So last time we left off, Ura defeated the seventh gym, obtained the power of MEGA evolution, and also was blueballed at the prospect at getting the Fly HM, forcing him to go through the snowy wasteland of Mt. Lanthanite. We've basically cleared all of the areas north of Venesi City, so time to go down south, where apparently it's the land of the ninjas and bad ninja jokes. Originally I placed all of the Tsukinami stuff in a single update, but decided to split it up due to the sheer length.I will try not to mock-quote Naruto too much.
Current party:
Last time we left off, Professor Bamb'o was a dick and didn't give Ura the Fly HM. It would be real convenient right about now. Honestly, while Uranium is heads and shoulders above a lot of other fanmade Pokemon games, I'm genuinely not sure what the whole point of keeping Fly out of the player's reach for so long is. It's not like the other fast travel options are particularly interesting, and this particular ice route is very, very annoying to go through thanks to the Hail.
Back to Silverport town, and some kindly old man tells me about pirates in the waters. Thanks, but I've got my electric-generating amoeba-centipede thing that'll zap any pirates and their pirate ship back to Davy Jones' Locker and all that. Also, my amoeba is also the goddamn Hokage. Somehow.
So he went from having a garbled ye olde English accent to Talk Like A Pirate Day in a smooth, single sentence. That's actually impressive.
Arrrgh ye squiffy wench-farrger, ye've gone and done somethin' lily-livered, ye blisterin' barnacle.
...walk the plank into the... beach? Like,we're barely a step into this harbour, the water's probably up to my hips or chest at most.
He might be called Jack, but this dude's clearly more incompetent than Jack Sparrow.
He's got a bunch of villainous-type scallywags in his employ! We've seen Vilucard before, but this is the first time we've seen Swabone, who is like Cubone if Cubone was a ghost, had a hook-hand, and also was drawn a bit weird. Either way, none of them manage to really do much against my team.
HOLY SHIT THAT'S COOL. Gross, a bit of a ripoff of Scolipede, but pretty cool. I genuinely forgot Haagross is a thing. I want one, but at the same time the position of an electric-time in my party's already filled and I like E. coli too much.
Landlubber? I ride a brain fish around and sometimes dive to the depths of the ocean, you hack. Go bug off on your silly rickety junk.
Oh hey, random fat sailor, did you "thought he might be" a pirate? Well why don't you call the authorities, then? Or try and defend your boat? I know the Rangers are kinda shit, but that one Staraptor lady was kind of competent.
Also, "Black Flag Pirates" is easily the most generic name for a pirate crew, like ever.
Hooray, fast travel! Not that there's actually much that will want to motivate me to return to Silverport or Snowpoint, mind you.
Oh hey, that's what a Shrimputy looks like, you adorable literal Clawitzer, you. I love how the antenna tapering off the Shrimputy's crown makes it the silhouette of a cowboy hat apparent without actually just having a cowboy hat. None of the bullshit that's going on with the skiing fursuits here!
Sorry, Cerebella, take one for the team. Dive's a crappy move, and doubly crappy on the special-inclined Cerebella, but she hasn't really been using Yawn, after all. Cerebella looks like a pleasant, always smiling fishy friend, I'm sure she wont mind.
Oh huh, this isn't what I expected from the diving aesthetic. I've always been so used to the more drab and mysterious diving look from the official games (particularly Generation III, where it's the most prominent) but Uranium's style of dive is less about going into the deep bathypelagic trenches of the seafloor and appears to just be diving around the coral reefs, in the mesopelagic range.
What? I really liked fishes and learning about nautical terms when I was a kid.
Brine's kind of neat, but the fact that your enemy has to have less health for it to deal maximum damage has always been pretty impractical.
Also, there are divers that fight Ura. I'm not sure if this was done before or after ORAS introduced their own divers.
Lavent's cool. Shame that she's just kind of a bland single-type Pokemon. I thought the combination of moray eels and tube worms is an amazing yet simple little creature concept -- not just for a Fakemon, but for an aquatic monster in general.
For whatever reason, though, it's Fire/Dragon. Like, fire I get, it's living in volcanic trenches, but it's a fish poking out of a worm tube poking out of a crevice. I genuinely thought it was Fire/Water, which is why I sent out E. coli.
HUZZAH! Blight's main STAB when he's not using Hyper Beam has been Swift, which is neat... but Hyper Voice is even better, basically the most powerful special Normal-type move that isn't Boomburst, Hyper Beam, or a legendary-exclusive move. Blight is even deadlier, and has even less of a soul now.
Pokemon Uranium: Hey HM's are stupid and we point it out with an NPC that will eventually give you items to replace those stupid, fuck-off HM's.
Also Pokemon Uranium: We give you our brand-new fake HM, underwater Rock Smash FOR NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL.
I won't subject Cerebella into a three-time HM slave. piss off with your water rock smash, Uranium.
Oh hey Selkids live underwater. I've never really considered sirens or mermaids to be deep-sea creatures, when it's logical that they would be, huh? Especially since Selkid are based on Selkies ("sea folk") specifically. Selkid's cute! She's Water/Fairy, and I'm going to call her "Primarina?" with a question mark. Because I'm kind of mean.
This game was almost certainly released as before Generation VII, though.
Selkids are cute, but evolve into the significantly more awkwardly-sprited Syrentide. Syrentide's actually not a bad Pokemon, and if I didn't like Brainoar so much, I'd probably consider using one for my party.
What's a TM for summoning the rain be doing twenty thousand leagues under the sea?
Even more bizarrely, what is a TM for a rat biting things be doing twenty thousand leagues under the sea?
Lavents are the rare encounter here, it seems, with the vast majority being Corsolas. I name him Pacific Rim after the movie.
Oh yeah Krilvolver are Water/Fire. You know what? I've been complaining about how a lot of Uranium typings aren't obvious, but I really should've been able to guess that Krilvolver is water/fire.
It's still dual-type, though, which means it's naught but fodder for Blight. Poetic, that, a shitty antique revolver gun met with the most devastating portable nuclear cannon.
Oh hey random island with a bell that I can't interact with. And a pretty decent TM that none of my party members can use effectively. Both my physical hitters, Taxonomaly and Chykka, can't use the move.
The creepy ghost pirate Cubones are found on these islands... and I honestly kinda wished that they actually gave us like, a sunken ship area populated with these dudes.
Also, bringing back my complaints about not being able to tell what type these creatures are... why the fuck are pirate ghosts Ghost/Fighting? You'd think they would be Ghost/Water because they drowned at sea, or Ghost/Steel because they have little captain hook weapons, or Ghost/Dark because pirates are villains, but no. Ghost/Fighting. Because pirates are so well known for their martial arts.
Oh, about time you attacked me. The ninjas were a lot more frequent with blocking my path.
Also, wow, you have a whole other person with you, Jack not-Sparrow. And also for a crew calling yourself Black Flag pirates, you have no flags.
It's spelled "swabbie", ye blithering bashi-bazouks.
Also, "sinking" is not much of a threat considering I spent the past five minutes wandering the bottom of the ocean without harm.
Silva is... a pun on Long John Silver, I guess? Also her hair looks like a cheap Shaak Ti cosplay.
As long as Blight survives his first turn, he will one-shot kill anything with two types. Like Vilucards and Swabones.
Also I really need to grind because I feel absolute shame for having my party under-leveled to these slimy sea-gherkins.
Skelerogue here is Swabone's evolved form and looks a lot more like Marowak. Or a Digimon. Also dies to Psychic really well.
DARE JA? ORE JA? NINJA!!!
The surfing ninjas arrive to defend the honour of their single-celled Hokage! Pirates versus ninjas Naruto versus One Piece here we go who will win
Chuunin needs a lesson in grammar, unless that Hulk-speak is intentional.
Also, the sheer fact that these fucking surfing ninjas are somehow still relevant other than that hilariously random bit earlier in the game is... it's either ridiculous or hilarious. I can't pick which.
They're not really a threat to E. coli, honestly, guys. E. coli is awesome, and he'll zap the lot of them.
The pirates book it, and apparently Chuunin does speak in Hulk-speak.
It is not to my pleasing, unless you are to give me and my pet electric amoeba gifts and monetary tribute. This is a new age, the age of the amoeba hokage.
Random island with the Endure TM and an official Pokemon. Floatzel feels genuinely random to find in this game, because unlike the rest of the official Pokemon, he doesn't get any official evolution or mega evolution, and... and I guess someone on the production team just really like Floatzel?
It is as you are told by... the surfing ninja?
The logistics of this town being one of the eight gyms any challenger must visit before challenging the official Pokemon league, but they treat Tsukinami village as some sort of Hidden Leaf Village that the ninjas must invite you in or whatever is honestly particularly ridiculous.
We've got traditional Japanese music and traditional Japanese lantern. I believe it's the Mt. Pyre music from the Hoenn games, although I could be wrong.
