Let's Play Pokemon Shining Pearl, Part 8 - Jet Dragon of Death

So last we left off, I beat Team Galactic, caught Palkia and steamrolled the eighth gym. And then I go through Victory Road, and... and there's really not much for me to say about it, really. It's a big cave, filled with the same old, same old Golbats, Medichams and Machokes we've been seeing in every single damn cave in this game. One rather big problem of the original Diamond/Pearl is that they locked even the Sinnoh dex behind the post-game for no real reason other than to make the postgame feel a bit smaller, but it really does make these caves feel a lot more boring when there isn't a 'chase' rare encounter every now and then. The water route leading up to Victory Road had Mantyke as a rare encounter, but the super-long Victory Road? Toss in some Nosepass, or Magneton, or Lickitung, or Dusclops, or Bronzong, some Pokemon that would be thematic for a Sinnoh cave? No? Some Pokemon that would evolve in this game... no? Nothing? Oh well, super repel time. There's also a bunch of Strength puzzles and whatnot, but with the Poketch taking care of all HM slavery in this game, Victory Road ends up feeling just like a long corridor. Which is all right, I suppose. 

Actually, the trainers are at least kind of fun. In a mechanic that I don't think anyone cared for, original Diamond/Pearl needed you to see every single Pokemon in the base Sinnoh dex before you can unlock the National Dex, and Victory Road's trainers are some of the only trainers to hold final starter evolutions or trade evolutions. It is always a bit cool to see trainers with Empoleon or Torterra or Machamp or Golem, for sure.

And... with minimal fanfare, I exit the long cave that is the Victory Road and, behold, it's a big church-like building! 

And anyway, my party at this point consists of Torterra, Gastrodon, Drifblim, Drapion, Toxicroak and Palkia. All of which are around somewhere around levels 55-60, or thereabouts. And... and I have been derisive about the difficulty of this game so far, and what proceeded to come afterwards is very... interesting, shall we say.

Right before I enter the Elite Four and champion, my rival Pearl/Barry shows up in his usual energized self, and he challenges me to a battle with a full party. And... and for once, he's actually not a joke! The designers of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl actually properly EV-trained the final series of battles and gave them held items. Which suddenly makes this last leg of the game surprisingly challenging. Pearl himself isn't much to talk about, of course, because his party still isn't the most impressive. 

He starts off with a Staraptor against my Gastrodon, but the emo-bird has a Focus Sash that allows him to survive an Ice Beam, and the bird manages to get off a couple of Close Combats. Pearl's Roserade isn't particularly useful against my Drifblim, who takes him out with a Fly. Neither is its Floatzel, though it having Ice Fang to fight my Torterra is kind of... expected, I suppose? 

Pearl's Heracross is a bit more fun, and it's a bit of a slug-out between it and my Toxicroak. He spends a turn (not his first turn) trying to Swords Dance, though, which was his downfall. My Toxicroak also two-taps his Snorlax with a Brick Break followed by a Sucker Punch, but the fact that I have to rely on priority moves is actually interesting. And Pearl's final Pokemon is his starter, Infernape, who I take down with an Earthquake from my Torterra.

Pearl does his usual excited ranting before running off, but for once, he's not a joke. Which I do appreciate, at least -- even if every showing before this was sub-par, at least he gave me an interesting final battle. 

And now, it's Elite Four Time! And unlike Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, which went all-out in redesigning the Elite Four rooms with long walkways and lights and a random creepy ghost girl hidden in Phoebe's room, Sinnoh's remade Elite Four run is... quite boring. Boring rooms with four fans and basic elevators. Yawn! And it's not like Sinnoh's Elite Four is ever interesting, like, ever. The first three generations had some help thanks to showing up in the Adventures manga, while the ones from Unova onwards tend to have some members show up in the game's story itself. But Sinnoh... you have Flint, I guess, and his bro-mance with Volkner. That's about it.

Our first Elite Four member is Aaron, who also has a most basic design -- label him 'Ace Trainer' and put him in Victory Road, and I wouldn't bat an eyelid that this is supposed to be an important NPC. His speech is also the most generic 'bugs are cool and perfect, I guess'... sorry, Burgh does that much better than you do. 

But then he tosses out his Dustox. Aaron has been the butt of jokes for being an elite Four member that uses Dustox and Beautifly... and turns out a finely-tuned Dustox can be quite annoying! He sets up Light Screen, which neuters my Gastrodon's Ice Beam. And he proceeds to heal with his held item, a Black Sludge, and continues to heal even more with Moonlight! I waltzed in not even stocking up on revives and hyper potions, and I am flummoxed -- delightfully so -- that a Dustox is even giving me problem. I took it out, of course, but with way more effort than I thought I would. That... that was fun. 

