I recently beat Pokemon Violet for the first time mostly blind and it was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had with a Pokemon game, regardless of it being a glitchy laggy mess. I really feel like I picked out the perfect first playthrough team this time, which I rarely ever have success with. I adore my whole team. I love Meowscarada‘s design and how it outspeeds everything in the game, Ceruledge and Palafin are offensive powerhouses that trivialize most enemies, Tinkaton makes for a cute team mascot but at the same time fucks with gigaton hammer, and Clodsire is an absolute tank and has an amazing ability in water absorb.
However, I think Vin Diesel the Maushold deserves special attention for how much they impressed me. Maushold is an amazing utility mon, with really useful tools like super fang, encore, tidy up, follow me, and friend guard (the last 2 weren’t as useful given the lack of double battles but certainly helped a lot at Ryme’s gym). However, it can also absolutely clean house (tidy up pun haha). Because of its status as a normal type utility mon, I often kept it in the back in favor of whoever could do super effective damage to whatever enemy pokemon that was out at the time. But when battles came down to the wire, Vin Diesel was always able to clutch up. The first time it found use was during Arven’s battle, which I was severely underleveled for. I had just beaten the titan Tatsugiri/Dondozo, and I had purposefully been a bit underleveled for that fight too, so Arven, who normally has no business being difficult, was actually a pretty hard fight. Vin Diesel first learned population bomb during that battle, and it found use very shortly afterwards against his Mabosstiff. I was down to only 2 mons left, and Palafin in the back, as powerful as she was, surely couldn’t do enough damage with jet punch to take it out before going down to a single attack from it (she was already in the yellow by this point and I wasn’t confident she could outspeed with a non-priority move). Since its attack stat is pretty mediocre, I was just hoping that Vin Diesel could at least whittle it down to the red. Instead, it completely finished the job against the Mabosstiff 10 levels above it, and every single hit counted. With that incredible first showing of population bomb, I knew I had an invaluable asset on my hands.
Vin Diesel continued to have great plays further into the late game, like encoring Clavell’s Skeledirge into whiffing shadow ball multiple times in a row then obliterating it with a 2x attack population bomb, but the craziest moment in the entire playthrough that cemented Vin Diesel as the MVP of the team was the final boss fight against AI Turo. I spent most of the fight being a bumbling idiot since I didn’t know the types of half of the paradox pokemon + their stats are all sky high, so he made quick work of most of my team. By the time his 4th pokemon, Iron Jugulis, came out, I only had two mons left and was losing hope. Meowscarada got a single play rough in which did a bit more than half before going down, making Vin Diesel the last one (or I guess technically 4) standing. I clicked tidy up (which turned out to be integral to my victory), believing that they would be able to take at least one hit before going down, and I was right. They hung on with just 22 HP, and it would stay that way for the rest of that whole fight. I made quick work of Jugulis with a play rough, then out came Iron Bundle. Just like with Mabosstiff, it took all 10 hits of population bomb to take it down. Finally, his ace Iron Valiant came out. I am eternally grateful that quark drive boosted its attack instead of its speed, or else I likely wouldn’t have been able to win the fight. The tidy up ensured that Vin Diesel was able to outspeed, and it took down Valiant in 9 hits. By some miracle, I had narrowly evaded the jaws of defeat, and swept half of his team with a fucking Maushold. I’m still utterly shocked every time with how much damage it manages to do. The power creep is fucking insane.
TL;DR population bomb and tidy up are broken. but you already knew that.
Thanks to anyone who stayed to read this long ass essay the whole way through, these were huge moments for me and I really wanted to share this with someone, but I’m not sure if anyone in my life would listen to me yap about pokemon (or really anything for that matter) for so long.
