Timber Dragon

I feel so lucky whenever luck is on my side A relatively painless Taka fight, contrary to fights in other runs where literally everything that could go wrong, did. The greatest fortune was no one attacking themselves from confusion. Chatot's Chatter was the most dangerous part of the fight (and not, y'know, the giant mutated Tangrowth in the background). It took down Combusken, Staravia, and Ducklett, but Staravia was revived. She solo'd Tangrowth herself thanks to a Double Team and the world being on my side during this Taka fight for a change. Luck doesn't last forever God, this fight. I wish we didn't have to bring an HM slave. This fight took multiple tries, most of them being because I was down to my last bird, but, this being a double battle, my HM slave had no choice but to be a participant in the fight. Which is illegal. In the end I had to catch a Pidgeotto just to have an extra meat shield. I usually try to take down ZEL's team so I can do two-against-one against Taka's side. Taka's Lileep from previous episodes is now an Exeggcute, which is far less annoying to deal with without Confuse Ray. Then a mistimed Aerial Ace hit Exeggcute and caused Taka to withdraw it for Chatot before I was ready to deal with it. My strategy kinda blew out the window with that, but that was okay. We... WINGED it. *sunglasses* Glaceon and Espeon were the biggest threats on ZEL's side, and Umbreon was just a matter of whittling down its HP. Once we could focus completely on Taka, the fight got easier. Relatively. PULSE-Tangrowth is bulky. It was a matter of endurance, though, and a Sand Attack to help against Acid Spray. ... I have a feeling Taka's future Exeggutor will be the Alolan version.

At first I thought that changing Cain's Water-type from Oshawott to Popplio was just shoehorning in yet another Alolan Pokemon. Then I remembered... Primarina? Okay yeah, that's Cain. And Alolan Grimer is a smart choice for his Psychic weakness, so I guess that gets a pass, too. Same thing with what I presume will be Alolan Marowak's Ghost-typing. Okay so apparently the rivals get smarter earlier than I remember. And they're still in the Alolan spirit after their supposed vacations there. Not much to say about PULSE-Tangrowth. Acid Spray worried me, got some Sand Attacks in, Combusken got wrecked anyway and Staravia finished it off. And Dartrix... did stuff? Not really. Also I got a Ducklett. Meatshields and stuff. Is it me, or can you not manipulate your date to get the weather that you want anymore? Cuz I wanted to get hot weather so I could buy some ice cream, cuz the healing items available to you at this stage in the game are utterly useless in battle. Alas, I go ice cream-less. Plucky Ducks This might be a boring video to watch. Ducklett started off on Maractus to get Florinia to use up her Super Potions, and then Dartrix spammed most of the battle with Pluck. He got all the way to Cradily, except he levelled past the level cap and confusion damage'd away his last bit of HP. Combusken just spammed Double Kick against Cradily. Staravia... did stuff. The only thing that was remotely a problem was Ferroseed and its Telluric Seed raising its stats, but even that was just a matter plowing through its defenses with Plucking. Oh, and Cottonee's Protect spam. But that was more a waste of PP and time than anything. The previous battle with Fern gave me more trouble, as it usually does for some reason. His Dartrix is bulky as hell, reminding me of Ludicolo from previous episodes, and again, healing items at this point are useless in battle, unless you robbed the ice cream vendors. Hindsight is 20/20. Ducklett has been surprisingly helpful. I got him just because he was there and I needed another meat shield, but Feather Dance has come in handy. Useful, but I have no strong need for a Water-type, and by the time he evolves I'll have more, better birds that don't have a 4x Electric weakness. Oh well, do your part while it lasts, Ducklett. Oh, and Happy New Year and stuff. I'm spamming rum and whiskey.

