After getting out of that (unpaid) hellscape, i finally catched my first glimpse of civilization: Lithi City.
It has a museum which doubles down as a Gym (finally!). I hurried to beat whoever was running the gym only for the guards to tell me that it's off limits (for now). So I took a small look at the craftsmanship, only to get jumpscared by a really old IGN meme... Really?
Naturally I continued south only to find 2 trainers about to fight Team Sodium (a Terrorist group which, based on the dialog, really likes blowing up kids into pieces). One of the Grunts had a FEAR Rattata which... c'mon, what's this, 2007?
After clapping that Grunt, there was yet another battle: a Raid Boss Beedrill with a Black Sludge and a Weather condition that buffs Bug types (both offensively and defensively).
Again, status conditions are (mostly) usefull here. I used soak to turn it into a Water type to negate its healing and so the starter could spam SE moves + Paralysis against it, not too bad.
Now, due to "plot" this Beedrill is invincible oh no... then the last pick happened (Metal Gear Solid Alert [!] sfx and the OG audio from Hokuto no Ken included)

Damn, I think we have struck gold with this game...