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Can you beat Pokemon Shield only using Pikachu?

Feb 19, 2020
Pikachu has been the face of Pokémon for over 20 years. Sure he's adorable and has been Ash's companion since day one, but can a Pikachu conquer the Galar region on his own? My name is Trendge and we are about to find out. Obviously, Pikachu isn't a starting option in Generation 8, so we'll have to pick them up a little later. We choose Scorbunny as our partner so Hop can choose Grookey. We have to complete the game's tutorial, which includes two battles against Hop, before we can get to Pikachu. Once we reach the wild area we can talk to this girl and she will give us a Pikachu as long as you have the Let's Go Pikachu game data in the same Switch profile.
can you beat pokemon shield only using pikachu
This Pikachu has the ability to Gigantamax, and I've seen some sources say that he has perfect IVs, but I haven't confirmed it myself. Let's quickly go over the rules now that we have our new partner. No Pokémon except Pikachu can be used in battle. Items cannot be used in battle, but held items are fine. And no glitches or cheats can be used. Pikachu's stats are... well, at least he's fast. We called our new little friend Sparkx and headed out to the challenge of the Galar region. We immediately take on some max raid battles so we can get some experience and prepare Pikachu for his first big battle.
can you beat pokemon shield only using pikachu

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We take Pikachu to level 15 and head to the Budew Drop Inn to challenge Team Yell. Pikachu currently knows Electro Ball, Quick Attack, Thunder Wave, and Double Team; and he has the Static skill, which is very convenient for this challenge. Team Yell proves to be no real challenge and we defeat each member with ease. After the Gym Challenger Ceremony, we have the opportunity to face Hop

using

only

Pikachu. We have a small level advantage over his team, but his Grookey almost eliminates us. Fortunately, Electro Ball is a pretty good move and we managed to win. We advance along Route 3 and then head to the first Galar mine, where we meet our new rival, Bede.
can you beat pokemon shield only using pikachu
His psychic Pokémon deal quite a bit of damage, but thanks to Double Team and Electro Ball, we advanced and barely managed to win. Just across Route 4 we found our first gym challenge. Milo is the first Gym Leader of the Galar region. He specializes in making trainers chase Wooloo, exercise, and breed grass-type Pokémon. We head into battle with Pikachu at level 19. We drop off some double teams in hopes of avoiding most of his attacks. We can barely defeat his Gossifleur, but we encounter his Eldegoss and she takes us down with no problems. We tried this battle a couple of times before I finally accepted that we simply can't win at this level.
can you beat pokemon shield only using pikachu
We tried again at level 21 with the Spark move now under our belt, but it's still no use. Even at levels 23 and 25 I can't defeat Eldegoss. Surely I can do it at level 27 right? ...I suppose not. I was hoping to save the leftovers for later in the game, but we need them right now. With the help of the leftovers we reached Eldegoss in full health and finally claimed the first badge. We proceed to cross Route 5 and fight some more members of Team Yell, and pick up this nice doctor's bike. Before we can get to the next town, we have to fight our old friend, Hop, again.
His Wooloo goes down without a problem, but now we have to deal with his Thwacky, and I'm pretty tired of grass types at this point. . We manage to paralyze him with Spark but his Razor Leaf does a lot of damage and finishes us off with Double Hit. The second time we took the opportunity to double team several times while fighting Wooloo. Our first attack on Thwacky is a crit and increases paralysis. Thwacky misses a double hit and we counterattack with a Slam. Hop heals Thwacky, but thanks to our increased evasion and paralysis he doesn't make a single attack.
Thwacky falls with Corvasquire right behind him. With this cleared up, we can head to the next city to face the second gym leader, Nessa. As you can probably imagine, Nessa's water-type Pokémon doesn't stand a chance against Pikachu. We can easily shoot our Goldeen and her Arrowkuda, and her Drednaw goes down after just two G Max Volt Crashes. Now that we have the water badge we can press to Galar mine number two. We barely make it through the entrance before that puny Bede challenges us again. His Solosis immediately drops to Electro Ball, and it

only

takes two to take out his Gothita and that's Hatenna.
His Ponyta confuses us and almost knocks us down thanks to Bede

