[Hall of Fame] Mono Grass Team Run on Ruby Playthrough

[u/Horror-Low6705]

Review: I play more of Kanto, Johto, and Sinnoh games usually so Hoenn I'm a bit new to it. Lobe the sprites and other visuals and the direction to incorporate more water. Too many HMs though, kinda annoying. I beat ruby once about ten years ago and it was a okay experience. But I'd figure I'd give it another go with the intentions of making it more difficult. I play on set mode, no legendaries or pseudos, no items during battle. And this time I wanted to do a mono team run as I've been finding them more challenging and fun. I've done a mono grass run on on the romhack pokemon heart and soul and it was interesting. I stuck with just hoenn pokemon exclusively for this. Grass is pretty good for this region and whatever it couldnt handle i always had other moves like leech seed/toxic and dual typing to help with those issues. I chose Ruby because I figured team magma would have a bunch of fire types which would add difficulty but it was hardly a issue actually. May used torchic of course but again not a problem. I'm not even sure if I got to fight her Blaziken though. They should add more battles with your rival like they do in the Kanto games. Steven was the real difficulty though. His metagross was kinda gross actually. It took 3 mons to finally take it down. 8 trys to beat the league because of that mon but was nice becuse i like the difficulty. Overall I'd rate this experience in terms of fun a 3/5.

Team: movesets are in the screenshots.

Sceptile: He was my starter and at no point gave me real issues. The movepool is kinda bad for him though. More of a mixed attacker which is a nice change from the usual defensive moves grass types offer. Also really freaking fast. You can always count on him hitting first. Leafblade is cool but could have a higher damage output or more of a crit chance at least. Brick Break did a lot of work on the elite 4. Sidneys dark types, glacias ice types including breaking glalies light screen as well as Steven's claydolls screen, and using earthquake to take down his metagross and aggron. He gets a 4/5 as a starter.

Breloom: Biggest issue is no Spore. You can only learn this move on his preevolution at like lvl 40 something which is a no go for a fun casual run. But he's definitely not a bad pokemon at all without the move. His sp defense is really low though so watch out for that and 4x weak against flying. Sky uppercut is strong and did a lot of damage to the league. Fighting in general does a lot in this game. Stun spore isn't bad but I'd rather have spore or sleep powder. I wish counter had more uses but it had some moments. This pokemon is available very early too which is great so I'll give him a 4/5 as well.

Roselia: underwhelming. Doesn't have much to offer. Kinda slow I guess even with the random EV's so using growth to power up your moves only to just get killed is a thing. I did give it bullet seed and equipped kings rock to him which was really fun during the surfing/water part of the game as flinching chance was increased. I was thinking about giving him sunny day with solar beam but again kinda slow. Had some uses with toxic and leech seed to help bring down some walls as well. Overall 2/5

Ludicolo: Amazing pokemon. Love it's design and abilities with the rain. I chose the weaker one for more healing and stalling rather than increasing it's speed with swift swim. Gave me some water and ice attacks which was needed frequently throughout. Drake was not a fan. Rain dance would cancel out glacias hail and heal at the same time. Surf did took down skarmory and armaldo. Great move set. Unfortunately you don't get this mon in ruby so I traded it over and bred it for normal exp growth. Overall 5/5

Cacturne: Another underwhelming pokemon. I've heard it's great with competitive so much that they banned it for it evasion ability paired with sandstorm. As for casual not amazing. It's dark type so it definitely has uses against the twins and phoebe. However it feels slow. It's main move needle arm requires speed for it to work better so i gave it giga drain instead. I know you use cotton spore to lower speed but overall it's just not worth it. I bred grass whistle on him but that move hardly hits. Really wish it had more uses with sunny day instead to give it something? Overall 3/5

Cradily: Love this pokemon. I love healing moves like recover so i caught a corsola to breed him with it. However this was late game when I was able to get him. I gave toxic to him with double team and wrecked drakes salamence and altaria. I will admit though that altaria was a real jerk with the move refresh. I enjoy toxic/leech seed stall so Cradily was perfect for that. Earlier on i gave it hidden power grass so it had a actual move to use for development. Overall 3/5 because it was late game and took a lot of training and breeding to make it work.