Toggle Background Color
Update 1: A Storm at Sea
The thread has voted, and their choice was Vulpix!
guys we're gonna have so much fun with rock types
By default, our partner is named after their species. However, for this run...
You all voted for Tango to be our Vulpix's name!
???: You're off to the world of Pokemon! Be strong! Stay smart! And be victorious!
Yeah, right. I know that you're plotting my brutal failure. Don't pretend you aren't.
After this, we transition to a black screen. A flash of white appears.
???: Are... Are you OK?!
Another flash of lightning.
???: No! Don't let go! Just a little longer... Come on! Hang on!
???: N-n-no! I can't...hold on...!
Call it a hunch...
...but I think tonight was a terrible night to go sailing.
Sometime later...
???: Urrgh...
???: Where...Where am I?
...I can't... Drifting off...
Hmm...
No. I refuse to be paralyzed by this any longer! This is it. Today I'm going to be brave.
???: Whose footprint? Whose footprint?
???: The footprint is Vulpix's! The footprint is Vulpix's!
That shocked me!
...
Whew...
...I can't... I can't bring myself to go in. I vowed I would do it today, but...
I thought that holding on to my personal treasure would inspire me...
Tango picks up the stone, and shakes herself off.
I'm such a coward... This is so discouraging...
And so Tango leaves to the south...
...but we don't, because first these shady eavesdroppers have something to say!
Hey, Zubat! Did you get a load of that?!
You bet I did, Koffing.
That little wimp that was pacing around...had something good, right?
That wimp had something, that's for sure. It looked like some kind of treasure.
The two of them then leave the same way Tango did.
Meanwhile, at the beach, something very special is happening!
The Krabby have come out to blow bubbles!
For some reason that makes me feel irritable.
And it's here that we find Tango.
Wow! What a beautiful sight!
If you have any complaints about this GIF, you can keep them to yourself. 
But anyway, back to Tango.
All those bubbles, reflecting the setting sun off the waves... It's always beautiful.
[img]bubbles bubbles bubbles.gif[/img]
...This is where I always come when I'm feeling down on myself. But it makes me feel good to be here like always. Coming here heals my spirits.
Hey...what's that? What's going on over there?
Someone has collapsed on the sand!
...Ugh...All right, I'm up, I'm up...
You're awake! Thank goodness!
(...Wait a minute, where am I? How'd I get here?)
You wouldn't move at all. I was really scared for you! Do you have any idea how you ended up unconscious out here?
...Nope.
But never mind that! Who are you?
I'm Tango. Happy to meet you!
(Huh? Wait a minute...)
(Am I talking to a Pokemon?!)
(Uh oh! What am I supposed to say? I definitely don't look like a Pokemon...)
(...Maybe I should explain that.)
Now listen. I'm not a Pokemon like you. I'm a human. That's why I look odd.
What are you talking about?
(I... I am an Eevee!)
(...How did this happen? What happened to turn me into an Eevee?)
Are you pulling some kind of trick on me?
I swear, Tango, I'm telling the truth! Here, let me prove it. Umm...
...
...
...
...It's no good. I can't remember anything...
...But I am human. I'm not lying about that.
You're telling me the truth?
Oh hey, that's easy! I remember that! I'm...
Unlike our partner, our main character does not have a default name. That being said, I asked you guys to choose a name, and you chose Charlie.
...Charlie. Pleased to meet you!
OK. Well, you don't seem to be a bad Pokemon, at least.
Sorry that I doubted you.
That's fine, Tango. I know my story sounds pretty silly. I don't fault you for suspecting me.
More and more bad Pokemon have been turning up lately. A lot of Pokemon have gotten aggressive. It's just not safe anymore...
Hey Tango, maybe we should move out of th-
Well, I do beg your pardon.
Somehow, I doubt that that was genuine.
Umm...
Heh-heh-heh! Can't figure it out? We wanted to mess with you! Can't face up to us, can you?!
Wh-what?!
Oh! That's...!
Sorry, kiddo. We'll take that!
