Pokemon TPP Red: The Cutesy Girl Part I
Mar. 30th, 2015 01:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorTime for new variants in a new series. The Pokemon series is full of variant potential, and I’m not just talking about those horribly retarded Nuzlocke challenges. With the ability to use any of the countless Pokemon and a few romhacks, the possibilities are many.
I’ll be doing something of the latter today: actually, the same romhack used by TwitchPlaysPokemon for their Red anniversary run. It in itself is actually a hack of a hack, specifically of something called Red 151. In addition to that, it’s also a HardType hack. However, TPP edition it brings several new features to the table, including a reward beyond the Diploma for catching all the Pokemon. This is a useful resource for it, by the way. A locations guide.
To add to the fun, let’s use a theme: we’ll be using obviously CUTE Pokemon! Why? Because a good friend of mine was playing through too, using the theme of obviously strong Pokemon (based on a tabletop character of his, with this being a hypothetical parallel).
An interesting feature about this hack, not seen in the TPP version due to the streamer vetoing the idea, is the ability to choose your gender. I therefore went with the girl for variety, naming her Mandel. Why? Because this almond is running parallel to the French Cerise. Call her Mandy for short.
The starter is obvious. Bulbasaur is the only starter that remains at least somewhat cute in its final evolutionary form, so we’re going with that. You immediately go to the nickname screen in this hack. You can avoid nicknames by pressing end, but I figure cute nicknames for cute Pokemon, so Saury it is.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures in the very early going. But Mandel spent all of her money on Poke Balls, and made a bunch of catches, managing to get everything on Route 1 except for the rare Exeggcute. Her second official team member was on Route 2: Polly, a Poliwag! It only sported Bubble as a move for a while (up to Level 16, in fact), but it’s no big deal when that’s about all it’ll be using.
I trained until Saura learned Vine Whip as shown above, then went off to Route 22. The rival is a bit different in this. He instead uses Pokemon that saw a buff in this hack, as well as Eevee (evolving it into whatever is advantageous against your starter). Here, he has a Spearow and an Eevee. Polly was able to whittle down Spearow before getting KO’d, after which Saura easily finished the job.
Viridian Forest’s Bug Catchers did not use bugs at all! In fact, many of their Pokemon were grass, making my plan to train up Polly here a bit of a bust. Saura had to handle these with Tackle. It did manage to fight a Venonat at the end, however. Similarly, the forest itself had a bigger selection of wilds, but it wasn’t worth it. The key to not needing to grind in Pokemon is keeping your team small, at least early on. Two was good enough for now.
Getting Polly some experience in Pewter Gym was also a bit of a problem. The first trainer uses a Kabuto and an Omanyte. It fought valiantly against the first, but just lost out. Saura could easily pick the slack up, however.
Brock wasn’t too bad, despite his changed team of Onix and Aerodactyl. Beating the fossil Pokemon from light years guy had gotten Saura to Level 16, enough to evolve to Ivysaur. Polly’s Bubble was enough for Onix, and it chipped in a bit before being brutally murdered by Aerodactyl’s Rock Slide. Wait, what?! It can’t learn that in Gen 1!
The good news is hack does seem to change the enemy AI a bit, so it high-level AI doesn’t exclusively use super-effective moves if it can. The good news is, it meant Aerodactyl did not use Wing Attack all the time on Saura, so after a bunch of useless Agilities and a Rock Slide, I won out. The bad news is, this behavior doesn’t take whether the move does into consideration. So against Lance’s Dragonite, for example, it would repeatedly use the Psychic-type Barrier and Agility against a Poison-type, despite the fact that neither does damage.
Route 3 had some nasty fights, including this guy who had a Butterfree and Beedrill. Had to get Polly up to Level 16 to deal with the first one, which wasn’t too tough after a Metapod/Kakuna gave some free experience, and a few other fights. It learned Hypnosis at this level, and with its good speed, could often go first and use it. The only problem was its low accuracy. The Beedrill I dealt with by using Leech Seed, then using Growl to send its attack to the toilet. It couldn’t outdamage Saura’s regeneration, so it could never win!
By the way, another thing about Gen 1 (and 2) mechanics: stat-lowering moves, when used from the AI’s side, have a chance to fail for no good reason. When you use them though, they have the full advertised accuracy.
After reaching Mt. Moon, a new offensive option became available. The Water Gun TM is...actually, not too helpful in vanilla, at least as far as Squirtle is concerned. And not too helpful for Polly, either, who would learn it at level 19 (being at level 17)
Hey, look at that. A cute, round (?), and fluffy Pokemon, just for me! Clefable is a very nice Pokemon, able to learn just about any TM you could ask for. A short while into the cave, I found a Moon Stone, but chose to hold off on evolution (after which it would learn no more moves) for a while. With the leveling curve in this game, it’d be a short while, anyway.
More money meant more opportunities to catch Pokemon and fill out that Pokedex. Abra was in Viridian Forest, but instantly teleports away. Polly’s new Hypnosis prevented that. After catching on Route 3, I proceeded. The cave offered up several other options, all close in-level to my own in the high 10s/early 20s. Again, for not expanding my team too much for reducing the grind’s sake, I only caught them most of them for the sake of the Pokedex.
A lot of them could inflict status on me, such as sleep (Jigglypuff/Clefairy), paralyze (Pikachu/Oddish/Bellsprout/Paras), and poison (Oddish/Bellsprout/Ekans). The last group could at least be stopped by switching in Saura. Zubat were also something to be aware of, not just for their confusion, but for how Grass and Poison are both weak to Bug in the original games and here. I generally stayed away from the status-inflicting Pokemon, while fighting the Ground and Rock types. Cleff’s Water Gun came in handy, naturally.
The HP Up is a Vitamin item which increases Stat EXP, but more often than not at this point in the game is better off being sold for a bunch of money. I went ahead and did that, buying even more balls, and returned. Besides the aforementioned status-inflicters who made me fall back, most of the fights here were easy. Polly hit level 25 here, evolving into Poliwhirl in the process.
Yeah, this speaks for itself. I did catch it on the next ball before Leech Seed finished it, though. Catching’em all can be a pain, at times.
The Super Nerd at the end had an interesting party: Magmar, Electabuzz, and...Exeggcute? The first two were obviously the trickiest. Polly Water Gunned down the first, and the second got Leech Seeded and Growled down. Exeggcute was more obnoxious than it had any right to be though. Cleff Minimized, and Doubleslapped away on it to take it out.
Misty was a joke. The only conceivable way she could’ve damaged Saura was through Lapras’ Body Slam - it didn’t have an Ice move besides Mist. The battle flew by so fast that it wasn’t an issue the one time she used it, especially since Sing missed, and Starmie (Tackle, Water Gun, Harden, Bubblebeam) was helpless against Saura.
To the west were more Pokemon to be caught. My own were actually so strong, weakening them for the catch was a bit problematic. They for whatever reason are way lower level than in Mt. Moon. Only one that needed help from outside my group of three was a Ditto. I sent in a Weedle for it to transform into and got the job done.
And then Saura hit level 30 and learned Razor Leaf. This move is fantastic in the first generation games. Namely, because it almost always criticals! The only thing reigning back Saura from total dominance is the Grass type itself being ineffective on many types. Still, this would seriously dent anything that didn’t resist it, and outright slaughter anything weak to it.
The rival this time started with a Pidgeotto. Urgh. Polly put it to sleep and slapped it silly, same for the Fearow that followed. Then out came Parasect. Now, for whatever reason, its base stats in this hack are absurd. 100/115/115/100/100. This was a bit of a problem. It resisted Razor Leaf. The solution?
Minimize with Cleff a lot in the early goings until it can’t be hit, then have it deal with the fight by itself! It worked perfectly, putting Pidgeotto to sleep, Minimizing the maximum of six times, then Doubleslapping/Water Gunning my way to victory.
I continued to use Cleff through most of Nugget Bridge. Pretty much everyone here but the fourth one (who had a Clefable and Wigglytuff) used evolved versions of their original teams. The worst was a third guy’s Raticate. Hyper Fang is simply disgustingly good early on, and it’s learned at Level 14! They may be a meme, but they’re fairly tough. The easiest was oddly the Rocket at the end, who also didn’t use his originals. Aside from a Shellder that Clamped for a bit, he was nonthreatening.
