Part 4 of my screenshot-based let's play of the fan-made Pokemon game, Pokemon Uranium! Last time we left off, we cleared the second gym, caught a hideous-but-lovely psychic brain fish, and evolved our bear caterpillar into a modern art piece.Onwards with more Uranium!
Last time we left off, we entered Comet Cave, we are told that the cave Pokemon are rampaging and that we have to do a Generation IV style team-up dungeon with Theo.
Unlike Generation IV, though, Theo straight-up just refuses to let you return to town to shop for supplies or do whatever, and you're just railroaded into this until you complete the dungeon with him. He at least is able to keep my party healed after every battle (I picture him holding a giant syringe-machinegun with potions and ethers), but it's still pretty irritating.
Anyway, all the battles here are double battles, and if I'm a wee bit more motivated I might've used it to train my party. But I'm not, so after a couple of levels with
Also, why is Bubo still in my party? I could've sworn I swapped the little bugger out for Pahar. Eh.
DANGER DANGER DEATH THE CRISIS
OH SHIT A NEW POKEMON! Now I know you're new at this whole trainer thing, Theo, and your party is kind of shit, and you have a burning desire to prove yourself to the world and I've been how you say kind of a dick to you, but I REALLY want that little cute rock-spider thing with an eye-of-the-abyss thing peering out of the rock, come on, buddy, do me a solid here...
Theo, you cunt.
So, yeah, just like the fourth-generation games, you can only capture pokemon in double battles when there's only one left. But your buddy's Pokemon acts on its own, so as seen here, sometimes assholes like Theo knocks out the pokemon you're trying to capture.
Unlike the official Pokemon games, there simply flat-out no way for my Pokemon to attack Theo's pokemon and keep the situation under control. god, I really want to get out of this dumb cave even more.
Finally. It took a couple of encounters that I ran away from before we encounter another Comite, and thank god that the stupid paint-tail cat missed its attack. Screw you, Theo. I want my rock spider.
What the heck, it's an alien rock spider that camouflages as random rocks, and it's got a cute little eyeball! Honestly, this sort of alien probably would fit right at home as a villain-of-the-week in a Ben Ten episode or some shit. I love this thing.
I always loved the term "Starspawn", even if it tends to refer to Cthulhu babies or some shit. I do want to get this little cute adorable buddy into my team -- it's far cooler than having Barewl around, anyway... but Theo won't let me out of the cave.
You know, if you're going to railroad me, at least have the decency of telling me. "If you get into this dungeon, you can't exit until it's done" or something?
Not pictured: the cave shaking at random intervals as we pass a bunch of lakes and approach the exit.
Pictured: Theo trying his darndest to put up a brave front.
Pictured: Theo failing to put up a brave front and running the fuck away like the little coward that he is.
I can't even go and make sure Theo doesn't get his fool ass killed by the swarms of Comites, Tonemies and Fortogs, because a bunch of Strength boulders fall down from the sky and block my way back. Until I get the Strength HM, I guess every single area I've passed through is out of bounds. I actually would make sure Theo isn't mauled or crushed to death, I'm not that mean.
God damn it I really wanted to rename Cerebros into Cerebella.
God damn it a giant two-headed land-snake attacks me!
Oh, huh, it's a wild Pokemon boss? Kind of interesting. This "Terlard" creature is the evolved form of the Grozards we've been seeing throughout the game, and she's a whopping level 22, a pretty steep jump from the Pokemon in the cave.
Fortunately, it's a wild Pokemon, so I just chuck pokeballs at it until I
Terlard is a Ground/Dragon, and Uranium is going to have its fair share of dragons, being a fan game and all. It's actually relatively restrained in the amount of dragons it has, actually. Also, "Terlard" is... I get the origin of the name, a combination of "terra" and "lizard", but the name sounds more like something you get when you butcher a Grumpig or some such.
I'm not sure if she can do fire/ice stuff, but we're calling her Jakiro, the Twin-Head Dragon. Y'know what? Simply because she's of a higher level and I'm too lazy to grind, I'll put her in my party once I exit this damn cave.
Not really, it can't really do a whole ton to my mutant fairy cocoon. Anyway, apparently Terlard's two heads are fighting each other, and somehow it causes every single other Pokemon in the cave to rampage. Somehow. I kinda get what they're going for, but I really wished that either the dex entry or the Pokemon's abilities reflected this a bit better, y'know?
I actually hope they do this more, have actual wild Pokemon be like, minibosses of smaller dungeons like caves and whatnot.
