Congrats on finishing! Looking forward to the final post.
Thank you so much!
Here’s the final post as promised.
The End
Even if the Challenge ended yesterday, I still played a little today. There were a few things I wanted to do.
First of all, Elsanna headed back to the Max Lair. She embarked on another Dynamax Adventure and finally caught Suicune!
Third time’s the charm! This was a pain. But I still love you Suicune, you are the best Johto legendary and the mascot of the best Johto game. Naughty Nature, very suitable because of the pain it was to get it. I nicknamed it Clear since it is Crystal Clear. This third attempt went extremely well. Elsanna and her NPC partners only lost one “life” on their path to Suicune. I guess Dynamax Adventures are easier when they aren’t done on a timer, which makes it easier to do the right decisions. Or maybe I just had more luck this time.
I also caught the Wailord that can be found in the Workout Sea at the Isle of Armor.
Catching it was easy, I only needed Haru. It has a Naive Nature. It is at level 80, making it one of the highest-leveled Pokémon I have on this file.
I also decided to do the post-game rematches with Marnie, Klara and Peony. Not going to describe them in detail, they were all easy and I won without issues. One thing I had forgotten but learned again now was that before you can have a rematch against Klara, you need to go to the Potbottom Desert where she is doing some secret training with a Slowpoke.
Though it seems like the training isn’t going particularly well…
That’s all I did today. In the end, my very final playtime ended up at exactly 19:00, which is cool.
Now, to the bonus things. First of all, I noticed that both Haru and the Cryogonal I caught (later nicknamed Freeze) both have a Mark!
Like with shinies, I don’t care much for Marks and I have never hunted for them, but this was still quite cool. The odds of getting this Uncommon Mark is apparently 1 in 50 according to Serebii, so it isn’t super rare. But since I only caught/obtained a total of 35 Pokémon on this run, I think I got quite lucky with two of my Pokémon having this Mark.
I also want to show some other screenshots I never included anywhere. First, Elsanna’s face upon getting ambushed by the Vespiquen. It was priceless.
I didn’t include this screenshot during that part of the story since it isn’t very good, I took it just as the screen faded to black.
Another thing I noticed is that Circhester looks really beautiful during the night.
I never noticed this before since I rarely play during the night.
There’s also a quote from Rose which I didn’t include earlier.
Seeing as this was a Speedrun, he was completely correct.
And I suppose I should showcase all of the story-related legendaries I caught during the post-game, with their nicknames as well!
Skyward is at level 71 because it grew a level during my battle against Hop.
Now, some thoughts on the Pokémon I used during the post-game. First, the Catchers.
Haru was very useful against most of the legendaries. Prankster Wide Lens Thunder Wave is a near-guaranteed way to paralyze almost everything, and it worked. It could also chip the HP of the opponent with Flash Cannon and Play Rough.
The main purpose for 007 and Kraxe was to use Soak, which always worked as intended. Other than that, they could also cause chip damage with their other moves.
Bloom was very useful with Worry Seed to change the Ability of opponents, and to Swipe them down to 1 HP. Charm was also great to lower their Attack.
Luke wasn’t used quite as much as Bloom, but when it was used, it had a similar role with using Charm and False Swipe.
Song was mainly useful against the Birds to lower their Att/Sp.att. Otherwise it wasn’t used very much.
Overall, the Catchers worked as intended. I never had to change the weather against any of the legendaries. This was something I had feared I would have to do against the birds since the weather can be varied in the wild areas (Hail or Sandstorm would have been the worst), but thankfully, I never had to do it.
As for the Warriors, I want to say some things about three of them.
Just like during the main game, Quick was not used very much. But I definitely feel that it got considerably better after evolving. More bulk, a second typing and better offensive stats meant that it was an improvement on the whole. Still a slow Fastpoke though.
Old wasn’t used a whole lot either, but I think it still worked very well. Steel is a great type both offensively and defensively, it also has a great offensive movepool.
Code was a lot better with Flamethrower and Energy Ball, allowing it to pull of regular sweeps at times.
I already posted my thoughts on the other members of the Warriors and my opinions on them haven’t changed, so I won’t say more about them.
As for another bonus thing… I had many ideas for what to name the parts of the Challenge. There were some names I had planned to use at some point, but they never ended up being included. Coming up with cool names is easy (I took a lot of inspiration from other things I am a fan of, some are also ideas of my own), but finding names that were suitable for what I did in the game in every part was harder. Here are the scrapped names:
Awakening
First Night Alone
Legends of the Night
White Clouds
A New Side of the World
Into the Wild
Friendship is Alive
There were also a few details I forgot to include in some of my posts. Like the nicknames for the first three Regis, they are obviously related to their elements. There are probably also various errors and mistakes in some of my posts, I usually just proofread the posts once or maybe twice before posting them, so there are bound to be errors. I wish I could have been more meticulous, but I just didn’t have time for it. Though at the same time, I think I usually end up proofreading my posts too many times before posting them here on the forums, so maybe it was a good thing it didn’t happen this time around.
Some more thoughts on the Challenge itself. As a slow player, I enjoyed doing a Speedrun as a change of pace. I think it was good for me to step out of my comfort zone for once. However, I think I set the goal too high for the main game, and too low for the post-game. I managed to complete the main game challenge with 2:33 left to go, but I got 1:21 over the goal for the post-game. Which means I completed one part of the challenge but not the other. But that’s still okay, this was all just in good fun. In terms of real-life time, it took me three weeks in total, which is about what I had expected.
This challenge was very fun and exciting… sometimes I got a bit too excited, as you might have seen in some of my posts. But at the same time, it was also very exhausting. During the weekdays, I usually didn’t have much free time left after playing and making the post here on the forums. So I’m really glad I decided to do the challenge now during the summer when I have more free time, it wouldn’t have worked otherwise. I also think it was a good decision to do it now instead of waiting until my real vacation starts (which was my original plan as I would then have had even more free time). Now that this challenge is done, it will hopefully allow me to relax more during my vacation once it starts.
Fun as this was, I’m not planning to do another challenge anytime soon. If I do, it will definitely not be until after Scarlet/Violet. Which means it won’t be until next year. I have some different ideas for future challenges. Slow Speedruns for other games, and some completely different ones. I’m not sure what, when or even if any of them will happen. We’ll see in the future.
As for Sword, there are of course a ton of things left to do in the game. But I’m not going to continue playing it. I feel done with the game once more. I won’t do anything more in it right now, and it is unlikely that I’ll return to this file again. There are more things to do, but there are actually several major things I haven’t done in my main file either. Like catching all the legendaries/UBs in Dynamax Adventures, obtaining all TMs, beating Restricted Sparring with all types… and a lot more. Still, there’s no denying that Sword is an extremely fun game. Playing through it again has further cemented it as my 6th favorite Pokémon game on the whole. Maybe I’ll do a third playthrough of it again at some point in the future, not sure though.
With all of this said, Elsanna bids you farewell.
Decided to take a real photo for once, as opposed to a screenshot.
…
So what’s next for me? My real vacation starts in two weeks! Wait, that’s not what I wanted to talk about here.
Switch-wise, I am going to move on to some other games. There’s one game I own which I haven’t started on yet, so my plan is to play through it now during the summer. Then there are several others I am interested in as well. Including some which haven’t even been released yet. XC3 releases at the end of the month and my hype for it is quite big! On the whole, there are three more games I want to at least complete the main story in before S/V are released.
Pokémon-wise, I am planning to do a playthrough of Black 2 sometime soon. But it will be a very casual playthrough and not a challenge, so I will not post about it here on the forums. I’m also continuing with my Battle Facility project. I haven’t gotten a lot of progress done on it lately as I have been busy with this challenge and other things. But I have gotten some things done. Still stuck in the Emerald Battle Dome though. Once I have something new and notable that’s worth reporting from that project, I’ll make a post about it in the appropriate thread. Aside from that, I don’t think I’ll play any other Pokémon games until I get Scarlet or Violet… still haven’t decided which one to get, but after seeing the cover legends, I’m leaning more and more towards Violet.
I’m also going to take a break from the forums at some point soon, it will last until I have played through the main game of S/V. It won’t be a complete break though, but I will stop following most threads here in OI. Though I’ll still continue on my Battle Facility project and post about it from time to time. I’ll also keep an eye out for challenges by other people.
To those of you who followed this challenge, thank you! I hope you enjoyed it. Personally, I had a lot of fun both playing and writing this, and I hope you had fun reading it as well!
To end all of this, have a song. One that is made by a rather controversial artist. But this is my favorite song by him. It was also the last track he made before he quit making music (at least under this artist name), and I think it is very suitable as an ending song.