Curated Critiques

After a little hiatus where my monster catching game of choice was Monster Sanctuary, we’re heading back to the world of Pokémon! Last time we zoomed down Cycling Road, and now we’re-

Already accosted by a Sonic enthusiast. That’s just how it is, isn’t it?

Oh, look, a blue hedgehog. This totally righteous boy goes down to a Leaf Blade.

This is… eh.

Route 18 is quite a short one. We’ll pick up a new Pokémon, deal with that second Biker and head to Fuschia.

Once we have Surf there will be more to do here though, they really went all out with expanded routes here.

Biker: …same.

Seemer is this guy’s only fusion. It’s a cute little ball of cold sludge and I want one. It’s an easy fight either way. After this, it’s time to go hunting for a new Pokémon to catch! We run into a lot of Spearow and Rattata, which we skip since they are already in our Pokédex. Eventually, we run into this beauty.

I’m happy to welcome a Miltank into the team.

Cool!

Now for the rest of the update we’ll be exploring Fuschia City!

Another place where I just have to express my appreciation for the way the game’s devs have captured and updated the aesthetic of the locations in this game. Anyway, the first place we go is, as ever, the Pokémon Centre.

After healing, it’s time to fuse our new Pokémon together! This is, of course, the one we’re not using.

Oh this is simply horrific.

This is a giant Spearow in a Miltank costume. I do not like the Milk Bird.

This fusion should be a lot less cursed.

Please be good, please be good, please be good.

I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen worse in the past 40 seconds.

Tiny Cow! It’s a TINY COW! I love.

This is a really nice touch. There are a lot of Pokémon just wandering about in Fuscia City, making it feel extremely alive.

Oh boy I sure hope not, Paras is a boring Pokémon.

Iron Head is a nice move. I don’t teach it to anyone just now, but it’s nice to know that it’s here. Let’s have a wander around the rest of the city.

Let’s explore these houses first. I’m glad Kanto is a place where you can just head into anyone’s residence with no issues.

The Abra here likes to teleport around randomly. I don’t know about you, but if I had a pet who teleported around like that I would be very- wait that’s just what cats are never mind.

It’s always a Machoke isn’t it. The Hottest Pokémon.

This woman references how because of the Safari Zone Fuschia City is full of Pokémon pets. I really am liking this place. This is where I’d like to live.

A quick stop by the Poké Mart to stock up on healing items and Poké Balls, and I instantly regret talking to this guy. Gems are hold items that Pokémon can consume to boost one move one time. They’re not that useful but it’s cool to have access to them.

A leisurely nighttime stroll.

Uh, if you pronounce the syllables backwards, but who would think to do that? Maybe the joke would be better if her name was Ajnin. It’s not like this game isn’t already full of ridiculous names.

^{Hah, Erika.}

Into the hotel now! This is a nice bit of lore that references how Koga’s part of the Elite 4 in the second generation, and that his daughter Ajnin replaced him as the leader of Fuschia.

This hotel has a back exit!

Sure random lady, I’ll let you touch my Pokémon in the middle of the night.

:3

Quests!

Old Man: …unsanitary.

Time to go Grimer culling!

With no leads, we’ll have to talk to everyone we meet to find this poor Pokémon’s owner. Luckily, I’ve been doing that anyway.

Yuh huh.

This sounds fun so we’ll obviously be doing this right away.

Midnight bike race on a route full of rough bikers. This couldn’t be safer!

She says a lot more than this but I’m cutting out a lot of extraneous stuff.

The mini-game is simple. Pass over the squares to turn them green and head to the gate at the top of Cycling Road. There are only five and with speed-up on it’s easy to win this even while taking screenshots.

By the skin of my teeth.

The powers of speed up.

RACING BIKE!!!

Obviously, the super speed of the Racing Bicycle is going to be a bit hard to show off with screenshots.

Before we test it out, we have this!

Extremely cool! I wonder how this interacts with Pokémon with multiple evolved forms, like Eevee. Nevertheless, we do have a use for one of these.

Evolving the Magneton half of Ketchup into Magnezone would normally require us going to the Power Plant I believe, this way we can boost up Ketchup’s stats significantly and earlier!

I have been consistently pleased by how cool this fusion’s sprites look.

Now let’s try out this bike!

nyoom

Enough of that. This is cool. Hmm, these Pokémon here might be hints at Koga’s team for when we fight him for a badge!

(They’re not.)

Now let’s take a look at the Zoo, which is more of a Zoo in this game than in others!

Nidoking is metal as fuck.

Yeah same. RIP Esduo.

Oh, same girl same.

Love this lil’ scene.

I wonder just how far away from Kanto Unova actually is.

The Pokémon just walk in place while facing each other.

And this is where Flute Dude hangs out here.

To top off the update, we’re gonna find some newbies in the Safari Zone!

Before we enter, there’s a little shop. I buy some Honey to see if that’s a potential source of shenanigans here, and a Safari Souveneir.

The standard rules apply: 500 steps and 30 Safari Balls only per trip.

No Save button, notably.

Here’s how I’m going to tackle the Safari Zone: I’m considering every area a different location for the purposes of encountering new Pokémon. There are five of them, which means a whole five new Pokémon! Gonna be a lot of fusions from this.

Our first Safari Zone encounter. Let’s see what we get!

Oh wonderful. Something we can skip. Note that we can see the capture rate and the flee rate of the Pokémon here, which is really nice for seeing how our options here affect your chances!

We pick this up as we keep trying for a new teammate.

Oh.

Approach replaces ‘Throw Rock’ for a far more Pokémon friendly experience.

Could be an interesting one to build.

The rest houses have some people to chat to. I do not know where Erik is, or who Erik is.

Area 2!

Getting through these encounters quickly, which is nice.

Nice pickup, especially since we just caught something that evolves with a Leaf Stone.

Signal Beam is a fantastic move good special-type Bug moves can be hard to come across for a lot of non-bug Special Attackers who would like one. Very useful to remember that this person is here.

Heading east from Area 2 brings us to the sandy Area 5.

This area has quite a lot of new things!

Like this rude, new dude! This is our second trip into the Safari Zone thanks to running out of steps earlier.

Welcome, Fiero!

Bit of a secret past these rocks.

These spots run around. Sometimes running over them gets you a ground-themed item like Soft Sand, sometimes you get an encounter with a Diglett, understandably.

We tell this careless man where his Chansey is and he disappears promptly. Weirdly, so does the kid.

I really like how the Safari Zone has been updated and expanded a bit. It will take multiple trips to see and collect everything. That is, you need a few trips if you don’t encounter a handy little glitch.

Deep in Area 5 we find this tomb-looking area.

Inside, we instantly get into an encounter.

Yes, I missed the shot of the Larvesta. Yes that is an Ultra Ball. Oddly, this tomb is not part of the Safari Zone. When we get into fights, we send out our Pokémon.

It’s somehow Area 3, and our step counter has disappeared. We can save too. Looks like we can explore this place with impunity.

Pokémon roam the halls and if they walk into you, you must fight them. Having Repels here is very useful for cutting down on unnecessary fights.

There’s a lot of relics strewn around the place! Should be a good place to make some money as there’s bound to be a ‘manic’ somewhere who will pay a ton for these, like the Balm Mushroom guy and the Big Nugget person.

If it wasn’t enough that we’re catching so many new Pokémon in this update, we also hatch the egg we got a while ago!

Adorable. I am sorry I tried to give you to a little girl who wanted to make you into an omelette.

Caterpoke is too adorable not to train up, not gonna lie to you all.

More moolah.

I think this is the main attraction of this area. Volcarona is a fantastic Pokémon and unfortunately we’ve already caught our encounter here!

It spends a single turn using Whirlwind…

And disappears, probably forever. Oh well.

More nice pickups.

Here’s the thing though: We’re back in Area 5 and our step counter hasn’t come back. In addition, we send Pokémon out for battles. We’re exploring the Safari Zone illegally now.

This Sandile could have been killed and it doesn’t even know it. I ran away, of course.

This is the other end of Area 2. Let’s finish of the Zone.

This TM is Acrobatics, which is known well for synergizing fantastically with a Flying Gem. I might teach this to Valefor – it’s a good move. This is Area 3, and while it’s a ‘new area’, the underground tomb counts as Area 3 so we can’t catch anything here.

Heracross would be a great get for the party, alas – no Pinsir and no trades for this playthrough.

This item will be very nice to help slow Pokémon, especially those hobbled by subpar fusions.

This is the last place we’re catching a Pokémon.

First of all, this rock.

It’s a nice rock.

This is, of course, Surf.

Note that we haven’t found any Gold Teeth, or indeed met a toothless man in Fuschia – Strength must be acquired in a different fashion in this game.

One more encounter and now it’s Area 4’s turn.

Oh hey, it’s a Pinsir! If we really wanted to break the rules to get a Heracross now, we could. But that’s against the rules and I play fast and loose with them enough.

I didn’t attack the Pinsir once, this is all residual Rocky Helmet damage – I was worried it would kill itself and I’d lose the chance to catch it.

I got lucky towards the end there, though.

I’m hungry.

Not much to do now, just search the place for items.

I’d Surf around the place, but we need Koga’s badge before we can use the move outside of battles.

This is Quash. Quash is bad.

And here we are. It’s funny that we apparently have some time remaining – we’ve walked well over 2000 steps. It feels fun to cheat the system.

And there we have it. This is already a long update, we’re going to have a bit of a fusion and training montage next time to see all of our newbies! Until then, see ya!

Post-Update Summary

Not exactly much progress was made today, but we caught a lot of Pokémon that will help us last longer in case we hit a difficulty wall in the future!

New Pokémon

Route 18: Domina the Miltank
Safari Zone Area 1: Silver the Lickinat
Safari Zone Area 2: Bonito the Exeggcute
Safari Zone Area 3: Dusty the Larvesta
Safari Zone Area 4: Burrito the Pinsir
Safari Zone Area 5: Fiero the Trapinch
Egg: Breeze the Caterpoke

New Fusions

Miltank + Spearow = Milrow
Magnebok (Magneton + Arbok) evolved into Magnebok (Magnezone + Arbok)
Lickitung + Venonat = Lickinat
Caterpie + Slowpoke = Caterpoke