You're welcome, hiker man. Also... I don't see the Pokemon Rangers anywhere. Y'know, at the first sign of rampaging Pokemon, it really should be Pokemon Rangers first on the scene, yeah? That was how the Rangers of Fiore, Almia and Oblivia behaved, anyway -- a rampaging Terlard should really have been calmed down by rangers.
Of course, if the Rangers of Tandor were led by anyone more competent than the constant disappointment that is Ura's father, maybe we'd have a ranger or two on site.
Ah, a move that 100% describes how I feel about this cave and Theo in general.
Frustration is basically like reverse-Return, but is completely useless because happiness is actually pretty damn easy to increase.
FRESH AIR! So I guess Theo is just stuck behind those Strength boulders? There's no way he has Strength, after all, since he's constantly behind me.
The actual game doesn't acknowledge it, but these Routes apparently have individual names in the PokePod map. Route 5 is "Tancoon Way", which is... pretty misleading, because there aren't actually any Tancoon around.
It's instead populated by sheep! They come in official cute fluffy electric sheep...
(I named one Robodream, because do androids dream of electric sheep?)
...and baa baa black sheep variety! I am genuinely flabbergasted that somehow this black sheep is Dark/Fighting. Dark, sure, I see at this stage, but I really feel like this critter probably should only gain Fighting when it evolves. It's presumably one of those "closely related but not really" counterpart, sort of like Pinsir and Heracross?
I name mine Baaphomet. I'm genuinely not a big fan of the Baashaun line, but the typing is pretty useful and I'm not opposed to using ones I don't like should I come to a roadblock.
This is where I would've naturally encountered Tricwes if I hadn't gone around and wonder-traded and gotten one out of nowhere. I caught one, and I named him Zapfly. Not the most creative name, honestly, but I didn't want to go for the obvious "Bumblebee" or "Yellowjacket" names.
Some of the trainers here have Kinetmunk, the evolution of Chyinmunk, which... I'm legitimately not sure if I've seen before. Starspawn tries to be useful, but as a pure-Rock type that can only do the honestly crappy Rock Throw, Starspawn's usefulness is severely limited.
One of the trainers in this route has a Cocaran, which is a coconut crab that is adorable as shit and I want one. It's a literal coconut crab with a coconut for a shell and little googly stalk eyes and cute little pincers and leaf-legs and aaaa I want one.
Holy shitballs! Silver Wind is a move that I've learned not to disrespect. Bug-types tend to be pretty m'eh or crap, but coming off of some of the more powerful bug-types introduced in newer generations, Silver Wind ends up actually living up to its "Ancient Power, but with bugs" intent. Needless to say, Taxonomaly learns it immediately and finally has a decent attacking move other than Fairy Wind.
Rochfale Town, which I assume is a pun on... rocks fall, maybe? Well, rocks fell when that jackass Terlard rampaged on Comet Cave, blocking my way back home to my auntie and my hometown.
On the upside, the first house I pass has an adorable little superhero dog (no, I'm not making it up) guarding the house. Who's a good boy? Who's a gooboy?
I dunno, a lot of money move around among the trainers... Specifically, Ura beats up other trainers that clearly have jobs like sailors and whatnot, and then spend the money on poke-balls. Clearly, the economy is moving.
(Don't try to think too hard about the logistics of the Pokemon world is what I've learned)
This random lady on the mart rants about how everyone loves Kanto, Johto and Hoenn Pokemon, but dislike Sinnoh Pokemon and Tandor fanmade ones. Gee, I dunno, lady, lots of people complain about Hoenn too. And I see lots of people complain about Kanto too. And don't get me started on the Unova-bashing!
Kalos and Alola, on the other hand, are almost universally beloved, maybe because people've matured when the franchise sort of returned a bit more into the public spotlight.
Oh, since we're in a Pokemon Center... bye, wonder-traded Tricwe. You weren't super good. Mostly, I just want Pokemon whose names I can make up.
"Mister Burke" the Grozard has a funny name, but gets traded away as well.
HOLY FUCK wot
It's the nuclear form of Trawpint, a Pokemon based on Birdo from Mario, with two shard-like wings glued onto its back, a radioactive symbol shaped diaper, and... and it actually looks a lot cooler in nuclear form.
I need to stop spoilering myself with wonder trades.
So yeah, thanks to the wonders of wonder trade, we get spoiled on the existence of nuclear pokemon. Trawpint is Poison/Nuclear, and is thus a completely brand-new typing that this game made up. Its moveset seems to be pretty identical to what I presume a normal, regular Trawpint has, though.
The Nuclear type, as we'll learn later on, is 2x effective on every single type out there except for steel (which means a Nuclear-typed attack will deal 4x damage on pretty much anything dual-typed)... but also receives 2x damage from every type out there. It's the definition of a glass cannon, I guess.
Also, similar to the Shadow Pokemon in the side-games Colosseum and Gale of Darkness, the Nuclear Pokemon essentially act like traded pokemon and will continually loaf around and ignore orders. So yeah, this little walking nuclear plant will just chill in the box, since even if I'm willing to use traded Pokemon, I'm not going to use this particular one.
Back to catching shit on the route, and we get the "bliss bird" Aveden, what Happy Birb would've evolved into if I hadn't tossed him into the internet. Apparently it uses its neon light markings to communicate with each other? The Wiki says that Aveden is specifically based on the Wilson's Bird-of-Paradise, and I actually think that the real bird is way more colourful and garish than the Pokemon.
I call mine Domino because she looks like she's wearing a domino mask.
The same route also has Costraw, the pre-evolved form of Trawpint. Apparently these guys are Poison/Psychic, and it's apparently a leech that sucks out life-force and has telekinetic powers. It's Poison/Psychic. Also, it has a mohawk. It's kinda weird, but weird in a good way, not in a "wtf is this" way that Barewl or Tofurang were. Not sure if I'm going to use this, though, since the Psychic sort of overlaps with Brailip and I don't see much point in carrying a Poison-type around.
I call him "Psycoleech", because "Psycholeech" doesn't fit.
There's a different entrance to Comet Cave, but I don't get to go much before a pond and a strength boulder blocks my path. Curse you, HM-gated travel!
Back to Rocksfall Town, and I just sort of run around and talk to everyone. This dude is a generic "angry at the new generation" strawman, complete with the writers throwing in a derisive "play in the dirt" condescending line.
A little too friendly? ...what do you mean by that, it can be taken in multiple ways.
...okay, lady, what do you mean about that? I'm not sure if she's just genuinely cheerful, if she's got an interest on portable non-rigid containers, or she's just trying to flirt with some innuendo but it flies over Ura's head.
The other dude in this room basically has a bit of a mini-quest where he wants to see a certain type of Pokemon, but speaks in quasi-riddles. I remember a mini-quest similar to this in the Gen IV games. I bring him Official the Dunsparce, and he gives me the Moon Stone. The second riddle is me showing him a Magikarp, and he gives me a Water Stone. The third riddle wants Pahar's evolution but I can't be arsed to level up mine.
Presumably Palij is Pahar's evolution? I don't have either Tofurang or Palij, though, so can't do this. And honestly, if I had the time and effort to evolve a Tonemy into a Tofu Hippo, I'd rather spend it on leveling up Tajador the Pahar instead.
As I leave the town... suddenly Professor Bamb'o shows up! How did he get past the blocked tunnel? He's flustered, apparently, and ropes me into a side-quest which I must complete to progress.
Dude, is Theo alive? He's last seen in a goddamn rockslide, and I don't know if he's alive, dead, or if the Tonemies have feasted on him.
Also, there is no way to actually get Bamb'o to look at my Pokedex and give me the rewards I would've gotten if I visited him in Moki Town. Which is honestly kinda silly considering the game basically shut off access to Moki Town with that Terlard collapse. Uranium is a great fan-game, but playability wise between the railroading and the general difficulty of accessing previous areas without Fly is just sort of... sub-par, I guess.
We return to the nearby lab, and Bamb'o quickly defuses the situation before we get a typical sitcom misunderstanding.
Apparently there's a thief. Okay, professor Cypress, have you by any chance seen an emo boy with a leather jacket and long, red hair lurking outside the back window of the lab and pushing anyone who tries to talk to him? No? Okay, just asking. Bad experience in the past.
Also, grr grr at being recognized only as Kellyn's son. Ura is his own man!
Professor Cypress goes on a long description of what she does and the Pokemon thief, before showing off the prototype Pokemon Speech Translator. Awesome! While we've had telepathic Pokemon before, and talking Pokemon in the anime, maybe this fangame will finally let us fully communicate with our Pokemon? That's great!
Very conveniently, a researcher arrives with the lab's resident Owten, who is just sort of hanging out injured or some shit.
Apparently Owtens speak with broken syntax.
Also, the PST only works with plot-relevant Pokemon like this, and at no point (at least so far) that I am able to use the PST to speak with my Pokemon buddies. What a complete waste of an otherwise fun concept. Even like, two or three token lines from my own Pokemon depending on their happiness would've been neat.