Aaron's second Pokemon, his Beautifly, took a turn to Quiver Dance up and that allowed my Drifblim to two-shot it with Thunderbolts. And then his third Pokemon is a Heracross, which fails to land a Rock Slide against my Drifblim (who flew)... and then proceeds to gimp himself with a held Flame Orb. I'm not sure what the Heracross is supposed to do with the Flame Orb, since it's a physical attacker and burning yourself kind of... makes your physical attack suck? That nerfed rock slide failed to kill my Drifblim, and the rhinoceros beetle is out. 

Now Aaron's fourth Pokemon has given me problems ever since Platinum -- a Vespiquen who spams Defend Order. Aaron's Vespiquen was probably what made me  Not having anyone that could one-shot her majesty, I tagged in Toxicroak and launched a Toxic to slowly poison her majesty to death, while slowly launching Poison Jabs. Aaron's ace is a Drapion, who isn't a Bug-type but evolves from one. I have a bit of a cheeky Drapion vs Drapion slugfest, which I probably shouldn't do since I don't exactly have a lot of items... and his Drapion has Earthquake. My Drapion falls, and my Torterra takes out his Drapion with my own Earthquake, but that's probably the first actual 'fainting' I have in this playthrough that isn't me joking around. 

So yeah. The Elite Four is actually a somewhat legitimate challenge this time around!

Our second member is nice grandma Bertha. I remembered there used to be some theory that she was Agatha's sister or cousin or something based on them both being little old ladies and also having a similar name? Eh. Her party doesn't really get to show off what they could do, since my team is really tuned to destroy her. Torterra hops in and uses Wood Hammer to execute that Quagsire in one go, then turns around and uses Giga Drain on the Whiscash to recover the health from recoil. 

I swap around to toss out Gastrodon to take out the Sudowoodo (who really can't do anything) with Water Pulses, then the Golem and its Sturdy proved to be a bit of a challenge -- it hits hard enough with Earthquake, and Sturdy means that it's guaranteed to get one hit off in-between Bertha fully healing it. But not by much. And then Torterra one-shots Hippowdon with a Wood Hammer. 

And next up is Flint, who is happy that I helped out Volkner for him. I remember that his team is also a bit weirder in Diamond and Pearl, although it's not exactly a parallel of Volkner's as I had hoped... that wouldn't come until Platinum gave the two bros an Electivire and Magmortar. But Flint comes up with a Rapidash, who gets washed away by Gastrodon. His next Pokemon? A Lopunny. God bless you, Flint. That Lopunny tries to do a High Jump Kick against my Palkia, crashes and gets knocked out by the subsequent Aura Sphere that the God of Space launches. Flint's third Pokemon is a Steelix of all things. Didn't we kill enough Steelixes in Byron's gym? Come on, guys, if you're going to meme, at least give him something less boring. My Torterra takes the Steelix out with an Earthquake. 

Just as I was about to handwave Flint as a nothingburger, his fourth Pokemon is Drifblim. Oh! Respect, I have one of those, too. It's Balloon Wars time, except while I set launch a Phantom Force, an attack that takes two turns...  Flint's Drifblim uses MINIMIZE. Which causes my attacks to miss, of course,  which is hilarious. And then the Drifblim proceeds to BATON PASS. Baton Pass! In an Elite Four battle! That's glorious. And coming out as Flint's ace is that monkey Infernape, infinitely more terrifying than Pearl's Infernape since this is a minimized, high-evasion monkey. 

Flint's Infernape proceeded to unleash a THUNDER PUNCH that takes out my Drifblim. I swap out to Torterra for another starter-vs-starter fight. Flint's Infernape unleashes a Fire Punch (Flint's first actual Fire-type attack in this whole battle, which I found funny) which takes my Torterra to red, but an Earthquake knocks out the monkey. And as Flint's final Pokemon proves to be the Drifblim again, I finish it off with a Crunch from my Drapion. 

...you know what, Flint? Good show. Good show, good show. That Minimize trick was unexpected, but very cool that you were able to actually execute it. I like this. 

