Pokemon Platinum (Generation 4), Part 5 - Maylene and Crasher Wake

Her upper quarter and lower quarter are dressed for Winter! Her middle half is dressed for Summer! It's Dawn!

Next up is perhaps Gen 4's most memorable gym leader. The only gym leader with his own entrance theme, sung by him of course.

Not sure if this is him singing or the crowd singing or both. ...not sure where the crowd is either.

After all this buildup...Wake sods off. That's right, he just leaves! He's too cool to fight us here. Besides, it isn't even his gym. I guess he was just visiting.

The actual next gym leader is Maylene, master of Fighting type. So what is Wake the master of then? Oh yeah, rolling waves... Water-type.

This gym is weird, and involves knocking punching bags into piles of tires to get them out of the way. It's a bit of a tedious puzzle.

It's full of Machokes, and they generally melt from Gardevoir's Psychic attack. Just OHKOs all around here.

Kadabra gets some work too. He doesn't have Psychic yet but it looks like Psybeam is just as good at thrashing these things.

The abundance of Machokes in this gym kinda highlights the limitations on the amount of Pokemon available in some types in these early gens. Let's see if the actual boss comes up with anything new...

Lucario is her ace, and she leads with it. He's lightning-fast, which is his entire claim to fame, and equipped with a Big Root. This means his Drain Punch is way OP and can ruin your day. A party without any Psychic-type 'mons might actually hit a wall here, but I just mow him down with Gardevoir. The Ralts line was my secret weapon for both Fantina and this.

And then she brings out more Machokes. ....wow.

Psybeam and Psychic...both don't look like how I imagined them looking in Gen 1.

Four down, four to go.

Moving on, the next part of the game transpires near the ocean, and everyone talks about the sea.

This guy was the bane of my existence back in the day. When I first played Gen 4, I got stuck for a while at this part of the game and thought I had to go to Sunyshore City next. This was before objective markers really existed in games. So I kept coming back here after every story event, hoping this guy would let me through...and he NEVER DOES. Turns out that damn Sunyshore City is like the LAST place you go in this entire game.

"The locals call it The Bone Zone."

Dawn: "Sorry, I have a boyfriend"

When Nipple grows, you know you're doing something right.

Nipple continued growing! A man could poke an eye on him!

Level 36 isn't just any old level. This is the level where the penguin reaches his final form.

He's now Empoleon, which is probably a reference to Emperor Napoleon. ...what this has to do with a penguin, I don't know. I do know that this is many people's favorite third-form of a Pokemon starter, outside of the Gen 1 classics of course.

Big upgrade for Roselia here. Spamming this attack can keep it in a battle for a pretty long time, even if it's outgunned.

"Get out, JAILBAIT" says Team Galactic. "We're gonna need to see some ID before we can have you prancing around here in that skirt. Team Galactic may destroy ecosystems and assault people, but we don't break age of consent laws!"

Rapidash Countdown: Ten levels left.

This is probably the best HM in the game, and functions as a Dragon Quest "Return" spell to warp back to any town or city. The only problem is...I don't have anyone that can equip it. I seem to run into this issue a lot in Pokemon, I never plan ahead and include a Flying-type in my party.

My trusty HM mule, Bidoof, can't fly. And shockingly enough, Empoleon can't fly. My plan was to give him the HM, and that's out, so... I'll need another HM mule, unless I can get a really good flying 'mon. I don't have room for this...

Before long, here's the next gym, Crasher Wake. The gyms are really squished together at this point in the game, and originally they were even MORE squished together because Fantina was right after this one.

With this gym being Water-type, finally Ponyta can't carry the fights. Matter of fact, he's obsolete here. Luckily Roselia can pick up the slack, among others. It would be great if I could evolve it to Roserade any time soon, but it requires a stone found late in the game.

The trainers are all sailors. They've got binoculars so they can get a better look at Dawn and her hot little outfit. Bunch of sickos!

"CRASHER WAKE, BROTHERRR!"

"GROUND AND POUND, BROTHERRR! GROUND AND POUND!"