Whoa-ho-ho! Not gonna make a move to get that back? What's the matter? Too scared? I didn't expect that you'd be such a big coward!
(To Tango) See you around, chicken. Heh-heh-heh.
The bosses for the first dungeon, ladies and gentlemen.
...Ohhhh...
That's my personal treasure. It means everything to me.
If I lose that...
I have to get it back! Can you please help me?
Sure! It's not like I have anything else to do.
R-really? You'll really help?! Th-thanks! Can we go take care of it right now?
Of course.
Charlie and Tango go the same way Koffing and Zubat went...
And just like that, we're exploring the first dungeon of the game.
This last sentence is very important. If you get in a tricky situation, it's a good idea to stop and think out your next move.
This is what we'll be looking at most of the time. The UI tells us what dungeon level we're on, our level, and our current and max HP. In addition, we have a map that will fill out as we explore the level.
On the top screen are our controls, but I'm not going to discuss all of them quite yet.
On the map you might see some colored dots. The white dot is us, the yellow dot is our partner, and the red dot is a foe. The blue dots indicate things we can pick up.
Whoops, I guess I talked too long. Charlie and Tango seem to be getting antsy. Let's do something!
...about that Shellos.
Sometimes enemies will be generated sleeping, meaning they will do nothing. However, moving next to them or attacking them will wake them up and cause them to become aggressive. Our first priority is therefore to get rid of this Shellos, as regardless of what we do he is going to wake up next turn and there isn't anything we can do about it.
Using Y, we can change Charlie's direction without having to move. Now it is time to attack!
We can do a normal, untyped attack using the A button. Unfortunately, it's not very strong and can only attack enemies immediately next to us. In addition, if that attack kills, we only get half the experience points we would get.
So let's use a move.
Tail Whip lowers the Defense of one enemy by one stage. Not terribly useful except in boss battles, where the extra damage might come in handy.
Tackle, unlike Tackle in the main games, is going to stay on Charlie well into the future. Low power, high PP moves have an actual use here, unlike in the main games, because if the move can defeat an enemy then you don't have to use the PP of a more powerful move with less PP, saving that for when you need an enemy dead right now. In addition, Tackle works off of STAB, meaning that with Charlie's Adaptability we get a 2x multiplier to our damage.
The only problem with it is that it is a little inaccurate, with a 95% hit rate, which is not a good thing when the RNG hates you.
Helping Hand is also much better than in the main games. It raises the Attack and Special Attack of everyone but you by one stage. Fun Fact: Buffs and debuffs last THE ENTIRE FLOOR without external intervention. This makes Helping Hand much better than Tail Whip: Tail Whip's damage increase only lasts until whatever you used it on is dead, while Helping Hand's lasts the entire rest of the floor.
Last, we have Flail. Flail sucks. Its gimmick is that it grows more powerful the lower your HP is, with a 2x multiplier at <75% HP, 4x at <50%, and 8x at <25%. The problem with this is that it requires you to be at low HP, a problem when we're only going to be pushing triple digits HP at the very end of the fucking main game. Chances are that if your HP is low enough to use Flail at its full power, you will probably also end up getting oneshot by your opponent if it's still alive afterward. It does have 100% accuracy, but it also has an attack power of 2, 3x weaker than Tackle. That plus low PP makes this one a pass.
In this case, we're using Tackle. We get a superfluous critical hit and OHKO it.
Now that we don't have to worry about Shellos, let's see what's lying on the ground.
Poke, unlike every other thing that lies on the ground, does not take up space in our inventory. Instead, it goes in a separate counter.
That being said, if we want to keep this money, we'll have to escape this dungeon. If Charlie or Tango is knocked out, we will be kicked out of the dungeon without all of our money.
No pressure.
A total of 68 Poke is lying on the ground. Not much, and it's useless to us right now.
In a corridor, we can only see a few space in front of and behind us. We need to traverse them, however, to reach other rooms, and they can also serve as a chokepoint in a pinch.
While exploring the corridors, we come across a new enemy: Shellder. He's not terribly threatening, using since all of his attacks deal 1 damage, even Tackle.
