Pokemon Ultra Moon Playthrough #8: Rainbow Rocket -- Let the Trumpets Sing!

Yeah, I'm definitely enjoying the Rainbow Rocket stuff! And the best part of it has to be the old-school remix of the Generation I Team Rocket Base theme song. God, it's just amazing! The battles with the grunts aren't particularly tough, although they do have Pokemon upwards of level 60, making them exactly on par with my own party, and while the Grunts have like one or two Pokemon each, there are a fuck-ton of grunts!

And Lillie gives this introdump that the castle's kind of like transformed and infected by the Rainbow Rocket technology. Which is just cool! Aether's aesthetics never appealed to me that much. And while Lillie stays behind to heal my Pokemon, well, at least she fought a bit earlier on.

But who else to show up but your boy Guzma? Last entry in my LP for Ultra Moon, I talked about character analysis and how Guzma's development is so well done in the Ultra games compared to base Sun/Moon, and here it's amplified even further. Guzma gives this speech about how while he's just a glorified Alolan thug, there are some things that he will not stand for people messing with -- and Team Rocket messed with one of those things. I'm assuming Lusamine, his mentor/boss? Yeah.  That was a pretty damn badass moment as Guzma strides into the castle, does his whole "the hated boss who beats you down!" spiel, then joins me in a double battle. That's pretty damn cool!

I've always wondered what the stairs in Lusamine's mansion led to and why they were coded into the game if they were blocked with grates. Now we know.

And this wonderful remix of the Team Rocket HQ theme blares throughout the entire journey, and I just am super-duper happy. The first wing on my left has some cool, old-fashioned Team Rocket teleportation floor panels, and a hilarious sequence with a bunch of Team Rocket grunts where they try to block my way with a human- chain. The wing to the right has this very annoying memory game where you have to step on the right sequence of floor panels... and lo and behold, halfway through each room, a grunt interrupts you with a battle! That's actually a pretty cool gimmick that isn't frustrating, but still troll enough to put into the game as something that the evil team would do.

Oh, and we have Electrodes disguised as Pokeballs and that made me so happy. It truly feels like old-school Team Rocket once more, but so much more epic.

And on the far right room... is Maxie! First of the villains for me to beat down! Not Omega Ruby geek Maxie, either, but old-school Generation III Maxie with his weird kimono-esque long-shirted thing. And, something that I didn't quite realize because I skipped all promotional material, Maxie doesn't just come from Hoenn. No, he comes from an alternate universe where he actually managed to capture Groudon, and created the utopia of massive continents that he wished to create. This is the insane, tunnel-vision Maxie from Generation III, and he's a Maxie that won! Well, that's pretty freaking dope.

I made myself a little challenge rule that I'm not allowed to use recovery items when fighting the evil team bosses. Shouldn't actually matter, right? Maxie and Archie are chumps and I've been kicking their tail since 2002.

And when the Hoenn music flares up and I finally engage him in battle, it does feel pretty epic. His Pokemon is pretty high-leveled too, and it's a bit of a shame that, just like Ruby and Omega Ruby, Maxie still leads with a Mightyena and Crobat, none of which are actually any threatening. Bewear punch! Kabutops rock slide! OHKO! Maxie then sends out his signature Pokemon, Camerupt, which gets one-shotted by Kabutops again. His fourth Pokemon, bizarrely, is a... Weezing? Why the fuck is Maxie associated in any way at all with a Weezing? Why not a different fire-type or ground-type? Weezing gets Psycho Cut'd by my Malamar. That's astonishingly easy.

[Maxie is about to send in Groudon. Will you switch your Pokemon?]

Oh. OOOOOOOOOOH.

Well, that changes things. And makes me unbelievably happy. Maxie sends out Groudon, and the Groudon ate the Aqua Jet from my Kabutops before one-shotting it with a one-turn Solarbeam. Well, that's kinda tough! Groudon's just a ground-type, though, and while he has a fuck-ton of stats, my Decidueye outspeeds him and a Leaf Blade will finish it off... oh. Oh. Full Restore. Of course.

Man, this is fun. I manage to take down the Land Continent Pokemon, the lizard that creates land by its mere existence, with a couple more leaf blades from my ghost owl. I love this. Maxie is the first of the Rainbow Rocket leaders to fall, and he congratulates me, saying that I need to press the picture of a volcano behind him, as well as a blue picture. Well, time for a showdown with Archie!

And after a bunch of fallen Rocket thugs later, I face off against Archie... and it's old-school Archie, too. Who is white, and doesn't have all the wetsuit and anchor stuff all about him. Like Maxie, Archie repeats some lines from Generation III about the sea being the cradle of life, and like Maxie, he is from a universe where he managed to capture Kyogre. Let's go!

One thing that kinda makes me sad is the fact that Maxie and Archie's teams are actually pretty similar with each other, so it's a Mightyena and Crobat that fall after each other. Archie's signature Sharpedo also falls quickly to my Pikachu's thunderbolt (no rough skin for you, sharky boy) and he has... a Muk? What is with the Hoenn evil team leaders being given random Kanto poison-types as their fifth Pokemon?

