LA's Pokemon Black 2, Me too, Playthrough

In early 2018 I set out to complete Living Dexes for Pokemon Pearl and Soul Silver. Those went pretty well and I've moved on to after-challenge content but it doesn't scratch the itch that a playthrough brings. So, moving on to the next generation, I have decided to complete the same challenge for Pokemon Black 2. Why this game? Well, there's two reasons:

1) The version 2 games in Gen V are more entertaining and the Pokemon contained more varied,
2) I've always wanted to complete a Challenge Mode game (B2/W2 only) but I've never unlocked the key for it. This journey will provide me with the save file that I want AND the key for me to experience Challenge Mode on White 2 in the future.

So, this time around my mission is to uncover every secret item/area/trainer in the game and complete a living Unovadex in full using support from my copies of Gen V games and a second DS system. There will be no other challenge-like constraints, no Nuzlocke rules, no gameover rules; there will only be a mission to complete the game in a journey I'm calling…

LA's Pokemon Black 2, Me too, Playthrough​

Stage 1: Aspertia City to Floccesy Ranch and Back Again!​

Gen V seems to be a pretty unpopular generation for a lot of Pokemon players but not for me! I find the storyline in these games to be the best out of all main series games and couldn't wait to get stuck in. Now, I love the selection of starters in Unova so getting them all is a big plus for me. However, I could only pick one for the start of the game as trading isn't available until after the first badge so picked up Tepig to get me through the first stage.

I completely forgot that this game doesn't play night and day so was pretty relieved when picking up my captures on the first routes after 6pm. Snagging Pokemon like Patrat, Purrloin and Lillipup was easy enough but I found a real stumbling block at Floccesy Ranch when trying to find Riolu; the first Riolu I found got crit by my Mareep and the already irritatingly-long hunt had to start again!!! Two Riolu later, my Tepig and Mareep were both at level 13 so I was more than ready to take on Cheren at the Aspertia Gym.

I took a break at the Pokemon Center to rearrange all of my captures and set them out in order according to the Unovadex. I won't evolve anything that I can catch later so won't stick around in this part of the game for long.

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this first stage:



If anyone doesn't know, there is a Mystery Gift glitch that can be used to obtain event Pokemon. I used this to pick up a few Pokemon that I otherwise would not be able to get…

Oh? There's a mystery gift glitch in B2W2?

Nah said:

Oh? There's a mystery gift glitch in B2W2?

Click to expand...

Yeah! All of the DS titles are able to connect to a private server (even though WFC is no more) and download the old event Pokemon such as the legendaries and event items. The only problem is that the Gen 4 games need a WEP network to function which I do not have access to :(

Stage 2: Aspertia City to Virbank City​

I've always had a love/hate relationship with this leg of the journey; on one hand I absolutely love the variety of Pokemon that are made available early-on including accessibility to some lesser-used 'mons like Magby or Elekid but at the same time grown to hate the time-wasting button mashing of PokeStar Studios. Whoever thought including the Studios section of the game was a good idea should be shot!

Grinding my way through the rest of Route 20 was simple enough and picking up Dunsparce was easier than first thought as it showed itself in the fifth patch of shaking grass. The Virbank Complex was a little more challenging as I had to pick up three Magby and they seem to have such a poor catch rating! No joke, I lost 9 Pokeballs, 3 Premier Balls and 3 Great Balls to a single burning duck which was in the red and paralyzed!

Before moving on I ensured that I had all of the starters and elemental monkeys imported from other games to keep my living dex going.

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 3: Virbank City to Castelia City​

Castelia City is one of those places that I always forget the details of; no matter how many times I come to this place, the only locations I seem to remember are the Pokemon Center and the Gym. Fair enough, these are the most important places but it can get a bit annoying when trying to find all of the gift items and hidden areas in the city.