The Sinnoh Elite Four's final member is Lucian, the Psychic-type bookworm. And he leads with Mr. Mime, who is a fairy mime in this generation! So he actually can do some things against my Drapion with Dazzling Gleam, and that's after setting up a couple of screens. Cross Poison knocks out the Mr. Mime, though. Lucian sends out a Medicham, which I face with Drifblim. Ghost-type should be able to sweep Psychics, right? Wrong, because that Medicham has Ice Punch, knocking out my Drifblim. I toss out Torterra to Wood Hammer the Medicham to death.

Lucian's next Pokemon is an Alakazam, poor poor Alakazam whose bark has always been worse than his bite ever since Generation II. Drapion one-shots the fragile spoon-bender with a Crunch, then takes on Lucian's fourth Pokemon, a Girafarig. It tries to set up a Trick Room and launch a couple of Thunderbolts against Drapion, but otherwise isn't much to talk about. It tried, at least. 

The last Pokemon Lucian tosses out is a Bronzong, who manages to outspeed my Torterra thanks to the Trick Room. It uses Earthquake! I use Crunch! But the already-wounded Torterra gets taken out, and I had to bring in Toxicroak to take down the Bronzong with a Sucker Punch. And, again, having treated the game as an easy joke of a cakewalk before, it is very refreshing... particularly since I had maybe four or five revives coming into this run, meaning any defeat is damaging and even healing up was a luxury as well. 

And finally, we have our champion. There is some attempt at gravitas by having the camera spin around, but it's honestly pretty minimal effort with what they had already modelled into the game. Cynthia thanks me for Mt. Coronet... and wow, you did absolutely jack-shit in this version of events, did you, Cynthia? My previous exposure to the Sinnoh story was Platinum, where this confrontation actually meant something since Cynthia has been doing what Lance did in Gold and Silver. That's the reputation that Cynthia has in my head, where she runs around trying her best to at least do damage control even if our protagonist is the one getting into fights. She even went to Spear Pillar and into the Distortion World with us! But here, she's just some lady who gave me duck migraine medicine one time. 

And Cynthia's first Pokemon is... a Spiritomb! Infamous for being Dark/Ghost, without any weaknesses, back in Generation IV. And actually having stats to back it up, unlike its poor predecessor Sableye. Technically, I can use Fairy-type moves against it, but I don't exactly have a Fairy-type to use at the moment! So I launch Drapion. Both Drapion and Spiritomb are tanky enough that we can comfortably take each other's Crunches and Shadow Balls, and I was planning to use the Spiritomb to burn through Cynthia's potions. It... it didn't work out so well, because the Spiritomb procced enough 'Special Defense goes down' with Shadow Ball, and a critical hit takes out Drapion. Toxicroak comes out, and I hoped to be able to deal enough damage with Sucker Punch. I didn't deal enough damage to knock it out with Sucker Punch, and Spiritomb unleashes a Psychic. I knew that 4x-effective hit was coming the moment my Toxicroak's Anticipation was set off. 

Torterra finally comes out and takes down the Spiritomb, but two for one was an insane trade this early on. Cynthia's second Pokemon is a Roserade, who tanked an Earthquake like a boss, enough to Sludge Bomb and poison my Torterra, before falling down to the next Earthquake.

Cynthia's third Pokemon? Milotic. Whether it was Wallace or Cynthia, Milotics have earned both respect and fear from yours truly. And I just know this thing has Ice Beam. But I was banking on being able to kill it with a Wood Hammer. Torterra even has a Quick Claw! Alas, the Milotic outspeeds me, and headshots my Torterra with an Ice Beam.

...the Milotic also has a Flame Orb, and gets set on fire. Which sounds stupid, but Milotic does have the ability Marvel Scale, which ups her Defense stats if she's afflicted by a status condition. And it's not like Milotic cares about the physical attack stat that is nerfed by the Burn effect...

I chuck out Drifblim, who has Thunderbolt. Milotic has very high special defenses, but I thought I could chip away at its health. Thunderbolt hits... and Milotic uses MIRROR FUCKING COAT. The attack that reflects special attacks. Drifblim dies to it. I tried to then overpower Milotic with a legendary, unleashing a Spacial Rend with my Palkia, but Milotic very handily tanks that and kills Palkia with another Mirror Coat. That... that was not my most intelligent play, I must admit. 

Finally my Gastrodon pops out, and I barely kill it with a critical Earth Power...  which would have been dangerous since that is also a special attack that Mirror Coat could reflect back. But Cynthia has three more Pokemon remaining, and even if I tried to revive someone, there was no way I was surviving a gauntlet that also contained Cynthia's powerful Garchomp.

