Let's Play! 5FMP Jumps Into the Harsh World of the Pokemon Kaizo Series (A MonoFighting Run)

[5FingerMachPunch]

As the title states, I am going to be running through the Pokemon Kaizo series using only MonoFighting, and you might be thinking that this won't be interesting in the slightest compared to doing something like a nuzlocke. However, the reason I went with a MonoFighting run > a nuzlocke is because this game abuses everything broken about Gen 1 and spams it really hard to the point where you're essentially forced to hax and luck your way through the game (so basically it makes the game harder in my opinion than it would be doing a nuzlocke). Additionally, the game is extremely tedious in how it forces you to progress through and I believe that's more pronounced with a MonoFighting run than with a nuzlocke. More on that a bit later. As of currently to my knowledge, there is Pokemon Blue Kaizo, Pokemon Crystal Kaizo, and Pokemon Emerald Kaizo released and made by SinisterHoodedFigure, and these are all the games that I will be playing under the MonoFighting rules. This list will get added onto if any future romhacks of the series come out. Finally, I should probably add that I have personally already played Pokemon Kaizo Blue and Crystal in the past (and subsequently did a MonoPoison run of both), but not Pokemon Emerald Kaizo. Now, if you have no idea what Kaizo means at this point, read the below short paragraph, otherwise skip ahead for a more in-depth explanation of how exactly the Kaizo series goes about being... well, "Kaizo".

Firstly, let's get this out of the way for those who don't even know what "Kaizo" means, as there's a chance that some people may not know. Simply put, Kaizo is a genre of video game hacks that are ridiculously difficult, and typically feature a lot of trial-and-error type of gameplay. I'm sure there's a better way of explaining it. Anyways, now (try to) put that in the context of Pokemon, and that's what these hacks are essentially.

If you're here, I assume that you know (or now know) what Kaizo means, so let's see just how exactly the Kaizo series goes about being difficult and annoying as well as general changes that the hacks make:

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General Pokemon Kaizo Series Changes

• Each game allows you to catch all 151/251/386 Pokemon in the pokedex and gives you a much wider variety to catch from the start.
• Every map has been edited in some way in order to force you to play the way in a specific way. A good prominent example of this is in Pokemon Blue Kaizo where in order to access Fuchsia City you need to have Fly; however, the normal path to Fly from Celadon is blocked off by water that you have to Surf on. Instead, you're forced to go around all the way through the routes below Lavender Town, go through Fuchsia City, and then are forced to go upwards on Cycling Road almost the entire way up, and for sections where you have to go downwards to get through certain sections of Cycling Road you have to be stupidly precise with your movements, as otherwise you'll have to start from scratch.
• Most/All Pokemon have modified movesets in some way so as to be more useful earlier on in the games. Additionally, evolution methods are changed for some Pokemon in all 3 hacks. No more need for trade evolutions.
• Trainers in general are much better, with their AI being made much better and parties being changed to be a lot more threatening than in the original games as well as general moveset improvements (ie some trainers abuse OHKO moves and other broken things along those same lines). For example, in Blue/Crystal Kaizo, Psychic-types get spammed like crazy (and this right here is pretty much what I meant earlier by "more on that a bit later"), and same with generally solid Pokemon such as most Normal-types and such.
• Revival items do not work in battle at all (they do work out of battle though); this means once a Pokemon faints during a fight, it is gone until that fight is over and you revive it then.
• You can buy some really neat items way earlier on in the game (or just in general when they weren't able to be bought prior) than they normally would.
• Some moves are modified to function differently for the purpose of making them better moves.

Pokemon Blue Kaizo Specific Stuff

• The only notable thing that is different between Blue Kaizo and others is that certain items are much cheaper.

Pokemon Crystal Kaizo Specific Stuff

• The main thing that's different between Crystal Kaizo and the others is the fact that every important trainer has a full team of shiny Pokemon in their roster. It's not the most important thing, but it can be potentially helpful due to the specific DVs needed for a shiny.
• The other thing is that there is an easter egg that I'll leave you to figure out for yourself.

Pokemon Emerald Kaizo Specific Stuff

• Some Pokemon get a stat buff in some way.
• There are additional bosses that can be fought (unsure on this since I've not played but I believe they're locked to postgame).

It's late when I'm typing this so I might've missed something above, oh well.

Whew. So without further ado, let's dive into the small little ruleset that I'm personally going to be playing by. Note that I'm gonna follow these rules for all games. Also, I assume that you all understand the concept of a MonoFighting run, so I won't even bother touching on that really.

Rules

1. I have to play on set to make it slightly more difficult.

2. I cannot use repels, no matter how bad the encounter rate is. This means I must face the full brunt of assaults from every wild Pokemon, even if I cannot run away successfully.

3. I cannot use the Poke Center to heal up my Pokemon; instead, I must rely on healing items I buy and pick up to keep myself going until I faint.

4. Lastly, I am not allowed to use multiples of the same species on the final team, because otherwise I could avoid using Hitmonchan. This also makes Blue Kaizo harder because I'm actually gonna be stuck with 5 mons instead of a full team.

Alright, now that all of that is done, I think it's time to finally dive into the Let's Play itself! I have played a bit already, but I do still kinda wanna play more before posting the first update. Also, it's past 1 AM rn as I'm finishing this so lol I rather not type more considering how long it even took and instead just want to go sleep. I'll probably post again tomorrow night (or rather today for me but way later) or the following day depending on how busy I am. Lastly, feel free to give advice if you wish (either for the Let's Play in question or something about my formatting and whatnot, doesn't largely matter), or if you wanna be nicknamed at some point in this or something, I can try to do my best to incorporate others into this. After all, I do feel that these lose their charm without community involvement of some kind.

 

[5FingerMachPunch]

Updates

Update 1 (10/22/2018)
Update 2 (10/26/2018)
Update 3 (11/7/2018)

Once I get around to it, this post will have Update 1.

EDIT: Nah I decided to just post Update 1 in the below post since it's been a few days, and it doesn't really make sense not to anyways so lol.

 

[5FingerMachPunch]

So... of course I had to get busy when I originally wanted to make this post but it's all good. This should be a warning that updates will not come out fairly fast and if I say that I'll post an update or something in the next couple days just assume that it's gonna actually take me forever to update. Anyways, you don't care about how busy my life is...

Welcome to 5FMP's Pokemon Blue Kaizo MonoFighting Challenge run! I think that title alone tells you everything you need to know (along with my first post, which you should totally go read if you've not yet), so let's not waste anymore time.

Update 1

So firstly, before I get to the character names, I'm just gonna say it now: I'm not going to bother covering most story-related stuff because it's unchanged from the original. Also, I'm going to assume you already know the stories of the original games, so if you don't know their stories and you get lost at any point during this run, then I highly suggest that you go learn the game's stories first, then return to this run.

I named myself Jason because spoilers: it's my real name. Not much to really say there. I was actually stuck on what to name my rival for like 15 minutes as I'm not the greatest at coming up with names. Then I kinda decided to name him after a good friend of mine. Thus, we have....

James as our rival. Not bad.

Of course, we got the good ol' standard Potion here in the PC like usual. Might as well take it, I never know when I'll need an additional Potion to save me. Continuing on, I trigger the Oak event and get him to kidnap me so I can get my starter Pokemon. James is waiting here rather impatiently as well for his own starter. I honestly have no reason to really think too hard about it since none of the starters are Fighting-types, but I choose Bulbasaur mainly because I want a Cut HM slave as soon as possible without having to actually go out of my way to catch one (especially since no Fighting-types learn Cut in this to my knowledge). Also, I like Bulbasaur, so why not. Squirtle isn't needed as I have Poliwrath for Surf, and Charmander sucks, so yeah Bulbasaur it is.

As for James... well, I forgot to screenshot at the proper time but he chose Charmander as you should all probably expect of the rival.

Or did he...? Before I continue on, Bulbasaur is at the usual Level 5, but it comes with Vine Whip/Toxic/Leech Seed. Very nifty moveset, if I must say so myself. Of course, this is largely irrelevant since Bulbasaur is going into the PC once I catch my first team member and train it up slightly high enough to take on wild mons itself. As usual, our friendly little rival over here is gonna ambush us to battle in hopes of beating us down. As a future note, all battles will be put in hidetags too since there's actually some changes with some of the trainers, and I rather not spoil what those changes are for people who don't want to see them. However, I would think 99% of you aren't even going to bother checking this hack for yourself so feel free to look anyways if you wish. That out the way...

Rival 1

Oh hell no...

Luckily, I've already played this once, so I already knew to expect this. Mew's moveset consists of simply Pound and Thunder Wave at this point. Oh yeah, and I should take the time to mention now that the AI maintains that infinite PP glitch that existed in the originals. It won't matter for this fight, but in the next rival fight, you'll see just how annoying this makes certain fights. Let's continue onto the battle analysis.

Turn 1

Mew uses Thunder Wave and paralyzes Bulbasaur. Following that, Bulbasaur ends up getting fully paralyzed when I tried to go for Toxic. I'm sure my thought process should be obvious here: if I can Toxic poison Mew, the match is much easier, especially since I already know that Mew is going to pull the Thunder Wave out Turn 1. It's just unfortunate that I got unlucky.

Turn 2

Mew goes for Pound as Bulbasaur goes for Toxic again and land it, so now Mew is Toxic'd and on a timer. Now the only thing I can really do is click Vine Whip over and over trying to whittle Mew down, though it won't be easy. There's also Leech Seed, but honestly I shouldn't really need Leech Seed that badly to win.

Turn 3-6

Mew goes for Pound, Bulbasaur goes for Vine Whip (or tries at least, though it gets fully para'd on Turn 5). Mew goes down to Toxic poison on Turn 6 without me even needing to use the Potion, which is great. Phew, easy battle.

James is out the lab just like that, and I'm free to continue on my quest. I quickly zoom through Route 1, ignoring all the tall grass, and grab the free Potion from the Mart employee. I reach Viridian City, go to the Poke Mart to get Oak's Parcel, and go back to Pallet Town to deliver the Parcel back to him. Looks like our cocky friend James came back as well, and both me and him receive a Pokedex from Oak. What a total surprise. James runs off to do whatever he does, and I head back for the Viridian Mart to shop.

Now this may seem like a random screenshot, and it is. However, I want people to actually keep this in mind throughout these playthroughs of the Kaizo games: literally every map has some sort of edit done to them. Route 1's wasn't a drastic one at all, but you can notice it nevertheless. I won't post every one of these map edits because it'd be way too much to care about, but you'll likely notice a trend that I correlate with these map edits, as it's one of the charms of this series. I won't say what it is right now, but it should be easy to pick up on with time. I actually mentioned one, but there's something else to it as well. Continuing on, let's see what the Mart has in store for me.

10 Pokedollar Poke Balls?!?! Sign me up please! That's always a great thing because I need Poke Balls to catch members of my team that I desperately need. I buy 99 Poke Balls for overkill just because I can. Otherwise, I just buy myself a Parlyz Heal and move on. I would've bought more, but I did for a fact know that Mankey was catchable on Route 2 in this. I had no idea about where anything else was because it's been 2 years since I last played this and I deleted my save file from then. Otherwise, I would've bought more items (I should've bought more regardless, which was a fail on my part but oh well).

Now my search for a Mankey was needed in order to truly start my MonoFighting run. Luckily, I run into one fairly quickly because they're pretty common on Route 2. I catch it with little effort.

After catching this Mankey, I switch it a slight bit to a point where I think Mankey can fight on its own before I go back and deposit Bulbasaur in the PC. I let Mankey faint because it's pretty weakened, and then that's when I found out something that I never knew about the games: apparently using the PC also brings you back to the last Poke Center where you used the PC? I'm serious when I say I had 0 idea that this even existed. The original idea for me to add the rule regarding healing at Poke Centers was obviously to make it harder, but it was also to slow me down were I to blackout and make it more annoying to get back to where I previously was. Thus, I've decided to make a bit of an add on to that rule where I can't abuse the PC in order to make things easier on me on that regard; however, I will need to withdraw and deposit things into the PC eventually, so I will do so when I absolutely have to. I'll edit the first post accordingly.

