Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 44: The Dark Nightmare of Lumiose City

After the Heatran mission, we get a short discussion with the rest of Team MZ. Ansha and Lida suffered from the same nightmare dreams of a voice telling them to go away, and Korrina speculates that this is because Hyperspace is merging with Lumiose, affecting everyone's dreams. Korrina briefly has the mad idea of just letting Hyperspace Lumiose swallow up regular Lumiose just to find Ansha's legendary Pokemon, but the rest of the team shut her 'joke' down. 

Corbeau summons us to the Rust Syndicate office, but going into the office instead teleports the entire Team MZ into Hypesrpace Lumiose. Hoopa didn't even open the portal or anything. Rather randomly (and in a far better comedic timing than the mainline story) Jacinthe has infiltrated the group and asks what's going on. Apparently, everyone important was teleported to Hyperspace Lumiose. The game lets me run around a bit to look for where Corbeau has landed, with the clue of 'a place surrounded by walls', but every named NPC is scattered around this large map. I didn't bother to go around to talk to absolutely everybody, but we've got the usual suspects and even the more passive NPCs like Mable and Emma, and even the named Infinite Z-A contestants like Zach, Yvon and Xavi. 

We find Corbeau, Vinnie and Phillippe in the arena where the Mega Starmie fight happened, and we get a lot of discussion about how this is basically the result of the hyperspace distortion getting worse. Not only are Pokemon coming from Hyperspace to the real world, but people are being dragged from the real Lumiose into Hyperspace. Potential world-ending threat, oh no!

And just like that, very abruptly, we're teleported back to Corbeau's office. Rather hilariously, Corbeau ends up standing on his own desk, something that the game doesn't acknowledge but I do find funny. After a lot of recap about what's going on and the potential threat (this bit, by the way, was very repetitive) Corbeau shares that they discovered that Hyperspace Lumiose is being maintained by just a single Pokemon... but one that was exposed from sheer undiluted mega power when Ange went on its rampage. This is going to lead to a massive Rogue Mega Evolution. 

Ansha briefly gets a moment where she laments potentially losing the chance to catch the 'fine legendary Pokemon' that she has been after, but brushes it off very quickly, since her dream isn't worth the sufefring of everyone else in Lumiose. Corbeau praises her maturity, but also notes that even if we solve the Rogue Mega Evolution, pockets of Hyperspace will still remain for quite a while (i.e. as long as we play the game). 

The solution to reach the massive portal is to make an even better donut to power up Hoopa, and apparently this leads my character to suggest that we nede to feed Mega Evolution power to the donut. This will unlock Mega Evolution -- or power equivalent to Mega Evolution -- on Hoopa. I... yeah. Okay. Everyone likes it, and Corbeau, with a super-serious zoom-in to his face, declares that this is Operation Mega Donut. Okay. Fine. 

Unfortunately, this leads to like a massive 40K or something grind for points. It took me a while to get it, because I keep running out of berries and having to dive to low-level rifts to get more berries. Sigh. 

Anyway, skipping through all the grinding, Corbeau arrives in Hotel Z, takes a look at the adorable donut stand, and asks Ansha if she is interested in a little financial backing "to turn your solo stand into a global donut empire". Lida is a bit angry, but Corbeau defensively says that he has a nose for business opportunities. Phillippe notes that it's a bit hard for others to know when Corbeau is joking, to which Corbeau replies... "who says I am?"

Apparently, the research they did is that I need to make a donut with 310 points in sweet and sour, 100 spicy, and 40 bitter and fresh. Oh, and I have to put in some plot device Rust Syndicate spice called Epice Noire. It's all just so random and shoehorned in just so that we have another long collection quest to do. I was fortunate enough to have the berries at this point to make the epic donut called Bad Dreams Cruller, or whatever, but it is just a bit silly that neither works with the dreams theme of Darkrai, nor the more sci-fi bent of Hyperspace distortions. This is compounded with the fact that... well, these nonsense requirements is just a way to force people to grind even more after a bout of grinding, yeah? Wow, this DLC is horrible with the grinding. 

