Rainbow Chara X
Impossible to gauge!
- 129
- Posts
- 9
- Years
- Shiny Hunting in Sinnoh
- Seen May 12, 2025
I can tell you with 100% certainty that things can only go downhill from here.
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter #9 - Companions[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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I still can't get over the Zygarde creating an edgy karma ice route thing. I would forgive Dark Rising Girl for not knowing what Zygarde can do due to the earlier version of this being made in 2013, but that was just a demo.
The finished patch I'm playing right now was finished in around 2014 or so... a full year after X and Y were already out. So honestly? She has no excuse for getting facts wrong or anything else like that.
Also hello, we're rich.
They don't call it the Endless Gardens for nothing. Look at those perfectly laid out bundles of grass and flowers.
You're going to be seeing the same screen for the next fifteen or so rooms, so I may as well just document the items that are in here. Sunny Day the TM is made obsolete thanks to Jeanne's presence.
We could have definitely benefited from more Full Restores.
The Leaf Stone isn't worth that much while the TM is Steel Wing. Not sure how we're ever supposed to really make use of either.
This place is long, tedious and linear. You can't really get lost yet it still takes quite a bit to get back, especially if you don't have repels on hand.
So... there they are. The Lati Twins make their scene as optional Pokemon in the middle of some giant meadow.
They are also way underpowered even by current enemy team standards (we're hitting 70s) so I'm left to assume that DRG didn't tweak their levels when she changed the game around. Little touches could help quite a bit here...
Oh and if you run away from one, this message pops up. It happens with both of them, which is some major laziness on DRG's part.
Why does all the weird stuff happen to Siegfried?
Now that we've beaten up Frontier Brain Brandon, we can finally get out of this eyesore of a city.
Bringing up the map shows us Kanto (obviously), but I just have to address that there's a city named ERROR. I don't know what Dark Rising Girl did, but she must have fucked up Vermillion in the process.
If this were a fair game, I would value these a lot more. Unfortunately, this is Dark Rising, so these are about as rare as dirt on the road.
The route we're on is called the "Boscage Trail". I have no idea if that's a real word or just something DRG made up to sound clever (ex. Numassity from the first game)
Oh my god he's a dork.
I'll give Mason one thing - his lunacy is great. He provides more entertainment than most of the other characters in this series, at the very least.
There's just a couple on top of the cliff there. I dunno what they're doing but they better keep it private.
Spoiler alert: It's actually Gary.
Nothing plot-related is said except for the fact that Gary wants to challenge Monica because she beat Ash. Oh, and something about finding a legendary in a canyon. I don't really care enough to transcribe the dialogue because it's not important.
The poor guard though.
Gary would normally be a challenge if this wasn't Dark Rising.
Electivire is a cool Pokemon that just can't keep up with me. Ah, the joys of being the protagonist in a single-player video game.
The rest of his team was beaten off screen because we have better things to do.
Gary promises us to give us Surf in the next town (
) so we can get to a place called Alfheim City (now that I know isn't a made up word) and that he's looking for Terrakion in the canyon ahead. Okay, cool.
I like this guy. Mostly because he sees a bunch of suspicious people in hoods and doesn't even bat an eye.
That's a lot of fights. How about we take a small detour?
(There was a cut tree on the fence and it lead into this house)
That... That's Iris from Black and White. The cameos never end! Let's just chuck in every single character from the real Pokemon games in our fan hack for no reason.
"Get out of here!"
Iris in Dark Rising: The most realistic Pokemon trainer in all of the series. You break into her house, she straight up tells you to get out.
Wait, no, there's still Gladion.
Iris is like one of my favorite Unova trainers and I can't even pin down why.
Too bad her Pokemon get to suffer for my amusement.
Corin: Still the Best Garchomp, 2017.
Siegfried nearly died trying to out-hax Iris.
"I come to this place to be alone sometimes... heh."
... I'd rather not know what you do in here.
Also, Iris is straight up stuck in the wall. The reason being because she has no other sprite than "facing forward", so she turns invisible if you try to talk to her from other directions. You can't fool me, DRG.
Not here, and I'm kinda salty about that. I don't want to face more goons... but I'm always down for an ass-whupping.