Ponyta was a useable Pokemon, it and Rapidash I’d say are cute enough. But that’s one of the problems with the wide variety of Pokemon early on in this hack. Since you can’t get many of these Pokemon at this low a level so early, the programmers didn’t allocate moves to them at a level so early. There’s a few exceptions, but the short of it is, this can be a bit problematic. In other words, until the 30s or so, it would literally be a one-trick pony short of TMs. I did consider Vulpix, but it was too low level to help.
Anyway, as you may have guessed from the level, the Pokemon up north are stronger, but still way behind the curve. I used none of them.
After Cleff hit level 31 for Metronome, I evolved it. A short time after, Saura hit Level 32 to evolve into Venusaur. Metronome uses a random move aside from itself and Struggle, which can lead to fun results. The first use was a smashing success, using Guillotine to OHKO a Hypno. The second...not so much. Cleff rolled Hyper Beam against a Fearow, missed, then it used Mirror Move for the KO.
I used some of the TMs I had picked up along the way on my trio at this point. Polly got Bubblebeam, Cleff got Mega Punch, and Saura got Take Down. Instead of Bide, Brock gives that up. Some heavy hitting moves should be just what I need to keep up!
There was a Beedrill that gave me a bit of grief on the way to Vermillion, ugh. Need to start expanding soon. But that aside, we were able to move on.
The S.S. Anne had some tricky fights, including this jerk. Thankfully, Polly outsped it - OHKO moves working or not based on Speed in the original games. The Rival was more of the same as before: Minimize up with Cleff, and wail away.
Saura dominated for the third gym in a row. After it got taken out by a rogue Electrode Explosion when facing the underlings, I swapped in Polly against Surge’s. Sure enough, it blew up on the less-valuable Pokemon, and didn’t even have the gall to defeat the Poliwhirl.
There was a real ugly fight on Route 9. Mandel had to use the Weepinbell she was using for Cut, what with HM moves sucking and all, to take down this Vileplume.
This feels a good place to break up the report, as the next section of the game awaits beyond Rock Tunnel, and it’s a bit faster than getting started.
Next | Index
I’ll be doing something of the latter today: actually, the same romhack used by TwitchPlaysPokemon for their Red anniversary run. It in itself is actually a hack of a hack, specifically of something called Red 151. In addition to that, it’s also a HardType hack. However, TPP edition it brings several new features to the table, including a reward beyond the Diploma for catching all the Pokemon. This is a useful resource for it, by the way. A locations guide.
To add to the fun, let’s use a theme: we’ll be using obviously CUTE Pokemon! Why? Because a good friend of mine was playing through too, using the theme of obviously strong Pokemon (based on a tabletop character of his, with this being a hypothetical parallel).
An interesting feature about this hack, not seen in the TPP version due to the streamer vetoing the idea, is the ability to choose your gender. I therefore went with the girl for variety, naming her Mandel. Why? Because this almond is running parallel to the French Cerise. Call her Mandy for short.
The starter is obvious. Bulbasaur is the only starter that remains at least somewhat cute in its final evolutionary form, so we’re going with that. You immediately go to the nickname screen in this hack. You can avoid nicknames by pressing end, but I figure cute nicknames for cute Pokemon, so Saury it is.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures in the very early going. But Mandel spent all of her money on Poke Balls, and made a bunch of catches, managing to get everything on Route 1 except for the rare Exeggcute. Her second official team member was on Route 2: Polly, a Poliwag! It only sported Bubble as a move for a while (up to Level 16, in fact), but it’s no big deal when that’s about all it’ll be using.
I trained until Saura learned Vine Whip as shown above, then went off to Route 22. The rival is a bit different in this. He instead uses Pokemon that saw a buff in this hack, as well as Eevee (evolving it into whatever is advantageous against your starter). Here, he has a Spearow and an Eevee. Polly was able to whittle down Spearow before getting KO’d, after which Saura easily finished the job.