Wing traveled back in time and now he has a Rowlet. Not satisfied that his aviary had had more bird-LIKE Pokemon than actual birds, he decides to get a new team and will be pickier about who deserves to be in his glorious flock. The first attempt of my bird-themed run was fun, but I'm starting over mainly to rethink my team choices. This unfortunately means that our resident asskickers like Aromatisse and Porygon-Z are off the team, but so are Pokemon that turned out to be deadweight like Talonflame. The good news behind this all is that I'll invest more time on birds that will actually be worth it ... and I get a Rowlet. Anyway. The new flock: Cochin Species: Torchic Ability: Speed Boost My starter, Speed Boost Blaziken, yadda yadda nothing new here. Rowan Species: Rowlet Ability: Long Reach No relation to a certain professor. The nice thing here is that most of the times I'd need a Water-type for, the Rowlet evolution line will be able to handle. Mistral Species: Starly Ability: Reckless I don't know about you, but I fully intend to bring this thing to the end game. Where did Reborn get all these Alolan Pokemon from? ... From Alola. Clearly. Must be why so many people here are poor -- they spent most of their money on vacationing. It happened to be sunny weather when I trounced Fern. The sun might have helped his plants, but all it did was make it easier for Torchic to burn them. Fun fact: As I type this sentence, I haven't actually beat Fern yet. I'm just so secure in my kicking his ass that I'm writing as though I have. Oh. He has a Rowlet now. Seriously, did everyone in Reborn visit Alola? ... a Sandile? Wow, I don't remember Fern getting smart until much later in the game. Oh well, I'll take advantage of the time before Rowlet gains the Ghost typing and let him wrap things up. Aaaaaand done moving on Everyone hits their second evolutions during the raid in Mosswater Factory. And apparently, Lin lets her Meteor grunts take vacations in Alola, too. Dartrix's Razor Leaf takes care of Aster & Eclipse quickly so okay now moving on again So I'm not the only one who had taken one look at Pom-Pom Oricorio and thought, yup, that thing belongs on Julia's team Looks like Julia got some team rotations. And also drank a lot of coffee from Alola. Also, I forgot to set my battle style to Set. That's why you'll see me declining to shift Pokemon and then immediately doing just that. I was a bit overleveled for this battle, but those Electric-types concerned me, and with Charge Beam you REALLY don't want any of her Pokemon out on the field for too long. What wound up stonewalling me on attempt #1 was not the electricity, but, of all things, her Pom-Pom Birb's Air Cutter. Combusken and Dartrix were in danger, and the Electric attacks would have taken care of Staravia. (Fun fact: Oricorio didn't even have any Electric-type attacks. Oh well.) The only other available feathery meatshields were Pidgey and Hoothoot. It looked like my only option was to downgrade Combusken's level so he could relearn Sand Attack, grind him back up, and get lucky. Speed Boost really saved my ass. It's useful to have in general, but I think this was one of the few times where my strategy kinda depended on it. I needed Combusken to be able to outspeed Electrode, but I also needed him to be fast enough to get in a Sand Attack before Oricorio could do anything. Then it'd be safe for Staravia to get in two Double Teams and faint Oricorio with good ol' Tackles, Quick Attacks, and luck. It was fairly simple from there. Geodude from an Electric gym leader caught me off guard (you might notice the pause in the video where I pretty much went "Um exsqueeze me?" Then I remembered those Alola vacations), but the only other hurdle was Electrode. I switched out Dartrix for Combusken early so he could get in a Speed Boost or two in time for Electrode, and some more Sand Attacks for good measure. Combusken did most of the work, got Sonic Boom'd, and Staravia finished it off with Quick Attack... which resulted in a glorious double KO thanks to Electrode's Aftermath. I should've remembered that this was Julia we were dealing with. Good on you for not fainting, Dartrix.

Yooooo. Gonna restart my bird-themed run, this time have a different team. For this one I'd like a Rowlet and a Starly. Non-awful IVs, but nature and ability don't matter. Thaaaanks. Game.rxdata

'Immoral' is hardly the term I would use here, but I totally get why a game like Reborn would leave a bad taste in the mouth of someone who normally associates Pokemon with the optimistic family-friendly tone it's supposed to have. A darker Pokemon setting is one thing, but on-screen suicides, terrorists, cults, and the like is kiiiiinda not really what you'd expect out of a Pokemon game. Taking something so normally nice and charming and then doing, well, what Reborn does, can be seen as a slap in the face of what Pokemon is supposed to stand for. I get it. That said, I've read fanfiction that's over twice as brutal as anything Reborn has thrown at us. Darker and edgier Pokemon fanworks are common. There are a lot of elements in Pokemon's setting that can be taken in a much darker perspective if you apply a dose or realism or cynicism. Part of the fun of fanworks like Reborn is taking Pokemon's existing elements and really pushing them. But Reborn has consistently kept a sense of humor and eventually optimism -- you're trying to make the city a better place, and you start to do a pretty good job of it. That's why I consider the game dark, but not edgy. ... Well, the early game could get pretty edgy, but not even a minute after you're nearly killed by the terrorist attack in the opening, you're given a "Hey, you're challenging the league, right? Neato!"

Saphira is a fight I'm dreading. Lin too. That's Dragon-type trainers for ya. The only strategy I'm planning is to see if I can get in two Surfs and get rid of the field, then do my best from there. The hard part is keeping my Surfer active long enough to do the job.

Back in the Ye Olde Days before field effects were a thing, Florinia, Aya, and Noel were tied for my three absolute hair-tearing borderline-rage-quitting nightmares, especially Noel. His team hits hard and is damn near impossible to totally defend against. His counters against Fighting-types are so good that unless you have something OP like Speed Boost Blaziken, you might not even wanna bother with Fighting-types. He's only manageable now because his field is easy to abuse. These days, Serra might be the easiest for me, even if it's just because I always remember to bring someone with Magnitude or Earthquake into the fight. Serra has the most annoying field, but it's the easiest to get rid of and it's laughable how crippled her team is without it. My hardest one depends on what kind of run I'm doing, but Corey seems to consistently give me problems. He has a nasty field effect that under normal circumstances you have no real way to completely manage at that point in the game -- no good (or any?) Steel-types and no Pokemon with moves that can reliably counter the field. The most you can do is make his field a slightly less dangerous version, then hope for the best with what you got. Crobot + field + Nasty Plot + Venoshock is pretty much a game over if you let him set up.

Might have found it from its TV Tropes page. How I stumbled on it, I have no idea anymore, but the description of its polluted setting and its difficulty got me interested. And hoo boy, was it difficult back then. It's still hard, but I came into Reborn during the days when early game Gyarados and Magmar were things, and the game still kicked my ass. *sigh* I almost miss getting stonewalled by Florinia. Almost.

Probably not my main game, but heavily considering redoing my bird-themed run. I just got back from a long hiatus and feel refreshed enough to redo it from scratch. There's things I'd like to do differently, especially my starting team, which would most likely include a Rowlet and Pikipek in there, because yes.

I'll get stoked for it before I finish the game, and then I finish the game and I've either lost steam for it, or the post-game content is either so hard or underwhelming that I stop bothering. That can especially be a problem when the post-game stuff was added for an updated release or remake. Chrono Trigger for the DS comes to mind. Stupid fetch quests...

Had Reborn not been nearing completion, and it was made closer to when Gen 7 came out, I could probably see Ame pulling something like that off. It's just that changing Pokemon types, even only a handful, would involve a DRASTIC overhaul of the game's balance. It's really mind-boggling how much thought Ame puts into choosing which Pokemon are currently available, based not only on strength that's reasonable for that point in the game, but if it's reasonable to find a certain kind of Pokemon in a certain area at all (e.g. many 'desert' Pokemon are currently unavailable because we haven't been to a desert area yet). At this point in time, so much work would go into revising into Pokemon catch rates, gym leader/boss teams, and even normal trainer teams, that it might not be worth it. Heck, Ame even mentioned that even implementing the canonical Alolan Pokemon would require a huge revision that she'd save for post-game content. Besides, with the complicated field effect system changing what kind of strategies you (and your opponent) can cook up with, the core Pokemon 'feel' is already being pushed as far as it can go while still feeling authentic.