Pokemon Sun LP, Part 14: Fights, Fights and More Fights

Bit of a shorter update on Pokemon Sun as I wrap up some post-game content. The biggest chunk of unexplored area is obviously the Poni Gauntlet on the Northeastern part of Poni Island, which I didn't get to explore during my hunt for Guzzlord. So imagine my surprise when I meet Mina! Who... apparently randomly fills in the role of the trainer who refuses to battle you in a route until you defeat every trainer in the route. Poni Gauntlet has some really high-leveled trainers, though, and I had to go back to the Pokemon Center a couple of times to heal my team (which at this point doesn't have any legendaries or Ultra Beasts in it). The Mina rematch is mostly the same with her first fight... honestly, poor Mina really should've battled us, maybe with a weaker team, on Vast Poni Canyon. Both her post-game fights felt shoehorned in.

The coolest douchebag around.

Of course, at the end of Poni Gauntlet is the Battle Tree, which, well, is a huge-ass tree. And who to interrupt me but two very familiar and dear faces -- Blue and Red? Blue shows up and notes how both he and Red used to be champions in their own time, and man, I am totally loving their redesigns. Blue mostly just looks the same as he usually does (he does wears green pants -- you can change his name from his original Japanese, but you can't change his pants) but Red really looks like he's grown up a fair bit.

It's not a surprise, of course. Red and Blue are all over the internet the moment that one trailer with them showed up.

I absolutely love how Red is just going all "..." and "...!" throughout the entire thing, and Blue just lampshades this by saying that Red is as silent as ever. It's a bit hilarious and honestly kind of heartwarming to see Blue and Red hanging out together like they're on a holiday or something. After their super-antagonistic attitude towards each other in the Kanto games, and Blue's dialogue in the Johto games implying that the two of them aren't on good terms, it's nice to see them just hanging out. Apparently they're invited to be bosses of the Battle Tree... and Blue gives me the chance to battle one of them. ONE of them.

Bah, game, you're making me choose?

Always #1 in our hearts.

I fought Red, of course, who uses his HeartGold/SoulSilver team of the three Kanto starters, Pikachu, Snorlax and Lapras (I miss the Espeon form the original Gold/Silver games :(). Red's Pokemon are obviously insanely leveled, all of them being 70, and he's actually a huge fan of switching in and out. It might probably be a lot easier if I had, like, Solgaleo, Necrozma and Guzzlord in my party, but it wouldn't be as fun. What is insane, though, is my Vikavolt (who is underleveled, at around 58 at the time of the fight) who I was carrying around to train, putting in insane amounts of work. It managed to take out half of Red's Pikachu's health, it managed to tank a Fire Blast from his Charizard and proceed to one-shot said Charizard with a Thunder, before falling to a Blizzard from his Lapras. Not bad for a freaking bug!

The rest of Red's team was a pretty cool challenge, and just like with Kukui, I survived with only a single Pokemon standing, again, my Magnezone. That Blastoise of his wrecked a good chunk of my team... it has DARK PULSE! That Dark Pulse took out my Decidueye. Who teaches their Blastoise Dark Pulse? Red, that's who.

Yeah, that was a very thrilling battle. Not quite as epic as the initial fight I had with Red while playing Crystal, but I have less access to powerful Pokemon in Crystal than I do here. Red and Blue bugger off into the Battle Tree, and after trying out a couple of battles, I decide to leave it until later when I properly EV train my Pokemon. Instead, I bugger off to do a couple of outstanding side-quests.

First up, I returned to Route 2. There was this house where a father complained about how he 'tried to set his son straight', but his son beat him instead... and apparently this is Guzma's house. Suddenly so many things are clear -- the house has a lot of second-place and third-place trophies and a photo album that went untouched, showing that Guzma has a bit of inferiority complex. Most chillingly are the bent golf clubs and the father's dialogue, which could seem to imply parental abuse, something that Guzma's own rants and characterization throughout the game would imply. I'll do a long article analyzing Guzma in the future. What a... fascinating character.

In either case, Guzma's mother is convinced that his son isn't evil and the media is just being nasty, and this inability to accept harsh facts probably caused her to ignore her husband's physical and mental abuse of her child as well. I get the TM for Swagger from her, which apparently is a present Guzma left behind. Guzma challenges me to a battle. He's no longer leader of Team Skull, putting duct tape on the Team Skull emblems on his jacket (ha!) but he's still going through the "it's your boy Guzma, destruction in human form!" gimmick. So he's not evil, but he's certainly no longer nice.

Guzma's team is mostly the same, he just adds a Scizor (a very respectable powerhouse as far as bug-types go) into the mix. I, unfortunately, do not have a Fire-type or a Flying-type, so it's a bit harder for me... but no less fun. Guzma eventually falls (he clearly has no idea how to properly utilize Golisopod's Emergency Exit) and he's absolutely angry. Hala shows up and laughs a bit, noting that Guzma needs to respect his opponents as worthy opponents, and his drive for competitiveness and a desire to not just destroy, but to actually win and defeat, is a good one. Guzma is all being a bit of an ass about it, but he eventually accepts Hala as his master, and goes off to train, but not before leaving behind a small token of appreciation -- a Dawn Stone, apparently the first ever prize he's ever won. A bit of a strange thing for Guzma to give me, but okay.

