We pick up where we left off after last part where we fight a bunch of mochi-possessed villagers, and... somehow, despite his possessed sister being the whole reason I'm here in the first place, Kieran doesn't connect two and two and realize that the dance that the two farmers were doing is the same thing that Carmine is doing. Whether it's a curse or something done by a Pokemon or whatever, you'd think that Kieran is smart enough to realize what's going on?
Nemona is wandering around in the background, though, so we chase after her, passing a whole bunch of brainwashed nameless NPC's going mochi-mochi in the town.
I go to the Festival Hall, and Kieran's grandparents are there, seemingly still normal. They left Carmine sleeping at home, though I do think that it's not the wisest thing to do when your granddaughter is possessed. At least leave someone to take care of her! Grandpa (who we got the name of, it's Yukito) talks a bit about how they're here to buy some festival noodles with the hopes that they will make Carmine better.
Grandma Hideko? She's already possessed, holding a plate filled with donut-shaped mochi. She is very insistent, telling grandpa to have some mochi. Eat it. Eat the mochi.
Despite all the creepiness going on with Carmine, Grandpa just shrugs and eats the mochi after maybe two lines of arguments. Even if Grandpa hasn't seen what's going on in town, his insane granddaughter is literally yelling 'mochi mochi'. You'd think he'd be suspicious or at least uncomfortable. I guess he just really listens to Grandma?
Neither Kieran nor my character do anything to stop this, and, of course, Grandpa's eyes becomes purple as he gets infected with the mochi zombie virus. The purple miasma consumes both old people, and they start yelling MOCHI MOCHIIII and do the dance.
Grandma Hideko and Grandpa Yukito challenge us to a double battle, and it's actually quite interesting. Grandpa uses Arbok and Weezing, the two original Pokemon of the anime's Team Rocket. Grandma, meanwhile, wields a Chandelure and a Mamoswine for some reason. That one was a bit bizarre!
They go down pretty easily, and kind of just stands in place rigidly like the two farmers we beat up. Kieran panics, afraid that he'll end up like the rest of them because of the curse or whatever until we figure out that, yes, all the people yelling 'mochi mochi' has something to do with the mochi that they eat. It's kind of mind-bogglingly simple and I think that's the part of this whole story that irks me the most.
Arven calls at this point, because he and Penny are kind of besieged in the Community Center. In some typical horror movie trope, they are attacked by folks offscreen and all we can hear is things breaking, people screaming, before the line goes dead. Penny and Arven have fallen to the mochi people, it appears, and there's something ominous as Penny yells about there being "something there" at Peachy's.
Kieran and I rush back to town, to find that... Arven and Penny are absolutely all right. They gave me the wrong impression! Penny saw something weird, knocks Arven, and the phone being dropped was what caused all the screaming over the phone. But then Pecharunt shows up hovering above Peachy's in his 'sealed' form. I do like the fact that Arven and Penny are bamboozled, thinking that it's a drone.
Pecharunt then attacks, and I get why the mochi are shaped like donuts -- they're supposed to be the segments in his chains! Pecharunt shoots a bunch of mochi-donuts from the halves of his peach-shells. My character manage to dodge it. Kieran, the doofus, gets clonked in the forehead. Arven and Penny swallow them whole, and... I guess they have zero gag reflex, because they just swallow the two mochi whole.
And, of course, they begin to glow purple and demand a battle. Moche MOCHEEEE! The game has some fun emphasizing just how much Penny is more worked up than Arven, yelling a lot and mixing up her 'Mochi' with 'Eevee'. Which... leads her to yell 'ECHEEEE' a couple of times which, uh, is kind of unfortunate. (Penny would be the one out of the three Paldea buddies to be an ecchi fan).
Pecharunt just looms in the back of this battle, constantly splitting apart his peach shield and having it open and close.
And... the fight is a double battle between Penny and Arven against Kieran and me. Arven has Greedent, Mabosstiff and Cloyster. Penny has Umbreon, Leafeon and Sylveon. It's... it's not super duper exciting, honestly, since I've fought Penny and Arven so many times and they didn't even give them new Pokemon this time around.
After they get beaten down, little Pecharunt actually tries to slink away and act all innocent, which is actually adorable!
