Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

This was quite the fun team to use, especially since it carries a lot of interesting answers into different threats. Quite the impressive showing from what are normally a bunch of iconic but mediocre Hoenn mons.

Baltoy/Claydol

Claydol offers an effective combination of offense and defense, in multiple ways depending on the team. Its wide coverage, boosted by Mystic Power, can be put to good use with Twisted Dimensions, flipping the script against the many extremely fast lategame threats. In doubles this becomes even more effective, enabling strong but powerful allies. There's also the very funny tech of using STAB Outburst to wipe something off the face of the earth. What I find more interesting, though, is its other ability: Ancient Idol. This makes its attacks scale on its defensive stats instead, which makes for a phenomenal synergy with Cosmic Power. Against a suitable opponent, Claydol can begin ramping up its bulk on both sides, becoming unbreakable especially with healing from Recover. From there, the exceptional combo of Earth Power and Dazzling Gleam can tear through any team. You could also make use of Psycho Boost, whose SpA drop is irrelevant since it'll be coming off of the SpD stat instead.

Lileep/Cradily

One of the most reliable drain tanks in the game. While Grass and Rock individually suck as defensive types, together they're actually really good. This makes it pretty easy for it to live hits and answer back with a Giga Drain. It won't do much, but equipped with the Absorbant ability, it also applies a Leech Seed, allowing it to deal consistent damage to nearly anything while also staying healthy. Since all its offensive pressure comes from this, you're free to invest fully in its bulk, further enhanced by Battle Armor. Combined with Subtitute, Protect, and Recover, Cradily can stick around for a very long time, able to take out multiple enemy Pokémon with just this combo. You can also use that bulk to make it a reliable Stealth Rock setter, or accelerate your opponents' demise with Toxic.

Anorith/Armaldo

Armaldo was kinda underwhelming, probably because the rest of this team is way better than it. Really though, it's a perfectly serviceable offensive Pokémon. Keen Edge boosts powerful STAB moves like Mighty Cleave and Guillotine, and it has STAB priority as well in Accelerock and Aqua Jet. Trick Room is the best environment for it, but a bulky Choice Band set works fine too and Rock Polish with a Sash is surprisingly effective in the right environments. It just doesn't have much else outside of being a standard bulky attacker.

Feebas/Milotic

Feebas is absolutely terrible, somehow worse than Magikarp, but Milotic more than makes up for it. It carries on its legacy of bulk from the base game, sporting abilities like Marvel Scale, Prism Scales, and Self Sufficient to help it stick around for a long time. With this longevity it can either support the team with moves like Hypnosis and Flip Turn or go on the attack with STAB Scald and Moonblast, boosted greatly by Adaptability. Base 100 SpA may not seem very high in Elite Redux, but when you can stick around for this long, it's hardly an issue. Even less so for its well-deserved Mega, turning it into a true behemoth of bulk and further enhancing its offensive capabilities. Pure Love and Tangling Hair heavily punish opponents who try to attack it on its weaker physical side, the former also being great for stopping scary multi-hit moves like Triple Kick and Whirling Strikes. Alternatively, Natural Recovery makes its pivot role even better, sustaining its HP throughout long fights and giving it more opportunities to reposition. This excellence in both offense and defense made Milotic an excellent choice for any situation, whether it be using Karma to set up in the Psychic gym, Brine to wear down the Water gym, or just sponging hits in general all throughout the run.

Castform

Castform is one of the most infamous cases in the vanilla competitive scene. A Pokémon that can effectively fight in any weather sounds like a fantastic concept, but it just doesn't have enough sauce to make it work. At the very least, it gave us Weather Ball, used to much greater effect by countless other Pokémon. Anyway, as for its incarnation in ER, that is a very different story. Castform is one of the best and most fun Pokémon to use in this game, at least in my opinion. Its stats are better, and it has forms for sand and fog now, the former of which it always should've had. Additionally, its signature ability Forecast has been buffed to not just change its form with the weather, but to also automatically cast Weather Ball after using a weather-setting move. This makes it amazing for countering opposing weather, since it can set a more favorable weather for you while also attacking so as not to leave itself vulnerable. It's also just good in general, as this grants it 100 power Adaptability-boosted STAB moves of five different types, some boosted by their respective weathers as well. Something that's really interesting to note as well about the buffed Forecast is that using a weather-setting move while that weather is already up can still trigger Weather Ball, meaning you can save a moveslot on Weather Ball itself and just have a moveset of four weather moves. But wait, there's more! Castform's choice abilities also change when it tranforms, so it's a good idea to pay attention to what base Castform has. Anticipation turns into each weather's offense-boosting ability, giving it a free Specs boost once transformed. Guilt Trip turns into a speed-boosting ability instead, very useful into opposing weather since you can use their weather to outspeed them and set your own. Pressure then turns into a specialized ability, mostly useful if you're working with another weather setter to allow Castform to focus on one weather only. Annoyingly, the above only apply to the rain, hail, sand, and fog forms, with the sun form getting its own unique arrangement. I know it's not a plant, but I feel like they could give the sun form Chlorophyll instead of Catastrophe to at least be consistent with the others. Anyway, with how many weather teams there are throughout the game, having a Pokémon like Castform that specializes in weather strategies is valuable for any team.

Kecleon

This run is two for two on terrible Hoenn Normal-types who have suddenly become cracked. Kecleon has absolutely terrible choice abilities, awful stats, and an exceedingly shallow movepool, but all of that is irrelevant in the face of one of the best abilities in the game: Color Change. I'm sure most of us are familiar with what this ability does; it's amazing what the ability to be resistant or immune to literally every attack that comes your way does to an otherwise terrible Pokémon like this. It has no recovery, limited coverage, literally zero setup moves, and only a handful of useful utility moves like Fake Out, Trick Room, Blood Shot, and Knock Off. Still, it's just enough that, combined with its incredible longevity, it can be a reliable disruptor into nearly everything. Honestly, it was a wise move to make every other aspect of it so terrible, since it would otherwise be utterly broken. Even then there's a case to be made that it's still broken; any Pokémon with Fighting coverage can't hit Kecleon at all so long as it turns into a Normal- or Dark-type with Protean at the end of each turn, and strong Electric, Dragon, or Ground attackers don't appreciate its presence either. Quite possibly the most reliable defensive piece any team could ask for, even with its limited presence once it actually hits the field.

In other news, I'm making progress on the spreadsheet. I don't have enough entries in it to be satisfied about releasing it, but it should be good to go in one or two runs.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

It's been a hot minute, I've been occupied by other things but I finally got around to finishing this run. It doesn't help that this isn't the best team in the world, a lot of these Pokémon feel very incomplete in the world of Elite Redux and could use some extra sauce to keep up with the power level.

Zangoose

Zangoose's main thing is Toxic Boost, which acts as a somewhat better version of Guts. It only works on poison, but in exchange it negates the residual damage, improving its longevity. Not that it matters, since it's pretty frail. It definitely doesn't lack in power, though, packing STAB Facade and coverage like Close Combat and Knock Off. While its Speed is barely good enough to be used without a Scarf, it also has the excellent ability On the Prowl, giving it priority after switching in. While this is a bit awkward if your Toxic Orb hasn't activated yet, it nonetheless makes Zangoose a great revenge killer. Tough Claws serves to make its moves even stronger. There really isn't much else to its gameplan, it switches in, smacks something, and gets out before it can be hit in return. I do wish it would get an evolution or a Mega in the future, it still feels a bit incomplete.

Seviper

Like its eternal rival, Seviper is only decently fast, though it can function as a mixed attacker which is pretty nice. Special sets can make use of Tipping Point to boost up, though even with its great new defensive typing of Poison/Dark its stats make it very hard to take more than a couple hits. Opportunist is good for both physical and special sets, giving it a niche of cleaning up weakened teams, but I think its physical set with Cutthroat is the best way to run it. With Keen Edge and Hyper Aggressive, moves like Cross Poison, Kowtow Cleave, Bitter Blade, and Psycho Cut hit hard and fast and provide a wide range of coverage, with Deep Cuts also providing them with the utility of applying bleeding to stop opponents from healing. I ran mine with a Choice Band to great effect, landing oneshots left and right and stopping speedy sweepers in their tracks. I do wish it got Sacred Sword, and like Zangoose I think it needs a Mega or evolution to really feel complete.

Lunatone

Lunatone is a decently bulky Psychic attacker, a fairly common archetype, though what sets it apart is access to Sage Power, a special version of Gorilla Tactics. It can use this to great effect when equipped with a Choice Scarf, which makes its base 70 Speed actually pretty fast. Together with its built-in Choice Specs, STAB Diamond Storms, Psychics, and even Moonblasts and Dark Pulses thanks to Lunar Eclipse hit very hard. Another benefit of using Lunatone as a fast sweeper is the utility of Sturdy, allowing it to live a hit from a faster threat to keep the sweep going. I think with Lunar Eclipse and Dreamcatcher, a Hypnosis/Rock Polish set can also work, but I didn't try it out here.

Solrock

Where there is a moon, there must also be a sun. Due to its nature as a sentient rock and not a primate, Solrock is not afforded the benefits of Gorilla Tactics like Lunatone is with Sage Power. Nevertheless, it has its uses. I also used it as a Scarfed attacker, taking advantage of Victory Star to turn Stone Edge and Mind Break into powerful and reliable STAB moves. Solar Flare additionally lets it use STAB Double-Edge or V-Create along with a one-turn Solar Blade. Sturdy gives it the same benefits as I mentioned for Lunatone. This set is fairly generic but effective nonetheless, though it has other options too. Drought lets it support its teammates on a sun team, but it can also take advantage of the sun itself through Sun Worship.

As for Solrock System, there are two reasons I didn't use it in this run. First, it's not actually a tranformation from regular Solrock like Galaxy Espeon or Primal Snorlax are, it's its own weird separate thing (think Ursaluna-Bloodmoon) and thus will be covered separately. Second, Lunatone and Solrock by themselves are simply unable to handle the Rock monochamp, so I wouldn't be able to get Solrock System even if I wanted to.