That episode aside, I continue on my way to train up Mankey; I believe I trained it up to about Level 12 before continuing onto Viridian Forest as I felt it was sufficient enough. I proceed to dodge around the Route 2 grass and enter Viridian Forest. I'm not going to cover the trainers because they're honestly nothing special. However, something to note with Viridian Forest is that every tile that you can walk on is all tall grass. You can imagine how annoying this makes it right off the bat, but thankfully the encounter rate isn't cranked up all the way here, so there's a bit of a breather there. Of course, it isn't just a straight forward path out either, as you likely could've guessed; instead, you're forced to go a specific path, and you can typically tell when you're on the right path because you'll be forced to battle one of the three trainers in Viridian Forest along the way. I had already beaten the first trainer and then I encounter a Poliwag unexpectedly in Viridian Forest. I forgot to screenshot it, but I caught the Poliwag. I then backed out of Viridian Forest and went to grind Poliwag up to the same level as Mankey before going back through Viridian Forest and cleaning up the remaining trainers. Upon defeating the last trainer, however, Poliwag reached Level 14 and something special happened. Remember when I said that evolutions were messed with in the first post?

So that happened. I proceeded to get out of Viridian Forest and head to Pewter City, solely because I wanted Potions. Funnily enough, the trainers gave dirt for money, so I couldn't even buy a single Potion. that really sucks, but there's nothing I can really do about it, so I just beat the gym trainer in Brock's gym (it's not changed from the original games surprisingly so Poliwhirl won that fight easily). I then proceed to let my team faint so I can go back and challenge the rival on Route 22. Technically, this is an optional fight, but what's the point if I don't go and battle him? My team prior to the fight is below.

Mankey has Submission/Thrash/Karate Chop/Seismic Toss at this point (I got rid of Low Kick for Seismic Toss like an idiot lol), and Poliwhirl has Bubblebeam/Submission/Body Slam/Hypnosis.

Rival 2

I actually forgot to screenshot both the rival intro and Mew coming out cause I'm dumb so excuse me for that lol.

Turn 1

Eevee uses Quick Attack as Mankey quickly puts down Eevee with Submission. Mew comes in as Eevee's replacement.

Turn 2

Mankey uses Thrash in an attempt to get off as much damage as possible as it gets paralyzed by Mew's Thunder Wave. Additional thought process was that because I already understood that the AI was likely going to attempt to status me Turn 1, it would possibly give me an opportunity to exploit it by fishing for the potential crit which would help keep Mew low as well as force Mew to possibly have to Soft-Boiled after my Thrash turns were over with. I also know that Mew doesn't have Confusion at this point, so it makes it worthwhile to go for. Keep in mind that my goal is to get Poliwhirl in safely as Mew uses Soft-Boiled in order to optimize my best chances at either paralyzing it or putting it to sleep with Hypnosis due to not coming in on a Thunder Wave or a Pound. As you'll see, I opt for trying to paralyze over sleep (idk why but in my mind I figured it was a higher chance to break through with paralysis rather than sleep fsr).

Turn 3/4

Mew just spams Soft-Boiled as Mankey tries to use Thrash. It does break through paralysis Turn 3 but not Turn 4, so now Thrash has been broken. Oh yeah, and did I mention that opponents having infinite PP has not been fixed in this? So Mew essentially has infinite healing.

Turn 5

Knowing what I have to do, I hard switch to Poliwhirl. Thankfully Mew thinks that I'm gonna attack and just throws off a Soft-Boiled, just as I planned. Now is my best chance to try to paralyze or sleep.

Turn 6

I use Body Slam and do decent damage (note that Body Slam is a 3HKO, which is important later on) as Mew uses Thunder Wave as expected. No paralysis for Poliwhirl unfortunately.

Turn 7-9

Mew spams Soft-Boiled as I try to fish for paralysis. No such luck for these turns.

Turn 10

Mew, oddly enough, uses Pound instead of Soft-Boiled, giving me a potential chance to paralyze and turn the battle around. Luckily for me, seems as if lady luck favored me here and let me get the full paralysis. Additionally, Mew is in KO range of Body Slam, so as long as I break through paralysis and don't get RBY'd by that infamous 1/256 miss chance I should be golden.

Turn 11

Poliwhirl breaks through paralysis and manages to KO Mew, ending the battle right then and there. I really regret not trying to use Hypnosis first as this battle would've been a lot less painful, but I won so it's whatever at this point. (Also it was literally better in every way but my mind didn't really think about that so oh well)

That done and out the way, the last thing standing in the way in this update is Brock. I spend a bit of time grinding for Brock in order to have a decent shot at winning. You may be wondering why considering I have a Poliwhirl, and indeed that's logical. However, I'm going to spoil it now: Brock has a...

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Aerodactyl that knows Fly (which is a one-turn move in this hack, mind you)

That doesn't seem like a big deal because as I said I have a Poliwhirl, but there's another factor that's infamous with RBY: critical hit rates. Thus, it's necessary to grind up enough to be able to take 2 crit hits. I forgot to screenshot the team prior to Brock, but it was a Level 18 Mankey with the same moves as before (except it has Double-Edge now > Thrash), and Poliwhirl is Level 20 with the same exact moveset as last time.

Brock

Turn 1

As easy as it gets; pretty much just click Bubblebeam and pray it doesn't get that RBY 1/256 miss. Golem is essentially no problem. Brock's next Pokemon is Kabuto.

Turn 2

I switch into Mankey on Kabuto as it uses Waterfall and crits. Luckily Mankey lives with a fair bit of HP left. The reason I'm going hard Mankey instead of staying in with Poliwhirl is because Poliwhirl is (potentially, I'll explain a bit later but you likely already know what mon it is) slower than another Pokemon on Brock's team and Poliwhirl needs to be kept healthy enough to take 2 attacks from it and 2HKO back with Bubblebeam. Also, Mankey can OHKO Kabuto while Poliwhirl can't.

Turn 3

Mankey uses Submission and KOes Kabuto (thankfully not missing). Two Pokemon down, two to go.