Oh yeah, I haven't talked about Tango's moves. Tango also has Tail Whip, so I'm skipping that.
Ember is Tango's closest equivalent to Charlie's Tackle. It's a tiny bit stronger than Tackle (7 attack power for Ember vs. 6 for Tacle) and can attack around corners, but has half the PP and worse accuracy, at 84%. Tango also has worse STAB, meaning Ember only gets a 50% bonus to attack. Unlike the main games, that bonus is still good enough that it is a better idea for Tango to spam Ember against resistances, unless she has another move that can hit its opponent for super effective damage, due to how the multiplier for type advantages work in this game.
Tango's only other attack move is Faint Attack. It's not STAB, and only as strong as Tackle in terms of attack power, but it doesn't have to worry about hitting, as it has perfect accuracy, and it has 30 PP. Think carefully before forgetting this move, because there's no way to get it back afterwards.
Ember doesn't connect on this, as well as the second one, and then the Shellder dies to a tackle. You'll be able to compare the damage soon.
Anyway, I decide to show off how terrible our regular attack is.
It dealt 5 damage.
Yeah.
Two new things! The metallic tile with a green arrow on it is a Wonder Tile. It is the only way to remove debuffs, but it will also remove buffs, so watch where you step.
To the right of us is the stairs. If we go down it, we'll advance another floor, or end the dungeon if we're on the last floor.
That being said, we don't always want to go down a floor. Enemy pokemon respawn slowly but infinitely, making grinding another option. I decide to go down to the next floor.
B2F
It isn't kidding.
Tutorial: If you find an item, open the menu with the X button, then use the Items options to see what it does.
I will, but first...
Let's look at the Others menu. I'll explain Options and Window separately. As for the others...
Map blacks out everything but the map and UI, making it easier for us to see the map.
Message log allows us to scroll back through the message log, which can be useful during turns where a lot of attacks are made if we want to check something.
Mission objectives shows us our current objectives.
Dungeon hints contains useful information about how to play the game, in case you forget.
Touch Screen sets whether we can use touch controls anywhere, only in the menu, or whether they're disabled altogether.
Top Screen sets what is displayed on the top screen. Right now it's showing the controls, but it can also be set to display our team stats, the text log, our map as well as our team's levels and HP, or the current job. I'm not gonna talk about that last one just yet.
Bottom Screen sets whether the map on the bottom screen is clear, shaded, or not present at all.
Grid affects whether or not a grid appears when we press Y. By default it is set to on.
Speed affects how fast we walk. We can set it to be faster than normal.
Far-off Pals specifies how the game should handle offscreen team members being attacked. Look cuts to the attacked member, while Self keeps the camera firmly fixed on us.
Damage turn affects whether or not we turn to face an attacker when we take damage from them.
D-Pad attack if turned on allows us to make a regular attack by pressing the D-Pad in the direction we want to attack.
Check direction if turned on will ask us what direction to attack in when we use a move or throw an item.
I leave all of them on the defaults, although I might bump Speed to fast later.
Window allows us to change the style of the border. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow us to change the color of it.
Hope you like hot pink!
My favorite one. I didn't touch the default window border in this update, but I will in the next one.
What is lying in front of us is an Oran Berry. Unlike in the main game, where they only restore a measly 10 HP, Oran Berries here are insanely good, restoring 100 HP upon use. I choose to take it with me.
You can't see it onscreen, but we got lucky: the stairs are in the current room, meaning we could leave without encountering a single enemy. I decide that getting extra levels for Charlie and Tango is more important.
I am immediately annoyed.
Kabuto is a Rock and Water type. Like everything else here, she can only use Tackle. Unfortunately, that Rock typing is enough for her to survive one Tackle from Charlie.
So I decide to make my life easier.
When choosing a move, I have the option to set it. This allows me to use it by pressing L and A simultaneously. In this case, I choose Tackle, since I'm going to be using it a lot.
Kabuto also has pretty good Defense. The move would have only dealt 20 damage even without the resistance.
You can compare this with the above screenshot if you want a damage comparison. There's no such thing as double resistance in this game, so Vulpix would have dealt 13 damage without resistances.