Man, it must suck being Daikatuna, despite Daikatuna being the mascot Pokemon of these surfing ninjas, to have a shitty small statue placed at the edge of town, while snakehead griffin boy over there gets to take up the entire city square.
Oh hey a relatively useless TM. Also it's at this point that the night time Tsukinami village starts pissing off my eyes.
Ah, much better. Apparently the snakehead griffin is Yatagaryu, who is a fusion of a Yatagarasu (three-legged crow) and a dragon. As much as I want to mock this for being a weeb-y Pokemon, I'll concede that as the mascot of a village that's sort of a parody (I'm not sure how seriously the game makers took this village) of traditional-Japanese-themed-shonen, it fits?
Whatever, "Stormbringer" pseudo-legendary, I'll kill any and all Yatagaryus I find because Nucleon is so much more awesome. And also deals 4x damage to you.
Oh by the way everyone in this is religious, but not in the "I will lob five paragraphs of Autious And Mutios lore we thought up of over dinner" way that Legen Town's priest did. This is how you handle giving us lore and backstory. Huge exposition and introdump like that just doesn't really work if it's just one random NPC shoved away in the background of a town.
Because I myself too am a weeb who watches too much anime, I know "Tsuki" means moon and "Nami" means wave.
NINPOU SUITON SPITBORU NO JUTSU! Oh no! Ura's only weakness!
One of the houses belongs to the surfing ninjas. I am very, very sad that they do not have, like, a stack of surfboards in the corner or something.
Oh, hey, it's the former Hokage. Except he's no longer the Hokage, so I can't really call him that. What do I call him? I guess Tobirama? He's my least favourite Hokage. Okay, then. Fuck off, Tobirama.
Also, don't you talk that way about E. coli, she's a child but she kicked the butts of your entire party without even taking a single point of damage.
You're already wearing a full face mask, though, so I don't see that as a problem.
Hokage hints at some sort of dojo master whose pupils are spread all over the region or some such.
There are definitely more than 10 ninja around. Most of them are in buildings. Some of them are walking down the street. You're trying to look and sound mystical and shit, but it's kind of silly when it's sort of obvious just how many there are of you.
Anime has told me that official ninja garb is either a bright neon orange poofy sweater, or some weird green military jacket thing.
A lot of NPC's talk about Angelure Town, where there are apparently a lot of water-type pokemon... but no such town actually exists in the game, and considering that the game-makers have pulled development, these all just end up being sort of a non-sequitur.
Grandmaster Yoshitaka, the Final Fantasy artist? Oh, no wait, it's just some dude who's mastered six arts and Likes To Capitalize Every Word In His Title. I'll call you Yoshi.
Did you train CP9 with those six arts, Yoshi?
Yeah but any Chyinmunk or Birbie has access to those six arts, so, uh... yeah. Also your disciple sucks, Yoshi, maybe teach him about type diversity, and not be so obvious as to use a full team of water while travelling the seas. It's not like Pokemon actually have some sort of field advantage mechanic or whatever.
Ooooh spooky, a prophecy. Did Naruto have a prophecy going on? I can't remember any. But I guess it could just be a generic "doom is coming to Konoha" nonsense.
Also, his disciples are all those stat trainers who train my Pokemon with bean-bags, and if traveling in Tandor isn't such a goddamn hassle, I'd probably have gone and looked around for more of these stat trainers.
I'm already a Hokage, though? Well, I mean, I guess E. coli is? Why would I need to do all of this just to become an honorary member? You make no sense, Yoshi. This is why Mario kicks you into crevices.
Ah, a more tangible reward, a Yatagaryu.
And also, apparently his disciples will want to fight me for... for them to agree to return to their master's summons? That's like me punching and fighting the FedEx guy for delivering a summons to the court or some shit.
Have you tried orange sweatshirts and inexplicably transforming into giant fox kaijus? And going from being assassins to bizarre illusion creators and elemental manipulation?
I know a guy who's great at making black robes with red flame emblems...
That doesn't show how powerful love is, that shows how powerful a political marriage is. Silly romantics.
Also, yeah, apparently there used to be a war, and the ninja prince and princess Hinata and Kaito do a whole Romeo & Juliet nonsense to stop the war. It's Fanfiction Plot 101, honestly, and for all the faults that the Naruto manga might have, this trite plot isn't one of them.
