Continuing to document the making of Princéton: Bluff Version, today taking a look at the last trainer fight in the game, Luce.
Luce has a special place in the grand picture of Bluff City, because in addition to being a loose balloonist, she reflects a tradition that goes back to the very first Bluff game — a Janine NPC who seems like a one-off character created for an individual scene, coming to life as a recurring character across three dimensions.1 Once Eloise has made it to the East Beach, if you haven't yet she will ask you to help her get some rope. Once you've delivered it to her, she'll ask you to distract Luce while she ties it. Luce, affable as ever, is ready for a battle between Pokemon trainers; and why not, a fight on the beach could be a good time!
Fun fact: I believe this is the only trainer sprite I went in and edited by hand. Luce is tall — easily six feet or taller, as you'll remember Pomp mentions in the discussion over lunch, so tweaking the proportions and drawing some new lines, I made the sprite the maximum possible height for a trainersprite, filling all 128 pixels. In-game, I don't think this is noticeable, because you aren't ever looking at multiple sprites side-by-side with one another for comparison, but it's the thought (and the work to get it right) that counts!
Eloise warns you that you'll be facing powerful flying Pokemon. Luce opens with a Drifloon as a smaller balloon who you can make short work of with even a pair of Powder Snows, but then you're faced with a atrocious2 antagonist: the Water/Flying Gyarados. Princeton has no move advantage against this type combination, and Gyarados is blessed with great natural stats. But, remember as always: the object is for the player to feel like the underdog but actually to have better chances of victory than it looks like. In this case, Gyarados' fearsome mouth is defanged by its moveset: Splash, which does nothing, Scary Face, which is intimidating (alongside Gyarados' Intimidate that lowers Princeton's attack as soon as it switches in), and Tailwind, which doubles the speed of Luce's pokemon for the next five turns. Gyarados' only damaging move is the Dragon-type attack Twister, which is neutrally effective against every Pokemon you could have besides Gible. With Twister's minor chance to flinch and few natural ways to shortcut, you might have to beat Gyarados through a knock-down brute force battle... unless you've picked up another wild pokemon with say, Rock Slide, or Volt Switch.
Closing up the ranks is Drifblim, the Luce Guce. At level 16, this is tied with Muscles for the highest level Pokemon you've fought so far, and unlike Gyarados, Drifblim has not been defanged. A moveset of Minimize, Hex, Will-O-Wisp, and Double-Edge means you might even have to use some of your mayonnaise potions, ice cream, or lemonade to heal up. Despite Hex dealing double damage to targets burned by Will-O-Wisp, and Minimize decreasing your chance of hitting the big hot-air-balloon, Drifblim's lack of recovery means you should eventually be able to overcome it, if you haven't spent too many resources getting past Luce's previous Pokemon.
And with that, we've completed the last mandatory fight in the game! Next week we'll learn more about the end-of-game, credits, and something special hidden under the watch truck...
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You might remember Maggie Darcy?
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I first learned the word "atrocious" from reading the R/B/Y pokedex entry for Gyarados. What word did you first learn from Pokemon?