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countmohawk · 7 years

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Ultra Sun Recollections 19

The Altar of the Sunne... Nebby... Necrozma...

Needless to say, this is the climax of the game. Spoilers incoming: you have been warned!

The Altar of the Sunne is right on the other side of the Dragon trial site. We have to climb well over 100 stairs to get to the altar itself, but that’s nothing.

Lillie seems to already know what to do at the altar. It’s likely she read about the particular ritual we’re invoking while she was holed up in the Malie Library, but since the flutes themselves are magical, it could also be their power working through their bearers. I’m not sure which interpretation of the events I prefer.

We get into position, wait for the sun to rise, and sound our flutes!

Wait, hold on, that’s not the right whistle! Let me try that again...

There we go! Much better.

So, lo and behold, Nebby was our legendary Pokemon the whole time! As a Solgaleo, he’ll have the power to open Ultra Wormholes. Time to chase down Lusamine, right?

Not quite. Instead, it looks like Necrozma brought Lusamine to us! I have to admit, I was more satisfied than I probably should have been to see her pride get stomped flat here. Dealing with Lusamine and Guzma can wait, though - Necrozma and Nebby are about to go at it hammer and tongs!

I didn’t get any screenshots of the actual battle between the two legends, although it did look pretty cool. However, Necrozma managed to beat Nebby, and then assimilated with it, producing Dusk Mane Necrozma: also known as “the guy from the box art!”.

And then we have to fight it. Dusk Mane isn’t all that difficult to beat, though, even with a legend’s BST of 680.

(also, yes, my Starmie’s nickname is “Asterisk”)

Unfortunately, beating Necrozma here only causes it to retreat through an Ultra Wormhole, which has the side effect of plunging Alola into darkness!

Actually, how does that even work? Necrozma did a hit and run on Nebby, who was, up until about 15 minutes ago, relatively small and powerless. Maybe the ritual we invoked to evolve it into Solgaleo also linked its powers to the light of Alola? In that case, we might have dun goofed ourselves - although, without a guardian to fight against it, Necrozma may have simply eaten the world’s light and fled anyway, which would leave us in exactly the same position.

Anyway, with the light gone, the UR Squad show up. They are, understandably, mad at Lusamine, not only for her deception earlier but also because she didn’t even succeed at quieting Necrozma. However, they decide to set aside that particular bit of animosity for the sake of their mission.

It doesn’t make any difference right now whether we’re fighting or saving Necrozma, though - either way, we’re going to have to take a ride to his home turf on the back of the UR Squad’s Lunala, the counterpart to our own Solgaleo Nebby.

OK, a brief aside here: for all that Nintendo likes their motions controls, I find them entirely too wobbly and gimmicky. Anyone who has seen my playthrough of Wario Land: Shake It! would remember all the similar comments I made against the Unibuckets. Fortunately, reaching the white warp hole is fairly simple, even with a janky control setup.

Thus we arrive at Ultra Megalopolis. The other half of the UR Squad is there to greet us - Phyco and Soliera, whom we would have encountered if I was playing Ultra Moon instead.

What did Lusamine really expect would happen when she came down from on high? You can’t bully Necrozma; he’ll bully you!

Phyco’s explanation on how Necrozma came to be in the broken form it currently inhabits is interesting, although he doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Whenever scientists think they can control ancient powers, they inevitably screw something up and piss of said ancient powers. Gotta believe in Fortune Cookie Nonsense, after all!

One thing he says does stand out, however: Necrozma’s black crystal body is not actually its true form. What would that look like then?

Ah. That’s cool. And slightly intimidating. And now we do battle!

Full disclosure: I got 6-0ed by this guy on my first try. Ultra Necrozma has a 754 BST and a +1 totem aura; outspeeding him is basically impossible, and he hits hard enough to oneshot basically everything. Of course, my team is composed of glass cannons, so there was basically no chance of any of them living through even a neutral hit. I ended up beating him on my second try with a combination of Refresh luck and Hail damage (my Alolan Ninetales has Snow Warning). I had hoped to drop a Stoked Surgesurfer on him for the Paralysis hax, but my Raichu didn’t roll high enough on the hax table itself to live a hit.

After beating Ultra Necrozma, it separates from Nebby and flees back to Alola, and we use Nebby to ride back to Alola ourselves, which leads into the denouement of both the UR Squad and the Aether family’s story arcs. The Squad, of course, are thoroughly pleased that we were able to do for them what they could not do themselves: defeat Necrozma and calm it down from its rampageous nature. With that need taken care of, the Squad decides to take up residence in Alola and do some science on their own into the nature of Necrozma and the world’s light. Can’t fault them for that; being proactive is good practice for anyone. They do share one thing in passing, however, which is the connection between Totem Pokemon, Z-Crystals and Necrozma - apparently all of those types of energy are caused by leftover radiation from Necrozma, back when it was still whole. That’s a fairly useful bit of lore for worldbuilding purposes!

On the other hand we have Lillie’s reconciliation with Lusamine. ...Well, “reconciliation” might be too strong a word. For all that she holds herself up tall here, though, Lusamine definitely seems to have been humbled a fair bit by her experience (and her failure to defeat Necrozma on her own terms). Even in declaring her intention to have Nebby cared for at Aether Paradise, the camera stops short of showing her eyes, which I think is significant. And for her part, Lillie acknowledges her own weakness, and the fact she had to rely on us for everything.

I should point out that what happens in this scene is not a simple “forgive-and-forget” moment. Although Lillie does accompany her mother back to Paradise, she remains free of Lusamine’s control; the relationship between the two has clearly changed.

I still have a few more things to say about how Ultra Sun wrapped up its climactic battle sequence, but those can wait for another time. Now that Lillie and Nebby are safe and sound, it’s time we got back to our own island challenge!

#pokemon usum #pokemon ultra sun #Ultra Sun #ultra sun recollections #game log #mohawk talks #lillie #lusamine #necrozma #ultra necrozma #nebby #solgaleo #guzma #ultra recon squad

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