I haven't necessarily been looking forward to this, which is why it took me so long to work up to actually sitting down and doing. I mean, the battle junk is the least interesting part of the game for me (well, second least since Nintendo bungled the Super Contest thing.) I'm more into catching all of the different types and uncovering all of the games little secrets.

Which is why I bought both Prima strategy guides and kept them by my side as I prepared for the Elite Four. I'm just going to waste time starting and restarting to get this done. I wanted to walk in at a very fat level, have a good idea of what I could do to maximize my team's type advantages, and barrel through all five matches without saving inbetween.

And of course I shot movies of each bout.

Elite Four #1 - Aaron
He's a bug trainer, but he throws in a Drapion just to screw with you. The Drapion looks like it might be a bug, but it's not. Allowing for that little problem, this was all Staraptor's show.

I had tried the Elite Four a couple weeks ago when my guys were all high-40's, and I couldn't even get a toehold against Aaron. Having a flying-type getting its ass kicked by the first bug-type in the queue is humiliating, so that should explain why I wanted to do this solid. My high-50's Staraptor had no such problems, as you can see.

Elite Four #2 - Bertha
She's all ground-type. I love when they stick to one type.

My Torterra - already the tank of the team - just went to town here. Didn't even switch anybody else in. Absolutely no thought went into this battle. Razor Leaf, Razor Leaf, Giga Drain. Razor Leaf, Razor Leaf, Giga Drain.

Elite Four #3 - Flint
This was the first battle that gave me pause, so it went longer than ten minutes (which meant I had to break the movie in two to upload to YouTube). As fun as it is to just have one dude in there swatting down all comers, there's something to be said for a longish battle where you have to switch your team around so as to take advantage of the type match-ups.

Starting Empoleon against Rapidash and Infernape was a no-brainer... although I had expected to keep Empoleon around a little longer, so the fall against Infernape was not appreciated. Look at that guy's HP; my Surf should have killed him. And then Flint had the nerve to Full Restore the Infernape! God that pisses me off.

In the second half of the battle, I get really lucky on getting past a Cute Charm to score a killing hit on Flint's Lopunny. But my Gengar becomes the team's weak link, shot down by the Drifblim and my Toxicroak has to finish the job. I REALLY should have trained the Gengar up more. I figured his coolass ghostiness would lower his handicap in comparison to my other fighters, but I was wrong.

Elite Four #4 - Lucian
I was dreading this one... the psychic specialist. I started Gengar for his Dark Pulse attack but like I said, he just wasn't up to it. He took out Mr. Mime on a lucky flinch, but was assassinated by the Alakazam. Then I jumped in Toxicroak who finished off Alakazam but then was slaughtered by the Girafarig.

At that point, I'm sweating, until I remembered that my Torterra also has a dark-type attack, Crunch. Then it became easy... Torterra > Girafarig, Staraptor > Medicham, Infernape > Bronzong.

League Champion Cynthia
Another two parter because this was a long battle and I included the big victory celebration at the end.

My big scare here was the weakness-less Spiritomb. So I started with Staraptor, figuring I couldn't go wrong with the Intimidate ability. Staraptor almost killed the Spiritomb with a couple Aerial Aces, but Torterra had to do the finisher.

Milotic was the big problem. First he Ice Beams Torterra to death, and then Surfs Gengar out the door (there's an edit there because I literally sat and thought for a minute about who to drag out next). Toxicroak gets a laugh because you can't Surf against him, but even that doesn't help much and it is neck and neck between the two for quite a few turns.

I revived Torterra because I needed his grass-type moves against the Gastrodon, so that was no trouble. Similarly, Empoleon had an easy match against the Garchomp... but only because I taught him Ice Beam just before the bout started. Then it came down to Infernape against Lucario (easy) and Infernape against Roserade (yeah).

I think my Infernape really lived up to her nickname. And it is super cool that the one that ended the battle is the very pokemon that I chose at the start of the game!

Here is my winning team... and now I'm off to explore all of the funky post-game stuff.

Staraptor level 60

Toxicroak level 60

Empoleon level 60

Gengar level 56

Infernape level 60

Torterra level 63

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN