There’s a facet of older Pokémon games that I always find interesting, which is contrasting what aspects of them feel like typical RPGs, and what’s distinctly Pokémon. You have to remember that back in the 1990s, developers were still experimenting with, and iterating on a lot of the genre conventions that we know, and love today.
As such, there are a lot of things, especially in the older Pokémon games that feel distinctly like other RPGs from the time. For example, not every type is designed to be an offensive powerhouse like they are in more modern games. The clearest example of this are Grass types, which learn mostly supportive moves, or attacks that are demonstrably weaker than their counterparts. In essence, Grass was designed to act akin to the clerics, bards, or witches of other RPGs.
I bring this up because it helps to explain why Dragon type Pokémon get treated so well throughout the first 5 generations. Using our RPG parallels, Dragons are kind of like your secret late-game bosses. They’re incredibly powerful, almost no types actually resist their attacks, and they have very few exploitable weaknesses. Hell, the whole reason most people even bother having Ice type coverage on their teams is specifically so that they can deal with the inevitable showdown against these bastard lizards.
As a very direct response to this, I’ve made no secret about collecting, and curating my Dragon type solutions throughout the run. Obviously, Mabel has been running Ice Punch for ages now, but I also went through a whole situation to obtain Aurora Beam on Daisy Jr. All of this, so that I’d actually be able to deal with Dragons once I hit the late-game.
To that end, Clair, the next, and final, gym leader of the run will be a litmus test of how well our Dragon type answers actually perform. She’s basically a tutorial for Lance featuring a team that’s eerily similar to his, so I’m fairly confident that we’ll get a strong approximation of how well we’ll perform against Lance based on how things go during our battle with Clair.
That said, we have to reach her first, and, I’ll be real with you – that was not an issue. Between Trevor, and Mabel there wasn’t anything that the various gym trainers could actually do to impede our path. I was actually surprised at just how well Mabel was doing, but the combination of Ice, and Electric coverage worked wonders on the army of Dragonairs, and Horsea that are strewn throughout Clair’s gym.
With that out of the way, it’s time to face the head honcho herself.
We start with DJ into her first of 3 Dragonairs, and hit it with a Never-Melt Ice boosted Aurora Beam. My hope was that this would 1-shot the Dragonair, so we could stack 3 back-to-back KOs before moving onto Clair’s Kingdra, but…uh…
Hoy boy. That wasn’t even close. That’s…really bad. I mean…it’s not great for this fight, but now I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do against Lance. Dragonite takes more damage from Ice type attacks, but I’m not even sure anymore if Aurora Beam does enough damage for that to matter.
Though, none of that will matter if I can’t actually manage to beat Clair, so I pull myself out of spiraling, and try to focus on how exactly I can salvage this gym battle.
Luckily, fate appears to be on our side as Dragonair 1 misses an attempted Thunder Wave. This gives us an easy W on the following turn as we’re able to down Dragonair 1 with a second Aurora Beam.
Out comes Dragonair 2, and I decide to hold course and get as much mileage out of DJ as possible. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that Clair’s trio of Dragonair mirrors Lance’s in a very literal sense. That is, one of them knows Flamethrower, another Ice Beam, and the third Thunderbolt which mirrors the Fire Blast, Blizzard, and Thunder of Lance’s trio. As such, I’m completely taken off guard when DJ is hit by a Thunderbolt. Thankfully, she barely holds on, and is able to down the second Dragonair with another Aurora Beam.
At this juncture, I don’t know which of the 3 Dragonairs is left. It could be the fire, or the ice one. Either is a problem for Mabel, so I’m glad that DJ managed to hang on for 1 more Aurora Beam before finally being KO’d. This meant that I could send in Mabel for an easy lay-up with Ice Punch to finish off Clair’s third, and final Dragonair.
Okay.
All that’s left is Kingdra, which, annoyingly, only takes Super Effective damage from Dragon type attacks.
Now, similar to Clair’s Dragonairs, I don’t actually know what her Kingdra can do. Well…okay – that’s a lie. I know what it can do now, but while fighting her I wasn’t 100% sure what moves it knew. I figured it was something similar to her Sniper Kingdra in the remakes, so my guess was that it knew the combination of Hydro Pump, and Hyper Beam. I’m fairly certain Mabel could shrug off a Pump because her Special Defence is, frankly, enormous, but I was not as certain about Hyper Beam. Despite this uncertainty, I decide to leave Mabel in and go for a Thunder Punch.
