Pokemon XY All Starter Playthrough vs the E4:
Here's how this went down, because reasons!
Of course, this requires
MUSIC to go along with it!
Drasna is first! Not much to say here; Empoleon and Greninja did most of the work hurling Ice Beams. I said it in the past, but that Altaria needed to be a Flygon; no wouldn't save her here because still gets murdered by Ice Beam, but the rest of the E4 has no redundant typing Pokemon, she has 2 Dragon/Flyings. Noivern is kind of a must because Gen 6 Flier, but Altaria is just dumb. Flygon would be something different at least.
Malva gets pasted easily. Mostly Greninja just sweeping most of her team effortlessly, Emboar getting OHKOed by Talonflame's Bravebird, and dying to Empoleon, nothing much here.
Siebold was next! Open with Sceptile to face the Clawncher. It survives Energy Ball, Dragon Pulse, Sceptile survives with sub-33% HP. Oh look, Overgrow kicks in! Sceptile starts going on a murder spree...then comes out Gyarados, Sceptile returns because Overgrow bonus stays so no worries, and then Gyarados comes out! Ok, so I throw Meganium at it to hopefully Toxic, and maybe get some damage in too. It gets the Toxic, Ice Fang causes Rocky Helmet damage, and Gyarados is at like 40% when Meganium dies. Ok, so Charizard X should have no problems beating this. Things seem to go well as, expected, it uses Waterfall as it's opening move, Charizard X Mega Evolves and takes the brunt of the force. Ok, so he should be able to kill it with Dragon Claw, right? NOPE! FLINCH HAX! Then Full Restore thanks to Toxic, insult to injjury, Rock Slide misses, Earthquake, Zard X dies, I realize I am not winning this.
Ok, looking back at what happened, I lost because of that Aqua Tail flinch, and that Rock Slide is really stupid on Zard X if he's not hitting a Fire/Flying type because anything else that has a W4 to Rock has a W2 to Fire, at least (So Flare Blitz is better), and W2 = STAB Dragon Claw w/ Tough Nails is better. Ok, NEVER USING ROCK SLIDE AGAIN! So I do exactly what I did before again, and win this time because no Waterfall flinch hax, and Sceptile murders the rest of the team.
Wikstrom last! Being a steel type, Emboar beats up Klefki with Flamethrower and Probopass with Hammer Arm. Aegislash beats him because stance change, King's Shield, etc. He's a jerk. I think Aegislash beats another one, but then Greninja finishes off Aegislash because NINJA FROG. He brings out Scizor. Oh dear, how will I ever beat that...
*Mega Charizard X Flare Blitz*
Yeah, that was not hard in the slightest!
Now, onto the Champion! This time, I'm going to do it in EPIC PLAY BY PLAY FASHION! I'll note I lose the first time, because while I beat most of her team fine, her last Pokemon just ripped me apart. So here's the WINNING RUN!
First off obligatory Music Change!
CHAMPION BATTLE THEME GO GO GO!!!ROUND 1:
VS.
I didn't know what she was opening with my first time I fought her, and when I saw Hawlucha, my first reaction was "SHIT! How do I deal with that!?" Especially because I took of Extrasensory on Greninja. Then I realized Charizard was my best openner, who my first fight I coincidentally opened with because he has Fly.
Charizard goes
, uses Fly. Hawlucha uses Sword Dance twice in the interim, gets smashed in the face. Hawlucha falls! I was thinking about finding an image of Hawlucha being defeated but hell if I know where to start looking for that.
ROUND 2:
VS.
If you ever wanted to see a Mechanical Penguin Fighting a T-Rex, this is the probably the only place you'll see it, and you should worship Pokemon as a result! Empoleon summons up his Inner
and fires Ice Beams at the Dinosaur, who Earthquakes, then gets a Full Restore...followed by a 2nd Ice Beam...and a 3rd...and Empoleon wins.
...you know, on hindsight, maybe he isn't as much like Chill Penguin as I thought, since Empoleon actually won.
ROUND 3:
vs. 
First fight, I threw Sceptile at it and hoped Dragon Claw would do it. Sceptile's attack proved not enough and Goodra has Fire Blast I believe, so oops, who'd think the
LIQUID DRAGON WHO GETS POWERED UP BY THE RAIN would breathe fire? I then Ice Beam'd and that didn't work so well because Special Defense.
Winning run? I just throw my own badass Dragon at it. Tough Nails STAB Dragon Claw hitting weakness vs. averagish defenses, Goodra goes splat.
ROUND 4:
VS.
Flaming Sumo Pig is faster, goes first, Hammer Arms, W4 from high attack with STAB, I don't think I need to say what happens to the dinosaur.
ROUND 5:
VS.
Emboar tries to fry the Pumpkin, it doesn't work as well as expected, it sets up Ghost typing, then Phantom Forces! Ninja Frog swaps in, takes the hit, Dark Pulses for the win.
FINAL ROUND:
VS.
Ok, Gardevoir downright destroyed me last game. It's faster than Zard X so a quick OHKO won't work, it does enough damage to murder Meganium in a shot before getting Light Screen up. Greninja and Sceptile are my only hopes for outspeeding it. Thankfully, there's Confide TM, which I give to both!
Sceptile goes in first, because he hasn't been used yet. He goes first, uses Confide! Gardevoir uses Moon Blast, Sceptile barely survives. Ok, cool, I can get a 2nd in, right?
Nope, Gardevoir goes first next turn, and kills Sceptile; yes, they were equal speed clearly. I fear for Greninja until I remember that Sceptile had a negative Speed nature, so it's going to be notably slower than Greninja instead of slightly below and basically, I know I didn't futz up EVs so much there, so yeah, Greninja goes in, uses Confide, then still gets OHKOed by Moon Blast because Greninja durability is a thing and Moon Blast hits weakness.
Next up, Meganium. Ok, this is my most durable Pokemon easily, and it has Light Screen, which is the obvious first action. Moon Blast takes off not so much because of two confides, Light Screen, Toxic, I get off like 3 bulldozes due to Light Screen + eventually lapping it in turns. Ok, now that it's sufficiently weakened on Speed, Megazard X comes out!
Megazard X near as I can tell is not weak to any of Gardevoir's attacks, so there's no way he's getting KO'd. Charizard has Shadow Claw for this fight, which while yes, weaker than Flare Blitz, the last thing I want to do is make Charizard potentially easier to kill in case he fails to OHKO. Shadow Claw hitting weakness beats out Dragon Claw, so it's my best bet here; plus there's the Crit Rate. So Charizard uses it, attack does like 90% damage! And that wasn't even a crit
...well, I guess any thoughts about Flare Blitz failing to OHKO just went RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW, because STAB Flare Blitz is so much stronger. As expected, she Moon Blasts, Zard survives, full restores, Flare Blitz, VICTORY!
Fun playthrough in any event, though a few things that bugged me were HMs, mostly Emboar being stuck with Strength and Sceptile wtih Cut a large part of the game, as well as an instance where Greninja needed to use Waterfall over Surf because even with the -Attack EVs, his Attack > Empoleon's.
NOW TO RUN DOWN THE TEAM!
GOING BY ORDER OF GENERATION BECAUSE SCREW YOU!
Also, Music change:
Probably most appropriate song for thisMVP, no questions asked. Charmander stage, he's generic but he joins at level 10 so he's only that for 6 levels. Charmeleon gets Dragon Rage one level after Evolving, which is stupidly overpowered that early. As that starts to stop being broken, he gets Fire Fang and a few levels later, Flame Burst, so his STABs improve significantly, which holds him over long enough til he evolves.
Charizard...well, Mega Charizard X is ridiculous. High in both offensive stats, so you can be flexible, Tough Claws makes him better at physicals of course, physical tanks, good typing both offensive and defensive, and once he reaches Move Relearner, he gets access to Dragon Claw AND Flare Blitz, steamrolling over things. There were a number of moments where my strategy was just throw Charizard at something and watch him murder things. He was also my only Sky Battle viable character, which the only time I ran into a problem was against Aerodactyl, aka something faster than him with STAB Stone Edge, jerk <_<
On paper, Meganium shouldn't be that good relative tot his team. He's a tank, but doesn't really do much with it. He ended up being a pleasant surprise. The tanking made him good for just stalling things with Poison Powder/Toxic, having Reflect + Rocky Helmet made him good for just sitting there and taking damage while hitting someone with a stat lowering move (like Bulldoze). Nature Power works at intervals for some offensive variety too.
The thing that stands out about Meganium is that it often just gets moves earlier than expected and ends up being better offensively as a result. Most obvious is the early Razor Leaf, where it has 55 Power STAB Crit move when everyone else is using 40 power moves. On top of that, it evolves to final form earlier than most and gets Petal Dance, aka 120 Power STAB, stupid early. It would struggle a bit against other Grass types and Flying types, granted, especially pre-Toxic when it couldn't use Poison Powder, but ultimately, as you saw above, was key for beating Mega Gardevoir.
