Send me a Piplup.

I'm up to a small handful of pokemon, including my new favorite, Shinx. Shinx recently faced off against a Magikarp, whose fighting skills, as you can imagine, have not gotten any better in ten years of Pokemon games.

Jubilife City is really nice. It's a great visual antidote to the boring little hovels of the first areas. The awkwardly-named Poketch factory is in Jubilife, and it just so happens that you get a Poketch for free once you visit the Training School and then locate three clowns. The Poketch is super-keen and just screams to be made into a real toy. The starter Poketch comes with a clock, calculator, pedometer and pokemon life meter. There are twenty different features that must be collected separately, so I'm looking forward to that.

Although the life meter does not update in real time, which is stupid. I had that screen up, showing a slightly damaged party, when I went to heal at the Pokemon Center... and after the heal, the screen still showed the damage. I had to click out of the life meter and back in to get it to update.

Had a faceoff with Wedge and I barely won. In fact, had he not used a couple of useless Growl attacks, I would have lost. Regardless, he took off to the east after the battle ended, in the direction of Oreburgh. I followed, and found him standing in front of the door to the Gym. A few halting NPC conversations later, I learned that Roark - Oreburgh's Gym Leader - was working in the coal mine south of town.

After a quick run through the mine, during which I mistakenly killed an Onix that I would have liked to capture, I spurred Roark to return to his Gym. Somehow, by the time I got there, he had already battled and lost to Wedge. I defeated Roark's two Gym subordinates, evolved my precious Chimchar into a Monferno, healed up, and then challenged him...

Oreburgh must really suck for pokemon training, if this guy is the best they could offer. I guess that's what comes from living in an isolated mining town.

Anyway, after scoring a Gym Badge, I hightailed it back to Jubilife so I could hit the Global Trade Station, one of Pearl's vaunted WiFi features. Since I had some extra Geodudes in stock, I submitted one of them (with Rock Smash!) for a trade and asked for a Piplup (any level) in return. You can only request pokemon you have seen in the game, which is a rather clever way of stopping people from demanding Mewtwo over and over again.

My Friend Code, by the way, is 4381 8470 0450. Battle on.