Somehow the player character in this game will only ever use the PST on missions like this. Boo, I say. Boo.
But I have a fire velociraptor, a psychic goldfish, a fairy buttplug cocoon and an alien spider-rock. Can't I just flame wheel these Owtens? Or confusion them a little? Fairy wind, perhaps, to blow them away? Just because they're unwilling doesn't mean I can't attack them, right?
Nope, got to be railroaded to these Owten, who Ura are willing to fight for some reason.
There are... four or five? I tried catching them all and tried to give them insulting nicknames, but after "Dongface" and "Racist" (they hate humans, after all), it's not worth the effort and I just had Cerebella fry their brains inside-out.
Pfft, shut up, you silly cat-owl, you will fall like all of your other racist owl friends.
In the cave, Ura gets accosted by a stringy humanoid with a garlic for a head. Yeah, they're probably going for a zany anime character with Garlikid, but I personally don't really care for him. At least this puts Garlikid into more context, though.
It's exactly like N, but a Pokemon, but more dumb. A freedom fighter for enslaved Pokemon! Misunderstandings! Waaaa!
Garlikid, the Pokemon Hero, Liberator of the Oppressed, Breaker of Chains and Avenger of the Night! Honestly, if Garlikid actually ended up seeing two sides of the story and saw someone who's genuinely abusing Pokemon, it'd actually be a lot better than "haha what a moron" even though a story focusing on liberating abused Pokemon would work amazingly well in a fan-game, especially since Nintendo/GameFreak won't ever touch the darker side of that subject with a ten-foot pole.
"Hero" Garlikid looks dumb, and he acts like a trainer.
Despite being a Pokemon, he never actually fights. Who's enslaving who now, you onion Superman wannabe?
Oh look it's that adorable superhero dog! The spriting isn't the best, but Lunapup is an adorable good boy and I love him. He's Fighting-type, and a Low Kick downs poor Starspawn.
But muscles ain't worth jack shit against Cerebella. Behold your arch-enemy, the BRAIN! Honestly, as a creature with an exposed brain, Brailip is a pretty appropriate supervillain for Lunapup, huh?
...except apparently the designated supervillain here is Minyan, who's this dracula-looking cat-bat creature that looks adorable as shit and I really want one, more than I want Lunapup. As I quickly learn from losing Cerebella and Taxonomaly in quick succession, Minyan is a dual-type Dark (great against the psychic-type Cerebella) and Poison (great against both of Taxo's types) creature. With the aid of some critical hits, she sends two of my team packing.
Also, she's got the ability "Bloodlust", which is, as far as I can tell, original to this fangame, where Minyan restores health with every single hit. I brought along Baaphomet as a HM slave, and he manages to slap Minyan silly with some fighting-type moves.
Garlikid's last Pokemon is Baaphomet's evolved form, Baaschaf, who's exactly like Baashaun but on two legs. Charlie shows up, and, showing that he's still a wee bit over-leveled, spams Flame Wheels until Baaschaf falls.
Garlikid threatens to destroy me, but he doesn't even try to fight. Maybe he took one look at the fire-breathing Charlie, natural enemy of onions, and decides to book it.
Silly, one-dimensional, deluded character! Anime power of friendship! Naruto speech! Humans and Pokemons are friends!
Despite being fainted, Lunapup and the otehrs just pop out and just leave Garlikid behind. LOL dumped
Next time, Gadget, next time!
Honestly, done well, the Garlikid quest could've been interesting, but this honestly feels tacked on and more of a distraction than anything. At the same time, I also feel like I'm being unreasonably hard on this storyline. It's nice fluff, honestly.
It ain't no man...
Long explanation about things we probably could've inferred from the Garlikid dialogue, but it's nice to have clarifications. Apparently Lunapup, Minyan and Baaschaf are just excited and thought it's playtime, despite the fact that the first Owten was scared shitless, and the swarm of hostile Owtens are clearly out there campaigning for "humans are evil".
Sheepish, off-handed indirect admission that Cypress might actually be mistreating her Pokemon? Don't you dare be mean to Lunapup, you evil woman! I've got my eye on you. At least you're changing, but if if you mistreat that good boy, I will have Cerebella fry your brain.
I keep the prototype PST
A far more tangible reward from Bambo'o, though, is the Exp. Share! He literally flies away on a bird before I could show him my Pokedex, though I will definitely take the Exp. Share without complaints. This will make grinding levels so much easier.
I keep the two Owtens I enslaved in a box called "Trash", because I'm a spiteful shit.