Turn 4

Mankey uses Submission and unfortunately misses while it gets KO'd by Waterfall. It isn't over though as Poliwhirl can still win with some luck, but it's gonna be much more difficult considering Poliwhirl isn't gonna be too healthy (unless it crits Omanyte). I'm forced to bring in Poliwhirl here.

Turn 5-6

Poliwhirl uses Submission twice as Omanyte uses Blizzard on the one turn it's able to attack (yeah I have no clue either). Now it's down to the last Pokemon... Aerodactyl.

Turn 7-8

Now these last 2 turns could decide everything and I have a decision to make to try to increase my odds. The highest odds for me to win is actually going for the speedtie with Poliwhirl. However, the thing is I actually don't know whether the DV Values have been changed around for trainers or if they're still the same as they were in the originals. This means, assuming DVs were left alone on trainer Pokemon, that I have a little less than a 50% chance to win (because losing the speedtie + the possibility of missing on one or both of the 2 turns). Meanwhile, I have a safer option that will guarantee me victory if the luck plays in my favor, which is landing Hypnosis and proceeding to get a 2 turn sleep from Aerodactyl while I 2HKO with Bubblebeam, but has lesser odds of actually working.

Ultimately, I took the risk and go for Bubblebeam. Although I personally was thinking that the DVs were bumped up to all 15 for trainer Pokemon, it was worth the risk anyways of finding out. If it turned out false, I could basically win from that alone, and could potentially give me vital information on trainers (since I never really took note of this last time I played as I never cared so much at the time). To my surprise, Poliwhirl actually outspeeds and lands the first Bubblebeam. This is amazing news, because this means I pretty much win, right?

Hahaha, I go for Bubblebeam Turn 2 as I should to finish the fight.... and miss as Aerodactyl kills Poliwhirl. And that's that. I got RBY'd and lost to a 1/256 chance. Awful luck, but what can you really do about it. I forgot to screenshot that too because I got so pissed off I almost actually closed the game out altogether after that.

However, I basically had confirmation that I didn't need to grind up more; rather at this point it's all up to luck and having Mankey + Poliwhirl come through in the end. If Mankey hit Submission, it would've been a game changer, as Poliwhirl would've been much healthier as it'd only need to use one Submission (or rather it could've just used Bubblebeam to KO), meaning that Aerodactyl was done for always. I go back immediately to go claim my badge and win the way I should've won in the first battle. I should note that I also always outsped Aerodactyl every turn, so i have no clue anymore on trainer DVs.

Whatever though, Badges: 1/8.

And that's that. I realize that this is extremely long, but I really wanted to explain some little things about the game as I figured most of you have never played this hack, let alone heard of it, so this first update was pretty long. I also wanted to go slightly in-depth with my thought process during fights, as people can get some sort of feel for how I try to think things through (and see as much of my mindless thinking when I'm just playing and not trying to actually think). For the future, updates won't be anywhere near as big (unless you guys enjoy these longer updates, then I'll continue the long updates). It's not too late to be nicknamed as either Poliwhirl (Poliwrath) or Mankey as well! It'll just have to wait until Lavender Town. There's also Machop (Machamp) and the Hitmons that you could be nicknamed after. Finally, there are a rare group of people that may say that I'm cheating because I'm using Poliwhirl when it's not a Fighting-type, but to that I said it evolves into one and I've always played with rules that allow you to use pre evolutions missing the type so long as you evolve them as quickly into the final evolution as I can possible, so it's my run, I'll do what I want.

Team

Poliwhirl (Level 22)
Stats: 65 HP/36 Attack/37 Defense/48 Speed/28 Special
- Bubblebeam
- Hypnosis
- Body Slam
- Submission

Mankey (Level 19)
Stats: 48 HP/39 Attack/19 Defense/36 Speed/21 Special
- Submission
- Karate Chop
- Seismic Toss
- Double-Edge

Memorize the order of the stats; I'll only be adding the number in the future to save space.

Feel free to drop either appreciation or suggestions for things I should fix. I'm nowhere near perfect, after all, so don't be afraid to speak up about those. Also this took me almost three hours to actually get done because my pictures were not wanting to work fsr and I typed a lot more than this so . No clue when the next update will be out, but I'll hopefully see you on the next update.

 

[5FingerMachPunch]

New update because Friday's a pretty free day for me, so yeah let's get this going.

Update 2

So there wasn't honestly a whole lot that happened that's really noteworthy because I mostly breezed right through this next part in one night and very few fights gave me any real trouble at all to speak of.

So the first thing I did was check to see if Machop was a wild Pokemon on Route 3 before proceeding further. Sure enough, I found one and easily caught it.

Afterwards, I went and grinded Machop up to a decent enough level (don't remember where I stopped, I think around Level 18 but don't quote me on it) to be on par with the rest of the team.

In terms of the rest of Route 3, it was honestly all easy going. I beat every trainer here with relatively no trouble. I got through Route 3 in like 15 minutes no problem. The next challenge was Mt. Moon. The first trainer had a Venonat with both Psybeam and Stun Spore which is always annoying, but it didn't manage to kill anything considering I had a Poliwhirl. A little further in, Mankey evolved and then I found a Water Stone in Mt. Moon, so you know what that means.

2 FEs before I even reach the second gym is pretty insane, but then again so is this entire game so really am I the one winning? Anyways, moving on, Mt. Moon kind of winds around a lot, with more and more trainers I'm forced to fight. Even worse is that, as you would expect of Mt. Moon, although it isn't the highest, it's still pretty annoyingly high. In terms of the rest of the trainers, just like Route 3, most of them didn't really give me too much trouble. There were a few trainers that were very annoying, however. One of them appeared at the end, and used both a Gastly and a Kadabra and unfortunately got lucky with Hypnosis vs me once. That's the only trainer whose full party I can remember, but a few others did annoy me as well, such as one that used a Drowzee with something else I can't remember. It largely doesn't matter though, because I eventually broke my way through Mt. Moon, and that's really all that matters. Oh yeah, and Machop evolved.