Also they are like the most awesome characters in the world and are blessed by gods take our word for it they are awesome seriously they are blessed by gods and brought peace and are priests and great nation leaders and also somehow is the 'historical foundation' of the village.
This place is almost like a cult that fanboys all over Hinata and Kaito. We get it, they are super duper awesome.
Also some lore about how the temple is erected to end the Great Ninja War. And is also a temple, and is also a gym. Okay then. That seems a mite disrespectful, but you do you. It's your culture.
Also, the war ended years ago, but the star-crossed lovers that stopped the war with their political marriage are also the gym leaders. There's a stupid explanation for this later on.
This man runs a hotel.
The first room contains a mother-and-child couple. The child really loves My Little Pony!
Canon character cameo! Fennel is from the Black/White games, the fifth generation, and she's also heavily involved in the Pokemon Dream World side-game or whatever. The Dream World bit is honestly kind of a concept that is interesting, but in execution is just a more bizarre version of the Pokewalker.
Also, I tell her about the girl who's fallen into a nightmare in Venice. She's a vet and not a human doctor, but, eh, they're all small, it's the same thing, right? It worked in Walking Dead, after all.
The third room contains move tutors that will teach me moves if I bother to smash shit on the ocean floor. Move tutors still require copious amounts of grinding to get what they want, despite this same game also making move-relearning absolutely free. You know, it's like one step forwards and two steps back with this game.
IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE!
I show Sparklebutts to her. Hopefully showing a Minicorn to her will make her day. Shit, that's probably what my reaction would be if you showed me like a Bulbasaur or something.
She hands me what she claims is a random rock she finds on the beach, but Ura is a rock connoisseur and immediately identifies it as a mega stone. Okay.
Oh yeah, there's like a bazaar going on outside. This shady looking gentleman sells delicacies, but is just a convenient place to get coconut milks and carrot wines, which are basically almost always better to have than super and hyper potions.
This lady has the Johto special balls. I honestly am confused why official games have data for these balls in, but only ever really include the balls that are introduced in Generation III and IV. Like, sure, Moon Balls, Friend Balls and Love Balls are kinda nonsensical, and Lure Balls aren't super useful in some games, but while they are clearly inferior to Dusk and Quick Balls, I have respect for Fast, Level and Heavy Balls.
Also they're a lot cheaper. I stock up on a bunch of them.
Oh wow, this is a competitive player's wet dream. All of the super-useful items in competitive could be found here for... for honestly relatively affordable prices. You know what? The Pokemon that trainers have might somewhat outlevel my party, but I will abuse these items to gain an advantage over them.
We're experimenting around here. Blight gets an Expert Belt, which increases super-effective moves. Since Blight is a nuclear type, that means every single move Blight does.
E. coli gets a Life Orb, which just straight-up boosts all damage at the cost of dealing damage to the wielder every turn. E. coli has Giga Drain, which sort of offsets what amounts to poison damage every turn, and unless they resist E. coli's immense special attack stats, they're not going to survive anyway to take advantage of E. coli's weakened state.
The Choice items allow only a single move to be used until the Pokemon is switched out, but gives extra bonuses to stats. Charlie gets Choice Scarf, which boosts speed, while Cerebella gets Choice Specs, which boosts special attack. None of these two are around for their type versatility if we're being honest, and even if Cerebella's locked into Surf or Ice Beam it's not the worst thing ever. Blight's another Pokemon that's great for a Choice item, since Blight only ever does Hyper Voice at this point anyway.
Also I swapped out Chykka for Taxonomaly because I'm still undecided which is better. Chykka his harder and faster, but she's just so fragile. Taxonomaly has a shit ability, is slower and a bit weaker, but a fair bit sturdier thanks to her typing, and Fairy's pretty versatile of a type to have in my party.
One of the big buildings in this big city is a museum. Okay. Because that's what I associate with ninjas. Archaeology and history.
You know what, so much of Naruto's plot involve things that happen in the past, so I guess it's keeping with the thinly-veiled Naruto homage?
The ninja museum doesn't just have ninja stuff, but also has a history of Venesi or whatever.
Also, apparently, 200 years ago ALL the ninja ruled all of Tandor. West Tandor is apparently Tsuki clan's territory, and East Tandor's Nami clan territory. I think the surfing ninjas are Nami clans? So somehow everything on the western side -- the rainforest tribe, the resort town, the mining town... they're all former ninjas?
The idea of the great ninja war in Naruto being done here but with ninjas riding surfboards and wielding kunai-fish is such a nonsensical mental image.