Predictably, Mabel doesn’t put much of a dent in Kingdra, and gets nailed for massive damage by Hyper Beam. However, she completely defies my expectations, and remains standing after the ferocious attack.
That said, I don’t envision a future where Mabel carries us home to victory here, so I decided to swap over to Pinellopi during the recharge turn. I’m fairly certain I don’t have to elaborate on what the plan from here is.
Though, hilariously, Selfdestruct lands a critical hit against Kingdra. I’m not entirely certain that I needed the extra damage to KO Kingdra, but I suppose Pinellopi was trying to send a message.
And with that, we have the final gym badge!
Well, that’s not exactly true. Clair sends us into the Dragon’s Den before she acknowledges our win, but after that we get our 8th gym badge. It’s kind of wild that Johto has not 1, but 2 different gym leaders who’re sore losers. Though, I wish more gym leaders were like this because it makes the pair of them a lot more memorable than the mountain of wet blanket type specialists that populate the newer games.
Now, as much as I’d love to lie to you, and say we went straight to the Pokémon League, I can’t. There are a couple different things that I ended up doing before I decided to take my first steps into Kanto to conclude our journey.
For starters, DJ’s inability to 1-hit KO any of Clair’s Pokémon was…very worrisome. I really can not afford to let Lance’s Dragonites run wild otherwise they’ll completely bowl over my entire team.
To that end, I decided to spend the bulk of my accumulated wealth purchasing a copy of Blizzard from the Goldenrod Game Corner. In fairness, I tried gambling at the slot machines first, but I lost all of my coins. Evidently, the lucky slot machine isn’t that much luckier than the other ones.
Either way, Blizzard gives us a much stronger, albeit less reliable, answer to Lance’s Dragons if Aurora Beam proves lacking.
I also grabbed a couple extra copies of Return while I was in Goldenrod to replace Headbutt across my team. Before any of you accuse me of cheating, I started this playthrough 9 weeks ago. So, in theory, there have been enough Sundays for me to legitimately obtain the 3 copies of Return that I’m using without time travel. I just…didn’t regularly check back in on the game between recording sessions because timed events are kind of poopy.
Though, with that…I think I’m ready to head over to Kanto, and tackle the League.
As such, I biked back to New Bark Town, and headed East toward Route 27.
Now, it’s somewhat of a series tradition to place the toughest trainers in the game just before the Pokémon League. This accomplishes 2 things. The first is that it gives you an opportunity to squeeze a couple additional levels onto your team before the final boss rush that concludes your adventure. The second is that you’re given a useful barometer for how well you’ll fare against the League.
That in mind, holy shit am I glad that there is a woman who gives out free heals on Route 26. I was just about at my rope’s end by the time I reached her place. Normally, the trainer battles across Routes 26, and 27 aren’t that tough to get through, but there is such an obvious power disparity between what I’m using and what the bulk of these trainers are using. It isn’t even just the raw power of their Pokémon either – they all know really strong moves too. For example, Megan’s Venusaur knows Body Slam, Blake’s Magneton knows Thunderbolt, and Joyce’s Blastoise knows Curse. This puts all of these trainers a cut above your standard route trainers in terms of their overall difficulty.
That said, we eventually make our way up to Victory Road, which is completely devoid of trainers sans Kevin right at the end.
As a brief side tangent, I really like the Victory Road in Silver and Gold. It’s like a mini version of the original Victory Road from Red and Blue. I’m sure there were plans to make it to scale, but they had to shrink it down so they could include Kanto in the post-game.
Anyway, we get through Victory Road…mostly fine, but I forgot where exactly Kevin challenges you to a battle. As such, we’re facing our rival, once again, without having swapped our team around.
Given that…lack of forethought, I led Daisy Jr into Kevin’s Sneasel. There is basically nothing DJ can do here, so I swap her out for Winston who eats a Screech. That’s a little spooky given Sneasel’s high Attack stat, but I decide to let it rock, and send a Fire Punch on the following turn.
Thankfully, Kevin gets greedy, and goes for another Screech instead of cashing in on the defense drop. Unfortunately, we’re not able to take down his Sneasel in a single attack, so we’re stuck going for another Fire Punch on the following turn.
