Pokemon Moon Text LP: Part 19 (Patreon)

New outfit! I mentioned that I switched to one last time, but I didn't include the picture of it yet. It'll be in this update's trainer card, so yeah. I tried my best to get a picture that wasn't super bright, but it was difficult, so it may be hard to tell that the skirt is light pink. I went a bit more expensive than usual with this one, deciding to finally buy one of the super expensive hats from the Hau'oli mall, along with a pair of shoes from there. I also made use of the dyeing facilities in Festival Plaza, and managed to snag the Red Designer Top from a visitor for an ungodly amount of FC. Overall I do enjoy this outfit, and the only thing that seems kind of out of place is the glasses, but those are non-negotiable. And I'd make some kind of comment on how it looks kind of similar to Lillie's original outfit (except she was all white and this is pink), but you can make that conclusion on your own. Oh wait, I pointed it out anyway.

At some point early on in this "session", I got a Kadabra from Poke Pelago, which you can't get anywhere else (not counting evolving an Abra). So that's kinda cool.

Moving on to actual progress, I returned to Exeggutor Island to meet up with Lillie again. She seems less concerned by my sudden imitation outfit and more concerned by the fact that a giant palm tree is attacking her. I mean, that is a bit of a problem, admittedly. So I battle the Memeggutor and catch it relatively easily. Afterwards, she thanks me for the help and then some very questionable camera work occurs. It kind of zooms in on her chin, then pans upwards until she's completely out of frame, just showing the background for a couple seconds before fading back to regular gameplay. No idea what that was all about. Two seconds later, it starts to rain, so she takes cover in a convenient cave entrance (which doesn't actually go anywhere) and then proceeds to give rain-related exposition. Apparently as a child, she ran out into the rain once and her mother ran out with her, and they danced together in the rain. Then they got sick and had totes bonding time. This was back in the good old days before Lusamine randomly became psychotic, it would seem, so I guess that answers my question from last time.

Lille then asks me what I plan on doing after the island challenge. One of the answers is "fill the Pokedex", which is the most accurate for me personally, so I go with that one. She then says that she wants to become a trainer now in what is actually something resembling real character development. I'm not sure how it would work in terms of game mechanics, but I'd be all for showing her the ropes and helping her get started. That actually sounds like a really enjoyable thing to me (though obviously a bit out of place for this point in the game, since it would basically be revisiting tutorial-type stuff), and I kind of wish they had worked that in somehow. But nope, she's just going to follow around sporadically (not even actually following me like whats her face from Colosseum or the companion trainers in Gen 4) with nothing but a bottomless bag of repels and healing items for me to leech off of. Speaking of which, how is it that the repels are working unless Nebby is a super high level? Eh, whatever. After this conversation, a random meteor shower comes in for no reason other than the game trying to give TEH FEELS. Oh, and as soon as it starts, she turns away from it and gives me a ^_^ face. Hey, you're kinda, uh, missing the thing there. Turn back around and actually watch the meteor shower, dammit!

The rain abruptly stops and we head back out to the only actual thing of note on this island, a small shrine with the Moon Flute on it. Well, that was easy. I go over and investigate it. Lillie says "Luna!" and nothing else. The camera zooms in on the flute. "A flute is placed on a very old pedestal... will you take the flute?" Of course I say no because I'm a dick, and the game just kind of throws me back to where I was standing with no further ... anything. I dunno, I just found that really funny for some reason. So I go ahead and actually take it, and then we head back to the boat where the chief dude says that we need to go to Vast Poni Canyon, since it leads to the Altar of the Moone.

Surprisingly, I head there without any further distractions, only to find a row of six Team Skull grunts squatting. Excellent, my favorite. The only girl of the group stands up and basically wants to know if there's any way that we can help Guzma get back from his dimensional escapade. But instead of actually like, trying to help or do anything useful, she battles me. Obviously the best choice of action. After that thrilling match, I see Plumeria hanging out on a nearby ledge, but she seems to just be observing for now. The remaining five grunts all attack at once, but since this isn't OR/AS, it's not actually a horde-style battle against five Pokemon at once, it's just a single trainer with five Pokemon. Oh, Gamefreak. If only you knew how to optimize your games and maybe create low-poly models for things, you wouldn't have to remove features from the previous generation. (I'm fairly sure they removed Triple and Rotation battles purely because they couldn't handle six Pokemon on screen at once along with the trainer models. That's kinda sad.)

