After fighting my way up Mount Coronet, defeating four hundred and seventy Team Galactic goons as well as three of the top dogs, coming face to face with the legendary pokemon in charge of all of time was not the respite I had hoped for. After ineffectually hurling my weakened level 30-odd pokemon at Dialga’s godlike frame and realising this wasn’t going to work, I reached for the Poke Balls and decided to hurl and hope.
With legendary pokemon, this is essentially the strategy to opt for. They’re too powerful to hurt, too strong to survive and so good at escaping pokeballs that even lowering the HP to 1 and freezing them means you’ll have to use 30 Ultra Balls minimum. The exception to this is of course, my Palkia, which, tired and frustrated, I threw a simple Poke Ball at without even bothering to damage it first. It worked, and remembering the countless miserable hours used trying to catch a Moltres I had no need for, I nearly cried.
So, me, face to face with Dialga, Ball pocket open. I spot my Master Ball, the one I’d been saving to catch Cresselia. I’ve already bought fifty Ultra Balls, and it’s night-time so those twenty Dusk Balls are also available. I bought all of them specifically for that moment. Still, after wasting 7 Max Repels on the way up the miserable and pointlessly Graveler-filled Mt Coronet, there was no good reason in my mind not to save myself the tears and throw the Master Ball.
To cut a short story shorter, I now have Dialga.
Catching legendary pokemon is a tedious business. Aside from their being ridiculously powerful, there’s absolutely no reason to do it. It’s like bothering with Togepi pre-Gen IV. You’d have to be a seriously obsessive completist (cough) to bother with something so weak, and so awkward.
I’m not a genwunner by any means, but it did cut through the crap of all that switching your game on and off by only having one really hard legendary pokemon to catch. That was what the Master Ball was for. A level 70 psychopathic psychic cat to add to your team as a reward for bothering with the game so long.
Then, someone at Game Freak thought it would be a wonderful idea to introduce roaming pokemon that you needed to use the Master Ball on, because they’d run away from you otherwise. Even if you had a Diglett with Arena Trap on it, they had that base covered- the legendary beasts would either a) Kill your Diglett instantly or b) use Roar and flee from your tiny, useless Diglett.
Generation 3 packed a particularly cruel punch by having the roaming pokemon afflicted by glitches, making them not only difficult to catch, but in the case of Raikou and Entei, liable to disappear from the game. To add insult to injury, the roaming pokemon had their data incorrectly stored, making them unusually feeble.
Roaming pokemon are awkward, rubbish and upsettingly easy to kill. And because you didn’t know you were going to encounter them, you just have to either accept that it’s never coming back or just switch off your game without saving.
The Master Ball gives you the chance to turn these problems into opportunities. With a flick of the wrist, you can catch the blighters on the spot, add them to your pokedex, and continue on your merry way.
Unless, of course, you’re playing Platinum, and you have no fewer than FIVE to catch, and only one Master Ball to do it with.
So, why in hell did I chuck my only Master Ball at the non-roaming, perfectly stationary Dialga? Put simply, because working your way through the game and getting another Master Ball is less frustrating than throwing seventy Poke Balls at a hideous beast who keeps devouring your precious pokefriends.
Last time I caught Moltres, it took over 140 Ultra Balls. I had a level 60 Charizard by then. But, thanks to a cruel mantra drilled into me for over half my life, I have got to catch them all. Repeatedly. Game after game, forever.
Now that I have Dialga, Skuntank, Murkrow and Mime Jr. (it’s been a busy week), I am just 12 critters away from completing the Sinnoh Dex on Pearl. I’m too close to achieving it to back out now, but can’t help but think that it’s a) been a terrible waste of my time and b) not going to be worth it. And then I think “Gotta catch ’em all!” and I’m helplessly lured into trying to evolve Drifloon into Drifblim. Only, now I’m 21 and understand EVs, I can’t use the Day Care, because what if I wanted to use that Drifblim in battle later?
Pokemon is a cruel mistress, and the Master Ball is her darkest temptation.
Kanto to Unova (and beyond) 