Back in the old days of Pokemon, moves were either physical or special based on their typing. For the most part, Pokemon were designed accordingly. Physical types were attached to physical Pokemon, and special types attached to special Pokemon. Even somewhat strange Pokemon like Flareon, a Pokemon with sky-high base 130 attack but no STAB to use it on, still had a solid special stat. Not all Pokemon were so fortunate, though. Some were cursed with utterly mismatched typings and stats, leaving them with no hope of a good STAB. Yet, if GameFreak gave them these typings, there must be something to them. So, let’s drink from GameFreak’s fountain of wisdom and use these misfits as their typings suggest. What could go wrong?
To explicitly lay out how I’ll be playing:
Let’s get started! First choice is the starter. None of them are viable choices for my party, so this only affects the rival’s starter Pokemon. I picked Cyndaquil for him to get Feraligatr, which I thought would be the hardest option for me. I quickly go through the start of the game so I can actually catch Pokemon. It doesn’t take long for me to find my first real party member, a Caterpie. The Butterfree it’ll eventually evolve in to is perfect for this run as a Bug/Flying-type with a pathetic 45 base attack. I catch a Level 4 one that’s male. While DVs are hard to check at this level, Gen 2 actually generates gender based on the attack DV, which for a 50/50 gender split like Caterpie means the males have 8 or higher attack – not bad.
With my first party member received, I go to grind a little bit. Solo Caterpie is basically not feasible for the route to Violet City without items, sadly. Caterpie’s pretty bad and doesn’t benefit from the excellent starter exp curve, so it takes around 15 minutes to get to Level 6. With that out of the way it’s time to start this adventure proper. Caterpie is barely able to slug its way through each fight, needing to use a Berry for the infamous Youngster Joey and the trainer after him. Soon after it evolves into Metapod and enjoys a nice defense buff. The Bug Catcher near the end has a Weedle that can poison me, so I give Metapod a PsnCureBerry to deal with that.
Sprout Tower
Once I’m at Violet City, I can go ahead to the Sprout Tower and claim my second Pokemon, Gastly. To be honest, Gastly only has access to physical moves for a while even in a normal playthrough, so it’s not that different for now. The lack of Hypnosis hurts, though. I pay attention to the gender again, trying to get a male. Now for the trainers. With two Pokemon that resist Grass, the Bellsprout here don’t put up much of a fight and are easy pickings despite my team’s meager offense. Metapod evolves into Butterfree and is forced to learn Confusion, which I just have to avoid using until I can teach something over it. Despite the lack of Confusion, Butterfree still has little trouble bulldozing miniboss Sage Li and his Level 10 Hoothoot. It’s missing Peck…
Speaking of Hoothoot’s physical ineptitude, I should explain why I’m not using one. As a Normal/Flying-type with terrible attack, it seems perfectly suited for this run. However, I decided against it because while this is a challenge run, part of the fun is the novelty of using all these Pokemon how they’re not actually intended to be used. But Hoothoot and Noctowl have such pathetic special movepools that using them would be barely different than a normal run – all they get is Confusion (at Level 41…), Dream Eater, and Thief. No, I didn’t forget Psychic. GameFreak did! Combined with the fact I’ll be getting another Normal/Flying-type eventually, I just didn’t see the point of including Noctowl.
Violet Gym
Everything in Falkner’s gym is Normal/Flying, which means Gastly can’t do anything without Hypnosis, so it’s up to Flying-weak Butterfree to pull through. The first trainer has a Level 9 Spearow that puts up quite a fight, requiring Butterfree to use a Berry, Harden twice, then barely win as it and Spearow exchange blows. The other trainer just has two Pidgeys that lack Flying moves, so he’s much easier. For Falkner, Butterfree basically needs Poisonpowder to get through the fight. Unfortunately, Butterfree is just under Level 12, a fair bit short. In retrospect I would’ve forgone training Gastly for now, as it’s virtually useless for this fight. Oh well, not much to do but some quick grinding. I spend around 10 minutes in the Ruins of Alph fighting Unown to get to Level 13, forgetting the icky Confusion for Poisonpowder.