On the other side of Mt. Moon, there's not much to comment on. Remember that obscure trainer on Route 4 that you can only get to via Surfing that almost no one even remembers? Yeah, you're forced to fight her before getting into Cerulean City. Otherwise, nothing interesting. Once I actually get to Cerulean, I can't even access the gym because the path to get to the gym is blocked off by the officer guarding the house where the Dig TM got stolen of all things. This means I'm now forced to go grab the SS Ticket from Bill, and you know who that means I have to fight here first. However, before I go to battle my rival James, I'm going to go shop a bit because oh boy this shop is selling Ethers (but not Super Potions fsr, only normal Potions ).

After I'm satisfied with my shopping, I head up towards Nugget Bridge to take on my rival and, afterwards, the 5 trainers. However, let's clear up the business with the rival first.

Rival 3

Turn 1

James leads Dratini as I lead Poliwrath. I go for Body Slam since... I mean, I'm a Poliwrath and that's a very underlevelled Dratini. I also don't want to give myself unnecessary recoil damage, and Body Slam always has a nifty paralysis chance incase I somehow don't KO. Thankfully Dratini gets absolutely thrashed, so I don't even have to worry about it. Next, James send out Kadabra.

Turn 2

Just like with Dratini, Body Slam is my best play here. Kadabra's frail as hell (not to mention underlevelled so it's very likely to die) and of course there's still paralysis if somehow it lives. Not to mention, Poliwrath is likely not dying to any one hit Kadabra wants to use, so Body Slam it is. As I figured, Kadabra is put down and out for the count. I got a crit but I mean... it's a Kadabra, I doubt that really mattered lol. Next, James sends out... Dragonair? Oh boy here we go.

Turn 3

So unfortunately at this point I don't have another choice but to use Submission. As much as I'd like to use Body Slam, if it lives that's gonna be a pain for me and from how the first 2 things before dropped to Body Slam, I figure that Submission will put a swift end to anything Dragonair could ever hope to want to do. Seems I am correct as I watch Dragonair go down. I hate that Poliwrath is so overlevelled, especially also compared to the other 2 members of the team, but really Poliwrath is truly the key to getting me through this challenge. I think you can all guess what Pokemon is coming out next since it's been in the other 2 battles so far...

Turn 4

I don't even want to try to entertain the idea of possibly letting this Mew have a shot vs my team, because it very well could turn everything around, so I'm going straight up for Hypnosis here. Thankfully I connect, and thankfully Mew stays asleep, so unless Mew wakes up the next turn, this battle is pretty much over.

Turn 5-7

Easiest battle of my life (though I got really lucky). Poliwrath ends up cleaning Mew on its own by putting it down with 3 Body Slams. Mew doesn't even wake up, which always makes my life even easier. Rival beaten down. Poliwrath has managed the battle entirely solo. Kinda dirty, but it is what it is.

Moving on from the rival battle, we have the Nugget Bridge trainers. The first trainer has a Scyther, which is annoying, but not much to be feared. Otherwise, Nugget Bridge was easy going, include the Team Rocket member. I get my free Nugget and then go on in my mission to reach Bill. Guess what? I have to beat every trainer on the way there. You starting to see a pattern? Remember when I said in the previous post that you'd likely pick up on a common trend that goes on with this series? Well, if you already played these games or you already noticed it since I did try to make it obvious, then well great for you. However, for those who haven't picked up on it yet: the trend is that the map edits actually force you to defeat every trainer in the game, and there's no way to avoid them outside of glitching or cheating. That's part of the reason this game is absolutely brutal (although really it's not much when you're able to go back to the Poke Center and heal). Now that I mention the map edits, there's a pair of ledges that you have to jump over on Route 25 in order to get to Bill in the first place. However, once you jump over them, you cannot go back over and must keep going until you either make it successfully to Bill or faint. Yikes, no turning back at that point.

None of the trainers really give me any real trouble though since I'm adequately prepared, and I reach Bill in a fair 15 minutes or so after getting across Nugget Bridge. Once I get to Bill and get the SS Ticket, I'm free to finally access the Cerulean Gym and, by extension, access through the Dig house. I beat the Rocket thief in the Dig house backyard, then go to grind up a bit in prep for Misty. I cash out my remaining money as well so I don't lose it. With some grinding, it's time to take on Misty.

Misty

Turn 1

Vaporeon outspeeds and uses Sand-Attack. Oh great, this is gonna be fun. I go for Submission since I figured that Vaporeon would maybe attack to weaken it a bit. Luckily, I actually hit. Looks like I can't keep Machoke in though, so I'm going to go to Poliwrath which is what I should've led with but I was kinda hoping for one of the other 2 to shine. What a shame. As you'll see, Vaporeon not attacking me is actually going to come into play later on in the match.

Turn 2-3

I go hard Poliwrath as he uses Body Slam. No paralysis though, phew. Poliwrath uses Submission Turn 3 to KO Vaporeon without risking Body Slam not KO'ing and thankfully hits. Maybe I should've used Body Slam cause it probably would've been close and I didn't risking missing nor did I suffer the recoil damage, but eh oh well. Misty switches in her own Poliwrath next. This'll be interesting...

Turn 4

Not even going to fuck around with opposing Poliwrath, I'm just gonna try to land sleep and KO it from there. I hit and Misty's Poliwrath stays asleep. Thank god.

Turn 5-7

Poliwrath spams Body Slam to avoid recoil damage as Misty's Poliwrath never wakes up. That's a dead Poliwrath there. 2 down, 2 to go, looks like Misty's next is going to be Dewgong.

Turn 8

Click Submission, kill Dewgong. One of the easiest KOs of this run so far. Speaking of Submission, Dewgong gives Poliwrath Level 35 and now it wants to learn Blizzard. Hell yeah I'm going to forget Submission. Hypnosis is way too useful; even if it only has 60% accuracy, sleep is broken. Body Slam is still nice too because of para, and Normal coverage is always nice and dandy. All Submission really does is kill me faster, so I'll get rid of it any day of the week for Blizzard, especially because I plan to have broken Amnesia on Poliwrath for its final moveset. The timing honestly couldn't have been more perfect. Now here comes the mon that's going to give me major trouble: Starmie.

