Once you push the rock, take the top path through and it leads you to the exit... Which sends you back out into more fog. Yay! Aside from the fact that I keep expecting Pokemon Pyramid Head to pop out from behind a tree, I'm given the feeling that I'm in some sort of one-way forest maze, since there are lots of ledges to jump off of, but no real paths. I also find a long set of stairs leading up at the back of the forest, but note that there is no gods damn way to get to it. Seriously, there's a wall of forest that can't be walked through, and the only thing that comes close to getting to it is the wrong side of a hop down ledge. I guess that's all that can be done here, which makes me a bit sad.
I give up on this area and then press on to the next town, which was about 3 feet outside of the cave's front door.
I shall dub this city Stairopolis! The town of useless sky-ways and raised housing! There is, as far as I can tell, literally nothing here worth mentioning.
Directly outside of the town however is this, and it is worth mentioning.
This hill is literally slathered in items, and yes, I mean that they were applied sloppily, and in great quantities. None of them seem that rare or valuable... not that I can really tell, and for all I know they just gave me three of the Hope Diamond. Sadly there's not much else here, so I guess I'm just heading east till I reach the Elite 4 again, at which point I will battle them again... after more power leveling. *headdesk*
I cross over into the next area expecting a bridge, but am instead greeted by this.
It seems to be London Bridge, circa 1750. Why? Because the town is built on the bridge, and that's one of the only places I can think of where they did something like that in a major city. There's no Pokemon center that I can find so far, but there's a home that people let you stay in. To the south of the east entrance is what seems to be some sort of Pokemon cooking school... and by that I mean that it could very well be a school for cooking Pokemon, as the students all seem to have brought one along with them. It makes sense when you think about it, though. There's only Pokemon, and people need food. Pokemon feed is likely made out of all of the bits of Pokemon people can't eat, like cattle feed. Now you know what happens to all of the Pokemon you battle that aren't caught. You eat them.
Moving on, I note that the bridge spans a watery area which I can travel through, and leads to the north. Aside from a few items which you can find with the dowsing machine, and some that sit out in the open by themselves, there's not a lot worth mentioning here...
And this is where I'm stuck, dear readers. I don't want to end this post so soon, but at the same time there's not enough space left for me to, say, give detailed walk throughs of the Pokeshifter, or the Dreamworld. So, now the question arises... what do I do? I can't think that beating the Elite 4 would be very interesting, even if their levels are higher than they were last time, and several of their Pokemon have evolved...
So, I think the only reasonable thing to do would be to end it on what's likely going to be the hardest part of the game, beating Cynthia.
It is with a heavy heart that I head off to power level, not because this is the last battle of this game, but because I am power leveling yet again, and it hurts me. It hurts me deeply dear readers, to the point where at night I have frightening, Kafka-esque dreams where I am slowly morphing into a Bidoof, and my family slowly begins to cast me out. Eventually, I get a Poffin stuck in my fur that I cannot dislodge, and the resulting infection leads to my death. Yes, I am serious.
But here is my party.
I go to see Cynthia, and we begin our epic Pokemon battle once more!
Perhaps I picked a bad starting Pokemon in my party to begin this epic battle... Or maybe not! It was rather surprising to me that my Dunky took out her Spiritomb in three simple uses of Bite. Of course I am higher level, and did manage to make it flinch once, so I think it's safe to say that victory was pure damn luck, I'm not going to lie. It asks me if I want to change Pokemon... and I decline. Why wouldn't I? My little green guy is doing pretty well so far, I might as well give him the benefit of the doubt.
I'm starting to think this could have been a bad idea, and I'm quickly proven right as my Dunky is knocked out in a single decisive blow. Damn ice attacks. I send out my Pgen to battle next, and god bless Fly because I'm able to troll her Milotic to death in two or three rounds. Might as well stick with Pgen for now, even if I don't know what's next.
Ahh... That, umm... that was probably a mistake on my part, but as they say "never look back!" which I only agree with if you're sure Pyramid Head isn't around, in which case you should look back every two of three seconds. I stick with my constant, unashamed use of Fly, and manage to bring this frightening beast down, though it almost costs my lovely Pgen his life...
Which is quickly taken by this Remora looking bastard, Reshiram to avenge him. Yes, I am not above using legendaries in battle, and no I don't view it as cheating. I only use fully trained teams of normal Pokemon when I battle my friends, but I'm fighting gods damn Cynthia, so I don't view this as cheating. And it's a good call, because she's so hard that I have to use three full heals before I can beat him, and move on to this.
Lucario... damn, this could be complicated. Or not, as two of the psychic move Reshiram has seem to be enough to take him out.
FUCK YEAH, WARGLE! Just looking at him makes you want to salute, doesn't it? Well, me neither, but he's still pretty damn cool looking, and he's also pretty impressively tough. Enough so that my fire move doesn't kill him instantly, but instead he takes me out... and then the burn kicks in, and he's gone. It's almost poetic, isn't it? Know what else is?
Thirty grand... And the fact that I didn't have the camera set to Macro for the majority of those pictures... CRAP!
Well I'm sorry gang, I know some of you have been reading along with me for a while, and I hate to end it on a note of failure. Let me think of a good ending for the review...
Alright, we'll go with this:
I've been a fan of Pokemon since I first received Red on my... birthday, you don't need to know what one, just know that I'm old. As the series has progressed, there have been complaints all across the fan community about how the Pokemon have started looking silly, and childish, and how the games now suck. Let me be the bearer of bad news when I tell you that the Pokemon game series has never, ever been anything absolutely spectacular. It has always been a game for children, and all they've done over the years has been to make it more appealing to children. Now does that mean I dislike the Pokemon game series?
No, I think it's safe to say that I do not hate it.
When viewed through the eyes of nostalgia, nothing will ever hold a candle to how it was when we were young. In fact, everything always seems so much better when we were young and had less of the weight of the world on our shoulders, that we are heavily biased toward it. Think back to when you were six, seven, eight, nine, ten or eleven, and remember if you really can what it was like, what you were like, and what video games were like. They've come a long way in what's really only a few short years, and now we've grown accustomed to certain things, and in many cases we're tired of the rehash of the same old things being used over and over again.
Now try to think if you were the age when you were first handed a Pokemon game, and imagine that you had been handed Heart Gold, Soul Silver, or even Pokemon Black. You wouldn't have been able to express in words how amazing you thought that it was, and it would have been the highlight of your childhood. The Pokemon in it would have looked perfect, and each and every one of them would have become a real part of your childhood, and your future view of how a video game should be.
Please, don't judge a video game off of how good they used to be, because imagine how you would have felt, or even did feel, if and when someone told you that the game you loved so much was garbage. It would have hurt, but you would have ignored them and continued loving it. So ignore yourself for a moment, forget about what your childhood was like for a few hours, and try to BE that child again... I think you might end up discovering that you like things a little bit more than you realized.
If I was going to give this game a number to review it, I'd give it an eight out of ten. It was great, but it wasn't absolutely perfect, because nothing really is. If you're looking for some sort of symbol for that measurement, go with livers. Why? I don't know, you're asking for the symbol, not me.
Keep your eyes young guys, never let the world bias you, we're all going through this together...
Oh yes! And tune in Saturday and Sunday for a pair of special updates to show off the features I never got around to showing you!
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