Weirdly enough, again the gym leader leads with his strongest Pokémon, Gyarados. Most bosses leave their toughest for last. Well, as nasty as Gyarados is, if there's one thing I'm strong against right now it's Water-types. I've got decent Grass moves on Empoleon, Gardevoir, and Roselia, so I just rotate them in and spank 'em.

This thing is weaker than Gyarados, but it always goes first, and I couldn't get more than one move on it before it'd drop any of my 'mons. I was already in rough shape from the previous fight. Luckily, Roselia got a poison on it before getting taken down. It was largely an accident, because Roselia usually auto-poisons foes that touch it.

From there, I literally just spammed Recover on Kadabra every turn. Kadabra couldn't actually attack, since the Quagsire would just go first anyway and kill 'em. So I was forced to spam Recover...and the poison eventually whittled it down.

This is an important one, and unlocks most of the remainder of the game.

Gym Snitch Guy: "So uh, what are you doing after this?"

Dawn: "I have a boyfriend"

Gym Snitch Guy: "Dammit! All this work playing the long game and snitching was for nothing!"

Dawn leaves and immediately gets challenged to a Pokebattle by this babe.

Dawn: "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!"

A guy on a beach wants to take her out to dinner.

Dawn: "I have a BOYFRIENNNNNNND!!"

These reporters then ask Dawn if she has a moment, because they're interviewing potential Pokemon champions.

Dawn: "I HAVE A BOYFRIEND"

Dawn then rides her bike through the rain. No one knows what it's like... to be a hot woman and have everyone want you. It sounds great, but nobody really sees who you are underneath your long luxurious hair, your succulent breasts, and your smooth creamy thighs. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIIIIKE!

Well, at least she'll always have her bicycle and bumpy roads.

Speaking of boobs, this establishment here sells the rare and sought-after Moomoo Milk. It's sourced directly from Whitney's Gym over in Johto. Her Miltank, that is, they don't milk Whitney. That I know of anyway.

These cost $600 a pop, and are way more than worth it. They heal 100 HP, which is a lot more than Super Potions. Even later on, while they heal less than Hyper Potions, they also cost a fraction of what Hyper Potions cost. Pound for pound, Moomoo Milk might be the best heal for the cost. So these are good for the whole game, for out-of-combat healing and situations where you don't need as much healing as a Hyper Potion, which is most of the time up until the very endgame. In other words, buying a bunch of these is advised. I got ten, and in retrospect I should have gotten thirty or so.

Editor's Note: Similarly to this, in Gen 2, Lemonade is pound for pound the best healing item value in the game, even if it doesn't heal nearly as much as Hyper Potions. I need to remember to buy a ton of those from the one merchant that sells them when I play Soul Silver.

With the latest gym defeated, Cynthia shows up to give our hero a headache-curing potion. This is important for the next step.

A flock of Psyduck have been blocking this road all game, and now I can finally get them to move. Cure their headaches and they all waddle off. This leads to the next town, but first, a hellishly-long trip to get there.

After a route full of ninjas hiding in grass (as if random fights weren't enough), I reach an even worse route:

The Fog Zone. Can hardly see anything here, plus all attacks have an automatic 50% accuracy reduction.

This one trainer's Scyther ends up randomly being one of the worst fights in the game to this point, and absolutely mauls half my team.

Yeah, I'm getting whittled down to pretty much nothingness here, with no end in sight to this fog zone.

Time to detour back to an earlier area, these cave ruins, to get...

...this non-required HM that really is required, when it comes down to it. Also, if one sticks around in this room, there's a Pokemon (Unown, I believe) that only spawns in this one room in the entire game... and is necessary for filling the Pokedex. It was one of the last ones I found because I had a Repel on at this point and had to go back here to get it. So heads up, get it while you're here.

Defog clears up the fog zone. I defeated most of the trainers in this route while I stumbled around before, so it was smooth sailing now.

Next up: Gym 6 is Byron, master of Steel, and Gym 7 is Candice, master of Ice, as the game begins to wind down.

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