Pokemon Sapphire - 0 Exp Game Part 2: Brawly
23Playlist of the challenge now up:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=986C7BC1ED99BA8D
Updated with each new video.
The second gym is normally a noticeable leap in difficulty compared to the previous two, most especially for Ruby players. The two Pokemon here are high-levelled (though both in their first tier evolution forms), can take a hit and hit back with a deadly attack, powered up or not.
You're expected to beat this gym before you visit the Granite Cave to the west to proceed through the storyline; however, there are immediate benefits to going to the cave first, even without the ability to use Flash outside of battle that the second gym grants. In this challenge, these benefits are crucial.
On the last floor of the Granite Cave in Sapphire and Emerald versions, the players can catch a unique ghost/dark-type Pokemon Sableye, who has great immunities to normal, fighting and psychic attacks. This typing makes him ridiculously useful on many occasions even as his level grows obsolete (and does so rather quickly in this challenge), and he can easily take on both Machop and Makuhita single-handedly.
Machop has two damaging attacks - Karate Chop and Seismic Toss. Both are fighting-type and can't hit Sableye due to his ghost typing. Sableye slowly chips away using Night Shade. Though Night Shade has only 15 PP, it's best used against Machop, because Makuhita has higher base HP and NS will always do 12 damage (since that's Sableye's level).
It might appear like a good idea to give Sableye the berry that restores his PP but Makuhita has Knock Off, which quickly destroys the item, so that's not very clever. We don't need Night Shade for Makuhita though.
Makuhita, unlike Machop, does have a way of attacking Sableye and that's with the dark-type Knock Off. It's weak, using special attack instead of attack, and is hardly threatening. Though Makuhita could potentially stall me out with Sand-Attack, something in the AI is programmed to make him insist on using Knock Off every turn.
This is the perfect time to use Leer, and then finish the enemy off with some Scratches. He has Bulk Up in his moveset too, but he's too busy trying to knock off the imaginary item.
Too bad, the AI in this game is decent in comparison to the previous two generations (as I will try to prove in later videos).
If I were playing this challenge in Ruby, I'd have a lot of trouble in this gym. I would probably progress the storyline to catch stronger Pokemon, though I'm not sure if that would improve my chances - the wild Pokemon in the next areas are still pretty weak, and the options available to them only power Machop and Makuhita up - their Guts ability makes them even stronger when paralysed, burned or poisoned.
But yeah, playing this on the Sapphire version makes it the safest gym battle by far.
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