Can you beat Pokemon Shield only using Pikachu?

Pikachu has been the face of Pokémon for over 20 years. Sure it's adorable and has been Ash's partner since day one, but can a Pikachu conquer the Galar region on its own? My name is Trendge and we're about to find out. So obviously Pikachu isn't an option to start with in gen 8, so we'll have to pick those up a bit later. We choose Scorbunny as our partner so Hop chooses Grookey. We have to go through 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 Let's Go Pikachu game data on the same Switch profile.

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 Pokemon 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 named our new little friend Sparkx and headed off to the Galar region challenge. We immediately hit some max raid battles so we can get some experience candy to get Pikachu ready for his first big battle.

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 ability, which is very convenient for this challenge. Team Yell proves to be not a real challenge and we

beat

each member with ease. After the Gym Challenger ceremony, we get a chance to take on Hop

using

only

Pikachu. We have a bit of a level advantage over his team, but his Grookey nearly took us out. Fortunately, Electro Ball is a pretty good move, and we managed to get the win.

We make our way through Route 3 and then head to the first Galar Mine, where we meet our new rival, Bede. His psychic Pokémon do quite a bit of damage, but thanks to Double Team and Electro Ball, we pushed through and barely managed to win. Just across Route 4 we found our first gym challenge. Milo is the first Gym Leader in the Galar region. He specializes in making trainers chase Wooloo, working out, and breeding grass-type Pokémon. We headed into the battle with Pikachu at level 19. We dropped some double teams in hopes of avoiding most of his attacks.

We can barely take down his Gossifleur, but we run into his Eldegoss, and he takes us down with no problem. We tried this battle a few times before finally accepting that we just can't win at this level. We tried it again at level 21 with the move Spark now under our belt, but it's still useless. Even a level 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 scraps for later in the game, but we need them right now. With the help of the leftovers, we reached Eldegoss at full health and finally claimed the first badge.

We proceed across Route 5 and fight a few more Team Yell members, 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 just fine, but now we have to deal with his Thwacky, and I'm pretty tired of grass-types right now. We managed to paralyze him with Spark but his Razor Leaf does a lot of damage and he finishes us off with Double Hit. The second time around, we took the opportunity to double-team multiple times while fighting Wooloo. Our first attack on Thwacky is critical and increases paralysis.

Thwacky misses a double hit and we respond with a Slam. Hop heals Thwacky, but thanks to our increased evasion and paralysis, he doesn't launch a single attack. Thwacky goes down with Corvasquire right behind him. With that out of the way, we can head to the next town to take on the second Gym Leader, Nessa. As you can probably imagine, Nessa's Water-type Pokemon doesn't stand a chance against Pikachu. We can easily shoot both our Goldeen and her Arrowkuda, and her Drednaw drops after just two G Max Volt Crashes. Now that we have the water badge, we can move on to Galar mine number two.

We barely made it through the entrance before being challenged again by that fool Bede. His Solosis immediately falls into Electro Ball, and it

only

takes two to finish off his Gothita and Hatenna. His Ponyta confuses us and almost knocks us over thanks to Bede

using

a super potion. We get really lucky and we get through the confusion enough to land two sparks on Ponyta, giving us the win. We meet up with 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 Pokemon, he can finish it off and the game still counts it as a win.

In fact, I was quite surprised by this. Our next big battle takes place in the lobby of the Budew Drop Inn against Marnie. His Croagunk knows the Vengeance move, which requires 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 drop Croagunk because Marnie heals him. Scraggy is unable to attack thanks to the shock's paralysis, and he falls easily. Morpeko misses us twice, and all it takes is a few Slams to take him down and claim the win.

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 takes us down with a Flame Wheel critical hit. We give him another chance and this time we are lucky to pass the Arcanine from him. We Dynamax and paralyze his Centiscorch for a decent amount of damage. We get to 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 tried it 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 down to half health, so things aren't looking good. We're looking for a Max Guard to make sure he doesn't hit us with his next attack, and he can't attack a third time thanks to paralysis. We go for Thunderbolt and he starts spamming Smokescreen.

Fortunately, we only miss once and Centiskorch falls to a final Thunderbolt, which gives us the third badge. We have another battle with Team Yell once we get to Route 6 but, as expected, they don't present any challenges. Before we can take on the fourth Gym Leader, we need to have another battle with Hop. His Cramorant immediately falls and his Silicobra is paralyzed by Pikachu's static. He's going to dig, so we Double Team, which causes his attack to miss. After a few slams, Silicobra falls. Our evasion ability is clinging to his Thwacky, which is unable to land a single attack on us.

