Let's Play! Pokémon XG - “been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night; but now i see daylight”

[Daylight]

So—Pokémon XG—a version of the nostalgic classic Gale of Darkness with (mostly) generation 7 mechanics (Tracing Intimidate still doesn’t work and Lightningrod doesn’t boost special attack)—including physical-special split, Fairy types, hidden abilities, as well as new abilities, new items, new shadow moves and over 100 shadow Pokémon (including Alolan Ninetales and Alolan Marowak), new dialogue, quests, and an expanded roster of wild Pokémon.

Now, similarly to XD, your starter Pokémon is an Eevee. Unlike in XD though, in XG you have an additional starter Pokémon—usually a Zigzagoon. However, I have a uh… “special” version of Pokémon XG in which Zigzagoon is replaced with Feebas.

Speaking of, in this “special” version of XG, the initial shadow Pokémon encounter at the HQ lab is… an always-shiny Ralts!

Isn’t he beautiful?! The shinies in Orre are pretty unique too. I really like this lavender-toned version of Ralts.

Joking aside, swapping around those two Pokémon is the only modification I made to the game. While Milotic & Gardevoir are available in XG, both are very late encounters and Pokémon is most fun for me personally when I get to play with old friends and favorites.

Also, as you’ll soon discover, Feebas and Ralts are not exactly uh… early game powerhouses. In fact, replacing Protect + Helping Hand Zigzagoon and Gale Wings Taillow with two ‘mons who have basically nonexistent bulk or damage output until evolution means I probably didn’t just not give myself an advantage—but that I’m doomed to a pretty hard/grindy early game as we’ll have to rely solely on Adaptability Eevee -> Espeon for a fair bit of time.

So… onto the way I’m playing. The goal is: capture and purification of 100% of Shadow Pokémon—and possibly challenging the Orre Colosseum if I’m feeling up for it. In XG, there are a total of 121 Shadow Pokémon—which is quite a big jump from XD’s 83, so it should be a pretty fun challenge. The bosses are also generally more challenging and have more cohesive strategies & themes—for example, Eldes has a sun team with Drought Ninetales, two Chlorophyll mons, and a choice scarf Solar Power Charizard.

Anyway, the rules I set for myself are…

• No items in battle.
• No overlevelling past each boss’s ace. (Lovrina’s Clefairy is level 25, Exol’s Mawile is level 29, Snattle’s Alolan Ninetales is level 37, Gonzap’s Skarmory is level 42, Gorigan’s Regirock is level 55, Ardos’ Wailord is level 64, Eldes’ Ninetales is level 67)
• A boss is only considered defeated if I 6-0 them—reset to the last save until I am able to do so.

…and that’s it! I’m pretty basic. While I would find someone else doing a Nuzlocke of this game entertaining, I personally would not enjoy it. Mostly because a large portion of the game requires flinging snag balls at powerful Pokémon with low catch rates that always have powerful super-effective shadow moves for turns on end—in double battles. And, again, I also like playing through with my favorites and wouldn’t enjoy having to use mons I don’t really care for if some of those favorites were to faint.

Anyways… onto the game!

Currently, I have played right up until the battle with the first Cipher Admin—Lovrina. Most of this early game is a breeze so I’m not gonna spend too much time on it, but there are a few highlights.

To start: I check my starters’ natures (Calm Eevee & Bold Feebas! Nice!), pick up Jovi from Dr Kaminko’s, and catch Naps’ shiny Shadow Ralts as Dr Krane is being kidnapped. Somewhat unfortunately, Ralts has Trace instead of Pixilate (which it gets in this game). So I guess we won’t be spamming Fairy Hyper Voice with Gardevoir later on, but maybe we’ll be able to steal Swift Swim or Chlorophyll from some of the bosses that use weather teams.

Anyway, in Professor Krane’s absence, our mom, Lily (a named parent!!), is determined to finish the purification chamber (that Professor Krane started because apparently he foresaw Cipher’s return?) so she sends us off to Gateon Port to collect a machine part she needs.

The highlights in Gateon include a little bit of 4th wall-breaking humor from the man who gives you Eevee’s evolution items as well as evolving Eevee into the considerably more powerful Espeon. Espeon basically one-shots everything at this point in the game after acquiring Psybeam at level 17. Your starter Eevee also comes with Hyper Voice which is a pretty nice spread move off of Espeon’s high special attack this early in the game, especially once we get to the Agate move tutor for Helping Hand on Feebas & Ralts

(I also snag a shadow Marill and a shadow Poocheyena before heading back the HQ Lab & then being sent to Agate Village to purify my Ralts.)

