Pokemon Soul Silver 0 Exp Game Part 15: Final Battle vs. Champion Lance

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MoogleBoss

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Published on March 10, 2012 2:49:45 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ho693R88e4

Game:

Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver (2009)

Duration: 17:07

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The championship battle against Lance is finally here!

Lance is back with his team of dragons and pseudo-dragons who have noticeably benefited from the transition between generations 2 and 4. He still has those notorious three Barneys in his party and unlike the GSC ones that relied on Hyper Beam to deal damage, these ones pack more of a punch, with physical dragon-type STABs.

Lance simply can not be fought by weak Pokemon due to the sheer strength of his team, so Pokemon like Dodrio don't really contribute anything anymore. Stronger Pokemon in our party become even stronger in comparison to the rest here, and that's Gyarados and Steelix who offer the advantage of their good typing and versatile movepool.

Lance leads with Gyarados, which is hardly his best Pokemon. The only special attack it has is of dragon-type so Steelix can switch into it and get its teeth into the watery beast with Thunder Fang for 4x effective damage. However, it's not even a 2HKO (level difference and lack of STAB), even without Intimidate on the opening turn taken into account.

For this reason, I passed Zoom Lens (+20% accuracy on counter attacks) to Gyarados and taught it Thunder. This makes Thunder 90% accurate, and it's preferred to Thunderbolt since the latter has the usual 10% chance of paralysing, while Thunder gives 30%.

Paralysis allows Steelix to switch in without having to take Waterfall damage, and also happens against Charizard who was surprisingly hard to deal with too.

On one of my attempts, I managed to take Charizard down in just two turns with my Choice Scarf'd Ursaring. This time it didn't survive a turn of Air Slash + poison damage. Go figure. I was about to finish it off with Gyarados, but instead of healing it switched to Barney. That fucker.

Zard is actually pretty hard since I didn't take Golem along (even though I went through the trouble of evolving a Graveler and even fed him stat boosters). Dropping Tentacruel in favour of Golem is something I now wish I would've done, since Toxic Spikes weren't crucial in any of the strategies, and it is too slow to do the old Swagger/Attract strategy (plus Will has an all-female team now). The lack of Golem makes Zard freely rape our ass, as we need at least 3 actions to take it down with anything. After an Intimidate, Steelix is the better tank for its attacks as it survives 2 Air Slashes thanks to its steel typing. Zard has no special fire STAB, luckily.

Then there are all the Barneys. Two with Dragon Rush (one of them with Thunder and the other with Blizzard). If a Barney switches into Gyarados, it HAS to be the Thunder one because the AI thinks it's quite clever. Gyarados can handle the Blizzard one with some luck, though, as Dragon Rush misses often.

The highest-levelled Dragonite runs Outage, which is now physical not special, and has 120 BP instead of the old 90. This gives it huge destructive power and Gyarados can't withstand one of those until it switches twice with its Intimidate. This same Barney also has Fire Blast so Steelix is also reluctant to switch in. There's a bit of a gambling mindgame going on here - will Outrage last 2 or 3 turns? Will confusion prevent Dnite from hurting its target? Will Fire Blast miss Steelix? Nothing you can do but guess and hope for the best.

Though Avalanche and Ice Fang are both 4x effective, Gyarados and Steelix need one Leer and one Screech respectively to OHKO. Not OHKOing is a bad idea because it adds a certain level of unpredictability to the battle - will the opposition go for the kill or heal itself when at critical health? Heck, it even switches out when low on HP sometimes.

The only "safe" Pokemon in Lance's team is Aerodactyl. It's got nothing to threaten Steelix with, so it's a perfect time to heal and revive all those who require it. Everything else poses quite the challenge, though.

And with that, the maingame is complete. I will definitely tackle the Kanto portion of the game, including Red, only question is when I'll do it.

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