Pokemon Ultra Moon LP #5: Showdown Against the Blinding One

I haven't done an update on my Pokemon Ultra Moon playthrough in a while. It's... well, it's about this point in Poni Island where the game diverges the most from Pokemon Sun/Moon, I think. (Again, if you want to see my original reactions to many of the concepts and locations in Alola, you'll have to go check out my old Pokemon Sun playthrough).

So Poni Island's plotline still more or less happens the same way between arriving in the Seafolk Village until the Altar of the Moon, with the slight addition of Mina as a plot-relevant NPC in Seafolk Village. Surprisingly, though, the game now allows me to leave Lillie behind when I go to Exeggutor Island where she models for Mina, and I get to go through all of Exeggutor Island without having to go through the 'eek it is raining!' bit from Lillie again.

Exeggutor Island is also portrayed as a bit more of a side-quest, with me having to rescue three huge Exeggutors from the Pinsirs bothering them, which is pretty cool. I've always thought that Exeggutor Island was a weak concept since we don't exactly do a lot with the Exeggutors there, and this is a neat little side quest.

The rest of Poni Island happens, and I do love the large amount of trainers that actually make it a bit of an endurance mission to get through Poni Island -- I missed this. I missed these types of routes that's just jam-packed with trainers the way the route immediately outside of Pewter City was back in the first generation games. As with Sun/Moon, there's a crapton of roadblocks. This time around I think the scene with Hapu's grandmother is a bit longer, and there's some weird flashback about her youth with Mudsdale because of some sidequest from a photo in a library book or some shit? I dunno.

MVP of the party

Where I once would fight Hapu in the gates of Vast Poni Canyon, though, here I don't actually do it this time around -- instead, Pycho and Soliera show up and have a brief bit of dialogue about the Bliding One, and then I fight Soliera again. Who still has that one lone Poipole. Like, jeez, at least have a couple of Nihilegos if you don't want to over-burden the new players with the stronger legendaries, but a single Poipole? Mother fucker, no matter how many times you throw that cute little purple alien at me, the result is still a Malamar-delivered Psycho Cut to your face.

Apparently the Ultra Recon Squad being shit fighters is an actual plot point, though, so I can't be terribly mad. Pycho and Soliera note how the Alolan fighters have such a great bond with their Pokemon and they really want our help when Necrozma arrives to invade Alola. It's... okay? So we're friends with the Ultra Recon Squad, then? Honestly despite the writing team delivering a standout story behind Team Skull, Aether Foundation, Hau, Lillie and Gladion (I riff on how much they interrupt my adventure, but the writing behind the characters are legitimately good) the Ultra Recon Squad's writing is so oblique and genuinely bland that I can't bring myself to actually make heads and tails out of what their real motivations are. They're just walking plot devices.

Vast Poni Canyon is near-identical to Sun/Moon. I'm sure there are some differences in encounters or trainers or whatever, but it's all the same -- I get to train my party a lot, and there's that scene on the bridge with Lillie and the birds, and there's the unmanned Totem trial with Kommo-o. It's very, very sad that they leave a TM for Dragon Claw (which Bewear instantly learns) in the trial cavern itself, making the battle so much easier for me. I was legitimately worried because in my Sun playthrough I had two Fairy types with me (Mimikyu and Ribombee) which made Kommo'o barely even threatening, but here I don't have any Fairy or Ice type moves. Of course, a combination of Bewear's Dragon Claw, and Malamar's Foul Play makes short work of the trial although I got half my party knocked out by the sheer power Kommo'o has. Good show.

And then... Temple of the Moone! After the ritual, we get Nebby transformed into Lunala, which is similar to Sun/Moon... and then plot twist! We don't go into Ultra Space and fight Lusamine as she is possessed and fused with a Nihilego. No, instead Guzma and Lusamine are dumped out of an Ultra Wormhole (I'm going to have to assume that Necrozma kicked Lusamine's ass in Ultra Space, which results in her lesson of humility here), and Necrozma finally makes his appearance.

And then Necrozma fights Lunala and by god it's like something out of an anime as the two of them basically turn into beams of Dragon Ball streaks of light, slamming onto the altar and just zipping all about the place, shooting lasers and blasting each other with energy, until Necrozma takes down Lunala and fuses with it. That is an amazing cutscene.

And then, of course, I have to fight the Necrozma-Lunala fused creature, and it's just an amazing feeling. Sadly, I can't capture it. Necrozma-Lunala is still kind of a poorly-done design in my opinion, although as with many other Generation VII characters, seeing it in proper 3D form makes him look so much better than drawings. Mostly because the huge Necrozma arms move. I still don't like it, though -- Necrozma-Lunala (Lunacrozma?) looks so messy. I take it down pretty easily, which, despite the epic music, was actually relatively simple, with a Z-move from my Decidueye taking down the monster.

And then Lunacrozma goes berserk, opens a fuckton of Ultra Wormholes...  and we get the awesome Hala/Tapu Koko cutscene... except it's altered now to have Hau standing near Hala. And the creature that pops out of the Ultra Wormhole isn't Buzzwole or Pheromosa, but... the huge wall Ultra Beast dude who I haven't looked up the name of because I'm avoiding spoilers! The cutscene still proceeds as it does, with Tapu Koko showing up...

And then it does something I was pissed off at the other games for not including, which is showing all the other Kahunas facing off against Ultra Beasts in their own respective islands. We get Olivia standing face-to-face with Pheromosa perched on a cave, we've got Nanu just wandering around and the Guzzlord slams down and roars in his face and he's just rubbing his head, and we've got little Hapu facing off against Xurkitree.

Which is all well and good! I'm hyped as hell, and I have to chase down Necrozma into the Ultra Beast dimension and fuck him up real good to save Alola and Ultra Megalopolis! The sky is dark and shit as Necrozma apparently 'stole our light' or whatever the hell. The Ultra Recon Squad tells me that they're going to lend me their Solgaleo (wait, they have a Solgaleo?) to allow me to access Ultra Megalopolis...

And what follows is a pretty fucking obnoxious minigame that I have to pass. And let me tell you that the 3DS motion gyroscope or whatever the hell doesn't work as well as I want it to be, and it's super-duper obnoxiously annoying that I have to repeat the minigame like four times because I kept being transported into the wrong wormhole into single-enemy 'Ultra Space' locations with... Abomasnows and Stunfisks and Swannas? Oh god, so to complete the Pokedex I have to do this shitty minigame to roll the dice and get the non-Alolan Pokemon?

Oh, and we still don't have a Gen VII national Pokedex, because what the fuck, yo? You put in pointless minigames like this or the Mantine Surf or the photography session, but a proper national Pokedex? Nope.

Anyway, after that stupid-ass minigame, I finally go through Ultra Space and reach Ultra Megalopolis, which looks cool! I'm going to go through it in my next playthrough, though, because this has gone on for a fair bit too long.