Once we’re in Agate, I immediately go and teach Feebas Icy Wind, Protect, and Helping Hand which make him considerably better and especially helpful versus the gauntlet of trainers you have to fight in the Relic Forest. I basically just click Hyper Voice and Helping Hand the entire time.

The final fight here is versus Eagun and his slightly overlevelled Pikachu, which goes down to a helping hand boosted Psybeam after delaying us for a turn with Fake Out. Also, I just gotta mention: the creator of XG swapped and chimeraed together various move animations and I think he did a great job! Don’t the effects for Protect and Psybeam pictures above look gorgeous?

Anyway, after defeating Eagun and purifying Ralts, I take the time to nickname all of my party members at the name rater in Agate: Rafiel the Ralts, Apollo the Feebas, and Oreo the Espeon. No I will not explain that last one.

Eagun then sends us off to Mt Battle, where we meet Vander who sends a child off to an abandoned building in the desert. Totally a normal thing to do when you suspect illicit activity in said abandoned facility. Now, at this point, I would ordinarily just jump into the next part of the game: the Cipher Lab. However, with Feebas’ perfectly even attacking stats of 11 and Ralts’ total lack of any bulk whatsoever, it would be… difficult. And I don’t want to wind up overlevelling Oreo as the first boss is pretty soon.

As a result, my chosen course of action was to grind my three team members up to level 20 on Mt Battle—at which point Apollo evolved into Milotic and Rafiel into Kirlia. Also—Rafiel learned Calm Mind, Oreo learned Hypnosis, and Apollo learned Glare—the latter two of which will be particularly helpful for catching the many Shadow Pokémon ahead of us and former-most of which will be pretty fun once Rafiel is a Gardevoir. Now I think we can go take on the hexagon brothers.

With Milotic’s Glare and Espeon’s power, the hexagon bros are a breeze. OH! And would you look at that! I guess Trace is pretty nice.

And Apollo is looking gorgeous of course.

There’s not too much else to note between the brothers and where I am before Lovrina—EXCEPT one trainer’s Lileep got FIVE protects in a row and oh my god I was so confused. I googled it and apparently in gen 3, protect is broken and the 5th consecutive protect actually has a 99% chance to succeed. It was still about a 1.5% chance for it to get to that point though.

Anyways, I think I will end this post (and all future updates) with a progress update & an inspirational quote or an encouraging message or positive affirmaction because we can all use a little more sunshine. :)

Current Party Members:

Pokémon Snagged: 16
Pokémon Purified: 1
Positivity & Light:

 

[King Feraligatr]

Nice to see you revive this, Blitz.... hopefully you can finish it. :)

 

[Blitz]

Yea... I still have that save file idk why I haven’t finished it.

Good luck! You’re gonna need it~

 

[Daylight]

Part 2: Cipher Admin Lovrina​

I really can’t get over how good the Psybeam animation looks in this game… Anyways, I wasn’t actually planning to play anymore XG until the weekend but I got home from the gym and just felt like it. So here we are.

So, before we battle our first boss—Cipher Admin & Head Scientist Lovrina—and escape Cipher’s Lab with Dr Krane, there’s a quick mini-boss in her brother Naps—whom we snagged Rafiel from before and whom is currently holding Dr Krane hostage. Naps seems vaguely sympathetic toward Dr Krane but cites his allegiance to Cipher before challenging me to a battle.

Honestly, swapping his original Shadow Taillow with Shiny Ralts actually makes a lot of sense considering that, as you can see, he’s partial to Fairy types and stereotypically cute Pokémon. He even uses a Gardevoir in his post-game rematch! He also happens to be probably the strongest trainer we’ve faced thus far with a team of 5 Pokémon, including his Shadow Misdreavus.

(Well that’s interesting. Pure Heart is an ability—maybe the only one—unique to XG. I checked the documentation and it grants resistances to Dark, Ghost, and—most importantly—Shadow moves. The list of ‘mons with access is very short—Clefable, Wigglytuff, Meganium, and Bellossom are the only fully-evolved ‘mons with it. Keep this in mind!)

