanic Atk and Def stats, a low Speed, and a surprisingly functional Special bulk considering the strength of its Physical. It also has a unique fighting style that makes it well-suited to a lead role, and a characterisation that makes it a fitting choice in Guzma's ace.
Guzma's Golisopod has the IV spread 31/31/15/15/15/31, no EV investment, an Adamant Nature, and knows the moves First Impression, Razor Shell and Swords Dance. First Impression is a 90 BP Physical Bug move mostly exclusive to Golisopod (you can breed it onto Farfetch'd) that has +2 priority, but can only be used on the first turn it's out. Guzma's biggest weakness is that he only has one other offensive move on this thing, and you can't exactly buff First Impression's power with Swords Dance.
There's just something comical about seeing something that looks as terrifying as Golisopod, and sending out this piece of konpeito candy.
And honestly, you're not helping.
Trust me, it's worth setting a turn setting these up when Guzma is your opponent. Guzma is particularly susceptible to them, and because of its general nature and typing, Minior is a surprisingly good choice in setting them up.
No First Impression to be used on Minior. Not surprising- Minior resists it.
With its second action, Sturm hits Golisopod with Ancient Power, knocking him to half health.
Which triggers Golisopod's Ability, Emergency Exit. Despite having a different name to Wimpod's Wimp Out, Emergency Exit functions identically. In addition to making it sound like Golisopod is covering up its own cowardice with bravado, Emergency Exit gives Guzma a free switch-in (and, as something Pokemon rarely has, a switch-in Switch Mode doesn't counter), and also allows him to send out Golisopod later- and use First Impression a second time. It's a very cool strategy to show off, but Guzma fails to exploit it to the best of its ability due to his other gimmick.
Guzma is the Alola region's Bug-type expert, and his team is entirely composed of Bugs. Ariados has flat 31 IVs, 252 EVs in both Atk and Spd, an Adamant Nature, and the moves Fell Stinger, Sucker Punch, Shadow Sneak and Infestation. Fell Stinger is a 50 BP Physical Bug move that boosts Ariados's Attack by three stages if it scores a finishing blow, and it has two Physical priority moves. And somehow, it's not terrifying at all. That tells you a lot about what being an Ariados does for it.
Because Guzma is a Bug expert, Stealth Rock inflicts ~25% HP (that sure doesn't look like 25% to me, are we sure that's the right figure?) on all of his Pokemon. If you can get your hands on Stealth Rock early enough, all Rock-weak Trainer bosses are scared of it, but Guzma is the only such foe in the Alola region you can really expect to pull this trick on. Kiawe is fought too early to reliably have Stealth Rock in SM, Sina never gets a good fight, and the Flying expert hides from Rocks in her own way.
The worst part is, that was probably its best move.
OK, I know it wasn't at full health, but Meteor Form Sturm oneshot it. I will say, though, I don't really like being on ~75% HP when Golisopod comes back.
Oh, neat. Autotomise is a Steel Status move that applies +2 Spd stages and also sheds 100 kilos from Sturm's weight. Strictly speaking, there's no reason to pick it over Rock Polish (of the moves that use weight, it wants to be heavier against the one it's weak to), but it's cool to have something like this.
Anyway, Golisopod comes back out, and here's the part where Guzma gets even more scared of Stealth Rock. Against most foes, Stealth Rock won't help you against the lead. Against Golisopod, it will suffer from the hit. And if you do enough damage on the move that scares it out, you might even oneshot it when it comes back in! I didn't do that this time, but you know, it is an outcome.
Sturm might have lost if Golisopod went for Razor Shell, but I'm mostly sending in Dottie for the Amulet Coin bonus. With that said, I would have loved to claim Sturm handled the entire team itself.
On the other hand, does Ariados count as an opponent?
Of all the instances of dissonance between the defeat pose and the defeat quote, this one might be the greatest. Guzma actually kinda gives us a sort of worthy opponent outlook, matching his somewhat reasonable assessment of our role in the conversation, but he looks a hair's breadth away from punching somebody over this.
When the fight scene ends, there's an establishing shot, and then it smash-cuts to Guzma, where he throws his head around violently in frustration at his defeat. (Incidentally, it's gone back to the Guzma Encounter theme.)
Take note of the dialogue tag: Guzma himself is the one screaming at Guzma about having failed to defeat us.
That's not exactly a healthy reaction to losing there, bud. You... you OK?