(Also, why not a full party of six? Give Maxie like a Magcargo or Torkoal, and Archie like a Tentacruel or a Walrein or some shit)

And then... Kyogre! Man, Kyogre is majestic. And he brings on the rain. Gotta be easy, right? Thunder gets 100% accuracy in the rain. Pikachu can take out a legendary whale... oh. Barely more than half. Right. Legendary stats. Hydro pump hits, Pikachu faints. No problem, Decidueye can Leaf Blade -- oh, Ice Beam? Fuck. I guess I'll send out someone tanky, like Bewear. Oh, cool, Hammer Arm gets a good chunk of Kyogre's health... and hydro pump knocks out my Bewear. Kabutops can -- oh, Kyogre knows Thunder? I really should've seen that coming, I used Kyogre a lot in Alpha Sapphire. Eventually it's my humble Malamar that manages to tank a hydro pump and psycho cut Kyogre down.

Well, that's difficult. But also fun as all hell! Clearly I need some backup, so I get ready to return back to the PC in Aether Foundation to bring out the big guns (literally -- Lunacrozma is a Lunala and Nercozma fused together, so it's a literal 'big guns').

And then I'm greeted to this. This here.

Guzma physically pushing Team Rocket grunts in their faces while they flail wildly. Well, when Guzma said he's going to make sure nobody gets pass him... he meant it literally.

Archie and Maxie walk out of their respective rooms and, pretty hilariously, they don't actually know that the other is working for Team Rainbow Rocket as well! They're actually about to throw down and battle each other when... some random distortion happens and eats them in a swirl of electricity. Did... did Nihilego eat them? What happened to Archie and Maxie? Regardless, though, that's two out of... six team leaders down, I think, assuming we don't fight a representative from this generation (I won't rule out an alt-universe Guzma or Lusamine).

A second pair of stairs opens, and in true Team Rocket fashion, the grunts Guzma are bullying lets it slip out the plot devices I have to do. A card key and a button, you say? Well.

A quick trip to swap out Pikachu with Luna-Necrozma (who I resolved not to use until it's a desperate moment) and I'm back! I clear out all the rooms, get all the loot and kill all the Electrodes in the Archie and Maxie wings, and then I pick the left side of the second floor stairs. It's a bit of a fun old-school spinny-spinny floor tiles, although it's laughable compared to the complexities of the Generation III floor-spinny tiles. A lot of Team Rainbow Rocket grunts fall (and I appreciate that they exclusively use Generation I Pokemon) and the door stands to my next foe. An 'antisocial freak', huh, random grunt? That actually describes Cyrus pretty well.

I never actually liked Cyrus out of the many, many villainous gym leaders, and while I would've rated Maxie and Archie lower than him in the past, a combination of really great development in the remakes and nostalgia make me love them a lot. Cyrus is just... still insanely obsessed with his new world and lack of spirit and soul and all that bullshit. I mean, Cyrus doesn't really give the game makers that much material to work with, so yeah. Like Archie and Maxie, Cyrus came from an alternate universe where he succeeded in his insane plan to create a new world with no emotions... and instead gets sucked into Alola.

Cyrus's team is pretty much identical to his Platinum-era team, at least. He leads with a Houndoom that falls to my Bewear. Crobat and Honchkrow get rock slided. Weavile gets one-shotted with a hammer arm. Cyrus apparently replaced his Gyarados with the legendary Pokemon, and I thought that it was totally going to be Giratina... but it's... Palkia?

Um... okay? Why Palkia and not Dialga? Hell, fuck that, why not both? I mean, I'm not using Necrozma unless necessary, but most people by this point would have had Necrozma and Lunala/Solgaleo in their party, and have the possibility of getting the Tapus into their party as well. Why not give Cyrus a full party and have both the Time Dinosaur and the Space Godzilla?

Still, Palkia is ten dozen times cooler than Dialga, so at least this is a Cyrus that has great taste. And, well, Palkia's... a powerful dick! He's the god that rules over space, and he doesn't go down easily. Palkia actually gave me a run for my money! He can Surf and Spacial Rend (by god Spacial Rend has a cool animation in this generation), that's not unexpected... but Thunderbolt? Earth Power? Suffice to say, it's a thrilling battle against Palkia. Nearly the entirety of my party gets absolutely slaughtered, and while I didn't have to pull out Necrozma, I did cheese out the win against Palkia by spamming Sucker Punch with Decidueye.

Cyrus gets a bit of a character moment too because my Rotom Pokedex pops up and talks to him, and apparently Cyrus remembers his own Rotom -- I completely forgot that Cyrus has a bit of an expanded backstory where his first Pokemon was a Rotom. It's a neat little detail! I like it.

Shit, it's pretty tough, though, and definitely an epic fight. Cyrus, you have gained some respect from me. I just hope Giovanni, Ghetsis, Lysandre and... do N and the Generation VII evil leaders get in on this? Either way, I just hope they put up as much of a fight as Cyrus did. This is just epic and fun. We'll face off against the rest of the Rainbow Rocket gang in the next part, though!