gonna try to watch lupin, psycho pass, FLCL, one punch man, and haruhi next

Quote from: Verbatim on September 26, 2017, 03:12:08 PM

wouldn't say excited, but i'm certainly not afraid to die or of what whatever comes after

Have you ever been in a near death experience?

every time i'm on the road

That night, I was meant to stop playing, but I was too excited. The Route just before Goldenrod City contains a lot of cool things, like Abra and Ditto, and I just couldn't want to catch something there, especially since the route doesn't have anything time-specific running around. Even if I catch something lame, like a Drowzee, there's a kid in the Goldenrod Department Store who will trade his Machop for one, and that'll be very helpful against the next gym.

And hell, if I actually find an Abra, I have the PERFECT teammate to help me catch it: Blair. Not only is she a fast Hypnosis user to help ensure that I catch the thing, she also has Mean Look. With this move, she can actually stop Abra from Teleporting away, assuming she's able to outspeed the thing (and I'm sure she'll be able to). Man, I'm just loving Blair more and more by the day.

By the way: this Route, which happens to be Route 34, also contains the Daycare Center, which is the one area in the game where Pokémon are able to reproduce with each other. On Route 34. Let that sink in for a minute.

Too bad, though. I ended up finding another Rattata. What a shame. I named the bastard "Wotcher" and boxed it.

That actually made me a little salty, considering I had a 65% chance of getting something that's actually interesting, so I decided to take it out on all the trainers in this area. Notably, there's a Picnicker named Gina who has a Bulbasaur for some strange reason. I wonder where she got that from.

There's a police officer in this area as well, called Officer Keith. Police officers only battle you at night, and I happened to be playing after midnight, so I thought I may as well take him out.

He only had one Pokémon: A level 17 Growlithe.

This made me pause just for a little bit, considering that it out-levels my whole team by a factor of 1 to 2. I was leading with Bram, and the first thing I did was confuse it with Supersonic. Knowing Growlithe has a high Attack stat, it'll probably hurt a lot for it to hit itself. It didn't hit itself, though. It used Roar.

Now, I have baby Nicholas out. Bemused, I switch back to Bram, since he's the one who needs the experience points right now, and hoped it would hit itself this time. It didn't. It just used Roar again.

At this point, I'm thinking, is this all it's going to do? So, I try to game it by switching to Blair. If it doesn't hit itself this time, that'll be three times in a row that it did not hit itself, which is a 1 in 8 chance. If it does break through, though, it'll probably just use Roar and someone else on my team (possibly Bram) will be switched out. That was my thinking at the time.

For the third time, it didn't hit itself. And it didn't use Roar.

It used Bite.

Now, at this point, I realize how hard I fucked up, because this is something I probably should've anticipated. Growlithe is a police dog, so of course it would know Bite. And in this generation, Bite is a Dark-type move, making it super effective against my poor Gastly here. But Blair is at full health, so maybe she'll be able to tank the hit?...

She didn't. It was a one-hit KO, and it wasn't even a critical hit. Blair's dead. Completely my fault, too, since I have no idea what I was thinking sending her out in the first place. I thought for sure that Growlithe would hit itself, but if the idea that it would use Bite had entered my mind before, I'm sure I would've thought she'd be able to take the hit. But until I checked her stats, I never realized just how frail she actually is, defensively speaking.

She's an awful Pokémon to lose. I was just thinking about how glad I was to have her on the team, too. I guess that was my mistake. Nuzlockes prey on favoritists.

To avenge her, I sent out Quill and slaughtered that Growlithe with a Headbutt. Come to think of it, I suppose Blair was a Gastly. Technically, that means she was dead the whole time, or that's one way to look at it.

I arrived in Goldenrod City, and the cheerful-ass music that plays in this place did NOT match my mood at all.

At the PC, I sifted through my box of Pokémon, mulling over who to place in that now-empty sixth slot on my team. There's Rocky, who would probably perform excellently against Whitney, but he's at such a low level at this point, and I think Onix learns moves very slowly. He also has a pretty low Attack stat, and I'm not sure if I want to deal with that. Gnash, Balcombe, and Wotcher are out of the question, since I already have both Rattata and zubat in the squad. I don't wanna use an Exeggcute right now, and I don't think Alkali is going to help much right now.

I settled with December the Spearow and spent the rest of the night training him. There's so much to do in Goldenrod City, but after Blair's death, I wasn't really in the mood for any of it anymore.