Barboach/Whiscash

Whiscash is an interesting one, it has the stat spread of a defensive Pokémon but the abilities of an offensive one, making it somewhat tricky to use. Field Explorer is a fantastic ability on it, powering up moves like Dive and Dig to the point that even with no Attack investment, Whiscash can score knockouts onto a lot of things. By the way, did you know there are a bunch of moves that aren't field moves in the vanilla games that get boosted by Field Explorer? Zen Headbutt and Triple Dive, for example. Anyway, Dive and Dig specifically have excellent synergy with Aftershock; the free Magnitude triggers on both turns the move is used, netting you a lot of extra damage. One extremely annoying bug, though; if you use one of these moves against a Ground-immune Pokémon, the first Magnitude failing somehow cancels the semi-invulnerability, leaving you open to an attack. The move still goes through next turn, it's just really annoying taking unnecessary damage especially since despite its good defensive stats, Whiscash has no defensive abilities apart from Unaware. In any case, setting up with Dragon Dance is a viable strategy given its good physical bulk, but its low Speed means it needs more setup than other DDancers. I wanna say Whiscash feels incomplete, similarly to Zangoose or Seviper, but it has a lot of stats, there's just that disconnect between their distribution and its abilities. A Mega wouldn't hurt, in any case.

Corphish/Crawdaunt/Crawdauntless

Like many Water-types I've covered, Crawdauntless prefers to be in the rain, Swift Swim being a vital tool to patch up its poor Speed. Regardless of the weather, though, that base 160 Attack will make itself known. With Adaptability boosting its STAB bonus, those Crabhammers and Knock Offs will be hitting for insane damage. Hyper Cutter even protects it from Intimidate and similar effects as well as giving Crabhammer a 50% chance to crit. Choice Scarf sets are decent, but Choice Band with adequate support works as well. Now, if you don't find yourself needing the Adaptability boost, you can instead opt for Dauntless Shield to get some setup opportunities with either DDance or Agility to get the jump on enemies. Whatever you choose, Crawdauntless is sure to bring a lot of power to a team.

Btw, I'd like to know: would you lovely folks be interested in a document or spreadsheet or something where I compile various possible sets for each Pokémon I do in this challenge? It could serve as a resource for less experienced players and also just as a way to discover fun stuff and get inspiration for your own runs.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Today we have a horde of new evolutions gifted to some notoriously mid Pokémon. These guys have some super interesting setup potential, which made this a very fun run.

Torkoal/Tortemple

I didn't expect Torkoal of all Pokémon to receive an evolution, considering it's already pretty decent thanks to Drought, though I suppose its actual stats do leave a little to be desired. Tortemple retains Drought, which of course allows it to enable sun teams. It's also a good fit on Trick Room, since the weather powers up its Eruption. This team is neither of those, but it still has its uses. It has good bulk, letting it be a general stop to many threats but especially physical attackers. Hot Coals is also nice utility to hopefully neutralize any physical attackers switchinf in. White Smoke is an infuriating ability to fight against and it functions similarly when it's on your side, letting you sneak your way out of fights you would otherwise lose. Overall, it's not a particularly interesting or flashy Pokémon, but it does what it's there to do and that's good enough.

Spoink/Grumpig/Boarlock

On the opposite end, Boarlock ended up being one of the most fun Pokémon I've used. This was completely unexpected; I mean, it's an evolution of Grumpig. How much can you really expect from it? At first glance it appears to be a standard bulky attacker; with Fur Coat and Thick Fat it can survive hits, Gluttony lets it heal big with a held berry, and Power Core puts its defenses to good use when attacking as well. Setting up with Calm Mind on a defensive Leftovers/Sitrus set is perfectly viable, but I wasn't content with something so standard, so I looked into other things. My first attempt was a scuffed Belly Drum Salac Berry set, the idea being to tank a hit, max out Attack, and activate the berry for both a heal and a Speed boost. It's just far too weak physically for that, though. Eventually I settled on a Calm Mind set that still ran the Salac Berry for a faster approach, but even with max investment, base 60 at +1 can only take you so far. But what if you weren't restricted to one boost? Introducing Transmute, a fascinating move that restores a consumed item if it knocks its target out. Boarlock can sit in front of a special attacker and set up with Calm Mind. Getting chipped down isn't a problem; in fact, it's exactly what it wants, as it can then activate its Salac Berry. It can take the knockout from there, but I prefer to keep stalling for time, taking more damage until it's below half again. Then I take the kill with Transmute, get the berry back, and immediately consume it to get to +2 Speed. This is generally good enough to sweep most teams, including an impressive showing against the demonic Glacia. Such a fun sweeping set to play, especially since it's not just a single setup move you're clicking to get strong. Boarlock definitely exceeded my expectations, I'd recommend it if you want something different and fun in a playthrough.

Another thing that got me to appreciate Boarlock was its role in the second half of the Water gym. After a couple attempts, I decided to throw some doubles strategies at the wall until something worked, and as it turned out, Boarlock with Ally Switch alongside Mega Altaria is a cheat code into their Kyogre and Palkia lead. See, assuming both are at high HP, Palkia will always click Spacial Rend into Boarlock and Kyogre will always click Sheer Cold into Altaria. By using Ally Switch, Spacial Rend goes into the Fairy-type Altaria and Sheer Cold goes into Boarlock's Thick Fat, giving the fluffy bird a free setup opportunity. This was so funny when I discovered it, and it's definitely inspired me to try this move again in the future.

Spinda/Spindaze

The Contrary bot of Contrary bots. That ability is essentially the only consistently viable thing it has, but in all fairness it's a pretty nice thing. Strength or STAB Close Combat let it do its best Mega Staraptor impression, though it really isn't very bulky even after several boosts. Superpower lets you get stronger, though again, on a Pokémon this frail, it can be inconvenient to ramp up. It also has no way to boost its Speed, which while good at base 110, isn't the fastest thing in the universe. For the massive potential of Contrary, it struggles to deliver without significant support. That being said, it does have other tools which could make it worthwhile. Let's Dance is an interesting, if unreliable, disruption tool, acting as a Hail Mary to get you out of tough spots with confusion. Toxic Spill also helps with more consistent disruption and stalling, especially if you invest in bulk and use Contrary CC to enhance your longevity.

Trapinch/Vibrava/Flygon

Ah, Flygon. The Hoenn fan favorite that doesn't get the fan favorite treatment. Shafted out of a Mega and forever destined to play second fiddle to Garchomp. But not today, no. Elite Redux has given Flygon everything it could ask for, and now it is a force to be reckoned with. Its claim to fame is its signature ability Sand Song, turning moves like Hyper Voice and Uproar into powerful STAB moves. It can also lock into these moves with a choice item without much issue thanks to Tinted Lens, an ability it should totally have in the base game. Amplifier boosts this power further, though Sand Stream is another option for supporting its teammates as well. The Specs variant is a powerful breaker, but my need for speed saw me using Scarf more often, which also worked fine but I honestly missed a lot of the power of the Specs set. Setup variants with Dragon Dance or Quiver Dance are also possible if you play around Flygon's weaknesses. Flygon has also miraculously gotten a Mega Evolution in this game, enhancing what it already does. The main draw is Desert Spirit, summoning sand to activate Sepia Lens and potentially Sand Force while also enabling its Ground moves to hit flying targets. This makes its Uproars and Hyper Voices all the more spammable, with nearly nothing in the game being able to stop it.

Cacnea/Cacturne/Cacjack

I could've sworn Cacjack had a Mega, or maybe it was Cacturne from a fangame that had one. Regardless, Cacjack is an interesting one. It suffers from the Hoenn Special, being a relatively slow and frail mixed attacker, but it has its ways to get around those issues. Ominous Shroud and Scarecrow help it out defensively in many different ways, ensuring it can usually take a hit or two. It may even be enough to adopt a drain tank playstyle, using it with Soul Tap in the fog along with Leech Seed and Subtitute. I think this hit-taking ability is better put to use on the offense, though. Like Boarlock, I used an unorthodox sweeping set that took advantage of abilities and moves alike. This time, Ominous Shroud and Tipping Point's synergy let it get one or even two SpA boosts just for being hit, and in those turns it can use Trailblaze to patch up its mediocre Speed. By running Giga Drain and a Shell Bell, you can even restore Ominous Shroud against the right opponents, insuring you against ones you can't take out yet. It can be inconsistent when faced with opponents strong enough to kill it through Ominous Shroud and Scarcrow, but otherwise it makes for another fun boost sweeper. One notable performance is nearly sweeping Phoebe's entire team after tanking two hits from Giratina.

Swablu/Altaria

Keeping in line with this team's theme of setup, if Boarlock can sit in front of a special attacker and sweep, Altaria can do the same with physical attackers. Fluffy halves the damage taken from contact moves, so against a favorable matchup it can Dragon Dance to the max and begin taking things out with the synergistic coverage combo of Play Rough and Earthquake. That being said, it still isn't exceptionally strong Pokémon, with stats geared more towards defense and support. With Cloud Nine to shut down opposing weather strategies or Cotton Down for emergency speed control, it makes for a good utility pick, especially since it's bulky and can heal status with Natural Cure. Upon Mega Evolving, Fluffy changes to Fluffiest, making even the mightiest contact moves bounce right off and further facilitating its setup variant. This is further compounded by Peaceful Slumber giving it passive healing, as well as making it a funny counter to Sidney's Darkrai. There are so many fights where you can just park this thing in front of an unfortunate physical attacker and DDance for the win, including Winona, ironically enough, since her own Altaria in the base fame is infamous for ruining trainers' lives with its own DDancing.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Coming back to our regularly scheduled single battles, this run is pretty normal, all things considered. Strong attackers, bulky tanks, weather and hazards, the works. Mostly an easy run except the usual problem areas.

