Tobi Nuzlockes: The other gyms

Before going on the next quest, a friend of mine was kind enough to trade me some gals from Pokémon Omega Ruby (the less cool, loser version that the hip kids don’t choose). I’m now a Seedot richer, which is good because I like to dump Pokémon in the PC when they reached their final form. My new “;-|” the Seedot will be able to take over for Grass or Dark types if the opportunity comes.

Next up on the agenda is going all the way back to the home town. Brandon offers to take me, and I won’t say no to a free teleport. We instantly make it to the next gym, which is run by my dad. His gym specialises in Normal-type Pokemon and using performance enhancers. Didgeridoo knows a double kick, move, which ensures none of these people offer any sort of challenge. I normally like Normal types, but they are pretty consistently lame in this version sadly enough. Poor Norman feels the crushing weight of being effortly schooled by his daughter who didn’t start Pokémoning until a week ago. Maybe it’s time he re-thinks his life choices.

Badge Count: 5

Outside of the gym crybaby Wally and his dad give me HM03 Surf in the hope I won’t trash him again. Maybe it’s because I was feeling generous, or maybe it’s because the game wouldn’t let me kick his ass, but I graciously spared him. Wally then teleports me back to Mauville to make up for the massive amount of backtracking I would have had to do, so this means I can now press on again.

Before I do that however I got another trade Pokémon from my bud. This time I got a Zangoose, which I appreciate a lot, since I could never catch it myself in this version of the game. That said, since Zangoose has no evolutions, I will never ever not once use her. 

Steven spots me roaming around the world and ropes me into going on a magic carpet (read: latios) ride to an abandoned island. This is where we find a Latias, whom Team Aqua wants to snag away from us. I don’t care either way, but when Steven asks me if I want to fuck dudes up, I cannot refuse. Protecting the Latias made it make a bloodpact with me, and now I own it. Steven also gives me a thing that allows me to digivolve this Latias. I don’t know why people constantly give me free stuff, but I’ll gladly take it. Sadly enough Steven nor this Latias knew what I do with Pokémon that can’t evolve, so this Latias and its precious rock are both getting hoarded in my PC forever. 

Pressing on, a fisherman asks me if I can appreciate a nice rod. Hell yeah I do, so I tell him exactly that. Pleased with my enthusiasm, he gives me his rod, which the game tells me is quite good. I also find Team Aqua attacking a weather institute. They reveal their plan again to destroy the world, which they question may or may not be a super duper idea. OH WELL. The weather people give me a Castform, which I immediately box away, never to see sunlight again.

A long boring trek later, I meet Brandon again who forgot his place once more. He challenges me to a duel in which he gets crushed quite hard. I take his lunch money and his HM02 Fly. FINALLY! This is the single most precious move to me in the entire game, because it lets you fast-travel to every city you’ve been to. Sadly enough I’m not allowed to use it yet, because I don’t have a permit.

I then arrive to Tarzanville, a town full of treehouses. A kid there wanted to trade a Spinda for a Skitty, and since Spinda doesn’t evolve and Skitty does, I kindly agreed to it. I had the fortune that this Skitty was a girl, so she won’t be instantly discarded. The town itself is pretty boring and annoying to navigate, so I try to go to the gym, but for some reason I’m blocked by an invisible wall. checking around a bit, I notice Steven who tells me the invisible walls are actually cameleon Pokémon. That’s not how camouflage works, but I won’t break my head too much over it. He gives me more stuff and I can do the gym now, so back I go! The gym turns out to be a flying one. Flying types are weak to electric, rock or ice attacks, and I have exactly zero of those. Time to brute-force my way through this thing. I won’t lie, I did not have the easiest time here, and I had to go heal up after pretty much every single fight. 

Badge Count: 6

Armed with my new badge, I can finally fly to my heart’s content now! Sadly enough I noticed that none of my decent Pokémon were capable of flight, and I don’t care enough to switch one out yet. I hope back on my bike and wade my way through tall grass and puddles. One of the trainer encounters with a delinquent trainer sadly enough cost me the life of my newly traded Skitty “Sketit”. I wasn’t really planning on making much use of this little kittycat, but its name (which I did not give) made me laugh. RIP Sketit, may you encounter no Sharpedos in the Poké-afterlife. As I slowly make the funeral march back to Pokémon Centre, I suddenly get mobbed by a swarm of FIVE ODDISH. I don’t approve of this duel-battle nonsense that this game sometimes does, and triple battles are especially a no-no, but a horde of FIVE ODDISH invading my funeral is just unacceptable. I incinerate all but one of them, and take it as my prisoner.