Ironically, Cynthia's fourth Pokemon is also a Gastrodon. Earth Power faces off against Earthquake, but my already wounded Gastrodon finally gives up the ghost. 

Yep, I lost to Cynthia! That... that honestly sounds about right. 

It's rematch time, and this time I bring up a whole ton of revives and full restores to use in-between battles. I also finally cracked the TM box and gave some of my Pokemon better moves. Palkia gets Surf and Flamethrower, Drifblim gets Psychic, and Drapion gets Aerial Ace. 

And...  and I'll spare you guys the Elite Four rematches, but basically the ones that give me pause is still Aaron's tanky Dustox and Vespiquen; and Flint's damned Minimize play. Knowing what's going to happen and having a slightly more leveled-up team, and not afraid of taking some knockouts since I can revive them afterwards really does make it a lot easier to go through the gauntlet, though. 

And then, the rematch with Cynthia again. This time, I lead with Toxicroak against her Spiritomb. I use Toxic on the Spiritomb, and then just intend to turtle the heck out of the Spiritomb with Drapion. Cynthia actually got wise to the toxic tick-downs, and swaps it out for her Gastrodon. I send out my own Gastrodon for a rematch of the slugs. This time, Cynthia's Gastrodon kept spamming Rock Tomb for some reason, while my Earth Powers have much heavier STABs. 

Next up is Cynthia's Roserade against my Palkia. A little rose-dancer sprite versus the Kaiju God of Space. Palkia unleashes a Flamethrower... and Roserade replies with a critical hit Dazzling Gleam. A fairy-type move! That... that's very cool, actually. I pop Toxicroak out, another Pokemon vulnerable to Dazzling Gleam, and proceed to Sucker-Punch the little sliver of health that the enemy Roserade has. That was cool, though, not going to lie.

Cynthia brings out the wounded Spiritomb again, and I take a turn to revive Palkia. Toxicroak somehow hangs on for dear life at 3 HP (so it isn't even the bullshit 'fake sturdy' mechanic) and then manages to trigger one of Cynthia's Full Restores, sets off another Toxic, before I swap him out at around 10 HP or thereabouts. I didn't actually expect much out of Toxicroak since neither of his Poison nor Fighting types are particularly useful in this Elite Four, but that I salute you, punk frog. 

Torterra comes on in and takes down the Spiritomb with an Earthquake, and then... it's the Milotic rematch time. My Torterra manages to tank the Ice Beam, and unleashes a Wood Hammer. As Milotic unleashes a second Ice Beam, I swap out for Drapion, who can tank the Ice Beam better. Thinking that I could finish off Milotic at my leisure with physical attacks... Cynthia's Milotic uses RECOVER.

Right. This is a bit of a problem. I can't even try and cheese-poison the Milotic, since the Burn actually protects it from an attempt to use Toxic or whatever. So I just spam Cross Poison, while Milotic continues to Recover... and unleashes a couple of Scalds that eventually takes out the Drapion, who was already not in full health. I did take one of the Drapion turns to fully heal Torterra. 

And with some of the accumulated damage that Drapion has managed to do to the Milotic, Torterra tanks an Ice Beam (which I knew he could do), before finally slaying the majestic oarfish with a Wood Hammer. It's a mutual kill, but dang, Milotic, that was badass. 

I send out Drifblim, and Cynthia sends out Lucario. I find out quickly that my attempts to spam Psychic aren't doing enough damage to Lucario, even if it's just spamming Flash Cannons. Eventually, I swap out to Gastrodon, who tanks Flash Cannons a lot better, and proceeds to take down Lucario with Earth Power. 

And finally... the pseudo-legendary of Sinnoh. The Land Shark of Death, the Jet Dragon of Doom, the Harbinger of Sandy Ruin, the Terror of the Deserts, ace in the hole of Cynthia...

Garchomp. 

I start off with my already wounded Palkia. A god against a pseudo-god, sounds fair, right? But one thing about Garchomp is that Garchomp is really, really fast.

Boom, Dragon Claw, critical hit, and Garchomp proved that the sheer, unparalleled speed and power jet engine is truly enough to slay the God of Space. 

I move in to Drifblim, trying to buy a turn to fully heal Gastrodon... and Garchomp does Swords Dance. "Yep, I'm fucked", I say. Knowing that Drifblim can't really damage Garchomp substantially, I take another turn to heal Torterra. Garchomp unleashes a Swords Dance powered Dragon Claw, and pops Drifblim. Aftermath damages him a little, but not enough. 

