Here we are, going all Electric again in Sinnoh! And going all cute this time too, with the utterly adorable Pachirisu being my One and Only
du jour. I love squirrels ever since I got a stuffed one as a infant, so cruising with Pachirisu was going to a delight no matter what. After polishing off the Rock Gym with Piplup
— let's make this easy, because why not?
— I recruited a Pachirisu next to the Valley Windworks; and since I was out of electric-themed names and squirrels are famous for their nut-hoarding ways, I decided to name my new lone ranger Nocciolata. Because hey, who doesn't love delicious italian hazelnut spread?
I'll say it: Pachirisu totally blew my mind. I had a number of preconceptions regarding the Sinnoh squirrel's fighting niche, going from him being a status effect caster to him being one of those fast yet fragile Do-or-die 'Mons. The one thing I never,
ever expected him to be
— nor any Pikachu clone, for that matter
— was a frigging
staller. How can that cute teeny-tiny squirrel be so incredibly buff and sturdy? GameFreak nicely subverted expectations with that one, and I loved being taken by surprise
— all the more so as it doesn't happen so often anymore with me being the
Pokemon solo run veteran I am. The number of hits Pachirisu can swallow without breaking a sweat is properly astounding; my lovely Nocciolata didn't faint a single time, and I can count on the fingers on one hand the number of times he was down to the last quarter of his HP bar. Heck, Ground Moves themselves never took away more than half of said HP bar! Earthquake? Please b*tch, you couldn't one-shoot me even if you had the manual. Needless to say, my peace of mind on the battlefield was utterly ensured with such a hardy 'Mon: I could do my thing unhindered, confident that my little Nocciolata would survive pretty much any assault.
Pachirisu's defensive pizzazz nicely compensates for his slightly lacklustre offensive prowess. With an Attack and Sp.Attack of 45, the Sinnoh squirrel kinda lacks punch; and unlike other weak 'Mons out there, he cannot rely on some evolution down the line to rev up his fighting oomph. On top of that, my Nocciolata's Attack was actually lower than his Sp.Attack, despite him boasting a Docile nature that should have left his base stats unchanged
— puzzling, to say the least. This led to an insanely irritating situation that I don't remember having ever encountered before in a solo run, with my Pachirisu being able to empty foes' HP bars nearly entirely
— yet not quite
completely. I lost count of the number of times the opponent was left with literally one pixel of HP, forcing me to waste a precious move and making the fight last longer than it should. I never knew what I could expect from a hit, and if a turn was going to be the last or not.
Pachirisu's default learnset is pretty similar to
Luxray's one, with Spark (later discarded in favour of TM Shock Wave by yours truly) and Discharge as his Electric Moves of choice. However, he has to make do with Normal only when it comes to other Types, which could easily have led to a sorry retread of my
Pikachu solo run of
Yellow. Fortunately, my little squirrel had an ace in the hole: TM Grass Knot, a.k.a. the best way to wipe a battlefield clean in Sinnoh and virtually erase Pachirisu's one and only Type weakness. It never dawned on me before how abundant Rock, Ground and Water 'Mons are in Sinnoh
— but I'm very aware of it now indeed. Ironically enough, I was in no hurry to learn the move at first, and only did so because I didn't want to be stuck with Normal and Electric Moves; and boy, didn't I regret it afterwards! Grass Knot's usefulness only grew over time, and I cannot even begin to explain how much of a death sentence it proved for Ground or Rock 'Mons that were also heavy. Which, incidentally, is nearly always the case. In a nutshell: I spent pretty much 80% of my run spamming Grass Knot, Return, Shock Wave and Discharge, but didn't even suffer from it thanks to how versatile and efficient those Moves were. This goes to show that when it comes to Move pools, performance matters more than variety indeed.
I'm done with my Pachirisu run of
Pearl, and let me tell you: I'm also done with
Pearl as a whole, and with
Diamond as well. That pair is just the slowest of the slow when it comes to pacing, and I cannot bear the thought of enduring any more runs of them. From now on, I'm gonna stick to
Platinum when it comes to all things Sinnoh: it's faster, prettier and overall much more enjoyable. Thanks for following my solo run
Pokemon adventures, dear fellow gamers; there's more coming soon, so stay tuned!
Wait, it's a tank? I never knew that. I knew it wad used by the winner of a RL Pokemon tournament, which shocked (hah!) everyone, but I never took the time to look too closely. And it's one of the cutest Pikachu clones to boot, tied with Emolga in my opinion (that has it's own advantage by being part flying, so it's immune to ground).
ReplyDeleteI think I might actually take a page of your book and do this as well, though I still don't want to play Platinum again. Let's see...wait, not available on gen VII, not available in the gen III remakes, and appears just before the third gym in gen VI, which is super late considering it takes forever to get to the second gym. In Black/White II, it's only in a hidden groto at level 55.
You can get Emolga before the first gym in X and Y, but super late in Sun and Moon. Level 57! Sky battles with Emolga sounds adorable, but I'm really tired of X and Y. Well, I guess I'll save it for when I want to do another run of Black and White.
This sucks. This is why I hate having so many pokemon. Unless it's a gen I pokemon or it's ultra super popular, you're only going to reasonably have that pokemon in a team in its own generation and nowhere else.
I hate to always compare the series to Digimon but...in Digimon Story you can raise any digimon from a few babies you can get in the first few areas, some just take a longer than others. This makes it so you can have a completely different team each playthrough, and start planning for it from the start. (actually I don't regret comparing them all the time. Pokemon fans were always deriding Digimon by calling it an inferior rip-off, so screw it.)
Pachirisu works really well as a tank, no doubt about that. On top of his high defensive stats, he has Sweet Kiss, Endure and Last Resort in his arsenal, which gives him the potential to be the most annoying pest in combat. Pachirisu's call in life is to linger on the battlefield for a million turns, taking hits comfortably while slowly but surely destroying the opposition. Can you imagine the havoc Last Resort alone can wreak? That Move makes Pachirisu a tool of destruction! He's more than sturdy enough to endure three turns and use his other Moves first, especially if he cast Sweet Kiss and manages to confuse the opponent. I could certainly have used that trick in some of the Pokemon League battles!
DeleteIn fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Pachirisu is a really versatile and well-rounded 'Mon. He's really fast on top of being sturdy, which means that he can often act first in battle and thus gain the upper hand. He can survive one-shooting with Endure, and inflict it with Last Resort. And he can dole out Paralysis and Confusion thanks to Sweet Kiss and Discharge. I'm not surprised somebody won a Pokemon Tournament with that little wolf in sheep's clothing! Writing about this actually makes me want to try cruising with Pachirisu again, this time using different strategies and making the most of his stalling Moves. Maybe I'll go for it again in X&Y; Gen VI made Pachirisu even more badass, and I can use trading to get him right from the start.
And talking about Gen VI and squirrels, Emolga is most definitely on my shortlist of solo run candidates. He's just too utterly adorable to ignore! I love the Pikachu clones overall, and totally wouldn't mind running solo with them all. Now that's an idea for a future feature! ^__^
I think everyone was shocked to even see Pachirisu in a tournament, much less be the winner. The extremely boring thing about competitive pokemon is that there's 5 or six optimal teams you'll see, and most of those will have shared pokemon between them. It's very against the core of pokemon in my opinion. Sadly, with the way the meta game works, it's very unlikely to see something like that ever happen again, but at least Pachirisu will always be remembered.
DeleteYou know, as much as I hate Sun and Moon, Togedemaru is absolutely adorable. And the steel typing is interesting. I hope he's in sword and shield so I can play him in game without lag (hey, finally a little bit of optimism towards that game!). Dedenne is...ugly, but his dual typing is also interesting (though in retrospect, it should have gone to Alolan Raichu). Honestly, out of all the clones, only Plusle and Minun are boring. If you do this idea, is it even worth it to do two runs for them?
Also, I'm stealing Nocciolata's name because I'm garbage at naming Pokemon. When I do Nuzlockes, I have to have a list of names with a theme (like trees, colours, desserts, etc) or else it all goes downhill. Otherwise I just pick simple names in Japanese (like Saru for any monkey pokemon) or a dumb meshing of syllables. I'm only proud of the name I give my male Eevees - Janus, who is the roman god of beginnings/transitions/duality - and I didn't even come up with it. I saw someone else on the internet with that idea. So from now on, all my squirrels in gaming are being named Nocciolata or plain Hazelnut.
Regarding Plusle and Minun, I'll only do two runs if their stats and learnsets are at odds enough to justify it — like, male and female Meowstic levels of being at odds. Otherwise, I'll just cruise with the better half of the pair, or with the first one I manage to recruit. We'll see!
DeleteOh boy, don't get me started on the hassle of finding suitable names for 'Mons! :D I generally suck at it too. I usually go for simple names tied to the 'Mon du jour physical characteristics or type, and I try to tie them with the entry's title to make things easier. I love gen III and IV in that regard, because I can use and reuse names of gemstones and metals endlessly! :P I also try to play with different languages to give myself more leeway. At least, things are nicely clear-cut when it comes to my Trainer: they always get the name of the entry I'm playing. Problem solved! Except with X&Y, of course. :P
Funnily enough, the only name I'm genuinely proud of is also an Eevee name! That would be Eeveeta, which was the name of my female Eevee in my Flareon solo run of White 2. Too bad female Eevees are so darn rare! Heck, maybe I'll slap that name on all my Eevees regardless of their sex. I still have plenty of Eevee runs to perform, and it would be a shame to let that name go to waste!