Thanks a lot, Kukui. Now Guzma is taking it personally on us.
Unlike the Skulls, Guzma walks away from this one. He also walks through us- we don't actually have to move out of the way, though.
The Grunts taunt us and bolt, as usual.
The Trainers cheer us on- or perhaps more accurately, jeer Guzma for having lost to us. This does quite a lot more to humiliate Guzma than merely losing to Kukui might have, but I'm still judging Kukui for it.
(Aue, incidentally, is a Hawai'ian interjection, roughly equivalent to "Goodness!" in usage. It is pronounced "AHH-whay".)
Credit where credit is due: I used Stealth Rock and didn't just spam SE-on-Bug moves. This is an applicable comment.
As a soft reward of sorts, although Kukui positions is as something we probably should've got sooner, he gives us the Z-Crystal for our starter's final evolution- either Decidium Z, Incinium Z or Primarium Z. You only get the Z-Crystal for your starter during the main story- because you can't trade Z-Crystals, there's a way to get the other two in postgame, but this also means that you cannot trade in the other starters and use their Z-Moves during the main story. I'll mention the Z-Moves once I get to their evolutions- all three evolve at level 34.
Incidentally, all four kids already have all three starters by this point- I've started working on trading around version exclusives and that sort of thing off-screen at this point, not that the game should really be expected to notice.
Ah, yeah, I've got a little delivery for you, Kukui...
Plot McGuffin delivered. As a fun fact, the inventory cruft actually cuts deeper than just looking for form-changing places around the region- all Pokemon games starting with, like, BW have kept every key item in the series to date on hand, just in case. This means that the Professor's Mask is still in the data for SV. One of these days this will be a problem.
...Was I supposed to be her babysitter? I mean, I sorta did become that at some point, but she doesn't need me hovering over her shoulder.
I left her with someone trustworthy. I think.
Just casually deciding we're not going to care about what happened to Hau. USUM tweaks it so he came back to Malie Garden along the way, but I'm going in depth with that in the bonus update where we see Ailey's fight with Guzma.
Guzma's not too bad. I mean, sure, his Golisopod talks a big game, but you can bop it on the nose just fine.
With that said, there's a slight bit of caution that's necessary around a group of people actively attempting skulduggery. We're hardly friends with them now, after all.
Good luck with your desecration of a sacred site, coward.
I'll get there just fine as soon as the elevator's been built.
Kukui leaves, allowing us to focus on characters who are slightly less self-absorbed.
And Lillie. Lillie is not self-absorbed enough.
Acerola jumps right into telling us where to go for the other Ula'ula Trial.
...Geographically speaking, there's a lot more to getting to the next Trial than that. You've completely brushed over Route 12, for one thing!
This is a reference to the fact that a police officer is the NPC who points you to where Route 11 is, but considering police officers are black-on-black here in Malie, I struggle to believe anyone is using his tip to get them onto Route 11.
Says the girl whose dress has received frequent maintenance.
And that's where that conversation ends. Lillie sounds like she'll be fine, but wasn't Hapu supposed to get her to the Ruins or something?
We won't be going to Route 12 this update, though. That thing is huge.
What we are doing for the rest of this update is looking at a few things that open up after beating Guzma in Malie Garden- the only one of which that is found in SM is this little thing that appears in Malie Garden itself.
The name "Nugget Bridge" should be familiar to longtime Pokemon fans: this was the name of an area in RBY, north of Cerulean City on Route 24, where you challenged five Trainers in a row to win a prize. I believe both RBY and SM allow you to return to a Pokemon Centre to heal and reorganise your party, but I decided to do it straight here.
Somewhat oddly, this Trainer repeats the dialogue said by the introduction NPC. There's a reason for this, which we'll see in a bit.
A Caterpie, mate? We're not in Melemele anymore, that's not threatening.
Weedle (Yellow): Beware of the sharp stinger on its head. It hides in grass and bushes where it eats leaves.
...Now that's weird. Beedrill can be found by Island Scan in USUM, but there is no way to acquire Weedle in vanilla SM. Weedle is a Bug/Poison type with mostly identical stats to Caterpie. As such, it goes down to basically anything that counters Caterpie, and also Psychic.
...I'm getting an odd feeling going on here with this dialogue...
Another short and sweet intro- I guess with a gauntlet, they don't really care so much about you needing to read the whole thing.
Pidgey (Blue): A common sight in forests and woods. It flaps its wings at ground level to kick up blinding sand.