Adaptability is insane, yes.
That being said, Ember ended up killing Kabuto. We continue exploring the floor, and...
Hey, not every room's gonna be a winner.
I proceed to dash right into a Shellder. She proves just as threatening as last time: not at all, going down to one Tackle.
Oh right, dashing. If you press B and a direction in a corridor, you will move along it until you either hit a wall, get to a fork, or encounter an enemy.
This is what happens when you step on a Wonder Tile with no changes. It says "X's stats returned to normal" if you do have any stat changes.
Oh for fuck's sake, another empty room?
There was nothing else on the floor, so let's take a look at the complete map.
Cool, isn't it? It's also completely useless to you, the viewer. The game will randomly generate a new floor every time you go to the dungeon.
Don't believe me?
I was playing a different session to figure out what each of the options did. Having reached the second floor, I decided to fully map it out.
Same dungeon. Same floor. Different layout.
The penalty for losing is much harsher than it sounds, isn't it?
B3F
Two dow-
SHUT UP GAME I ALREADY TALKED ABOUT IT
Otherwise, an inconspicuous start to the floor.
To our left is a Sleep Seed. This seed, upon being eaten, causes the eater to fall asleep for a few turns. This sounds useless for us, but we can also throw seeds, and if it hits another Pokemon, they will eat it, disabling them for a few turns.
This is nowhere close to the best status seed.
Unfortunately, we only have room for one item, and 100 HP is better than making an enemy sleep for a few turns, so we pass this up.
And the stairs are in the next room. I ignore them, as I want both Charlie and Tango to get to level 6 before we reach the bottom of this dungeon.
This is a very common situation. Kabuto is outside our range, but it will be able to attack first if we move towards it. In this situation I choose to move to the right, to draw it in, and then down, to bring it within range of Tango. After that, I beat it silly.
When I try moving to the next room, though, I get a very nasty surprise.
Look on the lower right if you're having trouble seeing it.
Water types can walk on water tiles, and Kabuto is partially a Water type, allowing one to flank us.
It's not the only here either.
While approaching Kabuto to attack it, Corsola, another Rock and Water type, walks out of the corridor. He's as unthreatening as everything else and after I kill him and Kabuto, we move on.
...To an empty room and a dead end corridor. Shit.
Upon coming back to the room with the stairs, a Corsola jumps out of the water and starts advancing towards us. Eevee's Tackle, despite hitting a resist, one-shots it.
I decided to see what was on the right, and this Shellos somehow saw me through a wall. When it did, it decided to use Mud Sport, a thoroughly useless move due to the fact we have no Electric moves.
It once again got oneshot by Tackle, but more importantly...
We got a level up!
Charlie's HP increases by 3, while her Attack, Defense, Special Attack and Special Defense increase by 1.
Tango also leveled up!
Unlike us, Tango will say something whenever she levels up.
Her HP increases by 3, same as Charlie, but her Attack, Defense, Special Attack and Special Defense went up by 2.
All that was left to the right was an empty room with a Wonder Tile, so Charlie and Tango move on to the final floor!
...Once this Shellos dies.
B4F
I FUCKING TALKED ABOUT THIS ALREADY
The initial room. The seed seen at the top of the screen is another Sleep Seed.
And we find the stairs right off the bat once again. I decide once again to explore some more.
I find two Blast Seeds in this room. When eaten, they deal a fixed 20 damage to the enemy you are facing.
Meh.
I wanted to explore more, but then I saw my Belly was down to 68. Belly is one of the ways grinding is punished: moving around and doing anything causes your Belly to deplete. If your belly hits 0, the damage of all your attacks is reduced to one and your HP drains with every step instead of regenerating.
There is an item that can help with that, but even if I knew where one was my lack of inventory space means I have no room for it. This scares me enough to bail for the stairs.
Well look who it is.
If it isn't our old friend, the big chicken.
Urk!
That's my personal treasure! It means everything to me!
Treasure, you say? So that thing really is valuable, huh?
It could be worth more than we'd hoped for, I'd say. We ought to try selling it. Who knows? It might get a good price. Whoa-ho-ho! All the more reason not to give it back!
If you want it back that badly... Come and get it! Heh-heh-heh!
Gladly!
...What?
Boss Battle
I would highly recommend clicking that link.
Anyway, this boss fight is a complete pushover. It's so easy, you don't even need to use items.
an oran berry helps though
This has not been my finest hour.
Pictured: me fucking up. I was hoping to move Charlie, Tango, Koffing, and Zubat into a 2x2 square. This ends up working out, but in the moment I'm panicking a tiny bit.
So what do I do?
What I should have done on the first turn.
Come on, Tango! You can do it!
A-Alright, let's do this.
Helping Hand doesn't just increase the power of our partner's next move in this game. Instead, it increases the Attack and Special Attack of everyone but the user by one stage. Given what I've just gotten into, I need Koffing dead now to stop Charlie from getting ganged up on, and increasing Tango's Special Attack will help with that.
...Okay, so this isn't terribly impressive. Just wait until Tango uses Ember.
Koffing and Zubat just use their regular attacks, dealing a total of 8 damage to Charlie. This is a good thing, considering that Koffing has an actually threatening Tackle he could use.
I decide to use this bout of mercy from the AI to buff Tango's attack again.
This time it pays dividends, taking Koffing out of the fight.
Koffing and Zubat's low health is honestly what keeps them from being a huge threat. Zubat is even more fragile. How fragile?
Fragile enough that a single non-critical Tackle from Charlie is enough to take him down from full health.
So yeah, take down Zubat first, then buff and focus down Koffing. That's it.
Owowow...
We got roughed up...
One fade to black later...
B-blast it... How'd we get wiped out by wimps like them?
Bah! Here you go. Take it, then!
Whoa-ho! Don't think you're so awesome. Your victory was a fluke!
Yeah, you just remember that!
That's actually kind of funny coming from you, Zubat, given how quickly you went down to one Tackle!
Bye!
Tango picks it up.
Thank goodness...I actually managed to get it back.
This happened only because you helped me, Charlie.
Thank you, Charlie!
You're welcome!
Later...
Thank you very much!
I just did what any decent per- uh, I mean Pokemon would do.
This is a Relic Fragment. ...Well, at least, that's what I started calling it... But this Relic Fragment... It's my precious treasure.
I always get so excited when I hear tales from the past! Don't you feel the same way? Hidden troves full of treasure and strange relics...
...uncharted territories veiled in darkness...and new lands just waiting to be discovered! Such places must be full of gold and treasure! And history! Wouldn't it be dramatic to make historic discoveries?
And it just so happened...that I found this Relic Fragment.
...Tango, I don't mean to be rude, but that just looks like a piece of junk.
Sure, it does look like junk, but take a close look.
Look there. See that strange pattern inscribed on it?
Huh...
That's a pretty cool pattern. I've never seen anything like it before.
There must be some meaning to this pattern. This Relic Fragment must be the key to legendary places! To areas where precious treasure lies! At least that's the feeling I get.
This fragment must fit into something...somewhere! I want to discover where that is. I want to solve the mystery of my Relic Fragment. So earlier, I tried joing an exploration team as an apprentice...
But...I was too cowardly...
...
You lost your memory. And you somehow transformed into a Pokemon... Do you have anyplace you can stay?
That's right! I was so caught up in recovering your Relic Fragment that I forgot about my situation.
...And while I remembered my name, I didn't remember where I lived. I'm essentially homeless..
I see... In that case, can I ask a big favor?
I think we could make a good exploration team together, Charlie. So will you do that with me? Please?
...
Sure!
You'll really form an exploration team with me?
Yay! Thank you!
We're going to be a great combination! Let's make this work!
That's where we can get the training to become a proper exploration team. I think the training will be very tough...
So let's give it our best, Charlie!
Yeah, Tango!
Narrator: And so, Tango and Charlie formed an exploration team. This turned out to be their very first step into many fantastic realms of adventure that awaited their arrival.
