- Greetings,
Pokefans, Michael here and normal type moves are the
only type of attack in Pokemon that cannot deal super
effective damage to anything. They do neutral
damage to everything, except rock and
steel which resisted, and ghost which is immune to it. That makes it one of if not the most limited attacking
types in the game. But I thought it would
be fun to see just how limited this
attacking type is. Today I'm embarking on my newest Pokemon playthrough challenge, can I beat Pokemon FireRed while only using
normal type moves? Well, the answer to
that question depends on your definition of use. If it means use at all,
then no, you can't. Using surf outside of battle
is required to beat the game and surf is
obviously water type. However, if you define
use as use in battle, then I think I
might have a chance. Might being the
operative word here. The rules, or should I say
rule of this challenge, is simple, I can only
use normal-type moves in every battle sequence
in the entire game. And the term moves applies to
both attacks and status moves. So I can use Growl
since it's normal type but I can't use withdraw
because it's water type. The Pokemon I use can
be whatever type I want and can know any move they want. I just can't select any
non-normal type moves in battle. If I do, whether by accident
or because I just ran out of all of my normal type moves, then I have to reset my
game to the last save point. So that covers all
the intro stuff. So don't forget to
subscribe to my channel. Subscribe, I'm making
an emphasis on this because it's important, and let's dive into can
I beat Pokemon FireRed while only using
normal-type moves? To start off the game,
I named myself Michael and my rival and
abbreviation of PokeMEN7 after my most vile enemy. I'm kidding, we're
very good friends and we make lots of videos
together on my second channel. So you should subscribe to him, and also my second channel. Step one was choosing my
starter and I went with Squirtle because its status move was
Tail Whip, something appealing since that meant I could
make its tackles do more. I named it Turtle because
Squirtle is a turtle that squirts water. This one will not be
squirting any water. So therefore it
is just a turtle. Suddenly, PokeMEN7 attacked. After a Tail Whip, my
regular Turtle dealt with this Bulbasaur after
just a few turns of tackling. Little while later, after
running Oaks's errands for him, I encountered and caught
a Rattata I named Vermin. I knew that normal type
Pokemon, a type of Pokemon I have overlooked
a lot in the past, were going to be instrumental for the success of
this playthrough. While they learn
normal type moves like lots of other
types of Pokemon, the normal type
Pokemon get a 50% boost to the power of their
normal type moves thanks to Stab, the
same type attack boost. Rattata's a particularly
appealing early-game normal type since it gets the eye-popping
80 base power Hyper Fang at the fantastically
low level of just 13. I think that's the
first time in my life I've ever referred to
Rattata as appealing. After grinding Vermin up, I made my way through
Viridian Forest without too many problems. Unfortunately though I had an
exceedingly difficult trial in front of me, Brock. Brock is a rock-type gym leader and rock-type Pokemon
are a nightmare to fight if you can only use
normal type moves. First off, they resist normal but also they tend to
have high physical defense which is an issue since
all normal type attacks are physical attacks
in Generation III. As evil icing on the cake, a lot of these rock types also
know Defense Curl or Harden, which makes them even tougher
to KO with physical moves. I knew I would need some kind of strategy beyond just
brute-forcing my way through because I didn't want
to spend ages grinding and super over-leveling
my Pokemon. My first thought was that
I could poison his Pokemon. That way they would
take damage over time even if I, myself,
wasn't doing much damage. Unfortunately, Poison Sting and Poison Powder are
against the rules, but Poison Point is not. There's no rule against what
abilities my Pokemon can have and Poison Point is an ability that can poison the enemy
Pokemon if they make contact. The most easily accessible
Pokemon with Poison Point are the Nidorans,
which are found on route three just
east of Pewter City, which this douche canoe
won't let me go to! (softly groaning)
Okay, new plan. I can't poison them
and I can't burn them. There's no Flame Body
Pokemon I can find, but I can do the third best
thing, which is paralyzing them. While that doesn't
do damage to them, it makes them slower and
will give me more chances to hit them without
them hitting me. And I can do the Paralysis
by using the ability Static. I got the ability on a Pikachu that I found in Viridian
Forest relatively easily and named it Parahax. I then decided to try out my
strategy idea on the first and only gym trainer
who told me I was 10,000 light years
from facing Brock. Little prick thinks
10,000 light years is time when its distance, ha! And he was, he was
still kinda right. I led against his Geodude with Vermin to test
my damage output. It did that little
before it had gotten any defense boosts,
so that was not great. I immediately
switched to Parahax to implement my next strategy, killing its attack with Growl while I hoped it
would get paralyzed. Unfortunately, it KO'ed Parahax
before Static kicked in. After a very long battle, it looked like Vermin
was going to win, but then Geodude got a crit. Turtle came in and
finished off the Geodude, but it couldn't
beat the Sandshrew due to its Defense
Curl and Sand Attack, plus Scratch doing a lot since
I hadn't Growled it at all. I gave up part of
the way through as to not lose my
limited potions. This battle taught me that Parahax had to
be a higher level. I tried it without
leveling it up at all and that wasn't gonna work. It needed to be able
to take more hits so there were more opportunities
for Static to activate, but also so it could
stay in long enough to get more Growls off. That Sandshrew cost problems because its Scratches
did so much damage and Onix's Rock Tombs
would be even worse. Unfortunately, Parahax did
not know a normal-type attack which meant that I had to
switch train it to grind it up, which was very slow
and very annoying. After just a bit of grinding
and Vermin learning Hyper Fang, I decided to try to beat
the gym trainer again because I had grown impatient. This time after it
maxed its defense and I minimized its attack, I got the Paralysis
on the Geodude. I then brought in Vermin who, after many turns and a
potion due to a crit, was able to take
the Geodude down. In came Sandshrew and I
did the same thing again, Growl until I got
it to -6 Attack while I waited for
Static to kick in. This took a long time
due to Sand Attack making me miss a lot of Growls, but eventually Static worked. And I even got to cancel out one of its defense curls before
it took Parahax down. I had to do some switching between Turtle and Vermin to
get rid of Accuracy drops. But eventually I was able
to defeat the gym trainer. I had proved that my Growl and Paralysis
strategy could work. So I just now had to
level up my team even more to fight the higher level Brock. So after even more
grinding, I took him on. The battle started badly as his Geodude crit
Parahax right away. But then it turned around because I got the
Static Paralysis the next time it attacked. A few turns later, I
decided to switch in Vermin since while I hadn't minimized
the Geodude's attack, it hadn't boosted its
defense all the way yet. So I thought I would get
in damage while I could. This was the right call as
the drops I had done made it so Vermin only took 4 HP
damage from each tackle. I began wearing down its health with Quick Attacks to
preserve Hyper Fangs for Onix and I even got a
crit at one point. After a while, I took
the Geodude down. In came Onix and I
brought Parahax back in. I healed it up right away which was the right call
since Rock Tomb did a lot. Then the next time Onix tackled, I luckily got the Static
activation right away. After several more turns,
one of them using a potion and a few of them with
full Paralysis on Onix, I was able to get
Onix to -6 Attack and -1 Defense, since it didn't use Harden once. Finally, it took Parahax down. Then I brought in Vermin
whose first Hyper Fang crit and did half, Onix
was fully paralyzed. Then I Hyper Fanged again
and it was paralyzed again. My final Hyper Fang
crit a second time, KO'ing the Onix and
winning me the Brock battle on the first try, and actually
making me yell in excitement. I beat a giant rock snake
with two small rodents. Once on route three, I
caught a Nidoran male in order to be able to
use the Poison Point strategy I wanted to use
earlier on future rock types. I randomly named it Needle. Unfortunately soon
after, I realized that Nidoran male did not
learn a normal-type attack until level 20 if I
kept it from evolving, or level 22 if I let
it become a Nidorino. However, Nidoran female
had Scratch right away. I wanted one of them
to be useful right away for the rock types I
knew I'd fight in Mt Moon so I caught a Nidoran
female and named it Empress, then trained it up to evolve and be about equal
levels with Vermin. The journey through Mt
Moon was smooth aside from a battle with a Magnemite, which proved tricky due
to it resisting my moves, dropping harshly my special
defense with Metal Sound and jolting me with
Thunder Shocks. Eventually I beat it with Parahax and
Static actually works on electric types
in this generation. Upon exiting Mt Moon,
I had the opportunity to teach one of my Pokemon
Mega Kick and Mega Punch. But for the time being, I decided to keep those
options open for later since they're just
one-time tutors. In Cerulean, PokeMEN7
attacked once again. Vermin had to take some
hits from Pidgeotto but was able to handle it. Empress dealt with Rattata but also took some
hits in the process. Abra couldn't do anything. So Empress was able to beat
it without taking a hit. Finally was Bulbasaur and
this thing, new Sleep Powder. As soon as I saw
that move happen, I instantly regretted
my starter decision. I wasn't even using
Turtle anymore. And now for the
rest of the game, I had to contend with my
rival's best Pokemon being able to put all my Pokemon to
sleep with relative ease. (loudly groans) But Bulbasaur battle
started very badly. Despite healing,
Vermin was asleep and down to red HP in
a matter of a few turns without even being
able to get a hit off. I brought in Empress who
resisted the Vine Whips. It wasn't long though
before she was asleep too and to make things worse,
Bulbasaur of Leech Seeded, meaning any damage
I did with Scratch was gone after just two turns. I realized that my only way to
win was to drop its defenses. So during a brief waking
moment, I Tail Whipped. Empress then fell to Leech Seed. I brought in Parahax to
get more Tail Whips off and thanks to Sleep
Powder missing twice, I got it down to -4 Defense before Parahax took a nap. I used my chance to heal Vermin in the two turns it
took Parahax to fall. Vermin came back in
but was still asleep. After sleeping for two turns, it landed a Hyper Fang,
OHKOing Bulbasaur. This victory caused it to level
up and evolve into Raticate. The next time I play
through a Kanto game, there is no way in booty butts that I am picking
Squirtle again. I love Squirtle,
but Sleep Powder on this Bulbasaur
is so annoying. But now that that nightmare
was over, for the time being, I decided it was time to train
up Needle the Nidoran male. Now of course it doesn't
know a normal-type move but if I could keep it from
evolving into level 20, it would learn Horn Attack. Then if I used a Moonstone
on it right away, which I could do, I got
a couple from Mt Moon, it would become Nidoking, which
learns Thrash at level 22, which is the strongest
move in the game by a, well, only about 10 base
power points over Hyper Fang. But still, that,
it was exciting. After a long time
switch-training it against both trainers
and wild Pokemon, Needle learned Horn
Attack at level 20. So I allowed it to
evolve into Nidorino. I then immediately
evolved it into Nidoking, then trained it up two more
levels so it could learn Thrash. And then of course
it took me all of this time before I realized that it had an
attack-lowering nature, but it's fine, I'd committed
and I was sticking with it. Feeling confident,
I challenged Misty. Needle immediately OHKO'd
Staryu with Thrash, which was beautiful. In came Starmie who
unfortunately outsped and landed a super
effective Water Pulse. I was able to get
a Thrash hit in but it only did about a third. Starmie's next Water
Pulse of course KO'd. I brought in Vermin
who tanked Water Pulse and did big damage with
Hyper Fang, but didn't KO. I went for Quick Attack,
but she healed up. She Water Pulsed again,
but Vermin held on. I healed, she Water Pulsed,
but this time it confused me. I was worried if
Vermin hurt itself, I would lose, but I clicked
Quick Attack anyways. It fought through
the rubber duck haze, landed Quick Attack and won
me the battle, two gyms down. After training Needle and Vermin
up against various trainers around Vermilion
and on the SS Anne, and avoiding all the Workers because fighting
Magnemites really sucks, the next event of note was
PokeMEN7 attacking again, this time on a boat. Since I'd only been
training Needle and Vermin, they were much higher
level than my rival's team, which made the battle
much easier to manage. All his Pokemon went down
easily except Ivysaur who of course decided
to Sleep Powder again, stupid flowering frog. It nearly KO'd Needle, but once
I woke up, I won the battle. After a traumatic experience
in the captain's room, it was time to
challenge Lt. Surge, another battle Needle and Vermin were very over leveled for. Needle took down Voltorb and
Pikachu without taking a hit. Raichu proved more
annoying due to Double Team in ridiculous Thrash
Confusion hacks. Needle hit itself in confusion
four consecutive times, but after a combination
of him healing, even using a Full Heal for
the Poison at one point, me healing, Poison damage,
and finally landing a Thrash, I won the battle without
any Pokemon fainting. Next was Rock Tunnel, which
proved bothersome at times due to all the rock type
Pokemon I had to fight, even avoiding all the
Hikers that I could. But Vermin and Needle
got me through. I spent very little
time in Lavender Town and immediately headed
west to catch a Growlithe. As we already seen, rock
and steel-type Pokemon are very difficult to deal with. But ghost-type
Pokemon are impossible to deal with in this playthrough because my normal-type moves
cannot hurt them at all. There might've been a
way for me to beat them using some strategy with
like making themselves KO themselves with
Curse, or Confusion, or something like that. But those depended
too much on luck and just sounded not very fun. Before I went into
the Pokemon Tower, I wanted a reliable way
to defeat ghost types and that reliable
way was Odor Sleuth. Odor Sleuth Is a normal-type
move that not only makes us so the target's evasion
boosts are ignored, but it also makes ghost
types lose their immunities to fighting and normal moves. Growlithe is the only Pokemon
in the game that can learn it and it's the reason I picked
FireRed over LeafGreen, since it's a FireRed exclusive. For the record,
Foresight is another move that accomplishes
the same thing. So you can still do
this in LeafGreen. You just have to go
for Machop or Hitmonlee and teach them Foresight. However, I really
wanted to use Arcanine because Arcanine is cool and
also learns Extreme Speed later in the game, which I
thought might come in handy. I caught the Growlithe
and due to its purpose being to be sniffing
around to find things, I nicknamed it Bloodhound. Also, it had a jolly
nature which was incredible for an Arcanine not using
any special attacks. Unfortunately it didn't
have a normal-type attack and wouldn't get one until
level 25, being Take Down. But then after a bit
of switch training, I realized I could get
the secret Power TM at the department
store in Celadon, a normal-type move with
varying secondary effects depending on the location
the battle is occurring. I taught it to Bloodhound and
used it as its main attack. Next was the Rocket hideout. Getting through here required
quite a few backtracks to heal up since Bloodhound
wasn't strong enough to OHKO much of anything. Eventually though, I
made it to Giovanni. Through a combination
of Poison damage and simply hitting it
over and over again, Needle defeated Onix. Needle got one hit off on
Rhyhorn before being confused and after the Surge battle, I was getting rid of
that confusion ASAP. I brought in Bloodhound
to drop its attack with Intimidate and its
defense with several Leers. I brought Needle back
in who was now able to do much more damage, taking down Rhyhorn
in two more hits. I brought in Bloodhound briefly
due to Needle's Confusion, then brought Needle back in. Thrash did a lot less to
Kangaskhan than I was expecting, but Needle broke
through Confusion to get the final
hit needed to win. And then after this
battle I realized that Bloodhound no longer
needed to be a Growlithe. It had learned to
Take Down at level 25 and then the only other
normal type move it learned by level up was Helping Hand, a move which is
obviously useless in a game with very
few double battles. Then Arcanine was
the one who learned Extreme Speed, not Growlithe. Essentially, I had no incentive
to keep it from evolving. So that's fun. All I had to do
was buy a Firestone from the department store
and evolve Bloodhound into an Arcanine. With the Silph Scope in hand, I headed into the Pokemon Tower. The rival battle proved annoying once again due to Sleep Powder. I super regret picking Squirtle. But Bloodhound was
able to deal with it. Thanks to Bloodhound's
Odor Sleuthing and Secret Power power, I took down every ghost that
got in my way in the tower. After clearing it out, Mr.
Fuji gifted me the PokeFlute and you know what that
means, it's Snorlax time. In a playthrough where I can
only use normal-type moves, I would be a buffoon
to not use Snorlax. I decided I would go
catch both of them and then use whichever
one was stronger. Catching Snorlax is never
fun since it can heal itself but I successfully
caught the first one and named it Lockdown,
then caught the second one and named it Quarantine. I named them Lockdown
and Quarantine because during lockdown
slash quarantine, I think we've all become
a bit more like Snorlax. Comparing the two,
Lockdown was better in basically every way with a better nature and
seemingly better IVs, so it was the one I went with. Then I took on Erica and
it was a piece of cake. Her Victreebel poisoned Vermin, meaning she fell into my trap. Vermin has Guts, so its
attacks got way stronger and in a matter of
just a few more turns, Vermin had swept
through her team, giving me my easiest
gym battle so far. I then made my way
to Fuchsia City because I wanted to get
to the Safari Zone ASAP. On my first trip though, I
did the necessary story stuff of getting the Gold
Teeth and Surf, then headed to look
for a Kangaskhan. I wanted a Kangaskhan because it can have
the ability Scrappy, an ability that lets it
hit ghost type Pokemon with normal and fighting
type moves just all the time. I wanted this because
it would be a second and I think more reliable way for me to attack
ghost type Pokemon than having to use Odor
Sleuth on Arcanine. But then after
about five minutes of looking for a Kangaskhan,
I thought to myself, is Scrappy an ability
that's in Gen 3? No, it is not. Well, glad I
realized that before I spent too much time on it. Instead of Kangaskhan, I considered Tauros
because I love Tauros, but it was pretty rare and also
would be difficult to catch. Instead I decided
I wanted a Dodrio because it's fast and
reasonably strong, plus it gets the really
cool move Tri Attack which is physical in this gen and would allow me to get
some useful status conditions on enemies that I wouldn't
have access to otherwise. Also it could be
my flyer, no matter how illogical that is. On my second trip
into the Safari Zone, I caught a Doduo and
named it Birdbrains because I'm very funny. For the rest of that trip
I decided to scroll around and actually found a Tauros and actually caught
it, naming it Longhorn. An added bit of craziness
is that I found this Tauros with only five steps
left in this Safari trip. Clearly it was meant to be, so welcome to the squad,
Longhorn, holy crap! I now had what I intended
to be my final team of six and now a lot of
them knew Strength because I had that HM now and
it's a solid normal-type move. It was then time to grind
against all of the trainers because my team was way
too weak to fight. Koga. I spent a very long time
clearing out all of the trainers between Celadon and Fuchsia,
and Lavender and Fuchsia, which is I've always thought
was weird in the Kanto games. Like, "Oh here's this
one item, the Pokeflute. "Now here's half the map." Once I did that, I continued
my trainer grinding in Silph Co, eventually
reaching my next duel with PokeMEN7 in an
oddly corporate setting. Overall, this battle
went very smoothly with me taking out all
but one of his Pokemon without any of mine
getting below green HP. That final Pokemon
was the cursed Sleep Powder-happy
Venusaur though. So right away, I had
Lockdown give it a taste of its own medicine
by using Yawn. And then it immediately
Sleep Powdered me back. But this time it didn't matter
since Lockdown had Snore, allowing it to still attack
despite being asleep. And then it woke up immediately so the second Snore
failed, but that was fine since Venusaur was now asleep and I could Body Slam
it into oblivion. That was by far the easiest
battle I had had with PokeMEN7 since the
Bulbasaur/Ivysaur/Venusaur
learned Sleep Powder. I guess it pays to have
a member of your team that is a sleep specialist. Soon it was time to
battle Giovanni again. I had Vermin up against Nidorino for a chance at Poison Point
giving it the Guts boost but it didn't happen and Vermin
just beat it in two turns. Then came Nidoqueen and
Vermin did get poisoned but Double Kick and poison
damage took it out soon after. I brought in Needle for
a fun monarch face-off and thanks to Thrash critting and me resisting
the Double Kicks, Needle won in three turns. In came Kangaskhan and Longhorn
beat it with four Strengths and it would have been three
with a better damage roll. Finally was another
cursed rock type, Rhyhorn. I brought in Needle for a
chance at Poison Pointing it and I got my wish early on. I then brought in Lockdown
since it was my hardest hitter and a few Body Slams later,
Rhyhorn was down and I had won. The rich, old guy gave
me the Master Ball which I had no
intention of using, aside from maybe a wild shiny. Then I headed straight
to Koga's gym. I led with Vermin for a
chance at Guts Poisoning, but it took out the first
Koffing before that happened. In came Muk who
promptly minimized so I started to drop
its defense with Leer, so I needed to hit it
fewer times to KO it. Vermin survived an attack, then landed a Strength
which got the KO. Vermin needed a rest, so I brought in Longhorn
for the next Koffing. Longhorn got Toxic
poisoned in the process but was still able to
beat the Koffing easily. Finally was this level
43 Weezing which I
used Lockdown for. After a Yawn I started
Body Slamming away while Koga healed with a
full heel, then Hyper Potion. I just kept Body Slamming
and it was enough to overwhelm him
and get the win. I headed straight to
Sabrina's gym without delay. You know, aside from healing and beating all of
her gym trainers. Sabrina is typically
the toughest gym leader but her team doesn't handle
strong physical attackers well. Longhorn obliterated
her first two Pokemon. Then her Venomoth
stuck around a while due to her healing efforts,
but Lockdown beat it easily. Finally was Alakazam
which Lockdown outsped
with Quick Claw, but couldn't quite
OHKO it, allowing it to use Calm Mind,
which was terrifying. Thankfully Lockdown's
beefiness let it tank the next boosted Psychic, then finish off the battle the
next turn, six badges down. On the way to Cinnabar,
Vermin reached level 40 and was finally able
to learn Super Fang. Learning Super Fang
was a big deal. And it was one of
the two main reasons I had kept Vermin on
my team all this time despite it being weaker
than my other normal types. The first reason is that
I had grown attached. Come on, the thing beat Brock's
Onix, like, it's awesome. Super Fang is a move that
halves the target's current HP and Raticate is the only Pokemon to get it in this generation. This is amazing because it
allows me to do big damage onto rock type Pokemon
without having to worry about their high
defense or resistances. Next was my jaunt through
the Pokemon Mansion. And side note here, I wish
my first time exploring through the Pokemon
Mansion had been before I knew what Mewtwo was. The diaries lying around
in the decrepit lab are really cool examples of
environmental storytelling. But it's not as impactful if
you already know the story, which I did when I went
through the Pokemon Mansion, 'cause I'd seen the first
movie, I knew what Mewtwo was. After clearing out the
trainers on the water routes and getting to see
Blaine's classic line, it was time to take him down. I led with Bloodhound to
resist incoming fire moves. It was once again up
against its pre-evolution but despite Blaine's
Growlithe being higher level, my dog was the one to win out. Next was Ponyta, who I
brought in Lockdown for due to its Thick Fat. Bounce unfortunately paralyzed, but Lockdown hit through
and OHKO'd Ponyta. Lockdown attacked
through Paralysis again to defeat Rapidash. Finally it was the
level 47 Arcanine and Paralysis finally
started to cause problems, keeping me from moving
two turns in a row. I answered with my own
Paralysis from Body Slam which he promptly
full healed away, then healed back up
once I'd worn it down. Lockdown kept at it until
Arcanine took it down. I brought in Longhorn
who got in a hit, amazingly survived Fire Blast, then ended it,
winning me the battle. After leaving the gym, Bill
suddenly arrived wanting to take me to the Sevii Islands. It has been so long since I
played FireRed or LeafGreen, I think genuinely over 10 years, that I totally forgot that
you went to the Sevii Islands before battling
the Pokemon League. I remembered the whole plot
line of it once it started but I was genuinely surprised
when Bill showed up, like, "Hey, let's go." I did a like, a
confused double take. Long story short, I witnessed
the council of CompSci majors, got repeatedly
punched in the face, bathed with old men,
met the father of a girl with a
situationally-appropriate name, made an unwise decision to
fight an entire biker gang but won anyways, and
rescued the lost Lostelle. Back on the mainland, it was
time for the Viridian Gym, the most grueling
set of gym trainers I've battled in a long time. That place is chock-full
of ace trainers with teams of five
Pokemon and potions. So that's annoying on its own but normally it
wouldn't be too bad, except most of the Pokemon
in that gym are rock or fighting types, which
are two types of Pokemon that my mostly normal
team does not appreciate. After a lot of long battles and many trips back
outside to heal, I finally cleared them all and was ready to fight
Giovanni, which I was expecting to be the toughest gym
battle since the first one. He led with Rhyhorn
and I immediately began implementing my strategy
for how to defeat it. Massively drop its
attack by swapping between my two
Intimidate Pokemon to make it so Vermin
could live hits, then bring in Vermin
to Super Fang. This works great since all it
wanted to do was Scary Face for the first chunk of time. It still took a
while to take it down once Vermin came in,
due to him healing, then me having to heal, but eventually
Vermin got the KO. In came Nidoqueen and I
brought in Birdbrains, both because it was
immune to ground and because Tri Attack
did not make contact, thus making Poison
Point useless. Tri Attack froze it,
allowing me to hit it again. It barely didn't KO though
so for the final hit I clicked Fury Attack
to save Tri Attack PP. It got the KO but Poison
Point poisoned Birdbrains. In came the second,
much-higher-level-than-me
Rhyhorn and I began my Intimidate
swapping strategy until it was at -6 Attack. Once Vermin came in,
I Super Fanged twice then Tail Whipped it twice because I knew Strength couldn't
KO it at quarter health. Unfortunately it landed
a crit Earthquake, which KO'd Vermin. However, the Defense
and Health drops it was able to pull
off allowed Longhorn to come in and
easily finish it off. Birdbrains then
defeated Nidoking and Dugtrio relatively easily,
winning me my final badge. Next was the final attack of
PokeMEN7 before the league. Pidgeot proved annoying
due to Feather Dance dropping my attack, but I
was able to get things done. Then he brought in his Rhyhorn and this Rhyhorn just, what the hell, John? I began my Intimidate switching
but on the first turn, it lands a Horn Drill
and OHKOs Longhorn. I brought in Vermin to
start dropping its defense since my Intimidates
switching strategy was really screwed up. It proceeds to then
land a crit Take Down which did 75% of
Raticate's health. I started Super Fang to
do the damage I could before it KO'd me and it
lands another Horn Drill. Horn Drill, crit, Horn Drill. I did the math and the chances
of that happening were 0.62%. Is that rarer than a shiny? No, but it was still
ridiculously unlucky. I brought in Lockdown who
couldn't KO it with one hit but thankfully he didn't heal so I was able to finish it off. Gyarados I beat thanks
to a combination of Lockdown, Birdbrains,
and Hydro Pump missing. Once again, I beat his
Growlithe using its evolution. Birdbrains then beat Alakazam
thanks to taking a Psychic. Finally it was Venusaur
and for the first time since the very first
battle against PokeMEN7, it did not have Sleep Powder. This battle annoyingly took a
while still due to Synthesis but chip damage from
a Tri Attack burn and resisting its Razor Leaves allowed Birdbrains
to take the win. After losing two
Pokemon to Rhyhorn very close to the
beginning of that battle, I thought I was screwed. But my team pulled through
and I defeated PokeMEN7 for the second-to-last time. Next was the Victory
Road but nothing of particular interest
happened here. My team was under leveled,
so my Max Repels didn't work. So that was annoying. And I avoided as many trainers
as I could on my first trip then went back to
battle them later. Once I was through though, I
grinded up the team quite a lot to level 57, about halfway
between the league's lowest and highest-level Pokemon. I also changed up their
movesets quite a bit. I deleted some unnecessary
HMs like Cut or Surf, although I left Fly on Dodrio, and I also taught several
of them Hyper Beam since you can buy TMs
from the department store. There was one
moveset change though that mattered more than
any other, Belly Drum. Belly Drum is a normal-type
move that removes half of the user's maximum
HP in exchange for maximizing its
attack, taking it to +6. It's good and competitive
and even better in a playthrough when
you can use potions. It's a terrifying move,
especially on a bulky Pokemon. And guess who learns it, the very bulky
Lockdown the Snorlax. After grabbing some Tiny
Mushrooms from Mt Moon, I headed to the move
reminder on Two Island and taught Lockdown Belly Drum. Right after that, I
also taught it Return since due to its
high friendship, it
was 102 base power. I was ready to Belly Drum sweep
the hell out of the league. Well, parts of it. Lorelei was up first and the Belly Drum sweeping
worked to perfection. All I had to do was
Belly Drum, potion up, than OHKO anything in my way. Jynx proved more annoying
due to causing Sleep and Infatuation, but eventually, Lockdown got the
win single-handedly. Next was Bruno though, and
this was gonna be tougher. Not only is his entire
team rock or fighting type, two of the types that
my normal-type using normal-type team really hates, but also his first Onix,
the Pokemon he leads with, knows Roar, which could
force a switch out after I had done the
Belly Drum boosting, causing me to lose it. I needed to use
other strategies. Bruno led with the Roaring
Onix and I led with Longhorn to begin my Intimidate
switching strategy. Although once
Bloodhound came in, I decided it would be better to just lower its defense
and began Leering instead. After a bit of that, I brought
in Vermin to Super Fang and Strength its way to victory and that plan succeeded in
just two hits thanks to a crit. In came Hitmonchan and I
didn't feel comfortable setting up against
it with Lockdown. So I brought in Birdbrains. Tri Attack did a lot
but Hitmonchan went for counter which
obliterated Birdbrains. Longhorn was able to come
in and finish it off though. Hitmonlee came in, so
I brought in Needle. Thanks to its Strength
doing about half plus some Poison
Point poison damage, Needle easily won in two turns. Then Bruno sent
in his second Onix which I was comfortable setting
up against with Belly Drum. Once the setup was done,
Lockdown OHKO'd it with Return. Finally, it was his
terrifying Machamp. I went for Return, worried
that Hyper Beam might miss. Machamp landed a
devastating Cross Chop but Lockdown clutched
it and held on. The Return decimated Machamp,
winning the uphill battle against the fighting and
rock type specialist. Next was Agatha with
three ghost type Pokemon. So Belly Drum sweeping
wasn't gonna work here because every time
she sent in a ghost, I had to bring in
Bloodhound to sniff it. The battle ended up proving
more annoying than difficult. Bloodhound Odor Sleuthed
each ghost when it came in, and then I usually ended
up defeating her Pokemon with a variety of
my team due to all the sleep shenanigans
she likes to pull and me switching out
when that happened. The most notable turn was
her Arbok taking down Vermin due to a Sludge Bomb
after a Screech. At the end of the battle,
half my team was asleep and one was fainted, but I
was never in danger of losing. The final Elite Four
member was Lance and this ended up being the
easiest battle of the bunch since lockdown could easily
Belly Drum sweep freely. His last Dragonair couldn't
even KO it with a Hyper Beam and Lockdown ended the battle
with 4 HP, it was beautiful. Then it was time for the
last battle of the game, my final face-off with PokeMEN7. His Pigeot knew Whirlwind so
I couldn't lead with Lockdown because I didn't
want to force switch to lose my Belly Drum boost. I led with Longhorn instead
who I had to switch out before I could KO the Pidgeot, due to Feather Dance
dropping my attack. He used that turn to heal
and then Birdbrains came in and promptly froze
it with Tri Attack. Tri Attack was so
fun in this game. The amount of times
I froze enemy Pokemon was beautifully large. Another Tri Attack wouldn't KO but a Hyper Beam did,
proving my bird superior. The switch battle
style allowed me to avoid the recharge turn. So I swapped in
Lockdown against Rhydon to set up Belly Drum. I got scared though at
first and tested a Return to see how much
Earthquake would do, but he Scary Faced first. Then I just decided
to Belly Drum and Earthquake
did about a third, making my HP go down to just 23. I healed up, tanked a Take Down, tanked an Earthquake,
then clicked Return. That was unfortunately
not enough to KO though, forcing
me to heal again. He didn't heal though. So an Earthquake and a
Quick Claw move first, Body Slam later, Lockdown
took down Rhydon. Alakazam hit decently
hard with Psychic but Lockdown survived
and OHKO'd it. Gyarados dropped his
attack to just +5 but that was still
plenty for me. After healing up, I
OHKO'd it with Return. Arcanine dropped it to +4,
but that still didn't matter and Lockdown OHKO'd it too. Finally was his
Venusaur, the Pokemon whose Sleep Powder caused
me so many problems. In an act of sheer
victorious defiance, I OHKO'd it with Hyper Beam using the Pokemon known
for sleeping a lot. I had beaten FireRed using
only normal-type moves. And this beautiful squad
was the team I did it with. Just look at them, what an unexpectedly cool
team I ended up with. Closing thoughts on
this playthrough is that it wasn't
actually that bad. Battling rock types and steel
types, sure, that was annoying but it gave me a chance
to kind of figure out how to beat them
almost like a puzzle. I got to solve a lot of
puzzles like Odor Sleuthing the ghost types and Intimidating and Super Fanging
the rock types, and using Static and Poison
Point to my advantage. It was fun to figure
those things out. Lockdown the Snorlax
was absolutely the MVP. I'm so happy I
noticed and remembered it can learn Belly
Drum because that made decimating the league
just really fun. Thanks so much for watching
and an extra special thanks to my patrons over on Patreon who are helping support
my channel independent of fluctuating YouTube ad rates. If you wanna help support
me in the same way, the link is in the
description below. Also, if you wanna
check out some more of my fun Pokemon content, I
recommend these videos here. All right, that's
all I have for now. So until next time, Pokefans, gotta catch them all.
