05/02/2017

Pokemon Y: The male Meowstic solo run


My Rowlet solo run showed me that defensive 'Mons with a reduced offensive move pool can nonetheless be decent solo run material; and in the wake of that discovery, I suddenly needed to tackle a male Meowstic solo run. The deed didn't seem so impossible after all, especially considering how shamelessly easy X and Y are.

No sooner said that done; I stuck my still unplayed Y cartridge into my 3DS and before I knew it, I was roaming Route 6 and hunting for Espurrs. I must confess that I actually had this wild fantasy of attempting to cruise Kalos with a shiny male Espurrnevermind the fact that I never ever encountered a shiny 'Mon in any of my Pokemon playthroughs. However, after it took me roughly two hours to capture a dozen male Espurrs, I realized how futile this hope was and moved on with my run. Now, why capture so many Espurrs, you may ask? Well, because I wanted to take advantage of another feature I had failed to take into account until then; and that feature is none other than Pokemons' Natures. See, I wanted to give myself as good an edge as possible and to compensate for my future Meowstic's unavoidable weaknesses by choosing the most fitting Nature. I didn't go as far as to hunt for a specific Nature, mind you; I recruited a bunch of Espurrs and chose the one with the Nature that best fitted my purposes. The lucky winner turned out to be an Espurr with a Quiet Nature, which was quite a good bargain considering that Meowstic's Speed is fairly high and could thus tolerate a bit of lowering; and since Meowstic's most powerful offensive moves are Special moves, an increase in Sp. Attack was definitely most welcome.

The ensuing run went incredibly smoothly and was pure delight from beginning to end. Despite the fact that male Meowstic does indeed has a ridiculously tiny offensive move pool, I managed to end up with a quartet of offensive moves belonging to four different Types by the end of my run, which was more than I had dared hope for and allowed me to handle pretty much all battle situations. Since this is Pokemon Y we're talking about, my Meowstic obviously reached the big 100 level-wise before the credits rolled and could take care of the Elite Four without breaking a sweat. Now that's a job well done, especially for a defensive 'Mon.

Cruising Kalos again right after Alola was a bit of a trudge, I must admit. The fact that you simply cannot get rid of those cursed roller blades is infuriating, and the sheer abundance of towns in Kalos still doesn't sit well with me. And gosh, Serena is the less stimulating rival ever. Not only did she seem less than enthusiastic to spar with me, but her incredibly sorrowful expression at the end of battles made me feel horrible for repeatedly beating her. I want my Pokemon rivals to rile me up, damnit, not to make me want to hug them and rub their back after every fight! Good thing Game Freak ditched the rival pattern entirely for Sun and Moon instead of offering yet another half-hearted rival.

On the other hand, playing Y right after Sun made me realize how painfully slow the latter is. I knew that already, but being thrown on Kalos' roads literally two minutes after starting the game really drove the point home. And we're not talking solely about the general pacing: battles in Y are also ten times snappier and brisker than their Sun and Moon counterparts, with their endless intros and slow-emptying life bars. On the other hand, Y sports considerably more of these annoying caves full of Zubats, and I was none too happy to be reunited with them. The swift and flowing pacing also deteriorates in the second half of the game, which is way too drawn-out for my taste. So if I had to pick up my favourite pair of games between X/Y and Sun/Moon , I'd still choose the latter over the former despite their diluted pacing and combat that feels likes you're battling through molasses.

I actually wonder if Game Freak may have been somehow testing the waters with X and Y before rehauling the Gym system in Sun and Moon. The Gym distribution in Kalos is quite unusual when compared to former entries, with Gyms seemingly popping up randomly in townsso randomly, in fact, that I always lose track of the number of Gyms I've cleared at some point and invariably end up surprised when I'm told that I can now challenge the Elite Four. Gone is the rock-solid and long-enduring "One Town, One Gym" pattern, and in its place comes a much less linear repartition of the game's famous eight milestones. Could this more haphazard Gym distribution have been envisioned as a way to break the traditional Gym mould and subtly introduce players to a different structure while gauging their reactions, or is it just me reading too deep into matters? We can't know for sure, but I really fancy thinking that Game Freak had things mapped out long before the first line of code for Sun and Moon was even written.

With that, I'm done with my male Meowstic solo run. It was an incredibly pleasant run that made me want to attempt even more solo runs with 'Mons that may be considered poor solo run material at first glance. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

6 comments:

  1. If you want another challenging solo run (assuming you're not sick of pokemon for a while), try one with a staler. X and Y even have a really good early pokemon to do it with: Bulbasaur. It's grass/poison typing give it natural access to a lot of the moves preferred be stalers, namely leech seed and toxic, and it has access to a few moves that counter both its weaknesses thanks to TMs. In nuzlockes, this type of pokemon is extremely reliable, able to eventually take out anything your remaining team can't handle as long as the rival pokemon is not strong against it. They can save a team from many deaths and survive a lot of otherwise "oh crap" moments. Given that I currently only play pokemon with a nuzlocke challenge, sometimes with further restrictions like a wedlocke, level limit or no items, I have a gained an appreciation for these pokemon. Bulbasaur even became my favourite gen 1 starter, surpassing my childhood love of Charmander. Pro tip: stick earthquake on it to deal with fire types and either hidden power (fighting type) or rock smash to deal with ice types. The two remaining moves can be toxic and leech seed, and the item you use can be leftovers for extra security.

    In a solo run I can see them making the run a bit more challenging, or at the very least a bit more lengthy. But I recommend you to try nonetheless, if only because it seems you haven't played around with status effects much. The next step up from that would be playing around with buff/debuff moves, a necessity if you ever try a run with a level limit.

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    1. Thanks a lot for the advice! I'll keep Bulbasaur in mind for a future solo run. Since I'm not planning to replay Blue any time soon, it would indeed be a neat idea to tackle a Bulbasaur solo run of X or Y instead.

      I'll make a confession: if I can get away with playing RPGs in general and Pokemon games in particular without resorting to status effects and buff/debuff moves at all, then I'll gladly do it. The reason is simple: I don't like these moves, which I deem too sophisticated and roundabout for my taste. That's why I solely focus on offensive moves in Pokemon solo runs, even when playing with mainly defensive Mons. Blame this love for brute force on the fact that my first foray into RPG-dom was made through super-simplistic Action-RPGs à la Landstalker.

      I don't think I would ever try a Pokemon solo run with a level limit. Not only is overlevelling pretty much mandatory for a successful solo run, but I play solo in Pokemon mostly to bask in the glorious feeling of being able to blaze through the game. ^___^

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  2. I'm not a big fan of the Pokémons from X/Y's generation but Meowstic is one of those whose design I absolutely adored from the beginning. Except the pre-evolution, which is really unnerving, with those big dead-like eyes. What moves did you end up with on your Meowstic?

    And encountering Shiny Pokémons or, even worse, PokéRus is an exercise in frustration. The odds are way too low, something like less than 0,0001% if I recall correctly, although they bumped it up starting with the X/Y games. I still remember when I encountering my first Shiny back in 2000 and something, a golden Oddish. I thought it was a bug so deleted the save and started over and then no one at school believed me the next day. Good times.
    Ironically enough, I've encountered PokéRus several times over the last 2 decades playing Pokémon, which has even worse chances of finding compared to Shiny Pokémons.

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    1. I ended up with Thunderbolt, Psychic, Disarming Voice and Hidden Power (I unfortunately don't remember which Type it was). These moves were rather weak overall, but they were the best choice available in terms of Special Moves. Disarming Voice got me out of a bind more than once despite its low power; Thunderbolt, on the other hand, was an uninspired addition that I soon came to regret. With hindsight, I should have hold onto the move I erased to make room for Thunderbolt, i.e. Psyshock. It was more powerful than Thunderbolt, not to mention that it gained a power boost thanks to the Type matching. Oh, well; this mishap sure didn't prevent me from finishing the game, now did it? :P

      Wow, you met a Shiny and didn't capture it? And you deleted your save file to boot? Now that's hilarious!! But didn't you, like, tear your hair out when you learnt what had actually happened and what you had missed? :P

      I'm not sure I'll ever encounter a Shiny, to be honest. I mean, I only ever encountered one Legendary Pokemon in the wild, and they are much more common than Shinies... But gosh, I sure would have loved to play with a gorgeous golden shiny Meowstic! ^___^

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    2. I have to agree, that sounds like a very lackluster movepool. Well, it's not like X/Y are hard anyway, so you have a greater leeway using sub-par Pokémon and/or movepools.

      To be fair, I was around 10/11 years old back then and the internet wasn't exactly an accessible place like today, otherwise I'd google what the hell was that. And, in hindsight, I was pretty dumb because I'd already had catch the story's shiny Gyarados in a prior save but didn't make the connection. Oh well... :p

      Shinies are really, really, REALLY rare. There some ways to trick the newer generation Pokémon games into increasing shiny rate, though. I never tried since there's really no advantage to getting a shiny but I admit there's always that feeling of accomplishment of finding one legit Shiny in the wild.

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    3. I've read here and there on the internet that Tipping increases the probability of encountering Shinies in X and Y, but it's never been confirmed.

      If I encounter a Shiny in any of my future solo runs, I pledge myself to capture it and clear the game with it, no matter how far I've come. *hand on heart*

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