After that non-threat is dealt with, Plumeria finally steps in and ... surprisingly, is somewhat reasonable. She apologizes to Lillie for the whole kidnapping thing from earlier, and in a somewhat "I'm not sure how this ties in to your motivation" sort of way reveals that Guzma has a thing for Lusamine. Apparently it's because she was the only adult who ever respected how strong he was. She then gives me the Poisonium Z for no real reason and leaves without having accomplished anything. But wait, you didn't show me the pose for it! And actually, I wouldn't have learned the poses for the ones I picked up randomly, either. Perhaps the poses aren't actually necessary at all, and it's all just a conspiracy to make people look like complete bogans when using them. It's possible. Oh, and then suddenly, Grand Trial.

No, I'm serious. I head into the next area, Hapu's there, and she won't let me progress until I battle her in what is officially the Grand Trial of the island. But... but I didn't do any other trials first though. Is this even allowed? I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT'S REAL ANYMORE ok fine I'll do it.

Starting off this battle against a Ground-type trainer, I lead with the ever-useful Crazy Bus. I know perfectly well this is a bad idea, but hey, I might get a cheap hit in or something. Hapu leads with Dugtrio, and I use Dig, hoping that it doesn't know Earthquake. It does. Goodbye, Crazy Bus. Next comes Skeeter, and Dugtrio drops to a single Scald. Her next Pokemon is a Flygon, and with that, the battle basically turns into "use Scald like ten times while both sides repeatedly heal" for a while. It was tedious, but I eventually took it down. Next she uses Mudsdale, and I decide to keep going with the same "spam this one move over and over" strategy. Surprisingly I actually did outspeed it and got a hit in, taking out about 75% of its health. But then it uses the Ground Z-move, Tectonic Rage, and Skeeter is no more.

Next I go for Lubba, since it has the whole Ground immunity going on, and I figure a Psychic would be enough to take out its remaining HP, but surprisingly no. It was a critical hit, and still only did about half of its already-low HP. Mudsdale went for a Heavy Slam, which would have one-shotted Lubba if not for Refresh kicking in and leaving 1 HP left. So now with the broken shell, Lubba was able to do more damage with Psychic and finish it off. I also got in a decent hit against her final Pokemon, a Gastrodon, before it used Muddy Water and KOed Lubba. That Psychic managed to trigger a Special Defense drop, so I sent out Laylee to see if I could get in some stat boosts and then do some good damage with Air Slash. I used a Calm Mind and took a hit with over half my HP left, so went for a second one, but then a rogue critical hit happened and so much for that plan. So next I send out Ratzenberger to try and tank a few hits while damaging it with the ever-present Scald. I managed to take it out with one followed by a Hydro Vortex, ending the battle.

As expected, I get the Groundium Z for winning, and then Hapu rides off mere seconds after saying that she'll be happy to help if we get into any trouble in the canyon. I guess it's a good thing I have a way of contacting you then... oh wait, this game doesn't have any sort of cell phone equivalent for some reason. Now that I think about it, is this the first game since the originals that doesn't? G/S had the Pokegear, R/S/E had the Pokenav, D/P/Pt had... actually, they didn't have anything either. But B/W and X/Y had the Xtranceiver and Holo Caster, so yeah, it's fairly rare to not have that. Wonder why they did that, maybe they're just going for a more "you're on your own in nature" sort of thing with this game. Except they also stuck a Pokemon Center on basically every route, so I'll just shut up now.

Luna looked out over the Vast Poni Canyon. It's big, it's grand, it's vast. Lillie takes some pictures, then realizing she can never show them to anyone, tossed the camera into the canyon below. "That's us," said Lillie, sporting a healthy wind-burned cheek. "We're like a disposable falling camera in a canyon that's constantly careening off things."

... Sorry. Actually no, I'm not apologizing for that last paragraph, that was beautiful. But yeah, I head into the canyon and nearly lose the first battle. It's a trainer with only two Pokemon, but they're also about 6-7 levels higher than my team, and the Pokemon in this game seem to be a lot tougher than usual, so that actually makes a fairly big difference. I do get through it though, and Laylee finally learns Revelation Dance as a result of hitting Level 40. This is a move that changes to whatever type matches the Oricorio's form, so in this case, it's a Psychic move. It's the only way to actually get a secondary STAB on Oricorio, so I've been waiting for this one for a while. I also learn pretty shortly after this battle that this is the location where Crazy Bus has the ability to evolve into a Vikavolt, so I checked that poll from earlier. There were only six votes, and it was 4-2 with "no" winning, so Crazy Bus is staying a Charjabug.