I had a slightly botched Sceptile due to lowered Speed nature. Thankfully, he still outsped most opponents, so wasn't a big deal, though mattered against Mega Gardevoir.
One thing that held Sceptile back was being forced to have Cut for a large part of the game because there's so many goodies you get with it throughout the entire game. That was annoying. Another thing is how Sceptile has to wait quite a while to get a decent Grass STAB; it's stuck with Absorb for a while which is awful, it can use Nature Power during outside segments for Energy Ball, but then you use it somewhere else, and suddenly it's Earth Power or Power Gem and THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU WANT so unreliable. It gets cool stuff like Fury Cutter and X-scissor at least, but yeah, held back by that STAB. Acrobatics didn't hurt either though meant he couldn't use an item.
He gets a lot better at level 29 when Leaf Blade kicks in of course, because ACTUAL GRASS STAB! Sure, running off his weaker offensive stat, but it's good enough to last him until you get the Grass Pledge tutor, which is his primary source of offense until the Energy Ball TM. Of all starters, Sceptile is the most grateful of the Pledge Boost; while 4 of my Pokemon made use of it to some degree, Sceptile is the one who needed it most desperately; yeah, Leaf Blade is cool, but 80 Power running off a much higher offensive stat > 90 Power. Oh, did I forget to mention Sceptile had a +SpA Nature?
Really wishes Flash cannon wasn't aftergame, but hey, it could use other stuff to compensate. Getting Flying type attacks like Drill Peck, even if off the weaker offensive stat, let him deal with some nuisances, Shadow Claw let him beat up Psychics and Ghosts, and of course STAB Surf off high SpA is always nice. It of course got better once Ice Beam popped up (it was using Blizzard before this), and...uh, yeah, it's Empoleon. Interesting typing, good defensive stats, solid offense, it performed about as well as expected.
Inability to bust Fairies because of the Flash Cannon thing was annoying though, but it could tank them at least.
I kept overselling this guys durability, stupid highest HP of my team by a long shot! That said, Emboar is oddly good at overcoming Speed issues thanks to stuff like Bulldoze and Flame Charge, though this didn't come up as often as you'd think. One thing that is annoying is that his STAB Fire Physicals sort of end at Flame Charge for worth; Heat Crash exists but it's wildly inconsistent, and doesn't really do him any favors on lots of things he hits weaknesses on. As a result, I gave him Flamethrower, and he was my primary source of Special Fire offense, despite Charizard being better at it. Thing is, Charizard is just better than him at all forms of offense, so not a fair comparison, and Emboar's SpA isn't even bad at all (100), so this ended up working out.
Emboar also had some weird quirks in that consistently he was the only one capable of learning a bunch of key TMs. Heck, both Poison Jab AND Gyro Ball were only learnable by him, so he was my best Fairy Buster, which didn't come up often. He also does get a good Fighting STAB in Hammer Arm, which while makes him slower, after a point I felt it wasn't worth wasting time dealing with his speed so the less Speed aspect didn't really come up.
Basically, he didn't stand out much but he was effective when I needed him.
The disappointment, sadly. The game is just so randomly geared against Greninja throughout a large part of the game. His good moves don't pop up until a little too late, and he really cannot take hits at all, so he often needs that OHKO. Also enemies seem really good at hitting his Dark typing weakness, having a Fighting or Fairy move often (Psychic types were huge offenders of this.) The other thing is his offense isn't as high as you'd expect.
He gets much better once Dark Pulse, Ice Beam and Extrasensory are gotten, but they're all late, and before then he has legitimate issues. On paper, he really shouldn't be worse than Sceptile at all, but for some reason, the game just seems so geared against him, and the the slight durability difference the two had seemed to make a notable difference, at least to special, as well as Fighting moves seemingly being everywhere. True, Empoleon had a similar issue there but Empoleon can actually take a hit, and in some cases would get Torrent activated as a result, which made all the difference.
In any event, it was fun, and I kind of want to do another themed play-through but by the time I feel like playing Pokemon again more seriously (I am doing some aftergame stuff too anyway), Alpha Sapphire will be out and well GIGA RAYQUAZA!!!!
(yes that is a thing even if it's not)
