More bugs! Last we left off, our hero Ura braved the gigantic mountain-like hive of a massive colony of Firokes, Sponarees and Harylects, the dreaded Anthell, as well as the rainy and dangerous Baykal Rainforest, before arriving in the remote, backwater Amatree village, where he discovers that apparently the insects of Anthell sometimes abduct humans when they are hungry... and the gym leader's apparently not around...(Also, something something nuclear meltdowns, I guess -- presumably that storyline's shelved for the moment)
Okay, last time we left off, we are informed that the gym leader of Amatree town is missing... and apparently, the leader of the gym is a Fire-type user! Wait, weren't the first couple of gym leaders based on a habitat? We're just going back to regular old types now? Okay then.
Apparently this Tiko fellow went to the deeper levels of Anthell to train his fire Pokemon.
"Consider part of your badge to go fetch him?" Dude, you're a pyromaniac, as the game renamed your trainer class, you clearly are far more equipped to fight a bunch of bugs and rescue your boss than some random trainer who honestly just randomly waltzes into town.
But no, Tiko might be consumed alive by the insects who might by laying eggs in his flesh, just passive-aggressively intimidate this one random kid to rescue Tiko. What if Ura was a less competent trainer? What if this was Theo? Can you live with that blood on your hands, pyromaniac man?
You even have a can of bug spray that you could use in conjunction with your fire Pokemon! Pyromaniac man, you have like three or four sentences, but you might probably be as bad a human being as Sheldon and Kellyn.
Well, fine, whatever. Ura will rescue your dumb gym leader.
The Bug Spray is just plot device to get rid of the blocking Pokemon. There is absolutely no reason in-universe for Ura to not continue using the Bug Spray as a special max repel, nor is there a reason given for him to just summon all six of his Pokemon to beat up eight Firokes, Harlyects and Sponarees. Honestly, I've beaten through like three times the amount of it just reaching this point.
And then Ura reaches a dead end and falls into a hole! As you might probably tell from the layout, there's no way to return to the upper level, so time to go deeper into the nest, I guess.
PFFFFTTTTTTTT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I mean, I know what this is supposed to mean, but come on, that's funny. I have the mind of a juvenile five-year old and so I find it funny.
Also, all the Bug Maniacs in this deeper part of Anthell are named after insects, like "Roach" here. Roach has a full team of six Pokemon, with each member of the elemental ants. Not much of a challenge at this point, but it's impressive that he has six -- I thought that was going to be the gimmick of the deeper Anthell, considering how the whole point of bugs is that they swarm all over you, but nope, Roach here is the only one with six.
The deeper caverns have the evolved forms show up a bit more often, so I catch myself a Sponaree, the evolved form of Sponee. It becomes significantly less cute. I call him Bubbles, which might be a pretty obvious and easy name, but whatever.
I am Edison. Edison! Are you Edison? No you're not!
I do like Harylect. I don't think I appreciated him as much because Firoke was a lot cooler-looking, while Sponaree's design is kinda bizarre and weird (but I don't dislike it), whereas Harylect is just kind of a fuzzy wingless bee, but the lightbulb abdomen and the little detail of their electrical plug antennae are pretty charming.
So I beat up Fly...
And Ant...
...and Quito. It took me a while to realize the pun on Quito's name, and I feel dumb.
Apparently they have extra dialogue after you defeat them, which are pretty creepy, but having fallen through the tunnels, I didn't manage to talk to Ant, Fly and Roach. Anyway these bug maniacs are clearly brainwashed and captured by the Seikamater's brood.
He serves the Brood Queen! For the Brood!
I really wanted to make Zerg jokes from Starcraft, but Zergs don't really say a lot of memorable unit lines.
Ah, finally. My bum's hurt after falling down so many levels.
Okay, so apparently Tiko's gotten himself in a bit of a bind. Get it? A bit of a bind? Anyway, how the hell did you get captured and wrapped up in a spider-web, anyway? I mean, I guess the bugs are hungry, but apparently they left those brainwashed bug maniacs alone? Just what makes a human eligible for consumption, and what makes a human ideal for brainwashing duty? Also, is this like the bug equivalent of like a ritual sacrifice? Blood for the blood gods!
Now you have a bad feeling about this? Look, man, you're wrapped on a spider-web and surrounded by giant doberman-sized bugs, I'm pretty sure "bad feeling" passed a long time ago.
Oh yeah, the whole point of Tiko is that he's proud that he's crossdressing and wearing a skirt. Which is cool and all, I don't judge what people wear and how they dress themselves -- the joke wore thin pretty quickly later on, but at this point it's just bizarrely ridiculous that after being rescued Tiko's priority is to call out Ura for apparently staring at his skirt, and then to mock kids these days for not appreciating crossdressing fashion.
Oh no the bugs are blocking our way out! I bet it's because the Queen is here. Long live the Queen!
Oh no, the Queen is hungry and angry! Feed him one of the bug maniacs!
You pussy. Damn it, would it help if I shared revives and super potions with you? Teaming up against this gigantic monster queen ant would work, right?
Also, how did you fall prey anyway? I mean, I guess the Sponarees would be a bad match for your fire-types, but still.
Shit, man, I'm going to do nothing until I catch her! I like bugs, and the queen of all bugs is going to be a great feather in my cap. Who knows, Queen Seikamater might even replace Taxonomaly in my team!
Whoa nellie she's a big 'un. To quote a badass lady that fought a colony-controlling queen... "get away from her, you BITCH!"
I try an ultra ball, but it fails and the game tells me, that, no, you can't catch Seikamater. Just because.
Okay, Tiko, pay attention. This is how you use a fire-type Pokemon to handle bug-types. I know it might seem complicated, but pay attention, okay? First, you click "Fight", then you select "Flamethrower"...
AND CHARLIE THE INCINERATOR WILL BURN DOWN THE QUEEN-GOD OF INSECTS UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT
Yeah, you got one-shotted, Seikamater. Deal with it.
Ewww it's bug juice. EWWWWWW.
Somehow we just teleport out, despite the bugs clearly being impenetrable and blocking the way previously. I guess they just got so shocked at how insanely badass Charlie was?
You would probably be minced by the bugs, Tiko. Who says "I won't mince words" anyway?
Tiko is surprisingly pleasant and thanks Ura for saving him. Although to be fair, Ura did just save him from a gigantic, massive ant queen that tried to eat him.
Fling's another one of those not-very-good moves that I tend to ignore.
I'm not sure how flattering it is for the game's dialogue to basically go "Tiko wears skirts!", pause, and then basically acknowledge it and go "yeah, he wears skirts, so what?" as if guilt-tripping the audience or something.
The puzzle of this gym is that strength blocks pushed on ice tiles will shut off some flames, and it's basically a relatively simple maze.
Sometimes you accidentally push a boulder too far and have to reset the puzzle, which is annoying.
I have three things on my team well-suited to kick any Fire-type's ass -- Charlie's Magnitude; Coconut's Rock Slide and Cerebella's Water Pulse.
I've never seen Raptorch's animation from the front and it's cute! ...for all of five seconds before Cerebella drowns it with a pulse of river water. Also, there's Flager, the fire cheetah cub or whatever which was on sale in the Amatree market.
Chimical is a Fire/Poison that has Petrifiy, an Uranium-original ability that is like Intimidate but for speed, which is actually pretty freaking powerful in actual competitive. Also, despite being based on a chimera, his body layout resembles more of a manticore (no goat part, and he has wings... though at least the snake-tail is chimera) and the pertification bit isn't something associated with chimeras.
I absolutely fucking love just how utterly dumb and goofy the snake tail looks that's just perfect.
AW SHIT MY LITTLE GOOEY BABY GERM HAS EVOLVED. Instead of one eye, he has like six and all of them are located on his feet! Gellin is a lot less cute than Nupin, but I still like him a lot. He's a bizarre combination of a sea slug, a horse, and sort of brings to mind the extinct Hallucigenia, but he's still just a big blobby cell that has just grown a bunch of leg-like flagellae.
I still love my baby E. coli.
Using generated electromagnetic pulses as propulsion is actually a pretty cool utilization of the real-life electrical-generating properties of some bacteria. I suppose that explains the pretty hefty speed boost E. coli gets as a Gellin, since I don't think those jelly flagella legs are particularly fast.
Tiko's a very pleasant and polite man. He thanks me for saving him from Seikamater, talks about dances and some such, and then we fight!
Here we go! Honestly, I'm not sure why everyone makes such a huge deal about Tiko's skirt. It's not even particularly flamboyant, and I've seen Hawaiian dancers and whatnot dress similarly. That's a pair of funny Shuckle earrings, too.
Round one Cerebella versus Palij, go!
Palij is faster with an Air Slash, but Cerebella's Water Pulse is pretty devastating. Not quite enough to take Palij down, though.
Oh, healing, is it? Two can play at that game.
Tiko ends up withdrawing Palij, and throws out Firoke, which eats a Water Pulse (his health went down a bit less than half). I'm frankly surprised he still keeps one considering he was almost eaten by this thing's mother. Firoke's Bug/Fire, though, and I've fought enough of these to know that higher-leveled ones have Bug Bite, which would be bad for Cerebella.
...so I switch to Charlie, who handily shrugs off the Bug Bite. Tiko then heals up his bombardier ant with a hyper potion.
Charlie, on the other hand, gives absolutely no fucks and unleashes Magnitude 8, which is pretty respectable. I forgot that Bug resists Ground-type moves, though, for some reason, so kinda dumb of me.
Oh hey apparently Water Pulse ended up confusing Firoke! Let's see if Cerebella's psychic powers will reach from beyond her Poke-Ball... and, of course, Firoke hurt itself! Haha, dumb ant, he can't do anything without the direction from its dead queen-mother!
Another Magnitude 8 and Firoke is out.
Tiko sends out Palij again, and I bring out E. coli in all of his glorious, oozing, flagellized form. Come forth, my child, and show what you can do!
That isn't E. coli taking out Palij, by the way. Palij survives the super-effective Shock Wave with a literal pixel of health remaining. Which is absolutely annoying. Hilarious, but annoying.
This allows Palij to get off an Air Slash, which ends up being pretty super-effective on the part-grass E. coli, but another Shock Wave burns the bird and puts it on the ground.
Oh shit, now it's Pajay, a bigger bird! Pajay is Palij's final evolution, and it's... it's neat!
Pajay is faster and a lot stronger than its pre-evolved form, and scores a critical hit just to add insult to injury. Oh no, E. coli! Well, it's my fault for using a grass-type in a fire-type gym, but I really wanted to see E. coli's new form.
Cerebella versus Pajay! Water Pulse versus Air Slash, round two!
And I do mean Water Pulse versus Air Slash, because that's what the two of us spammed. Pajay was faster and Air Slash carries the chance to flinch, but water pulse takes out larger chunks of Pajay's health.
I genuinely expected Cerebella to not survive that final Air Slash, but she did with nine health, before drowning the Pajay.
Y'know what? This fight with Tiko is actually probably one of the more challenging ones I've been in throughout basically the entirety of Uranium. It's still not particularly hard since I wasn't playing things super-smart and all, but I did feel challenged while fighting him, which is great.
Which begs to mind just how the fuck Tiko fucked up so badly against the bugs of Anthell when all of his party members are fire-types, and two of them are fire/flying.
Here we go, Charlie versus Chimaconda, Chimical's evolved form. Still has petrify, which lowers Charlie's speed. I don't like Chimaconda's design, the main lion body has weird proportions and looks off, but I appreciate that the snake still looks like a dumb goober.
Somehow with Petrify, Charlie is still faster. I blame the level difference. Magnitude does 4x damage, and I sincerely doubt Chimaconda has anything that can hurt Charlie, so I one-shot it.
I was genuinely caught off-guard by a fifth Pokemon, I thought Pajay and Chimaconda would've been it. I've heard horror stories about just how fast Inflagetah is, how it has a bullshit ability, and how it can wipe entire teams unprepared for it...
But all Tiko's Inflagetah did was just poke Charlie a bit with Extreme Speed.
Not impressed, and Charlie buries this mutant antelope-cheetah thing with a Magnitude 8.
I really didn't mean for Charlie to get this over-leveled, since I hate the trope of the starter Pokemon being the strongest, but I did get a lot of mileage out of him in Anthell. So.
Victory for Team Ura! Woop woop!
We get the Salsa badge, and apparently it allows Surf, which is definitely something I'm looking forward to.
Overheat's a pretty great but risky move. It's basically a big red emergency button -- it deals damage harder than Flamethrower and Fire Blast, but basically neuters your Pokemon's special attack, which cripples the usability of whoever uses Overheat. I keep it in mind, but don't teach it to Charlie just yet.
