Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4), Part 4 - Fantina

 

It's important to free the nipple. Let them get fresh air. Let them BREATHE.

Today on Pokemon: I take on the second-hardest fight in the game. Fantina, mistress of Ghost-types, is formidable. At this stage of the game, options are very limited. Will I have an answer prepared in time?

This classy locale lets you walk your Pokemon to get friendship points with them, an invisible stat that affects certain things. Not too sure how it works, but I know high friendship is required to evolve a Lucario if one can find its predecessor.

What? These bastards discriminate?

...oh. They don't allow in your giant beasts that might eat everyone. You don't say. Get outta here, man.

The place isn't even that classy as it turns out. It's some sort of bizarre mud-house quarry that looks like it was constructed by bees.

Dawn runs into Dawn's Mom in the next city. I was so appalled by the interaction that I forgot to take screenshots of it, but what happened was: Dawn's Mom gave her a slinky dress to wear to get the judges hot and bothered if she enters the local Pokemon Fashion competition, wished her luck with it, and left to go get laid.

Wowie zowie!

Well, when in Rome. I choose the Cute Contest, thinking Togepi and his eggshell pants should be a shoe-in to win this one.

Dawn changes right in front of everybody! A few jaws land on the floor. A couple of people got arrested.

This competition makes absolutely no sense to me, and I didn't do any practice rounds beforehand. All I care about is getting to the next gym and doing more foightin'!

Elsewhere in Hearthome, Dawn's Mom rides something else.

Bizarre mini games follow where I have to press buttons at the right time and so forth. What am I even playing at this point

The competition is fierce, with some adorable 'mons on the stage.

Togepi is the toast of the city, attracting fast cars and even faster women. It was a tale of rock and roll Babylon, where "push it to the limit" played on loop.

...and then Togepi lost the competition because I didn't know what I was doing. He then took off his eggshell pants and stormed out. That's it for Togepi on this playthrough. Some say he can still be seen sometimes, hanging out behind the Poke Center, strung out on Red Bull and memories of a long-distant time.

Here's Fantina, the third gym leader. Since I did the fashion show and she was in the audience, she's impressed enough to battle. I'll paste what I said in the last post about her:

The third gym is home to Fantina, the toughest Gen 4 fight besides the final boss. In Diamond/Pearl she was the fifth gym, which was a much more sensible placement. She was STILL tough even then. Moving her to gym 3? Oof. She isn't as deadly as Whitney in Gen 2, the toughest of all third gyms. She's probably second-place though.

This gym is a PITA where you have to guess the right door or get warped back to the start, and it randomizes every time. In the Diamond/Pearl version of the game, the doors are all there is to the gym, so it's just plain boring. In this version, there's a dark maze between the doors.

It's basically pitch-dark in here and you can barely see anything, so the trainer fights are pretty unavoidable. It's good to clear the maze anyway, since you'll need to go through it a bunch of times to guess all the right doors in a row. It's more interesting than the D/P version, at least. This game is just a better version of those games in every conceivable way. There's a reason why I only play the final versions of each gen.

Time for Ralts to start earning his keep, as he unleashes Confusion against the Ghost-types in here. Confusion isn't great, but it's a solid basic Psychic attack until you can get the real ones.

Status effects are the order of the day here, and my 'mons spend most of their time confused. Ghost-types are the worst in this game.

Also, this damn balloon-thing dodges basically all physical attacks. This has to be one of the most annoying gyms in the series.

I CAN'T SEE SHIT

Finally, here's the boss. Now we find out what kind of lunatic would hoard Ghost-types.

So the story here is that in Diamond/Pearl, this was the 5th gym. It was locked so you had to come back later. There was a huge space between the 2nd and 3rd gyms, then you got the next few pretty close together. So to give the game a more natural curve, they just...unlocked this gym, now it's the 3rd gym, and everything has a more natural curve. The only problem is that this fight is really difficult for a 3rd gym, since it was intended to be 5th.

The main issue is her ace 'mon, Mismagius, which is an absolute beast. They DID lower the level of this fight a bit since moving it to the 3rd gym, at least, but not enough to offset how much lower the player levels probably are.