I pass the Safari Zone, which apparently is free nowadays. It’s hard to argue with that price, but I still can’t be arsed. I just made use of their PC and went on my way again. I arrived at the town of Lillycove, which is pretty uneventful. By that I mean there’s no gym here, and only contests and places that foreshadow Team Aqua stuff. They tell me to go to Mt Pyre, and so I do. It appears to be a cemetery built inside a mountain that is only accessible by boat or water pokémon. Sounds kind of cruel to make morning people go through all that hassle, but Hoenn is not exactly known for its convenience and hospitality. Lots of fights later, I make it to the top. Team Aqua found a blue rock, which is part of their master plan. They bail and I get its red sister-orb. Before they bail, they tell me they’re going to Slateport. Ugh, it’s going to be one of those sequences, is it? I drudge my way to Slateport, fight some dudes and hear that they stole a submarine there. Where I need to go now is back to Lillyport again. They had a not super secret base over here, so I storm that one. I fight a lot of identical Pokémon load-outs again, and make it to the submarine. Team Aqua Admin Matt challenges me to a duel again and says the word “bro” a lot. His characterisation is as weak as his Pokémon, because I smoke his lineup once more. While this waste of time was wasting my time, the submarine takes off again. Goody.

Not sure what to do now, I wander around the world for a while until I reach another town. Finally one with a gym. It’s a psychic gym, which I’m not really equipped to deal with. Once again I am forced to brute force my way through, rather than play strategically, but I pull it off nonetheless. 

Badge Count: 7

As I walk out the gym, a beacon of light shines out of the sea. Steven appears and gives me Dive and tells me to go over to the beacon. Easier said than done. After lots of aimless swimming and diving, I find the right place. Even Though I can’t read it anywhere, I feel like the cave I’m in is called the cave of Golbat-y Despair. I swear there is nothing in here but Golbats and they pop up every 5 seconds. Luckily I bought some repels. Actually I fibbed there a bit. There are other things in this cave too. Lots of Not-Team-Rockets. Team Aqua is here with their identical pokémon load-outs again. I kick their ass, as well as their leader Archie’s. For whatever reason he still thinks reviving Kyogre is a good idea, in spite of the world-ending consequences that even the smallest child could predict. He proceeds to do exactly that, and OOOH MY GOOOOOD FLOODING THE WORLD IS BAD?! Well suckle on my earlobes and call me Colonel Mustard. This is such a huge, unforeseen twist.

Whatever, Tobi and his near-infinite supply of Ultra Balls will fix this.Good thing I did buy a crazy amount of them too, because it took me nearly 20 balls to catch this guy. Catching him solved the global flood problem and turned everything back to normal. The criminal organisation that was behind it said they were sorry and don’t need to go to jail or anything.

There’s also a water type gym after this, which Guttertrash one-shot her was through.

Badge Count: 8

Now that I had all the badges, it was time to head to the Victory Road. That place was surprisingly short. It did have Wally, whom I’m not sure what he’s doing in here. I don’t think the guy had any badges, going by how weak and pathetic he is.

The Elite Four is nothing special either. I took them out with pretty much just Didgeridoo and Guttertrash, who were just so much higher level than anyone else. I beat the Elite Four and face the current champion… Steven. He absolutely trashes my party, which caught me by surprise. I was able to pull through with the sole survivor being Guttertrash the Ludiculo. A few brave Pokémon gave their lives so I could heal him back up. It was an absolute massacre, but I emerged victorious. Brendan and Professor Birch were late to the party as usual. He thinks that people that can beat the Petalburg Gym leader have what it takes to become a champion, but that was seriously one of the most effortless gyms in the game.

I immortalise my crew in the Hall of Fame:

Didgeridoo the Blaziken (RIP)

Costly Willy the Kyogre (RIP)

Guttertrash the Ludiculo

Glossles the Aggron (RIP)

Nimbuzzard the Altaria (RIP)

Super Souper the Alakazam (RIP)

Brendan cheekily thinks he has the right to challenge me to a duel during the credits too. Pretty unfair, since 5 of my 6 mons just passed away. He tried to cover this fact up by healing everyone back up, but THATS NOT HOW WE DO THINGS. I decided to exclusively use Guttertrash for this fight, and we still easily disposed of him. This is why I’m a champ and you aren’t, Brandan. Know your place.

Afterwards a weird cutscene took place, which I almost mistook for my 3DS freezing. That should tell you plenty about how lovely and interactive it was. Whatever it is, it’s none of my business, as I beat the game!

Final thoughts:

I’ve never been a huge fan of the third generation of Pokémon, and while plenty of my original issues were still present, quite a few were also resolved. Along with that, there are also a substantial amount of improvements in its core systems. If you’re going to play Ruby or Sapphire, this is by far the best way to play these games. They’re faster, more convenient, nicer looking and contain a lot more features.

Concerning the Nuzlocke Run I think it was a moderate success. It did make me feel a lot more invested than I normally do. I did notice one small issue however, and it’s one that’s an extension of a problem I usually have when playing these games. I usually end up rotating my team very little, and focus on two of three monsters to play the entire game. I basically ended up doing the same thing here, causing me to have two mons that were like 15~20 levels above everyone else at all times. I think if I do another Nuzlocke, and I honestly think I might, I’d definitely look into a rule that would force me to switch things up more. Not having to rely on just two would have prevented me from getting slaughtered as much as I did in the Championship match. Either way, I can definitely recommend a Nuzlocke Challenge to any Pokémon veteran.

Tobi Nuzlockes: First four gyms

Badge Count: 0

Went to pick my first Pokémon from Professor Bitch. For someone that dedicated his life to Pokémon, he sure got punked pretty easily. Saved right before picking a starter so I could soft-reset until I got a girl. I alternated between all three until I finally got a dame, which ended up being my very own Torchic. The name ‘Didgeridoo’ was kindly provided to me for my new Fire type friend. After making my way up town, my other “friend” Brendan challenged me to a duel with his opposite typed creature. I’m glad I got a free potion from the Pokémart flyer-peddler, because Brendan almost smoked me with a lucky shot. The first monster I caught myself turned out to be a puny little Wurmple named ‘Spools’. She turned out not to be very capable or cool, so I’m afraid she’ll be out as soon as she reaches her final form. Luckily these things usually evolve quite quickly.

I finally confronted the first Gym Leader, Roxanne. She uses rock Pokémon, which the NPCs tell me render my starter completely useless. Not good, since Didgeridoo was my best one by quite a margin. Health was dropping fast from all my best dudes, and it turned out the only seemingly viable mon I had was the Lotad ‘Guttertrash’. She had a water move, but also couldn’t take a punch from pokémon of that level. Luckily she has a move at her disposal, Teeter Dance, that reliably confuses dudes. She kept going STOP HITTING YOURSELF to Nosepass over and over again, while also blowing bubbles up its nose. We managed to overcome the challenge with a sliver of health left, earning ourselves the Gym badge!

Badge Count: 1

Exiting the gym, a scientist was running and screaming that Devon was robbed. All of it?! Either way I go a little bit east of town to a cave. Here I find the robber and molleywhop his pets until he gives his loot back. I take personally take it back to the president of Devon, who gives me a miniature TV. I quickly figured out that nothing good is ever on, so I won’t be turning it back on any time soon. For some reason he didn’t want to keep the stolen loot and asked me to give it to someone else. The president also told me take a boat to an island town to meet with that person. I don’t question it and do what he says. On my way to the boat, I talk to someone that gives me a watering can. May not sound like much, but it appears that watering berries greatly improves the amount of berries you can pick up again. While I’ll probably break this oath out of forgetfulness or laziness, I am going to try and water every berry I plant.

A sea trip later I found myself on the aforementioned island. It’s quite small and doesn’t appear to have a lot going for it. I enter the gym, which appears to be dilapidated. Lights barely seem to function, unless you stand on a giant button on the floor. I don’t know who designed this place, but I prey (s)he sought another profession after this project. I make my way through the gym and sports equipment in the dark and end up in a room with the gym leader. His name is Brawly, which is a stupid name for a person. I bet it’s not his real name. Having Didgiridoo on me, who is a burd, I smoked his fighting type monsters effortlessly.

