There are many, many different ways to play through the Pokemon games, ranging from absurdly hard to straight-up ridiculous, but one player may have found the perfect middle ground with one of the strangest but most difficult challenge runs I've ever seen.
Content creator Smallant recently posted a video showcasing his run of Pokemon Ultra Sun, which was littered with rules suggested by his Twitch chat to make his time in the RPG a living hell. The first suggestion was implemented before even stepping foot into the world – changing the game's language to German. Smallant doesn't speak German, and given that he'd never played through Ultra Sun before, it meant he had to constantly guess what he was supposed to be doing, where he was going, and what his moves were. And no, he wasn't allowed to Google anything.
Just to make matters worse, Smallant was barred from using Pokemon Centers to heal his team, as well as stat-boosting X-items to make fights easier. On top of that, he couldn't evolve any Pokemon, and was forced to learn new attacks when leveling up every time he had the option (even if they were awful). Other rules were even more strict – every time he had a Pokemon faint, he had to do 10 push-ups in real life, and in the case of a full team wipe, he had to release his strongest companion.
Needless to say, there were many hurdles to overcome. Not understanding what moves he was using caused a number of blunders early on – in one major fight, he used what he thought was Haze in an attempt to nullify the massive stat boosts from a particularly tough Crabrawler. However, he actually used Mist, which just prevents the user from having its own stats cut, and his poor Wingull was promptly sent flying by a still buffed-up Pursuit attack.
Otherwise, there was the language barrier, and there's perhaps no better example of this than when Smallant was trying to complete a quiz in Pikachu Valley, where you're asked five very basic questions about the Pokemon mascot. Not knowing what he was being asked or what he was saying, this took many, many attempts to complete – and after all that, all he got was a shirt and hat to wear. Booo.
The lack of permitted evolutions also meant that he had to get creative with his team as the challenge progressed. Solid options included Pokemon that don't evolve in the first place, like Miltank and Mawile, since they're usually tougher than unevolved first-stage Pokemon. Otherwise, he had to look for fully-evolved wild Pokemon, like the notoriously elusive Salamence that can sometimes be found at a hilariously low level on one of the early routes if you lower a Bagon's health. During this process, Smallant ended up finding not one, but two shiny (rare, alternate color palette) Bagon, which he was forced to knock out thanks to an extra rule that banned him from catching any male Pokemon. This genuinely hurts to watch, but he did end up finding a level 9 female Salamence eventually.
In the end, Smallant emerged victorious in just under 30 hours, which is pretty dang impressive considering the tough conditions and, y'know, lack of understanding of what he was actually doing. His arms are probably feeling a bit stronger now, too, as throughout the run, he was forced to do 536 push-ups. The grind never stops, I guess.
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