Anyway, we gather in front of Prism Tower and we get a rather generic (even by Pokemon standards) roll call about being ready to save people and stuff. Corbeau and Phillippe take over the duty of gathering everyone around Prism Tower, and there's a bit where holo-Jacinthe starts appearing and nosing her business into everyone and being her whiny self about not being allowed to lead the mission, but Corbeau quickly gives her an answer she's satisfied with by saying something about letting a trainer of her caliber being freed from managing logistics. 

There are some short bits of dialogue as the characters gather -- Gwynn hanging out with Canari and Tarragon, causing Ivor to run around yelling for her; Jacinthe bothering Grisham and Griselle; a short bit of Jacinthe praising Lebanne; Naveen and Taunie arguing about curry. Oh, and Emma actually shows up for this finale, having missed the main story one. 

Korrina, Taunie, Ansha and myself stand on the top of Prism Tower, perched on the edge... it's quite dangerous, particularly with the kid, no? And Operation Mega Donut begins, and... man, it's a bit silly to have everyone just tap their Key Stones and have the light of the power of friendship fly up to the donut, yeah? At least have them mega evolve their partner Pokemon? It's not going to be something new, but at least it would make more sense with the 'power of mega evolution' and everything. Sigh. Anyway, the power flows to the donut, which Hoopa eats. She flies up and briefly the image of Hoopa Unbound appears behind her, and she stabilizies the gigantic rift, allowing us to go through...

The location that we end up in is an island. Specifically, New Moon Island from Generation IV, where the Darkrai event would take place in the few regions that had the Wi-Fi event happen. The environment is honestly nothing special, even if it is a novelty in this game. 

Korrina stops us halfway through and finally deduces that the Pokemon we're facing is Darkrai. Which is, again, very anticlimactic considering that most experienced audiences would already know; while newer ones wouldn't have any idea what Darkrai is. No foreshadowing whatsoever, and if you're going to not really explain and name-drop it, might as well as just have Darkrai's actual physical appearance be the introduction. 

After explainins Darkrai's powers, Korrina gets a bit angry at this perversion of Mega Evolution, which is supposed to be a wondrous thing that's the ultimate bond between a partnership... but it's tormenting poor Darkrai now. 

However, halfway towards the boss arena is a familliar figure... it's AZ and Floette. Or rather, an echo of AZ and Floette, which Taunie quickly points out. It's 'just a dream, but then life is a dream'. This echo of AZ ends up basically allowing Taunie and Korrina to say goodbye to AZ in a way, which is a bit of a cheap way to do it... but this sequence with AZ and the music behind it was way more emotional than anything in the entirety of this DLC, so I'm going to let the contrived coincidence slide. Taunie is quite upset that AZ has passed away without giving her the chance to say goodbye while thyey were dealing with the tower. 

AZ thanks Taunie and Korrina, and praises them both for their growths. Taunie is a lot more emotional, but Korrina's a lot more... well, she takes it a lot better. AZ notes that he had wished to welcome Korrina properly to Lumiose, but life has a way of laughing at all the best-laid plans in the world. This ghostly AZ finally ends his little meeting by thanking me. Our time together, short as it is, was precious. "After wandering in the dark for as long as I have, your words are almost blindingly bright". AZ then gives us some words of encouragement, before he disappears. Taunie urges us to go. 

And we enter a grotto, with the circular image of the real Lumiose City hanging overhead like a full moon. 

As Darkrai's voices continue to speak, we get a cutsecne! We see the 'moon' in the background, we get some blurring and Darkrai is standing there. Yes, standing. Darkrai's got feet, most famously shown in his feature movie, but it really does look quite creeepy being long, extended and looking like someone stretched a shadow from the ground. Darkrai retracts his legs and flies in front of the camera, eyes glowing, and we get the Darkrai boss fight!

Darkrai is at level 200, but the Epice Noire donut actually sets my party to almost be around that level so this is a point where the game is actually properly optimized for a fair fight and I don't have to wonder if I fed Hoopa the right size donut or not. I brought in a team somewhat equipped to fight Darkrai... okay, it's mostly just Hawlucha, Meganium, Diancie and maybe Mewtwo that I'm relying on. But I find it hilarious that for the most part of this initial battle, I relied on a mega-evolved luchador bird to suplex this nightmare ghost.

Darkrai's special attacks are his signature Dark Void, which puts me to sleep and I don't know if this is unique to the raid battle, but it also damages my boys continually while they are drowsy. 

