Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 28: Root of All Evil

Last we left off in the main story, I got a lot of exposition, and dealt with the Team Flare Noveau storyline. As I return to Hotel Z, Taunie declares that she, too, has reached Rank A. Off-screen. I guess there are just a bunch of other Rank B and C trainers walking around, and these are technically people who are stronger than the likes of Jacinthe and Corbeau, but okay. As we discuss about Floette's choice, however, the little flower pixie begins doubling over in pain. 

AZ identifies this as the tower, Ange, affecting Floette. Her pain subsides, and there's a brief discussion on whether we'll be able to save the world... but nothing much happens and I go to sleep...

Only to be awakened by a big earth-shattering KABOOM. Of course. I gather around with the rest of Team MZ, and there's a bit of a light-hearted banter about the antique elevator's slowness, but we reach the top of the tower to see AZ and Floette looking at Prism Tower... which is glowing bright pink, and exuding some kind of miasma. Naveen is also watching Canari's stream, of course, and he learns some things from that. I'm not even mad, that's how a lot of people get their news these days -- social media livestreaming like Instagram and Tiktok. 

AZ notes that the time he feared has come, and it wouldn't be long before Ange goes rogue as well. If left unchecked, it will cause a lot of Rogue Mega Evolutions across the city. Vinnie summons team MZ, and AZ entrusts Floette to us. Once Floette has mega evolved, she can take the power of the tower, the power of Ange, and she can take the form of 'Ange Floette'. Not the best name, there. But we do at least have a plan. 

AZ then says a bit about how he would slow us down if he comes with us, and he'll try his best to support us from afar. This is very ambiguous, so Lida actually gives the old man a proper job: cook some food for them. AZ finds this surprising, before finding it amusing and agreeable. I thought that was a nice scene. 

Oh yeah, as the camera zooms in on my resolute face, the little Zygarde Cell/Core from the prologue scoots out from behind a flower pot and jumps at me. Interesting, so little 'Squishy' here isn't actually part of the 10-50% Zygarde entity that has been hanging around Lysandre!

Anyway, going to Prism Tower shows that the entire set of ugly construction walls blocking access to Prism Tower has been utterly demolished, leaving a rather impressive pile of rubble stacked around the tower. Grisham and Griselle watch in stoic shock, although they noted that they had helped evacuate the local civilians. And on the end of the line is Vinnie, Floette, and Team MZ. Ready for a final showdown. 

Vinnie gives me a rundown -- we need to deal with Prism Tower, or the entire city will be overrun with berserk Rogue Mega Evolutions. Yeah, having that Pyroar pack from Wild Zone 17 going wild would be insane. Vinnie asks us to decide among ourselves who should be Floette's mega-evolution partner. 

Taunie instantly goes "I'll do it". Lida and Naveen kind of protest a bit, but don't really pick any sides. I appreciate this. Taunie is Rank A, and she has worked hard to get here (even if I wished we saw some of her actual battles as part of the story instead of mostly offscreen) and her confidence that we are at least equals is quite nicely-done... not too 'nice' like some of the rivals, but she actually is trying to hold on to some aspect of her confidence as a trainer and as a leader of Team MZ. 

She wants to fight me, she wants to prove she's stronger, and she wants to save everyone in Lumiose. Understandable. Vinnie agrees. Lida and Naveen are both conflicted. Music starts as Taunie gets ready to fight... and it's battle time! Taunie sends out her first Pokemon, a Meowstic. I meet her immediately with full force this time, mega-evolving My Friend Malamar to one-shot the Meowstic with a Night Slash. 

After every fallen Pokemon, Taunie actually has something to say. She insists that despite me being the secret weapon of Team MZ, she is still the leader. Next up is Goodra... who spams Toxic, actually. My Mega Malamar doesn't actually have anything against Goodra, so I take out my own tank, Meganium, and kept spamming Giga Drain and Dazzling Gleam. A bit of a dangerous fight sinec Goodra is very tanky in special defenses, and Taunie's Goodra knows defense. But tank meets tank, and Goodra falls. 

Next up is an Avalugg, another odd choice. My Chandelure takes it out with a Flamethrower, but not before Avalugg gets off a Stone Edge right on my poor lamp. 

And then, Feraligatr! I was trying to save one Pokemon of mine for one Pokemon of hers, but screw it. We need to have the Johto starters fight. Meganium versus Feraligatr, just like all the way back in 1999 with Gold and Silver. I unleash Giga Drain. Feraligatr unleash Breaking Swipe. Feraligatr survives with a sliver of health. I charge up Solar Beam. I take out Feraligatr just as his own Ice Fang hits. Both Johto Pokemon are out. 

