Elena!! ✨ΘΔ

When I was a kid, I used to use neoseeker obsessively.

Genuinely one of the most explicitly-defined archives of my own actions as a child, Neoseeker was pretty foundational for me in a good number of ways - in my interests, in my style of writing, and most importantly (as far as this post is concerned), in my primal urge to share single-player playthroughs of games with anyone who'll listen.

What brings me to posting what will hopefully be the first of a good few posts dedicated to a playthrough of Pokemon Platinum is a wonderful collaboration between two strong emotions brewing in my brain right about now - an urge to play a Pokemon game before Scarlet and Violet release in a little over a day, and an urge to relive the experience of documenting a Pokemon playthrough like I did on the Neoseeker forums as a child...

With pictures and text, in a place where character limits aren't a concern. I'm finally home.

A few ground rules about this playthrough before we get kicking:

1. I'm going to be adhering to level caps before each gym leader. That is, I'm going to ensure my team is at-or-below the level of the next Gym Leader's ace. We'll be level 14 for Roark, 22 for Gardenia, 26 for Fantina, and so on.

2. I traded myself six newly-bred eggs from my completed save file of Pokemon Pearl - this way, I'm using a significantly more interesting team than your standard Sinnoh fare.

3. I'm not using any other challenge-playthrough rules - this is not a hardcore nuzlocke - but I'm probably gonna avoid using items in important battle as much as I can.

Alright. Here's a good look at the goobers we'll be learning to love throughout this playthrough!

With the help of a few friends on Discord (to whom I simply asked "hey, name a Pokemon from before the 5th Generation) and a little bit of prep on my completed copy of Pearl, I've assembled a motley crew of little bastards!

The Queen, the vengeful ghost of the recently-deceased Queen of England who has decided to haunt me in particular. How lucky. Only knows Knock Off. parisian, the snooty artist of the bunch. he's probably a fan of avant-garde neoclassical music and likes to say "you wouldn't understand it, this is too advanced for you" a lot. Only knows sketch. cuisinez, who's name is french for the action of cooking - did you notice, the game is in french? I bought a french copy of Pokemon Platinum a few months back, and this is my excuse to play it. Neat! Knows Tackle and Leer. Flyfish, the unidentified fucking thing from Splatoon 3. Unlike your teammates in Salmon Run, wild Starly and Bidoof are pretty adept at BLOWING IT UP NOW. Knows Tackle and Growl. Stormy :), the Gligar named after a friend who is a Gligar therian. It's platinum sprite is so fucking blue, I thought it was shiny for a bit when it hatched. Only knows Poison Sting. Sherri, the daughter of a Breloom named Todd from my last playthrough of Pokemon Ruby. She ended up with a few egg moves because of that, so she'll probably be a strong performer during the early goings of this playthrough. She knows Absorb, Giga Drain, Sludge Bomb and Tackle.

It's been a very long time since I tried raising a Pokemon from Lv. 1, let alone six of them, and I immediately remember why this isn't a super common practice. The first few levels for every single member of the team bar Sherri and The Queen come excruciatingly slowly, largely through switch-training.

Sherri has the luxury of knowing Sludge Bomb, a 90-base power move inherited from her father. This lets her pretty effectively clean house against the Starly and Bidoof on Route 201 until she's high enough level to switch-train the rest of the team.

The Queen has the luxury of, well... being a ghost type Pokemon this early into the game! Starly and Bidoof only know normal type moves - Tackle, and occasionally Growl - so The Queen can whittle away with the comically-low base power Knock Off (only 20! in this generation) to gain her own experience. She even gets the luxury of the useful Night Shade at level 8 - it's not going to do much damage this early on, but it'll likely outdamage Knock Off against most things that aren't outright immune to it.

Flyfish and cuisiner, given they're both starters in their own right, only take a few short levels to get going. once they're outdamaging the wild pokemon (which happens right around level 5 - funny how that works!), they're pretty self-sufficient.

That's more than I can say for poor parisian and Stormy, though!

parisian, of course, has one lone move - the ever-unique gimmick of Sketch. I have an idea of a few choice moves I'd love to give our friend before we reach Roark, but they're all past this initial "grind-to-usuability" that's taken up so much time as-is; the poor guy has to be switch-trained until we can finally fight some trainers who are liable to use moves more worthy of sketch than Tackle.

Stormy, unfortunately, might just have it the worst of the bunch. Here's a little insight on the moves it'll learn via level up before our first level cap: It's going to have it rough for a good while. Things very quickly begin looking up for Stormy soon after the first level cap - it'll gain access to useful moves like Quick Attack and Fury Cutter, as well as the TM for Rock Tomb - until then, however, it'll be stuck warming the bench.

I'll be hard at work getting our friends here ready for their first big fight(s), which I'll likely detail in Pt. 2 - hopefully, I can at least get that out before Scarlet and Violet end up eating up all of my time come tomorrow.

Thank you for reading through this whole post! Please let me know if you found this interesting, I'd love to make more like this if y'all would like to listen!!