using

a super potion. We get very lucky and overcome the confusion enough to land two sparks on Ponyta, giving us the victory. We meet Team Yell in the mines, and this time Hop gives us a hand. Team Yell actually manages to take down Pikachu during this battle, but since Hop still has Pokémon, he can finish it off and the game still counts it as a victory. This actually quite surprised me. Our next big battle will take place in the lobby of the Budew Drop Inn against Marnie.
His Croagunk knows the move Revenge, which consumes about half of our HP from the start. We struggle to get past Scraggy and his Morpeko uses Quick Attack, taking us down immediately. This time our battle against Marnie is a little different. It takes three shocks to release Croagunk because Marnie heals him. Scraggy cannot attack thanks to the paralysis from the shock and falls easily. Morpeko fails us twice and all it takes is a few Slams to take him down and claim victory. Now we can challenge Kabu for the third gym badge. Kabu specializes in holding towels and training fire-type Pokémon.
His Ninetails knows the Will-o-wisp move, which is super annoying. We manage to get past Ninetails but his Arcanine knocks us down with a Flame Wheel critical hit. We give him another chance and this time we are lucky enough to overcome his Arcanine. We Dynamax and paralyze his Centiscorch causing a decent amount of damage. We can attack two more times before Centiskorch can retaliate thanks to the paralysis, but it's not enough to take him down and he takes us out with a Max Flutterby. We're back at level 35, and this time Ninetails doesn't use Will-o-wisp, but unfortunately Arcanine does.
Once again Centiskorch drops us with a single Max Flutterby. We try again at level 37 with the Thunderbolt move now on our side. Once again we arrive at Centiskorch burned, but this time we still have most of our health. Max Flutterby brings us up to half health, so things aren't looking good. We look for a Max Guard to make sure we don't get hit by his next attack, and he can't attack a third time thanks to the paralysis. We look for Thunderbolt and it starts spamming Smokescreen. Fortunately, we only fail once and Centiskorch falls to a final Thunderbolt, giving us the third badge.
We have another battle with Team Yell once we reach Route 6 but, as expected, they don't prove to be much of a challenge. Before we can face the fourth gym leader, we have to have another battle with Hop. His Cramorant immediately falls and his Silicobra is paralyzed thanks to Pikachu's static. He goes to dig, so we use Double Team, which causes his attack to miss. After a few Slams, Silicobra falls. Our evasion runs into his Thwacky, who is not able to launch a single attack at us. His last Pokémon, Toxel, doesn't stand a chance and falls with Slam.
Allister is a master at being creepy and breeding ghost-type Pokémon. When we reach him, Pikachu is level 45 and knows the moves Thunder, Slam, Thunderbolt and Double Team. This is a problem. I completely forgot that Allister's first Pokémon is a Galarian Yamask, a ghost and a ground type. None of my attacks will deal any damage to him. All I can do is spam Double Team, so that it loses most of its attacks and burns all my power points that I can use to fight. In fact, Yamask runs out of plugs before us, but we are not far behind.
We took down Yamask with Fighting, but now we have no real moves left for the rest of this Pokémon, and you won't be able to Dynamax if you have no moves left. We got his Mimikyu down to about half his health before succumbing to the knockback damage. Luckily for us, Pikachu has a pretty diverse moveset with the use of TM and TR. We take the TM for Thief, a dark type move and return to Allister's gym. This time we can deal some damage to Yamask, but he likes to use the move Disable, which prevents us from using our new move.
While we wait for movement to become available again, we use double team to increase our evasion. We reach his Mimikyu again, use Thunder to deal massive damage, and are lucky enough to inflict paralysis. Another Thunder knocks Mimikyu down. This is where our next problem begins, as Cursola knows the move Curse, which deals much more damage each turn than the remains will restore. We removed his Cursola quickly, but the curse is here to stay. Allister Gigantamaxes his Gengar, who we hit with maximum darkness, taking about half of his HP. We get Gengar to chip away at the last bit of his health, but he gets the better of us and Pikachu goes down.
We tried this battle a few more times, all with similar results. On our next attempt we maximize our evasion by using double team while fighting Yamask. We get to Cursola with full health, but we can't shoot him and he uses curse again. We used maximum darkness on Gengar to reduce him to yellow HP. He uses the same move on us and we respond once again, knocking him down and claiming the ghost badge. Before we can take on Gym Number 5, we have to have a small battle with Bede in the Crayola Ruins. Since we still know the move thief, we get through his team with very few problems.
Bede gets kicked out of the gym challenge by President Rose and we laugh throughout Glimwood Tangle. We left Ballonlea and headed straight to the next gym. Luckily for us, Iron Tail is one of the many TMs Pikachu can learn, so we taught it to him to prepare for the battle against Opal. Opal asks questions during the battle that give Pikachu stat boosts, assuming the questions are answered correctly. We take out Galarian Weezing from him with a pair of iron tails and his Mawile with thunder. Togekiss falls after thunder and lightning and his GMax Alchremy falls after three maximum steel spikes.
With the fifth badge at our side, we headed to Route 7 to have another battle against Hop. This battle turned out to be one of the most challenging of this entire race. We tried this battle for the first time at level 49. His Trevenant knows the horn leech move that steals a big chunk of our HP. To make matters worse, he also knows how to confuse Ray. We can't