I tried to rematch the Elite Four -- who remain the same, albeit with buffed-up levels. This time around, I swapped out a couple of my team members with Necrozma and Solgaleo, which makes some of the fights a bit of a joke. And apparently as I sit on the champion's chair... I select from a pool of possible challengers, which is very cool. For the first time in the franchise, I get to actually be the champion instead of just earning the title. My first challenger is Hau, who uses the same team that he uses, though he adds a Crabominable as his fifth Pokemon. All respect to Hau, he's grown to be a bit of a more challenging affair than most recent rivals -- and that Komala of his has an insane amount of powerful moves like Earthquake and Sucker Punch and Wood Hammer! My next challenger is Kukui, who uses the same team he did during the first championship. My third challenger is Molayne, with an updated version of his old team -- everyone's evolved, plus an Alolan Sandslash's hanging out as his fifth. So there's be a lot more challengers, which is cool.

Also, much appreciated that I don't have to watch the credits and restart the game every time I beat the League. It's always something that pisses me off with the other games and makes grinding a bit annoying.

I go off to capture the two other legendary Tapus I neglected, and as I head to Tapu Fini's ruin, I meet Dexio and Sina, who talk about Zygarde 100% (I'm not close to completing it, no sir) before going into a little talk about Mega Evolution and whatnot, and how similar it is to Z-Moves in that it transfers the trainer's energy to the Pokemon through a Z-Ring. Dexio demonstrates Mega Evolution to me in a battle, and apparently he's a Psychic-type trainer? His team is all psychic-types (Espeon, Slowking, Alolan Raichu, Metagross and Alakazam) that get absolutely manhandled by my team, which is contains a lot of Ghosts and Bugs. And he's got a Mega Alakazam to show off that gets immediately wrecked by a Never-Ending Nightmare courtesy of Mimikyu. I mean, a Mega Metagross would be scarier, but okay. He gives me the Alakazite and the Keystone or whatever, before buggering off after a long speech about bonds and whatever. So, the rest of the mega stones... are things I have to hunt for? I haven't even bothered to track down all the mega stones in Alpha Sapphire! Jeez.

Kinda-sorta a mermaid.

That's done, though, and I briefly fight a pair of Swimmers who call themselves the Hidden Maidens, who give me the TM for Surf and Waterfall. Cool, those are two of the HM moves that I would actually want.

Tapu Fini I had fought before and she kind of Struggled herself to death due to heal herself back up with Aqua Ring, but this time around I used Thunder Wave from the get go to paralyze her, and just kept False Swiping with Tapu Koko whenever she brings her health up to yellow. Tapu Fini is my favourite out of the Island Guardians, and it's nice to have her around at last. It's a bit of a hard capture, but honestly it's not quite the hardest legendary I've captured ever. Like, it's a bit jarring compared to how easy the Ultra Beasts, Solgaleo and Tapu Koko were, but eh. What a sleek design, both in totem form and when it opens to reveal the fairy-mermaid inside.

The final Tapu is Tapu Bulu, and I had to go through the fucking Haina Desert to reach him. One of the NPCs apparently tells me that the code is 2-1-4-3 and it's a code to follow the stacked rocks in Haina Desert, to make sure you don't loop yourself back to the starting area. It involves me going into a dead end with a Psychinium Z (the last Z-crystal I have to collect), then returning into an identical-looking area as the one I left... but it's actually not, because the rock positions have changed.

Also, I absolutely hate the ambush Pokemon running around in the sand in this desert. At least in Turnback Cave I can just repel and not have to deal with fucking Dugtrios dragging me down with Arena Trap. Yeah, I'm not a very big fan of Haina Desert.

I reach the Ruins of Abundance, and challenge Tapu Bulu, the ugly fucker who destroyed the Megamart and Tapu Village. What an asshole. Tapu Bulu is my least-favourite among the four Island Guardians by a huge margin, because of how strange he looks. He's thankfully less of an hassle to capture than Tapu Fini. After a couple of Lunges from Buzzwole to absolutely neuter his ability to deal damage short of Nature's Madness, I just chuck Pokeballs and Tapu Bulu is sent to a box, never to see the light of day.

I'm sorry! I just straight-up don't like how Tapu Bulu looks.

That's all four Tapus collected, though, so that's almost all of the legendary Pokemon left in this game. The last one to collect is the second Cosmog. It's a bit of a weird little gimmick, but I bring Solgaleo up to the Altar of the Sunne, where an Ultra Wormhole is waiting for me. I basically travel to the world of Pokemon Moon, where the time is reversed, and the Altar is the Altar of the Moone, and the weird lake in Ula'ula is now the Lake of the Sunne. I go to the lake, and there's a brief cutscene where Solgaleo speaks with Lunala, and a Cosmog pops out of nowhere. Er... did they just make a Cosmog? Whatever the case, it joins my party. Despite having the time and the location corresponding to Pokemon Moon, though, none of the version-specific Pokemon carry over, so it's still Turtonators and Sandshrews and all that jazz. Oh well, back to my own dimension. I prefer my game to be synchronized with real-world time.

I have to remember to pick up Magearna sometime in the future. Oh well. There's a couple of extra possible champion fights, I think, and maybe I can fight the Game Freak developer... plus the whole Pokedex and item completion, and Zygarde 100% but as far as the game goes, I think I beat it, for the most part, so yeah. This is likely to be the final part of my playthrough of Pokemon Sun, and any future Pokemon-related posts will be like, character analysis or theories or speculation or whatever, so let me say a couple of words.

Really love the design of the game. I don't agree with the handling of some characters (Hau in the first half, Mina, and generally the post-game Ultra Beast questline could've been made far more interesting) but overall the very story-focused plot is very much appreciated. There are criticisms I make against the game, but overall it's a very strong game and definitely tops XY in terms of how fun it is to play through. I'm not sure how it ranks overall among the seven generations of Pokemon games, and I doubt that I'll ever try to rank all the games... but I definitely enjoyed playing through Pokemon Sun.