^ Add Haunter and Gengar and you have 80% of the fights in this roadblock.
However, they do try to spice it up.
God damn that Banette sprite is cool. Why couldn't we have this level of sprite quality all game instead of having the weird no-shading bits?
Like no, seriously, what's up with that? Did Dark Rising Girl think it looked cooler without shading?
The Banettes can't stop us, but they sure are succeeding at taking my patience away.
I know, right? This is just tedious. You could sort of get away with this sort of gauntlet in normal Pokemon due to the lack of a real plot (90% of the time), but isn't Dark Rising supposed to have a story?
How in the hell is this story supposed to have a healthy pace if we keep getting into random fights that don't really amount to anything? It's a waste of time.
[The hooded kid stays quiet]
: "Worthless... you can't even talk."
Now Monica's getting a bit edgy herself because she promises to destroy Darugis and everyone associated with him. That's... a lot of people.
Oh hey, it's our loser crew. How's it going, guys?
Oh lord, they're gonna give Monica an intervention.
(Okay, alright, I'll transcribe this one just for the logic involved in it)
: "What are you guys doing standing around? Darugis is still out there. Isn't that why we came to this region in the first place?!"
: "Chill, Monica."
No, Dray, we cannot just tell Monica to chill about a world-destroyer that's more broken than Aizen from Bleach.
: "You've let your failures cloud your mind, Monica."
: "Sydney's right, Monica. What happened to V is not your fault."
...
Excuse me?
You're trying to use V's death as the catalyst of Monica acting all frustrated? You're saying V's death was a failure on Monica's behalf? Okay, stop, stop. I just have to address this.
This has got to be the dumbest fucking plot thread in all of Dark Rising - let's ignore the Fairy Typing, Darugis, and all of the other idiocy we've encountered up to this point. Let's ignore all of the useless, irrelevant characters and plot devices that ultimately do nothing in the grand scheme of the story. In fact, for a game made to tell a story, this has to be one of the most miserable ones I've ever seen.
This is what kills me: V and his character arc that started in the first game. For those of you who did not take the time to read through the first Dark Rising LP, V was a character that was introduced as an unrepentant, evil man that did things ranging from attacking the protagonist, wishing eternal torture on them and their father, sealed his own children in stone for no reason (despite them being dedicated to his cause!) and other things while having a snide attitude from start to finish.
Despite his obvious villainy and complete disregard for Monica, the in-game protagonist shed a tear upon his death like if he was a sympathetic character. Fast forward to this game where he dies a second time (long story), Monica is revealed to have made a promise to save him and his children and her failure to uphold the promise made her "sad". Pardon my french, but can you fuck off with that?
Out of everyone that deserved to die the most, it was V... yet the game acts like he was some lost soul that deserved a second chance. I'm sorry, but no. I'm glad the bastard's dead for real now, because honestly?
Darugis may be poorly written with uber powers, but even it at least fills a consistent purpose - being the final obstacle. At no point are we ever lead to think it might be a good guy in the game proper and the goal's been to kill it since day one.
Says a lot about V, huh?
Anyway, Monica tells them Darugis has to pay (he should) and they mention that we can't win using negative emotions. Florina decides that we need to make Monica happy by... get this, battling.
This doesn't work either - if Monica is disturbed to the point where she's talking back at her friends and willing to kill people associated with Darugis, then one little battle isn't going to cure that. It'd take long therapy sessions, good companionship and a lot of time away from the mission at hand to really snap her out of it.
Sure, it doesn't have to be that complicated, but don't try to resolve this issue by wasting even more time.
Oh, and Dray is a meme as always.
Florina's gotten an upgrade to be something more than Blue May, but her sprite could still use a bit more work.
She has an interesting team that gets stomped out by ours in a flash. What can you really do before the almighty level curve?
Serperior is my favorite of the Unova starters... unfortunately, Contrary doesn't exist in this so it'll never reach its true potential.
Oh, and Corin acts as the Dragonslayer once more. Mega Altaria would have been a great addition to our team, but that didn't become a thing until Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
[Monica smiles]
... That's how easily this problem is solved.
