Opening with working together with Lance to fight a TR grunt was fun, although the implication that he just waited until we arrived to even fight the grunt is kind of hilarious.
With that I entered Saffron City, and unlike in the original games the entire city was taken over, with the closest freedom people have being the Pokemon Center, although it had a Rocket selling Slowpoke Tails, and Rage Candy Bars which decrease LV's which was interesting and may be a quest item at some point, so I bought one and moved on.
Amused to see that the Fighting Dojo is unaffected by the city lockdown and just running normally, they aren't going to be helping with storming Sliph Co I see.
Also not quite as overleveled as I thought, as while I'm solidly above Grunts, the Fighting Champion had three LV45's. Yes my Ace Agni was 5 levels higher, but most of my team was only 2 levels higher, with my weakest being 3 levels lower.
Still EXP Share may eventually push me up, we'll see how it goes. If I ever get 15LV higher than anyone important I'll know it needs to get turned off.
I choose Hitmonchan as my Pokemon for winning the fighting dojo and moved on.
Hilarious to see that there is a police station here, but they can't do anything because Team Rocket technically isn't doing anything illegal here due to following the rules of Pokemon Battling, that's one perspective.
Also has a song about Donuts, and tedious paperwork on the Radio, I see the creator of this hack certainly wants to point out some stereotypes.
I then proceeded to beat up a Team Rocket Grunt and their friend who actually succeeded in doing a fair bit of damage due to it being a double battle and stole their Rocket Identity.
Bought a couple of Mankey's Paws, as I knew that later on there would be an old Lady who would buy them for slightly more than they were worth.
Also bought a Rocket Ball which is just a Pokeball painted black, might be cool to run around with it if I catch something with it though, I only bought the one.
More importantly though it's perfect for No Guard, as it half's accuracy in return for Guaranteed Critical Hits.
We are going with the Pokemon Manga's plot where they've captured the three Legendary Birds and are fusing them. I wonder if this will actually have a threeway fusion, or if it will just leave one of the Birds out to dry, or if there will just be extra Birds and they'll have each possibility fused.
Man I'm already 15 LV's above the Grunts with Agni, I wonder if I was supposed to go to the fighting Dojo after this?
Also I wasn't expecting there to actually be Slyph Co Members that you outright rescue, generally it's just Scientist Trainers and a Nurse Joy that heals you.
Wonder if that'll be a side-quest. Something to look into later.
In the process of crushing all team rocket members, I evolved Oberon, Electabuzz half into an Electavire, which was a bad autogen, thankfully I just need to buy a Shiny Stone and then he'll look great after I beat Sabrina.
Annoyingly enough right before the floor with heals, I retreated back to the Pokemon Center to restore Agni's PP, and then came back and saw it. Still glad it's there, makes restoring myself far faster, glad I got the keycard so early on, really lets me completely ignore the whole teleport puzzles. I used it a grand total of once to get past a mandatory Teleport point which gave me the Keycard.
Although now having cleared all 10 floors, to get to Floor 11 I'm going to need to start looking at all the teleporters now.
I regret leading down from the top, as the correct teleport point was back on Floor 3 after testing them all one by one.
Wasted 7 minutes or so.
Time to likely face Blue again followed by Giovani, although since I fought Blue at Fusha maybe, it'll just be Giovani.
Team going in.
I'll lead with Agis as I generally do for Boss Fights.
OK so looks like it is Giovani and it is indeed a triple fusion, it really does look like it came straight out of the manga.
I'm even the same LV as it
it's Tri Attack does roughly 40% of my HP and I'm already faster after one Sword's Dance, I use a second and have been Paralized. Time to break out a Full Restore and then try killing this thing, hopefully an Ice Punch will be enough to take this thing down, as it's certainly a Flying type at least so Cross Chop's Stab likely won't help.
Of course, this time the Tri Strike burns me, I'll have to use another Full Restore, here's hoping it's not guarenteed to cause one of the three status effects.
It Paralized me again so it might be, welp time to risk an Ice Punch!
First time I was using Monkey Claw, and it fails to Crit, only doing a third of it's HP?!
This thing might have an ability that prevents Crit.
Alright it's clear Agis ain't great here. Time to swap to Abath and hope this goes better.
I absolutely wasn't expecting one Beast of a Pokemon like this, I should have given her Toxic and ditched the Ground Move or her Rock Move.
Yea one turn of Rock Blast going 3 times, and it does as well as Double Sword Dance Ice Punch.
Also switched to using Flying Moves against Abath despite it resisting it and Sky Attack, could it be out of Tri-Attacks already?