While going out of Amatree Village to backtrack through Baykal Rainforest, I capture one of the Quetzorals, who are Grass/Flying. I believe the final evolution is Grass/Dragon? Since I named the smaller form Jan'alai, this one gets to be called Hakkar.
Oh hey it was Theo.
Haha, throwing shade Sheldon's way! In my headcanon, Ura and Theo do a fist-bump.
Ah, look, he's actually being chill and cool about Ura constantly overtaking him or something. He's either became more mature, or has just accepted his lot in life. He still wants to battle me no matter what, though.
It's raining, so both of our water-types are boosted... but Cerebella really doesn't have anything to hurt Sableau. She's kind of a one-trick pony at this point with Psybeam...
But while Sableau throws around mud slaps at my smiling brain goldfish, I decide to be a dick, pull a trick out of Maria's book and use Yawn.
And then switch out to Coconut (who eats a Mud Slap), allowing it to get free Bullet Seed hits onto the sleeping Sableau. Theoretically I'm trying to prevent Coconut from being one-shot by an ice beam or something like that, but I'm not sure if the AI is that smart.
Cerebella comes out again against Ura's new addition to his party, a Spritzee! Who is an official Pokemon from generation VI! That's cute, but a rain-boosted Water Pulse kills the baby perfume bird.
Oh shit his cute little Lunapup has evolved into this abomination that looks like a knockoff of those Elemental Heroes from Yu-Gi-Oh!
He's Fighting/Ground, and I severely overestimated the power of Coconut's Bullet Seed, and takes out Coconut over two turns of scoring 5x Bone Rush. Hey, Theo, you're improving!
KISS HIM TO DEATH, TAXONOMALY. Yeah, Herolune went out as Taxonomaly drained life from him.
The rest of Theo's team is same old, same old. E. coli tanks a super-effective Air Slash before one-shotting his bird with Shock Wave...
And as per tradition, Metalynx does not even get a single move off. At least Theo's stopped blaming poor Metalynx for his loss.
Hmpf, whatever indeed. He's actually somewhat maturing. Or maybe he's accepted his lot in life to be worse than Ura. Hooray Surf!
Dick move on the part of the Legend Town guys, by the way. And yes, I get that Theo's a kid and they don't want a kid near a nuclear fallout site, but he does have strong Pokemon. If nothing else, that steel-type Metalynx could probably tank a fair amount of hits from the nuclear Pokemon, and being a werewolf superhero Herolune could probably rescue people too.
This is a lot of a better reaction than the crybaby I fought on the boat.
Hooray a more powerful water-type special move! Surf's one of the HM's I'm never sad to have around, because it's legitimately useful.
As Theo mentioned, having Surf means I can zip through the rivers of Baykal without having to navigate Anthell, which is great.
We get a healing move TM, and apparently Dive is also in this game.
I just spend the next couple of minutes just running around with surf, gathering items (none of which are interesting) as I surf across the coast of Route 5...
Holy shit, I got accosted by a pair of ninja dudes who appear out of nowhere! Are they using chakra to walk on water or some shit? Oh no, it appears that I've stumbled upon their territory! Woe is me!
"Surfin' ninjas gonna take you down!"
...got to say, I really did not expect that. It's just so out there and ridiculous that I can't even unironically mock them for being just straight-up dumb. It's just so... so bizarre and wacky that apparently there are surfing ninja gangs that are territorial.
NINJA SURFERS. WHAT THE FREAKING SHIT? And it's Ronin and Juunin... Ronin, I know, is like a lord-less samurai and also the alias used by Hawkeye in that Endgame movie. Juunin doesn't mean anything specific as far as I can tell.
Oh hey they use those adorable little kunai fishes! Now I see why fish-ninja-weapons are in this game. Frynai is actually a pretty awesome design!
And like a complete dumbass I forget that Charlie has a 4x weakness to water, and two Aqua Jets takes Charlie out -- you just don't survive that, 9 levels of difference or not. His ability burns one of the Frynai as he goes out, though.