The fight against regular Darkrai is, to be frank, not the hardest. But then he flies up and mega evolves, and... what is this? Mega Darkrai is just a big blob. It first appears as a big oval with tentacle hands, a tentacle 'tail', and a mass of trailing tentacles on its rear side. Its front side has bright pink markings resembling an eyeball. What the hell? ... and then the eyeball markings blorp together like a creepy flower and Darkrai's regular head, albeit with stringier hair, pops out like a flower or something. Okay? 

Not much I can say about this raid battle. Dark Void is still threatening, but the most annoying attack is Future Fight, which rains down psychic meteors around a location. Oh, and it summons clones a couple of times. At this point it's just doging, spamming plus moves, and just whittling Mega Darkrai's health down until it gives up the ghost (heh) and I catch him in a Dusk Ball. Success! 

Taunie, Korrina and Corbeau all congratulate me on a job well done, and with that we return to the real Lumiose, having dispersed the massive hyperspace hole. Korrina speculates that Darkrai was hiding on top of Prism Tower to avoid everyone else in the city, since the tower was closed off for redevelopment. But this also made Darkrai right there to be exposed to Ange's mega energy when it went supernova, causing Darkrai's powers to go wild. They then conclude that Darkrai was just out of control and not actively malicious, something that I think all previous dialogue have already made quite clear... but okay. 

There's then discussion about Ansha's goal, which we'll follow up with next. Ansha then reiterates how happy she is to be part of Team MZ, we do a group fist bump, and credits roll. The credits features a lot more secnes that are just reused from the gameplay, but it ends with a childish drwaing of Team MZ (with me being drawn with the default starter green jacket), Ansha and Hoopa in front of Prism Tower. 

After credits roll, there's a bit where Team MZ gathers in the sofas, discussing Ansha's request again and formalizing Ansha's requests. They then lampshade the fact that Corbeau will call, and we walk up to his office before he has the opportunity to call us. Corbeau tells us that they detected strong radiation in two locations, a distinctive pair of brightly hued hyperspace distortions... called the Ruby Distortion and Sapphire Distortion. Of... of course.

Learning of Ansha's quest for Rayquaza, Corbeau then recalls his mentor, a gentleman from Kanto that is a boss of an organization. Giovanni? Corbeau is a student of Giovanni? No wonder he's got style. Corbeau learned about Johto and Hoenn legendaries from Giovanni, and Lida helps to collaborate some of the Hoenn backstories. It's a nice (if random) revelation that Lida is from Hoenn, and we get a retelling of the Groudon/Kyogre fight, and how they were calmed down by Rayquaza... I think anyone reading these Pokemon let's play blogs would be familiar with the plot of the Generation III games, right? 

Anyway, I would be excited if Corbeau didn't jump straight into telling me that I need to get ready for another grind. Why. Why can't this just be a regular side-quest, why??? 

As you probably can tell, I do enjoy, for the most part, the story of Mega Dimensions as much as I do think Ansha is a bit of a flat character. But damn, the padding via grinding is driving me insane. 

Random Notes:

• The game is really ambiguous and flip-floppy whether the NPCs we meet in Hyperspace are really people from the real world dragged into Lumiose, or if they are copies created in Hyperspace. Some quests (like the Naveen-vs-Canari one) implies the latter; this main quests implies everyone we meet in that sequence are the real people; the hyperspace battle zones are definitely 'fake' people... but some of the sidequests are a bit ambiguous. 
  
• Zach, Le Eternel Z: "Wow! I managed to reach a place that's not on the map! I must be an amazing driver!"
• Mable: "If I knew that this place was safe, I'd love to do some research... but I do value my own life." Gee, thanks, Mable, for that vote of confidence on the safety of these interdimensional planes. 
• Grisham: "I suppose we'd better prepare, too." Griselle: "We ARE prepared!" Griselle just has an expression that screams 'I'm done' when Jacinthe pulls off her nonsense antics, and, sister, same.
• Ansha's childish crayon drawings does bypass the need to make two versions of the drawing for male protag/Taunie and female protag/Urbain. Everyone looks like a stick figure! 
• Corbeau and Lida seem to confirm that at least for Rayquaza, there's only THE Rayquaza, the one from the Hoenn region. Nice, we're going back to at least some legendaries being special and only existing as a singular species throughout the various games.