(Prepare yourself for this one because things get into dangerous levels of schmaltz. If you somehow survive this without getting diabetes, you are a stronger person than me.)
"It felt good to battle someone without hatred inside of me. I got thrust into this war with Darugis the moment I received my first Pokemon. I never had the chance to... the chance to feel what I felt battling Florina just now. At least, not a lot. I want more moments like that."
Sydney begrudingly admits that she's become friends with Monica and pals during the journey.
: "Hey look, Sydney has feelings!"
yuk yuk
Dray is honestly the best hero character, though.
: "Thanks guys, I'm back. I'll avenge V, but not through anger. I'll defeat Darugis and make sure everyone in the world can have battles with each other just like I did with Florina. Through Happiness and being Competitive. But most of all, by just having Fun."
YOU'RE SERIOUS
I can't
i'm done
how can you do this to me
Just... I get that Monica's supposed to have her spirits lifted or something, but this is just too much. The fact this cheesy speech is coming out of Monica of all people makes it even worse, because the game acts like she's completely free of all negativity. Yes, really.
Dray makes a Yugioh Zexal reference that even I don't understand and we all agree to meet up past the Vulcan Canyon. Alright, sure.
[Monica's team stares at her in confusion]
: ("Don't you, uh... think you're overdoing it a bit?")
: "... You're right - what in the world am I saying?"
(someone act as a knight in shining armor and whisk me to a good game already)
This place looks incredibly familiar but I can't put my finger on where it comes from.
The warning won't help much if you're already inside the steaming hot volcano cave. Silly sign.
Oh wow that is hideous map design. What did she do to this place?
There's Terrakion, but we'll just leave him. He's doing fine in this weird mountain place anyway, so who are we to take him?
If I'm not mistaken, this was another place in the vanilla FireRed? It was the mountain where you could catch Moltres, I think.
There's a Rocket Grunt here? What's he up to?
I will not have any Pokemon of mine smashing this dude.
Let's just... quietly leave.
Brandon's like "bring it, kiddo" while Monica claims that she's going to beat him without negativity. That's physically impossible, but I've already said my piece on that.
We fight him in a Double Battle format now and that makes things go faster. I can appreciate this.
Damn. That kind of power is simply too much for anything to handle. It's literally as if we sliced through solid rock and the pieces left behind diamondized from how hard we were cutting. Sigurd is that strong, folks.
Triple Soul and 2X Saber = the most bullshit combination of moves in all of Pokemon, fanmade or not.
Brandon better pack up his stuff and go home because the burn we left on him can never be healed.
He thanks us for freeing him from the possession and we go on our merry way.
A volcanic canyon that leads into a beach. Okay, I guess.
These dudes harass some lady and there's a water surface effect that was definitely not meant to be used here.
Oh my god, there's even more of these guys... plus an old face.
(Why was my save for this part called "zombo.com"? I must have been bored to reference a site that's nothing but loading.)
Ziyah: ("I'm sorry, Monica") - "Monica, I must take you down! By Darugis's orders, I will stop you right here and crush your Pokemon!"
She's totally faking it, but Gary tells us to fight her. I guess we have no choice, then.
Okay, who saw it coming since part 1 that she was really Marley. I guess out of all the characters she could have stole, Marley is a good one. (I have a thing for goths, ok.)
Siegfried and Gale destroy this Umbreon and Medicham in some wicked Triple Soul + Brave Bird combo.
Wow, even Gardevoirs can fly? I didn't know that.
: ("How are they doing that?")
Thankfully, due to the lack of a Fairy type, Corin (somehow) beats them with Earthquake.
Shadow Tag Noivern is still terrible, but I'll live. Poor Siegfried keeps getting thrown into these awful situations where he nearly dies, though.
Oh. Did we do a bad thing by winning?
Monica knows she's not being mind-controlled but doesn't think that there might be something iffy about an ally(?) fighting her. Ziyah decides to leave and takes the grunts with her... well, I guess we just doomed an entire village by doing what we've been doing all game.
Now, if only this kind of manipulation was more prominent throughout the entire series.
So I've decided to do some intel on what these weird number glitch monsters even are:
They're Bad Eggs.
