A look back at: Pokemon Vega

Yep, I really, really do like it when there's a well-made wiki about a ROM hack with enough information to help with creating a walkthrough, especially with regards to encounters and/or movesets. This time, my walkthrough for Vega didn't include locations for Pokemon or the overall dex, since the wiki has got that covered. The only thing I struggled with walkthrough-writing here was getting some custom movesets, so I left a few out and the rest are of course drawn straight from the wiki itself. But enough about that.

So for Vega, I found it quite interesting that it gets a lot of infamy due to its difficulty. Which I really don't think is the case, at least before the postgame. The postgame of course is where things open up and you can fight newer trainers with newer Pokemon and rematch gym leaders, and you can do most places in whichever order is necessary. But the new movesets and stronger Pokemon make this game's difficulty more or less. It is in fact the movesets with coverage for all sorts of super-effective counters, as well as the held items, that make the gym leaders, Elite Four, enemy team leaders, and all other uber trainers that much more difficult to deal with. Gotta hate those Leftovers and Brightpowders and such ruining what would normally be just challenging battles. You gotta think with some of these trainers. The gym puzzles, particularly Lapizula's gym, are quite nasty, thankfully the wiki provided me with some ways to solve each gym.

Plot-wise, Vega is a direct sequel to Altair/Sirius, and you basically start out by going back to your real home. For some reason, Mosmero follows you and chases a random team grunt, the professor of the region is actually your dad, and your named rival is some newbie Pokemon Ranger. Plus there's references to at least three Pokemon movies in location or by character. Getting to Distant Island and by extension the Sphere Ruins involves challenging ALL gym leaders, as well as former rivals from the last game, doing a sidequest to reacquire Aldina, and another random sidequest involving Porygon, which is surprisingly a lot. But there's more, this is probably the first time I've seen one last quest upon completing the Pokedex. And I actually did it, legitimately I may add, without gamesharking the Pokedex to be complete already or something like that. The end result? The big bad guy you defeated long ago using Mewtwo's old clone lab from the first movie to have an incredibly nasty uber team. You gotta see his team, moveset, and abilities to believe it. Vega sure proves memorable in so many ways.