I got pretty paranoid when level grinding my mons, but this should provide a good security net in case things go wrong. Let's head into Victory Road.
Here's one thing that genuinely bothers me about Emerald: level grinding in Victory Road
sucks. Aron and Larion have Protect and Roar. Hariyama has Whirlwind. Golbat has Bite and Confuse Ray. It's just not fun.
Sky Pillar is noticeably better thanks to no phasing moves, but the Sableye there still have Detect and the Claydol have Selfdestruct, which, while it probably won't kill you will do a decent chunk.
that was STAB Rock Slide lmao
Alright time to wipe the floor with this scrub.
Hariyama beat Gardevoir lmao, the only other thing of note was Altaria Safeguarding on Thunder Wave.
I like how you find the last Winstrate family member here, saying he trained with his whole family. What I don't like though is that it feels like every single Cooltrainer here has healing items. It makes the fights way more tedious than they need to be, combined with the possibility you likely brought an HM slave to this place (thankfully I didn't need to).
The poor guy...
Man I forgot how obnoxious this Victory Road is without Flash. It's so easy to get turned around.
And now we're at the Pokemon League.
We should be just fine, honestly.
I gave Nosepass Sunny Day for the lulz.
You suck bro.
Even if the mechanics hadn't caught up with him yet, this team is still silly. Swords Dance Crawdaunt with only Strength? No-STAB Shiftry? No Shadow Ball Absol? Really?
Magneton fries Mightyena, Hariyama floors Crawdaunt and Absol, Torkal melts Shiftry and Cacturne.
I like Phoebe's design but her team is annoying.
Very difficult to one shot her mons, lots of status. Banette outsped her entire team sans Sableye, who Magneton fried.
Glacia has a great sprite but her team sucks.
Two unevolved Sealeo. There are no words.
Apparently Glacia didn't like Lemmy being a secretive father so she froze him, lol.
I somehow didn't OHKO Glalie with Flamethrower.
Glacia apparently REALLY hates Hariyama, because she crit Surf to OHKO. Magneton fries it.
Drake has another great sprite. I remember having a really hard time with this battle as a kid, probably because I didn't know the type chart super well yet.
This team is pretty competent. Hariyama takes out Shelgon, Tentacruel ices Altaria and Flygon, Banette somehow outsped and 1v1ed Kingdra (!) while Tentacruel came back in to ice Salamence.
Time for Champion Wallace!
Being real here, I don't mind Wallace replacing Steven too much. Sure, Steven's cooler, but I think Wallace has a noticeably better team.
Seriously. Water is a great defensive type and he has great moves.
Magneton outspeeds and OHKOs Wailord.
We paralyze Gyarados and set up Sunny Day. Magneton then fries it.
Thanks to a crit and a fail to basically 2HKO after Fake Out...
...we go down, but waste one of his healing items. Banette picks it off. Magneton outsped Tentacruel (!) and Thunderbolted it, we got a lucky Hydro Pump miss. Tentacruel took Ludicolo easily.
We outsped and crit Milotic with a Thunderbolt LET'S GO!
We're the Champion!
Love the music in this room!
That's our team. Most of them have been pretty alright, though Nosepass and Torkal were pretty bleh overall.
RSE's credits have great music and I love how it shows the Pokemon you caught on your journey.
Mudkip / Marshtomp showing up caught me off guard though: I totally forgot I dropped them LMAO
And that's it!
Not talking about much of postgame intro stuff because it's boring. We head back to Meteor Falls where we find
Him! We're doing this fight underleveled!
Let's do it!
It's interesting how it plays the Rival battle theme here.
Bro Nosepass actually lived Steel Wing. We proceed to Sunny Day. He unfortunately got Spikes up as Torkal fried it.
oh, we're dead lmaooooooooooo reset
Next match we KO Skarmory at the expense of Nosepass falling. Hariyama takes Aggron and Tentacruel takes Armaldo. We Surf Claydol and die, then revive it using Hariyama to barely 2HKO it with Surf.
RESISTED BODY SLAM GOT IT PARALYZED LET'S GOOOOOOOO
We Thunderbolt it with Magneton, Max Revive Torkal using Tentacruel, then Heat Wave for the kill.
We Max Revive Magneton and Hariyama, and then...
HE GOT THE ANCIENTPOWER BUFF FIRST USE. BRO
We paralyze Cradily and revive our whole team.
BRO HE GOT IT
A SECOND TIME WTF
We crit him with our first use of Brick Break!
Reversal is putting in work.
He seemed to keep wanting to spam Full Restores and Ingrain or whatever, so we won. Very good.
We triumphed.
We'll have to wait and see.
And that's the end, as I'm not doing anything else in Emerald. Nosepass was surprisingly clutch yet still pretty toilet, Torkal teetered between halfway decent and borderline poor due to being slow, Magneton was freaking amazing, Hariyama was consistently solid, Banette was actually pretty fun, Tentacruel was pretty good, though it didn't contribute a whole ton in the last couple fights outside Drake.
As for what I think of Emerald, I think this is where the series really came into its own. I think it's a beautiful game for the Game Boy Advance even today. It's still fun to play in spite of slightly archaic mechanics like the lack of physical / special split and HM spam toward the end. Depending on how you look at it, the difficulty of this game could be a positive or a negative: I still think it's a pretty rough game today! The Gym Leaders really do not slouch, and while the Elite Four is kinda easy, Wallace definitely brings the difficulty back up.
As for other things, while it's not as bad as Gens 1 and 2, some moves and the like still weren't quite there yet, like 5 PP Giga Drain and Bug typed moves not named Megahorn, combined with the occasional Pokemon being unreasonably bad for certain periods, like Lotad pre-Surf, Electrike pre-level 20 Spark and Seedot pre-Faint Attack (level 31 as Nuzleaf). The Pokemon roster is still perfectly playable though. Honestly, I think my opinion on Emerald is pretty similar to Platinum in that both are difficult games with HM spam and the occasional odd movepools.
Overall, I think Pokemon Emerald is a really solid game anyone should try, but it being difficult could scare newbies off.
Thank you for reading this dual Let's Play and thank you to
Turdterra for joining me!