3. Since when does this game use strategy

Bugledudledu

Feeling confident after my third consecutive deathless trial, I set off towards the Lush Jungle where this island’s final trial will be held. On my way I catch Bugledudledu the Trumbeak. I’m not planning on using him, I just like the name. The grass trial involves searching through the jungle for meal ingredients and fighting a bunch of Fomantis, little grass type praying mantis dudes, that we cruise through easily. I’m expecting the totem pokemon at the end to be an evolved one of these and I have a seemingly foolproof plan: hit it with lots of fire. I lock in Sloan in the first slot with her shiny new firium z crystal and summon the totem poke. Sure enough, it's a Lurantis. I havent encountered one before, but it looks like a bigger, scarier version of Fomantis and Sloan has double resistance to grass. This should be a cakewalk. Sloan opens with her z move INFERNO OVERDRIVE and I watch as the Lurantis’ health bar drops. My expression turns to one of mild annoyance when the bar stops at right around ¼ health. No problem, next round will finish it. The sidekick summon for this fight is a castform, the gen 3 weather dependant booger pokemon. He seems like a weird choice for a grass trial but I’m not worried about him at all. My frustration only deepens when the Lurantis outspeeds Sloan with synthesis. With my z move expended it will take several rounds to finish it off if it keeps healing itself. To make matters worse,  the castform knows water gun. Sloan can’t stay in long enough to finish of the main foe with castform pressuring her so I swap her out for Slayer. If this is going to be a battle of attrition I’m going to do it right. Slayer is able

RIP Slayer

to use feather dance on the lurantis twice, dropping its attack to ⅓, but while doing so the castform does something I wasn’t expecting: it uses sunny day. In and of itself this isnt surprising because weather is the one gimmick it has going for it, but I wasn’t prepared for all the repercussions that came with it. The following happens when sunny day is in effect: synthesis heals for ⅔ instead of ½ health, Lurantis’ signature move solar blade (a physical version of solar beam) doesn’t need a turn to charge up, castform becomes fire type, and its weather ball becomes fire type and doubles in power. So the end result is Lurantis can heal even more hp, can dish out reasonable damage every turn despite having its attack lowered, and the castform goes from being laughable to having a 100 power + STAB + sunny day bonus attack. This last point is driven home when the castform suddenly drops Slayer to 0 health from what should have been a safe amount. As he bleeds out, Slayer looks me in the eyes and says: “I’m going to see Deadmau5 now, I hope he can forgive me.”

Things are starting to look grim. My only poke with type advantage now is Sloan, but shes too weak to send out and I need to be wary of the water gun. I need time to recuperate but Dartrix is week to fire and Macho isn't beefy enough. Casper and Gooby are sent out to be bricks while I heal up. I only have one way to win this now. I wait for sunny day to expire and for castform to cast it again. While its up not only will Sloan do more damage, the water gun will hurt her less, but I need the full duration for this to work. Sloan is able to bear the brunt of their assault while taking advantage of the sunny day and dishing out plenty of pain itself, but if Lurantis scores a critical with its x-scizzor the attack debuff won’t help and she is dead. Fortunately, with the help of some super potions Sloan is able to slay Lurantis after it runs out of PP for synthesis and is taken out of the battle just in time for sunny day to end. Macho is sent out to clean up the castform and we emerge victorious.

Its like scyther's hippy cousin

Murphey the Mudbray comes out of the box to fill in for Slayer. All I have left to do on this island is to defeat the Kahuna, who I learn uses rock type, so I take some time to grind up the ground type donkey. As Paul has pointed out, Mudbray has the wonderful ability Stamina, which increases his defense every time he’s hit by an attack. While grinding and fulfilling odd jobs around the island I catch Rick the Gastly, Meh the Butterfree, and Lulabell the staryu. Gen 1 represent.

Lycanroc is apparently rock type

With Murphey trained up the kahuna battle goes smoothly. By the time we reach her final pokemon,  Lycanroc, the Murphster's defense is so boosted she’s unable to scratch him. After the grass battle I’m happy have a boring boss fight.

Before leaving the newly conquered island I take some time to battle the last few trainers and squeeze every last drop of experience out I can. Dartrix is having fun lazily pummeling water types on a beach when my opponent sends out a shellder. As a grass flying I can’t risk that it knows any ice moves so I switch it out for a full health macho. He could use the experience anyway as he’s close to becoming a machoke and delivering some serious pain. The shellder uses leer on the switch but as Macho winds up for a devastating brick break it uses icicle spear. My first thought is “good thing I took out Dartix”, but then something awful happens. The shellder hits all 5 times with one critical hit to bring macho down from 100-0 in one long swoop. It did at most 2-3 more hit points of damage than it needed to but the result is the same. And so Macho was brought down in a routine trainer battle 2 levels from evolution, at which point I could have evolved him to Machamp whenever I felt like it. I leave Island 2 with a bitter taste in my mouth.

RIP Macho

Deaths: 7