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After a week of killing Smeargle, I am finally done with Emerald.
Grinding took a while. Since Steven uses rock types I could not really use Inca&Inja so I decided to train Pearl instead. I rationalized it saying I should have a back up water type to be safe and I needed Waterfall to reach the fight anyway but in retrospective, I think I just wanted to use Perl. The guy spent a lot of time in my team while dealing with the shitty water routes and he deserved better than just getting replaced by a shiny he helped find.
This was also my first time doing the Steven fight and it was honestly tougher than I thought.
Perl took out the Skarmory with a rain boosted Surf but got poisoned so I had to switch him out after Steven sent out Aggron because I thought he was going to use Thunder.
He used Solar Beam instead and Mel defeated him with an Earthquake.
Then came out Metagross. I switched to Clamp but a Surf wasn't enough and between an Earthquake and a Psychic, she was left with only 2 HP. Thankfully his next move was another Psychic so I was able to safely switch to Van and finish the Metagross off.
Then came the longest stretch of the fight, Mory vs Cradily and Claydol. Neither could do any damage to my Mory and her new Leftovers but I got really unlucky with misses and confusion and they kept getting omniboosts, so switching wasn't really an option. Still, she ended the fight at almost full HP. I only switched her out because she ran out of Steel Wing PP and got confused again by Armaldo's Water Pulse.
Offi then finished the battle by setting the Armaldo on fire with a crit Flamethrower.
Overall, it was a fun run. Finding 2 shinies was wild but even without that, this was probably my favourite playthrough of Emerald ever. I really like this team and how many of this gen's pairs I got to use. Dustox&Beautifly, Camerupt&Sharpedo, Ninjask&Shedinja, Huntail&Gorebyss. I dunno, it feels like a very thematic Hoenn team and I really like it. 7.8/10, too much water.