The rest of this area kind of progresses uneventfully. It's not the easiest place to get through, since the wild Pokemon are frequent, strong, and usually pretty fast (Dugtrio and Golbat are, at least), and the trainers aren't pulling any punches at this point in the game. I will say, however, that it's quite a nice area to travel through in a visual sense. It alternates between being inside a cave (which is still more visually interesting than most caves) and outside, and there's some pretty nice views. Along the way, I catch a Boldore, Machoke, Lycanroc (Midday form), Murkrow, and the new pseudo-legend of this generation, Jangmo-o and its evolution Hakamo-o. Since I usually like to comment on the new Pokemon when they show up, I feel somewhat obligated to say something about them, but they're just kinda "eh" to me. Not bad, but not amazing either. Not really my style, at least. Same goes for Lycanroc, actually, except I do very much dislike the Midnight form of that one. (And now that I think about it, I still have to catch one of those, but it's currently after 7 PM as I'm writing this, so I'll have to wait another day).

Next up we have the infamous "Lillie and the bridge" cutscene. I say infamous because people liked to bring it up a lot as being unnecessary and overdramatic. To summarize, Lillie catches up to you as you reach a bridge crossing over the section of the canyon where we originally came in. She mentions that she wants to get over her fear of heights, and so crossing this bridge is going to be her own personal trial. She slowly moves across, then a group of three asshole Murkrows show up and start harassing her. She freaks out a bit, then runs all the way across. Afterwards, she says "I completed my first trial! Amazing, right?", and the options you have to respond with are "Yeah!" or "It was all right".

I'm going to defend this cutscene in some ways, though I will admit the claims that it was unnecessary and overdramatic were still pretty accurate. I like how they're trying to develop Lillie's character and make you care about her. Maybe some people are just finding her annoying or wimpy at this point, I know she isn't exactly loved by everyone, but I actually enjoy having her around. Maybe I just have a thing for helping (or at least being a role model for) someone who's in this sort of position. I mean, she is actively trying to toughen up at least. One thing I also see complaints about is the fact that her fear of heights hadn't been established at any point, so bringing it up as a thing to suddenly need to get over is pretty lame. And ... yeah, I'll accept that also. I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be implied that it was a thing ever since the Spearow attack on the bridge at the start of the game, but she never specifically said that it was the reason for freezing up, so I assumed it was just a general fear of the Pokemon attacking and not having any of her own to defend herself and Nebby with.

With that said, I couldn't bring myself to be mean to her, so even though it was a bit lame overall, I answered positively to her "Amazing, right?" comment. Trying to put myself in the situation and not just treating the bridge like what it is in-game (a solid surface to walk on with no chance of moving underneath your feet, and invisible barriers on the sides preventing you from ever falling off), I realized that I'd also be hesitant to cross it since I'm also really bad with heights myself. So whatever, I'm siding with Lillie over the haters on this one, and ya'll can deal.

With that out of the way, I continue through a few more cave areas and outdoor areas, including an optional section that you had to crawl into. There's a few Strength rocks, a section where you walk down a dead tree-ish thing, and it's just generally a pleasant journey overall. Or it would be without the constant wild Pokemon harassment, but that's my own fault for not being a high enough level to use repels. Along the way, Dreemurr learned Wood Hammer (which I taught over Sucker Punch) and I found a TM for Dazzling Gleam, which I taught to Lena to replace the extremely underpowered Disarming Voice. But most importantly, I finally managed to get Aleene up to Level 42, meaning she evolved into a Palossand! Here's to hoping that she's more useful overall now. It's also somewhat worth noting that the battle that triggered the evolution was a trainer with a Muk and Magnezone, which brings back memories of the Aether employees that caused such a problem earlier on and started this whole "you need to evolve soon because you suck" thing.

Eventually I come across another bridge, and this one has a new character on it. This is Mina, the artist who was mentioned back in Seafolk Village, and dear lord does she look high. Basically, half of her dialogue is stupid art-related comments (similar to Mallow's cooking puns), and the other half is just acting... well, high. Basically that she doesn't really care about what's going on and is just kind of going along with whatever. To emphasize this point, she admits that she's a trial captain but doesn't actually have a trial set up, and gives me the Fairium Z for absolutely no reason. I've... I've got nothing. I kind of hope she comes back later on, because otherwise this is a complete waste of a character. No idea what to think at this point. (Also, is it just me, or are there a lot more female NPCs this time around? It's probably about 50/50 if I actually counted, but I feel like almost all of the trial captains have been girls. Then again, I still have a hard time seeing Ilima as male, so that's probably a contributing factor.)

With that behind me, I reach another big outdoor area and, after going into another cave, open a shortcut back to the beginning. I see a crevice leading off into the distance with a few trainers, and it finally occurs to me that this area is totally Victory Road. God, am I actually that far into the game? I am heading to an area where I'll be presumably summoning the version mascot, but man, I could have sworn there was going to be a lot more before the end. I've still got Mount Lanakila to get through before the Pokemon League at least, so maybe this isn't the final area, but it's sort of giving off those vibes. But with that said, this is where I'm stopping for now. I guess next time we'll find out how close to endgame this really is.

Current status:

http://i.imgur.com/Jhe0ZMi.png