PARTY:


BOX:


TRADED AWAY:


RIP:

it's pretty fun, but it can get boring

i always preferred puyo puyo

Can we talk for a minute about how fucking awesome Azalea Town's music is?


Obviously, this whole game just cascades a waterfall of nostalgia over me, but it's this song, this one song right here, that just... DOES it for me. I can't explain it. I just listen to this track, and I'm literally a child again. It's wonderful. I can't say if it's my favorite song in the game, but it's certainly the one that's taken me back like nothing else has so far.

Anyway, I made it back to Violet City, and for better or for worse, Doherty the Bellsprout wound up in better hands. The dude's name is Kyle, apparently. Don't worry, I still have Patches. In exchange, I got Rocky the Onix from Kyle, whose level is always copied from the Bellsprout that you present him. In this case, he was level 6. It's unlikely that I'll ever need him for anything in the foreseeable future, but it's just nice to purge out some of the duplicates from my squad. I like variety.

From here on, the order of the things I did may be slightly off before heading to Ilex Forest, but it's honestly not a big deal.

I traveled all the way back to Azalea to do a little bit of training for my fight against Bugsy, the next gym leader. The level of his strongest Pokémon, Scyther, is 16, so I tried not to exceed that. Though, this proved to be a complete non-issue that I didn't have to "try" for at all, since Quill is a Fire-type, and Ember is known to mercilessly destroy those pesky Bug-types.

Nah, the fight I actually WAS kind of worried about was the second rival fight that takes place after defeating Team Rocket at Slowpoke Well. Since I've already done this, attempting to head west into Ilex Forest will now trigger the second rival fight, and there's no way out of it. He has three tough Pokémon in his party. From my memory, I remember getting my ass beat by his scary Croconaw, but he also has an annoying Gastly and Zubat, too. Not good news.

That said, I took care of Bugsy first, since he's such easy pickin's and all. Quill went in so hard, he evolved into Quilava, who is probably one of my all-time favorite middle stages (and I tend not to like four-legged Pokémon that much). It just looks so cool.



And damn, it's about time something on my team evolves. Everyone else takes so long.

Ironically, I actually didn't use Quill at all during the Bugsy fight. I let Rattaboy, Bram, and Blair take him out instead. Patches found himself without much use once again, but he shouldn't feel too bad about that. He kind of carried the team through Union Cave, so I suppose he deserves a break.

With the Hive Badge now in my possession, I knew I had to go fight the rival next. Since this fight is much scarier, I went back to Union Cave and trained everyone up to level 14.

It was during this training session that my Egg finally hatched, making Togepi an official member of the team. I couldn't think of a good nickname for him at first, so I thought it would funny to just call him "Nick," but then I went with the extended "Nicholas" instead. I always felt there was this holy, angelic air about this name that seemed to fit a Togepi well (and especially Togetic), so there you go.

If you call up Professor Elm after the Egg hatches, he'll ask you to stop by his lab (all the way back in the starting town) so that he can see it. If you do this, all he gives you in return is an Everstone, which is used to prevent your Pokémon from evolving. Sounds pretty useless, but I decided to head over there anyway, mostly so that I could actually train baby Nicholas in a safe location. You know, where he's not absolutely guaranteed to die. He's just a baby, after all. The amount footsteps I'll be taking will also boost his happiness by a lot, which is something I have to do anyway if I want him to evolve any time soon.

Since he only knows Growl and Charm, I taught him the move Swift from that TM I picked up to give him some kind of fighting chance. Seems like a fitting attack for him anyway (shooting stars). With STAB, it actually has 90 power, and it never misses, so there was no reason not to teach him the move.

To my surprise, he actually held his own against some of the tougher Pokémon in those early routes, and eventually learned the move Metronome. Normally, this is one of my favorite moves, but I strictly prohibit its use in nuzlockes (unless I'm feeling cheeky) because there's a 1/120 chance that Nicholas will end up blowing himself up with Self-destruct or Explosion. That's simply something that I cannot allow to happen, even when it's such a remote chance.

Eventually, I brought Nicholas up to level 11 and thought he was caught up enough for me to move on. It was time for me to fight the rival.

As I made my way back, I briefly revisited the Ruins of Alph to solve the Kabuto puzzle just for fun, and I used Repels to prevent myself from having to catch any of the Unown in the chamber. In order to get my encounter here, I need the move Surf, so I'm not quite ready yet.