Thankfully Naps isn’t too hard since I’ve already leveled up the team in preparation for his sister and, more importantly, we’re able to land a quick hypnosis on his most powerful Pokémon—Shadow Misdreavus. One great ball and a few Psybeams later and Misdreavus joins our party and Naps is defeated.

Naps makes a run for it and I heal up my team with super potions before leaving as well. I also equip Rafiel with the “Aura Filter”—an item unique to XG that halves damage from shadow moves—which we found while exploring the lab. And Oreo gets the Wise Glasses that we pick up from the chest in Dr Krane’s room. Here’re the team’s movesets going into the first boss battle:

And with that, we’re ready to face our first boss!

…If there’s one change I’m not a fan of in XG, it’s how the creator altered Lovrina. In XD, she’s kind of a campy villain, yet also pretty cool and pretty threatening when you realize what she does for Cipher. But here… the way she speaks feels overly unrealistic, infantilizing, and honestly kind of misogynistic. She’s supposed to present a kind of silly valley-girl persona, for sure, but she’s also a prodigious & competent teenage scientist (and criminal) that performs experiments on living creatures. And while her actions are the same as they are in XD, the sheer level of ridiculousness in the way the creator has her speak here really undermines the more threatening part of her character. But I digress. Onto Cipher Admin number one!

(Still easily the coolest Cipher Admin. At least now that Miror B has been fired.)

Like her brother, Lovrina has a Fairy-type & Cutemons theme, although she sticks to the Fairy-type part a little more strictly.

(Yes, her Pokémon have nicknames.)

I lead Rafiel & Apollo and Lovrina leads Marill & Snubull. I go for Glare on Marill as Rafiel nearly knocks out Snubbull with a Psybeam. Marill Knocks Off Rafiel’s Aura Filter and Snubull misses a Play Rough. The following turn we knock out Snubull but Marill uses Play Rough and brings Rafiel down to very low health.

She brings out her Shadow Clefairy to next, so Rafiel uses his low health to bait some attacks with Protect as Apollo Glares down Clefairy. Then, I switch Rafiel with Oreo and weaken Clefairy with a bubble beam from Apollo. Clefairy uses Shadow Snooze (AKA Spore) but Oreo Magic Bounces it back while Marill is unable to attack. The following turn I’m able to capture Clefairy with my one remaining great ball and take Marill down.

Then comes her own shiny Kirlia as well as Mawile, which, yes, does have Huge Power.

Speaking of Mawile having Huge Power, it’s probably very obvious by now that XG has pretty atypical learnsets and abilities. I mean… I did mention Ralts having Pixilate over Synchronize and showed Feebas evolving at level 20 and learning Glare after all. The general rules that XG follows are:

• Pokémon with Mega evolutions inherit abilities/moves/typing from their Mega form.
• Pokémon with Trade or otherwise inaccessible evolution methods (like Feebas) become level up evolution, usually at level 20 or 40.
• Weaker/unusable Pokémon get stat/ability buffs, but not a typing change. (For example, Delcatty gets Fur Coat in XG.)

Anyway, Oreo uses Hyper Voice twice and with an additional Bubblebeam from Apollo, Kiss and Bae go down.

Her last ‘mon—Cuddles the Wigglytuff—is actually her weakest, and she goes down to Psybeam + Bubblebeam from Oreo and Apollo. With the experience points earned from Cuddles, Oreo reaches the level cap of 25 and Lovrina is defeated. A surprisingly easy battle! I was expecting her Huge Power ‘mons to be more of an issue, but she never went for Aqua Jet with Marill and Mawile never went for a STAB move for some reason.

Regardless, Lovrina makes her escape and so do we—after picking up an suspicious SD card Lovrina’s assistant dropped—which I’m pretty sure used to be a CD ROM in the original game lol.

Also… I haven’t mentioned it yet since I’m not using them in battle, but I’ve been walking around with and rotating the Shadow Pokémon we’ve snagged so far in order to passively clear their heart gauges. With Lovrina defeated and our 17th shadow Pokémon snagged, it’s time to go purify them.

Thankfully, once we return with Krane to the HQ Lab…

We now get to use the Lab’s completed Purification Chamber! The Purification Chamber is a much easier and more efficient method of purification than visiting Agate Village. It allows us to passively purify Pokémon in our PC just by walking and is where most of the Pokémon we catch will be going. It’s pretty much unchanged from XD aside from incorporating the Fairy-type into the rhythm/tempo stuff.

