10 05 2022

Crystal: The road to the Pokemon League is thankfully a gauntlet but a less annoying one than last Gen. Honestly, the reduced emphasis on caves was super smart. There’s a few of them but they’re less annoying than Gen I. I wonder how many complaints Game Freak received from kids back then. Note to self that I WILL forget: Look up if anyone translated some stuff from the era. I wonder if the delayed timeline led to the feeling like an editor went and cut stuff. Truncated Victory Road feel like time has passed. I feel like the weird assembly of parts in Gen II accidentally made a fun vague amount of time passed. The palette and layout of the routes from Johto to League have a good feel of a fun rural trail. The trainer fights having Kanto/Gen I favs is pretty fun too. Once inside the Victory Road cave, I was glad it was simpler. Maybe they knew some people would be grinding the roaming pokemon and would be pretty tired of some of the game’s BS. 

    At the end of the Victory Road cave, There’s a Rival battle. He’s mellowed out a bit. Still a jerk, just less cartoon and more finding himself. That said, I forgot the trigger for the event is some tile before the exit. So uhh. Luckily I got the legendary pokemon, so it was fine despite no prep. He finally gets the idea that maybe he is screwing up. He promises to get better and he will fight again.

    A quick trip back home to store money in the savings account and a quick trip back to the mart to get some healing items, I give the Elite Four and champion a go. I kept the team I took to Victory Road, but swapped Poliwhirl for Donphan. I figured for any stall tactics, the bulkier Donphan will hold up a little more for later fights. I have less play-by-play since I was gambling way less this time. I didn’t plan well on Will other than just use the secondary typing to win over the team, and Koga goes the same. However, Koga’s Muk is a Minimize Muk and so I just spammed attacks until it died. Got a little worried since I didn’t pay full attention to how many potions I got and I should’ve gotten more. Oh well. 

Xatu was not high level enough to fully deal with Bruno’s team. Their levels and damage output mean that I eventually had to tap out to heal multiple times and also just take out Machamp with one of the legends. Cross Chip does a ton of damage. Karen was the hardest fight so far. Umbreon does a lot of damage to my Miltank and it took multiple pokemon to deal with, the rest of her team went way smoother. Miltank helped bring down Gengar, for how scary Gengar is though it didn’t do that much to even Xatu. I had used half of my potions by the end of her fight and it got me worried about Lance. 

I double check my team and put NeverMeltIce on Suicune, hoping that would help. It helped. Lance’s Dragonites got sent out first in order and Suicune held up way better than expected. I figured the level gap would make it more even, but after how difficult Gen I was and the grind I did in this game. Look, I realized this was one of the few times I’d get a chance to bring three full legendaries that have very nice but not completely bonkers stats to the initial Elite Four. Sometimes I bring none, Sometimes I bring one. I can’t remember an opportunity where I got two through, some of those event distributed ones are hard to fit in a team. Raikou and Suicune clean up the rest of his team and I’m champion. Whew. 

It feels satisfying to have beaten Crystal’s Elite Four. It’s been a long time since I had this many nice pokes, but still had some challenging fights. I do wish the level curve was less absurd, it would’ve been nice if some of my team strategy didn’t use “could be sacrificial” as an option, but them holding up as well as they have despite level gaps gives me hope I could luck through Red like I did the first time in Gold. A lot of pokemon get their movesets around Level 50 to 70, but this game doesn’t give you a good way to deal with that. It was finally nice to get a Game Boy pokemon game’s hall of fame with Crystal’s girl trainer. Been racking my brain as to what happened that made me not get Crystal, may have been something in whatever gap between Japanese coverage when I found out about it on fansites and US release. Those years were… not kind to me. It also doesn’t feel as “oh gosh finally done!” as Yellow did because I know there’s a lot of pokemon to still do. I have no idea if I’ll get a chance to level an actual team for Red. I think I did it in Gold because I had very specific answers to Red’s pokemon and luck. Really wish I didn’t lose my Gold save because I know my team worked because I had my original Venusaur from Red, Typhlosion starter, and Golem from Red. Memory is a little hazy on other pokemon. Looking forward to the rest of the game and I’m hoping that my focus on legendaries will ensure I finish everything quickly.