Badge #18, Pt 2: Courland Pocket

As soon as you enter the arena, you'll be greeted by a long cutscene. It starts off bad, then gets really funny.

This is a gigantic tournament. You'll be paired up with somebody as your battle partner and forced to fight for your survival. Who your partner actually is depends on the route; on the R route, your partner will be Cal. On the Z route, your partner will be Florinia. You'll be facing Lumi and Eve in your first round no matter what.

Oh yeah, and all the cutscenes are like ten minutes long. We needed another Vietnam War to thin out the millenial generation a bit.

Round #1

Let's get straight into it. Here's your partner teams:

And here's your opponent teams:

Also, you'll be fighting on an Inverse Field. Wonderful. When you're ready, enter the door on the left side of the room to begin the battle. Lumi uses Ice types and Eve uses Psychic types, so the field effect means Cal is weaker and Florinia is stronger (fantastic!). Grass and Fighting types are the go-to here.

Round #2

After nothing happens to the siblings, you can take either exit to proceed to the next round. Very predictably, you're going to be fighting Cal/Florinia from last round. Their teams are up above.

The field effect here differs depending on opponent. When fighting Florinia, it's the Glitch Field; when fighting Cal, it's the Dragon's Den field. When you're ready, enter the door on the right side this time.

Oh yeah, the upcoming cutscene uses the phrase "emotional labour". It's best to hold down text skip here.

Round #3

This one's kinda funny; somehow, the Grass-type trainer wins against a Steel-type trainer. That's one hell of a choke. (Or, on the other route, Cal handily beats a Steel type trainer. That one is expected.)

No surprises here; you now have to fight Florinia/Cal; whoever you didn't fight before. Likewise, you'll be on the field effect that you didn't use last time (so Glitch/Dragon's Den). Very creative.

The Final Gym

After that, only one more battle remains: it's against Saphira. She tells Terra to load up her gym, making this your final gym fight and your final badge. Of course, being a gym, it has to have a gym puzzle. Right? Right??

No. This is not a puzzle. This is a test of your sanity. You're surely not going to drop the game now, after all of that work, right? Right?? If you walk into the left side and talk to Saphira, she'll beckon you to meet her at the top of the gym.

Find your way to this giant treasure chest at the topo and interact with it to begin the struggle session. Answer the question in any way you want, really; you're pretty much guaranteed to lose relationship points.

After that, the "gym puzzle" begins. You need to kill every enemy that appears on-screen before it gets to your chest. There is no guide or walkthrough I can give to you here; you will have to take things as they come.

Turn on Debug mode and heal your party after every battle. Quick-save after every battle. That is the best you can do. The only other advice I can give you:

• Don't try and go to things; you'll be caught out by something faster moving. Let them come to you.
• The exception to this is the Magneton, which you have to go to (when it starts lifting the chest away). You have to go all the way to the bottom and up the right-most pillar.

After, like, a good ten minutes of that, you'll fight the Ultra Steelix from before (I guess the devs really wanted to use that set piece again) and the path to Saphira opens up. Take your place on the right side of the arena to begin the final gym battle. As per usual, some tips:

• This is one hell of a lopsided fight. She has five Psuedos and a Mega Charizard, and they're all higher levelled than you. To top it off, the field effect gives her a boost to all of her Dragon type moves.
• The field also gives a boost to Fire type moves, which means you can't rock up with a team of Steel types either. On the other hand, it does mean that her Fire resistance is effectively neutered, so blasting through her entire team with a strong Fire type is a worthwhile strategy.
• Save a rock type for her Salamence and Dragonite. Something like Gigalith with Sturdy and Power Gem dispatches them with relative ease.
• Obviously, Fairy types are helpful. Ice types are not helpful. Dragonite loses its fairy weakness due to Multiscale, and is neutral to Electric too.
• Troll her hard by using Surf twice and converting the field back to a Cave.

Terra deletes your fonts. Cool! You have to fight her without any text available.

When you've beaten her, you can finally exit the building from the rear. It's time to liberate France.