The Battle Sims in XD

[baratron]

Oh my God! The Battle Sim CDs! They rock! ;D

I've done about 20 of them so far - the one that caused me the most trouble was the third, or maybe fourth one I did: no. 20, "Let slip the Houndoom". The problem was that I didn't have the sufficiently devious mindset required for the puzzle. I should've remembered that damn Colosseum Double Battle trainer who drove me completely insane by using Toxic on his own pkmn, followed by Facade - which gets powered up to double strength by the pkmn being Poisoned. That was the only one I've needed to look up in an FAQ, so far. (Richard went onto GameFAQs for me, so I didn't read the the solutions for any of the others. Hooray for living with a mad fluffy person.) The rest have been comparatively easy now that I'm thinking about attacking my own pkmn, and I've managed to do quite a few of the three star puzzles on my first or second attempt.

I love the Rattata one (no. 17) - level 5 Rattata beating a level 100 Shuckle in 4 moves. Totally rocks! Also, disc no. 35: the Metronome battle! Most crazy thing ever! After five or six attempts where I lost both pkmn while the opposing pkmn were both still ok, I eventually won owing to a stupid collection of luck. First, my Togepi got Recover and almost completely filled his health bar, then the opposing Geodude Transformed into Cleffa, then my Cleffa (on 1 HP!) used Thunder on the Geodude - and because he'd Transformed into Cleffa, it was Super Effective rather than completely useless, then Machop got Confused and knocked himself out.

And did I mention the one that involves you having a team of Rhydon, Golem, some bird and Flareon (no. 19, I think, without having the game in front of me), and you have to defeat 3 opponents in 2 moves? The solution is so amazingly devious I don't want to say it in case it spoils it for anyone else, but that one really is brilliant.

I could actually live with a complete game of the Battle Sims and nothing else . The rest of the game being good is just a bonus .

Anyway, if anyone cares, these are the ones I've done so far & can give solutions for. But obviously, that would be highly spoilerific...

01: Flying Vs. Flying. Predict the opponent's moves to win!
02: Skill Over Power. Use the foe's power to your advantage!

 

[QuagsireQing]

At first glance, the battle all seem completely impossible. There's always a nasty trick, though. The hardest part of the battles is using the exact moveset designed to take out the enemy. Once you realize that there's pretty much only one order of moves to be used, it gets a little easier. Let Slip the Houndoom and Volcanic Reaction are two really good examples. I'm trying to get through them all without the use of FAQs, which results in sometimes as much as an hour spent per CD trying to get it just right.

Sometimes you just get lucky. You thought Slowpoke Family Feud to be devious, Baratron, and I got it on first try just pretty much just by using Thrash and being lucky. I got the idea to take away Slowbro's Own Tempo with Misdreavus's Skill Swap, but next turn Misdreavus got Psybeamed to death, and I never got to pass that Own Tempo on to Sharpedo, so Sharpedo ended up Thrashing itself into Confusion anyways. Lucky for me, it never hurt itself in its confusion, and I ended up taking out all three Slows with continued Thrashes. ;D

 

[baratron]

Oh, I did the Slowpoke challenge on my second attempt. Got given the clue by attempting to use Confuse Ray on Slowpoke in my first attempt... I still maintain it's devious, though. Although you can Check the CDs before playing to see the order of pkmn, levels, movesets and held items, you don't get told their Abilities - which means that any solution which relies on knowing a particular pkmn's ability is truly For The Expert .

Quite a few of the challenges have multiple possible solutions. There are at least 3 possible ways of doing the Color Change Carnival. One of them is the "neat" way that takes only 2 turns and uses entirely Super Effective attacks against Kecleon's various Types, but you can do it perfectly well in 3 or 4 turns. I've been writing my FAQ today and playing some of the challenges many times .

The one I'd be interested in input on is Battle CD 08: Zangoose Vs. Cradily. It seems that it's random on which turn Slash becomes a Critical Hit. (Yeah, I know in actual battling that's the case, but these Battle Sims are generally quite reproducible - 5 attempts at the Plusle & Minun one have me certain that Thunder on the first move always fails.) About 15 attempts at disc 08 have left me fairly convinced that Turns 2 & 5 have the highest probability, but I'm not certain. And it certainly seems possible to use the right strategy and not succeed because you never get your Critical Hit.