Turn 9

You already know the drill, I'm going to put Starmie to sleep because it's a threat. Starmie uses Thunder Wave, which is annoying, but thankfully Poliwrath not only breaks through para, but it lands Hypnosis. Now I'm gonna attempt to heal off the para and damage Starmie from there.

Turn 10

I heal off the para, but bad news: Starmie wakes up. Well, shit. Besides that, Starmie outspeeds even Poliwrath, so I have to para at this point because it's only going to get more annoying to fight if it stays unstatused and Poliwrath is probably going to go down unfortunately. I just gotta try.

Turn 11

Starmie uses Thunderbolt as Poliwrath lives on 14 HP and uses Body Slam. No paralysis unfortunately, but the fact that Thunder Wave wasn't used brings good news, and perhaps Starmie may try to just use Thunder Wave next turn due to how the AI works instead of attacking and killing Poliwrath, because that'd be great for me.

Turn 12

Starmie does indeed use Thunder Wave like the stupid AI it is instead of killing Poliwrath as Poliwrath gets off another Body Slam that proves to paralyze this time. What great timing and luck for me.

Turn 13-14

Misty uses a Super Potion on Starmie as Poliwrath gets full para'd. Starmie uses Thunderbolt to finish off Poliwrath, so now it's down to the other 2 Pokemon on the team.

Turn 15-16

I decide to go Machoke over Primeape because Machoke has almost as much power and great bulk, so it can at least attempt to beat down Starmie a little easier. Machoke uses Karate Chop as Starmie uses Blizzard, which Machoke takes albeit not that well. Machoke proceeds to KO Starmie the next turn, ending the battle with Misty.

I get the Cascadebadge and get the hell out of the gym. A fitting way to end off the Update with another gym done. This honestly didn't even take me that long to beat Misty. It took maybe 4 hours at most for me to go through from Brock to Misty.

Team

Machoke (Level 29)
Stats: 85/64/50/31/35
- Submission
- Karate Chop
- Low Kick

Primeape (Level 28)
Stats: 80/69/40/65/43
- Submission
- Karate Chop
- Seismic Toss
- Double-Edge

Poliwrath (Level 35)
Stats: 115/69/77/60/56
- Bubblebeam
- Hypnosis
- Body Slam
- Blizzard

Just like last time, idk when Update 3 will happen, but don't expect these updates to come out fairly fast forever (this was unexpectedly fast for me).

 

[TheJ3estPenguin]

this is a good playthrough, i can't wait for more episodes!

 

[5FingerMachPunch]

Whew, it's been almost 2 weeks, but life got extra busy for me so that's my excuse, and when I did get free time, Blue Kaizo wasn't the first thing on my mind to do. On that note, I start a new job here pretty soon, so I'd expect this to be the pace that I release updates at from here on out, give or take since some parts are going to be longer than others. I was actually going to have this update be a little long but it's been long enough so I'm just going to go ahead and post my next update now. Anyways, rambling aside, let's get into Update 3.

Replies

TheJ3estPenguin Well I'm glad you're enjoying this so far. Naturally, the only way to answer your call for more is to give more, so here you go! Hope you enjoy this update as much as the others!

Update 3

So we ended the last update after beating Misty. Heading down to Route 6, trainers start to get more and more difficult to handle, but before we talk about the trainers, we actually have 2 more team members to get to complete our team. Yes, indeed, because of my rules, I cannot get a aduplicate team member, locking my team in at 5 members. Welcome the last 2 members of the team, the Hitmons!

With those 2 caught, we continue on trekking through Route 6. Most of the trainers are pretty easy here. However, a few of them gave me a slight bit of a tough time. One of them also just happens to be one of my favorite trainers from this game, let me show you why.

I'm pretty mediocre in all honesty

Okay... What the actual fuck. This dude has the audacity to ask if I'm good then proceeds to send out a Level 100 Weedle.

So I guess I'm good since I won this battle, right? Joking aside, this dude took me a few tries due to some bad luck, but I did win eventually. The two trainers at the end were also slightly troublesome given I couldn't just hard switch Poliwrath into their Nidoking and Nidoqueen since they both know Thunderbolt. Annoying, but nevertheless I did get through them, albeit with a slight bit of annoyance and difficulty. Now I'm finally in Vermillion City, and the first thing I'm gonna go get are some Super Potions so I can heal up my team, but those aren't the only things I'm being blessed with...

There're also Revives here. Fuck yes, I'll take this any day of the week. Now I don't have to worry as much about money to some extend due to having to faint if I wanted my party to truly be as healthy as possible. I'm serious about that, btw. Prior, since I can't heal at Poke Centers as per my rules, I'd have to literally have wild Pokemon KO my whole team. That's a non-issue at this point, so long as I can play decently well enough to keep my team alive.

Meanwhile outside, I have to go around and through the route to the right of Vermillion City (Route 11 I think? I have no clue tbh because I always skip over that route in every playthrough that I can.) in order to even reach the SS Anne, and you know what that means: more trainers I'm forced to fight. Speaking of trainers now, remember when I said that you were forced to fight every single trainer in the game? Yeah, technically I lied because every trainer in SS Anne that was optional before is still optional. Also, in order to reach Route 11, you have to hop over another ledge , effectively locking you out of the Poke Center/Mart until you beat every trainer on the route or until you faint. Yikes.

I decide to actually grind up a bit first just to try to make it a little easier on me going through the route. Also, my team outside of Poliwrath was severely underlevelled, so my team was in serious need of needing to grind anyways. Thus, that's what I did for about an hour until I was satisfied with my team's levels. This is what I ended up with:

Route 11, as I figured, was for the most part a breeze. A particular class of trainers that I need to mention now are gamblers, whose entire gimmick is pretty much OHKO moves. Annoying, but largely not a problem outside of possibly killing one Pokemon on your team, more if you're unlucky. Every other trainer I made it past with little to no issues at all. Upon making it to SS Anne, I already knew I wanted to defeat every trainer for the exp and money. Also, the items there were valuable, or at the least if they had no tangible benefit for me, they could be sold for money. A few trainers, just like on Route 11, were fairly annoying, with one having a team that spammed partial trapping moves and another having a Slowbro which I had to sacrifice one team member to beat, but otherwise nothing too serious. However, that doesn't include the rival fight here, which is an entirely different story...

