This is a somewhat strange segment, in multiple ways. Sadly, I do not know why we cannot back track to a previous city in the event we want to go shopping. If you were low on resources after the past fight, you could find yourself in a very bad situation, especially since you cannot level grind in the game.
Other than that, we get to engage in some urban combat where the weakness of the AI and randomness of the RNG are out for everyone to witness. It took me multiple tries to get far enough in the fight where Denam's sister was not immediately obliterated. The elevations can make this a little tricky, and the cards just compound things if they fall in weird spaces. It is a little astounding how much can go wrong on this map and what little recourse you can have to deal with it. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQioNJ7oaSs
There are different ways this fight can play out depending on how thoroughly you hunt the nodes. To make things optimal, I went ahead and popped all of them so I could do the sidequests while I was in the area. With all of them down, she loses access to some of her attacks and will lose turns when trying to use them. This makes the fight pretty simple and you can bag her and gain entrance to the castle. However, before we do that, there are quite a few other sidequests that need resolving...
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq18jh0PgOk
This is the gym that is unlike the others, in that it is barely a gym. We have to fight our way through Team Yell before facing off against the only gym leader who does not Dynamax. To compensate for this detail, Marnie exists. Otherwise, we make our way to the wrong side of the tracks and are ready to make our way back to the start of the circle for the final gym.
Since this gym is dark type, you may want a strong bug, fighting type, or fairy. Espeon is weak to dark, but is packing fairy moves to offset this weakness. Other than that, Rillaboom has fighting moves, and we are using Vespaqueen as a potential bug (she will be swapped out soon), so we can hit all of the weaknesses of the dark type. Piers didn't have much of a chance...
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFSWXkTT1_Y
Barroth can be one of the challenging monsters for some people as he has a few factors going his way. For one, his head is brittle and sturdy, so much so that I have not been able to break it this game. Second, he has a roar that can debilitate people. Third, the mud helps dampen the damage he takes and needs to be removed before he can finally take full fire damage.
The good news is that Pierce gunning gets around all of this, and I am able to shred his mud armor from a safe distance. The bad news is that I still do not have a way to break his head in this game. Still, we can get the drops we need and slice his tail off before moving onto the next monster. The good news is that the head and chest pieces I get off this guy will last be the remainder of the single player campaign. There will be a few other parts I will need to get from other sources as we go.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDDBPvxeOCc
We pick up 4 new citizens here and also deal with the Shadow Beast you see in the thumbnail. I also have to say Firefighter is probably one of the more annoying characters to recruit since you have to go through the flooded apartment building where there are probably 3x more enemies than actually necessary. I'll go into more detail about the enemy numbers in a later video, but I'd have to say that it is the game's greatest weakness. Normally that would not be a bad thing, but the number of enemies in some of these places is a crippling flaw in the overall game. It's really that part alone that is making me not want to replay this.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COBb98Kbrsk
We have to take a detour from our journey to conquer the different gyms and investigate the three lakes around the Sinnoh region. We visit the two that we have already seen and deal with the goons there. However, to reach the last one, we have to cross more of Mt. Coronet and access the northern regions of Sinnoh. There, we have to deal with a gym leader who stands in our way. Luckily, on the way there, we happen to achieve the final evolution of a Pokemon that has been pulling heavy duty work.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCTNgQN_hLo
Once again, no combat here as we get to see the scenario for the chapter get set up, then we get to explore Crossbell. Mainz and St. Ursula are now both open full time, so we are able to talk to everyone there in the rotation, meaning these segments are only going to get longer. I left Armorica out of this one since they have the story quest to progress the chapter, so you will get to see them at the start of the next video where we knock out the quests.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9-NQalZbVM
The match of the millennium is ready to start as Crimson and I square off. Fire and water will clash, and in the end, only one can prevail.
Sadly, since I am not up to date with a lot of the developments in Pokemon, you can see that my team is made up of quite a few of the older guys. I also am not familiar with a lot of the abilities, so I am playing some things by ear.
The strategy of course is to lead with Raichu and get cheap shots in with Kingdra while I can, with the option of Dynamaxing Kingdra if I can seize control of the weather. Since I am in comms with Crimson during all of this, I don't explain my thought process, but you can see that the majority of my reads are right on the money.
My goal is to keep the rain going, which revolves around Pelipper, especially since Crimson is running a team that relies on the sun. There is a fatal flaw in his strategy that will be revealed in the rematch, but see if you can spot it. In the event that I lose control, I have Gardevoir here who can Trace an ability (like Chlorophyll) to allow me to hijack Crimson's sunlight to my advantage. Alternatively, I do have Chandelure to just use the sun to amplify fire attacks should they become necessary.
One of the things working against me is that my experience with Venusaur is as a tank, but here it is a special sweeper. As such, I don't know how easy it is to kill or if I really lucked out with that perfectly timed Psychic. I have an idea at times whether to expect special or physical attacks, but I can't always tell what will work against the opponent. It is something I could learn if I were to commit more time to the game, but I make no promises right now.
So some neat stats for you guys:
Crimson failed to block any of my moves with Protect. He also never managed to get me to use more than 5 guys in either match. It won't be until the rematch that I am forced into using my 6th.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MkMXQX2k9c
The ranked games are in the title. There are a few standard games in the mix where I am just trying to knock out event stuff. The main thing is that I picked up a coin doubler, so I went hard to get the most out of it. As a result, despite us spending a lot recently to acquire Machamp, I am on track to pick up Pikachu much more quickly than anticipated.
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP6keiYQnf4
With our ability to cross mountains now, there are new enemy strongholds we have access to, and we kick things off with Pandemonium. I think this is the last time the group gets separated and has to operate independently, throwing switches and such to allow them to converge before forcing their way out. There are a few bosses we have to crush in our attempt to stop the enemy's plan to unleash the Darkness Tear. If all goes according to plan, we will be sending them back to the drawing board for their next plot...
...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHIGVr5bdnY