GRcade Plays: Your Pokémon Journeys

Welcome to GRcade Pokémon Journeys!

Please use this as a place to document and share your current journey through any Pokémon game you're playing. Whether it be a regular run, Nuzlocke, mono type or any other way you're playing.

I know there's a few of us here that likes to add extra challenges into our playthroughs of Pokémon games, that gave me the inspiration to start this thread!

Personally, I love following others journeys, it's always interesting to see how others use strategies to overcome obstacles, deal with surprises and generally how they get through the game.

You can contribute as little or often as you like, no pressure! Feel free to use any media you like, text, pictures or videos, it's all welcome!


Current:
Pedz - Shield - Eeveelution
Carlos - Sword - Dinobots

Completed:
Robbo-92 - Crystal - Typhlosion Solo - 9/8/2021
Doom - Sword - Ghost Type Mono - 23/8/2021
Ironhide - Emerald - Standard - 3/9/2021

I’ve always wanted to give one of these kinds of play through a go, but as you could only ever have one save, I never wanted to wipe my game to try it. As much as I love Pokemon, it’s usually the stuff after the story is done that gets me. Shiny hunting, breeding and trying to put together teams for making money or catcher teams etc and I could never bring myself to give up that up to try a new way of playing the story. The profiles on the Switch are a real blessing for this sort of thing though.

For your Ghost type run, do you have to catch them during the run, or could you breed some up in another save and transfer over?

Game:
Pokémon Sword

Challenge:
Mono Type - Ghost

Rules:
- I can only use Pokémon that are Ghost either as they're primary, or secondary type.

- I must name all Pokémon I catch using a random name generator.

- I must TRY to be no more than 2 levels over each gym leaders strongest Pokémon. This is to keep it competitive.

- The run finishes when both main story, and the league are beaten.

Part 1:

Ok so, I've blasted through the tutorial section, picked Scorbunny as my starter, makes no difference as I'd box them as soon as I get to the Wild Area, where I can get my first Ghosts!

I got the Wild Area and headed straight for Watchtower Ruins, this is where a good few ghosts spawn!



So far I've managed to add a Golurk and Drifloon to my team! From the beginning, I always knew I wanted a Driflim as part of my final team so I was glad to find this nice and early!

Golurk I'm not so sure about yet, I love it as a Pokémon, but I have a few other 'Mon that I'd put in the team first. I'm always open to change though and my team will be based on merit! Don't pull their weight, they don't get in the team!



Golurk is lvl 14, Drifloon lvl 12. The first Gym Leader, Milo has his main at lvl 20, meaning I want to try keep my team no higher than lvl 22! I think my Drifloon will be key to me getting through this first hurdle!

GrinWithoutaKat wrote:I’ve always wanted to give one of these kinds of play through a go, but as you could only ever have one save, I never wanted to wipe my game to try it. As much as I love Pokemon, it’s usually the stuff after the story is done that gets me. Shiny hunting, breeding and trying to put together teams for making money or catcher teams etc and I could never bring myself to give up that up to try a new way of playing the story. The profiles on the Switch are a real blessing for this sort of thing though.

For your Ghost type run, do you have to catch them during the run, or could you breed some up in another save and transfer over?

Separate profiles are so handy for doing playthroughs! If you ever want to give it a go then please feel free to share here!

I did think about this, but I'm going to keep it to only Pokémon I can catch in the game, but that's a personal preference! I am however, going to need some help evolving some of these Mon as they need to be traded. Other than that, I'm going to try keep it "in-house".

Ghost has a lot of choice in Sword and Shield so it’s definitely a good type to go for!

I’ll be doing a mono type run on one of BDSP, think I’ve got all I can out of Sword and Shield (‘only’ about 350 hours between them over 2 profiles), first thought was flying as you get access to a Starly on route 1 so easy to get a start on your team from the get go!

Is mono type what some call gym leader runs?

I'm currently doing an Eeveelution run so that's my run.

Robbo-92 wrote:Ghost has a lot of choice in Sword and Shield so it’s definitely a good type to go for!

I’ll be doing a mono type run on one of BDSP, think I’ve got all I can out of Sword and Shield (‘only’ about 350 hours between them over 2 profiles), first thought was flying as you get access to a Starly on route 1 so easy to get a start on your team from the get go!

Yea I used a random generator to decide what I would use, pretty happy with Ghost actually, wouldn't be one of naturally think about doing. My aim is to get a Dreepy at some point, I'm sure it'd be a great addition to my team!

Yea once I've done my regular playthrough + completed the Dex, I'll move on to doing playthrough challenges with the other game. Flyings a great shout, Staraptor is one of my favourite birds!

Pedz wrote:Is mono type what some call gym leader runs?

Yea sounds about right Pedz!

Pedz wrote:I'm currently doing an Eeveelution run so that's my run.

How's it going so far? Would love to get some updates in here some time! Have you decided what 6 Eeveelutions you're going to use yet?

I’ve already got a team of 6 Pokémon in mind for a Flying type run of BDSP.

Staraptor
Drifblim
Vespiquen
Gliscor
Honchkrow
Togekiss

Staraptor is one of my favourite early game birds too, great moveset snd good attacking stats. Would have decent type coverage with the above team too.

Robbo-92 wrote:I’ve already got a team of 6 Pokémon in mind for a Flying type run of BDSP.

Staraptor
Drifblim
Vespiquen
Gliscor
Honchkrow
Togekiss

Staraptor is one of my favourite early game birds too, great moveset snd good attacking stats. Would have decent type coverage with the above team too.

Looks like a really solid flying team! Will be interesting to see if we need HMs to get through the game, or if they'll scrap them in favour of less annoying system. Because that could greatly affect what mono type playthroughs we could do!

They did announce they've kept the qol changes from newer games, so let's hope that includes no HMs!

The Doom Spoon wrote:

Robbo-92 wrote:I’ve already got a team of 6 Pokémon in mind for a Flying type run of BDSP.

Staraptor
Drifblim
Vespiquen
Gliscor
Honchkrow
Togekiss

Staraptor is one of my favourite early game birds too, great moveset snd good attacking stats. Would have decent type coverage with the above team too.

Looks like a really solid flying team! Will be interesting to see if we need HMs to get through the game, or if they'll scrap them in favour of less annoying system. Because that could greatly affect what mono type playthroughs we could do!

They did announce they've kept the qol changes from newer games, so let's hope that includes no HMs!

I’ve not done a flying type one before but the options in Sinnoh are rather good (much like Ghost types in Sword/Shield). I’d love to see them do away with HMs but can’t see it, I’ll just have however many HM slaves as needed and switch them in and out as needed.

I’m still on the fence of if I get Brilliant Diamond this year (hinges on if Platinum content is included) but this is a cool idea for a thread, never done anything other than a basic run through a Pokemon game.

I've never actually finished a pokemon game so I think this would be a great opportunity to rectify this.

I think Fire Red (via emulator) would be a good option as I have played it before.

The Doom Spoon wrote:

Robbo-92 wrote:Ghost has a lot of choice in Sword and Shield so it’s definitely a good type to go for!

I’ll be doing a mono type run on one of BDSP, think I’ve got all I can out of Sword and Shield (‘only’ about 350 hours between them over 2 profiles), first thought was flying as you get access to a Starly on route 1 so easy to get a start on your team from the get go!

Yea I used a random generator to decide what I would use, pretty happy with Ghost actually, wouldn't be one of naturally think about doing. My aim is to get a Dreepy at some point, I'm sure it'd be a great addition to my team!

Yea once I've done my regular playthrough + completed the Dex, I'll move on to doing playthrough challenges with the other game. Flyings a great shout, Staraptor is one of my favourite birds!

Pedz wrote:Is mono type what some call gym leader runs?

Yea sounds about right Pedz!

Pedz wrote:I'm currently doing an Eeveelution run so that's my run.

How's it going so far? Would love to get some updates in here some time! Have you decided what 6 Eeveelutions you're going to use yet?

Yeah, you gave em to me

ITSMILNER wrote:I’m still on the fence of if I get Brilliant Diamond this year (hinges on if Platinum content is included) but this is a cool idea for a thread, never done anything other than a basic run through a Pokemon game.

Cheers man, glad you like the idea! I believe BDSP will include Platinum content too, it certainly includes the Platinum Pokedex as already, 'Mon in the trailer such as PorygonZ were only ever available in Plat. Other than that we haven't heard about anything else! Although I think it makes a lot of sense to include the Distortion World etc.

Ironhide wrote:I've never actually finished a Pokémon game so I think this would be a great opportunity to rectify this.

I think Fire Red (via emulator) would be a good option as I have played it before.

Hell yea would love to follow your Journey through completing a Pokémon game for the first time!

Pedz wrote:Yeah, you gave em to me

[/quote]

Haha oh yes so I did! How've you gotten on with your playthrough so far?!

The Doom Spoon wrote:

Pedz wrote:Yeah, you gave em to me

Haha oh yes so I did! How've you gotten on with your playthrough so far?!

I've done 3 Gyms I think, haven't caught many pokémon simply because I thought it would be a little pointless as I got 400 in the dex on Shield.

Will be playing it again on Thursday.

The Doom Spoon wrote:

Ironhide wrote:I've never actually finished a Pokémon game so I think this would be a great opportunity to rectify this.

I think Fire Red (via emulator) would be a good option as I have played it before.

Hell yea would love to follow your Journey through completing a Pokémon game for the first time!

I'll probably start it when I've finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, which I'm currently playing (alongside a couple of other games).

Ironhide wrote:

The Doom Spoon wrote:

Ironhide wrote:I've never actually finished a Pokémon game so I think this would be a great opportunity to rectify this.

I think Fire Red (via emulator) would be a good option as I have played it before.

Hell yea would love to follow your Journey through completing a Pokémon game for the first time!

I'll probably start it when I've finished The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, which I'm currently playing (alongside a couple of other games).

Nice one! I'll look forward to when you start!

Love the title. I have only purchased my second Pokemon game, will start after I finish Skyward Sword.

Doom's Ghost Type Sword Playthrough: Part 2

Team up to this point:
Efisio the Golurk
Timoti the Driflim

---

So after getting signed up to the Galar Gym Challenge, we bump into Marnie and Team Tell for the first time, the latter being the loud, brash, obnoxious team that are supporting Marnie through her own gym challenge. They serve as the "evil" group in this installment of Pokémon. The reality is, they're not evil at all, just.. well... Loud, brash, obnoxious and a bit rude really!

Marnie who serves as the "leader" (she's not at all, or atleast not by choice, these guys just follow her around. Basically she spends the game apologising for them!

Anyway this is our first chance to battle with them and it suddenly occurred to me, they exclusively use Dark types, MASSIVE problem when one of the only two weaknesses my Ghosts have is Dark! What makes it worse is Ghost attacks don't do half damage to Dark types, they have no effect on them!

Luckily this first battle is meant to be easy, but for future reference, I better make sure I can either get Pokémon with Fighting, Bug or Fairy as a dual type to get counter this. Or at make sure I have some of these moves!

----

I head off through Route 3 and end up at the mines, which half way through is where we meet our second rival, Bede. He's stuck up his own ass so I took great pleasure in knocking him down a peg! He's a Psychic user, meaning (from memory) most of our future battles shouldn't be a problem for my Ghosts!



I head out the mines and on to Route 4. I'd just planned to do a bit of training, but while doing so, had a pleasant surprise!


I didn't realise that Pumpkaboo spawn here, a Ghost/Grass type which will come in handy for the second gym (Water)! I named her Tajra. I then I noticed the weather was favourable in the Wild Area for me to grab a Duskull, I'll be able to evolve it into a powerful Dusknoir sometime down the line! I named her Maya.

I had some story bits to follow then I was ready to take on our first Gym!


This was the team I took in, I've been able to keep within the 2 level limit, so far so good!


As you can imagine, Timoti was the star of this show, it's Flying typing gave it resistance against anything Milo could throw at me, while also quickly dispatching his team.


First badge earned and a nice and easy start to this run! Lvl 30 Pokémon will now listen to me, also I can now catch anything in the Wild Area that's up to lvl 25.

This is the end of part 2, off to work towards my second badge!