Vermilion Gym in Pokemon The Last FireRed: the first time it didn’t feel as scary as I expected

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I walked into Vermilion Gym feeling fairly well prepared, but still not completely at ease, because this is The Last FireRed, where anything familiar can turn against the player at any moment. Before this, I had changed my team quite a lot. I caught a Diglett in Diglett’s Cave, picked up a Hippopotas on Route 11, and boxed Greninja just to make room for a Pokemon whose only job was to use HM Cut (I had no choice, since I needed it to cut the tree in front of the Electric Gym). In the original FireRed, using an HM slave was normal, but in this hack, carrying a weak Pokémon really feels like deliberately raising the difficulty.

I gave that Pokemon a Red Card (an item I picked up in the Pokemon Fan Club house, described in-game as forcing the attacker out of battle if it hits the Pokémon holding it). Part of it was curiosity, part of it was hope. If I got cornered, I wanted at least one way to remove the gym leader’s key Pokémon. What I was really aiming for was eliminating the Dynamax Pokemon, because if that worked, the rest of the fight would become much easier.

The trainers inside the gym were not a problem. With three Ground-type Pokemon on my team (including the Diglett with Cut move), I handled them smoothly enough to keep my nerves steady before facing Lt. Surge. This gym also removed the switch puzzle from FireRed. You can just walk straight in, which made it feel like the author wanted all the pressure to come from the gym leader battle itself, not from side gimmicks.

The Battle with Lt. Surge#

Lt. Surge’s first Pokémon was a Lv36 Heliolisk. It was very fast and attacked first, but my Dugtrio survived and knocked it out in a single turn. That made me think the fight might not be as intense as I had expected. The next Pokémon was a Lv36 Raichu, and it immediately Dynamaxed. I switched to Lycanroc to set up Stealth Rock, because I knew Dugtrio would still be needed later. Once Stealth Rock was in place, I sent in Dugtrio (the evolved Diglett with Cut move) holding the Red Card, hoping that if it got hit, the Dynamax Raichu would be forced out of battle.

That idea was shut down instantly. After Dugtrio fainted, a message appeared saying the item was blocked by the power of Dynamax. At that moment, I realized the author had already anticipated every shortcut related to Dynamax, and there was no trick left to rely on. I had no choice but to stall out its turns. When Raichu returned to its normal form, I thought Hippowdon could finish it with Earthquake, but Raichu was holding a berry that reduced Ground-type damage, so the hit was not strong enough. Both Heliolisk and Raichu also had Grass Knot, which hit my Ground-type Pokémon extremely hard, and that was when the fight started to feel annoying.

Red Card being blocked by Dynamax during the battle with Lt. Surge in Pokemon The Last FireRed

At the time, it felt like the game was deliberately punishing players who relied on Ground-types to clear the Electric Gym, though even then, I did not feel it was punishing enough to be overwhelming.

To avoid Grass Knot, I switched to Breloom, and that turned out to be the right decision. Raichu used Grass Knot again, but it barely did any damage, and Breloom finished Raichu with Sky Uppercut, finally removing the Dynamax threat, even though it cost me quite a bit of HP. At that point, I realized that keeping Breloom on my team all this time had been absolutely justified.

Lt. Surge’s next Pokémon was a Lv36 Toxtricity. This was when I decided to Dynamax Dugtrio. As an Electric and Poison type, Toxtricity takes four times damage from Ground moves, so it did not stand a chance. The final Pokemon was a Lv36 Ampharos, and it could not survive a single Dynamax Ground-type attack either.

Breloom facing Lt. Surge’s Raichu during the Vermilion Gym battle in Pokemon The Last FireRed

After the Battle#

After the battle, I received the ThunderBadge and TM34 Shockwave. What surprised me was not the victory itself, but the fact that this gym did not create as much pressure as the previous two. Maybe it was not because Lt. Surge was weak, but because I had prepared more carefully, both in terms of my Pokémon and my mindset, already accepting that things might not go according to plan. In this fight, only the Dugtrio with Cut move and the Red Card fainted. The rest of the team was fine, and that made me feel my preparation had paid off.

Still, I did not allow myself to get complacent. This was only the third gym, and there is no telling what might be waiting in the next ones. After all, even the battle against the game’s author had not been easy. At the very least, for the first time in The Last FireRed, I left a gym feeling relieved, because it was not as scary as I had initially imagined.