Introduction
Special thanks to @GiggaPoggers and @Hamm for being the inspiration for this post. They both have done Pokemon playthroughs for the AMC and Swordbattle Forum (respectively). It seemed like a really fun thing to do, and with a lot of forum members having a Pokemon profile picture, I thought it would be great/fun if I did a Pokemon playthrough myself!
I’ll be playing Pokemon Radical Red, which is a ROM hack of Pokemon FireRed with all the Pokemon from all the regions, which is really cool and will allow me to hopefully catch everyone’s Pokemon on the forum.
One problem is that it is notoriously difficult, so I decided to switch to easy mode, since I’ll be limited to the Pokemon that forum members have specifically chosen. It is said to still be more difficult than FireRed, and I think gym leaders are still going to have Mega Evolutions 
An even bigger problem is that a lot of you guys (myself included) have chosen unevolved Pokemon. I think it’ll be close to impossible for me to beat the game with mostly unevolved Pokemon and with a level cap, but I’ll let you guys to decide whether I’m allowed to evolve your selected Pokemon. Please note that my life will be so much easier if I’m allowed to evolve.
- We’ll be merciful, we’ll allow you to evolve your Pokemon
- Shadowblade, you fool. Don’t evolve your Pokemon. Suffer.
I really want to beat the game by a certain/specific time, but I can be really busy with school. However, I’ll try to make some progress whenever I can and post any updates for my playthrough.
During my playthrough, I also hope to have each forum member have the opportunity to shine in at least 1 important battle, and note that this would be a lot easier if I could evolve, so please consider voting for that! Anyways, I’ve yapped (I nailed using that word :D) for long enough. Without further ado, here’s my playthrough thus far!
Pewter City
I chose Rowlet as my starter, and my rival, who I named monke, chose Charmander. We had our first rival battle, which I won (pretty easily, not to rub it in monke). After delivering Oak’s Parcel, I used my ten Pokemon to catch 3 forum members’ Pokemon. I just entered Pewter City after breezing through Viridian Forest with Rowlet’s move Peck.
Here’s my team so far!
Falkner/Brock
After arriving at Pewter, I realized I could’ve caught Pikipek (which evolves into Lewcan’s Pokemon Toucannon) back at Viridian City 
. So I doubled back to Viridian City and caught a Pikipek and named it Lewcan.
I also realized that I missed the rival battle with monke at Route 22. By then, I was really overleveled so winning was a breeze. Just to show how overleveled:
Also, side note, I’ve decided to evolve only when I feel like it would be necessary to do so. It would nice seeing how far I can go with the forum’s actual Pokemon instead of their evolved version. But taking a look at Wooper’s stats, I think I might need to evolve Slap soon.
I tried hunting for a Noibat (Hue’s Pokemon) in Diglett Cave, but with a 1% encounter rate, I gave up after spending 10 minutes with no luck. I’ll be able to find Noibats with a 10% encounter rate in Mt. Moon. However, the Diglett Cave did have TM Thief, which I used on both gautam and Uri for a higher power move. Thief also allowed me to snatch a Light Ball from a wild Pikachu, which I gave to gautam to boost his attack/special attack stats.
In addition to the Kanto gym leaders, Radical Red also has Johto gym leaders. Before fighting Brock, I needed to fight Falkner, who could be found in Pewter City’s Museum. The fight was pretty chill, mostly annoying because the guy KEPT SPAMMING ROOST. He also had a Wattrel that had Volt Absorb, which was pretty annoying because I was mainly relying on gautam’s Thundershock.
Another thing worth noting is that the level cap was at Level 18, but I was too lazy to grind XP. The fight probably would’ve gone a lot more smoothly if I did, but I also don’t want to have too much of a level advantage, otherwise fights would be boring.
After beating Falkner, who gave me TM Roost (the audacity of that man), I went straight to fighting Brock. His Geodude immediately used Self-Destruct to take down gautam .
Slapadabas the Wooper with Water Gun and ShadBlade the Rowlet with Razor Leaf was able to make quick work of Brock’s Onix, Archen, and Varoom.
After beating Brock, Uri the Sentret evolved into Furret!
Here’s the team thus far:
Once I reach Mt. Moon, I hope to catch a Riolu (which will have a 1% encounter rate ) and a Noibat for G-Man and Hue respectively.
Mt. Moon & Nugget Bridge Rival Battle
Sorry for the long wait on this, getting bullied by school.
After beating Brock and plowing through the trainers while traveling through Route 3, I quickly reached Mt. Moon, where I needed to hunt a Riolu and a Noibat. With having an encounter rate of 1%, it took over 30 minutes for me find the Riolu, which I named G-Man. Thankfully, it was much faster finding Noibat, which had a 10% encounter rate.