Also the ninjas are Shakespearean connoisseurs, and founded fake Venice. Ninjas can be anything, apparently. This is getting more and more ridiculous.
Apparently the Nami clan of the past ride around in longships, not surfboards. Longships which are apparently "outfitted with the most powerful Pokemon weapons or some shit.
Oh no, poor Metalynx! Also... I'm pretty sure that's like, more of a glaive or a particularly huge sword instead of a spear.
Apparently the ninjas of old look down on peasants.
HAHAHAHAHAHA the ancient ninja warriors often dress up as luchador chupacabras. Because they're "intimidating". Have you ever seen a Luchabra? They're the dumbest looking shit around.
What, are you talking about those dudes in Amatree? They're nice, they like fire-dancing and like to collect berries and shit.
Oh. Ohhh..... huh. I have an inkling that I know what happened to these indigenous tribes. There's a reason that Seikamater was so fat.
They didn't disappear. They turned into a full course meal for the Queen of All Insects. Gaze upon her and despair, the God-Queen of the Brood! Ia, ia, the Mother of A Thousand Chittering Young, the Heart of the Devouring Swarm!
Go ask Yoshi, green-haired man.
"Look at our two legendary dragons! Remember all of those other canon legendary Pokemon? They are MERE ASPECTS of the sheer awesomeness of our super-duper-awesome legendary dragons that are totally the ultimate paired gods."
You know, if you want to fanwank your own legendary, making them SUPER DUPER AWSUM versions and talking about how badass they are compared to official stuff is an immediate eyeball-roll inducing detail for me. Like, the stuff with Heatran being part of a trio is neat backstory. This is just sort of hilariously "look at my badass OC, it is the true godly form of these pairs that have nothing to do with the other pairs".
Oh wow, apparently the two super-duper-awesome royal family, who are also priests, star-crossed lovers and the ones who ended the war hundreds of years ago are also AVATARS OF THE GODS.
HAHAHAHA, I'd mock this if it was in a setting like Naruto. This is Pokemon, where there's no business of humans being avatars of hackeneyed yin-yang gods. I'm sorry. I'm genuinely sorry. The nuclear Pokemon, the surfing ninjas, the gambling and drinking jokes, the skating furry polar bears,... they're all at least somewhat charmingly cute. This is just dumb.
Some say they are Pokemon, some say they are spirits, some say they are avatars, some say they are poorly-written fanfic OC's.
Laissure and Yatagaryu are the pseudo-legendaries of this game, I believe? Which is why they have statues in a hall commemorating legendaries. I genuinely forget what Laissure looks like -- is it the long-legged bunny? Regardless, Laissure apparently is like earthquake bunny Juubi or some shit. Bunnies burrow a lot in the ground, I suppose, so associating them with the ground isn't the most far-fetched thing.
It's uh... I don't even remember what this is. It looks less like a bird and more like some sort of miscoloured Owten.
Oh look, more pirate malarkey foreshadowing shit. Y'know, I know for a fact that the three underwater leviathans aren't actually incorporated into the game itself, so I'm curious how this would've gone had the game makers decided to finish this. Is Angelure just going to be pirates-and-Cthulhu?
Again, having statues and individual backstories frames these three leviathans and makes them far, far cooler than the constant "AOTIOUS AND MOUTUS ARE THE TRUE GODS"
Krakanao is apparently like a Kraken, but people make nursery rhymes about him. It's like if Humpty Dumpty actually told the story of Lucifer falling from heaven or something.
Also, we get the backstory that, in true Naruto-style, apparently the Tsuki and Nami clans controlled these
Leviathao, in addition to having a pretty awkward-to-say name, is a big-ass ice narwhal. And the Tsuki clan had him. Because, uh... whales and narwhals have something to do with the moon maybe?
So did the Nami clan just win when the Tsuki clan lost Leviathao? Everyone talks about how it's the magic of marriage and love or some shit, but honestly, it seems like the Tsuki clan just lost when they lost their legendary weapon.
The most well-known, Baitaotao, is one whose story we've heard a bit of before in Legen Town or Vinoville or something.
Although apparently while the other two are just rumoured to be slumbering deep in the ocean, Baitaotao has been going around melting ships and leaving behind horror story shipwrecks, melting boats and eating people and shit. Some Bermuda Triangle stuff is going on here... again, a pity we never got any real conclusion to these.
Next part will be a slightly shorter one as we challenge the gym, and take the fight to literal gods! Cue the God of War theme song!
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