The only downside is that an already-purified Pokémon has to be present in the chamber in order to purify a shadow Pokémon. But it’s really only a downside right now when my party members are the only purified ‘mons I have. As I purify more and more Pokémon, it’ll become increasingly easy & quick to use.

Anyway, I will end the update here! I’ve actually already played up to right before the next boss—Cipher Commander Exol—but I think Pyrite Town deserves its own post.

Current Party Members:

Pokémon Snagged: 17
Pokémon Purified: 3
Positivity & Light:

 

[Daylight]

Part 3: Pyrite Town & Pokéspots
​

With Dr Krane rescued and Lovrina defeated, I find myself in Pyrite Town—one of the most iconic locations, in my opinion, in the entire Pokémon series. The iconic jazzy finger-snapping theme and the rough and gritty (but still charming) vibe make the town uniquely memorable. Amidst the abundance of clean and modern locations in the Pokémon world, Pyrite’s edge and swagger really make it stand out.

And we’re here because apparently the HQ Lab’s staff is unable to decrypt the SD card Lovrina’s assistant conspicuously dropped, and Krane insists that Nett of ONBS in Pyrite Town is the only one who can do it.

Speaking of Nett, I gotta say, one highlight of Pyrite Town I didn’t expect was this…

And these two…

Now, I don’t know about you, but both these interactions give me some *vibes*, intentional or not. So it’s unofficially official… main highlight of Pyrite Town: the Gays.

(Also uh, yikes officer Johnson.)

Anyways, there are few other highlights on our way to delivering the SD card to Nett…

We get a bit of a sad reference to The Under—another iconic Orreian location that’s unfortunately accessible only in Colosseum for the reasons the old man mentions. Maybe someday we’ll get an Orre remake and get to revisit the dark but glitzy location.

Speaking of Colosseum, on the way into Pyrite we run into the familiar face of Rogue Cail. In that game, he’s one of the first trainers you snag a shadow Pokémon from and he’s rebattleable throughout the story with a fairly powerful goodstuff-style team with fast & strong Pokémon like Houndoom, Gardevoir, and Machamp. In XG, he’s been edited into a mono-dark type trainer, which is an interesting choice.

Speaking of XD-XG differences though, Duel Square has been brilliantly turned into an EV training spot. On the right you have the Special Defense trainer Bodybuilder Tommy, the Special Attack trainer Chaser Tyler, and the Speed trainer Hunter Davis. And to the left you have the Defense trainer Rider Phil and the attack trainer Chaser Tammy. The HP trainer and his obnoxious Blissey are just south of here by the Pyrite Motel. While I’m here, I get as many Special Attack and Speed EVs for Oreo and Rafiel as I can until I get bored and I do the same with HP & Defense for Apollo.

The last thing of note that happens before meeting Nett is that I help a lost girl find her mom inside the ONBS building. Her gratitude yields us the Psyshock TM—which, given the current team of 2/3 psychic types that are all special attackers, is incredibly useful. It’s the most powerful psychic move Rafiel and Oreo will have access to until they learn Psychic—and, as a very nice bonus, it lets them one-shot the HP EV Trainer’s Blissey for easy experience and evs.

Anyway, after I give Nett and his boyfriend the SD card, they tell me it’s gonna take some time to decrypt, so they suggest I should (and the plot forces me to) go meet Duking at a rare location where wild Pokémon appear in the desolate Orreian landscape.

There’s a gag with Duking and the reporter interviewing him and we get to be on TV, but the main thing of note here is that I have access to a HUGE number of potential team options now. Well, that and…

The icon himself—lurking around one of the Poké-spots. And of course he challenges me to a battle.

He’s as fabulous as ever. But “Villain” Mirror B… hmmm. I much prefer his trainer class in original XD: Wanderer Miror B.

At any rate, Apollo glares his Ludicolos and Rafiel sets up 3 Calm Minds. From there it’s a pretty easy sweep, especially thanks to Rafiel staying healthy by Tracing Rain Dish.

He does notably have a shadow Ludicolo here—something I’m pretty sure is unique to XG—and it was pretty weird seeing Apollo get hit super-effectively by a shadow version of Muddy Water. But with a Glare and a bit of chip damage, it’s an easy snag.