His last Pokémon Toxel, doesn't stand a chance and goes down with Slam. Allister is the master at being creepy and raising ghost-type Pokémon. When we get to him, Pikachu is level 45 and knows the moves Thunder, Slam, Thunderbolt, and Double Team. This is a problem. I totally forgot that Allister's first Pokemon is a Galarian Yamask, a ghost and ground type. None of my attacks will deal any damage to him. All I can do is spam Double Team, so they lose most of their attacks and burn all my power points that I can use to fight.

Yamask actually runs out of power points before we do, but we're not far behind. We took down Yamask with difficulty, but now we have no real moves left for the rest of this Pokemon, and you can't Dynamax if you're out of moves. We got his Mimikyu down to about half health before succumbing to knockback damage. Fortunately for us, Pikachu has quite a diverse move set with the use of TM and TR. We take the TM for Thief, a dark-type move, and head back to Allister's gym. This time we can deal some damage to Yamask, but he likes to use the Disable move, which prevents us from using our new move.

While we wait for the move to become available again, we double team to increase our evasion. We switch back to her Mimikyu and 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 shadows will restore. We removed her 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 get the last bit of health out of him, but he gets the best of us and Pikachu goes down.

We tried this battle a few more times, all with similar results. On our next attempt, we max out our evasion ability by using a double team while fighting Yamask. We get to Cursola at full health, but we can't take him down and he curses again. We use maximum darkness on Gengar to reduce him to yellow HP. He uses the same move on us and we shoot once more, knocking him down and claiming the ghost badge. Before we can take on Gym #5, we need to have a little battle with Bede in the Crayola Ruins. Since we still know the move thief, we made our way through his team with very little trouble.

Bede is kicked out of the gym challenge by President Rose and we laugh our way through Glimwood Tangle. We exit Ballonlea and head straight for the next gym. Luckily for us, Iron Tail is one of the many TMs that Pikachu can learn, so we're teaching it to prepare him for the battle against Opal. Opal asks questions throughout the battle that grant benefits to Pikachu's stats, assuming the questions are answered correctly. We take out the Galarian Weezing from him with a pair of iron tails and his Mawile with thunder. Togekiss goes down after a thunder and lightning strike and his GMax Alchremy goes down after three max steel spikes.

With the fifth insignia by 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 career. We first tried this battle at level 49. his Trevenant knows the move horn leech which steals a lot of our HP. To top it off he also knows how to confuse Ray. We can't

beat

his first Pokémon on this first try. I teach Pikachu the move stealer again in hopes of making dealing with Trevenant a bit easier. Thankfully that helped, but he still manages to confuse us before we get to Snorlax.

Snorlax is such a tanky Pokémon that even thunder doesn't do much damage, eventually Bodyslam takes us out. I tried this battle so many times that I lost count. Level 52, nothing. 55 is not a chance. At level 60 I get to his last Pokemon Rillaboom, but still can't beat it, thanks to Hop using a healing item. Finally, after several attempts at this battle at level 62, Rillaboom falls off and we can continue our journey. We cross routes 7, 8 and 9 arriving at Sirchester at the location of the sixth gym. Melony specializes in being thicc as hell and ice type

pokemon

. Pikachu is pretty level thanks to that ridiculous Battle with Hop.

Frossmoth goes down after a Thunder and Thunderbolt, but Darmanitan actually takes us out with Icicle Crash. Maybe we're not so over level after all. On our second attempt, we hit Darmanitan with devastating thunder and finished him off with lightning. Eiscue does very little damage to us and also falls behind a Thunder and a Thunderbolt. Melony's ultimate Pokemon is a G Max Lapras that does a decent amount of damage with two G max moves. We return fire with three G Max Volt Crashes and claim this goddess' ice badge. I'm pretty sick of Hop right now, but that's too bad for me because it's time to fight him again in Circhester.

His Dubwool goes down pretty easily, but we missed three Thunders in a row on Snorlax, getting us taken out with a body slam and hail damage. We lose to Hop a few more times and are back at level 65. We take out Dubwool and Snorlax, and the hail damage kills Rillaboom for us. It takes a while to defeat Pincurchin because he keeps using the curse, but we finally take him down and get to his last Pokémon, Corviknight, and he goes down with a single Thunder. With Hop out of the way, we can take Route 9 towards Spikemuth.

We have a quick battle with some Team Yell members on the way, but they don't pose any threat. Before we are granted entry to Spikemuth, we have to fight Marnie.Marnie takes things out of her Liepard which falls after a single Thunder. Toxicroak mistakes us for Swagger, but we take him out with a Thunderbolt and Thunder. We get past the confusion and drop Scrafty off with a couple of Thunderbolts. We miss several attacks against his Morpeko and that somehow knocks Pikachu down. We lose the second time thanks to the poison damage, and try again at level 69.