Coconut comes in and uses COCONUT BULLET NO JUTSU to smash one of the Frynai dead. Honestly, the mental image of this angry, ill-mannered crab just grumbling as it launches coconut fruits at the enemy is hilarious. Saidine is Frynai's evolution, and his butt is a sai instead of a kunai. Saidine is also very cool!
Rock Slide hits both enemies in a dobule battle, but I severely underestimate just how much Saidine and Frynai's steel types would resist the rocks.
But by this point I swap Taxonomaly out for E. coli, for guaranteed takedowns via Shock Wave. Fry those fishes!
OH HELL FUCK YES
Thunderbolt is basically the Flamethrower of electric-type moves. It's the top-tier move that hits hard and is almost always accurate, and is basically going to be the move E. coli uses 99% of the time.
Thunderbolt murders Frynai, which is pretty overkill for the poor little fishie.
Apparently Ronin and Juunin come from a clan. Is it a clan of surfing ninjas, too? Are you the Hidden Surf'n'Turf Village? Are you led by the Dudekage?
GRIPPING YOUR PILLOW TIGHT!
And then the surfin' ninjas ninja the fuck out of there and... and I'm just utterly flabbergasted, man. What the utter fuck? This was just so random, took me by surprise, and I genuinely cannot decide if I love the sheer bizarreness or if I think it's the dumbest shit ever.
I catch one of my own Frynai in the ocean and name him Finjutsu. I'm proud of the pun.
I could surf eastward, which was what the game wants me to do, but I dick around a bit to do a couple of little side-quests and whatnot.
I visit Legend Town and apparently Sleepy Shit and Baaphomet reproduced! Keep the egg, though. I don't want to raise Felengs, they're annoying little shits. I deposit Jellyeater the Glaslug, in case I ever change my mind and decide to add her into the party.
Oh hey I don't need Strength anymore. Back in the box, Good Boy, you've been a good boy throughout the journey through the rainforest.
Push boulders for the world! Presumably he's working on a surfing board or something, which isn't something I care about since I'll always have Cerebella in my party and she'll always know Surf, but the thought is nice. This dude's dialogue is great.
I did a little grinding on the route outside of the day care center, because apparently I haven't actually walked around in the tall grass. Wild Garerewl populate this place, and these are probably the dumbest thing in Uranium, between the bizarre proportions that's not quite giraffe nor horse, the name, the tacked-on armour, the weird face and the single strand of curly chin hair. Like, I've got a lot of respect for Uranium's Fakemon, but not Garerewl.
I caught one of my own Chimical. He's got a cute snake tail, and I name him Manticore.
Primeapes are here too, I guess. I didn't really care for Primeape in official games, and sure as hell don't now.
Flager evolves into Inflagetah, and while I don't plan to replace Charlie any time soon, I'm calling him Hot Rod. Basically, why Inflagetah is powerful is... remember Talonflame from the days of online battling in XY? Take Talonflame, boost its stats, give it a pretty great movepool and a mega evolution, and give it Acceleration, an ability that boosts the power of priority moves. Yeah. Inflagetah's built to literally sweep entire teams not prepared to deal with it.
I also evolve Starspawn the Comite into Cometeor with EXP. Share. Not planning to put him back into the team or anything, but considering how much I liked Comite before, the least I can do is at least evolve him. His role as a Rock/Psychic isn't super useful, though, since it doubles up with Cerebella, and Coconut knows Rock Slide. Plus, Cometeor can't evolve without trading.
A brief pit-stop in Beachball City to restock on Quick Balls, and to massage and give E. coli even more ridiculous attack with which it can thunderbolt its enemy.
And I continue on in the ocean waters, finding a Mega Stone for Gyarados (can't evolve K40, though, I don't have the mega ring) as well as a TM for a move that E. coli has just outgrown five minutes ago.
One of the random swimmers has a Titanice, which is... a different sort of silly, but probably quite up there alongside ninja surfers in "are the game makers high when designing this part of the game?"
Also, apparently that poor bikini lady's half-nude. Oh no.
I'm baffled why the surfer ninjas attacked me while all of these swimmers and fishermen can just dick around without being attacked. Damn ninjas and their incomprehensible ninja code!
Current party: (oh yeah, at some point Wigglefoot hung out with us again)
Next week... someone gets replaced from the team with a new member! DUNN DUNNN DUNNN! Let's give you a hint: it's the one who hasn't shown up for the past two updates.
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