Rival 4

Firstly, I can assure you that the team, outside of gaining some levels, has not changed even a bit. Also, I have no clue why, but my Machoke's poke ball was glitched there for a bit even though Machoke had no status conditions inflicted on it at all. Weird, but whatever.

I chose Poliwrath as my lead because it's been the most consistent Pokemon on my team for quite a bit now, putting in work in pretty much every major battle it could thus far.

Turn 1-2

Poliwrath and Vaporeon both exchange Body Slams as Poliwrath quickly overwhelms James' Vaporeon. One down, three to go. James chooses to send out Jolteon next.

Turn 3

I go into Machoke because it's one of the bulkier mons on my team and I figure if Jolteon gets a lucky paralysis or a potential crit, I rather it be on Machoke than on Primeape or Hitmonlee since Machoke doesn't seem to be looking too useful in this battle if I were to judge from his first Pokemon and Machoke also doesn't mind paralysis that much compared to the others, so that's my play for me. I probably should have sacked Hitmonchan instead since that mon sucks, but it is what it is. Unfortunately, Jolteon indeed gets a crit, OHKOing Machoke. Seems like I'm in for quite a struggle especially if Primeape gets critted as well. I choose to send out Hitmonlee next as Hitmonlee should, outside of a crit, live a Thunderbolt and KO Jolteon back.

Turn 4

Lucky me, I don't even need to worry for Thunderbolt, as I get a lucky break and Jolteon uses Sand-Attack instead and misses while Hitmonlee kills Jolteon with a Hi Jump Kick. Poliwrath also levels up and I decide to learn Hydro Pump over Bubblebeam. This may seem incredibly dumb due to my rules, Hydro Pump's low PP and its inaccuracy, but honestly the power boost is worth the risk to me. Besides that, I still have the Bubblebeam TM in my bag so if I decide that I made a stupid decision by doing this, then I can always change it back. I could've also gotten rid of Hypnosis, but sleep could still be useful in the future for all I know, so for now Hypnosis isn't going anywhere. James decides to go into Flareon next.

(I forgot to take a screenshot for Flareon so rip)

Turn 5-6

I go into the obvious Poliwrath as Flareon tries to use Sand-Attack but fails. Geez, it seems James is not lucky with Sand-Attack right now. Anyways, Hydro Pump proceeds to destroy Flareon the following turn, and Flareon is done for. Last Pokemon is one you should be accustomed to see now at this point: Mew.

(I also forgot to take a screenshot for Mew, god I'm shitty at this)

Turn 7-9

I decide to use Hypnosis to try to fish for some sleep turns so I can try to whittle Mew down as fast as possible. Unfortunately, Mew uses Thunder Wave and Poliwrath ends up fully para'd. I try again banking on Poliwrath living Mew's Psychic, as it indeed does... but unfortunately Poliwrath gets double para'd. Karma's a bitch, ain't it? I have no clue but to just sack Poliwrath off and pray that Mew either uses Thunder Wave again or gets the 1/256 miss with Psychic and then Poliwrath breaks through paralysis and lands Hypnosis. Low odds, but I have no other play, eh? Sadly, none of that happens as Mew hits Psychic and finishes me off. Now I'm in some deep shit. I choose to go Primeape next as it has the highest special bulk of every member of the team, but I think I already know what's going to happen from here on out.

Turn 10-11

Primeape actually manages to outspeed and get off a Double-Edge while Mew KOes with Psychic. I go Hitmonlee next as it has a better chance to potentially get some sort of high roll or a crit and kill Mew than Hitmonchan does. Fortunately, Hitmonlee also outspeeds, but it also gets a crit, finishing the battle in a clutch situation. Phew.

And there you have it, James once again goes down.

After the battle with our Rival, we head up to the captain's room to go get HM01, then head off the ship to go take on Lt. Surge.

I forgot to mention it because this is important to know, but I also grabbed the Bike Voucher at some point. I don't remember precisely when, but it should be mentioned now that the Bicycle is a mandatory item for completing the game. If you have no idea why this is the case, you'll find out in the future.

Heading to the Poke Center to finally grab Bulbasaur for the first time in forever so it can act as my Cut slave, I'm equipped and ready to go clear out Lt. Surge's gym trainers as well as Lt. Surge himself. Before I do so though, I make sure to have Bulbasaur fainted so I can't abuse it as a free switch-in/sack. That'd completely ruin the point of the challenge and make it easier, so it's better that I do that to ensure that free sack isn't at my disposal.

Arriving at the gym, I'm ambushed by two trainers. Fun. The first trainer even proves to be a pain in the ass to beat between his Thunder Wave + Double Team spamming Magneton, his Stun Spore + Wrap Tangela, and his Explosion Electrode that basically guaranteed gets one KO vs my team. I did persevere in the end eventually, and the second trainer is actually very easy to beat, as he only has a Pikachu and some other Pokemon that I don't even remember anymore. Similarly, the third trainer is pretty easy, and after beating him as well as complete Lt. Surge's stupid puzzle, I'm free to go battle Lt. Surge. Now, it's time for the real show but before we get to the battle itself, here's what the team looked like at this point:

Lt. Surge

Turn 1

Electrode just simply uses Explosion. Could not have asked for a better Turn 1 honestly, considering it was Machoke who took it and died, not something else. It could've also been Hitmonchan, which I would've been fine with, but I felt that Hitmonchan would just get Thunderbolt'd instead. I go into Hitmonlee to follow up as Lt. Surge chooses to go Magneton next. Oh boy, this oughta be fun.

Turn 2-4

Hitmonlee is just going to use Hi Jump Kick to hopefully kill Magneton before having to deal with Thunder Wave/Double Team spam shenanigans. Unfortunately, Hi Jump Kick doesn't crit and now I'm facing down a +1 evasion Magneton. Seeing how much Hi Jump Kick did, I feel safer going for Body Slam as it should get the KO if it connects, and with +1 evasion I don't trust Hi Jump Kick. It misses unfortunately as Magneton gets off a Thunder Wave. This fight just got a lot more annoying. Luckily though, Body Slam connects the next turn as Magneton tries to spam Double Team more. 2 down so far. Lt. Surge sends out Porygon next.