beat

his first Pokémon on this first try. I'm reteaching Pikachu the Move Thief in hopes that dealing with Trevenant will be a little easier. Luckily that helped, but he still manages to confuse us before we get to Snorlax.
Snorlax is such a tough Pokémon that not even thunder does much damage and eventually Bodyslam takes us out. I tried this battle so many times I lost count. Level 52, nothing. 55 is not a possibility. At level 60 I get to his last Pokémon Rillaboom, but I still can't

beat

it, thanks to Hop using a healing item. Finally after several attempts of this battle at level 62, Rillaboom falls and we can continue our journey. We crossed routes 7, 8 and 9 arriving in Sirchester at the location of the sixth gym. Melony specializes in thick-as-hell and ice-type Pokémon. Pikachu is pretty level thanks to that ridiculous Battle with Hop.
Frossmoth goes down after Thunder and Thunderbolt, but Darmanitan actually takes us out with Icicle Crash. Maybe we're not so level after all. On our second attempt, we will hit Darmanitan with a devastating Thunder and finish him off with lightning. Eiscue does very little damage to us and also falls after a Thunder and a Lightning. Melony's last Pokémon is a G Max Lapras that does a decent amount of damage with two G max moves. We counterattack with three G Max Volt Crashes and claim this goddess's ice insignia. I'm pretty sick of Hop at this point, but it's a shame for me because it's time to fight him again in Circhester.
His Dubwool goes down fairly easily, but we miss three Thunders in a row on Snorlax, causing us to be taken out by a body hit and hail damage. We lose to Hop a few more times and we're back to level 65. We take out Dubwool and Snorlax, and the hail damage takes out Rillaboom for us. It takes a while to defeat Pincurchin because he keeps using curses, but we finally take him down and get to his last Pokémon Corviknight, and he goes down with a single Thunderbolt. With Hop out of the way, we can head down Route 9 towards Spikemuth.
We have a quick battle with some members of Team Yell along the way, but they pose no threat. Before we are granted entry to Spikemuth, we have to fight Marnie. Marnie kicks the Liepard off of him, who falls after a single Thunderclap. Toxicroak confuses us with Swagger, but heWe take out with a Thunderbolt and Thunder. We overcome the confusion and launch Scrafty with a pair of Thunderbolts. We miss several attacks against his Morpeko and it somehow knocks down Pikachu. We lose the second time thanks to poison damage and try again at level 69. Good. This time Morpeko is eliminated by a critical hit Thunder and we can head to Spikemuth.
In order to begin the seventh gym challenge, we must have a second Pokémon in our party for a double battle. We grab a Magikarp and head to the gym. Piers is the next Gym Leader we will face and there is no Dynamaxing in his gym. His Scrafty uses up a lot of our HP with Brick Break and Payback, but we take him down with a couple of electric attacks. Malamar survives Pikachu's Thunderbolt and takes us down with Payback. On our second try, we took down Scrafty a little more smoothly, but Malamar still hits us pretty hard with his revenge.
We take him down and Piers sends Obstagoon. We hit half his HP with Thunder and he responds with Throat Chop, almost knocking us down. Thunderbolt finishes him off and Piers sends out Skuntank. Piers flat out tells you that Skuntank knows the Sucker Punch moves, so we use Double Team four times. This also allows the shadows to heal a little. Skuntank switches to Toxic, but misses a Sucker Punch. A Thunderbolt takes the last bit of health out of him, and he nearly takes us out with another Sucker Punch. We return fire with one more Thunderbolt and claim Piers' Dark Badge.
There's only one gym badge left, so let's not waste time. We taught Pikachu the Play Rough move and caught another Magickarp to prepare for the next gym. Raihon specializes in selfies and dragon-type Pokémon. Play Rough eliminates Flygon early on. Gigalith eliminates Magikarp and Raihan sends Sandaconda. Neither Sandaconda nor Gigalith are dragon type, so I'm in trouble here. My electric attacks won't work on Sandaconda and will barely hurt Gigalith. They quickly take out Pikachu with Earth Power and Body Press. But don't lose hope just yet because Pikachu has another ace up his sleeve. Pikachu can learn the move Surf, which is not only super effective against ground and rock types, but also hits all Pokémon on the field in double battles.
The first time we tried this, we critically hit Sandaconda and he falls down. It doesn't do much damage on Gigalith, but it's better than what we did before. Unfortunately, it is still not enough to win the battle. We tried again a few more times at higher levels, but we still can't achieve victory. We can get close several times, but apparently level 85 is the magic number. We arrive at Duraludon with Gigalith still on the field. We use Surf to make Gigalith fall, but also to deal a little damage to Duraludon. We take a Max Rockfall as a champion and a Gigantamax Pikachu.
Max Starfall reduces Duraludon's health to yellow and he counterattacks with a max knuckle that deals very little damage. It only takes one more max Starfall to take down Duraludon for good. With the eighth and final badge in hand we can move on to the semi-finals. After driving a truck on snowy Route 10. We found ourselves in Windon. Once we reached Windon Stadium, we fought our first rival, Marnie. Marnie's Liepard and Scrappy are reduced to a single Play Rough since they are weak to Fairy-type moves. It only takes one Thunder to finish off our Toxicroak, and another Play Rough to eliminate his partner Morpeko.
His ace in the hole is a Gigantamax Grimsnarl. We paralyze him and deal massive damage with a single attack. He responds with G Max Snooze, but it's too late. One more attack from Pikachu knocks him down. Next up is our old friend Hop. He starts off with his friend Dubwool, whom Pikachu crushes with Thunder. His Snorlax tank is next. We hit him with thunder and take away about half of his HP, but unfortunately we don't inflict paralysis on him. He counterattacks with High Horse Power, taking a good chunk of our HP, and we manage to miss our next attack, allowing him to launch another High Horse Power.
We fail again and Snorlax knocks us down. On our next attempt, we cast our first and third Thunder on Snorlax and knocked him down. Hop sends his Pincurchin next and we attack him with rough play. He deals quite a bit of damage and one more takes him out. Corvaknight falls with a thunderclap, but Rillaboom is the one I'm worried about. I do Ganton max and look for a G Max volt shock that is guaranteed to inflict paralysis. Luckily for us, it works perfectly and Rillaboom can't attack. We sent a maximum star towards him, which brought his health into the red.
Rillaboom is able to attack this turn and hits us with Max Quake dealing a good amount of damage, but not enough to take down Pikachu. Hop uses a full restore on Rillaboom, crushing my dreams in the process. We both return to our normal forms and hit Rillaboom with rough play, taking him down to his last point of health. He counterattacks with great power and Pikachu is eliminated. So close. I lose to Hop several times, but I know we can beat him at this level. The trick is to maximize our evasion and have Hop use full restoration on him at the beginning of the battle.
We have her use it on his Dubwool and pass it on to the rest of his team. Once you get to Rillaboom, we go for the paralysis with G max Volt Crash and luckily he can't attack... twice. With no more full restorations at his disposal, Hop loses his last Pokémon to a Max Starfall. President Rose and Oleana start causing trouble, so of course it's up to Hop and me to stop them. We found Oleana waiting for us at the top of President Rose's tower and began to fight. It starts with a Frosslass that loses most of its HP from playing hard.
He counterattacks with Icy Wind, which doesn't deal much damage but slows down Pikachu, allowing it to attack first in the next round. She uses Will-o-wisp and burns Pikachu. Frosslass falls to another rough play and his Milotic is reduced to a single Thunder. His Salazzle attacks with Venoshock, but luckily it only takes a Surf to take out his next Pokémon. Tsarenna is especially annoying because she knows that movement attracts. We manage to launch two thunderclaps despite Pikachu's crush, but Tsareena beats us and Pikachu falls. After a few more tries, we passed his team avoiding Will-o-wisp and a clue and reached our last Pokémon, a GMAX Garbodor.
I was pressing the "A" button so fast that I didn't max out Giganta with Pikachu, but I still managed to land that critical hit on Thunder. Garbodor counterattacks with a maximum earthquake, but it's not enough and we take him down on the next turn. Back at Windon Stadium, we have to fight Bede again. Turns out he's still bitter. His Mawile cuts off Pikachu's attack with its intimidate ability, but it doesn't matter because the thunder knocks him down in one hit. Gardevoir is next and is able to survive a Pikachu Thunderbolt. He uses wish, then we sail and try to take him down.
Bede then uses a full restore. Surf deals a decent amount of damage, but the wish comes true and Gardevoir is fully healed again. We hit him with a surge and a Thunder and Gardevoir falls. He then sends the unicorn angry at him, and he manages to avoid a thunderclap. Our second attack lands safely and Rapidash falls. His last Pokémon is a G Max Hatterene. We attack with Max Starfall dealing a decent amount of damage, and he counterattacks with Max Mindstorm which also deals quite a bit of damage in return. We go for G Max Volt Crash on the next turn and win the battle.
Nessa is next, and as you can probably guess, we have no problem taking out our water-type team with Pikachu's Thunder. His G Max Dreadnaw also comes off easily. Allister gets back up and starts with a Dusknoir. Play Rough and Thunder takes him down, and Alistair sends Chandelure out next, who goes down with a wave. His poltergeist is pretty annoying because he keeps using protection and actually manages to take us out because we miss Thunder. Next time we'll go for a double team knowing that he will use protection and finally take him out with a couple of thunderclaps.
His feared Cursola has returned, but fortunately it only takes one attack to take him down. We finally get to his Gengar, who is defeated with Volt Crash and Max Starfall. Raihan is the last one we have to overcome in this tournament. It starts with Torkoal, who goes down with a pair of Surfs. Flygon is right behind him after a tough play. It takes a few waves to pass Turtinator, and just one rough play to drop Goodra. Duraludon is the last, and after some Max Star Falls, Raihan uses a full restore. We return to our normal forms and throw Play Roughs at him until he falls.
We have to take care of a few more story things before we can face Leon, so our next big battles against President Rose. We had a pretty tough time with this fight, struggling to even get through his first Pokémon. We taught Pikachu Brick Break after several failed attempts. We can eliminate Escavalier with a Thunderbolt and a Brick Breaker, and Farrothor, Perrserker and Klingklang fall after breaking two bricks each. Finally we get to his G Max Copperaja which falls after two maximum knuckles. We had some trouble against Eternatus and had to get Pikachu to level 95 to beat it, but we managed to do it.
It's finally time to face Galar's champion, León. The trick to getting past his Aegislash is to use Double Team when he uses King Shield. It takes me quite a while to get it right as it can be a bit unpredictable. This will also help us avoid Shadow Ball which does a lot of damage. We also have to be careful with his Haxorus since he knows the movement of the earthquake. We fought Leon several times at level 95 but couldn't win. We have no choice but to make the final push to level 100 and try again. On one of our attempts, we get lucky and take out Aegislash with a single critical hit, Thunder.
At level 100, Pikachu can defeat Haxorus with a single rough game and Intelon is not a problem as long as we don't miss, and Dragapult goes down with a rough game. Mr. Rime comes out and now things get interesting. A single Thunder doesn't knock him down and he uses the Teeter dance, so now Pikachu is confused. We can overcome the confusion to use another Thunder and turn Leon into the ultimate Charizard Pokémon. We stopped accelerating and opted for a G Max Volt Crash, and with that Pikachu has single-handedly become the new champion of Galar. But... Can we beat Hop one last time?
To win this battle we need his team to miss his attacks a lot. We maximize our evasion and get to work. Doubwool and Snorlax decline pretty quickly, but it's Rillaboom that worries me. We hit him with a critical hit, Thunder, and luckily he misses a drum hit. Another Thunderclap isn't enough to take him down and he launches his next Drum Strike, taking over half of our HP. We take away the last of his health with Theif and Hop sends Pincurchin. We use the rough and thieving game and he chooses to Recover. This only helps us recover more health from the leftovers and Pincurchin goes down quickly.
Corviknight falls with a single Thunderbolt but now we have to face the Zacian of him. A close combat fails and we launch our first thunder. He fails again and another thunderclap takes down the last of his health. He fails one last time and the thief takes him down for good. I know this probably seemed pretty easy, but I've done this battle many times and I was convinced that it simply couldn't be done, but without a doubt we have the strongest Pikachu in all of Galar. This challenge was a little harder than I expected, however at the same time I'm surprised that I was able to win the last battle against Hop.
Thanks for watching! Which Pokémon should I try this challenge with next? Let me know in the comments below. Hit the like button and subscribe to see more videos like this. My name is Trendge and see you on the next adventure!

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