Let's Play Pokemon Violet, Part 15: Ice Mountains & Raps

So this whole sequence is just me climbing the ice mountain range of Glaseado, which is... surprisingly fun! And packed with a fair amount of content and hidden stuff every here and there. Lots of new Pokemon. Bronzong, Altaria, Snover, Bergmite, Glaceon, Delibird, Cryogonal, Weavile, Froslass... but also little ruins with Hypno and Tinkatuff, and there are some fun little 'sights of Paldea' here and there like Glaseado's Grasp, or little icy lakes here and there. Also, it's pretty fun to explore with my vertical-climbing Miraidon! It is pretty fun just going around unlocking Pokemon Centers and landmarks!

There is a little cave where I can find an Ice/Dragon creature called Arctibax, and it sure is a cool-looking ice dragon with... yellow Wolverine claws? The pokedex tells me that it does front-flips and then stab people with its dorsal fin. Okay? I think this is the pseudo-legendary, if Tinkatink's line isn't the one. Pseudo-legendaries are all dragons now, right? Metagross is just a weirdo?

My Glimmet also evolves into a weird thing called a Glimmora, which looks like... I don't know what it looks like, but it still opens up like a flower. What a delightfully weird motherfucker. It's petals are apparently crystalized poison energy, and this is compared to Tera Crystals? Okay?

I get to the Montenevera City, which is a city in the mountains! There really isn't much to do in this city, so I go straight to the gym challenge. Nemona shows up and fights me, and... she really doesn't have much interesting things to do here, yeah? She goes through her usual spiel of generic dialogue of wanting to battle me and that I'm a good rival or whatever, but her team is still very much underwhelming! A Lycanroc, a Sliggoo, a Pawmot and a Meowscarada. Again, I just basically sweep the team with my Lokix and my Brambleghast. I didn't even need to use the starter that time!

The challenge starts off and this stoner looking guy called MC Sledge tells me that I need to warm up the crowd through... double battles! Three times in a row! Holy crap, a gym challenge where you actually fight people without any bullshit going on! (Okay, Larry's and Iono's gym puzzle were kinda neat, actually, but the rest... eh.)

Also, double battles! I didn't even realize how much I missed double battles! Man, you'd think they would sneak a couple more of these among the trainers! Remember Colosseum? Man, I wished they would re-release Colosseum and XD on the Switch. 

The first battle is against some kid with a Greavard and a Shuppet; then a cowgirl with a Haunter and a Misdreavus. As I beat them, the stage lights keep getting more and more bright. And then the final opponent is MC Sledge himself, a bit of a brick joke but also kind of surprising! He sics Sableye and Drifblim at me and... well, the Drifblim self-destructed like a fool. I get the idea, since Sableye is Ghost-type... but I had Skeledirge and Garganacl out. Skeledirge is also immune to self-destruct, and Garganacl was hurt by, like, 15 HP? Or thereabouts. Man, I am so overleveled for this gym. 

And then we get... Ryme! The MC of the R.I.P.! "This crowd so loud, it can wake the dead!" Okay, this lady is not what I expected from a rapper gym leader! But she's cool! ...and then the game immediately kills the vibe by forcing me to go back to the staffer in the ugly-ass gym building... 

I walk back and Ryme is having a rhyme rap battle with some random young man! "Fool, I got 'rhyme' right there in my name!" And... the rhymes that Ryme spouts out are actually pretty damn cool, I am just bobbing my head to the music as I read out her rap disses. She's up against someone who makes pro cashier rhymes. "Pro cashier? I'm about to check out. Musta got your rhymes on deep discount!" And finally, with a "you wanna end my reign? Yeah, keep dreamin'. Buy a book of rhymes, kid, and start readin'!"

The kid runs off and Ryme is a bit pissed off because the kid sets up kind of a terrible performance. It's boring wearing the crown if there ain't no one fighting her for it... and I walk up to her. 

She actually asks me if I'm going to do a rap battle or a gym battle with her, and I actually picked the rap battle! But she doesn't let me! No! 

Well, she's fun. I kinda wished that there were a bit more one-liners in her fight, but the MC of R.I.P.; dead or alive, let's make this a vibe, wants to fight. 

So I send out Skeledirge and Lokix versus... Mimikyu and Banette! Mimikyu! I love Mimikyu. I have one called Boo in one of the Alola games! I pop the disguise on Mimikyu with Lokix, while the Mimikyu and Banette gang up on my Skeledirge, before Skeledirge one-shots Banette with a Shadow Ball.

...and... the cheering of the crowd buffs my Pokemon's attack stats with their cheering? Come on! No! Don't do that! Buff Ryme's Pokemon too! It's already easy enough with having 6-v-4, an overleveled party and the fact that Pokemon's AI has never been good with double battles! Come on.