I managed to land some status effects and that gave me the advantage. Soon as you can get poison, or burn, or paralysis on something, the fight is basically over, just a waiting game at that point. Confuse isn't as good as the above, but it also tends to get the job done. Statuses are way OP in this series, especially this game.

Surprisingly, Mismagius isn't actually her final 'mon, despite being her ace. She's got a pretty strong Haunter as well just to finish you off.

More OHKOs follow, and...

...I get handed my first loss of this new era of Pokémon. Couldn't even get an attack off, since everything outspeeds my 'mons and they spent the fight confused anyway.

In the grand scheme of Third Gyms, I still think Whitney (Gen 2) is the undisputed champ of third gym leaders. Miltank and its team-murdering Rollout attack still gives me nightmares.

Back to Fantina. This time it's personal!

That damn Shadow Ball is ruining my day. I'm gonna try something here...

Battle items. These things can turn a battle in your favor. Their usefulness is limited because they only affect the Pokémon that's currently out, the effect disappears if they swap out again, and they use up a turn. This does guarantee that Nipple goes first every turn from here, though.

Main thing to watch out for now is healing up after these Magical Leaf attacks, and from there I manage to outspeed them and do some damage with water attacks. At this point in the game I sure as hell don't have any anti-ghost moves.

Fantina comes back and quotes Galaxy Quest, which I just saw for the first time. Well, that's wild. What a great Star Trek homage.

3 gyms down, 5 to go. They leveled out the spacing of the gyms a bit for this version, but there's still a huge space of time between gyms 7 and 8 no matter what version it is.

Next up is another battle with our annoying rival. After Fantina, he ain't shit!

His starter is now in phase 2. This thing gets strong later on and learns Earthquake, one of the best moves in Gen 4. They did a really good job balancing out the starters in this gen.

IMPROMPTU STARTER DISCUSSION

In Gen 1, the starters basically functioned as difficulty levels for the game. Grass was Easy, Water was Normal, Fire was Hard. The choice was a fun one that added a lot to the game and gave people different paths through it, but there was also a difference in difficulty between the three.

Gen 2 did the exact same thing, only in reverse. Fire was Easy, Water was Normal, Grass was Hard. While Charizard gets really good later on, the Grass starter in Gen 2 is one of the worst starters in the entire series.

Gen 3 finally sort of dropped this idea and balanced things out a lot more. Water is the best/easiest, finally giving it its moment after being Normal for the other two. Then Fire/Grass are pretty well balanced and are...Normal mode. Nothing is Hard mode in that one.

Gen 4 is similar, except Fire is the best/easiest while Water/Grass are balanced and are both basically Normal.

The rest I don't remember. For the most part Fire has been the most advantageous in this series more often than not, and Grass has been the worst more often than not.

"Psst. I got the good stuff. The real hardcore shit."

"Yeah, girl. Take a hit of this shit."

No...no thanks, Mr. Goods.

The night gets even darker as I run into a goddamn furrie.

Fantina, master of ghosts, wasn't even close to the freakiest thing I've seen tonight.

What do you think? Dawn didn't get these legs by sitting around on the couch all the time.

The status effects are REALLY starting to get on my last nerve in this game. It's a much faster-moving game than Diamond/Pearl, but it's still too slow when it gives you status effect messages and weather messages every turn.

Odd place here, it's basically the Lavender Town of this gen.

This bird was one of my favorite 'mons when I played Pokémon Diamond on my first DS back in 2008 or so. You could say something into the DS microphone and this bird would repeat it back every time you brought it into a battle. A friend of mine had it go "SKEET SKEET", a phrase that can be found in the Congressional Record.

Well, Nat's a total babe.

More ghost 'mons! Well, none of these are nearly as bad as what I just dealt with.

Yeah, the tower of gravestones and ghosts is where I spend time with my significant others, too. Well, not much else to see here, and probably a good spot to bounce for today.

WHO'S THAT POKEMON??

This Halloween, Dawn plans to be a Sexy Garchomp.

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