Turn 5

Hitmonlee takes it out with Hi Jump Kick as Porygon tries to use Recover for some odd reason. Oh well, can't question that, since it's dead. Lt. Surge goes for good ol' Jolteon next, which is always fun to see.

Turn 6-9

Jolteon uses Body Slam as Hitmonlee gets full para'd trying to get off a Hi Jump Kick. Jolteon uses Sand-Attack the next turn as Hitmonlee connects with Hi Jump Kick. I decide to hard switch into Hitmonchan the following turn to get rid of the Sand-Attack accuracy debuffs and possibly save Hitmonlee as fodder if it's needed. Unluckily for me, the AI is a cheating bastard and hard Thunder Waves my Hitmonchan. Hitmonchan gets destroyed the following turn by a Thunderbolt, which is eh to me. I meant to go into Primeape, but I rush and make the stupid decision of going Poliwrath instead. Jolteon decides to use Thunder Wave instead of Thunderbolt for some odd reason as it lets Poliwrath KO it. Yeah sure, thanks game. Lt. Surge goes into Electabuzz next.

Turn 10-11

I'm just going to sack Poliwrath and use Body Slam as Electabuzz uses... Psychic. Seems the AI really likes me right now, so I'll take it on top of the paralysis that Body Slam scores. Electabuzz picks off Poliwrath next turn, letting me finish it off with Primeape the next turn with Karate Chop. Raichu comes out as the final Pokemon.

Turn 12-13

Unfortunately, I lost to Raichu. I use Submission with Primeape and fail to pick up the KO as it gets picked off, then Hitmonlee gets critted on the following turn. I don't really know if I could've prevented that, but oh well. Granted, I got pretty lucky myself to get to this point.

From that, I proceeded to throw myself at this battle a few times just to see what my best strategy was in tackling Lt. Surge. During this, I figured out a few conditions that I need to meet in order to win the fight without excessively grinding:

• Hitmonchan is actually the better Mon to lead with over Machoke because Hitmonchan can't even do shit. Machoke is at least able to possibly do something and has a slight bit of bulk to it.
• Primeape and Hitmonlee absolutely cannot get paralyzed during this fight. If they do, it's an auto loss for me.
• If Hitmonlee and Primeape are the only Pokemon I have left vs Jolteon, it's an auto loss as well. This is actually how Machoke as well as, surprisingly, Poliwrath play their major role in the battle as they let Primeape and Hitmonlee in for free vs Electabuzz due to it having Psychic.
• Last but not least, Primeape absolutely needs to outspeed Electabuzz, either via being overlevelled a bit or via Electabuzz being paralyzed. If Primeape is slower than Electabuzz... well, I'll let you guess what that means.
• Also, I'm stupid for not teaching Primeape Dig at this point, which for whatever reason is not a 1 turn move like the others that were formerly 2 turn moves. So I taught Primeape the TM Dig.

After I gathered all of that information, I devised a new strategy to help win vs Lt. Surge, although it would still require some luck in my favor. However, it wasn't like the odds were completely unrealistic. My plan for beating Lt. Surge was as such: Hitmonchan would lead vs Electrode. If Hitmonchan was lucky enough to make it past Electrode because Electrode decided to not use either Explosion or Thunderbolt and Magneton came out, then Hitmonchan will try to damage Magneton as much as possible before Primeape comes out for the KO. I need to be somewhat careful though because a full HP Magneton won't go down in one hit without a crit, so I need to also make sure Primeape has enough HP to live Submission recoil off of Porygon as well as hope that Primeape doesn't get paralyzed. That's the easy part. Once Jolteon comes out is when the battle really needs some major luck for me. I go hard Machoke vs Jolteon because of its bulk, especially if Jolteon doesn't use Thunderbolt on the initial switch, giving Machoke some potential to damage it before Poliwrath comes out, or in rare cases it'll kill Jolteon before Poliwrath even gets to come out. If Machoke gets KO'd, I have to hope Jolteon goes for Thunder Wave and not Thunderbolt (or for a 1/256 miss). Either way, the goal is to either paralyze Electabuzz once it gets out or sack whatever is out vs Electabuzz to get Primeape in safely and hopefully Primeapr will outspeed Electabuzz and Dig sweep its way through the remainder of the fight. It took me a bit, but with that general strategy I did eventually come out victorious. This has easily been the hardest fight thus far, I'm not going to even try to shy away from that fact, but it's over and that's all that matters to me in the end.

And that wraps things up there. I simply went and bought healing items to heal my team up then stopped there. I really wanted to go further into the game than this, infact planning to go all the way to the Pokemon Tower this update but it's been a bit and it probably would've been a little longer if I didn't do this post now, so there you go.

Team

(No pics here either I'll add them when I get the chance to I swear)

Hitmonchan (Level 40)
Stats: 90/100/71/72/40
- Submission
- Body Slam
- Seismic Toss

Machoke (Level 41; if it makes people happy, Machoke is definitely evolving in the next update)
Stats: 117/88/68/41/48
- Submission
- Karate Chop
- Low Kick
- Seismic Toss

Hitmonlee (Level 42)
Stats: 95/112/56/90/39
- Hi Jump Kick
- Body Slam
- Seismic Toss

Poliwrath (Level 42)
Stats: 136/82/91/71/67
- Hydro Pump
- Hypnosis
- Body Slam
- Blizzard

Primeape (Level 44)
Stats: 120/107/61/100/64
- Submission
- Karate Chop
- Dig
- Double-Edge

EDIT: Finally added pics, internet was down and even though I actually had access to the screenshots this whole time on my phone (I save all of my screenshots to a private discord of mine so I can post them here later), I didn't want them in with the other option that wasn't via link because then those annoying attachment things show up. Maybe I should've just done that from the start but oh well at least it isn't annoying to look at at the bottom! I also haven't honestly even touched Blue Kaizo this whole time so I'm finally going to after a longer delay than expected so expect the next update to appear after Thanksgiving.