Strangely Giovani didn't even use a Full Restore, so Abath smoothly handled the entire thing with ease, and Agis just embaressed himself and used two Full Restores for nothing.
Got the last part of the Password to turning off Wild Fusions, and I absolutely would have never guessed it.
"Smearkia" really?
Combining it with the other two parts, the full password is Smearkia's Pure Power.
I believe it's randomized for every play-through, but man is that a rough one.
No deaths since Lavender Tower.
If that's the last one of this play-through somehow, I'll laugh so hard.
Blue came in literally as Team Rocket was leaving, and his first thought is his presence scared them off. Never Change Blue.
Also gave me a free Lapras which is nice, I have a lot of Water Types now, maybe I should have taken the Chikorita he offered me instead. Oh well.
Time to explore a Free Saffron City after IRL Lunch.
Back, and exploring already paid off. An NPC gifted me a Shiny Stone, so I can evolve into a Togekiss now rather than after I beat Sabrina.
Oberon's final form has been achieved.
Found a Bar that you can buy Beer and Tequila at which was fun, along with a Copycat Dancer that you have to copy.
Unfortunately the game glitched out after I drank while copying Copycat's Dance Move's and I moved a step away and got stuck, already reported in the Bug Section, thankfully my habit of saving meant I only lost 5 minutes of progress.
Time to try again, copied it all perfectly and was given a Smeargle in return, could be used to make some Whacky fusion possibilities sometime in the future.
Off to seeing the rest of Safron.
Swapped Signal Beam for Dragon Pulse on Agni after some thought, the 150 Power of a Super Effective Signal Beam ain't that far from the 135 Stab Psychic, or the 142.5 Stab Flamethrower.
At least the 180 Super effective Dragon Pulse feels like it'll be a bigger difference on those rare use cases.
Got the GS Ball for helping so many people/doing side quests, which sounds like it might eventually lead to Celebi. Could be cool.
Went to Mt. Moon and turned off Wild Fusions for more choice.
Learned about Crimson City, so Flew to Cereluian and started Surfing on the Cape, no new Pokemon Encountered,
Route 23 also had no new Pokemon, although a Trainer commenting a Pokemon Trainer must have balls, only having two Pokemon and then giving me some Pokeballs, Great and Ultra's after I won to show off his balls got me to laugh.
Another trainer asking me if her Pokemon looked like the face of Mercy and sending out Mr. Cruel also got me to smile, some good jokes this route.
Ditched Drill Run for Toxic in case of another Boss Fight and to help catch Pokemon as no-one can learn False Swipe and I'm way to high leveled otherwise.
Arrived at Crimson City and it doesn't even a Pokemon Center, thankfully it registers to Fly so I left and came back, found the Old lady who you can sell Mankey Paw's to for more than there worth at a progressively better deal inside the Hotel itself which surprised me. Pretty trivially easy to then sell it all which made me over 10K Poke in Profits in around 2 minutes of work. It'd rapidly get better if I kept at it, but I don't need the money.
Still good to have the option.
Have a Girl who wants me to fight her High level Bellsprout, why does a part of me worry it's a LV100 one. Welp let's give it a shot.
Nope just a LV77 Bellsprout, and a Shyther/Beedrill Mix at LV45, thankfully Agni handled it Fine even if he was only LV56.
Caught a Goldeen in Crimson City itself, thanks to there being Water in the area.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how I'd go about progressing further north due to there being a Bug where trying to Surf makes the city Surfable and not the barrier going forward. Thankfully fly fixes it.
Ditched Surf HM back for the TM Brick Break and entered the Saffron Gym.
Leading with Agni for the Fight with Sabrina and I'll temporarily forget Energy Ball for Calm mind, I would have preferred Psychic but I already spent a PP Max on it, so not losing that.
Facing Sabrina with Agni, Boeing, Abath and Oberon.
Current Team.
I won, but at LV57 Agni was 12 levels higher than Sabrina's strongest Pokemon, at least they are starting to give them Competitive moves like Nasty Plot and Baton pass. Still wasn't enough and won without any casualties.
Also got confirmation that Mankey's Paw doesn't work on No Guard without further testing so I took it off Agis, and gave him a Shell Bell.
My final stop for this session is to stop and evolve two Pokemon who need Dusk Stone since I now have beaten Sabrina and can buy them at Celadon.
Final form of Boeing
Final form of Agis
Next time I'll experiment with Stance Change and see how it works for me, after that if it doesn't work well I'll unfuse it and refuse with the ability No Guard instead.
After that I'll surf to Cinnabar, and use the ticket Blue gave me to go to the Islands.