Gastrodon pops out, and Quick Claw triggers, allowing the slug to somehow outspeed the jet dragon that had outsped the God of Space. 4x damage should be enough to take down Garchomp. It isn't, because it's holding one of those fucking berries that reduces super-effective damage. Another Dragon Claw is unleashed by Garchomp, and Gastrodon falls. 

One last Pokemon on my side. My starter, Torterra. The Garchomp is bleeding, slightly wounded. And Garchomp outspeeds me... and fails to kill Torterra. At 5 HP, Torterra unleashes Wood Hammer... and Garchomp falls. Torterra falls, too...

Which means... with a half-dead Toxicroak in my party (who I completely forgot about at this point, since his HP was so low that I thought that he was dead), I win. I win! That was a really fun battle, a challenging one, and I am so, so happy that they actually accounted for the stupid experience scaling in this game and still made Cynthia as challenging as she used to be back in 2010 or whenever. 

And Cynthia and Rowan show up and give the typical bullcrap about winning the game, and I register my Pokemon in the Hall of Fame. Toxicroak, with his smug-ass frog face, was the first to show up. I haven't been the most engaged with Shining Pearl and I think my let's play has been quite reflective of it,  but this last battle has been surprisingly challenging and fun. The credits roll, over some nice shots of my 3D character biking down a road, and a vignette of me meeting all the supporting characters, a nice CGI cutscene of Uxie, Azelf and Mesprit showing up as I cycle back, before it closes on me returning to my house in Twinleaf City. 

That's nice. Diamond and Pearl, I feel, has one of the better post-game areas in that they actually prepared an extra island in the north for post-game. There's also a bunch of legendaries to catch -- Giratina, Regigigas, the Lake Guardians for sure. Arceus, from the Azure Flute. I wouldn't be surprised if Darkrai and Shaymin's events also became triggerable here. 

But I think I'll move on to the next game before that. You'll no doubt see a couple of post-game posts over the next few months, but I do really need a break from Shining Pearl. Playing through it really does make me realize just how poorly-paced the original Sinnoh games were, particularly the repetitiveness of the wild Pokemon thanks to the much more limited dex -- which they really have no excuse for, do they, since Platinum just simply made Sinnoh a much more pleasant overworld to run around in just by introducing a couple extra Pokemon available from the get-go, and not arbitrarily locking Rotom or the Trophy Garden behind the National Dex or whatnot. 

And... yeah. There are some parts of this game that I really did like, but if we're being honest a lot of them are cosmetic and feel like the bare minimum of a remake and update. Especially when you're comparing it to FireRed/LeafGreen, HeartGold/SoulSilver and OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire. And I think this goes a bit double with remaking the Generation IV games because Platinum is probably one of the 'remastered' third versions whose changes are universally beloved. And taking away those changes and giving us... really, nothing in return -- makes the original script and gameplay feel a lot, lot worse.

Anyway, that's enough bitching on my part. I had fun, I had some nice appreciation for a bunch of Generation IV Pokemon I wouldn't have had before, and while BDSP wouldn't rank high up on my absolute list of Pokemon games, it's still not... not fully terrible. Next up... another remake game!

Random Notes:

• Normally not a huge Infernape fan, but how cool is that special illustration Infernape EX artwork from the game? Also, that Spiritomb and Alakazam art goes hard as hell. 
  
• It is so weird not seeing these guys with some of their Pokemon from Platinum, having farmed them for dozens of hours back in the day. Aaron without Yanmega and Scizor? Bertha without Rhyperior as her final Pokemon? Flint without Magmortar? Lucien without Gallade? 
  
• Aaron's Dustox and Cynthia's Milotic break my 'only TCG Pocket art' rule for this playthrough, since the two of them did give me a bit of a run for my money. 
  
• Honestly, I do feel a bit sorry for Bertha's Sudowoodo the most. A lot of the other 'weaker' members of the Sinnoh Elite Four at least try to do some gimmick -- Beuatifly's Quiver Dance, Girafarig's Trick Room, the stalling Dustox that surprised me... even Flint's Rapidash has some surprising coverage with Iron Tail and Poison Jab. But not Sudowoodo. His movepool and general setup is just so... so bad. 
• It's a bit of a funny coincidence mostly due to my selection of a starter Pokemon, but it is funny that Pearl shares multiple Pokemon with the Elite Four and Champion -- Roserade, Heracross and Infernape. 
• The musical piano piece in the conversation leading up to Cynthia's fight is great. I don't think I've ever paid attention to that piece of the OST before.