Great. This time, Morpeko is taken out by a Thunder critical hit and we can head over to Spikemuth. To start the seventh gym challenge, we must have a second Pokémon in our party for a double battle. We take a Magikarp and head to the gym. Piers is the next gym leader we have to face and there is no Dynamaxing in his gym. His Scrafty eats up a lot of our HP with Brick Break and Payback, but we take him down with a couple of electrical attacks. Malamar survives a Thunder from Pikachu and takes us down with Payback.

On our second go, we take Scrafty down a bit more gently, but Malamar still hits us pretty hard with a vengeance. We take it down and Piers sends out Obstagoon. We hit him with half of his HP with Thunder and he fires with Throat Chop, almost knocking us down. Thunderbolt finishes him off and Piers sends out Skuntank. Piers flatly tells you that Skuntank knows Sucker Punch moves, which is why we Double Teamed four times. This also allows the leftovers to darken a bit. Skuntank switches to Toxic, but misses a Sucker Punch. A Thunderbolt takes the last ounce of health out of him, and he nearly took us out with another Sucker Punch.

We shoot again with one more Thunderbolt and claim the Dark Badge from Piers. There's only one gym badge missing, so let's not waste time. We teach Pikachu the Play Rough move and catch another Magickarp to prepare for the next gym. Raihon specializes in selfies and dragon-type Pokémon. Play Rough eliminates Flygon early on. Gigalith takes out Magikarp and Raihan sends out Sandaconda. Neither Sandaconda nor Gigalith are dragon types so I'm in trouble here. My electrical attacks won't work on Sandaconda and will barely damage Gigalith. They quickly take out Pikachu with Earth Power and Body Press. Don't lose hope though because Pikachu has another trick up its sleeve.

Pikachu can learn the move Surf, which is not only super effective against Ground and Rock-types, but also hits every Pokemon on the field in double battles. The first time we tried this, we critically hit Sandaconda and it fell down. It doesn't do much damage on Gigalith, but it's better than what we did before. Unfortunately, it's still not enough to win the battle. We tried again a few more times at increased levels, but still can't get the win. We can get close a few times, but apparently level 85 is the magic number. We reach Duraludon with Gigalith still in the field.

We use Surf to bring Gigalith down, but also to do a little damage to Duraludon. We take a Max Rockfall as a champion and Gigantamax Pikachu. Max Starfall brings Duraludon to yellow health and he fires with a max knuckle that deals very little damage. It only takes one more Max Meteor Shower to bring Duraludon down for good. With the eighth and final badge in hand, we can head to the semifinals. After trucking down snowy Route 10, we found ourselves in Windon. Once we reach Windon Stadium, we fight our first opponent, Marnie. Marnie and Scrappy's Liepard are reduced to a single Play Rough since they are weak to Fairy-type moves.

It only takes one Thunder to take out our Toxicroak and another Play Rough to take out his fellow Morpeko. His trump card is a Gigantamax Grimsnarl. We paralyze him and deal massive damage with a single attack. He responds with a 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 with his friend Dubwool, whom Pikachu smashes with Thunder. His tanky Snorlax is next. We hit him with thunder and took about half of his HP, but unfortunately we didn't inflict paralysis on him. He responds with High Horse Power, taking a good chunk of our HP, and we manage to miss our next attack, allowing him to land another High Horse Power.

We miss again and Snorlax knocks us down. On our next attempt, we land our first and third Thunder on Snorlax and take him down. Hop sends the Pincurchin out of him next, and we rough him up. He deals quite a bit of damage, and one more takes him out. Corvaknight goes down with thunder, but Rillaboom is the one I'm worried about. which I max Ganton and go for G Max volt crash which is guaranteed to inflict paralysis. Lucky for us, it works perfectly and Rillaboom can't attack. We sent a max star his way, bringing his health to the red.

Rillaboom can attack this turn and hits us with Max Quake which does a good amount of damage, but not enough to knock Pikachu down. Hop uses a full restore on Rillaboom, crushing my dreams in the process. We both revert to our normal forms, and hit Rillaboom with a snap, knocking out every last bit of health on him. He shoots with great power and they take out Pikachu. So close. I lose to Hop a handful of times, but I know we can beat him at this level. The trick is to maximize our evasiveness and have Hop use the full restore on him earlier in the battle.

