30 04 2022

Crystal: Now that I have a Quagsire, I put a few more levels on some other pokemon with wild encounters just in case and went into Burned Tower. I had forgotten how tight money was in GSC, and didn’t have a lot of potions and status removers to work with going into the rival battle. I ended up resetting to get what I needed and better luck on the Haunter the rival has. After playing Yellow, I now have the idea to maybe run a smaller team. I didn’t need everyone to win this one. I could play the type effectiveness game, but it seems like there’s still a bit of the part of the game that is just damage based on RPG stats. Quagsire could probably deal with ghosts well enough. Party swapping is viable to a point, and I’m at the beginning of that point. My opponents are just hitting lv20 right now and (IIRC) a lot of wild pokemon until Victory Road are in the 20s. Let’s see what I catch.

    I forgot how much of a jerk the original dialogue was for the rival, noticing it so much more this time. He loses but still berates me for falling down a hole. Walk over after landing and awaken the roaming trio. Suicune sticks around a little longer to check the player character out and Eusine is jealous. Now that that’s over, I can challenge Morty. I bring Gastly in ant Lv18 and bring it to 22 by the end. Between Gastly, Quagsire, and Hoothoot I can get through all the gym trainers and Morty. After the trainers leading up, I went and stocked up on Awakenings now that I had money. Curse should be painful but I have pokemon to swap to. Gengar is super focused on Hypnosis/Dream Eater so I had to reset and make sure I had extra Awakenings. The failure chance of NPC status moves still was rolling heavy on me. Since Gengar is first it’d go Hypnosis to sleeping message, then the next turn I Awaken my pokemon to make Dream Eater miss. Then next turn the Gengar tries to do that combo again. If I bring in Ghastly it gets one-shot by Shadowball. I’m saving Hoothoot for the final Haunter because it’s not beefy enough to take on Gengar. Eventually I get enough turns to pull off enough Surfs and Gengar goes down, eventually. Hoothoot secret MVP for being normal type (Immune to Ghost) and having access to Flying moves. Put the Haunter to sleep, Peck into oblivion.

With Morty defeated, I can now Surf. So many places to go. Immediately I go get a Natu, after looking up how to get there. I forgot it was Union Cave that was connected with the extra areas in Ruins of Alph. With how moveset and TM availability are, I wonder if Xatu is worth it actually, but a part of me wants to keep going with it. Went and got a Taurus, a Miltank, and a Growlithe. Never tried using Miltank before so going to keep it. Hoping Quagsire holds up to Jasmine when I get to her. Tried to force first Entei/Raikou encounters but no luck. Worked off of NPC dialogue for once and got the HM for Strength. Went up the lighthouse and met Jasmine nursing the Ampharos. What I find interesting is the interior, by limitation or by design, just feels like a dungeon. The outside uses the normal building template so it just looks like a tall apartment building in GSC. Despite the dungeon interior, Jasmine is caring for ampharos in what looks like a cozy bedroom on the top floor. I want to go check my SoulSilver save since I was just in the area, but I need to remember how the interior is in the remake. 

Surfed over to Cianwood, which was harder than expected. Well, I could’ve gone back and healed before continuing. Caught random pokemon along the way, failed to catch a Mantine. I swear the catch rate sometimes expects you to have false swipe + sleep all the time. Wasted 20 poke and great balls on it. I was so close and couldn’t remember how far back on route 41 I was, so I didn’t reset. My only true transfer hunting is for the legendaries and some of the ingame trades. I thought about getting all of them, but Gen I and II in game trades aren’t really that interesting. To me, anyway. 

I walked north in Cianwood thinking there was some stuff there, and there was! The Suicune event here led to a battle with Eusine. Was not fully prepared for it, but I had a team that could handle him. Afterwards, in quick succession I beat Chuck and Jasmine. I had leveled up Magnemite for some reason, so it helped with chuck as backup for Xatu. I forgot the fun little bit of character in the NPCs here, Chuck’s wife gives you the HM for Fly. Jasmine took a little more effort but went alright. Quagsire was taking some big damage. In my head I remember there being a little more to this part but that could be HGSS. Or just me getting stuck here multiple times due to pacing. 

I forget if there’s some hint where to go next, Jasmine isn’t the talkative type. With the way Johto’s map is laid out it’s kind of obvious which way to go. Back to Ecruteak, to Route 42, to Mt. Mortar. Nah, I just played GenI with its annoying cave dungeons. I’ll skip on Mt. Mortar this time. Will trek in there later to get the gift pokemon. Mahogany has some stuff going on. Shady folks and blocked entrances to places. Something’s going on at Lake of Rage! A quick trip north passing some rocket goons has some people huddled around the lake wondering about the Gyarados sprite. 

A quick catch later and the pokemon that is supposed to be some sort of introduction to shiny pokemon is in my Box. When I was a kid I thought only this one was special. I had a Blastoise and another pokemon that were a different color in Stadium. I have vague memories of having another shiny back then and not understanding it for a while. Shiny pokemon didn’t have any meaning until the GBA. I want to say the pokemon I saw shiny in person other than the Red Gyarados didn’t have as noticeable color differences.