Taunie sends out Manectric. Back to Mega Malamar to take it out. Poor Manectric, you don't get to mega evolve, because...

Taunie's final Pokemon is one of her starters, Emboar. And Emboar, of course, Mega Evolves, and... it's a bit more of a Zhu Bajie inspired Pokemon. I... I'm still not the biggest fan, but I do think it solves a lot of the weird proportion problems that I have with base Emboar's design. Not sure about the giant fork-stick made up of fire... not that the concept is bad, but the texture of Mega Emboar's fire does make it look like a weird bacon moulded into a spear. 

Mega Emboar actually manages to take out my Mega Malamar with a Flare Blitz before I could get a Psycho Cut off, and then nearly kills my Slowbro before Surf finally brings it down. Taunie is shocked, but takes her defeat in grace, saying that she's happy we met and that she's proud to be Team MZ's leader. Naveen and Lida are shocked and a bit emotionally drained, and Vinnie is about to set up the mission... but then Taunie forces her way in anyway. She does give a quasi-valid reason that I am the one who has bonded with Zygarde so I need to be around for backup, but she just has a bit of a hero complex, doesn't she. 

AZ calls us, and apologizes for not being able to be here in person. Taunie and Team MZ resolve to deal with everything so AZ and Floette could live a peaceful life again, and AZ tells us young folk to protect Lumiose City where he could not; and tells Floette to lend us the power of the Eternal Flower. We get a cutscene, then, as Taunie inches closer and closer to the glowing energies pouring out of the Tower.

AZ's Floette has her mega stone, a Floettite, and Taunie Mega Evolves her... and Mega Floette actually gets a full-on model. I half-expected that to not happen, actually. Similarly to some other megas (Slowbro and Kangaskhan in particular), the main body of Floette does not change but rather, it's the flower that expands. It has become massive, while the stem has become an umbilical cord or chain that wraps itself around Floette's lower body. Ol' Floette doesn't seem to be bothered, though.  

Floette wraps Taunie up in a sphere of energy, and brings Taunie up to the top of Prism Tower, where it's a dome-shaped room with a throne. Taunie sits on it and places her hand on the control panel, looking very much like something from Breath of the Wild. Hilariously, Taunie actually starts streaming at this point, with the interface of a camera. 

All the pulsating pink energy in Prism Tower seems to drain and flow into Floette, forming a sphere around her. Outside, Vinnie is about to call off the forces. The crisis seems to be averted, and all we had is a bit of scattered scaffolding around Prism Tower. 

Except, of course, that's not the case. The orb starts to pulsate, and then black vines start to shoot down towards Taunie... and the rest of us outside see the Prism Tower's exterior actually crack like glass as the tower begins to glow again. And... vines start to sprout up and lift the entirety of the Prism Tower's inner skeleton up. Gone is the sleek covering outside. Flower buds start to unfurl up, revealing flowers similar to AZ's Eternal Flower Floette... except each flower is the size of a person. Hell, even the tower itself has been taken over by vines, moving segments of it around. 

And the absolute top of the tower, the 'lighthouse', has formed into like a 'cage' around a main flower, which unfurls open like 'fangs' and roars, being both the 'face' of this strange entity and also the 'mouth' of the cannon.

...okay, I was utterly and entirely blindsided by this plot development. I came into this part of the playthrough completely unspoiled, and I genuinely thought that the final boss was either going to be one of the humans, or even Zygarde himself. But for it to be an out-of-control... uh... kaiju flower vine mass monster? Okay, it's like, Biollante from Godzilla merged with the Eiffel Tower. That sure wasn't on my Pokemon bingo card. I don't know how I feel about it, but I did enjoy this part of the climax. 

Vinnie runs off to report to Quasartico Inc. Lida, Naveen and I apparently have evacuated to some rooftop, but the vines of Ange-Floette (which is basically the name of the entity) has essentially overtaken all of Centrico Plaza. Ruins from the destroyed parts of the tower litter the ground alongside the giant black-purple brambles, and it's a nice little 'railroading' of this alternate map as we go through the fallen scaffoldings. 

Taunie calls us and immediately confirms that she is okay, which does kind of undercut a bit of the tension when we see her in distress a bit earlier... but okay. Both Taunie and Mega-Floette are okay, but they are unable to control the giant plant Ange entity, which is attempting to fire off Floette's moves. Like Light of Ruin, all the way from the beginning of the game. Taunie then spots Zygarde on top of a roof in Magenta District, and tells me to head there.

