I’m playing a Nuzlocke on Pokémon Uranium. That didn’t stop being a thing that is happening, I’ve just been doing some work on another thing that might become a thing at a later point in the great sequence of things. Anyway these are the things that have been inflicted on me:
– Okay so I didn’t talk about the rival character last time but his name is Theo and he is a colossal whiny b!tch. He complains constantly, he has an ego that cannot bear losing a single battle, and on a recent occasion he literally left me to die (more on that later).
– My Orchynx soloed the first gym leader, Maria, because she trains Normal-types and Steel’s resistances are ridiculous. The second gym leader, Davern of Burole Town, is much more interesting, since he has ditched the old rule of gym leaders specialising in a type and instead specialises in a habitat: Davern trains cave Pokémon, such as Hentai Diglett and Blue Patamon. I’m on the record as liking the idea of ditching type-based gyms in favour of more broadly thematic ones, so this sort of thing appeals to me quite a bit.
– Blue Patamon apparently evolves into what I can only describe as a blue demon hippo. Its name is Tofurang, which sounds like it should really be the signature weapon of a vegan-themed Australian superhero.
– My Dumbfuck evolved into a Normal/Electric sort of weasel-chipmunk thing called a Kinetmunk. It is much more useful than I anticipated. My Birb has likewise evolved into a Big Birb. It is so far pretty much what I expected, but has one more evolution to go.
– The rock thing which I took to be essentially a sort of Geodude stand-in evolves into… some sort of… armoured rock-deer? At least I think it’s a deer, because it’s called a Dearewl, but its features are sort of indistinct and putty-like. Gotta say, these designers have a knack for subverting my expectations. And if I’m reading the empty spaces in the Pokédex right, it may have one more stage to go as well.
– There is a highly disturbing brain fish that follows me with its eyeless face and plump red lips. I do not like the disturbing brain fish. It disturbs me.
– God damn it why did I make this a Nuzlocke. There are all kinds of interesting Pokémon out here, like bubble spiders and literal fire-ants and what looks like a baby phoenix and crawling meteor-mites, but I keep having to catch useless bull$#!t like Ekans and can’t look at them properly.
– There is a Pokémon who is literally Sonic the Hedgehog. That is all.
– In a cave near the town where the second gym is located, berserk wild Pokémon were reported to be ganging up on trainers passing through. As a result, I had to team up with Theo to get through. He seems… competent enough, but the moment I encountered the source of the trouble – a terrifying earth dragon that seems to evolve from Hentai Diglett – he fled the scene, screaming. This thing is an absurdly high level and an extremely unfair thing to throw at someone in a Nuzlocke, but I had the good fortune to have my levitating Blue Patamon at the front of my party, so it didn’t completely murder me. But Theo still f%&#ing LEFT ME TO DIE and he never even came back afterwards to give my corpse a proper burial!
– I have been provided by one of the regional professors with a sorcerous device which can translate the speech of Pokémon. For some reason I cannot use it to understand my own Pokémon, but it seems to be effective on some of the wild Pokémon I encounter. Which brings me to…
– There exists a very curious humanoid Pokémon known as Garlikid, who looks… well… like a green human with a clove of garlic for a head (I’m presently assuming Grass/Fighting). A Garlikid abducted a group of Pokémon from a lab, intending to free them from their enslavement to humans, only to discover, after I turned up and defeated them in battle, that they weren’t all that interested in being freed from anything. Garlikid informed me, by way of the translator, that it is some sort of Pokémon superhero and is dedicated to fighting against oppression. According to Professor Tree, Garlikid are extremely rare and live in remote mountain areas, so this one may be encountering humans for the first time… and not liking what it sees.
– So that is a bizarre twist to what’s going on, but also a very interesting one. It’s the sort of thing that would have added a lot of nuance to the Team Plasma plot in Black and White, IF ONLY GAME FREAK HAD THOUGHT OF IT
– Also there is a vampire cat and what is it with all the goddamn cat Pokémon in this game
– But seriously though it is, like, Dracula in cat form and I am so confused
– Last but not least, after making it through two gyms and a terrifying cave without any deaths, we have two obituaries to post:
– R.I.P. Dale the quirky Kinetmunk, torn apart by a berserk Felunge on route 6, aged 18 levels. A service will be held as soon as his opponent can be persuaded to relinquish a respectful fraction of his body.
– R.I.P. Shrek the lax Baashaun (this is a sort of evil Mareep that beats you up and takes your money), crushed beneath the bulk of a Dearewl, aged 19 levels, also on route 6. His flattened body will be cured and on-sold as a tasteful rug to defer the costs of a memorial.
– Current team members (all level 20 or 21) are: Bagheera the Orchynx, Bearverly the Cubblfly, Poutine the Tofurang, Birb the Birb, Vegeta the Mankey and Fortune the Dunsparce. Who will live and who will perish? Tune in next time to find out! (Spoilers: they probably all perish)
Pokémaniacal 