09 05 2022

Crystal: Went through Ice Path, which was easier and better than I remember. Moving block puzzles are pretty annoying on the GB pokemon, but this seemed to go better than Victory Road. Not only that, Crystal has an enhanced tileset for this area. I can’t tell if this is GBC specific enhancements or just ‘we had more time to work on it’ enhancements. A lot of story specific areas have been subtly improved, but this feels like the most noticeable one. Makes me wonder if the release schedule had been a little different if we would’ve gotten a game that takes advantage of more of the GBC’s hardware. I don’t think we actually got too many games that did that, but I think everyone knew the GBA was on the horizon. 

    Decided to just get the Master Ball by beating Clair and getting the 8th badge. I’ve had terrible luck getting Raikou, so I’ll just leave my 1 pixel Entei as the last challenge to catch. Post-game, for the birds I should have enough cash to burn on ultra balls. In Crystal, at level 41 Suicune learns Aurora Beam. Despite being under level, I can also take on things with my Haunter and Miltank. As backup, I’ve kept using Haunter’s Curse to make up for damage. All the Dratinis/Dragonair were easy to take out with Suicune. Legendary stats in this part of the game mean that Suicune can take a direct Thunderbolt and shake it off like any other attack. That’s been the main incentive getting the Trio. Kingra went down between Haunter and Miltank. I had thought about bringing something else, but I remembered I needed Miltank to be the unusually tanky Normal type. 

    Clair is one of the Gym Leaders they actually gave a little bit of character. She can’t believe she lost to you! Some kid! Yeah! I would too! I also think she’s supposed to be somewhere around older teens, maybe early twenties. She isn’t full pouty yet, she’s from some sort of dragon clan thing, as I soon learn. Lance is from here too apparently. She sends us to the Dragon Den to complete a trial. It’s guarded by some trainers but… Only one overeager guy is a mandatory battle? Kinda don’t get why there’s random trainers on the shore, but I’ll take the exp. Honestly, this is one of the things I would love for a 3rd person pokemon game. They kinda make it work on the GBC, but it is still limited by the Tileset. Crystal also adds an interior that was carried over to HGSS. HGSS also makes this more obvious, but it’s a shrine in an underground lake cave. It has to be entered in through the ‘back’ of the building that faces the camera, through a side path requiring whirlpool. Inside I had to answer a quiz about what makes a good trainer to prove me worthy. Clair runs in and can’t believe I passed! Wow! She runs off because she assumed this kid would fail. Hey, Clair. Kids can be nice. Can be. She angrily awards the badge after being reminded that the elder could tell Lance she’s being a baby. (and not doing her official duties. oops.) She apologizes when I leave. Now, the guide has this in a different order, so I’m fuzzy on which flag activates it. I went and got the Dragon Claw after and walked back inside. Talking to the elder gave me a gift Dratini with Extremespeed. Definitely going to transfer that up if I’m able to. Not enough experience here to raise it. 

    I went down to Professor Elm, he said he had something for me. Hooray the Master Ball. Glad I went and got reminded about when it’s awarded. Instantly ran off to find Raikou on Route 38 and got very lucky. No reset required. Finally have that down. According to the catch rate calc, my Entei has a 50% chance of being caught in 11 balls, but I haven’t had much luck encountering it. Well, I didn’t have much luck. It took way too many hours of just resetting to get an encounter where Quick Claw activates so Haunter moves first, Entei gets hit by Hypnosis, hit by Mean Look, stays asleep for multiple turns, doesn’t use Roar, and doesn’t kill Haunter. I got an usually low amount of encounters using the method I felt like checking. Got too many where I couldn’t outspeed (Quick Claw). During a live stream I was watching, I got a second encounter where the planets aligned and thankfully it stayed in the ball with little fuss. I saved my game and turned off the 3DS. I had to backup my SD card right now. SanDisk is pretty reliable but it can happen. People lost whole ACNL towns and stuff. Now that Entei is here, I sat at Bill’s Box system and… went and caught a Poliwhirl. Well, I caught a Poliwag thinking the encounter table I was reading was right and got a high level Poliwhirl. A few moments later and I had the ability to use Strength, Whirlpool, and Waterfall on one pokemon. Also backup Hypnosis since Haunter went into the box. I know I’ll have an easier time working around Psychic types with other pokemon. On the trip through the routes into Kanto and Victory Road, I’ll be using Suicune, Raikou, Entei, Miltank, Xatu, and Poliwhirl.