Pokemon Black part 3: Rivals getting better

There's a bunch of items and stuff to get from people at Castelia City it seems. Since I'm not using a walkthrough I'm probably not gonna get them all. Sheesh, there sure is a lot of stuff to do though. There's a few office buildings filled with trainers who want to battle you, and some random empty office buildings for no reason... and a bunch of docks which I guess will serve some purpose later on.

Alright enough of that, time for the gym, but wait the gym leader went off somewhere. Of course, another Team Plasma distraction, I should have guessed. This time they tried to steal Bianca's pokemon. As if she didn't seem weak enough already. I kinda feel bad for her :(

After that you get to fight Burgh, the bug pokemon gym leader. It's not really a fight more like squashing bugs. This is incredibly easy if you've been training a Pidove through the Pinwheel Forest. Mine has evolved into a Tranquill making this gym a complete joke. The gym has these oddly durable walls of honey that you need to walk through.

So far the only gym with a decent puzzle gimmick has been the 2nd gym, the museum in Nacrene City, where you have to follow the clues on the bookshelves to find the entrance to the gym leader. The first gym, in Striaton City was just a simple pokemon quiz that's typical of the beginning of the game's tutorials.

More rival battles yay! First Bianca battles you, with a lot more confidence now...

    I'm the new-and-improved version of me! It's gonna go great this time!

So the game has finally stopped making her into the weakling side character. This should be interesting. I would be amazed if she ends up becoming a more competent trainer than Cheren by the end of the game. Her pokemon now are Herdier, Munna, Pansear, and Dewott... yeah still not a problem in the slightest. My Herdier was able to take out her entire team.

Next there's a battle with Cheren... now this dude seems to know quite a bit about strategy... his level 22 pignite dominated my level 25 Tranquill, and even my Drillbur somehow got down to 1 hp against it, even with the type advantage. Herdier easily took care of the rest of his pokemon, including the ugly looking cat thing, Liepard (what kind of a name is that?).

Rock smashed his ugly face in.

Suddenly, a call from professor Juniper. To remind us that she's a main character too... Ohhhh yeah right she's the one who gave us our starters. uh what's her name again? :P

Bianca's apparently too busy training to become hardcore like Cheren and me, as she didn't pick up Juniper's call. She wants us to meet her at the gate to Nimbasa City... which is straight down the road. She probably took a car or something. The construction that was blocking the path on route 4 is finished after you beat the gym, purely by coincidence I'm sure.

There's also some ruins on the way... hmm do I get distracted by this or not? Well the game's telling me to go straight to Nimbasa City so I guess I'll go there first.

Juniper shows up to give us some ultra balls and to tell us to keep being awesome and to catch any rare pokemon you see because they might not show up again. Cheren tells me that this whole journey to fill up the pokedex was something set up by our parents as an excuse to travel the world and have fun. It seems like there's a bigger plot behind this, but I'm not sure what that might be yet.

Cheren heads down to the ruins... I decide to check that out after exploring Nimbasa City. Bianca shows up... excited about all the things to do and see at Nimbasa. This place is an entertainment centre, with a theme park and sports and musicals and stuff... there's probably even more distractions here than there was at Castelia City... I just take a look around the place, and scope out the town's music (as I always do) and then head back down to check out the ruins.