I set about completing the Harlequin Hunt and visiting the random buildings where trainers were waiting to battle. After this, I travelled back to the Pokemon Center and completed a few trades with White 2 to obtain Elekid for my 'dex. Following Hugh's lead we cleared out the sewers and the hunt began for a whole load of Pokemon to add to my living dex.

By far the hardest 'mons to get in this section were Whimsicott, Lopunny and 8x Eevee. Resetting the shaking grass for the fully evolved Pokemon took a couple of hours to finally get both but that meant a lot of Audino had to fall to my team, providing loads of exp points and generating a couple of evolutions. The hunt for Eevee also started out with some frustration with an encounter rate of 5% before I realised something… the last Eevee I caught (number 4) was a higher level than anything else in the area. I double checked and yes, in the doubles grass Eevee are level 19 and are the only species to be found this high on the route (shiny hunters probably already knew about this!). With a bunch of Repels and my trusty level 19 Elekid I picked up the final four much faster and prepared myself to move on the Route 4.

Ugh... just realised I'll have to hunt for Lilligant and Delcatty on White 2!

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 4: Castelia City to Nimbasa City​

So… that hunt for Lilligant and Delcatty went much faster than expected! In addition to these I also snagged the other White exclusives including Braviary and transferred them all to my main game.

The happiness evolution of Espeon and Umbreon in this section was strangely easy. Normally it takes me at least a couple of badges to secure enough happiness to trigger the evoluation but these really caught me by surprise. Certainly not complaining – happiness evolution can be possibly the most annoying to complete – and I've managed to bounce through three already! I know Leavanny is coming up soon but I really want to catch one rather than evolve a Swadloon – I guess we'll see how it goes!

Nothing major happened along the way this time other than my intense irritation over those Breeders that battle you every time you go past them on Route 4, especially when you need to go back through Castelia to the Pokemon Center every five minutes.

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 5: Nimbasa City to Driftveil City​

Due to all of the "accidental" Audino grinding while search for rares in the groud shaking spots, I've managed to keep up with evolving Pokemon without creating a backlog of candidates in my PC. As I said in the beginning, I haven't had to evolve anything that can be caught at a later evolutionary stage which is working out pretty well… Or so I thought.

After reaching Nimbasa I moved over to Lostlorn forest and began possibly the longest hunt I've had so far. For some reason the ground shaking spots would not spawn when I cucled back and forth near the top of the long grass; I carried on for 12 minutes with no luck before giving up on that strategy and moving to another. I don't know why but it turns out that using Super Repels and cycling back and forth in the grass spawned the shaking spots I needed much faster.
The hunt for rares went on and I found most of the non-Audino entries fairly quickly except for that elusive Leavanny. This Pokemon took me about 3 hours of searching – thankfully I was prepared to catch it with the Yamask that I had been levelling since the desert with its non-critable Night Shade attack.

I reached Driftveil with no further troubles and found a couple of true shocks that I've never known about before during my playthroughs of B2/W2.

Who knew there was an entrance to Relic Passage here?! And why didn't I know that the passage leads to the back of Relic Castle?! AND HOW DIDN'T I KNOW THIS WAS THE ROUTE TO VOLCARONA!?

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 5: Driftveil City to Mistralton City​

There really is something about this playthrough which is catching me out quite often which is making me absolutely love it! Loads of things took place in this section which I either didn't remember or have never encountered before including the boat encounter with Team Plasma, being faced with Cobalion on Route 6 and finding a Nosepass in Chargestone Cave.

I fell afoul of button-mashing at the World Tournament and ended up completing all of Route 6 and some of Chargestone Cave before realising that I somehow missed Team Plasma and so couldn't get Surf.

When it came to 'dex hunting, the longest search this time was a 2 hour stint waiting for Castform to show itself. This sort of thing is really annoying – I don't mind searching a while for a final evolution or something strong but a Castform? That thing is definitely in my top 10 worst Pokemon ever.

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 6: Mistralton City to Opelucid City​

This update took quite some time as the section of game was so large to cover before the next badge city. As I've said previously, these games probably have the most content that I simply don't remember as I've completed the least playthroughs of this particular expansion and it is making me love this playthrough so much more!