Back in Azalea, I made my way towards the forest when, of course, my rival stopped me in my tracks. After refusing to believe that I was the one who stopped Team Rocket down Slowpoke Well, he challenged me.

He led with his Gastly, and I led with Rattaboy. This is perfect, since Gastly can't touch Rattaboy at all. I thought about switching to Blair so that we could have a cheeky Gastly fight, but nah, that would've been stupid. The obvious answer was to spam Mud Slap, which is not only super effective, but reduces Hypnosis's accuracy to near-nothing. I'm sure glad I taught him this move.

Even so, the Gastly was still faster, and tried to put Rattaboy to sleep twice in a row, which would've been horrifying, but it missed both times thanks to that Accuracy fall.

I fully expected him to send out his Croconaw next, but he went for his Zubat instead. What makes this thing annoying is its impeccable accuracy with Supersonic and its powerful Bite attack, which is a Dark-type move in this generation, so Blair is out of commission for this matchup. I stuck with Rattaboy, since he needed a level-up anyway, and just tried to Hyper Fang it to death. This worked splendidly.

Finally, Croconaw came out, and this thing was a level 16 monster with Water Gun, putting Quill out of commission. I seem to recall this thing having Bite as well, but I must have just been thinking about Zubat, because it didn't seem to use that move. Knowing this, I managed to put it to sleep with Blair and cut it down with a few Vine Whips from Patches, who also resisted his Water Gun attacks.

Not only did I win this fight with no casualties, I got to witness another great fight where my entire team plays off their strengths and weaknesses. There's a lot more synergy here than it seems, and it's gonna be exciting to see what kind of role Nicholas will play once he's at a proper level.

With the rival fight taken care of, I was free to enter the forest. It's here that I'll obtain the TM for Headbutt, which is a move I can use outside of battle to bump short little trees in the overworld to try to shake something rare or interesting out of it. I'm on the hunt for two things: a Heracross and a Pineco, both of which are some of my favorites, but I've never actually seen them before in the game, because it's such a weird and obscure mechanic.

But first, I had to teach someone on my team Cut, the infamous HM, because there's a skinny tree blocking the way towards the dude who gives you the Headbutt TM (and the next route).

Sorry, Patches, but you're getting the shaft again.

I made a beeline for the Headbutt dude, making sure to use plenty of Repel so that I don't waste my encounter on something silly like an Oddish. There are three areas where I can still encounter things: Here, Azalea, and the route just before Azalea. The forest and Azalea are considered "forest" regions, so I'll be looking for Pineco there. The route before Azalea is considered a mountain region, and that's where I hope to find a Heracross.

I eventually got Headbutt and taught it to Quill, replacing Tackle. I honestly could've taught it to Nicholas, so that may have been a mistake, but oh well.

It only took a couple tries to get my Ilex Forest encounter: An Exeggcute. This is probably the last thing I wanted to find, because it's such a hard thing to nickname, but I decided to name it Aubergine. Because it's an eggplant. I don't really wanna use an Exeggcute, but maybe I'll be desperate some day.

In Azalea, a Weedle fell from the tree. That's more along the lines of what I want, but still not the most exciting encounter. I named her Alkali. I might actually use her, since I really like Beedrill.

In the Route just before Azalea Town, my encounter was a Spearow (that was still sleeping). I named him December, after the Fearow I took to the Hall of Fame in my Blue nuzlocke (who was named November).

On a whim, however, I decided to headbutt the tree a second time. What did I find?

A motherfucking Heracross.

But since it's my second encounter, I don't get to have it at all. Son of a bitch. It's the first Heracross I've ever seen in my life, too. Even checking its dex entry doesn't reveal its nest anywhere.

I did take away something useful from the encounter, though: if you take too long to catch it or whatever, it will just run away after a few turns, just like the Legendary Beasts do. That's good to know, and it makes me proud to have Blair on my party, since she has both Hypnosis (which makes everything easier to catch) and Mean Look, which prevents things like Heracross from ever running away. I'll have to remember not to get rid of that move if I'm ever tempted to do so.

Blair in general has been a little more cooperative lately, like she's finally warming up to the team. Quill, too, seems to be taking this whole "nuzlocke" thing a lot more seriously, and is assuming the leadership role a lot more.

