Pokemon Leafgreen Finale - Many Pokemen (Wish Death)

 

After going all the way around the world, the first city's gym is finally unlocked. Will LEAF become Royal Crown Chinpoko-Master, or will I hit an impasse and be unable to beat one of the easiest RPGs of the 90's? Will the sixth man Machamp pull his weight? (No.)

The cool thing about Pokemon is that nobody ever dies, they just fly back into their Pokeball until the next time they get summoned for this society-wide cockfighting sport. Just because all of their culture are cockthusiasts and accept this terrible practice doesn't make it ok. #EndPokemonFighting

Gym 8 is Ground-Type, which is kind of full-circle from the first gym being Rock-Type.

We've also got some Rock-Types mixed in, which Gyarados easily dispatches.

The boss is a mystery until you reach him, but of course, it's Giovanni yet again.

He may be the leader of Team Rocket, but he's actually not a bad guy, and congratulates you after the loss.

As for the fight, it's basically a joke and Gyarados rolls over it. Usually I think I have Articuno roll over this fight, but I invested too much in Gyarados to not put him to work. Nidoking is the big boss here and it's...underwhelming.

Gary shows up YET AGAIN en route to the Pokemon League. You know, the fights with this guy are getting pretty redundant at this point.

He got a new roast chicken, and it has evolved to its final form. Kind of cool to see such an early-game 'mon getting the nod of being the rival's lead-off fighter.

Here we go, time for the Cave to Rhone equivalent in this game. The toughest dungeon. ...why is there a dangerous cave right before the Pokemon Championships? Why not just have a normal road leading to the building? Are they trying to get kids killed?

Victory Road itself is another Pokemon dungeon and it's as bad as the rest of them. At least the boulder puzzles make things a little interesting (but also more annoying). It's a larger version of Seafoam Cave.

This place is also crawling with women in bike shorts. Nobody wants to see that! Put on some pants!

Here in the endgame, the 'mons have gotten big and beefy like a Texas Longhorn.

Final team is as follows:

-VENUSAUR Lv 51

-ARTICUNO Lv 52

-ZAPDOS Lv 55

-GYARADOS Lv 50

-ALAKAZAM Lv 52

-MACHAMP Lv 44

Machamp drags down the average and might be a problem. Even the higher-level ones aren't as high as they should be for this.

First of the five fights in this boss rush. All five of them are harder than any of the other bosses in the game, and you get them in rapid succession. At least the game finally gives you an actual serious threat towards the end.

Lorelei is a tall redhead.

Yeah, this is as sexy as Pokemon LeafGreen ever gets, right here. She uses several types (mainly Ice and Water) and I wasn't prepared for this. My lack of Fire-Types really became an issue here, finally, and it took a bunch of resets to even get traction on this fight.

In the surprise of the night, her Slowbro (of all things) completely trucks half my team. I mean this Slowbro DESTROYED us.

After that is Lapras who is nearly as bad, though Zapdos was able to win that one. The huge obstacle here was Slowbro, no doubt.

Next up is Bruno Sammartino, the king of Fighting-Types. That type may not have gotten its own gym (besides the sad mini-me gym) but By God it's in the Elite Four!

Dude sorta looks like L from Death Note if we went hard into 'roids and learned to sit properly.

Not much to say about this one. It's Fighting types and Alakazam smokes all of them. Only real concern here is trying not to burn too many Psychics.

Things get tough again with Agatha, who employs a bunch of Ghost-Types.

BECAUSE SHE'S OLD, YOU SEE.

Brood Edge makes an appearance, as I realize GORO has been quite useless in this Elite Four contest. Even factoring out the level discrepancy, there just hasn't been a place where Fighting-Type turned the tide.

Don't remember Agatha ever being an issue before. Well, I've still got a lot of heals, and I'm hanging in there. Can I go for broke and take out the rest, or do my early woes mean I don't have a chance in the last two fights?

Last up is Lance the Dragon-Type master. As a kid I always thought this guy looked like Vegeta, at least in the Game Boy version.

He's got a Gyarados and it's much bigger and badder than mine. Articuno managed to get felled by it. So far, so not-good.

Zapdos swoops in with the electric moves. Zapdos isn't a front and center fighter very often, but when you need that emergency elec-type, he's tremendously useful.

Drill Peck is also pretty decent, and carries me through Aerodactyl (which is no joke)

Finally we have his big boss, Dragonite. This is probably the single toughest Pokemon I fought in the entire game. My party was so mangled at this point that I basically put Toxic on him, then...

...turtled up and spammed heals while Dragonite kept taking DoT damage...

...and eventually won. Cheap? Yes.

Condition after the Lance fight. Yeah that was a pretty sad display. Time to heal up, cause there's one more fight.

Gary is the new Royal Crown Chinpoko-Master!

Now maybe LEAF will notice him.

This is it, the final battle. Whoever wins The Prize will sense the thoughts of every person on Earth. Prepare to be grossed-out, Leaf!

Gary's biggest threat is Alakazam, and they get locked into that thing where it spams heals...

SPAM HEALS!

HEAL HEAL HEAL!

ONE OF THESE PSYCHICS WILL WORK

His signature 'mon is Charizard, and I've got a surprised saved up for that. Gyarados, unleash hell!

All in all, that was actually an easier fight than Lance or Lorelai.

This team really toughed it out and pulled through. Definitely recommend going through the endgame of a Pokemon while underleveled, what a huge rush.

GORO was, unfortunately, a non-factor in the final battles, and that spot would have been much better-suited to a Fire-Type like Moltres or even Flareon.

Speaking of Moltres...where'd he go? He wasn't in Victory Road.

Also that 77 hour timer is completely deceptive. More like 10-15 hours for this one, at the most.

We get a Mega Man credits screen with LEAF running like a noble horse. So that's it for this game...

...OR IS IT? We end up back at the beginning. That third Pokeball is still sitting here. No Professor Oak uberboss then?

No, but we do have some optional content added to this version of the game: Some fairly short islands that are off the main map.

There's a whole quest to do here that involves finding a missing person, and doing all of this is necessary to unlock Cerulean Cave and get Mewtwo.

However, as far as "postgame" goes, this 3-island section really isn't interesting and I've got little desire to run through it just to unlock a postgame cave that I've seen a zillion times.

There is, however, one part of the islands that's worth seeing:

Mt. Magma is a sprawling zone, AND it's home to Moltres. So that's where they moved him!

In the hot springs, we get Earthbound-like full recovery.

Rock Smash is the sixth and final HM, and only really needed in these areas.

Speaking of smashing stones, I love these martial-artists.

We've got another hottie here, a Pokemon Ranger. This one's notable because it's an exceedingly rare sprite. Matter of fact I didn't even see any others in the normal game.

After one more boulder-puzzle (I hope those weren't Moltres' droppings) it's time to get the third and last legendary bird.

This one might well be the nastiest out of all of them in this version, with some moves that can mess up your day.

ANNND it's gone. With no desire to finish the island-hopping section or grab Mewtwo from his cave, this is it for me.

Here's what Cerulean Cave looks like (was a good idea to spruce it up with crystals in the Let's Go games).

And Mewtwo in all his Freeza-like glory. At a lofty level 70, you better have the Master Ball and not have burned it on Moltres like I did.

 Great version of the game, definitely should have gotten Moltres earlier and given him Goro's spot. The three islands can be reached as early as Cinnabar Island and the fights there would have probably bridged some of that 40-45 or so level gap that I ended up running into in the main game. Other than that one big mis-judgment it was a pretty smooth playthrough. Eight years later, I've got Gen 3 concluded.

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