Taking it out of the Day Care center turns it into a Bad Egg, so that makes me wonder just what in good god's green earth Dark Rising Girl did to the coding of this game.
We ignore that and go into this house where Gary thanks us for helping.
Gary's a cool guy... until you talk to him again and trigger the same message.
If you talk to Gary twice, he tries to give you another Surf but all that does is crash the game. No, really. Looks like Dark Rising Girl and pals didn't really learn much after the first game...
[Monica gives a death stare to the cop]
: [Wearing a Judge Dredd hat] "That's what I thought."
Whoaaaa that is a derpy-looking Sigilyph. Something about it seems... wrong.
The ninth chapter into Dark Rising 2 and we just now get the ability to surf. I do like how she downplays HM use.
Oh boy, there's not only the town but Xerneas and Light too! What are we gonna get ourselves into?
: ("Hello again, Monica.")
: "Hi, miss Mani!"
: ("As much as I'd like to talk, we have to make this short.")
: "O-oh. Okay, then."
Summary time!
Light says that there's three chosen ones - him, Monica and Noah. Noah's been misguided into using Yveltal's power against the entire world instead of just Darugis (which is still stupid, by the way) and that Light's power of creation ultimately came from Xerneas. Neato burrito.
Only our powers combined can defeat Darugis (for some reason) and he challenges us to a fight to decide if we're truly worthy.
Hint:
Who's the person that's saved everyone's asses so far and even beat up Darugis's first form? First ten guesses don't count.
He's Blue Lance now. The only reason he should even look like Lance is if they're either the same guy or brothers... so I dunno.
Siegfried smashes his head against this Dragalge. He may be the size of a plushie but he still causes this giant poisonous horsefish dragon to crumble.
Sigurd acts unfair to one of my favorite Steel types.
Light has Phione for some reason. I guess he couldn't pay full price for Manaphy?
OH
Xerneas has seen better days.
: ("I know I'm no match for you like this... make it quick - we don't have more time to waste.")
[Sigurd nods]
: ("I'll be watching your progress, Sigurd. Know that I'll always be there to protect you...")
: ("Thank you, milady. I can't imagine if I had to fight you at your real strength...")
"Are you truly the stronger of us three?!"
[Monica, Sigurd and Signe give him a dull stare]
That's sort of a given, right? You can say that you're chosen ones too, but Monica's the only one who does anything around here.
You didn't expect it before we tried? Come on, man.
Light tells us that Darugis's lair is beyond Alfheim City and that we have to free Arceus to stand a chance. Thanks, but no deal. At least he wishes us thanks before we march off to our inevitable demise.
(This place just uses Lavender Town again, so instead let's have this theme instead)
This place is a home to warlocks and witches, apparently. I wouldn't put it past the actual games to do something like this with Hex Maniacs and Psychics... in fact that's sort of what I expect if we're talking about magic in the Pokemon universe.
Yeah, a dude in the other town said this place was full of evil witches and I kinda wanted to slap him for that.
"Alcina doesn't like talking about it..."
there he is
The big man himself. Oh Zygarde, why did you have to get shafted in this?
"Kinda weird."
After everything else that's happened, that's weird to you? I highly doubt that.
Convenient! At least they're right next to each other as opposed to the real games where they're towns apart.
For those of you curious as to what an "Alfheim" is, it's one of the nine worlds in Norse Mythology - the world of the light elves. It's supposed to be some shiny place that's ethereal in scope, so I can sort of see why DRG uses it for the magic town?
I'm reaching to get anything good out of the game at this point.
This, however, is based on a real-life forest that's supposed to be haunted. It's referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of Romania with weird crescent-shaped trees and all sorts of crazy supernatural phenomena. Now that's the kind of thing I like to see.
Yeah, no kidding. We've only been chasing it around for the entire game, you know.
Anyway, that's it for this one. Next time on Dark Rising 2, we're going to fight for our lives.
See you then.
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Team setup:
(Corin, level 87,
,
/
) - "Oh, that's not a good feeling. It's sort of like when Sigurd first appeared, but now it's enough to make me sick..."
(Sigurd, level 94,
,
/
) - "That's him. Are we ready, everyone?"
(Siegfried, level 87,
,
/
) - "Ugh... I hope so."
(Wave, level 88,
,
) - "M-my knees are shaking, bad. You reckon we can even handle this?"
(Gale, level 84,
,
/
) - "Of course we can. Monica's guiding us."
(Beatrice, level 86,
,
/
) - "Eeugh! What a terrible feeling. This puts even that necromancer to shame..."
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Back-up Team:
(Signe, level 87,
,
/
) - "I-it's time to face him again. It's time to stand strong!"
(Arthur, level 86,
,
/
) - "Aye! We have to be heroes!"
(Quote, level 81,
,
/
) - "Sheesh... those are some nasty vibezzzt. How come you aren't scared, dude?"
(Ambes, level 81,
,
) - "If I'm going to be real with you, I am. But... we have to be brave and take him out! Not just to save ourselves but all the people we believe in. Sis wouldn't forgive me if I stopped here."
(Johnny, level 47,
,
) - "Wow, Ambes..."
(Shadow, level 60,
,
/
) - "... I don't think it's time to play around anymore. We're in quite the fix."
(Bellamine, level 84,
,
) - "It's alright, sweetie. Stay here with your big brothers and sisters. I have to help Monica."
(Rubus, level 25,
,
) - "B-but mama... what if you don't come back this time?!"
(Ignell, level 82,
,
/
) - "I'll charge in and help them myself if I have to."
(Candelabra, level 82,
,
/
) - "We're finally here, huh? Lemme at him!"
(Beowulf, level 56,
,
) - "... Linoura. You can sense the thirst for blood too, right?"
(Linoura, level 60,
,
/
) - "Y-yes. It's so palpable that I can barely stand even from this distance. I can only wish them the best of luck..."
(Iris, level 60,
,
) - "Are they going to be alright?"
(Lucera, level 60,
,
) - "I only hope so."
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter #9 - Companions[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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Spoiler:
I still can't get over the Zygarde creating an edgy karma ice route thing. I would forgive Dark Rising Girl for not knowing what Zygarde can do due to the earlier version of this being made in 2013, but that was just a demo.
The finished patch I'm playing right now was finished in around 2014 or so... a full year after X and Y were already out. So honestly? She has no excuse for getting facts wrong or anything else like that.
Also hello, we're rich.
They don't call it the Endless Gardens for nothing. Look at those perfectly laid out bundles of grass and flowers.
You're going to be seeing the same screen for the next fifteen or so rooms, so I may as well just document the items that are in here. Sunny Day the TM is made obsolete thanks to Jeanne's presence.
We could have definitely benefited from more Full Restores.
The Leaf Stone isn't worth that much while the TM is Steel Wing. Not sure how we're ever supposed to really make use of either.
This place is long, tedious and linear. You can't really get lost yet it still takes quite a bit to get back, especially if you don't have repels on hand.
So... there they are. The Lati Twins make their scene as optional Pokemon in the middle of some giant meadow.
They are also way underpowered even by current enemy team standards (we're hitting 70s) so I'm left to assume that DRG didn't tweak their levels when she changed the game around. Little touches could help quite a bit here...
Oh and if you run away from one, this message pops up. It happens with both of them, which is some major laziness on DRG's part.
Why does all the weird stuff happen to Siegfried?
Now that we've beaten up Frontier Brain Brandon, we can finally get out of this eyesore of a city.
Bringing up the map shows us Kanto (obviously), but I just have to address that there's a city named ERROR. I don't know what Dark Rising Girl did, but she must have fucked up Vermillion in the process.
If this were a fair game, I would value these a lot more. Unfortunately, this is Dark Rising, so these are about as rare as dirt on the road.
The route we're on is called the "Boscage Trail". I have no idea if that's a real word or just something DRG made up to sound clever (ex. Numassity from the first game)
Oh my god he's a dork.
I'll give Mason one thing - his lunacy is great. He provides more entertainment than most of the other characters in this series, at the very least.
There's just a couple on top of the cliff there. I dunno what they're doing but they better keep it private.
Spoiler alert: It's actually Gary.
Nothing plot-related is said except for the fact that Gary wants to challenge Monica because she beat Ash. Oh, and something about finding a legendary in a canyon. I don't really care enough to transcribe the dialogue because it's not important.
The poor guard though.
Gary would normally be a challenge if this wasn't Dark Rising.
Electivire is a cool Pokemon that just can't keep up with me. Ah, the joys of being the protagonist in a single-player video game.
The rest of his team was beaten off screen because we have better things to do.
Gary promises us to give us Surf in the next town (
I like this guy. Mostly because he sees a bunch of suspicious people in hoods and doesn't even bat an eye.
That's a lot of fights. How about we take a small detour?
(There was a cut tree on the fence and it lead into this house)
That... That's Iris from Black and White. The cameos never end! Let's just chuck in every single character from the real Pokemon games in our fan hack for no reason.
"Get out of here!"
Iris in Dark Rising: The most realistic Pokemon trainer in all of the series. You break into her house, she straight up tells you to get out.
Wait, no, there's still Gladion.
Iris is like one of my favorite Unova trainers and I can't even pin down why.
Too bad her Pokemon get to suffer for my amusement.
Corin: Still the Best Garchomp, 2017.
Siegfried nearly died trying to out-hax Iris.
"I come to this place to be alone sometimes... heh."
... I'd rather not know what you do in here.
Also, Iris is straight up stuck in the wall. The reason being because she has no other sprite than "facing forward", so she turns invisible if you try to talk to her from other directions. You can't fool me, DRG.
Not here, and I'm kinda salty about that. I don't want to face more goons... but I'm always down for an ass-whupping.
^ Add Haunter and Gengar and you have 80% of the fights in this roadblock.
However, they do try to spice it up.
God damn that Banette sprite is cool. Why couldn't we have this level of sprite quality all game instead of having the weird no-shading bits?
Like no, seriously, what's up with that? Did Dark Rising Girl think it looked cooler without shading?
The Banettes can't stop us, but they sure are succeeding at taking my patience away.
I know, right? This is just tedious. You could sort of get away with this sort of gauntlet in normal Pokemon due to the lack of a real plot (90% of the time), but isn't Dark Rising supposed to have a story?
How in the hell is this story supposed to have a healthy pace if we keep getting into random fights that don't really amount to anything? It's a waste of time.
[The hooded kid stays quiet]
Now Monica's getting a bit edgy herself because she promises to destroy Darugis and everyone associated with him. That's... a lot of people.
Oh hey, it's our loser crew. How's it going, guys?
Oh lord, they're gonna give Monica an intervention.
(Okay, alright, I'll transcribe this one just for the logic involved in it)
No, Dray, we cannot just tell Monica to chill about a world-destroyer that's more broken than Aizen from Bleach.
...
Excuse me?
You're trying to use V's death as the catalyst of Monica acting all frustrated? You're saying V's death was a failure on Monica's behalf? Okay, stop, stop. I just have to address this.
This has got to be the dumbest fucking plot thread in all of Dark Rising - let's ignore the Fairy Typing, Darugis, and all of the other idiocy we've encountered up to this point. Let's ignore all of the useless, irrelevant characters and plot devices that ultimately do nothing in the grand scheme of the story. In fact, for a game made to tell a story, this has to be one of the most miserable ones I've ever seen.
This is what kills me: V and his character arc that started in the first game. For those of you who did not take the time to read through the first Dark Rising LP, V was a character that was introduced as an unrepentant, evil man that did things ranging from attacking the protagonist, wishing eternal torture on them and their father, sealed his own children in stone for no reason (despite them being dedicated to his cause!) and other things while having a snide attitude from start to finish.
Despite his obvious villainy and complete disregard for Monica, the in-game protagonist shed a tear upon his death like if he was a sympathetic character. Fast forward to this game where he dies a second time (long story), Monica is revealed to have made a promise to save him and his children and her failure to uphold the promise made her "sad". Pardon my french, but can you fuck off with that?
Out of everyone that deserved to die the most, it was V... yet the game acts like he was some lost soul that deserved a second chance. I'm sorry, but no. I'm glad the bastard's dead for real now, because honestly?
Darugis may be poorly written with uber powers, but even it at least fills a consistent purpose - being the final obstacle. At no point are we ever lead to think it might be a good guy in the game proper and the goal's been to kill it since day one.