Falkner
Falkner’s lead, Pidgey, lacks Flying moves for whatever reason, so it’s not particularly hard to set up 6 Hardens on it. Before setting up, I poison it so it’s nearly down by the time I finish setting up. When Pidgeotto comes out, I also poison it, then laugh as it can’t break through my incredibly hard butterfly with its 5 damage Gusts before succumbing to poison and Tackles. With that, my “team” (a.k.a. Butterfree) win their first Gym badge and get a much needed passive 12.5% attack buff. Another completely unmentioned property of Gym badges in Gen 2 is that they also provide a 12.5% damage buff to the type the Gym Leader used, in this case Flying. This particular one isn’t too useful, but many of these down the road will be a godsend.
Getting to Azalea with a New Pokemon
Upon leaving the Gym, I get a very interesting call from Professor Elm about a mystery Pokemon Egg. After spending an agonizing amount of time hatching it (no Bike, no Running Shoes, no Flame Body…), out pops the mighty Togepi. Most would be dismayed to see a Normal-type with 20 base attack as their surprise, but for this run it’s perfect. The only damaging move it can actually learn at this point is Mud-Slap, which is, uh, something. I teach it then head south. Underleveled with a 20 BP move, Togepi needs to be switch-trained for the most part, though it is a pretty helpful lead with Charm and accuracy drops. At Level 6, I have it face the Level 9 Nidoran-F to see how it fares by itself, and it takes all 10 Mud-Slaps to down it, to give you an idea of Togepi’s raw power. At Level 7 it learns Metronome, a fun and surprisingly usable way to damage foes, but sadly there’s no fun allowed here as it might call a special move. I have a weird fight against one of the Fisherman’s Poliwags where it hits 7 consecutive Water Guns despite being Mud-Slapped down the whole time – I have absolutely no idea what went on there. Only other thing of note is that Butterfree gained a level and learned Stun Spore, which I taught over String Shot.
Moving on to Union Cave, the sturdy Rock-types can be slowly dealt with Togepi’s Mud-Slap, with back-up from Gastly’s unresisted Lick. In here the very valuable Swift TM can be found, which would cure Togepi of its anemic offense and then some. Sadly, it’s a much better long-term investment on Butterfree, who ditches Tackle for it. Butterfree presses its lead as the team’s breadwinner for now. It should definitely relish it while it can…
Another New Pokemon
I move onto Azalea Town, where I can head into the Ilex Forest and get my 4th Pokemon, Venonat. While Venomoth’s stat spread is fitting for this run, Venonat actually has a higher attack stat to match its type. As such it’s a little ill-fitting for this challenge run for a while, but at least it fulfills the “challenge” component. Venonat is terrible until Sludge Bomb, especially with the Swift TM already used. It doesn’t help matters that the levels in Ilex Forest are strangely terrible – Venonat only appears at Level 5. So it also has to be switch-trained for a while, unfortunately. Someday I will have self-sufficient Pokemon besides Butterfree… I go on ahead to the Rockets in Slowpoke Well and later on the trainers in the Azalea Gym. Neither are very troublesome even with the burden of switch-training, but they’re not enough to catch Venonat up for the boss fights coming up. Not that it would be particularly helpful anyways.
Bugsy
Bugsy leads with Metapod, which Butterfree fittingly deals with. His next seems to be somewhat random, as it can be either Kakuna or Scyther. It doesn’t particularly matter which it is, but I found the behavior odd. In my winning run he sent out Scyther, his only real threat, but what a threat it is. Scyther takes negligible damage and quickly dismantles everything with Fury Cutter, no matter the resistance. Butterfree can start to nerf it with Stun Spore, though. I opt for this over Poisonpowder because of the inevitability of a full paralysis, breaking Scyther’s Fury Cutter chain. I then swap over to Togepi and Charm it twice, which heavily neuters it. My next move made more sense in my head, but I swapped to Venonat to confuse Scyther with Supersonic for some nice damage. Of course, I forgot there would be nothing “nice” about the damage due to Charm. Thankfully my time is not wasted as Scyther proceeds to hit itself four times in a row after I switch to Gastly. Completely unnecessary, but it does speed up the fight a bit. Gastly can only very slowly Lick Scyther down, so it’s a very drawn-out affair. After several turns Scyther goes down, and Bugsy ends with Kakuna which Butterfree also handles easily.
Rival (Azalea Town)
Almost right after Bugsy is another Rival confrontation. He leads with a Gastly of his own, which can be pretty annoying with Hypnosis. Togepi can deal with it slowly with Mud-Slap, but I tried my own Gastly on this attempt and got lucky with a Lick full-paralysis so I rolled with it. It doesn’t really matter – his Gastly just wastes time more than anything. I learn Curse from defeating it, which is incredibly useful. Zubat comes out next, but without a Flying-move Butterfree switches in and easily wins with its superior stats. Last is Croconaw, which tries to Scratch, but that’s a free switch for Gastly. I then Curse as it uses Leer. Gastly can still take another hit so I chip a little with Lick as it uses Water Gun, and paralyze it. I don’t actually want Gastly to faint though, as Curse damage in Gen 2 doesn’t trigger when the cursed Pokemon KOs something. So I switch to Venonat, who takes around a third from Water Gun. Since it’s paralyzed, I Disable its Water Gun to waste its next turn, which isn’t needed, but hey, it looks cool. After that, Croconaw succumbs to Curse and my rival is defeated.
Team Status:
Butterfree Level 15
Swift/Stun Spore/Harden/Poisonpowder
Gastly Level 16
Lick/Curse/Spite/Mean Look
Togepi Level 13
Mud-Slap/Charm/Growl/Metronome
Venonat Level 12
Tackle/Disable/Foresight/Supersonic
To explicitly lay out how I’ll be playing:
- Only using Pokemon where all of their STABs are for their significantly lower offense stat.
- Any damaging moves must be off of the weaker offense stat. Non-damaging moves are fine, except for the next restriction.
- No inflicting sleep. This might seem a little random, but sleep lasts forever in Gen 2, and without Sleep Clause ingame I think it’s ridiculously broken.
- Set mode.
- No bag items in battle.
Let’s get started! First choice is the starter. None of them are viable choices for my party, so this only affects the rival’s starter Pokemon. I picked Cyndaquil for him to get Feraligatr, which I thought would be the hardest option for me. I quickly go through the start of the game so I can actually catch Pokemon. It doesn’t take long for me to find my first real party member, a Caterpie. The Butterfree it’ll eventually evolve in to is perfect for this run as a Bug/Flying-type with a pathetic 45 base attack. I catch a Level 4 one that’s male. While DVs are hard to check at this level, Gen 2 actually generates gender based on the attack DV, which for a 50/50 gender split like Caterpie means the males have 8 or higher attack – not bad.
With my first party member received, I go to grind a little bit. Solo Caterpie is basically not feasible for the route to Violet City without items, sadly. Caterpie’s pretty bad and doesn’t benefit from the excellent starter exp curve, so it takes around 15 minutes to get to Level 6. With that out of the way it’s time to start this adventure proper. Caterpie is barely able to slug its way through each fight, needing to use a Berry for the infamous Youngster Joey and the trainer after him. Soon after it evolves into Metapod and enjoys a nice defense buff. The Bug Catcher near the end has a Weedle that can poison me, so I give Metapod a PsnCureBerry to deal with that.
Sprout Tower
Once I’m at Violet City, I can go ahead to the Sprout Tower and claim my second Pokemon, Gastly. To be honest, Gastly only has access to physical moves for a while even in a normal playthrough, so it’s not that different for now. The lack of Hypnosis hurts, though. I pay attention to the gender again, trying to get a male. Now for the trainers. With two Pokemon that resist Grass, the Bellsprout here don’t put up much of a fight and are easy pickings despite my team’s meager offense. Metapod evolves into Butterfree and is forced to learn Confusion, which I just have to avoid using until I can teach something over it. Despite the lack of Confusion, Butterfree still has little trouble bulldozing miniboss Sage Li and his Level 10 Hoothoot. It’s missing Peck…
Speaking of Hoothoot’s physical ineptitude, I should explain why I’m not using one. As a Normal/Flying-type with terrible attack, it seems perfectly suited for this run. However, I decided against it because while this is a challenge run, part of the fun is the novelty of using all these Pokemon how they’re not actually intended to be used. But Hoothoot and Noctowl have such pathetic special movepools that using them would be barely different than a normal run – all they get is Confusion (at Level 41…), Dream Eater, and Thief. No, I didn’t forget Psychic. GameFreak did! Combined with the fact I’ll be getting another Normal/Flying-type eventually, I just didn’t see the point of including Noctowl.
Violet Gym
Everything in Falkner’s gym is Normal/Flying, which means Gastly can’t do anything without Hypnosis, so it’s up to Flying-weak Butterfree to pull through. The first trainer has a Level 9 Spearow that puts up quite a fight, requiring Butterfree to use a Berry, Harden twice, then barely win as it and Spearow exchange blows. The other trainer just has two Pidgeys that lack Flying moves, so he’s much easier. For Falkner, Butterfree basically needs Poisonpowder to get through the fight. Unfortunately, Butterfree is just under Level 12, a fair bit short. In retrospect I would’ve forgone training Gastly for now, as it’s virtually useless for this fight. Oh well, not much to do but some quick grinding. I spend around 10 minutes in the Ruins of Alph fighting Unown to get to Level 13, forgetting the icky Confusion for Poisonpowder.
Falkner
Falkner’s lead, Pidgey, lacks Flying moves for whatever reason, so it’s not particularly hard to set up 6 Hardens on it. Before setting up, I poison it so it’s nearly down by the time I finish setting up. When Pidgeotto comes out, I also poison it, then laugh as it can’t break through my incredibly hard butterfly with its 5 damage Gusts before succumbing to poison and Tackles. With that, my “team” (a.k.a. Butterfree) win their first Gym badge and get a much needed passive 12.5% attack buff. Another completely unmentioned property of Gym badges in Gen 2 is that they also provide a 12.5% damage buff to the type the Gym Leader used, in this case Flying. This particular one isn’t too useful, but many of these down the road will be a godsend.
Getting to Azalea with a New Pokemon
Upon leaving the Gym, I get a very interesting call from Professor Elm about a mystery Pokemon Egg. After spending an agonizing amount of time hatching it (no Bike, no Running Shoes, no Flame Body…), out pops the mighty Togepi. Most would be dismayed to see a Normal-type with 20 base attack as their surprise, but for this run it’s perfect. The only damaging move it can actually learn at this point is Mud-Slap, which is, uh, something. I teach it then head south. Underleveled with a 20 BP move, Togepi needs to be switch-trained for the most part, though it is a pretty helpful lead with Charm and accuracy drops. At Level 6, I have it face the Level 9 Nidoran-F to see how it fares by itself, and it takes all 10 Mud-Slaps to down it, to give you an idea of Togepi’s raw power. At Level 7 it learns Metronome, a fun and surprisingly usable way to damage foes, but sadly there’s no fun allowed here as it might call a special move. I have a weird fight against one of the Fisherman’s Poliwags where it hits 7 consecutive Water Guns despite being Mud-Slapped down the whole time – I have absolutely no idea what went on there. Only other thing of note is that Butterfree gained a level and learned Stun Spore, which I taught over String Shot.
Moving on to Union Cave, the sturdy Rock-types can be slowly dealt with Togepi’s Mud-Slap, with back-up from Gastly’s unresisted Lick. In here the very valuable Swift TM can be found, which would cure Togepi of its anemic offense and then some. Sadly, it’s a much better long-term investment on Butterfree, who ditches Tackle for it. Butterfree presses its lead as the team’s breadwinner for now. It should definitely relish it while it can…
Another New Pokemon
I move onto Azalea Town, where I can head into the Ilex Forest and get my 4th Pokemon, Venonat. While Venomoth’s stat spread is fitting for this run, Venonat actually has a higher attack stat to match its type. As such it’s a little ill-fitting for this challenge run for a while, but at least it fulfills the “challenge” component. Venonat is terrible until Sludge Bomb, especially with the Swift TM already used. It doesn’t help matters that the levels in Ilex Forest are strangely terrible – Venonat only appears at Level 5. So it also has to be switch-trained for a while, unfortunately. Someday I will have self-sufficient Pokemon besides Butterfree… I go on ahead to the Rockets in Slowpoke Well and later on the trainers in the Azalea Gym. Neither are very troublesome even with the burden of switch-training, but they’re not enough to catch Venonat up for the boss fights coming up. Not that it would be particularly helpful anyways.
Bugsy
Bugsy leads with Metapod, which Butterfree fittingly deals with. His next seems to be somewhat random, as it can be either Kakuna or Scyther. It doesn’t particularly matter which it is, but I found the behavior odd. In my winning run he sent out Scyther, his only real threat, but what a threat it is. Scyther takes negligible damage and quickly dismantles everything with Fury Cutter, no matter the resistance. Butterfree can start to nerf it with Stun Spore, though. I opt for this over Poisonpowder because of the inevitability of a full paralysis, breaking Scyther’s Fury Cutter chain. I then swap over to Togepi and Charm it twice, which heavily neuters it. My next move made more sense in my head, but I swapped to Venonat to confuse Scyther with Supersonic for some nice damage. Of course, I forgot there would be nothing “nice” about the damage due to Charm. Thankfully my time is not wasted as Scyther proceeds to hit itself four times in a row after I switch to Gastly. Completely unnecessary, but it does speed up the fight a bit. Gastly can only very slowly Lick Scyther down, so it’s a very drawn-out affair. After several turns Scyther goes down, and Bugsy ends with Kakuna which Butterfree also handles easily.
Rival (Azalea Town)
Almost right after Bugsy is another Rival confrontation. He leads with a Gastly of his own, which can be pretty annoying with Hypnosis. Togepi can deal with it slowly with Mud-Slap, but I tried my own Gastly on this attempt and got lucky with a Lick full-paralysis so I rolled with it. It doesn’t really matter – his Gastly just wastes time more than anything. I learn Curse from defeating it, which is incredibly useful. Zubat comes out next, but without a Flying-move Butterfree switches in and easily wins with its superior stats. Last is Croconaw, which tries to Scratch, but that’s a free switch for Gastly. I then Curse as it uses Leer. Gastly can still take another hit so I chip a little with Lick as it uses Water Gun, and paralyze it. I don’t actually want Gastly to faint though, as Curse damage in Gen 2 doesn’t trigger when the cursed Pokemon KOs something. So I switch to Venonat, who takes around a third from Water Gun. Since it’s paralyzed, I Disable its Water Gun to waste its next turn, which isn’t needed, but hey, it looks cool. After that, Croconaw succumbs to Curse and my rival is defeated.
Team Status:
Butterfree Level 15
Swift/Stun Spore/Harden/Poisonpowder
Gastly Level 16
Lick/Curse/Spite/Mean Look
Togepi Level 13
Mud-Slap/Charm/Growl/Metronome
Venonat Level 12
Tackle/Disable/Foresight/Supersonic
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