Electrike/Manectric

Mamectric makes for a pretty standard Electric attacker. Fast, high SpA, and a host of standard-issue abilities for the archetype. I decided to do something pretty fun with it this run by using Generator for its choice ability, doubling the strength of its first Electric move per switch-in. Combined with Volt Switch and Choice Specs, I could use it as a nuke that also helped me reposition, something that proved useful many times for some of its teammates. Very occasionally I'd also get some use out of clicking Overheat or Dragon Pulse. In its Mega form, it gets a lot stronger and faster and keeps Generator to make this playstyle much more effective, along with Ground Shock to make that Volt Switch unwallable (outside of immunity abilities). You could alternatively use Blur to make it fairly sturdy against contact moves alongside Intimidate, or Volt Rush to go all in on power. There's also the option of running Manectric on a rain team, since it has access to Electro Shot and Boiling Flame. I have rain on this team, but since it's not the focal point of the team I opted for the previously mentioned Volt Switch nuke playstyle. Another benefit of this playstyle is in doubles, where using it with the Mega form makes it easier to cycle Intimidates.

Budew/Roselia/Roserade

I was at first a bit confused about the decision to make Roserade a full mixed attacker, as opposed to the base game where it is exclusively a special attacker. Over the course of this run, I came to appreciate the vision, which allows it to be played in a lot of different ways. I preferred to run it as a physical attacker with Technician and Loaded Dice to make use of Bullet Seed and Toxic Needles. Toxic Spikes from another teammate could help activate Merciless, but even without them it was already a strong option. Trailblaze was also decently powerful and helped patch up its middling Speed. I eventually switched this out for Victory Dance, the superior boosting option, supported by a fairly fast Sleep Powder. Upon Mega Evolving, I switched to a special attacking build. Kinda. Special or physical, it doesn't really matter in this case because Mega Roserade gets Equinox, letting you do the fun tech of running a move that drops your own attacking stats but having it come off of the other attacking stat. Leaf Storm and Venoshock hit very hard off of its excellent offenses, and activating Merciless is easier than ever because Rose Garden lets it lay down its own Toxic Spikes on entry. Just one Victory Dance lets it go for the sweep, but more often than not it gets hard walled by Steel-types and clapped by priority due to its extreme frailty. The former issue can at least be resolved with Corrosion, though it's advised to have another TSpikes setter on the team if you want to keep the Merciless boost.

Gulpin/Swalot

In Elite Redux, I mainly know Swalot from being very annoying to take down in the Team Aqua museum fight without a strong special Psychic/Ground/Water move. Being annoying to take down is evidently its whole thing, as the same strategy of Recycling a healing berry for endless recovery works just as well for the player as it does for that grunt. Toxic is an obvious companion for passive damage, while moves like Yawn and Toxic Spikes give it extra utility. Other than that, it's a fairly standard Toxic staller, though perhaps a bit better than others due to the automatic nature of its healing, from both its berry and Regenerator. Not much changes for its Mega form either, aside from the obvious lack of Berry synergy since it's meant to hold a Mega Stone. Toxic Waste is a great addition, though, speeding up the process of wearing opponents down with Toxic, and Corrosion lets it deal with Steel- and Poison-types. Liquefied in both forms is great, but make sure to be careful about the Water weakness.

Carvanha/Sharpedo

If you have a need for speed, look into using Sharpedo. With good offenses on both sides and access to Speed Boost, it makes for a good fixture on offensive teams, especially rain for the damage boost on its Water STAB. Thanks to Strong Jaw, its biting moves like Deathroll and Crunch deal a lot of damage, and Hyper Aggressive is always useful. Aqua Jet is also nice for countering priority users, though you should still watch out since it's quite frail. Just like our other entries on this team, Sharpedo's Mega form simply enhances what was already there, with Violent Rush to help it get ahead on that first turn with no Speed Boost and Speed Force to further benefit from Speed Boost. Losing Hyper Aggressive because it shares the choice ability slot with Speed Boost hurts though. I'm talking a lot about Speed Boost because it's such a good ability, but you do have some other options, like Speed Force on the base form or Growing Tooth in the Mega form. Still, Speed Boost is just so incredibly good that it'll usually be your best option.

Wailmer/Wailord

A very interesting decision was made by the ER team to change Wailord's base Speed to a whopping 1. This actually serves it quite well; for one, it frees up nore stat points to go into its bulk and offenses, which are actually quite good alongside its massive HP pool. Second, as a potential weather setter with Drizzle, it is guaranteed to get its weather up in normal conditions since its ability will always activate last. Third, access to Flip Turn makes it a very reliable slow pivot as it can move after even the most sluggish opponents. Finally, on a dedicated Trick Room team, or in the Psychic gym, it can absolutely rip things up with rain-boosted Choice Specs Water Spout that will always go first. Unfortunately there's no Trick Room on this team, but the other advantages of its unique Speed stat make themselves very known. Reliably setting rain for Sharpedo lets the latter achieve its full offensive potential, and disrupting opposing weather is great in general. It's also very tanky, letting it pivot in its frail teammates. Moving away from its statline though, Atlas is an interesting ability to work with, setting Gravity for 8 turns on entry. This lets it use strong but inaccurate moves like Hydro Pump, Blizzard, or Liquid Voice-boosted Echoed Voice to deal good damage. Smarter players than I could also take advantage of it to make Flying-types vulnerable to Sticky Web or Earthquake, for example.

Numel/Camerupt

Camerupt is a weird one. In the right matchups it absolutely shines, tanking attacks and dishing out damage in return while healing with Slack Off or Soil Drain. Other times though, it can struggle to do much of anything, which is why I mostly ended up using it as a Stealth Rock lead. This is probably because its base form doesn't have the greatest stats, both in bulk and offense. At least it has Solid Rock and Magma Armor to help with its crippling Water weakness, but I still wouldn't count on it to take those. In Trick Room, though, it can be quite the serviceable attacker with Eruption. Its Mega form changes quite a bit, but keeps its gameplan the same. Aside from a stat boost all around and a decrease to Speed to make it more effective in TR, it also gains Drought to set sun for itself and its teammates or one of Volcano Rage or Aftershock to tack on some extra damage on offensive builds. Artillery is also a nice addition, letting it use Inferno as a very powerful STAB move that hits and burns both opponents in doubles. I liked leading with it in Victory Road, since just like Wailord, its low Speed lets it get its weather up after the opponent and use its powerful Fire moves. At the end of the day, though, Camerupt is a Pokémon that pretty much always wants to be in Trick Room, so on this team where that isn't an option, it wasn't working at its full potential.

A few stats:

• Leo/need average: 8.125
• More More Jump! average: 7.625
• Vivid Bad Squad average: 8
• Wonderlands x Showtime average: 7.875
• Nightcord at 25:00 average: 8.875
• 2nd rotation average: 8.1

To reiterate, this is all my opinion! Feel free to discuss your own thoughts here.

Most of my ratings here were originally much lower, but a few weeks of being unable to do this meant I returned to them with a fresh perspective. It's the weakest rotation for sure, but there's definitely a lot of good stuff here still.

I talk a lot about rerecording songs here, not because the original vocals are bad by any means, but because the VAs have improved noticeably at singing in their character voices and I'd love to see how they'd do these songs if they came out today.

All thanks to two of the stupidest investment strategies too. I got the one that turns March into Luocha in the first plane, and figured I'd roll with that for as long as I could. Then in the second plane I got the one that turns all your equipment into Molecular Solvents, and figured it couldn't be too bad since "Luocha" acts super fast anyway. I used DoT and SH for the rest of the team to spam damage to trigger the "emergency heals". Extremely funny run, and also my first Wealth Creator win in a while.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Hoenn is the home of double battles, being the first region in which they were implemented. The devs made sure to emphasize this by having not just a double battle gym, but also several Pokémon built around doubles strategies. Elite Redux respects this design philosophy and boosts doubles strats just as much as singles strats. While I've never done it in any playthrough before, I figured that for this run, I would take three of Hoenn's most iconic duos into Double Battle mode for a special installment of Project 1025. This ended up being super fun and easy, and the doubles format allows for many fun synergies and strategies. Hopefully I get to do this again in the future with some more thematically fitting duos.

Sableye and Mawile

From the depths of Granite Cave come a duo of support and attacker, a pattern we'll continue to see throughout. Sableye's main tool is Prankster, allowing it to use its insanely deep supporting movepool to great effect. Screens, status conditions, hazards, debuffs, both Fake Out and Astonish, and other random things like Quash and Trick Room all find their uses in different battles. Its Mega is much of the same, and even the ability changes don't affect it too much since Prankster is the only important one. Coward is pretty neat, though most enemies don't care too much about attacking Sableye since its bulk and typing make it hard for them to see big damage on it. Its main weakness is passivity, since its damage output is very low and it has too many good moves to really want to run offense. In singles this can be addressed with a simple Parting Shot into a stronger teammate, but in doubles it can put its supportive talents to even better use by having an attacker next to it to directly take advantage. In this team, this attacker is Mawile. With Huge Power and Multi-Headed, its damage output is quite good even in its base form. Its low Speed is a bit of a setback, but it has decent bulk and a great typing along with the massive healing from Jaws of Carnage to keep it going for a lot longer than you'd think. The Mega jacks up its Attack stat to become absolutely humongous with Huge Power, with Hungry Maws giving even more power while keeping its amazing self-sustain. Behind Sableye's screens, Mawile becomes very hard to kill. This team-up also allows for the usage of a move I have come to love during this playthrough: After You. With Prankster, Sableye can use this move on Mawile with priority, effectively giving Mawile itself priority on its moves. With how powerful it is , it can easily get oneshots on anything, so you can set it up such that Sableye can advance Mawile's attacks into one slot while a relatively weak attacker in the other slot struggles against the bulky Ghost and the self-healing Fairy. This helped a ton in Victory Road especially, bypassing all the super fast threats. Both of these Pokémon are also great in singles, but together they are greater than the sum of their parts.

Plusle and Minun

I came into this run with high expectations for Hoenn's resident Pikaclones. They're the quintessential doubles partners, after all. Plus and Minus are excellent abilities on paper when paired with each other, Speed Boost is Speed Boost, and the amazing Lightning Rod + Discharge tech is available to them. Upon sending them onto the field, though, all of my expectations were blown out of the water. These two are aggressively mid when on their own but become GODS when paired up. Plus and Minus make both of them excellent damage dealers, but Plusle is more apt as the main carry for a couple reasons. First, Plusle has the much better SpA stat, allowing it to more effectively use Dazzling Gleam for its sweeps. Second, Minun has Power Spot to further boost Plusle's damage, while Plusle gets Friend Guard instead. Plusle can instead run Lightning Rod while Minun next to it spams Discharge, doing considerable chip on enemies and giving Plusle a boost at the same time. I EV'd Plusle to be just a smidge slower than Minun so it would attack after receiving the boost, and after Minun had broken any Multiscales or Focus Sashes on enemies. This stacking of multipliers on Plusle lets it do obscene damage, oneshotting even bulky Fairy resists through the spread damage penalty with a bit of help from Minun. Thunderbolt is also there for strong single-target damage, and Shock Wave helps a bit with the frail rodents' weakness to opposing priority. As for Minun, while it would spam Discharge 9 times out of 10, Decorate was great to have in the back pocket, serving as both good single-target damage and a massive buff for Plusle if one Lightning Rod boost and some chip won't cut it. Since Minun's Attack is way better than its SpA and it doesn't really need a boosting item, I gave it the Swirly Glasses so it could actually pack some punch with its attacks. Finally, both of them ran Protect to pick up an early Speed Boost and run away with the game. It's also good insurance against the occasional Violent Rush, On the Prowl, or Fake Out. I've gassed these two up a lot but they're not unstoppable; I mentioned a severe weakness to opposing priority, and Eerie Fog messes with their strategy of racking up stat boosts. Very bulky Ground-types are also tough to handle. Nevertheless, Plusle and Minun are among the best of the best in double battles, capable of dealing with nearly anything with ease.

Volbeat and Illumise

After those two powerhouse duos, these two, are... kinda just there. Volbeat is a decently strong attacker, Choice Band Reckless Electrocytes Tinted Lens Volt Tackle is pretty strong, but it's nothing groundbreaking. Zing Zap and First Impression are also nice, the latter in doubles especially, but there's nothing too special here. Setting up with Victory Dance is also an option if you can support it well, which I could've done here but isn't really worth the effort for a Pokémon that can only hit one target at a time. In singles it could work though. Illumise is a bit more interesting, being a solid standalone doubles support. Prankster and Friend Guard as well as access to moves like Tailwind, Follow Me, Pollen Puff, Helping Hand, After You, and Quash make it a good general support, and on this team a backup partner for Mawile in case Sableye went down. It's also decently bulky, able to survive some pretty strong super-effective attacks. It doesn't have much in the way of specific synergy with Volbeat, though. This is less of a combat duo and more of a lore duo.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

I almost thought this was gonna be a repeat of the incredibly frustrating time I had two runs ago, since these Pokémon in particular are very limited in the early game. As the run went on, though, I learned more about how to use these mons and they eventually grew into their own, netting me an extremely easy run through the League.

Whismur/Loudred/Exploud

Exploud's sole purpose in life is to spam sound moves. There is quite literally no other (good) way to play it. Give it a Choice Scarf and spam Uproar and Boomburst to your heart's content. While the completely unnecessary nerf to the latter makes it more inconvenient to use, Limber can at least cut down on the severe recoil it would otherwise inflict. Uproar is more reliable and not too far behind in power, and the drawback of being locked in isn't bad at all since you're holding a Scarf anyway. Amplifier combined with Punk Rock makes it an especially good attacker in doubles; thanks to multiplicative scaling, Uproar's 120 base power becomes a little over 200 without factoring in STAB. Even with the damage nerf on spread moves, you're still hitting both opponents with the equivalent of a STAB Hyper Beam. As you can imagine, this is very strong. Even resists take significant damage. Loud Bang is a great disruptive tool, and for a few tough battles I found that the best strategy was to just reset a few times until I got good confusion luck on critical turns. Ghosts are a problem unless you run Scrappy, but that means giving up on quite a bit of power. Still, Exploud is a powerful breaker that can find use on any team.

Makuhita/Hariyama

Hariyama is a fairly generic slow, bulky Fighting-type. It has Guts to power itself up, though it can be tricky to take advantage of since the residual damage cuts into its longevity even with Drain Punch healing. Trick Room teams can make amazing use of it though, especially with Belly Drum to set up. Limber is also interesting, allowing it to spam Close Combat and Headlong Rush with little drawback. Salt Circle is its third choice ability and while not very useful, it's a very good choice for flavor as a reference to the tradition of throwing salt into the ring in actual sumo wrestling. Stamina lets it make use of Body Press for STAB, and Thick Fat lets it come in on Fire and Ice attackers. All that being said, there isn't too much reason to use regular Hariyama over other similar Fighting-types outside of the aforementioned Trick Room strategy. The Mega is a bit of a different story, though. Nearly all its stats go into its defenses, making it significantly tankier than the base form. Outside of that it's still mostly the same Pokémon, but with one vital difference. Sumo Wrestler, one of two new abilities it gains, causes it to use a weak Circle Throw at the end of every second turn. This is free and riskless phazing, which a resourceful player can make use of in several ways. Hazard stacking teams love this for obvious reasons, and it can also come into play in niche situations involving single-use effects, like Booster Energy or Unburden. However, the most widely applicable use for it is to roll the dice for a favorable matchup. You can lead with Hariyama, tank one attack with its bulk and do some decent damage, then Detect on the following turn and phaze anything that isn't a Ghost. With some luck or some resets, you can force out a Pokémon with an unfavorable matchup against something in the back. You can now bring out that teammate and take advantage of the AI's unwillingness to switch by setting up with zero risk. This strategy will come into play with one of our future team members.

I'd also like to take a moment to talk about Mat Block. This is a very good move, but I am extremely annoyed by it because the in-game description says absolutely NOTHING about its effects. For everyone's information, Mat Block protects your entire side from any and all attacks, but ONLY for the first turn after switching in, like Fake Out. Again, very good move that I used in the Water gym to great effect, but it's important to know how it actually works.

Nosepass/Probopass

Very weird, these ones are. The best way I can describe Probopass is as a utility pivot. With good abilities like Solid Rock and Lead Coat and a fairly bulky statline, it can easily set Rocks against most leads and pivot out with a slow Volt Switch. It can also just come in when you're in a pinch and need a safe switch to something else. Outside of that, though, its functions mostly consist of Thunder Waving the occasional speedy offensive threat and using Sandstorm to override opposing weather. It's a bit of a one-trick compass. It has basically no offensive presence either, despite its amazing array of STAB and Electric moves. If it were up to me, I'd give it Charge Beam to go with Multi-Headed. It's really slow and not even that strong to begin with, it'll be fine.

Skitty/Delcatty

I had basically no hope for Delcatty going into this run, because what the hell are you supposed to do about a Pokémon this plain gameplay-wise? It turned out decently, though. Not amazing, but decent. There are two main ways to play it; a fast physical breaker with Speed Force, or an all-purpose attacker with Normalize. The former can fire off some pretty nice Double-Edges and Nocturnal-boosted Sucker Punches with a Band, while the latter can spam moves like Double-Edge pr Uproar without worrying about Rocks and Steels. Of course, with adequate support like a YawnPort Slowbro, it can also set up with Tidy Up, but this is tough to pull off without external help. Dazzling is fun for stopping priority, which is really nice in the Water gym especially. Special mention to Pretty Princess, which I think could actually be amazing for Delcatty on a Sticky Web team. I do not, however, have Webs on this team.

Aron/Lairon/Aggron

WHEN YOU COME TO IT AND YOU CAN'T GO THROUGH IT AND YOU CAN'T KNOCK IT DOWN, YOU KNOW THAT YOU'VE FOUND...

THE WALL!

THE WALL!

THE WALL!

NO MAN ON EARTH CAN MAKE IT FALL!

(Alternatively, for those with elite ball knowledge:

BOROBORO NO MELODY RITSUDOU AOI KIZUATO

SORE GA MAZARIATTE KIENAI KARA

UTAU NO WA ITAI YO KOWAI YO

SOREDEMO KIMI TO

TSUMUGU ARIFURETA UTA

SUBETE NO KABE WO KOERU UTA)

Lead Coat. Impenetrable. Primal Armor. Heatproof. THE WALL's reputation is well-earned in Elite Redux, as its combination of abilities makes it virtually unbreakable against physical moves. Even super effective hits don't bother THE WALL at all. Behind its defenses, it can set up Dragon Dances to its heart's content, readying itself for a complete sweep of the opposing team. THE WALL can come in on quite literally any physical attacker and get the job done like it's nothing. This is a particularly good synergy with Mega Hariyama, as Sumo Wrestler can phaze in a physical attacker for THE WALL to set up against. This ended up being my strategy against Glacia and Drake, putting THE WALL up against Beedrill for the former and Rayquaza for the latter. While you of course have to be wary against special attacks, after fully setting up even those shouldn't be an issue for THE WALL to outspeed and take out.

Meditite/Medicham

While Aggron is a setup sweeper like no other, Medicham carries power right out the gate. Okay, not in its base form, it's actually kinda mid without the Mega. For whatever reason, it loses Pure/Huge Power from the base game and gets a bunch of other boosting abilities that, while nice, don't do much to compensate for the fact that base 100 Attack is not really it. That being said, Technician-boosted Emanate Feint is a really nice move to have, effectively a 90 power priority STAB move. Let's not beat around the bush, though. The only reason to use Medicham is its insane Mega, which has only become better in ER. Finally gaining Huge Power, that base 100 isn't looking so small anymore. Gaining Enlightened amd keeping Technician means the Feint combo still works to amazing effect, and access to Double Kick and Double Hit as Technician-boosted STAB makes its damage output go sky high. Even without an item it can go ham, but in Permanent Mega mode, a Scarf or Life Orb on it makes it a truly elite sweeper. Honestly, the experience of using it in this playthrough was a perfect reflection of the playthrough as a whole: slow and frustrating in the start, but after unlocking the Mega a whole world of possibilities opens up.

The astute among you may have noticed that I skipped over a couple of iconic Hoenn Pokémon. This is very much intentional, the reasons for which you will find out in the next run.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Okay Arceus, I know I was complaining a bunch last time but you didn't need to make it this easy for me. I've never finished a run this fast, this team is just that strong and also really fun to use. It's a nice refresher from the snoozefest that was the previous run.

Gallade

Gallade is one of my favorite Pokémon, so I'm glad to see that it's really strong in this game. Dual Wield is an obvious part of its kit, though a little note about it is that the in-game damage calculator doesn't account for it. The rule of thumb I used is that if the calculator shows about 70%, it'll be a KO after the Dual Wield boost. Anyway, Fatal Precision is also extremely nice and lets it use moves like Excalibur reliably. Avenger makes it an excellent revenge killer with a Scarf, to the point that I had a couple battles where I deliberately sacrificed some team members to get the boost. Its choice abilities fall kinda flat for me, they're definitely useful but nothing that feels really nice or essential. It's a worthy sacrifice though, as its Mega form does away with all of them and replaces them with Intrepid Sword. Y'know, the ability that got Zacian banned in Gen 8? Of course it's not nearly as OP in Elite Redux, but it's still really, really good. This extra boost plus the stat buff to Speed (that Gardevoir doesn't get) take it beyond revenge killing and let it effortlessly slice things up like perfectly cooked fish fillets. In Permanent Mega mode like I have here, Choice Scarf makes it incredibly effective at ending games. Even in doubles, its sheer power means it can just knock a lot of things out in one shot and let the other side be handled by its partner. Psyblade and Sacred Sword are its go-to STABs, while coverage like Shadow Claw, Excalibur, and Leaf Blade all found their uses. Overall, just an elite physical attacker all around. You can always count on this gallant knight to win battles for you.

Surskit/Masquerain

It's a little strange that the Pokémon with "rain" in its name is not actually a rain abuser, but whatever. Masquerain is a pretty decent special sweeper, primarily enabled by Majestic Moth boosting either SpA or Speed when it enters. Then you can equip a Choice item for the stat that doesn't get boosted. Mine boosted its Speed while holding Specs. Another thing it has over other sweepers is Compound Eyes, enabling it to use more powerful moves like Hydro Pump and Hurricane, the latter being boosted by Aerialist. Especially in the earlygame, Masquerain can end up contributing a lot of damage. Unnerve is a good choice for its ability, preventing the use of Berries but more importantly Focus Sashes. Alternatively, with a bit of support, Intimidate or Scare can be used to give it opportunities to set up with Quiver Dance. It falls off as you enter the lategame, but you can never really count out the power of a raw Choice Specs Hydro Pump.

Shroomish/Breloom

Another of the classic Hoenn mons, Breloom makes a very interesting niche for itself. On the surface, it's a great Technician attacker. Trailblaze is decently powerful STAB that also patches up its mediocre Speed, Arm Thrust nets you good damage even with the minimum hits, Rock Tomb helps against Fire and Flying, and Mach Punch is a powerful priority move. Long Reach protects it from contact effects and boosts its moves, and Toxic Boost is a great combo with the Toxic Orb. The interesting part is when you trade Long Reach for Poison Heal to give it significant healing as well. Combined with Breloom's decent bulk and access to moves like Spore, Leech Seed, and Substitute, it can also function as a competent SubSeeder, just as it does in vanilla competitive singles. It gets a Mega form in this game, one that enhances both of these playstyles. For the SubSeed route, Stamina lets it get set up against physical attackers while Fungal Infection compresses offense and Leech Seed in one slot. While this is strong, the pure offensive route is far more powerful and decisive. It has the incredible combo of Perfectionist and Technician, turning it into an ideal multi-hit merchant with Bullet Seed and Arm Thrust. Long Reach helps as well. Equipping it with Loaded Dice lets it take out nearly anything in one attack, and that +1 crit chance comes into effect more than you'd think. Admittedly it becomes weaker on both sets when not on Permanent Mega mode, but it's still a very good priority attacker that saved my ass in the last two gyms and all over Victory Road.

Slakoth/Vigoroth/Slaking

ER has thankfully implemented the most popular Truant rework; that is, only disallowing attacking moves every other turn. This lets it use Slack Off or simply Protect every other turn as if that ability never existed in the first place. Now it can use to its fullest potential its massive Attack to fire off STAB Returns and other coverage moves. It's just a standard bulky attacker, though bulkier and stronger than most especially with access to Mold Breaker, an ability I will always glaze when it comes up. Its Mega form is basically the same, but with way more stats and an added Ice type that doesn't serve it at all defensively but makes for a nice second STAB. Crystallize-boosted Strength is especially powerful coming off of a staggering 210 base Attack. It keeps Truant, but not for long. When below half, it goes Ape Shift and drops Truant for the aforementioned Mold Breaker as well as always critting. The ability is completely lying about the status curing though, I literally saw the thing transform while paralyzed and it didn't get cured. Regardless, having been freed from the shackles of Truant, Slaking can now truly rampage like the great ape it is. You can either wait for opponents to chip you below half or take matters into your own hands with Double-Edge recoil. The important thing to note is that while it has a comfortable speed tier, it still is far from the fastest thing around. It's very bulky even uninvested, but it's important to consider nonetheless. Honestly, on nearly any other team, this beast would've seen way more use, but the rest of this team is strong and fun to use in equal measure, maybe more. Most of all our next two teammates.

Nincada/Ninjask

Ninjask is a Pokémon defined by its blazing Speed and nothing else. At base 160, it can comfortably outrun even Scarfers and Tailwind abusers after just one Speed Boost. It's also the first Pokémon I have EVER seen outspeeding the goshdarn Iron Leaves from the bottom left trainer in the Psychic gym and the ETerrain team in Victory Road. This Speed isn't all for show, though. Blur converts it into protection from Contact moves, great for setting up with Swords Dance, while Speed Force amps up its offense significantly. I opted for the former, alongside a Focus Sash for extra security as I set up. A lot of teams were just swept flat out, especially with the multi-hitting Fury Cutter and Whirling Strikes boosted by Compound Eyes bypassing Sash, Sturdy, and Iron Valiant's annoying Gallantry. Dig is also a very powerful coverage move. While priority is dangerous, Ninjask has a lot of room in this game to make a huge impact, which is something I really appreciate as I remember using one in my first Emerald playthrough. I do wish it got a Mega though, for parity with...

Shedinja

A true all-or-nothing mon. In any given matchup it either wins or dies, no in-between. The boons of Wonder Guard make it a win condition like no other, especially since you have full knowledge of your opponents' movesets. You can bring Shedinja in on something that can't hit it, then either go for the double switch since they're guaranteed to switch out or set up a Swords Dance to try and get something going yourself. If they don't switch out, though? Congratulations, the game is won. Nothing they have left can hit you. More advanced players can pull off some interesting tech with Suppress, making Shedinja a safe pick against opponents with only one move to hit it with. As for me, I just opted for Overcoat to block weather damage. Adaptability lets it do serious damage after a Swords Dance with moves like X-Scissor and Shadow Sneak, and Haunted Spirit lets it contribute even after it falls. Focus Sash is an excellent item on it, as you will always have it active and thus effectively double Shedinja's lifespan. Having said all that, the Mega form is something else entirely. It relinquishes Wonder Guard, which sounds terrible, until you realize that it has gained Cheating Death instead, a phenomenal ability that lets it completely avoid damage for two attacks. Combined with Magic Guard, this means that enemies have to hit the cicada shell thrice to kill it, four times if a Focus Sash is held. This gives it an incredible quantity of free turns to set up with Swords Dance and/or Agility, this sweeping potential further enhanced by Dead Power's Attack boost and Tinted Lens letting it comfortably run with just its STABs. Mega Shedinja is a sweeper like no other, the glassiest of cannons that nonetheless has the most reliable setup of any Pokémon in the game. One of the most fun Pokémon in the game, I encourage you to try this if you want a unique experience.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

FULL DISCLOSURE: I made extensive use of savestates during the Glacia and Steven fights to get good RNG on several things, mainly sleep turns. I have made it a point to never use such methods in these runs, and I always try to find consistent/semi-consistent strategies to the best of my ability, but with the tools at my disposal and my rule of fighting the League in Locked Mode, I saw no other way of beating those fights that would not require a completely unreasonable amount of resets. This was a choice I made for my own sake, as I do in fact have a life outside of resetting every time Articuno gets a first turn wake-up, Frostbite from Blizzard, or crit with Aeroblast. If you believe this run to be invalid, that's understandable, and you're welcome to disengage with this series or try your hand at making a consistent strategy for both fights with this team that can also handle the rest of the League.

I think Arceus saw me having a bit too much fun with the recent runs and decided to give me a bunch of stinkers. Okay, that's an overexaggeration, but this certainly isn't the strongest team I've worked with. For the lofty challenges of the Pokémon League, I think it's apt to call this team offensively inept. Victory Road in particular was pain, I constantly had to change abilities, moves, and items to get anything done.

Cascoon/Dustox

Dustox was... surprisingly good? It actually has really nice defensive stats for what it is, and Bug/Poison isn't half bad defensively, with resists to stuff like Fighting and Fairy. The real kicker is Majestic Moth, which we usually only think of as an offensive ability but actually helps a lot defensively as well. I built mine with one more Def than SpD to get the boost there, and equipped it with a Rocky Helmet to punish physical attackers. This worked pretty well, especially with Poison Point adding another layer of residual damage. It even has Roost and Moonlight to keep itself healthy. To top it all off, it gets Teleport to help pivot around difficult opponents. Aside from this role as a physical tank, it can also do perfectly fine as a traditional Toxic staller, with Aerodynamics instead of Poison Point for the extra immunity. Shield Dust is also amazing for a defensive Pokémon, letting it avoid pesky additional effects like Bleed or Burn. Dustox ended up being critical at several points in the League, mainly against Sidney's Alakazam, Glacia's Beedrill, Drake's Rayquaza, and Steven's Kartana and Zamazenta.

Lotad/Lombre/Ludicolo

Ludicolo is an iconic rain sweeper, but it's also just okay at it. Not as powerful as I hoped, but enough to get the job done most of the time. Swift Swim is the main attraction, of course, making its mediocre Speed very good in rain. With this speed it can fire off powerful rain-boosted Revelation Dances and the occasional Energy Ball or Ice Beam. It really isn't all that strong though when compared to other rain sweepers. I think the difference maker here is its access to Quiver Dance, which I didn't use this run but probably should've in hindsight. Rain Dish and Hydration give it more longevity than you'd expect, which could let it set up once or twice and really start cleaning house. Maybe someday I'll give Ludicolo another spin using that strategy.

Seedot/Nuzleaf/Shiftry

Shiftry is a strange one. It's kinda like Ludicolo, being a mediocre weather attacker thanks to Chlorophyll. Most of the time in singles I was just using it as a Creeping Thorns lead who could also get some chip with Sucker Punch or Knock Off. Wind Rider is also a nice asset, letting me get some cheeky switch-ins on Hurricanes or Blizzards. Overall though, nothing to write home about. In doubles though, it's an entirely different beast. Wind Rider works not only on wind moves, but also on your own Tailwind, meaning pairing it with an Air Blower partner doubles its Speed and gives it +1 Attack on entry. Now it can start cooking, especially with Moxie in the picture. What's more, the Attack boost stays even after Tailwind expires, meaning refreshing it gives a separate +1 boost on top of that. With adequate support, Shiftry can get out of hand very quickly in a doubles format. Thankfully, our next two team members can support it quite well. Oh, and it also gets Quash.

Taillow/Swellow

Swellow's main thing is its great Speed, allowing it to outrun a lot of really fast things. With either Guts or Determination, it can also deal pretty good damage with STAB Facade or Bravado, though it's not exactly the strongest thing in the world even after the boost. Still, it's nice to have, especially with Scrappy letting its Normal STAB and particularly a fairly strong Quick Attack hit Ghosts. It's very frail, though. In doubles it prefers to act more as a support instead, with Air Blower boosting your team and moves like Razor Wind and Hyper Voice chipping down enemies while its partner gets to work. The combo of Swellow and Shiftry carried me through the Water gym, mainly thanks to Quick Guard shenanigans saving me from Araquanid and Greninja.

Wingull/Pelipper

One of the definitive weather setters, especially in Champions. Pelipper obviously makes a great combo with Ludicolo to activate the latter's Swift Swim, and the former can still put in some decent work with Weather Ball and Hurricane. With full HP investment it can tank a lot of strong neutral hits and slow pivot with Take Flight, safely bringing in Ludicolo or another rain sweeper of your choice. There isn't much else to Pelipper's game, really. It just sets the rain and dips to let its teammates make the most of it. It does have Air Blower though, so at least it's not useless on non-Rain teams.

Ralts/Kirlia/Gardevoir

One of the icons of Hoenn, and one of its most powerful Pokémon too. Gardevoir can fill a variety of roles, from a snowballing sweeper to a powerful breaker to a bulky setup threat. Soul-Heart is one of its major tools, working like Hubris but better since it counts any KOs, regardless of who causes them. Against the right team, a Scarfed Gardevoir can clean house thanks to Soul-Heart boosts ramping up its offense. You can also do some interesting tech thanks to how the ability works. For instance, Dustox can Toxic stall something, and on the turn the oppoennt would die of poison, it can Teleport into Gardevoir to pick up the boost without locking into a move yet. Doubles makes this ability even better, as you can pair it with another strong attacker and be assured that you'll always be getting your boosts. On other teams, you may be better off picking Queenly Majesty or Psychic Surge, but Soul-Heart is generally the best choice. Magic Guard makes for a great innate, negating not just passive damage from weather and opposing abilities but also Life Orb recoil. In its Mega form, it becomes very strong indeed, keeping Soul-Heart as an innate now and gaining Pixilate to fire off very powerful spread Hyper Voices that can further contribute to racking up boosts in doubles. Shoutout to Lovely Kiss as well, having an emergency sleeper was amazing into Glacia and Steven. Finally, all my thanks to Mystical Fire, whose SpA-dropping effect was the only reason I made it out alive against THE STUPID ARTICUNO.

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

Thus begins Hoenn, the home region of Elite Redux! Today we have a cast of classic starters and some early route icons. This was actually a very easy run, this team is INCREDIBLY fast and can convert that speed into a powerful offense as well.

Treecko/Grovyle/Sceptile

Sceptile has always been rather unfortunate among starters. Its (former) signature move comes off of its worse attacking stat, it has a fairly shallow movepool, its Mega has a questionable ability, and it's incredibly frail to boot. Granted, it's been picking up lately in Champions thanks to Earth Power and ally Discharge support, but Elite Redux presents its own take on this beloved grass lizard. For starters, it's actually a physical attacker now like it always should have been, letting it use its several powerful slicing moves. These are boosted further by Keen Edge, letting things like Leaf Blade and Dragon Claw hit quite hard. Its Speed can also be put to additional use thanks to Blur, letting it take contact moves fairly well. The star of the show, though, is Protean, effectively giving it STAB on its coverage moves. This also goes well with its high Speed, as you can change your type before getting hit by an attack. Alternatively, Cutthroat gives it priority on entry just in case. The fun really starts when you factor in its Mega. Having become extremely fast, it can throw out its Keen Edge moves against even the speediest opponents, and these will be firther boosted by Speed Force. It becomes even deadlier on a Sun team; with Big Leaves boosting both its offense and Speed under the harsh sunlight, it becomes practically unstoppable. Sceptile makes for a very reliable general damage dealer, not only for its power but also for its ability to outpace most opposing Pokémon.

I think I should also note here that with the Quick Guard cheese in the Water gym that I mentioned in the run with Sneasler, Sceptile along with the next Pokémon were able to beat both parts of the Water gym fight by themselves.

Torchic/Combusken/Blaziken

There's a reason Blaziken is one of the best starters to ever grace competitive singles. Its bread and butter is the ability Speed Boost, which lets it outspeed most things after a single protect. It has Aerodynamics which you can do some funny stuff with if you switch it into a Flying move, but really you only ever want to use Speed Boost. After getting fast, it can hit really hard with Striker-boosted Blaze Kick and Double/High Jump/Triple Kick. If you want to play with fire (literally), you can drop Protect for Swords Dance and equip a Focus Sash. You can live a hit, set up, outspeed on the next turn, and hopefully sweep from there. The Mega only makes this even better. Now that it has Roundhouse, you never need to worry about HJK or Triple Kick misses again, and physical walls can't stop you either. With its massive Attack stat it doesn't quite need to set up anymore, but if you're playing Permanent Mega mode, why not? Sash SD Mega Blaziken can literally solo Steven; it outspeeds Mewtwo after one boost, his entire team drops to +2 Blaze Kick or Triple Kick, and he doesn't have a single priority move on his team (and even if he did, his own Psychic Terrain would block it). You'll need to be cautious around opposing priority and passive damage, but if you can find the right opportunity, Blaziken can end fights faster than you can say "fried chicken".

Mudkip/Marshtomp/Swampert

So, I heard you liek Mudkips? Good for you, as Swampert is quite the excellent choice. It really prefers being played on rain, as Swift Swim unlocks a lot of its offensive potential, but even outside of it it performs very well. With solid all-around bulk and access to abilities like Stamina and Regenerator, it makes for a good pivot with Flip Turn that can also dish out great damage. Aqua Tail and Earthquake are the STABs of choice, but if using Field Explorer over Stamina or Swift Swim, then Waterfall and weirdly enough Secret Power Ground have the highest damage output. In this run I used Stamina with a Rocky Helmet to punish physical attackers and safely set Stealth Rocks for the team. In its Mega form, just as with the other two Hoenn starters, its existing talents only get better. The stat increases help in all areas, Swift Swim gets upgraded to Breakwater to help on both offense and defense, and Iron Fist makes Seismic/Torrent Fist and especially priority Jet Punch very dangerous. Even when just using it as a lead to set Rocks, Jet Punch can take several knockouts before it goes down. With this great versatility, it's no wonder Swampert is so well-liked among starter Pokémon. Just keep it away from grass.

I should also note here my frankly hilarious strategy in the Psychic gym, which involved having Swampert sit on the field setting up with Curse while its frail teammates spammed Protect to buy turns for it. After getting fully set up, I just slammed everything with Hammer Arm and Ice Spinner.

Poochyena/Mightyena/Skulberus

For some reason I'm not too fond of the name "Skulberus", but that's neither here nor there. Regardless of the quality of its name, it's a decent physical attacker, though it can struggle to distinguish itself a bit. It has many powerful biting moves to take advantage of with Strong Jaw and loves seeing Intimidate thanks to Guard Dog. Shadow Tag is eh, the AI doesn't switch too much and it doesn't have a very good way to take advantage of it. Moxie is a fun option over Strong Jaw, against the right team you can ramp up pretty quickly with strong Knock Offs and Crunches boosted by Nocturnal. Stygian Rush is its most interesting ability, acting as Gale Wings for Dark moves. This was the one I brought to the League, though I used Moxie for the rest of the play through. Having an emergency button in Choice Band Nocturnal-boosted Crunch or Rip and Tear is nice, but overall, outside of Phoebe and the trainers in the Psychic gym, I never found myself thinking that it was an essential member of the squad.

Zigzagoon/Linoone

This is probably the biggest surprise of this entire challenge so far. I was expecting Linoone to end up like Furret or Ratiking; a decent Normal attacker with fun cheese but ultimately nothing too impactful in the lategame. Furthermore, these rodents tend to be overshadowed in their runs since they usually get grouped with the starters. What I got instead was a hydrogen bomb capable of annihilating pretty much anything, even in the halls of the Pokémon league. The key is Momentum, an excellent ability that lets it use its Speed as offense on its contact moves. With base 110 Speed this is a pretty good deal, since you can invest a bunch of EVs into HP to hopefully survive a hit and get off an Agility that functions as a double Dragon Dance in one turn. Linoone doesn't need that though. See, it also gets Quick Feet, increasing Speed when statused. Due to Momentum, this effectively acts like Guts as well. Equip it with a Frost Orb and now it has both a Choice Band and a Choice Scarf at the same time. Protect is not even required since Violent Rush gives it the same effect on its first turn. As for moves, Field Explorer gives it access to many great coverage options. Dig and Strength emulate the EdgeQuake combo, but with 100% accuracy and 165 BASE POWER APIECE. Secret Power also gets boosted to a 120 power move that can be any type you like. As for its Normal STAB, even with the boost, Headbutt is still weaker than Facade once the Frost Orb is active, so the latter is preferable. Combine all that and you have a Pokémon that can outspeed literally anything that isn't a pesky Booster Energy user and delete it with some of the most high-powered moves you'll see around. You'll have to watch out for priority since even with max HP EVs, Linoone is still quite frail, but when that isn't a factor, you'll have yourself one of the fastest and strongest offensive threats around.

Wurmple/Silcoon/Beautifly

Beautifly is fine. Its stats are eh, but at least Majestic Moth helps. To its credit, it can be pretty fast if you spec it to get the boost in Speed. Its damage is fine, I used it with a Life Orb and it got the job done but I can think of many better options for anything it could do. It has pseudo-STAB on Flying thanks to Giant Wings and Levitate so its Air Slashes can hit decently hard and cheese some flinches. Dazzling is situational but really funny when you can get it to work. Beautifly is really not built to be a lategame Pokémon, it can do a good bit against Roxanne and dunks on Brawly but falls off after that. If you really wanted to make it work, my best advice is to give it some good support, like a Yawn/Teleport Slowbro, and set up with Quiver Dance. Dazzling becomes valuable here to save it from priority moves or abilities that could otherwise bypass its speed boosts.

S+: The best of the best. If you have these Pokémon on your team, you are playing on easy mode.

S: Very strong and consistent choices into a wide variety of encounters. Not an automatic win but you'll never complain about having them on your team.

A+: Strong but less versatile or consistent. Good assets to have on your team, but support from other members is needed.

A: Very strong, but only on the right team structure or in the right matchup. If you want to use one to the fullest potential, you'll have to build a team that can set up the conditions for success.

B: Decent, but outclassed in their roles. Using these on your team over higher-tier Pokémon is possible, but a direct downgrade in almost all situations.

C: Underwhelming. These Pokémon struggle to contribute much of anything, or at least anything unique or especially strong.

Every Pokémon here has been rated based on my experience using them in Project 1025. Tiers are very roughly ordered within themselves. Note that, as stated in the disclaimers on my HoF posts, many of these Pokémon are not on their optimal team structures, thus my perception of them may be impacted. I'd understand nearly any argument for a certain Pokémon to move to a higher or lower tier; for example, looking at it now, I think Wobbuffet could stand to be demoted a tier.

If you have questions about a specific Pokémon or would like to make a case for something to move to a different tier, just put it in the comments, I'll try to respond to everything. As you can see, I've made a separate tier for Pokémon people made cases for in the previous tierlist. I will be giving them a second chance at some point in the future. That's all, and see you in the next installment of Project 1025!

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

The second region of this challenge is done! It took a lot less time than the Kanto section since that one included the many, MANY future additions to the Gen 1 evolutionary lines. Anyway, what better way to close out the land of tradition and legends than with a full legendary run? Though, to be honest, most of this run was just The Entei Show.

Raikou

Pretty much the paragon of pure Electric-type offense. With Ground Shock and Overcharge it has ways to break past common Electric counters, Drizzle lets it abuse Thunder and Electro Shot (though the latter is only available in the postgame), and Electric Surge and Transistor send the power of its Electric moves through the roof. With a deadly Rising Voltage and a priority Thunderclap, even resists would do well to be cautious around it despite it not really needing to use its coverage moves. The cherry on top is Beast Boost, which is an ability I always thought the legendary beasts should have for obvious reasons. It can boost either SpA or Speed, but since its power is so great as previously discussed, the Speed boost is more helpful to patch up its quick but not blistering base 115. As a general offensive threat, Raikou put in a lot of work throughout the run. It probably would've done more, if not for our next entry.

Entei

Choice Specs Flaming Soul Volcano Rage Molten Down Beast Boost Eruption. BEFORE THE THIRD GYM.

Suicune

I applaud the ER devs for having the foresight to NOT give Suicune Beast Boost like the other two dog-cat things, as it really is not built for that kind of thing. It prefers to play slowly, tanking hits behind the screens from North Wind as it deals damage and stays healthy with Recover. Water Veil and Leftovers combines means it has no trouble healing off damage even without spending a turn, and its incredible defensive stats mean it can shrug off even strong super-effective hits. With all this staying power, Suicune can either stall out passive damage sources like Toxic and Whirlpool or set up for more direct offense with Calm Mind. Notably, it has access to the perfect coverage of Water STAB + Sheer Cold, the latter also gaining STAB and never being able to miss thanks to Aurora Borealis letting it act as if in the hail. A bulky Water-type is useful anywhere and Suicune is one of the best ones. There is another, though.

Lugia

The guardian of the seas finally gains its well-deserved Water typing, a massive upgrade over Flying in terms of its defensive profile. This is all for the better, as Lugia is all about defense. With gargantuan stats in both defenses, Multiscale, and Wonder Skin, it can stand firm against nearly any attack and undo all the enemy's progress with Roost. Similarly to Suicune, it can either set up for damage or chip the foe down passively. The latter playstyle is significantly helped out by the ability Poseidon's Dominion, using Whirlpool on an enemy upon switching in. This traps them on the field and immediately puts them on a timer, though another underrated benefit is its decent chance to drench its target. This can provide valuable speed control in doubles or just help Lugia get the jump on fast threats. Overall, a super reliable switch-in to so many things, and one of the sturdiest defensive pieces in the game.

Ho-Oh

Where Lugia brought pure defensive prowess, its counterpart Ho-Oh takes a more balanced approach, balancing longevity with damage potential. For one, it trades its Flying type for Fairy, a vast improvement for both offense and defense. Off of its impressive base 130 Attack it can use stuff like Sacred Fire and Play Rough, but it would actually much rather use its Special Attack thanks to Majestic Bird giving it a sizable multiplier. Flamethrower, Dazzling Gleam, and something like Earth Power or Imposing Wings-boosted Air Slash can hit pretty much everything for great damage, and it even carries Flame Burst for spread priority. While its Speed is a little lower than you'd like on most offensive Pokémon, it makes up for it with its impressive special bulk with Prism Scales. I went the extra mile and equipped it with a Tactical Vest to shore up its Defense as well. Regenerator or Self Sufficient then let it heal off any chip it sustains, while Magic Guard can be used to prevent that chip in the first place and enable the use of Life Orb with no drawbacks.

Celebi

On the surface, Celebi's perfectly even stat spread would indicate a versatile Pokémon, somewhat like a lesser Mew. This is true to some extent, but its toolkit really pushes it to one particular playstyle. It can definitely serve as an offensive threat, setting up with Quiver Dance and making use of its selection of coverage moves to dispatch opponents. However, its movepool isn't the widest thing in the world, and an offensive build can struggle a bit to find opportunities to set up due to how sketchy Grass/Fairy is defensively. The best way to use Celebi, weirdly enough, is to go all in on defense instead, making use of its absurd healing from Grassy Surge, Self Sufficient, and Leech Seed to stall out opponents. Preferably you bring it in against something it can actually take hits from, and with good timing you can set up a Substitute to keep the stall going even in disadvantageous matchups. QDance still does well here, setting up its SpDef and Speed and ensuring its Giga Drains can actually heal for a good amount, but this is still a SubSeed build at its core. You can also just Baton Pass the QDances off, but who needs that on a team like this?

Project 1025 is my personal challenge to beat this game with every. Single. Pokémon. After all, the stat buffs, movepool additions, and especially abilities make all of them viable. I hope. And along the way, I'll share a bit about what I find interesting, unique, or strong about each one.

Disclaimers:

- I gen in the needed Pokémon for each run in a 2.65 debug savefile, then transfer the savefile up to the latest 2.65 patch and do the run there. It's quite a few hoops to jump through, but this challenge would not even be possible in the first place without debugging the mons in at the start.

- The particular patch of 2.65 I play on has a little toggle called Boss Rush, which does the same thing as turning off trainer sight. I'm not sure if this was supposed to be included, but it's technically a publicly available feature, so I will be using it to preserve my mental health. In the event that a future patch does not have this toggle, I will do the challenge in the latest version that does.

- I fight the gym leaders, the Pokémon League, the evil team leaders and admins, the rivals, the first Calvin fight, and every trainer in Victory Road.

- I play in Permanent Mega mode because I find it more fun.

- This is nowhere near a comprehensive guide to the Pokémon in this game, and in fact the vast majority will not be used optimally due to taking advantage of certain field conditions or synergies that the Pokémon surrounding them in the Pokédex can't provide.

- Redux forms and other fanmade mons (except evolutions of existing mons) will be done after all the official ones.

The Run

The second-to-last run for Johto. To ensure a clean finale that doesn't cross over into the start of Hoenn, I've padded this run with some NFEs who are powerful in their own right and most importantly in a different way from their evolutions. I do think they deserve some spotlight, especially since in some cases they are straight up better than their evolutions. I will be doing this more in the future, sometimes with NFEs and sometimes with Pokémon that I think deserve a second chance. I do hope that's okay with you people. If you're familiar with the Johto dex then you'll also know I jumped the order a bit here, also for the sake of the finale.

Smeargle

Smeargle is a worse Mew. It has a similarly expansive movepool, but with absolutely abysmal stats that render it entirely incapable on both offense and defense. That being said, there are far, far worse fates than being a bit less than half of one of the best Pokémon in the game. While Smeargle can adopt a number of roles, such as a suicide hazard lead or a doubles support, I did the same thing here as I did with Mew and turned it into a Baton Pass bot. In this role, Smeargle actually has some distinct advantages over Mew. For one, while Mew's only sleep move is Spore after the 8th gym, Smeargle gets the decently reliable Lovely Kiss from the very start, and also gets Spore one gym split earlier. This lets it safely set up for a large portion of the game, and it has better options here as well. While Mew has to wait a while for its really good boosting options like Clangorous Soul or Shell Smash, Smeargle gets the fantastic duo of Quiver Dance and Victory Dance after the 2nd gym, disgustingly early for such powerful setup moves. Smeargle in particular benefits from these moves boosting so many stats at once, as they lessen the move slots needed for a proper Baton Pass setup and thus make room for it to also fit hazard setting with Stone Axe. All of this is brought together by Prankster, which is useful on a kit like this for obvious reasons. It's also Smeargle's only good ability, including innates, but it's all it needs anyway. In spite of its awful stats, with a bit of sleep luck it can easily set any offensive threat up for success.

Miltank

Miltank is a rather infamous Pokémon, owing to Whitney having a very hax-heavy one early in the Johto games. It's a lot more honest here in Elite Redux though, living up to its name and being a proficient physical tank. This is due to Stamina and Let's Roll, which when combined allow it to take on nearly any physical threat. Paired with reliable recovery in Milk Drink, it can quickly become unbreakable. It doesn't just sit there, though. With access to Body Press, the Juggernaut ability to convert some Defense to Attack, and a surprisingly good Speed stat, it can dish out some serious damage if you let it stay on the field and rack up Stamina boosts.

Larvitar/Pupitar/Tyranitar

As the Johto region's resident pseudo-legendary and a long-time occupant of the OU tier in competitive singles, Tyranitar is naturally an excellent Pokémon in any environment, and ER is no exception. Impenetrable and Sand Stream protect it against passive and special damage respectively, complementing its great physical bulk. It can use the bulk to set up Dragon Dances, after which it can go to town. Predator lets it heal off any damage sustained during the setup, while Moxie lets it ramp up even further as it sweeps. Its Mega form makes this gameplan even more solid, sending its bulk into the stratosphere with Battle Armor and letting it convert that defensive power into offense with Juggernaut and Power Core. Tyranitar made for a perfect recipient for Smeargle's Victory Dances, enabling it to pull off many a clean sweep. Overall, an extremely reliable Pokémon that has no trouble finding openings to set up and punch holes through enemy teams.

Primeape

Ngl, Primeape is a fair bit better than Annihilape. It's not quite as reliable defensively, but it has far more explosive power and sweeping potential. The key is, of course, Moxie, which lets it snowball out of control. Getting that first KO to get going is also made all the easier by Violent Rush. If you want more immediate power though, there's nothing quite like Gorilla Tactics, which you can stack with either a Scarf for more speed or a Band to really delete everything. Both sets really like using Choice Scarf since Primeape is not wanting for power, but on a team like this with a Victory Dancing Smeargle, I also found myself using the Focus Sash after passing it a couple of boosts. It helps against priority moves, which otherwise are a huge problem because of all the drops from CC and Headlong Rush.

Porygon2

I'm sure it's well-known to us that P2 is better than P-Z in every competitive setting. I'm not entirely sure if that's the case here though. It maintains what makes it great in the first place, that being its access to Eviolite to turn it into a great defensive option. It even gets Self Repair to shrug off status and passively recover HP even without Leftovers. Normal is a decent defensive type, but it can actually do something really cool with its signature move Conversion. By having Thunderbolt in the first slot and Levitate as an innate, Conversion turns it into a pure Electric-type with no weaknesses, which is obviously great. This gives it the extra defensive power it needs to not just sit there and take hits, but dish them out as well. Conversion is not just a type-changing move, after all; it is also a special Dragon Dance. With its newfound defensive profile and Recover, it can fairly easily set up to +6 and sweep from there. Alternatively, in a doubles setting it can use Twisted Dimensions to support slow teammates. All that being said, in terms of being an offensive threat, P-Z outclasses it by far, and with some support it can achieve the same level of setup with stats that are much more suited to sweeping. As for its defensive role, it's still quite great in that, but the power of setup tanks is a bit diminished in ER due to stuff like Pressure and attackers being way more powerful in general. P2 is still great, but the playing field is at least more even.

Ursaring

Both Ursalunas are built for Trick Room, which proved to be a hindrance for their performance in their respective runs due to not being on teams that use Trick Room strats. Ursaring is a lot more well-suited to standard, non-TR teams due to the combination of Guts and Quick Feet, simulating the effects of both Band and Scarf when statused without being locked into a move. Despite its base 55 Speed, it can actually be quite fast with this boost. To pair with this, it gets a STAB full-powered Facade that can delete anything that isn't super physically defensive, especially when running Tough Claws. It also gets Close Combat and Shadow Claw to round out its coverage. Alternatively it can use Predator to heal off any chip it takes from its status or weak physical hits, which it can tank quite nicely with Fur Coat. I really liked passing Victory Dances to it with Smeargle, even a single boost alongside frostbite from a Frost Orb lets it clean house like nothing else. However, when it comes to tricky double battles, like the last two gyms and several Victory Road trainers, Ursaring has a silver bullet up its sleeve: Belly Drum. With a bit of help from Smeargle to put the other side to sleep and set Tailwind, it can easily max out its Attack and start dealing out oneshots like nobody's business. For the Psychic gym in particular, I employed a very funny tech of attacking my own Smeargle's Silk Trap to get slow enough to outspeed their whole team in Trick Room. While Ursaluna has more power overall in the right team, Ursaring comes close and can function anywhere.

A few stats:

• Leo/need average: 7.875
• More More Jump! average: 7.875
• Vivid Bad Squad average: 8.75
• Wonderlands x Showtime average: 8.5
• Nightcord at 25:00 average: 7.875
• 2nd rotation average: 8.175

To reiterate, this is all my opinion! Feel free to discuss your own thoughts here.

This is the point at which the songs begin to show their age somewhat. They're not bad at all, but I find some of them to be a little unpolished, whether in terms of music or vocals. If they ever decide to remaster old songs, a lot of these could stand to benefit from it. On a more positive note, this is Kohane's second top placement. To spoil a little bit, no other character does this, so good for her. Chinozo is also two for two on 10/10 comms.

Since the last ranking, I've recalibrated my rating system to be more consistent between rotations. Most of my earlier ratings should still hold though, and most changes were made upwards. There's too many to list here though, so you'll just see them when I rank all the characters' averages.

P.S. I REALLY CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW GOOD HARUKA LOOKS IN THE IF 2DMV

ESPECIALLY IN THE LAST PART WHERE SHE SMILES

I CAN FEEL MYSELF TURNING INTO MINORI THE MORE I WATCH IT

A few stats:

• Leo/need average: 9.625 (!)
• More More Jump! average: 7
• Vivid Bad Squad average: 8.875
• Wonderlands x Showtime average: 7.5
• Nightcord at 25:00 average: 8.75
• 3rd rotation average: 8.35

To reiterate, this is all my opinion! Feel free to discuss your own thoughts here.

"I wonder who will perform the best this rotation? Maybe the consistently strong N25? Or VBS whose music I have a personal preference for? What's that? OH MY GOD, IT'S LEO/NEED WITH A STEEL CHAIR!"

- My train of thought while I was listening to the 3rd rotation songs

This was a weird rotation. Some pretty low lows and pretty high highs, along with some fan favorites and hidden gems. And of course, the fact that Leo/need, who have had an unfortunate tendency to underperform in my other rankings, decided to lock the hell in and deliver a lineup on par with, if not even better than, VBS's legendary 5th rotation. I've always liked L/N more than the average PJSK fan, but making this ranking has elevated my opinion on them to new heights. Special thanks to halyosy, Wadatakeaki, Yuyoyuppe, and buzzG for delivering absolute peak and doing the girls justice.

BOROBORO NO MELODY RITSUDOU AOI KIZUATO

SORE GA MAZARIATTE KIENAI KARA

UTAU NO WA ITAI YO KOWAI YO SOREDEMO **↗**KIMI TO

TSUMUGU ARIFURETA UTA

SUBETE NO KABE WO KOERU UTA

From the new anecdote.

https://youtu.be/aE5MofefW5c

A few stats:

• Leo/need average: 8.375
• More More Jump! average: 7
• Vivid Bad Squad average: 8.5
• Wonderlands x Showtime average: 8.875
• Nightcord at 25:00 average: 8.125
• 6th rotation average: 8.175

To reiterate, this is all my opinion! Feel free to discuss your own thoughts here.

Anyway, 6th rotation was pretty good! I wasn't expecting to like some of these songs as much as I do now. I still like the 5th rotation more though, maybe I should make a ranking post for that too?