Towards the end of Mt. Moon, Radical Red has this trainer battle with this guy named Rocket Admin Archer, who was pretty unhappy with me sweeping through all his Team Rocket grunts. He had a team of Dark-type Pokemon, but unluckily for him, I have a Riolu. G-Man’s Force Palm (and with a bit of luck with paralysis) and Lewcan’s Rock Smash was able to make quick work of his team.
Afterwards, I arrived to Cerulean City, healed up at the Pokemon Center, and headed over to Nugget Bridge for the rival battle. Note that I did put Slap in the PC (sorry!) since I’ll be fighting Misty and Wooper doesn’t have any moves that would be useful against water-type Pokemon. But he’ll be back! Being the Pokemon with the highest BST, Uri was able to take out two of monke’s Pokemon single-handedly with Headbutt (with STAB bonus from being Normal type). I was able to take out the other Pokemon on his team with some type advantage moves, so the battle was pretty much a breeze.
I defeated all of the trainers on Nugget Bridge, but I noticed that ShadBlade the Rowlet wasn’t faring all that well against stronger, evolved Pokemon, and couldn’t deal enough damage. So I (reluctantly) decided to let myself evolve, hence my new profile picture.
Here’s the team so far. I hope to beat Misty soon-ish:
Cerulean City - Bugsy
After beating my rival, I challenged Leader Bugsy, who was the Johto Gym Leader for Cerulean City. I think I kind of underestimated how hard this gym battle would be… I thought I’d be fine with Lewcan the Toucannon and ShadBlade the Dartrix, because birbs. I thought wrong.
Bugsy first sent out a Lokix (note: I don’t know anything about these new Gen 9 Pokemon), which was pretty easy to take out with ShadBlade, who spammed Pluck and finished it off with a Sucker Punch to make up for the speed disadvantage. Despite not having a Fire Type on my team, I was able to take out his Scizor with relative ease. I was kind of worried when I saw it, but it wasn’t too much of a problem.
I would like to emphasize how vital the move Pluck was, allowing ShadBlade and Lewcan to steal berries from the enemy Pokemon, which allowed for some really clutch healing.
Bugsy then sent out a Scyther, which surprisingly turned out to be more of an issue than the Scizor. It was able to outspeed and one-shot gautam the Pikachu and Hue the Noibat. Thankfully, gautam’s Static ability paralyzed the Scyther, allowing Lewcan to outspeed it and take it out.
Unfortunately, here’s a screenshot taken seconds before Lewcan was taken out. I think this is what makes Radical Red especially challenging. Sometimes your opponents can unexpectedly counter your Pokemon when you think you have the type advantage.
Thankfully, I was able to take out Bugsy’s last remaining Pokemon Ledian with ShadBlade the Dartrix and Uri the Furret (who was thankfully able to outspeed Ledian). I received TM U-turn from Bugsy, which I think will be really useful later in the run.
Cerulean City - Misty
After beating Bugsy, I realized that I could’ve caught a Murkrow earlier 
. Probably would’ve been useful earlier against the bug-type gym leader, but it is what it is. I caught one and named it incognito.
I decided to swap out G-Man the Riolu and Hue the Noibat for Slapadabas the Wooper and incognito the Murkrow. They will definitely be really useful for future battles after they evolve, but as of now, they have pretty low BST for them to be useful. incognito had a higher BST, and I figured Slap’s ability Water Absorb would be really good for the fight.
I did some grinding to evolve Slapadabas and Lewcan, and here’s the team before challenging gym leader Misty.
I think grinding was a bit of mistake, since I ended up being pretty overleveled. The battle was still pretty annoying tho, with a Protean Frogadier (who had Ice Punch, that wasn’t good news for ShadBlade the Dartrix), a Starmie and Clodsire SPAMMING RECOVER, and a Floatzel that outsped most of my team.
Lewcan ended up sweeping through most of Misty’s Pokemon. Back in Mt. Moon, I had picked up TM - Bullet Seed and taught the move to Lewcan. While catching a Pikipek, I made sure that it had the ability Skill Link, which guarantees that multi-strike moves like Bullet Seed would hit the maximum number of times. With Fury Attacks and Bullet Seeds always hitting 5 times, Lewcan was able to outdamage Starmie’s and Clodsire’s Recovers.
I received TM - Flip Turn from Misty, another pretty useful move.
Videos of Key Pokemon Battles
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, though I could wait to catch it later (where it has a higher encounter rate).
Rip!