So the rival in Pokemon Uranium is a little kid named Theo. He is younger than your character, who I have named Rumple (because even Dark Ones want to go on pokemon adventures), and is pretty immature. He spends a lot of time screaming and crying about things, but as the story progresses, he grows up more and more, and learns how to deal with life’s problems in a more adult way. He stops idolizing the main character, following in his heels all the time, and instead begins to try and be the best Theo he can be.
Really, I started to bond with the little guy.
When you pick your starter (well it’s less picking and more being assigned through a personality quiz), he inevitably gets the one that’s naturally weak to yours. Since I got the fire dinosaur, he got a grass/metal cat demon. And boy did he whine about it, blaming everyone for his pokemon losing against mine all the time.
Eventually he came to accept that I was just better than him. Which is good, because I am. We still went on to battle through a gym together, and attain the power of Mega Evolution for our starters together, which was a very sweet and oddly compelling moment in the game.
His awesome cat monster mega evolved into the Fullmetal Alchemist, and my fire dinosaur turned into an even more fire, even more dinosaur guy. Except the back marking that used to look like a yoshi saddle now looks decidedly uncomfortable.
But I guess even actual time passes in the game for Theo to not only grow up mentally, but physically. His character sprite actually reflects this change, though now I no longer want to fight him under any circumstances, ever.
Because I think he’s going to kill me.
Here we are, in out final battle. It was a pain in the butt to get here, with all the dialogue and plot I had to wade through when all I really wanted to do was kick his butt one final, meaningful time. We finally duel and not only does he look at me like I’m a tasty meat snack but, somehow, he decided to ditch his poor starter and take mine.
No joke. Metalynx is no where to be seen. Instead, he has an Archilles just like mine. So all that journeying to get to the championship, and to get there again so we could actually battle, and he decides that his dutiful, loyal, beautifully dorky green cat is no longer good enough?
Here I was, giving him credit for no longer following in my footsteps, but he went and proved me wrong. Jerk.
I did look into the final battle a little, but according to the wikipedia page, he is supposed to have his normal team. I somehow got this strange bug, or something, where he fought me with pokemon he had not used before in any of our previous battles. Including his starter, which was the most jarring.
I’d love to know if anyone else had this happen, though, or if they fought him and he had his usual team with him! I did restart from my last save and challenged him again, but he still did not have his proper team.