Kieran tries to stop Pecharunt, but Pecharunt just cha-cha-cha slides away in his sealed peach form. For something that's basically a ball on a point, Pecharunt can move. This time, we chase down Pecharunt down the west side of town all the way to Loyalty Plaza, which is still ruined and will remain forever ruined because I don't want to give the greedy caretaker money to fix up the shrine to assholes.
Ahem!
The possessed Arven, Penny and Carmine are following us, as is basically the population of the entire town. Nemona is waiting with Pecharunt at the destroyed shrine, and of course she is also possessed. Where Penny was just mixing up Mochi and Eevee, Nemona is actually saying some words like 'match' into her possessed insanity, and Kieran even lampshades this.
And... throughout all this the music just jumps back and forth between the very calming Kitakami background OST, or the ridiculous circus chicken dance music. And I know I sound a bit like a broken record at this point, but damn, it is distracting that none of the music actually match the mood.
I fight Nemona with her full party. Lycanroc, Goodra, Pawmot, Kommo-o, Milotic and Meowscarada. At this point Blueberry Academy has kind of leveled up my Pokemon so much that I kinda steamroll Nemona without trying too much. I had Ogerpon, the shiny Camerupt, plus a bunch of Paradox Pokemon in my party, and they just absolutely steamroll the opposition.
And finally, Pecharunt himself comes down to play.
And... I gotta do it. I gotta have Ogerpon show up and fight the shit out of Pecharunt. It seems only fair! Ogerpon even gets a "GRAH! Pon PON!!!" angry reaction when she sees Pecharunt in the battle. Pecharunt also has some special interactions with the Lousy Trio, but honestly, winning this entire battle with just Ogerpon is kind of appropriate.
Because, well, if you forget in the midst of all the chicken-dancing silliness, Pecharunt corrupted the Loyal Trio and mutated them into monsters, and is implied to be the actual mastermind behind everything terrible that has happened to Ogerpon. Sending the Loyal Trio to attack Ogerpon, attempting to steal the mask, and indirectly involved in the death of Ogerpon's old trainer. By the way, I love that short video in the official Pokemon site detailing Pecharunt's backstory, which is implied to be framed in such a way to garner the audience's sympathy towards Pecharunt. Manipulative little devil, isn't he?
Anyway, I tend to not give a shit about terastalization in this game, but I think in this case it's appropriate narratively that Ogerpon activates the full power of the masks that represent her old trainer, goes full-on giant oni mask mode, and I let Ogerpon just Throat CHOP THROAT CHOP THROAT CHOP Pecharunt in his non-existent throat until Ogerpon wins.
Now this music, by the way, fits the battle. It's a bit more tense with some background taiko drums. Thank goodness. Pecharunt's signature ability is that any Pokemon he poisons gets confused as well, which represents the whole 'mind control poison aspect of his powers, but... despite me not using any berries to heal Ogerpon, she just keeps breaking through confusion. That's the power of VENGEANCE for you! It actually was pretty fun.
And eventually I catch Pecharunt in a Love Ball, because the heart on it looks like an upside-down peach. Pecharunt is defeated, and Ogerpon's revenge is satiated.
And... I do like this storyline. Pecharunt doesn't have much to say or do, but the context gives us enough to close the book on Ogerpon's story. I kind of wish Ogerpon actually had some cutscene closure with either Kieran or Pecharunt, and that's what I feel is kind of missing from the DLC. Neither Ogerpon, Terapagos or Pecharunt have much of a closure beyond the boss fighting, and I thought they all could've done with some. But oh well.
The miasma is gone, and Kieran (who's been holding back the zombie crowd) recaps everything to Nemona, Carmine, Arven and Penny, all of whom have amnesia of the time they spent doing the chicken dance. We have some brief gags between Penny's sarcastic comments and Nemona jumpscaring the party by acting out the chicken dance one last time, but otherwise I really don't think there's much to say in the wrap-up.
And we cut to 'several days later', where the Paldean students prepare to return to Paldea from the Community Center. Carmine and Kieran come to see us off, and apparently Nemona has battled the Kitakami siblings 'dozens of times', causing Arven and Penny to snark that they can form a 'Nemona Survivors Club'.
The events of this whole epilogue basically has closed off Kieran's story, and he finally gets his confidence back to go back to Blueberry Academy, wanting to give it another shot. Carmine has also apparently taken a sabbatical from school throughout all of this, and is jubilant that they can go back. Kieran acknowledges that Carmine cares for him in her own wacky 'big personality' way, and... and that's the end.