Badge Count: 2

I go up north of town and find a cave. The cave leads to cavern that had a giant mural of a Pokémon. Steven, the person the president wanted me to meet, was there, looking at the mural. I don’t think it was anything special though. It’s a cave painting of the Pokémon from the box art. The box art also had the Pokémon in full colour and with better detail. Steven is clearly easily impressed. He does compliment me that I’ve got the potential to be the best there ever was, which also ties into him being easily impressed. I’m aiming for mediocrity, booo-i. He also tells me to deliver the stolen good to yet ANOTHER person. When he bails, I do as well.

Taking the boat back, the captain tells me he we can go to another place, and I accept his offer. We end up on a beach with the angriest people. Everyone is looking for a fight. Tired of fighting, I go hide in a bar on the beach, but the owner tells me that I should beat everyone up for his entertainment. I can do that, and I will do that. He ended up giving me something, but I don’t remember what. Probably not super important. I move on north into town. I figured out where the person I need to meet works, but he’s not at his job. Figured that this wouldn’t be straightforward either. I ended up finding him in the museum that was being plundered by Team Aqua. Since those guys are incompetent, I easily disposed of them. Their leader went on a silly I COULD TOTES KICK YOUR ASS BUT IM NOT WEARING MY ASS-KICKING SOCKS TODAY SO YOU ARE LUCKY *bails with tail between legs* spree, but I didn’t care.

On another side of the town I met a Pokémon contest idol, who made me her protegé. I entered the COOLNESS contest with my Tailow ‘Redbobs’. Redbobs has nothing but Cool-type moves, so I absolutely smoked the competition. As my reward, I got a Pikachu in a tacky dress. Speaking of tacky dresses, somehow along the way I got one forced onto me as well. Not just that, but apparently I made a non-verbal agreement to always wear the thing whenever I enter a contest. The lesson from this story is that I probably won’t be entering any more contests.

I left town and stopped by the TRICK HOUSE. Sounding completely awesome, I of course entered it straight away. Turns out that the Trick House was just a house with a hedge maze inside. Not the tricks I was thinking of, and frankly it wasn’t very tricky either. Perhaps it came closest to Prince Tricky from Star Fox Adventures, as he was an annoying waste of my time too. I left that place asap and stumbled on my bro Brendan. He challenged me to a fight, which he really should not have done. I was Super Effective-ing his face off like there was no tomorrow. That boy can consider himself lucky he isn’t doing a Nuzlocke run, because I made a vow to annihilate every single one of his pets.

Speaking of insufferable candy-asses that need my destructive intervention, when I entered Mauville I saw Wally again. I didn’t mention Wally earlier, but Wally and I go way back. Back before I was the badass that you see before you today, I had zero badges and wandered in my dad’s gym. Wally was there and begged for a Pokémon to my dad. The lazy jerk saddled me with that job and I had to babysit him getting a Ralts. He apparently moved to Mauville, and he’s still the same crybaby loser he was back home. I got asked if I wanted to fight him, and I don’t know what caught me off guard more. The audacity to challenge ME to a fight when he knows he’s out of his league, or the fact that he asked and gave me a choice. A real trainer would have looked me straight in the eye and told me that we were going to tango whether I liked it or not. I really wanted to shut his ass down and not give him the time of day, but I guess I liked the prospect of crushing him and feasting on his tears more. Naturally I let Didgeridoo incinerate his feeble Ralts and he seemed to be really depressed about it. Here’s to hoping he gives up his dream of becoming a trainer. Since I’m right in front of the gym, I may as well tackle it as well. I don’t even need to heal my Pokémon up again, because Wally is such a bad, pathetic excuse of a trainer.

My lombre Guttertrash is most suited for an Electricity gym. She’s mixed race (Water/Grass), carrying both the strength and weakness of the gym with her. The perks of being the highest level mon in capable hands is that you can rise above types like that. If I needed any help, Didgeridoo was ready to double kick her way through the scraps.

Badge Count: 3

I’m afraid the first casualty was made today. I’d like to ask for a moment of silence for dear old Cloneasaurus the Plusle. He did not survive old trusted 'put a mofo in front and change it out in your first turn to a better one so they can share experience' technique. There are more dignified ways than to perish to a Zubat, so Cloneasaurus and I were probably not meant to be anyway.

Then a long pile of nothing happened. I got a sack to put soot in and I met an IT lady who made my Pokémon Storage System or whatever. Nothing eventful for hours basically. Ultimately I arrived at a cave where Team Aqua kidnapped Mr Science because he had a piece of meteor on him. I showed them who’s boss. Those rascals then made their way up a volcano and I chased them there, and claimed that meteorite for my own. For future reference, here is the summary of every Team Aqua battle in the future: the same zillion bats and dogs over and over again and no one is having a good time.

I finally drudge my way to the next city where an old lady shoves a Pokémon egg in my hands. You may think this is super cool, but to me this is just a massive pain in the arse. This means that I’ll lose a valuable slot in my party, because the egg can’t be put in my bag next to my keys, soot and cellphone. Even worse is that there may be a male Pokémon inside that egg, making this a completely worthless endeavour.

Luckily this town does have a hot springs gym. The gymmick (heh) is that slow geysers push you up and down floors. Guttertrash knows some water moves by now, so a fire type gym is laughable at this point. I clean up as fast as the stupid geysers let me, and I earn a badge and some goggles.

Badge Count: 4

Tobi Nuzlockes: Rules

Perhaps a small introduction is needed for the uninitiated. The 'Nuzlocke challenge' started when one day someone got bored of playing a regular vanilla game of Pokémon, and decided to add house-rules to spice things up. Doing so allowed him to explore and really make good use of the complexer mechanics that the series has to offer. He documented his journey and experiences, and inspired many others to do the same.

Considering I have beaten quite a few Pokémon games already and the fatigue started to settle in, I decided that it may be time I gave this a shot too. With the recent release of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, this was the perfect time for me to jump in. I'll be playing the Alpha Sapphire one because that's the one I saw first in the online store, making it the best version of the two. Arbitrary rules and difficulty may be just the thing I need. I settled on the following list:

Rules

• In Memoriam: Any pokémon that faints will be considered dead. The use of Revives is strictly forbidden, as is raising mons from the dead in a Pokécentre. Should an NPC accidentally heal my party, I have to adhere to the honour system and skill consider it to be dead.
• Gravekeeper: They will be deposited in the last PC box, which shall be considered to be my ‘graveyard’. This method will allow me to keep a neater log of my fallen comrades.
• Game Over: The Nuzlocke challenge will be officially over when I am completely wiped out and have no more Pokémon. At that point, I’ll have to decide whether or not I have to start an entirely new save, or to continue playing Pokémon in the vanilla way using my boxed Pokémon.
• Patriarchy Protest: I shall only catch female or genderless Pokémon. If I get a male Pokemon through trading, he should get boxed. We'll be strong independent women and we won’t need no man. *snaps fingers and bobs head* The reason for this rule is to be pickier with who I can catch (including Legendaries), adding another layer of challenge.
• Highlander:I will only have one Pokémon per species. First one I catch of a species will be the one I stick with. This rule is to prevent catching the same few critters over and over again to avoid having to level or comparing stats.
• Pikachu is “Pizza” in the UK: Any Pokémon I will catch will get a nickname. This little bit of personalisation will make deads hit harder than they already do.
• Dittos Can Be Classy Too: I shall not use a Ditto for breeding Pokémon. Similarly, I can only breed Pokémon when the purpose is to donate an egg to someone else, or to get a pre-evolution form. Breeding for stats or natures is explicitly forbidden.
• Pokénewbie: While I’ve technically already played this game before, in the form of the original, I will still play this version as blind as possible. This means I will not look anything up. This means no checking which Pokémon are available and where they are, no looking up Gym Leaders, no looking up levels of when Pokémon evolve,... nothing. The only thing I'm going on is what I know and what I can figure out through the game itself.

And that's about it! Kind of excited to see how far I'll get, and just how doable it is. I'm usually a pretty lazy Pokémon trainer, so I also wonder what affect it'll have on my play style and enjoyment of the game. I'll be keeping a log of my adventure, which I may occasionally post if I remember to actually do it. Wish me luck!