Hey, remember how I said in my last entry that the gym leaders were too easy? Well, that certainly changed...

I've tried facing Morty and the results...were not good. I got past his first Gastly no sweat, but then he brought out his Gengar. Which knows Shadowball. First off, I don't even remember Morty having a Gengar, and secondly I know that it didn't know Shadowball, because if I recall correctly Shadowball is a gen.III move (this is my karma for criticizing Ruby/Sapphire, isn't it?). Taking out the fact he's wiping the floor with me, it's actually a fascinating thing to watch Shadowball knockout even my strongest fighters with one hit. Just for the humiliation of it I am tempted to bring out Kazza, my level 60 special attack bruiser Alakazam from Platinum (seriously, its special attack is nigh 300). Except I know that won't actually do me any good. As I don't have enough badges yet Kazza will simply laugh at my pitiful attempts to control it. So instead I am forced to train a new, still-impressive-but-not-as-scary Kadabra, which is proving to interesting as I keep running into these stupid Ratatta and Raticate that know Pursuit and Bite (as I am writing this sentence maybe my game is trying to give me a hint to use a Raticate instead--which would make sense, Normal types just laugh at Ghost moves).

Follow up:

Otherwise I am just doing the small sidequests while trying to level up Kadabra to a point where it can peacefully hit Gengar first with Confusion. I've run into the Legendary Dogs (or Cats, or Beasts, what have you) several times already--which I have never done before. I didn't see Raikou, Entei or Suicune for the first time on my Gold version until after I beat the entire Kanto league. It's cool that I've found them so fast, but it does me little good because none of my pokemon can even scratch the suckers. And one thing I *don't* like is the fact I have no way of tracking them. In all the older versions of the game you had some way of tracking where they are via the Pokedex or some other mechanic--I so far am not seeing on in this game.

A few of the new features I stumbled upon are pretty cool, like the fact Kurt can make more than 1 pokeball at a time, the Pokelathon is AWESOME (I don't have to waste hours teaching my pokemon useless moves and groom it constantly, and I get to control what happens with my pokemon? Sweet!) Though I'm pretty busy with the whole gym stuff, I'm definitely coming back to the Dome later. And lastly: Cameron the photographer. At times he's cool, other times he feels like a creepy stalker.