This is a part of series about my current/recent playthrough of Pokémon Pearl. While some Fan terminology and some more advanced techniques will be mentioned, this post or a previous post will provide a summary of said topic.

Day 5

As I prepare to leave Jubilife City via the North exit, I find Professor Rowen being accosted by two people who are wearing the same outfit. This outfit stands out quite a lot here.  They seems to want something from the Professor for a Team Galactic, and appear to not to be taking No for answer.

He ask me to join his assistant, Dawn, in battle against the pair. This time I brought out my Starly, who made quick work of the the Pair’s Pokémon.

After winning team was clearly decided, the pair ran off.

Mike’s Thoughts

Another Short topic.. But here’s our first look our Villainous Team in Diamond and Pearl. While this battle is present in Platinum, you meet the Leader of Team Galactic before you get your Pokémon. (Although it’s not clear who is until later.)

As the game goes, we’re still quite early in the story, so this encounter is the first face to face encounter we have the main villain.

There is a saying within writing, to is “introduce your villains early.” It might not be that word for word, but the idea is the same. At this point, the the team isn’t so clear on their goals, other than they want something and not going take no for answer.

The later games introduce their Villainous Teams earlier than this. With Sword and Shield having their traditional intro be done by Head Villain, and the “Nuisance” team, before the First badge. (But that first badge is later than Diamond/Pearl/Platinum first badge is, in terms of storyline.)

I’d thing the topic of Villains can be covered in more details later.

This is also the first 2vs2 Trainer battle in the game, known as both Multi Battle or Tag Battle. While this isn’t the first in the series, which was in Emerald storyline, it’s was my first storyline Multi Battle with NPCs. Multi Battles was Possible with Multiplayer since Ruby and Sapphire at least 4 years before Diamond and Pearl.

Before this, you would have fought pair trainers back to back, or in Ruby and Sapphire both at once in what I like to call Hybrid Double battle. This Hybrid Double battle, would have two trainers who’d fight a solo trainer. The pair would just use their own Pokémon like a Multi battle, but the trainer would be using double battle rules.

Getting a Link Multi Battle is somewhat tricky, as 4 players all with same set of equipment to do. While most games that support this only require the console and the game, its more of the human factor to get 3 other people to play. I found very few tournaments showing off this feature, but then organizing teams to do this is very tricky to do. None of games to date have a matchmaking system for pairs of trainers, which limits who can in a Multi Battle style.

Multi Battle has return in every game since this one, including adding it logically in places in various remakes that didn’t have it.

EDIT: The Pokémon Brilliant Diamond Screenshot used on the Banner is taken from the equivalent battle mentioned in this post.