Commander

Her other two pokemon are her aces Volbeat (Bugsy) and Illumise (not nicknamed) so you're not missing anything as there wasn't one named after Charlotte currently.

I believe my strategy the first time I beat it was Rain, Intimidate with Arbok, Hit it with a Leech Seed from Cherrim, Something about reflect and Sand Attack and the almighty stall war or something. I know there was an exploit back when I first did it where I manipulated it to keep spamming Fire Fang on Alakazam letting it live the attacks and do damage. But yeah, there are quite a few easy ways to beat the guy easily with basically no effort.

I'm going to try and put this in a way you can understand. Writing is one of those things where while you can do what you want, there are standards. It's like making a cake. Chocolate seems to be the kind of cake people like the most for those who like it, but vanilla is usually much easier to make as it requires less ingredients. It's a weird analysis, I know, but it's probably the best to describe this situation. Everybody makes their cakes (or writing) differently so not one style is right or wrong. Here's what you're doing right now: all you have in front of us is a plate of sugar that you are calling cake. It had potential to be a cake, but it's not a cake. I mean you don't need to make a five paragraphed post but longer posts are usually more insightful. Details are very, very critical especially in the first post as you are making a brand new world from a blank sheet of paper. You should be setting up a world and scenery, but instead you give us an action. It's impossible to react from an action if there's no world to even step into. You can take what I just said with a grain of salt as I kind of only glanced over this topic to know I wasn't interested in it. I've been doing writing since forever ago, but that doesn't mean I know everything. The most important thing in writing though is creating a clear picture and slowly let the less important stuff start coming into play like characters and the plot (yes, the world is the most important part of a story or that's my belief).

If I had to take a guess that another gym leader was a member of team member (current member...not former) I'd place my bet on Aya as she's the only one I'd even believe would fit. It wouldn't surprise me either way if she was or wasn't associated with Meteor as that whole situation seemed a little too convenient. There's just a lot that you could put her on either side from all of her actions, unlike all the other characters who you pretty much can tell what side they are on. As for the whole Bennett and Elite 4 thing, let's look at this from a different perspective. What if El wasn't an E4 member. Who could possible have the power to remove an E4 member and put another in office. Even El himself couldn't do that alone. Heather and Arclight don't look like people who would bother with that and Laura would obviously not count. As for Anna, she's not even there half the time anyways. That leads us back to one person, one very important, overlooked person. You all already know who I'm talking about. El isn't the reason Laura got kicked out, someone bigger is. Lin is the very center of it and at the worst, both the efforts of Lin and El is how Bennett is going to be an E4 member (probably also due to the other members not being present). Solaris was the original leader of Team Meteor and very, very powerful if you couldn't tell. He alone isn't able to accomplish his dreams which is why he eventually lost his position as he needed someone very, very powerful. We know Lin holds a very important position if not champion and has more influence on Meteor than even Solaris and Sirius combined. They even showed moments that the two feared her. I also believe that is another factor in why Taka wanted the player to battle and he won't leave Meteor. But how is this connected to Laura? Lin holds a very high position and she hates Laura. If given the opportunity, I'm sure she'd do something about her especially considering how dangerous she could be compared to the other E4 members. That kind of leads to why I think Lin is the champion and why she isn't super involved if at all.

While Redwood was giving his speech, most people seemed deeply interested in his presentation, but one small faction of the contest hall wasn't able to hear it. In the center of the mess, rested a blonde girl with her feet propped up on the seat in front and was enjoying a nice little nap. The words of the professor were quite...soothing and enough to knock the hyperactive girl out for the taking. While she wasn't fully asleep, all she could really here was vague sounds from the speaker. Her snoring wasn't loud, but it was loud enough to bother anyone close by. Rosie, noticed this early on, but did nothing of the sort to stop it. Any quiet time with this girl was good enough. It also made for the perfect napping spot as she curled up right on her trainer's stomach. That nap didn't last long as the lights began to dim. The poor Pokemon took a plunge to the ground as the girl suddenly shot up. Citrine looked a bit confused at the sudden change of lighting and the screen on display. "Since when did we start playing a movie? I didn't think I was out that long." She wasn't speaking to anyone in particular. "Eh, it looks like one of those discovery channel things, but I guess it's better than nothing."

You either have two wars against Radomus in doubles, his Trick Room team or his Mega Gardevoir, but not both. Leveling is a pain here just due to how things work, but 58 is the recommended level which is pretty much 4 levels above Noel. I'm not really inclined to lower it as that'd make Radomus a joke then. If it's too much of an issue there are trainers you can fight in the grand hall with your handy dandy lucky egg. As for Trick Room, that's a really complicated headache of a subject, but he didn't use it because Metagross was on the field otherwise he would've. I expect that in E16 or 17 it'll be better made so Radomus will be stronger then, but trust me when I say I did a lot of math for buffing and adjusting that fight. The Singles fight was more for people complaining Radomus was too easy. Anyways, the road does not get any easier from here, but I have a feeling you can do it with that team (though I might advise a team adjustment soon as...a certain leader coming up could probably wreck your team).

So now that I finished the game, I can actually talk about story. There was a lot, I mean a lot of stuff that happened between my previous post and this post that I really should cover. I'm going to put this in a spoiler though I'm not going to spoil that much (or anything at all really):

If you try to plow through the game offensively, you'll be punished for it down the line. Strategy will lead you to more success. Hardcore simply bumps up the difficulty so going in there without a plan usually ends up very badly (cough *Serra* cough). This is the Mega Charizard Y song and dance all over again (that's for Hardcore though and not regular Reborn). Charlotte did need a bit of nerfing because of the EV spike. IMO, people wouldn't be complaining so much if Charlotte lost the perfect EV spreads instead of a level/item drop. Her pre-nerf team just did a little bit too much damage and just needed to be soften a little bit. Typhlosion losing Energy Ball was also a bit dent and it really should get a Power Herb to kind of replicate that. I don't know what the problem is though as I've forgotten what Charlotte currently has. You can't simply just say a leader is way too weak after a nerf unless you have concrete evidence. Are you able to pretty much sweep her easily with almost anything? Are her pokemon not hitting hard enough? If so, which one(s) is/are the problem? Is there an easy way to resolve the problem with a quick fix? Are the levels too low now and need to be raised? I've gone through many of these headaches on leaders/bosses and actually did listen to quite a few people when doing fixes for hardcore as I usually got pretty good feedback instead of complaints. Complaints are meaningless unless there is some actually useful info in them. ----------------------------------------------------- And don't even remind me of that whole Julia and episode 1 situation. There just is no good way to grind because the only thing you have is a level 12 trubbish who runs poison gas...making grinding very, very tedious at that point in the game. On the other hand though, you've got yourself a very nice trubbish to use against Julia if you catch it which will make your life easier. Most people actually don't know there is an alleyway with higher leveled Pokemon which in and of itself is the spot to grind (still very tedious though).

Alright, I've nearly reached the end and this is kind of going to be the best possible review as I remain on neutral ground. There's a ton a like about the game, but there's also a ton of cons to the game where I personally think it is not as good as explorers main game wise (I haven't hit the ending though). I'm nearly at the end of the main story so my thoughts on the story may change a bit. I'll start with my personal pros and positive notes of the game followed by the cons (I'll put them in a spoiler since they can get very spoilery, but I'll keep it quite subtle). Pros: Now for my personal Cons: I know my cons may look bigger, but they are pretty evened out to the pros. I'd give the game 8/10 though I can highly recommend it to any Mystery Dungeon lover as it is good no matter what I say. The graphics and music are fantastic and the gameplay is very fun. TBH, I feel the story system is what kills replayability given your Pokemon are too weak to do anything half the time making you use the third party member just to make progress. It is a step in the right direction though and I'm hoping the post game delivers as this new recruiting system is kind of fun.

By Zero, I don't mean everything will hit but the evasion boosts are gone due to frost breath being an Auto critical hit. If it's not frost breath, it has about a 50% chance of being a crit iirc (25% if it's only a one stage and 50% for a 2 stager, and 3 is always a 100%). It's not really important if you use slow or bulky mons, but speed demons can get haxed hard if you're not careful. My best advice for people having trouble is to go for very strong Special moves like Fire Blast and Focus Blast as due to reflecting making them even stronger. Trust me for Hardcore, I didn't even make Serra as strong as Pre-nerf Serra and people still have trouble with her. In reality, she should be fighting in a double battle but like Sigmund, it'd just overwhelm the average player.

The AI is a little crappy, but it does a decent job (and let's admit it, the AI really ain't so good in any of the mystery dungeon games). It's definitely difficult even in the first few points, but it you know how to use items you won't really struggle that much early on. My only gripe is that the one none attack move only does 5 damage (I wish it was still like a weak tackle instead) which forces you to use moves for KOs. It's a little more forgiving on the moves part as their are lower grade versions of items from previous MD games like reviver seeds and Max elixirs which are pretty common...until you actually need them. I can't really fully give a comparison between explorers and super yet as the beginning is LOOOONGGG, but in a good way. It's definitely better than Rescue team and I could argue the story starts out better than explorers even. Dungeons are back to being more Explorer style with big rooms instead of Gates all the same size rooms. The pros outweigh the cons so if you liked a previous dungeon game, I'd pick it up.

how? How is it even possible somebody can get that many upvotes in a minute.

Just gonna tell you that it's going be a little while before the tears. Right now it's actually kind of hilarious and full of surprises (I think I stopped at Chapter 7). And yeah, the game is definitely hard.

I'm not going to go into too much detail but as a first impression, I'm really enjoying this game. Even if you're new to the series it's really easy to get into due to a new tutorial type deal. The only gripe I have so far is the gender thing but I can honestly forgive that since they technically keep the partner's gender. It definitely doesn't start out like the other Pokemon games at all though and it's kind of an interesting twist when you're expecting something else to happen. They also brought hunger back as well so that's a plus/minus for a couple people. I haven't gotten far but it doesn't seem liked they dumped it down as I did struggle on one fight in the first dungeon...even though the rest were pitifully easy as to be expected. Edit: Now that I've made it a little bit farther it starts out kind of slow introducing all the mechanics and such, but again, the story is a little bit different than the other Mystery Dungeons and I really kind of like it so far. They kept a lot of the Gates Gameplay, but they also have a spin of their own. I can honestly recommend it easily for any mystery dungeon lover as imo, the story starts out a bit better than the other 3 especially with its fun ways of foreshadowing. Edit 2: Damn, this is a really long opening segment section. The second boss's dungeon is already 20 floors and has fully evolved Pokemon like Accelegor and Ambipom. Did I mention you'll probably be only around 11-12 at this point in the game if you're good which is saying something. It hasn't hit a hard point, but I'm already seeing difficulty spikes compared to Gates to Infinity (in those games, I pretty much wiped the bosses effortlessly). I was never close to losing, but the first two bosses are quite difficult from what'd you expect. Also spoiler for what happened:

You know you can make multiple saves, right? (Just search it and you'll see plenty of how to topics and such).

You might want to play another mod because what I'm doing might take a while to do honestly. If you're familiar with the gym leader castle system in stadium you might like this as it's something that will be improved upon each episode release. Since I have help though, I might slow down a little bit so it could be released from 2-3 weeks since I'm probably only going to do one fight a day max.

It's funny how people associate Sirius with his Chandelure when Seviper is actually his ace. Still, that's a really good pic of him.

Hey man, who said Escavalier was bad against Charlotte? Give that thing Drill Run in a Trick room and it'll have a field day with her. Anyways, welcome to Reborn and RIP lurker. You will never be missed. Anyways, I hope you enjoy your stay on the forums. Also, don't be afraid to leave your sanity at the door. You won't be needing it here.

Oh, thanks for reminding me I need to put something in there to fix that for Hardcore (I'm pretty sure it's just one or two simple commands). Trust me, that fight is a little buggy overall and I'm not sure what exactly has been fixed. If you talk to Serra from above, your game freezes XD and to the sides it's also a little funky. I'm also surprised you aren't running Mismagius for this either.

I'm not that into one piece but from the little bit of wiki I read from Robin, Absol wouldn't be that bad of a choice considering it's the disaster Pokemon and everything bad that happened or will happen it is summoned (up until the point you catch it that is).

Well half your problem is that you're running a team of physical attackers on a special based field. Physicals get punished very heavily on this field unless you run bulky Pokemon to revert the evasion back to zero (if Serra uses Frost Breath, their evasion automatically goes down to zero). If it's too much, just have Dugtrio EQ the field to cancel it out.

(cough) Dugtrio and Pawinard (cough) sucker punch (cough) Hmm...seems like I'm getting a cold.