Viridian Forest’s Bug Catchers did not use bugs at all! In fact, many of their Pokemon were grass, making my plan to train up Polly here a bit of a bust. Saura had to handle these with Tackle. It did manage to fight a Venonat at the end, however. Similarly, the forest itself had a bigger selection of wilds, but it wasn’t worth it. The key to not needing to grind in Pokemon is keeping your team small, at least early on. Two was good enough for now.
Getting Polly some experience in Pewter Gym was also a bit of a problem. The first trainer uses a Kabuto and an Omanyte. It fought valiantly against the first, but just lost out. Saura could easily pick the slack up, however.
Brock wasn’t too bad, despite his changed team of Onix and Aerodactyl. Beating the fossil Pokemon from light years guy had gotten Saura to Level 16, enough to evolve to Ivysaur. Polly’s Bubble was enough for Onix, and it chipped in a bit before being brutally murdered by Aerodactyl’s Rock Slide. Wait, what?! It can’t learn that in Gen 1!
The good news is hack does seem to change the enemy AI a bit, so it high-level AI doesn’t exclusively use super-effective moves if it can. The good news is, it meant Aerodactyl did not use Wing Attack all the time on Saura, so after a bunch of useless Agilities and a Rock Slide, I won out. The bad news is, this behavior doesn’t take whether the move does into consideration. So against Lance’s Dragonite, for example, it would repeatedly use the Psychic-type Barrier and Agility against a Poison-type, despite the fact that neither does damage.
Route 3 had some nasty fights, including this guy who had a Butterfree and Beedrill. Had to get Polly up to Level 16 to deal with the first one, which wasn’t too tough after a Metapod/Kakuna gave some free experience, and a few other fights. It learned Hypnosis at this level, and with its good speed, could often go first and use it. The only problem was its low accuracy. The Beedrill I dealt with by using Leech Seed, then using Growl to send its attack to the toilet. It couldn’t outdamage Saura’s regeneration, so it could never win!
By the way, another thing about Gen 1 (and 2) mechanics: stat-lowering moves, when used from the AI’s side, have a chance to fail for no good reason. When you use them though, they have the full advertised accuracy.
After reaching Mt. Moon, a new offensive option became available. The Water Gun TM is...actually, not too helpful in vanilla, at least as far as Squirtle is concerned. And not too helpful for Polly, either, who would learn it at level 19 (being at level 17)
Hey, look at that. A cute, round (?), and fluffy Pokemon, just for me! Clefable is a very nice Pokemon, able to learn just about any TM you could ask for. A short while into the cave, I found a Moon Stone, but chose to hold off on evolution (after which it would learn no more moves) for a while. With the leveling curve in this game, it’d be a short while, anyway.
More money meant more opportunities to catch Pokemon and fill out that Pokedex. Abra was in Viridian Forest, but instantly teleports away. Polly’s new Hypnosis prevented that. After catching on Route 3, I proceeded. The cave offered up several other options, all close in-level to my own in the high 10s/early 20s. Again, for not expanding my team too much for reducing the grind’s sake, I only caught them most of them for the sake of the Pokedex.
A lot of them could inflict status on me, such as sleep (Jigglypuff/Clefairy), paralyze (Pikachu/Oddish/Bellsprout/Paras), and poison (Oddish/Bellsprout/Ekans). The last group could at least be stopped by switching in Saura. Zubat were also something to be aware of, not just for their confusion, but for how Grass and Poison are both weak to Bug in the original games and here. I generally stayed away from the status-inflicting Pokemon, while fighting the Ground and Rock types. Cleff’s Water Gun came in handy, naturally.
The HP Up is a Vitamin item which increases Stat EXP, but more often than not at this point in the game is better off being sold for a bunch of money. I went ahead and did that, buying even more balls, and returned. Besides the aforementioned status-inflicters who made me fall back, most of the fights here were easy. Polly hit level 25 here, evolving into Poliwhirl in the process.
Yeah, this speaks for itself. I did catch it on the next ball before Leech Seed finished it, though. Catching’em all can be a pain, at times.
The Super Nerd at the end had an interesting party: Magmar, Electabuzz, and...Exeggcute? The first two were obviously the trickiest. Polly Water Gunned down the first, and the second got Leech Seeded and Growled down. Exeggcute was more obnoxious than it had any right to be though. Cleff Minimized, and Doubleslapped away on it to take it out.
