Pokemon Black 2: The Chronicles of Izalith

I thought I'd do a series of blog posts which are a bit different to what I normally do, and record my playthrough of Pokemon Black 2, a game I've still not got around to finishing yet. My story behind this game is quite a lot of putting it off really. I didn't pick this one up because if I remember rightly, there were quite a few games that were coming out, and I just didn't get around to getting the game (add into the equation the fact that Pokemon games never seem to drop in price.) So eventually, Pokemon X is imminently releasing, and I still haven't got around to playing Pokemon Black 2, so I got it as a gift from my girlfriend and was originally planning on playing through X and Black 2 simultaneously. That didn't really work, I like to focus on one game at a time usually, so X ended up getting finished whereas Black 2 progress didn't really go further than the 2nd badge or so. Anyway, I don't normally have more than one Pokemon game to play through at a time, so it was a bit weird that I ended up playing the newer game out of the two, and I found X a lot easier in terms of difficulty and pacing.
So I restarted Pokemon Black 2 a few times before getting to this stage. First time round, I chose Snivy and ended up hating it's middle evolution. It has stupid little feet that really don't look like they fit. Yeah...be prepared for more hate-filled rants about the newer generation of Pokemon designs while I play through this game.

 

See? Stupid little legs!

I'll be posting updates as I go along, either when I get to something interesting, or just milestones like gym battles.

Starting off, I named my character Izalith. I always liked the area Lost Izalith in Dark Souls and for some reason, this name came into my head when I was creating my character. Expect to see more dumb awesome names from games, novels, anime and other general geeky stuff when my inspiration runs out.

I chose the water starter Oshawatt this time round, and named him Barioth (Monster Hunter reference). Out of the three, water is my favourite type by far, and previously, when I was a lot more into the Pokemon games, I did some mono-water type challenges as my first playthroughs for some extra difficulty and interesting battles. I'll see if I can look through the blog for previous entries about those. I'm sure I talked about my progress in some of the DS games with mono-water challenges on the blog.
I actually chose Oshawatt as I played through Pokemon Black, but whatever, I don't mind. I don't especially like the starters from this generation, and I think I took the lesser of three evils here. I think I have the other starters on X as I restarted a couple times before this point, tranferring pokemon via Poke Transporter and the Pokemon Bank into Pokemon X.

Moving through the first few areas, my inner completionist made me take the time to catch all the available pokemon I could find. I usually do a fair bit of grinding in Floccesy Ranch at this stage, gotta get exp and dat Riolu...(Lucario is one of my favourite recent Pokemon)...the first time I played through this game it took me a long time to get this wee rare guy, but he appeared as the first Pokemon when I got to the ranch this time!
So Genji the Riolu ended up joining Dusk the Purrloin and Barioth the Oshawatt on my team. There are quite a lot of available Pokemon in this area, but based on my previous playthrough attempt, I refrained from adding Pidove (straight up terribad, I mistook it with the Staraptor line...which, if I remember rightly, that was actually good) or Mareep to my team. I have a Magnemite planned as my electric member if I can find one. They are very sturdy, solid early choices. I think I actually got whited out by one last time through...

After clearing up the ranch events, I went back to that guy with the Super Saiyan 3 hair (whose name I don't know) and he told me to beat up some kids with monkey pokemon to learn about type matchups.

My team of awesomeness:

Gym #1 - Normal

 First trainer here has some pretty high level normal type pokemon; Patrat lv 9 and Lillipup lv 9. I spammed Dusk's Sand Attack to reduce the accuracy of the Patrat, and then went in with Riolu who was lower level and finished him off for some experience. I userd a mix of all three pokemon on my team for the Lillipup, chipping away at it's HP. It made me think that I should go and grind some more, as after this battle, my highest level Pokemon is Barioth at lv 12. Based on how the next battle and the gym leader will ramp up slightly, I thought I should be higher level, so I went and grinded some more at Floccesy Ranch (That is spelled weird, I think it should be Flocessy..its like occasional. It always gives me problems...aaaanyway)

Taking on the gym leader, they appear to have Normal type pokemon; a Patrat lv 11 and Lillipup lv13. Not so intimidating, or is it?

The Patrat starts out buffing it's attack stats with Work Up twice. I made some mistakes with Dusk because I was only half paying attention/half writing in my notes. So now it had +1 Attack/+1 Special Attack (see? I used to be into the competitive side!? lol) I was a bit scared, so sent in Barioth to Water Gun it away quickly. Man, that was tough so far for a Normal type pokemon.

Lillipup hits pretty hard while I try and heal up by chucking Potions at Barioth. I then get in an X-Defend (yeah, I really used one of these things that normally just sit in the bag, or get sold) and start using Water Gun. I think I'm past the difficult part now, the end is in sight, then he starts using Work Up...Geez. And he just so happens to outspeed my Barioth, my strongest guy. So I get him to within a few HP left, Barioth ends up dying, and my best chance is to go with Genji's quick attack. He's already used his HP Recover item, so I manage to Quick Attack with my greatly underlevelled Genji for the win. Why do I always struggle against this gym? They are terrible normal pokemon on paper...but something happens and they become pretty strong. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Protip #1 - If you have empty spots on your team early on. Fill them with Lillipups with the Pickup ability. They will net you some items from time to time. I have 3 picking me up Antidotes, Great Balls, Paralyze Heals and all useful stuff I don't necessarily have money for yet.

Play Time - 5:08
Pokedex - Obtained: 9, Seen: 13
Gym Badges - 1

The Basic Badge from Cheren is mine! I'll update more soon, so stay tuned.
Next up....