This lady compliments Ura's impeccable sense of fashion. She has a Flaaffy, which... honestly isn't anything special, I've seen the Mareep line since 1999.
She flirts with Ura and trades numbers with her, with the implicit promise of illicit rendezvouses in Rochfale. She's a lot more forward than the bag girl, at least.
Yeah, Sponee ends up becoming a lot less cute. Sponaree is still a neat-looking bubble spider creature, but the pose makes it look like a weird sheep-spider mutant more than a cool spider.
Meanwhile, Smore's evolution, Firoke... it isn't anything special, but at least it's what you expect from a literal fire ant Pokemon. Neither of these are particularly good, and if I would compare them to a real Pokemon, they'd be the equivalent of Masquerain or Golbat or something -- good enough to be annoying in a fight, but not actually good to carry around.
Oh yeah, sometimes these glitches happen when the game changes from night to day, with the houses still in "night light" mode.
Anyway, more exploration on the pretty long Route 6!
Montage of battles!
Not many new wild Pokemon in Route 6 ("Pahar Hills"), it's mostly just Tancoons, Pahars and Cubblflies with the odd Tricwe and Lunapup showing up here and there.
I caught a Lunapup of my own, and apparently it's Ground/Fighting? Okay, wow, the visual design really doesn't communicate the Ground part at all. I have a literal plethora of different superhero-themed names to choose from (even superhero dog nicknames), but I'll just call him a Good Boy.
I had wanted to call him something like "Krypto" or "Ace" but that'd be a bit too obvious.
Secret Power is a gimmicky move that only has any sort of use in the Hoenn games with secret bases and shit. I also got TM41, Torment, which is pretty useless.
YEAH A GOOD GROUND MOVE FINALLY! Mud-Slap was getting pretty silly. Magnitude isn't the best Ground-move, but it's actually decent, and only really stops from being actually good by the fact that it deals variable damage, literally rolling the dice between 1-9.
None of my party really have any super-great moves. Cerebella in particular is hurting because she only knows Water Gun and Confusion as STAB moves, both being pretty much the weakest water and psychic moves respectively.
I don't get the reference, no. I genuinely didn't. I'm not enough of a nerd, apparently.
Holy shit, there's a lot of people flirting with Ura today. What, did he use some particularly nice Cubblfly cologne or something? Or are the ladies in Rochfale are just that more appreciative of a strapping young lad?
One of the trainers here had a Tubjaw, which is a grinning, asshole-looking fish with some... weird anatomy. He's neat! That face is the definition of "I don't give a shit what you think".
What a dick!
Starspawn unleashes the power of the rocks to kill his two Eshoutens -- the evolved form of Owten. It looks a lot less cute and a lot more feral than Owten. Pretty neat design, I really like it.
Oh, hey, Aerial Ace, that's pretty neat! Flying is always great coverage. I teach it to both Tajador and Taxonomaly -- both of them are special-oriented, but Aerial Ace will do until we get any better moves.
Also I did a bit of a party shuffling. Mainstays Charlie, Cerebella and Taxonomaly are going to remain permanent fixtures of my team -- and I'm surprised to say just how useful Taxonomaly has been, despite originally being pretty confident that I'm not going to use the Cubbug line in my playthrough. These critters have a way of growing on you, I guess. Starspawn is there, but he really hasn't been pulling his weight. I'm carrying around Tajador and Wigglefoot because they can potentially help out with type coverage.
Okay, so apparently the final tournament Indigo Plateau equivalent is here? I would say it's kinda random, but some of the Pokemon games have had the league be placed at a random place in the region that is simply unapproachable until you get 8 badges.
oooookay
Apparently the Andromeda galaxy has Scottish people or something? I feel this is a reference to something, but I just don't get it.
Exp. Share has made evolving Lotad a simple matter. He goes into Lombre at level 14, which is actually pretty trivial with Exp Share...
And goes straight into Ludicolo with one of the two Water Stones I own! He gets STAB Giga Drain from that TM I found earlier, and while the rest of his moveset (Bubble, Hidden Power and Brick Break) isn't ideal, I do have respect for the base stat 480 Ludicolo. It is a third form that normally wouldn't be great because of a pretty poor learn-set, but with Giga Drain... I did say that I wasn't going to use official Pokemon in this run, but I do kinda need a grass-type and the lack of STAB on Cubblfly is kind of hurting it.
There's a specific grass-type in mind I have that'll eventually replace Wigglefoot, but for now, she's hanging out in our party.
Next up... beach party!
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