Another Pokemon available in USUM's version of Island Scan only, Pidgey is a Kantonian Normal/Flying type- and the representative of Pikipek's archetype in that region.
Funnily enough, it happens to have the Dragon type move Twister in its kit. It's a Special Dragon move with only 40 BP, so that's the most notable thing it has.
You gotta love it when Woodstock's Poison Touch allows it to finish a KO it fell short of.
Nidoran♀ (Blue): Although small, its venomous barbs render this Pokémon dangerous. The female has smaller horns.
Now this is a surprise. Nidoran is a pure Poison type from the Kanto region that is not available at all in either SM or USUM. If you feel like there's something weird going on... that's because there is at this point.
Incidentally, gendered Pokemon did not exist normally in RBY, so the two different genders of Nidoran are considered wholly distinct Pokemon (although a Nidoran Egg may hatch into either gender). This isn't even the only weird technological clunk that the line has picked up because of conformity to tradition, but while it is possible to find Nidoran in the SwSh DLC, I'm not 100% sure what its future fate will be. I'm hoping they eventually retool Pokemon such that they can finally kill the Nidoran distinction and make them the same Pokemon line, with different stats in different genders. (...With Oinkologne, it's technically already happened.)
Nothing else to say?
I am actually appreciating all these multiple Pokemon per battle.
Tyler's team is Kantonian Rattata, Zubat and Ekans. Nothing we haven't seen before, but two of them aren't found in the SM Alola Dex. We can thank Tourists for showing us Kantonian Rattata.
Funnily enough, something kinda cool happened in this fight for Noah:
Moxie rampage! Isn't it cool when there's actual fights with more than one Pokemon for the benefits of Moxie to make itself apparent?
It even accomplished something meaningful: The extra Atk meant that I wasn't running on -1 Atk Bulldozing this Ekans.
This continues to be very bare-bones.
Not gonna lie, a little bit.
Especially when your team is exactly identical to Lass Rika's team. In SM, the Pidgey is one level higher, but in USUM, they are identical, down to the IVs.
Copy and paste, this really is...
I'm sure you will, Mr. "1 Pokemon".
Oh hey. You're the only Trainer on this bridge who belongs in this game.
Razzly's Draining Kiss quickly dealt with you, of course, but still.
Nothing else to say...?
For beating every Trainer on the Nugget Bridge, in both RBY and SM, we get a Nugget.
In SM, however, they made it a bigger one, because money is just a shade more valuable in this game. Nuggets give a lot more bang for your buck in RBY because of the difference in the economic scale. Also, the Nugget Bridge being so much earlier means this is your first Nugget.
...Gesundheit?
Pro tip, man- you need a lot better on-boarding than "we're evil, sign here please". What are the benefits?
No, no dialogue options have been provided. He's just this pushy without waiting for a response.
Veteran Don may come across as "the boss" of Nugget Bridge, but really he's just another grunt.
Look at him and his team of things matched by a Youngster. At least he's using two things to find in Alola. In USUM.
That Zubat wishes the buff to Leech Life made it good.
Knowing the boss of Team Rocket, I think he'd sooner try and get rid of me, just so I don't get any ideas about usurping him.
OI! ...OK, yeah, being a top leader in Team Rocket isn't a compliment, I guess, but you know... rude.
I know what happened last time they tried to reform it. They hacked a radio tower and accomplished nothing. Team Rocket has gone bye-bye-a-go-go, and if they know what's good for them, they'll stay there.
He's dead serious about that. You noticed the teams? The dialogue?
An exact, word for word reprisal of the original RBY Nugget Bridge.
All the teams and dialogue make more sense in RBY, when they were designed to appear at level 14-18 and had like no room for text. OK, the Bugs are a little weird, but the evolved forms are a little too strong for this point in the game.
Yes, the two Lasses both use Pidgey and Nidoran♀ in RBY, too. The second one has two extra levels on both Pokemon, but this is still pretty bad, especially since we haven't yet seen a male Nidoran yet.
The two Rising Stars are acting as substitutions for the Bug Catcher and Camper Trainer Classes, neither of which appears in SM. A little weird, but I guess they wouldn't have fit the aesthetic of Hawai'i.
And yes, they really do repeat this line in their post-battle text. At least this is optional in both games, but still.