After picking up some Charcoal for Quill to hold (it boosts his Fire-type attacks by a little bit), I made it through Ilex Forest and began to make my way towards Goldenrod City.

PARTY:


BOX:


TRADED AWAY:

Quote from: Tammy on September 17, 2017, 02:24:17 PM

ppl complaining about this being in serious are dumb af

this is an article about fake news

sorry its not spelled out for you haha

tbh you're scientifically illterate enough that I thought you posted it genuinely believing it was true.

pretty sure he thought it was legit

he's just trying to cover it up now

Just had my first death tonight. Pretty upset about it since it was completely my fault and easily preventable. More on that later.

Fucking traps makes you gay.

False

Traps aren't gay per se, but liking them definitely is. Checkmate, atheists.

do i need to update my "most incorrect beliefs" thread already

Why were people complaining about this game before it came out? It's bloody fantastic.

people didn't like the graphics and were skeptical about the melee counter

Falkner's gonna have to wait, I think.

After clearing Sprout Tower, I decided that, since my entire team is below level 10 anyway, I may as well try to see if I can't beat Falkner with a team of level 9s. The strongest Pokémon on his team is a Pidgeotto, and it's also level 9 (even though Pidgey isn't supposed to evolve until level 18). So, from this point on, I'm officially imposing a level cap for each gym, which will be the level of the strongest Pokémon on the leader's team. That should keep me from being too overpowered.

That said, I'm not interested in ensuring any of my Pokémon a certain death, so I'm still gonna try to play it safe. The reason I'm not fighting Falkner right now is because I'm fresh out of Berries, which will probably help me immensely, since they provide instant healing without taking a whole turn—but they only regrow on trees once per day. I can also only get two of them.

It may seem silly, but honestly, I think not picking them when I have the opportunity to do tomorrow so would be a huge mistake from a strategic standpoint. I'm already intentionally gimping myself by imposing a level limit, and I don't want anyone to die due to my own impatience, so I'm okay with waiting it out for now.

That said, I did at least clear Sprout Tower, like I mentioned.

As I planned, I waited until nighttime to catch my Gastly, which did end up in my party, but only after throwing four Poké Balls. The first female in the party, I decided to name her Blair, both after Bloody Mary (bit of a semi-portmanteau) and the Blair Witch Project. She'll never be a Gengar, but I'm already glad to have her on the team. Ghost-types are invaluable for their resistance to Normal-type moves and such, even if her attacks are kind of weak at the moment. I would've been much saltier if I wound up with another Rattata, since there's only a 15% chance of finding one vs. Gastly's 85%.

Training Gastly is interesting, too—she can't get hurt my Normal-type moves, but she can't hurt Normal-types, either. This will make her a sitting duck vs. anything like Pidgey or Hoothoot, since her only attacking move (Lick) is a Ghost-type move. At least she's good at fighting all those Bellsprout in the tower.

The final Sage in Sprout Tower has this level 10 Hoothoot that kind of gave me a run for my money. It landed two critical hits in a row on Bram (which was mostly his own fault, because he just kept missing his Supersonics...) but he and everyone else still made it out okay.

The rest of my session was spent contemplating what I was gonna do about Falkner.

Quill is resilient, but his only attack at the moment is Tackle, which is quite weak. He'll get bullied by Pidgeotto.
Rattaboy is fast and strong, but his low Defense stat will be the death of him against Pidgeotto.
Bram's Supersonic is really good... when it works. Half the time, it doesn't work at all. Dangerous and risky.
Patches is Pidgeotto food. He'll see no use in the fight whatsoever if everything goes as it should.
Blair is fast and can maybe put something to sleep if she's lucky, but it's still a gamble. She can't hurt anything either way.

So, yeah, I'm definitely gonna pick up those two Berries. Quill, Rattaboy, and maybe Bram will have to carry me to victory. I also found an X Defend in Sprout Tower, which will probably come in handy.

I'm not worried about losing the fight, or anything—it's a 5v2 fight, so I'm practically guaranteed to win. I just want to make sure everyone makes it out alive, 'cause death isn't cool.

weren't we supposed to change the gaming header a long time ago

no one bothered to make a good theme tbh

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 02:05:13 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 02:02:24 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:46:04 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 01:42:55 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:11:44 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 01:03:48 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:00:59 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 12:57:58 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 12:49:36 PM

Quote from: Iberian Husky on September 23, 2017, 12:46:08 PM

There's nothing wrong with emulating old games

Yes there is, especially if they were just rereleased (like Pokémon Gold/Silver).