Misty was a joke. The only conceivable way she could’ve damaged Saura was through Lapras’ Body Slam - it didn’t have an Ice move besides Mist. The battle flew by so fast that it wasn’t an issue the one time she used it, especially since Sing missed, and Starmie (Tackle, Water Gun, Harden, Bubblebeam) was helpless against Saura.
To the west were more Pokemon to be caught. My own were actually so strong, weakening them for the catch was a bit problematic. They for whatever reason are way lower level than in Mt. Moon. Only one that needed help from outside my group of three was a Ditto. I sent in a Weedle for it to transform into and got the job done.
And then Saura hit level 30 and learned Razor Leaf. This move is fantastic in the first generation games. Namely, because it almost always criticals! The only thing reigning back Saura from total dominance is the Grass type itself being ineffective on many types. Still, this would seriously dent anything that didn’t resist it, and outright slaughter anything weak to it.
The rival this time started with a Pidgeotto. Urgh. Polly put it to sleep and slapped it silly, same for the Fearow that followed. Then out came Parasect. Now, for whatever reason, its base stats in this hack are absurd. 100/115/115/100/100. This was a bit of a problem. It resisted Razor Leaf. The solution?
Minimize with Cleff a lot in the early goings until it can’t be hit, then have it deal with the fight by itself! It worked perfectly, putting Pidgeotto to sleep, Minimizing the maximum of six times, then Doubleslapping/Water Gunning my way to victory.
I continued to use Cleff through most of Nugget Bridge. Pretty much everyone here but the fourth one (who had a Clefable and Wigglytuff) used evolved versions of their original teams. The worst was a third guy’s Raticate. Hyper Fang is simply disgustingly good early on, and it’s learned at Level 14! They may be a meme, but they’re fairly tough. The easiest was oddly the Rocket at the end, who also didn’t use his originals. Aside from a Shellder that Clamped for a bit, he was nonthreatening.
Ponyta was a useable Pokemon, it and Rapidash I’d say are cute enough. But that’s one of the problems with the wide variety of Pokemon early on in this hack. Since you can’t get many of these Pokemon at this low a level so early, the programmers didn’t allocate moves to them at a level so early. There’s a few exceptions, but the short of it is, this can be a bit problematic. In other words, until the 30s or so, it would literally be a one-trick pony short of TMs. I did consider Vulpix, but it was too low level to help.
Anyway, as you may have guessed from the level, the Pokemon up north are stronger, but still way behind the curve. I used none of them.
After Cleff hit level 31 for Metronome, I evolved it. A short time after, Saura hit Level 32 to evolve into Venusaur. Metronome uses a random move aside from itself and Struggle, which can lead to fun results. The first use was a smashing success, using Guillotine to OHKO a Hypno. The second...not so much. Cleff rolled Hyper Beam against a Fearow, missed, then it used Mirror Move for the KO.
I used some of the TMs I had picked up along the way on my trio at this point. Polly got Bubblebeam, Cleff got Mega Punch, and Saura got Take Down. Instead of Bide, Brock gives that up. Some heavy hitting moves should be just what I need to keep up!
There was a Beedrill that gave me a bit of grief on the way to Vermillion, ugh. Need to start expanding soon. But that aside, we were able to move on.
The S.S. Anne had some tricky fights, including this jerk. Thankfully, Polly outsped it - OHKO moves working or not based on Speed in the original games. The Rival was more of the same as before: Minimize up with Cleff, and wail away.
Saura dominated for the third gym in a row. After it got taken out by a rogue Electrode Explosion when facing the underlings, I swapped in Polly against Surge’s. Sure enough, it blew up on the less-valuable Pokemon, and didn’t even have the gall to defeat the Poliwhirl.
There was a real ugly fight on Route 9. Mandel had to use the Weepinbell she was using for Cut, what with HM moves sucking and all, to take down this Vileplume.
This feels a good place to break up the report, as the next section of the game awaits beyond Rock Tunnel, and it’s a bit faster than getting started.
Next | Index