It's a nice bit of storytelling, poor mood music notwithstanding. I do think that while it's not a perfect storyline, they put in a fair bit of effort in trying to draw some thoroughline with Kieran's story, and to wrap up the Kitakami mythology. I do feel that ultimately, this does reinforce my belief that the Blueberry Academy, despite being a great overworld area, ends up being a gigantic distraction from the stories that the game developers wanted to tell -- making the Indigo Disk segment of the DLC feel fragmented and awkward. It's ultimately a small complaint, though!
And... now I'm back to hunting. I did detail some of what I did off-screen in the 'random notes' section, including starter-hunting and doing a lot of upgrades to the Blueberry Academy. I feel like the game lends itself well to 'grinding', but the BP missions do get so repetitive and I'm kinda miffed that I can't do it in greater Paldea or in Kitakami since there are some Pokemon drops that I would like to farm. I'm going to be playing Pokemon Violet a lot less intensely now (and real life caused me to extend this playthrough maybe two months longer than I would've otherwise) but I do plan to unlock all the gym leader rematches in Blueberry Academy -- which wouldn't be hard; it'll just be time-consuming. This BP grinding stuff is admittedly a fun, brainless way to play the game while I watch TV.
I'll maybe do one more post later on if I have enough stuff to say about the post-post-game stuff in Blueberry Academy, with all the legendary hunting and the rematches and whatnot, but right now I'm going to focus on finally writing up the final "Gotta Review 'Em All" for Generation IX!
Once again, thank you guys for reading through my ramblings as I play through this Pokemon game. It's frankly surprising just how well these Pokemon articles do compared to a lot of the other articles I do on this blog.
Random Notes:
- Again, I really wished that we had creepier music. Save the funky-dance music for the chicken dance reveals, sure, but I really wished that the atmosphere actually was a bit creepier than it is. The visuals are good enough, and the blank expressions of the people dancing to mochi-mochi is honestly creepy enough, but I feel like this whole DLC would've worked much better with a different set of music.
- Honestly, the music when we get the buildup to the orchard workers or when Pecharunt attacks Arven and Penny are quite suitable. It's just that they really like the goofy theme.
- I do like that there's a laughter track in the background of the annoying theme, which I assume is Pecharunt himself.
- Penny got herself a Veevee Mask from the festival grounds offscreen. That's adorable.
- There's nothing super exciting about it, but I've finally unlocked the Canyon Biome's upgrade, which puts in the rest of the starters. Squirtle, Litten, a bunch of others.
- I caught a Shiny Drillbur! I didn't even realize she was shiny until my Pokemon refused to attack it. They really ramped up the shiny rate in this game, huh?
- Also, I've finally gone and tried to complete my Blueberry dex as best as I can with only a copy of Violet. A couple of the starters were a bit hidden! Torchic and Cyndaquil only spawn in specific caves in the Polar Biome, and I missed Totodiles in the swampy waters in the Savanna Biome entirely! I actually had to look up a guide for those.
- I also upgraded a lot of the stuff that I could in the Club Room. There's an item printer, a bunch of new poses and new music... and I finally invited a trainer. I invited Katy, the Bug gym trainer. From Katy's arrival I don't think we're going to get a whole ton of new content for me to talk about. I don't think we get any real new context the way that the original post-game rematches do. Or maybe Katy's just boring? She adds a sixth Pokemon, an Araquanid, to her party, but that's basically it.
- I also did some rematches with Crispin and Amarys, and I guess this progression will depend on who shows up in the League Club Room. I'm not sure what changes this, but I guess I'll just fight whoever's around. Not a whole ton to say about their rematches, but they don't give me new clothes like Drayton. Boo.
- Amarys gives me a brand-new pose, the 'finger heart' pose. I ignore poses almost entirely in this game, but I love the dialogue where Amarys is apparently taught this pose by Carmine, who somehow got her to believe that this is an 'invincible' pose. That's why she did it!
- Crispin gave me a bunch of sandwich picks. Man, you're lame, Crispin.
- I actually want to do a playthrough of New Pokemon Snap, but I'm not sure if there's going to be enough content in it for me to do a let's play series. We'll see.
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