Why should you buy the remaster (or whatever this is I don't care about Pokémon) instead of emulating it?

Because then you'd be a thief and a bad person. You're not supporting the company that produced the game, and you no longer have the excuse of "it's an old game that they're not profiting from anymore."

But they're just rehashing an old game. I don't really see how they deserve the money that badly.

They're not just rehashing an old game. They're putting it on a modern device with newer and more reliable technology that's less likely to fail on you. The games I'm talking about are so old, they were on these big cartridges that had little batteries inside of them that are only designed to last a few years before they burn out. Once it burns out, you can no longer save your game anymore and it's basically just worthless.

Replacing these batteries is expensive and dangerous, because it requires you to know how to use a soldering iron if you want to do the job right, and even if you still have a working battery, it's gonna die again eventually and there's no way to transfer your Pokémon to newer generations like you can with every subsequent game. Gold/Silver were the only generation of Pokémon games up until now that didn't let you do that, because there wasn't a way to connect a Game Boy to a Game Boy Advance.

Re-releasing the games on 3DS solves all of these problems.

They're also only $10 and if you can't spare that much for such an excellent game, you're really just a pathetic waste of skin.

So after paying for the game and being boned by substandard technology, you're gonna buy it again? Why not emulate it?

Not "substandard" technology, outdated technology.

Because it's a fucking amazing game that Game Freak deserves billions of dollars for making.

I'd buy both versions 30 more times.

I don't emulate games ever because I'm not a piece of shit.

Seems like a lot of fanboying tbb. It's substandard technology to have it run on batteries that aren't easily replaceable.

Not if they last nearly a decade. People weren't even 100% sure video games would still be around in that long.

I know you're slightly stupid, but come on.

So they planned for failure and the industry collapsing within a decade?

Welcome to reality.

And yes, they do deserve money. I'll buy 100 copies every day.

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:46:04 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 01:42:55 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:11:44 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 01:03:48 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:00:59 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2017, 12:57:58 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 12:49:36 PM

Quote from: Iberian Husky on September 23, 2017, 12:46:08 PM

There's nothing wrong with emulating old games

Yes there is, especially if they were just rereleased (like Pokémon Gold/Silver).

Why should you buy the remaster (or whatever this is I don't care about Pokémon) instead of emulating it?

Because then you'd be a thief and a bad person. You're not supporting the company that produced the game, and you no longer have the excuse of "it's an old game that they're not profiting from anymore."

But they're just rehashing an old game. I don't really see how they deserve the money that badly.

They're not just rehashing an old game. They're putting it on a modern device with newer and more reliable technology that's less likely to fail on you. The games I'm talking about are so old, they were on these big cartridges that had little batteries inside of them that are only designed to last a few years before they burn out. Once it burns out, you can no longer save your game anymore and it's basically just worthless.

Replacing these batteries is expensive and dangerous, because it requires you to know how to use a soldering iron if you want to do the job right, and even if you still have a working battery, it's gonna die again eventually and there's no way to transfer your Pokémon to newer generations like you can with every subsequent game. Gold/Silver were the only generation of Pokémon games up until now that didn't let you do that, because there wasn't a way to connect a Game Boy to a Game Boy Advance.

Re-releasing the games on 3DS solves all of these problems.

They're also only $10 and if you can't spare that much for such an excellent game, you're really just a pathetic waste of skin.

So after paying for the game and being boned by substandard technology, you're gonna buy it again? Why not emulate it?

Not "substandard" technology, outdated technology.

Because it's a fucking amazing game that Game Freak deserves billions of dollars for making.

I'd buy both versions 30 more times.

I don't emulate games ever because I'm not a piece of shit.

Seems like a lot of fanboying tbb. It's substandard technology to have it run on batteries that aren't easily replaceable.

Not if they last nearly a decade. People weren't even 100% sure video games would still be around in that long.

I know you're slightly stupid, but come on.

Quote from: Verbatim on September 23, 2017, 01:50:57 PM

On top of all that, emulating games means I have to play it on a PC.

And playing games on a PC is just the worst shit in the world.

consoles use emulators to run older titles too.

Yeah, and that's how I'm playing Pokémon Silver.

but i don't know what your point is