Anyway, Ryme sends out a Houndstone. My Skeledirge and Lokix kill Houndstone and Mimikyu. And then... we get the final Pokemon, which is Toxtricity. Okay, I get it, she's a rapper and Toxtricity is a guitarist. Don't know if rappers need a guitarist, you'd think she would go for something more mic-related, like... oh, an Exploud? Skeledirge has a mic stand in its Torch Song animation. 

But then the Terastralize animation happens and... the giant stupid crystal for Ghost-type is... the G1 'Ghost' sprite from Lavender Tower! That's... that's actually pretty fucking clever, and alongside the floating Psychic eye, makes two Terastralize animations that don't look completely stupid!

Far cooler is that as Ryme continues to jive, all the tombstones in the crowd pop up into Houndstones, and that's fucking awesome! Even more adorable is a little tiny Greavard dancing on two legs on one of the speakers. Ryme calls that Greavard "DJ G-Rave". I get it! Rave? Grave? Oh-ho-ho!

Of course, like any gym leader Terastralization, the Toxtricity gets one-shot for predictably turning into a type that we can already prepare for. Yep, these gym leaders Terastarlizing... I still have zero respect for it. But Ryme? I can have a lot of respect for Ryme. She had a chilling and thrilling time, I get a VIP ticket to her next concert (which is the picture) and she gives me the TM for Shadow Ball! I'm undecided on whether I like Ryme or Iono more, but I definitely find these two performers miles and miles more interesting than the rest of the gym leaders in the region, who have all been pretty bland. Except for Larry, who was intentionally bland as a salaryman (oh, saLARRYman, I get it) and thus a bit more memorable compared to the pack. 

Rika shows up. Hi, Rika! She introduces me to a tiny child called Poppy, who is energetic and somehow part of the Elite Four. Unlike Acerola, who is a bit older than her character model implied, apparently Poppy is just a tiny kid. Okay! They run off. 

...and I planned to just maybe explore around a bit and leave the final gym for another part, but when I drove up to unlock Glaseado Gym... it's not even a town. It's like a couple of buildings acting as a rest stop on the big-ass snow mountain. You know what? I kind of... I kind of find this a bit realistic. Lazy, but realistic. 

The minigame here is super-duper simple. Just a snow-slope run. Not even a race, no real mechanics, just... slide awkwardly into all the objectives. 

I get introduced quickly to the final gym leader of the region for me, who is the Sub-Zero Shredder, Grusha. No relation to Sub-Zero. Or Shredder. There's an adorable Cetoddle on the battlefield, and Grusha shows up and... uh... he sure is a snowboarder who talks about how dangeous the mountains can be? Man, after Larry and Ryme, you really are very boring. 

And anyway, while Ryme at least had the fun of the double battle, Grusha is... highly underwhelming. I don't even have to fight any of his minions? Dude, okay, I have the Fire-type starter. Skeledirge basically one-man-shots his entire team. Torch Song the Frosmoth! Torch Song the Beartic and the very disturbing crotch fur in this engine! Flamethrower the Cetitan!

(Okay, Cetitan's cry is cool).

The final Pokemon is a Ice-Terastralized Altaria, which, unlike the past couple of gym leaders, makes zero thematic sense. It dies like a bitch. Grusha... gives some generic talk about striving for the future, and... I'm sorry, you are so boring. There's a couple of gags where he keeps hiding his mouth under his scarf, but I really don't have much to say about this gym or its gym leader. The Cetoddle has an animation of saying goodbye to me, that counts for smoething, right?

Nemona and Geeta show up and tell me that I've done all the pre-requisites to enter the Pokemon League, and I have to go and take the Champion Assessment near Mesagoza. They run off... but this means that I'm actually close to finishing the gym challenge sequence, as well as the Titan story sequence!

Very fun stuff, but I assume I need to finish up the gym challenge, the titan story and operation Starfall before unlocking whatever the final act of the full story is, what with the big blank Area Zero in the middle of the map. 

I'll have a couple of (non-Pokemon) articles in the blog set up ready to go before Christmas, and while I'll still be playing when I'm on hiatus, you guys won't see me blog about it until a while!

Random Notes:

• Oh! MC Sledge is a joke on MC Hammer!
• Quick Balls are available in the shops! I love Quick Balls! They're the best balls!
• I also have a lot of Stardust, which I sell to buy Quick Balls!
  
• Ryme is Tyme's sister! I vaguely remember that Tyme mentions a sister that's good with Ghost-types!
• One of the guys in Montenevera City offers Hyper Training. I don't really have the free time to play with EV's and IV's anymore, but it's nice to know!
• I never noted it before, but if you go to the Pokemon League before this (that's where I caught Tandemaus!) you get thrust into an interview with Rika that really feels like a job interview, but later on they talk about how it's useless showing up for the interview unless you have eight gym badges. 
• I didn't notice until like, near the end of this episode when I'm walking away from Grusha's gym that... they changed Hail to Snowscape! It's probably something that relates more to balancing an open-world game if they keep the whole damage-over-time thing, but I guess they also want to make the snowy weather a bit more distinct compared to Sandstorm.