Says a lot about V, huh?
Anyway, Monica tells them Darugis has to pay (he should) and they mention that we can't win using negative emotions. Florina decides that we need to make Monica happy by... get this, battling.
This doesn't work either - if Monica is disturbed to the point where she's talking back at her friends and willing to kill people associated with Darugis, then one little battle isn't going to cure that. It'd take long therapy sessions, good companionship and a lot of time away from the mission at hand to really snap her out of it.
Sure, it doesn't have to be that complicated, but don't try to resolve this issue by wasting even more time.
Oh, and Dray is a meme as always.
Florina's gotten an upgrade to be something more than Blue May, but her sprite could still use a bit more work.
She has an interesting team that gets stomped out by ours in a flash. What can you really do before the almighty level curve?
Serperior is my favorite of the Unova starters... unfortunately, Contrary doesn't exist in this so it'll never reach its true potential.
Oh, and Corin acts as the Dragonslayer once more. Mega Altaria would have been a great addition to our team, but that didn't become a thing until Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.
[Monica smiles]
... That's how easily this problem is solved.
(Prepare yourself for this one because things get into dangerous levels of schmaltz. If you somehow survive this without getting diabetes, you are a stronger person than me.)
"It felt good to battle someone without hatred inside of me. I got thrust into this war with Darugis the moment I received my first Pokemon. I never had the chance to... the chance to feel what I felt battling Florina just now. At least, not a lot. I want more moments like that."
Sydney begrudingly admits that she's become friends with Monica and pals during the journey.
yuk yuk
Dray is honestly the best hero character, though.
YOU'RE SERIOUS
I can't
i'm done
how can you do this to me
Just... I get that Monica's supposed to have her spirits lifted or something, but this is just too much. The fact this cheesy speech is coming out of Monica of all people makes it even worse, because the game acts like she's completely free of all negativity. Yes, really.
Dray makes a Yugioh Zexal reference that even I don't understand and we all agree to meet up past the Vulcan Canyon. Alright, sure.
[Monica's team stares at her in confusion]
(someone act as a knight in shining armor and whisk me to a good game already)
This place looks incredibly familiar but I can't put my finger on where it comes from.
The warning won't help much if you're already inside the steaming hot volcano cave. Silly sign.
Oh wow that is hideous map design. What did she do to this place?
There's Terrakion, but we'll just leave him. He's doing fine in this weird mountain place anyway, so who are we to take him?
If I'm not mistaken, this was another place in the vanilla FireRed? It was the mountain where you could catch Moltres, I think.
There's a Rocket Grunt here? What's he up to?
I will not have any Pokemon of mine smashing this dude.
Let's just... quietly leave.
Brandon's like "bring it, kiddo" while Monica claims that she's going to beat him without negativity. That's physically impossible, but I've already said my piece on that.
We fight him in a Double Battle format now and that makes things go faster. I can appreciate this.
Damn. That kind of power is simply too much for anything to handle. It's literally as if we sliced through solid rock and the pieces left behind diamondized from how hard we were cutting. Sigurd is that strong, folks.
Triple Soul and 2X Saber = the most bullshit combination of moves in all of Pokemon, fanmade or not.
Brandon better pack up his stuff and go home because the burn we left on him can never be healed.
He thanks us for freeing him from the possession and we go on our merry way.
A volcanic canyon that leads into a beach. Okay, I guess.
These dudes harass some lady and there's a water surface effect that was definitely not meant to be used here.
Oh my god, there's even more of these guys... plus an old face.
(Why was my save for this part called "zombo.com"? I must have been bored to reference a site that's nothing but loading.)
Ziyah: ("I'm sorry, Monica") - "Monica, I must take you down! By Darugis's orders, I will stop you right here and crush your Pokemon!"
She's totally faking it, but Gary tells us to fight her. I guess we have no choice, then.
Okay, who saw it coming since part 1 that she was really Marley. I guess out of all the characters she could have stole, Marley is a good one. (
Siegfried and Gale destroy this Umbreon and Medicham in some wicked Triple Soul + Brave Bird combo.
Wow, even Gardevoirs can fly? I didn't know that.