Though, my worry here was totally misplaced because his Sneasel only knows Quick Attack, and Fury Cutter to take advantage of the defence drop from Screech. As such, Sneasel barely puts a dent in Winston before he unceremoniously destroys it.
Out next is Kevin’s Golbat, who has, historically, proven to be one of his more troublesome Pokémon. My team doesn’t have great answers for Flying type Pokémon, and Confusion is…simply the worst.
That being the case, I decide the nuclear option is the best way to deal with Golbat. I send in Pinellopi, and repeatedly attempt to blow up Golbat with Selfdestruct. This proves futile the first several attempts thanks to that aforementioned Confusion, but Pinellopi eventually stops hitting herself, and sends both Pokémon to an early grave.
From here, I’m forced to send in my next Pokémon first, which means Kevin can counterpick whoever I choose. Knowing this, I send out Vanessa so that he’ll send in Kadabra. My thought was that Mabel is a fairly easy pivot into the Psychic type attacker, and I could use Light Screen to help increase our odds of success.
However, I forgot that the generation 2 game’s trainer AI doesn’t really understand how to use Future Sight. As such, Kadabra keeps using Future Sight, which gives Mabel several free turns to slowly chip it down. Honestly, I probably could’ve let Vanessa finish off Kadabra here, but I was a little too worried it’d swap gears into Psybeam.
Either way, Magneton comes out next, and finishes Mabel off with a soft Thundershock. This allows me to swap cleanly into Vanessa who knocks out Magneton on the following turn with Dig.
Next is Haunter, who doesn’t fare much better. It doesn’t manage to drop to a single Dig, but that hardly matters as it KO’s itself with Curse. Again, I love that the AI doesn’t truly understand how to properly leverage specialty moves like Curse (or Future Sight) in the generation 2 games, but I appreciate that they try to use them instead of simply ignoring that they exist.
Regardless, that just leaves Kevin’s Typhlosion, which is actually a Typhlosion this time. Thankfully, I’ve still got Winston at close to full health, and DJ hasn’t taken a hit yet.
As such, I let Vanessa go down swinging, before I send in DJ to clean up the dregs with a final Surf.
And with that, we’ve arrived at the Pokémon League. We’ve been beaten, bruised, and battered along the way, but we finally arrived.
That said, there are 2 things that I missed along the journey to the League: Earthquake, and Solar Beam. My team is still underleveled, so doubling back to grab both of these TMs proves to be beneficial as I’m able to score a couple of additional levels along the way.
Oh, speaking of levels: some of you might be wondering how I’m going to handle the level cap for the Pokémon League. Normally if you’re playing with level caps, you’d match the highest levelled Pokémon of the final Elite Four member, which would be Karen’s level 47 Houndoom. However, I’ve always thought this way of doing level caps is super dumb because it puts your entire team well in excess of each of the League members. Thus, the entire Elite Four becomes kind of a joke, and only the champion fight is actually a challenge.
Plus, we’re playing a generation 2 game, so we also have Badge Boost helping to buff our stats. This means that a level 47 team would (likely) completely demolish the entire League without any pushback.
So, what am I doing instead?
I went back and forth on maintaining Clair’s level 40 cap (which we didn’t bother hitting before I fought her), or setting the cap at 42 to match the first member of the League. I ultimately decided on the latter hoping that it’ll maintain a sufficient level of challenge, but won’t be entirely overwhelming. At pretty much every turn throughout this adventure, my team has managed to come out on-top, so I’m fairly confident in their abilities.
With that in mind, here is the full team as we’re about to enter the Pokémon League:
Please ignore the bit where I forgot to update their levels before taking the screenshot.
Obviously, some of those attacks are new additions, like Earthquake and Solar Beam, because they weren’t accessible prior to now. And Pinellopi learned Explosion to replace Selfdestruct, which means going boom – historically the only thing she’s been good at – should work even better now.
The only really notable change that I’ve made is that I dropped Fire Punch from Winston in favour of Shadow Ball. I was pretty worried about Will’s team of Psychic type Pokémon, so I figured it was more important to have a Super Effective option for dealing with them, as opposed to carrying Fire Punch for Koga’s Forrestress.
However, you’ll have to wait until the finale, Part 10, to know exactly how well the team actually performs across the League. The next post will just be a play-by-play of all 5 bosses, and maybe an afterword where I evaluate how the challenge as a whole went. Regardless, I hope to see you there.
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