It's at this point that a bunch of Rogue Mega Pokemon show up -- a Mega Heracross and a Mega Gengar. Thankfully, it's 'just' a regular battle and not a full on raid, albeit the two Megas noticeably are way more buffed up than what a normal specimen would be. Lida and Naveen fight with me, and for once, actually mega evolve their partners, leading to a fun triple mega evolution to have Mega Scrafty, Mega Starmie and Mega Malamar show up to fight. That's pretty cool. The two megas are pretty strong, though, with the Heracross actually managing to take down all three of our Megas. Admittedly, all three megas are weak to Bug-type.

Lida then finds a flat piece of rubble, and notes that this is what they need... and declares that it's time for a strategy meeting. I... okay. It's a cutscene that thankfully doesn't take too long, although the cheery strategy meeting background music does kind of take the bite out of the scene. 

Lida and Naveen recap the situation. We need to climb the wreckage and rooftops, but it is still problematic. At that point, however, the holo-avatar of Canari shows up and I love the absolutely flabbergasted expression on Naveen's face. Holo-avatars of Ivor and Corbeau also show up, and Vinnie also shows up in person. Vinnie has been trying to wrangle all of the strong trainers that Quasartico had given out Mega Rings to, but Canari, Corbeau and Ivor just all cut the middleman and decided to 'crash the chat', as it were. 

Naveen explains the situation, and Canari delivers a perfect gem: "what? Get it to come here instead." Which is absolutely true, Zygarde would be able to get through the rubble much more easily. But Ivor realizes that this is probably a test of my abilities, and Corbeau doesn't really give a shit either way, he just wants to know what he can do to help.

Unfortunately, my day is ruined when Jacinthe shows up in her terrible pink holo-avatar. Boo! Bring Grisham! Corbeau, my man, hates Jacinthe as much as I do and yells at her for bullshitting and complaining. Jacinthe actually proves useful, though, having obtained satellite photos of Lumiose City, showing that the vines have actually expanded to a lot of the city. We don't actually go to a lot of the places that singular tendrils have reached, but it's nice to see that it does really look like there's a fair bit more chaos going on than what I am facing against. 

All the trainers present are horrified, and even Ivor admits that his fists can't take down that many giant building-sized vines. Everyone else decides that their role is to clear a path for me, the protagonist chosen by Zygarde. That's cool. Lida sets up a little 'rally point' sequence as I go through the clearest streets on a half-circuit around Lumiose City, meeting up with where my allies are at in-person. Corbeau lampshades how lucky it was that the four high-ranked trainers are scattered in different districts. Yeah, very lucky, especially considering some of them aren't even in their regular hangouts! But okay, all for the epic final run. 

Jacinthe brings up that Grisham is missing and she starts ranting about her super-tournoi whatever, but Corbeau shuts her down and gives a quasi-inspiring speech about how people from all walks of life are there to help us. And after that, we set off... for a little heroic run throughout the city while my allies protect me. This is very anime. I love it. But the climax actually goes on for quite a bit, and we'll cover that... next episode. 

Random Notes:

• Throughout all of this, obviously, I can't travel. I do really feel like they put in a lot of effort in modeling the destroyed scaffolding and rubble, which looks pretty dang good. 
• Most of the NPCs have been evacuated from around Prism Tower, except for the important named ones. There is one guy who's just wandering around trying to call people on his phone in panic. Works well to showcase a city in the midst of an evacuation... except that the nearby Pokemon Center is still filled with its usual stock of calm NPCs. I can get Nurse Joy being cool, all the Nurse Joys, I am sure, are skilled professionals. But the random NPC talking about tutorial nonsense? I don't believe that. 
• For a moment, I was wondering where Taunie set her phone on, because Floette definitely isn't going around holding the phone...  but then I realized while writing this article that Rotom Phones just... float. Man, that would make TikTok videos a lot easier to take in the Pokemon world, huh? 
  
• But no, seriously, Taunie, after all of that, some of the first words out of your mouth is appreciating Lumiose's people because you could see it... from on top of... a rampaging plant kaiju monster. 
• Lida notes that with our Pokemon, it would be hard to get past the rubble. Which is actually true for my team (Meganium, Malamar, Chandelure, Slowbro, Scolipede and Hawlucha) but a player with larger Flying-type Pokemon, like a Pidgeot or Aerodactyl or Salamence really shouldn't be saying that. 
• Emma... Emma gets a single phone call (throughout all the climax, actually, mild spoilers) calling me and telling me to trust L. Which is honestly quite sad, considering she's been kind of our mentor a bit, and with that badass Expansion Suit she really should have no problem running around the broken city. There is a handwave of her taking care of people outside of Centrico Plaza, but that's hardly satisfying. 
• The battle music for the fight against Mega Gengar and Heracross is epic. I think it's a remix of the regular Rogue Mega raid theme, but faster-paced and just a deilght to listen to. 
• Vinnie notes that his daughter is awaiting his safe return. Aww, good dad.