I'd say that up to this point I have been somewhat familiar with the game but as soon as I hopped on the plane at Mistralton City everything became fresh and exciting. The spooky house on the mountain was great – who knew you got a Lunar Wing here? I guess that must mean Cresselia is somewhere in this game and the description mentioned a bridge for her but I don't know which one it will be… I also had no recollection of the furniture in the house moving so that made things weird in the first few minutes.

Reversal mountain was a simple enough cave. Again, a legendary Pokemon (Heatran) was mentioned here which I know I will have to come back for at some point. Speaking of legendaries, I had also forgotten that the musketeers challenge you to battle before the E4 and they are just on the routes and not in their old locations. This has made for some intense catching sessions – I had to reset twice before I got Cobalion and once for Virizion.

Now, I just finished catching one of the most elusive Pokemon in my entire playthrough so far and it really got my heart racing. It took a little over two hours for me to find a Lapras at Village Bridge and it took only three turns before it dropped a PERISH SONG. Extremely luckily for me I managed to catch it in my second Ultra Ball; if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't be able to guarantee the safety of my 3DS :P

My core team now consists of Serperior, Emboar, Samurott and Beheeyem all around level 50 and my latest hunt is for Gliscor in the grass outside Opelucid. I have a feeling this thing is going to be quite hard to find…

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 7: Opelucid City to Humilau City​

For the first time, I had some difficulty winning the Gym battle. Drayden wasn't too much trouble until he sent out that Dragon Dancing Haxorus – I completely wiped on the first attempt but the second time round I managed to seal the deal thanks to Serperior's Leech Seed and Coil setup strategy.

After Opelucid the road to Humilau was incredibly short and easy (including some tasty storyline action courtesy of Team Plasma) so I decided to spend some time catching and training Pokemon south of the city at the Seaside Cave and West on Route 22.

At the Seaside Cave I was amazed to find a Shuckle without much trouble which got me thinking – in how many games has it actually been possible to catch this thing? Turns out, quite a few but I just hadn't noticed it!!! For some reason the only place that I could remember Shuckle showing up was in Cianwood City (Johto) where a random guy just hands one to you. I have no intention of adding this to the team but maybe it would make for a challenging playthrough to included one as a key member of the team…

Terrakion was caught on the second attempt which wasn't too bad but his nature was mild… Not that I would use him but after throwing so many balls I had at least hoped for a neutral nature rather than one of the worst he could possibly get!

Next update may be a while – I need to play catchup on White 2 to transfer the version exclusives from that game before I can move on to the Giant Chasm. Also starting to think who might be the fifth member of the team to join Serperior, Samurott, Emboar and Beheeyem. If anyone has suggestions, let me know!

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage:

Stage 8: Humilau City to the Elite 4​

On this final leg of the adventure before beating the "bosses", there was a lot of storyline and Plasma fights. Although I knew this was coming up and was aware of the storyline, I found myself becoming gripped with the dialogue and really enjoyed the way the designer made this stage of the game play out. For sure, the Unova games have the best storyline and I especially like the way that the mixed record feature allows you to see events from the earlier games to make one continuous narrative. Just brilliant!

Now, nothing gave me particular trouble with regards to battling for this entire section so I kinda just breezed it. On the captures, however, certain Pokemon drove me insane; both Mamoswine and Metagross refused to show themselves for the longest time. Added to the fact that it is really annoying to get the grass to twitch with no room to ride the bike around, these made me super impatient. After spending nearly 30 Ultra Balls on a 1 HP Metang, I really was in no mood to pick up the evolved form so levelled up the more readily-available Metang.

Victory road was an interesting one for me – I had absolutely no memory of the layout and was expecting to see the exact same cave system as Black and White. There was a Zoroark at the end of the dungeon but I have no idea what it is protecting – I'll have to swing by after the Elite 4 to see what awaits in the cave…

Here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this stage: