GXXE01-32.png

Well, most of my family is awesome.

Actually, Jovi is awesome too, just in a more juvenile way than my parents.

GXXE01-33.png

You still never told me why he isn't here to see his dream realized. Is he leading Cipher? Is his real dream taking over the world (like mine is)?

GXXE01-34.png

Um, I'd rather let the technicians who know what they're doing start it. I don't even see an "on" switch.

GXXE01-35.png

Really? Here I was so sure that Professor Krane's "Let's Talk Them Out Of Being Evil" speech was what was going to thwart them.

Plus, I'm pretty sure this thing is useless without the Snag Machine.

GXXE01-36.png

I know. It's a device designed to purify my mindless killing machines and slow my plans for world domination.

GXXE01-37.png

I don't work here though. I'm just the boss lady's son.

Oh, whatever. Let's see, walk to the plate in the middle of the floor.

GXXE01-39.png

Ooh, shiny.

GXXE01-40.png

Ok, so you guys made the X-Men's Danger Room? Neat, but what does this have to do with purifying Pokémon?

GXXE01-41.png

Alrighty, tutorial time. This is a Set. It's a system designed to purify a Shadow Pokémon.

GXXE01-42.png

This is Shadow Carvanha. The Shadow Pokémon goes in the middle. Where it can stew in loneliness and despair.

GXXE01-43.png

We have to place at least one non-Shadow (the game uses the term "Normal", but since that's also a type, I think it's a bad idea. We'll call it "Regular") Pokémon for the Set to do anything.

Carvanha is a Water type, and Water is strong against Fire. So, while any Regular Pokémon will do, there will be a boosted effect if we put a Fire type in the slot, like Houndour.

GXXE01-44.png

Adding more Pokémon makes the Set more effective. Again, watch the type matchups. Fire is strong against Bug, so Ledyba makes a good second choice (plus, Bug is strong against Dark, looping back to Houndour, making this a fairly decent two-Pokémon set).

GXXE01-45.png

However, a third Pokémon makes it better still. Since Bug is strong against Dark, Poochyena here makes a good third.

GXXE01-46.png

Finally, the fourth Pokémon fills the set. This is where things get tricky. While chaining is basic enough, to maximize potential, you need to loop them all into each other.

Dark is strong against Psychic. But a regular Psychic type would not be ideal, because it wouldn't be super effective against Houndour.

By placing Baltoy, we can use its Ground type to be strong against Houndour's Fire type, completing the Set and maximizing the "Tempo" on the right.

Tempo is essentially the most important thing to Purifying Pokémon. The higher the Tempo, the faster it's Purified. Any time you hover a Pokémon over a slot on the circle, you can see how it affects Tempo. If it boosts it, it is always a good move. Maximizing Tempo the way I have here is called a "Perfect Circle" (and is something that will be important much, much later).

Flow is nowhere near as important as Tempo, but it still helps Purify Pokémon faster. This is actually the max we can get it right now (due to having limited Pokémon and limited types), but we can boost this quite a bit higher later as we unlock more options, and I'll show you that as we get there.

GXXE01-47.png

Once you've set up the Set, you can view a holographic overview of what it looks like. But, since it provides no information other that what Pokémon are in it, this is kind of useless.

I wonder how this system got okayed. Did someone in the Lab just mess around with the VR training program, discover the neato holographic visual effects, and decide that they had to go into the Purification Chamber?

Kaiba may have gotten flak for creating a holographic system just to make card games look more interesting, but at least there was a reason for it. This system is just pointless.

GXXE01-48.png

Um, you guys said it was right here.

GXXE01-49.png

I don't think Nine is that many. Not given that we're slowly creeping close to 1000 varieties of Pokémon. Besides, I don't have near the Pokémon to use all the slots, and none of you wonderful scientists are offering your own.

There's a perfectly good Blissey right there!

Oh, that reminds me: Normal types, despite having no types weak to them, count as Super-Effective against other Normal types for the purpose of increasing Tempo. So a set of all Normal type Pokémon will maximize Tempo for a Normal or Fighting Shadow Pokémon.

GXXE01-50.png

Thank goodness. As you learn if you play Pokémon Colloseum, you had to travel back to the Agate Village stone any time you wanted to Purify a Pokémon. That meant a lot of pointless backtracking.

While you still have to actually come back to the Pokémon Center to do the Purification, switching out the Sets makes it so much easier to keep Purifications coming fast, especially given the number of Shadow Pokémon we wind up getting.

GXXE01-51.png

Let's see, you tried asking nicely, and that didn't work.

We could set up a Game Corner and get them to gamble them all away?

Ooh, or how about we just march into their base and arrest them all?

Maybe we could...

GXXE01-52.png

I'd have never thought of that. This is why you are our brilliant leader.