We got him to wear it on his Dubwool and go through the rest of his gear. 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 restores at his disposal, Hop loses his final Pokémon to 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 started fighting. She starts with a Frosslass that loses most of her HP to play rough.

She returns fire with Icy Wind, which doesn't do much damage but slows Pikachu down, allowing it to be attacked first the next round. She uses Will-o-wisp and burns Pikachu. Frosslass falls to another rough game and his Milotic is down to a single Thunder. Her Salazzle attacks with Venoshock, but luckily it only takes one Surf to knock out her next Pokemon. Tsarenna is especially upset because she knows that movement attracts. We manage to throw two thunderbolts despite Pikachu's crush, but Tsareena outplays us and Pikachu goes down. After a few more tries, we got past her team avoiding Will-o-wisp and a clue and got to our last Pokemon, a GMAX Garbodor.

I was pressing the "A" button so fast that I didn't max out Giganta to Pikachu, but I still managed to land that Thunder critical hit. Garbodor responds with a max earthquake, but it's not enough and we take him down next turn. Back at Windon Stadium, we have to fight Bede again. It turns out that he is still bitter. His Mawile slices through 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 can survive a Thunder from Pikachu. He uses the wish, then we go surfing and try to take him down.

Bede then uses a full restore. Surf does a decent amount of damage, but the wish comes true and Gardevoir heals back to full. We hit it with a swell and a Thunder and Gardevoir collapses. He then sends the angry unicorn at him, and he manages to avoid thunder. Our second attack lands just fine and Rapidash goes down. His last Pokémon is a G Max Hatterene. We attack with Max Starfall which does a decent amount of damage, and counters 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 is also easy to pull out. Allister wakes up again and starts with a Dusknoir. Play Rough and Thunder takes him down, and Alistair sends out Chandelure next, who goes under with a swell. Her poltergeist is pretty annoying because she keeps using protect and actually manages to take us out due to missing Thunder. Next time, we're going to double-team knowing she'll be using protection and ultimately taking it out with a pair of thunders.

The dreaded Cursola of his is back, but luckily 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 beat in this tournament. It starts with Torkoal going down with a couple of Surfs. Flygon is right behind him after a rough move. It takes a few waves to get past Turtinator, and only one plays hard to drop Goodra. Duraludon is last, and after a few Max Star Falls, Raihan uses a full restore. We return to our normal forms and throw him around with Play Roughs until he falls.

We have a few more story things to take care of before we can take on Leon, so our next big battles against President Rose. We have a pretty tough time with this fight, struggling to even get past the first Pokemon of him. We teach Pikachu Brick Break after several failed attempts. We can take out Escavalier with thunder and a Brick Break, and Farrothor, Perrserker, and Klingklang go down after two Brick Breaks each. Finally we come to his G Max Copperaja which drops after two max knuckles. We had some trouble against Eternatus and had to get

pikachu

to level 95 to beat him, but we managed to do it.

It's finally time to face the Galar champion, Leon. The trick to getting past his Aegislash is to Double Team when he uses King Shield. It takes me quite a while to get it right as it can be a bit hit and miss. This will also help us avoid Shadow Ball, which does a lot of damage. We must also be careful with his Haxorus since he knows the movement of the earthquake. We fought Leon several times at level 95, but we 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 lucked out and took out Aegislash with a single Thunder crit.

At level 100, Pikachu can take down Haxorus with a single rough play and Intelon isn't a problem as long as we don't miss, and Dragapult goes down with rough play. Mr. Rime walks out and now things get interesting. A single Thunderbolt doesn't knock him down and he uses the Teeter dance, so now Pikachu is confused. We can get past the confusion to use another Thunder and make Leon the ultimate Charizard Pokémon. We top speed and go 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 evasions and get down to business. Doubwool and Snorlax drop pretty quickly, but it's Rillaboom I'm worried about. We hit him with a Critical Hit Thunder and luckily he misses a drum hit. Another Thunder is not enough to take him down and he lands his next Drum Beating, taking over half our HP. We take the last of his health with Theif, and Hop sends Pincurchin. We use Play Rough and Thief and he goes for Recover. This just helps us recover more health from the leftovers and Pincurchin goes down quickly.

Corviknight goes down with a single Thunder, but now we have to take on his Zacian. A hand-to-hand combat is lost and we land our first thunder. He misses again, and another thunderclap takes the last ounce of health out of him. He gets lost one last time and the thief takes him down for good. I know this probably seemed easy enough, but I've done this battle many times, I was convinced it just couldn't be done, but without a doubt we have the strongest Pikachu in all of Galar. This challenge was a bit more difficult 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 Pokemon 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 we'll see you on the next adventure!