The deluge of textboxes trying to get you to join Team Rocket is straight from RBY, but the spacing looks a lot better because all the textboxes actually fill the tiny space on offer. To either great surprise or no surprise, there is a surprisingly large contingent of fans that actually wants to join Team Rocket. I sigh, shake my head, and act like this isn't a little bit weird.
The guy at the end of the path is a Rocket Grunt in the original. And yes, that is a whip. RBY came before they had the tone of the games down entirely. I suspect a lot of the people who want to join Team Rocket were in the part of the target audience that got nudged out by this change.
This is the end of his dialogue in RBY. The fact he says "top leader" and not Admin is because Team Rocket didn't have Admins in RBY. Part of me wonders if that's why Rocket failed.
Anyway, back to SM, and... wait, is Don a Rocket Grunt in retirement? That kinda changes the tone of Nugget Bridge a bit... mate, Team Rocket is dead and buried. You can't just LARP one of their more pathetic recruitment attempts without being judged.
And the Trainers disappear entirely. This is not the case in RBY- unfortunately, since in the original RBY, you had to walk around all five Trainers to cross that bridge, and there's no Fly point on the other side. But still, that's the last we'll hear of Giovanni in SM.
As an aside, I left it merely implied thus far, but I'll say it outright: I do not like this joke. I get what they were going for, but the Pokemon being held by the Trainers are too small potatoes to have this late in the game, don't give enough EXP to be worth it, the old game design of having us fight so many more Trainers merely emphasises that fact, and using dialogue that was a product of being made on a console that can literally fit in your pocket makes it clear how out-of-place the whole sequence is- if the foreign Pokemon added entirely to carry the joke didn't do the job. Being more throwbacks to Kanto in a game with more than its fair share of them is the least of its problems.
To add insult to injury, FRLG gave names to the Nugget Bridge trainers. The names used by the SM Trainers aren't the same ones.
We're going to spend the rest of this update in USUM, as it happens, and we're starting with this other event in Malie Garden. I'm not 100% sure when you have to wait to spawn this, but we're doing it now for convenience anyway.
We have a Lass, a Dewpider, and a panic attack.
This does not get any less weird from here.
This is what one might call a bit of a rude call, particularly if it also happens to be her first Pokemon. I'm not necessarily sure on that, but we don't see her own anything else.
There's a Hiker with a Slowpoke on his head poking his head out of the water intermittently. This will be important later.
I think the girl's feeling matter just as much as yours, little guy. Shame I can't add you to my team, though. Maybe if you learned Liquidation at a reasonable level.
Of all the reasons to dislike Dewpider, this is... one of them.
On one hand, I don't think that's sweat.
On the other hand, I think you need to leave your father. This is an issue that's a bit more serious than you're making it sound.
Have a long heart-to-heart with your Dad about how inappropriate he is acting around his daughter. And possibly an ultimatum.
But no, apparently we're supposed to be encouraging her to get along with the Dewpider. Yes, this isn't the Dewpider's fault. But no, the New Alola Dex has 398 other choices, she does not need to use the Dewpider if she does not want to.
Although admittedly, might be a little hard to do the Water Trial if you don't want to hang around Araquanid...
It might. It also might not.
If you want to get along with Dewpider, I assure you, I am not the person you want as your first opponent. I am going to make you doubt Dewpider's credentials.
Flat 20 IVs, Serious Nature, no EVs, no assigned moves, level 28. You knew exactly what this Pokemon was going to look like.
Oneshot by Ridley's HP Electric.
If you want, I can get you another Clamperl?
...Lisa. Lisa. You are not selfish. You are dangerously unselfish. Stand up for yourself. And how are you impressed with this Dewpider.
As a reward, this is also pretty... meh. We're also running relatively low on things to catch in Net Balls in the forseeable future.
I mean, if you felt that, great. I didn't get that vibe. At all.
Scenes like this just aren't designed assuming that you won't oneshot the opposing Pokemon in one move.
At this point, the Hiker leaps out of the water and jumps into the scene, putting down his Slowpoke before he starts laughing.
...All of a sudden this scene gets even worse.
I mean, it's probably the garden water.
...Hey, are members of the public supposed to be swimming in that? I know for a fact that I'm not allowed to deploy my Lapras in there, but...
My opinion on your relationship with your father has not changed.
Well, OK, it has. Get out now.
And possibly change your name and Trainer Class.
Poor Slowpoke gets left behind. Do you want to join my team? I need something to evolve into Slowking when I eventually get my hands on a King's Rock...