Thankfully, due to the lack of a Fairy type, Corin (somehow) beats them with Earthquake.
Shadow Tag Noivern is still terrible, but I'll live. Poor Siegfried keeps getting thrown into these awful situations where he nearly dies, though.
Oh. Did we do a bad thing by winning?
Monica knows she's not being mind-controlled but doesn't think that there might be something iffy about an ally(?) fighting her. Ziyah decides to leave and takes the grunts with her... well, I guess we just doomed an entire village by doing what we've been doing all game.
Now, if only this kind of manipulation was more prominent throughout the entire series.
So I've decided to do some intel on what these weird number glitch monsters even are:
They're Bad Eggs.
Taking it out of the Day Care center turns it into a Bad Egg, so that makes me wonder just what in good god's green earth Dark Rising Girl did to the coding of this game.
We ignore that and go into this house where Gary thanks us for helping.
Gary's a cool guy... until you talk to him again and trigger the same message.
If you talk to Gary twice, he tries to give you another Surf but all that does is crash the game. No, really. Looks like Dark Rising Girl and pals didn't really learn much after the first game...
[Monica gives a death stare to the cop]
Whoaaaa that is a derpy-looking Sigilyph. Something about it seems... wrong.
The ninth chapter into Dark Rising 2 and we just now get the ability to surf. I do like how she downplays HM use.
Oh boy, there's not only the town but Xerneas and Light too! What are we gonna get ourselves into?
Summary time!
Light says that there's three chosen ones - him, Monica and Noah. Noah's been misguided into using Yveltal's power against the entire world instead of just Darugis (which is still stupid, by the way) and that Light's power of creation ultimately came from Xerneas. Neato burrito.
Only our powers combined can defeat Darugis (for some reason) and he challenges us to a fight to decide if we're truly worthy.
Hint:
Who's the person that's saved everyone's asses so far and even beat up Darugis's first form? First ten guesses don't count.
He's Blue Lance now. The only reason he should even look like Lance is if they're either the same guy or brothers... so I dunno.
Siegfried smashes his head against this Dragalge. He may be the size of a plushie but he still causes this giant poisonous horsefish dragon to crumble.
Sigurd acts unfair to one of my favorite Steel types.
Light has Phione for some reason. I guess he couldn't pay full price for Manaphy?
OH
Xerneas has seen better days.
[Sigurd nods]
"Are you truly the stronger of us three?!"
[Monica, Sigurd and Signe give him a dull stare]
That's sort of a given, right? You can say that you're chosen ones too, but Monica's the only one who does anything around here.
You didn't expect it before we tried? Come on, man.
Light tells us that Darugis's lair is beyond Alfheim City and that we have to free Arceus to stand a chance. Thanks, but no deal. At least he wishes us thanks before we march off to our inevitable demise.
(This place just uses Lavender Town again, so instead let's have this theme instead)
This place is a home to warlocks and witches, apparently. I wouldn't put it past the actual games to do something like this with Hex Maniacs and Psychics... in fact that's sort of what I expect if we're talking about magic in the Pokemon universe.
Yeah, a dude in the other town said this place was full of evil witches and I kinda wanted to slap him for that.
"Alcina doesn't like talking about it..."
there he is
The big man himself. Oh Zygarde, why did you have to get shafted in this?
"Kinda weird."
After everything else that's happened, that's weird to you? I highly doubt that.
Convenient! At least they're right next to each other as opposed to the real games where they're towns apart.
For those of you curious as to what an "Alfheim" is, it's one of the nine worlds in Norse Mythology - the world of the light elves. It's supposed to be some shiny place that's ethereal in scope, so I can sort of see why DRG uses it for the magic town?
I'm reaching to get anything good out of the game at this point.
This, however, is based on a real-life forest that's supposed to be haunted. It's referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of Romania with weird crescent-shaped trees and all sorts of crazy supernatural phenomena. Now that's the kind of thing I like to see.
Yeah, no kidding. We've only been chasing it around for the entire game, you know.
Anyway, that's it for this one. Next time on Dark Rising 2, we're going to fight for our lives.
See you then.
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Team setup:
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Back-up Team: