Paperblade

Oh, that black. That looks like it's the helmet cracking to me, but it's hard to say for sure. The black goes down past her head which could be hair, but her hand and arm aren't clearly visible so it's also possible she's reaching up to cover her face and/or hold the helmet so it doesn't fall completely apart.

Oh, yeah, that's why that one is just "kinda implied" Anyway, the color on Madame X's skin is the same (and I mean literally the same, the RBG and HSV values are identical) as the darker parts of other light-skinned characters, including Melia but also definitely not Melia characters, such as the pink-haired PC, Jenner, and various generic NPC models. The black line right above it is almost certainly her eye since they're always represented like that on sprites. Then the spot above that is where her hair would start, and it's light enough that she's probably blonde--it's much lighter than the outline of Jenner's hair for example, let alone someone with darker hair like Ren or journalist Valarie. So the sprite suggests Madame X is a blonde with similar if not the same skin tone as Melia.

Nah, for Melia, Melanie grabs her arm and it does the pillar of light animation that also happens when you and Melia overlap your other selves. It's very explicit

Wait yeah you're right. That's why the lead always Yawns.

It's likely they touched when Melia awakened regardless of which non-bad ending route you take, since in Melia's dream sequence in Ch. 14, Melanie explicitly says Melia overlapped her. Melanie clearly overlaps her in the bad end, so Melanie being bad future Melia is confirmed with how overlapping has been explained to us. It's kinda also implied in the bad end that Melanie overlapped Madame X since you see her armor in a pile near the throne. I'm about 99% confident that Madame X, Melia, Maria, and Melanie are all the same person but all from different timelines or something like that. Madame X might just be Melia after some sort of future trauma perhaps from another cataclysmic event--something is definitely coming because Crescent in Nightmare City repeatedly says "not much time left" and "soon". I don't think Madame X is evil either, she seems to have some sort of noble goal, but has a serious case of "the ends justify the means" where she is willing to sacrifice a lot of innocents if it means saving the world or something like that. For example, she states that part of the reason you end up in the bad future is she was watching the gang try to stop Vivian, but when she tried to rewind time (like she did to tell you where the bomb was in the first visit to the past), it was too late and this is when her Time Diamond broke. The interesting thing is why she is teamed up with Kieran and Freya and what they want, since they have Ultra Beasts and Kieran talks like he doesn't like the Interceptor's job ("Everything's on a predetermined path. At least, that's how it's supposed to be.") and both he and Risa refer to Team Xen negatively (Risa calls Ren "Team Xen scum" and Kieran says Ren is "wearing that disgraceful uniform"). Considering Madame X is the leader of Team Xen, I've gotta wonder why they are working for her. And I say "for her," because the dialogue at Eclysia Pyramid has the two of them referring to Madame X like you might a superior, giving her honorifics and talking like she's their leader. Also like, Indriad is clearly the real BBEG here. He is set up from the prologue and his shadow is felt throughout the game from the weird time portal in Ch.3 to whatever happened to create Angie (which is definitely coming back to bite us Soon because Cera is stalking us). And he's clearly still around because he was messing around in Goldenleaf with Geara and Narcissa. And he's obviously the father of Melia/Erin/Allen/Alice so there needs to be a confrontation there eventually.

His team might be bulky because he's setting up Arenite Wall. It's a Rejuvenation-exclusive move that can only be used in sandstorm, and sets a screen that cuts super effective damage (I think by half). Like other screen moves, it can be broken by Brick Break. Also, if you change the terrain, when it wears off the field will revert to being fieldless instead of the inverse field, which helps since his team is made with the Inverse Field in mind and a lot of pokemon lack coverage in a normal battle as a result. For example, on Normal difficulty, he doesn't have anything that will hit a Fighting type super effectively in regular terrain.

Walrein tends to not use Protect turn 1, at least from my memory of trying that fight like 30 times for my 3-mon run. It probably depends on what you lead with, but from my memory it likes Surf My first thought was something like Choice Band Moxie Krookodile Earthquake to try to push through, but the Ground immunities make that infeasible. So the alternative is maybe something using Banded Rock Slide, but Rock resists like what Solaris has make that rough. Blizzard might be the best out if you reset til Florinia Wood Hammers Walrein on turn 1, but I don't think that even OHKOs.

What stands out to me is a lot of the pokemon you are raising are weak to Fire, including multiple that are double weak. There's a couple good Rock and Water options coming up, or you could try training Geodude (I've personally never used it so I don't know how good it is).

I think the game rounds up when it should be rounding down, because your calcs are right and I've experienced similar

Fiore definitely has the big issue where almost every trainer has no real type theme and them not doing real EV training means they have some extra bulk, unlike Glass where everything just dies to fire. Like, Fern and Blake lead with Haxorus + Walrein, and in my experience Flobot's Torterra is 90% just gonna Yawn. I'm not sure if anything can grab 2 KOs there. Also if it goes over 75 it stops obeying vs. Solaris LCCC only have 5 each iirc so that gives you a turn of breathing room. John in Fiore also only has 5 but idk how much that helps.

I'm not sure if 2-mon is possible while still getting max Shade points, but just completing the game probably? Alolan Ninetales+Blaziken would probably be my choice for that run, although Blaziken+Honchkrow might be able to do it and beat Pyrous Mountain Solaris Also good luck with Fiore Mansion and LCCC. Glass Gauntlet has some setups that can eat through it which should be doable in 6 turns per battle, so if you get past Fiore I think you're golden. Edit: also 6 mon is pretty easy, Budew is basically a second starter and you can pick any starter if you think they're better for early game because increased team size lets you hold out for flygon

Supposed to be like that as far as I know

Infernape doesn't get boosting moves without breeding and while fast, there are faster things that blaziken will outspeed with some boosts while hitting much harder thanks to bulk up and higher attack. Some of the things blaziken can get away with running or doing are nuts Infernape is a very close second and has real advantages over blaziken though. Most of the fire starters are exceptional, and even the worst of them is good.

Yeah this is about where it starts to fall off. Fortunately around there it gets Misty Terrain so it has everything it really needs.

I'm glad that meowstic is getting the recognition it deserves. I would put some exp in it though, since it's actually just good vs kiki and aya, as well as earlier fights like corey if you get the lower peridot mix.

I hard disagree with this; Audino trainers without exp all are much faster than grinding EVs the hard way. EV rooms let you get a good spread in like 5 minutes tops, without it it probably takes an hour because the macho brace/power items aren't for a while and you have to find a good spot.

story spoilers pokemon customization stuff battles miscellaneous

Favorite: Burning Least: mirror

Unburden

This plus the previous post should be an exhaustive list of pokemon with EV spreads being messed up by # of commas. I used the regular expression ([^,\n]*,){23}[^,] to check these, it's a great convenience for this since it's nearly impossible to tell at a glance if something is right or not, and even with testing you pretty much need to be running calcs on everything which would be pretty far beyond thorough. You can adjust it to check other lengths if you want--the number should just correspond to whatever the last defined value's array number is as declared in the PokemonTrainers script. Also

Most of your pokemon are still in their weak first stages (especially Pichu). The best first stage mon there is Trubbish, who isn't great vs. Rift Galv because it's also Poison type. In addition, Vivillon is generally pretty solid in other fights around this time, but most pokemon in the Zetta and Rift Galv fights have a move that hits it SE. I usually like to have most of my team at this point to be things that have already evolved at least once just for the stats. Things like Swoobat, Fearow, and Sandslash are solid for this reason, as well as some rare encounters like Chingling

I wasn't aware either until I looked it up, I had assumed it was just one Unrelated, but I also have an imgur album with all of the Adrienn volunteer locations with short descriptions of where they are. The screenshots are taken with the person already recruited: https://imgur.com/a/UDjeB

Is this what enlightenment is like?

I'm looking at the code, and apparently we are both right/wrong. The start is predetermined, but there are two unique ones, based on whether or not Saphira was abducted in Tanzan Cove. If Saphira is abducted, it should start as: 629 475 134 829 578 316 Otherwise you get: 496 125 583 779 241 638 Here is a solution for the second one:

The golems are dark/fighting, so they are weak to fairy, flying, and fighting. The field cuts fairy damage iirc but since they're double weak you still come out ahead. They're not very fast iirc so a strong but slow attacker is still good.