Sunday, 15 May 2016

Alpha Sapphire: The Team So Far


I'm a couple hours into Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, just entered Rustboro City on my way to the first gym, and my team is starting to take shape. It isn't an interesting or useful shape but it is a shape and it looks like this:
Sunny the Treecko (Grass)
Lady the Poochyena (Dark)
Kemosabe the Zigzagoon (Normal)
Dancer the Surskit (Bug)
Puddin' the Ralts (Psychic/Fairy)
Seaspray the Wingull (Flying/Water)

Now I'm playing this one blind: no strategy, no smartphone, no wikia. This means I have no idea what's waiting for me in the Rustboro City Gym (no spoilers, please) but if it is anything like the trainers I encountered on the way then I am royally screwed. Hell if its anything like the Lv.16 Wurmple that just randomly ambushed me in the forest I am royally screwed. I seem to have lucked into the most incompetent Pokemon in the least useful combination. They miss like crazy, come down with status ailments if anything so much as looks at them and STAB bonuses elude me.

So far the only ones who have proven themselves even semi-useful are Sunny and Lady, mainly by deigning to have learnt halfway effective offensives moves.

On the plus side, I'm probably saved the agony of choice when it comes to replacing team members when I capture something better. Seaspray won't be with us long because I'm lukewarm on his design and I know what he evolves into and it looks terrible; and Kemosabe is either going to get the chop fairly early on or live a life of HM slavery, I haven't decided. Dancer is borderline, I like the design but I've never favoured Bug-Types so we'll see what attacks it levels into.

What do I want to replace them with? Well, I've no idea what's ahead but broadly speaking Fire-Types are always useful and as soon as I have a fishing rod I'm going after a Magikarp which I'm pretty sure this game has since I just fought a trainer who had three of them. 

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