(Ironically, if you want a King's Rock during the main story of SM, Malie Garden is the best place to do it. Finding Poliwhirls here is awful, though- this just says more about the other alternatives, or lack thereof.)
Anyway, we have Minior, so Ailey can go get her paycheck.
...Slightly creepy. How much so depends on what exactly that shell is made out of, on a biological level. Like, is the shell part of the Minior, and how OK is it with getting rid of it and growing it back? These are the questions you don't really ask as a mechanical designer.
All the jobs are becoming pretty drop-in-the-bucket in the face of just how much money I'm making, but every bit counts.
As a reminder, he has no interest in acquiring a Minior of his own. He's just weird like that.
I'm told this is after Sophocles's Trial, but I usually find you need to beat Guzma in Malie Garden to shake up the Event Flags and get Sophocles and Molayne out of this room for this to trigger.
The Charjabug Roller was charming enough a mechanic for the devs, especially considering that it's a brand new mechanic to USUM, that they decided to get their money's worth and add a few extra puzzles. Only four, and they're all unlocked now, but the Pokemon devs aren't exactly making puzzle games.
That was part of the Trial, but I suppose it could come in handy for the reminder.
For the puzzles, we are doing this for the sake of testing our noggins, not for connecting an electrical current, so we must comply with more artificial rules too. All puzzles must be completed in four actions, no less, and direction does play a role in our solutions.
The four puzzles are arranged by difficulty. Weirdly, I don't think it's a gradual slope.
The Easy puzzle is pretty easy, but not brain-dead.
You just need to push these three corner buttons once each. You also must push top-left before top-right. Otherwise, there are no surprises.
Although this puzzle does teach us that the Roller now causes the Charjabug to change the direction they are facing by 90 degrees every time they are Rolled.
No rewards for solving anything but the hardest puzzle.
Normal, meanwhile... might actually be easier than the Easy puzzle?
There is only one correct solution this time (well, OK, I assume bottom-right, top-left, bottom-right is also a valid solution), but it's still the same thing. You know exactly where each Charjabug must go, each one only moves thanks to one Roller, and you have a set order to do it in. Was one of these puzzles supposed to have a slightly different mechanic?
You going to ramp up the difficulty?
Yes he is. While Easy and Normal are both relatively trivial, Hard and Super Hard both gave me plenty of trouble, and I was sitting here for a good half-hour- or more- trying to figure out the solutions.
OK, I have no idea what I was expecting to happen with this orientation.
The Hard one did take less time than the Super Hard one...
And I'm not 100% sure I caught my successful solution. It looks like bottom-left, bottom-left, bottom-left, bottom-right: In the end, this only used half the puzzle board.
I'm also the same kid who (somehow) knows about astronomical magnitude. Apparently Ailey is just really good at the sorts of puzzles here.
This one... this one's sadistic. Also, yes, despite being set on diagonals, the rotational rule still applies.
Even knowing what the solution is, I'm not 100% sure which Charjabug is going on which panel in the completed solution.
As wrong solutions go, this one was pretty close.
I think I hate this false solution the most. If I had five actions, this would be a valid solve. I probably attempted this exact solve like ten times looking for the correct one.
Nope, they're serious about orientation this time.
See what I mean about accidentally repeating this solution so many times?
No idea what's going on here. You get loopy after long enough.
So close. The bottom Charjabug will be in position with one more push of bottom-left, that is if the centre one wouldn't be shifted.
I'm much better at Picross than I am at these sliding puzzles.
My only question is how.
That's a new and unique way of getting the orientation wrong.
Finally, at long last, I cracked the correct solution. Top-right, top-left, top-right, bottom-right. I'm not 100% sure how I stumbled into it, but I am so glad I screenshotted it so Ray didn't have to go through that.
There are, I believe, only 256 possible attempts, although the fact I attempted one of them multiple times tells you it would take a lot more than 256 attempts to get that by random chance.
As a prize, we get a PP Max. Probably not going to use it- I can farm Leppas like crazy- but you never know when I might need a 5 PP move more than five times in one fight. Or something.
I'm still not used to getting PP Maxes as prizes in-game, to be honest. There even were some in my first games DPPt, but admittedly not in places I visited often as a kid.
Yeah, replaying this sort of puzzle isn't quite as charming on its own.
Glad someone likes them. I think I know where Veeka's going after her retirement.
Next time: I don't think I can adequately explain what happened- especially since it technically happened before a lot of this update.
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