After defeating Miror B, I get an urgent message from Nett (or his boyfriend or Secc idr) about trouble at ONBS. Apparently Cipher beat up the security guard and kidnapped the receptionist (Megg, Nett’s sister) as a hostage.

I fight and snag my way through the three floors, rescuing the various staff and guests in the building along the way. They’re all fairly easy battles and nothing of much note happens until we get to the top floor where we meet…

…Boss Number Two: Cipher Commander Exol!

I really didn’t prep much for this battle—and I honestly don’t remember it very much either as I’m typing up this post now. But I do remember that I got lucky and snagged his shadow Mawile with only a Glare from Apollo and Hyper Voice chip from Oreo, as you can see below. Given that Mawile has always super-effective shadow moves and Huge Power, it was easily the most problematic ‘mon on Exol’s team, so it’s quick elimination made the battle much easier than it would’ve been otherwise. And the rest of his Pokémon either have low special defense or are weak to Psychic.

That’s what they all say.

With Exol defeated, ONBS is free and the Pyrite Town arc of the story is complete. And with the experience from our fight with Exol, Rafiel evolves into Gardevoir!

Isn’t he gorgeous? Lavender really is his color.

Accepting his loss in battle, but acknowledging his victory in his actual mission, Exol makes his getaway. Which I do respect. He’s buff, he knows what matters to his objective, and unlike the Cipher Admins, he actually succeeds at accomplishing that objective. Not bad Exol. Not bad.

Anyway, before I end this update, it bears mentioning that both before and after taking on Commander Exol, I actually spent some time catching wild Pokémon. My main goal was to get a Swablu, in the hope of playing with Pixilate Boomburst and/or Return since Rafiel wound up with Trace. All the walking back and forth required for the Spot Monitor to beep did mean that I was able to purify every single Pokémon I’ve caught so far—but dear god it took so long.

The abundance of options for encounters at the poke spots in XG is a bit of double-edged sword because while they do open up a large number of possible encounters, it’s incredibly difficult to find any one specific encounter you might be hunting down.

Thankfully, I did eventually find Swablu and I name him Felix—which means Lucky. And I definitely was because thankfully he has Natural Cure (which becomes Pixilate upon evolution) and not Cloud Nine—which means it looks like I am gonna get to spam some Pixilate-ed Boombursts… once he gets to level 50 anyway.

Also: my hunt for Swablu at the Oasis Spot yielded many good grass types (in addition to an Aerodactyl that I traded to Duking for his Pure Heart-ed Bayleef). And now I can’t decide if I should use Gloom, Bayleef, Roselia, or Jumpluff. Bellossom’s stats have been buffed to the point where all of its stats except HP are actually higher than Meganium’s—plus it gets Quiver Dance. Meganium doesn’t have a boosting move like Bellossom, but it does have Spore in XG. In combination with Pure Heart giving it a resistance to Shadow moves, I could see it being really useful for late-game snags. Roselia has Technician in this game, it’s speed has been buffed to base 114, and it has the highest special attack of the four, so it could be useful for fast sleep powders and leaf storms. Jumpluff similarly could be useful for fast sleep powders or Fake Tears because it has Prankster in XG, but it also has zero offensive presence. Which would you pick?

Current Party Members:

Pokémon Snagged: 24
Pokémon Purified: 24
Positivity & Light:

 

[TerrickTerran]

This looks really fun and I agree Wanderer Mirror B is the way to go.

 

[Daylight]

This looks really fun and I agree Wanderer Mirror B is the way to go.

It is very fun! And yeah, it’s interesting to see what changes the creator made as someone who’s very familiar with the original XD. For the most part, their changes definitely increase my enjoyment of the game. But there are a few—like the Villain Mirror B thing or Lovrina’s dialogue—that I think the original got right to begin with.

Speaking of changes, one other change the creator made that I haven’t mentioned yet is that many npcs have had their names altered. If you’re at all familiar with the original versions of the Genius Sonority games, you’ll remember that all the npcs had pretty strange names like “Laken” or “Berk” or “Snidle”. In XG, they’ve been changed to relatively “normal”-sounding names like Ruby or Matt or Stuart. Personally I kind of miss the wacky names but it might just be my nostalgia talking.

But yeah! It’s definitely a fun experience and I for sure recommend it!