E4 Champion & Beating the Game: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 20

Quick Guide

1. Our Rival has a very well balanced team, and it’ll be a little different depending on your Starter Pokémon
2. He will always start with Pidgeot. So start with a Pokémon that knows a strong Electric or Rock type move
3. Exeggutor is going to rely on Sleep Powder, so remember you can wake your Pokémon up for free with the Poké Flute
4. Lowering your Rival’s Starter Pokémon’s accuracy will be very effective since they know hard-hitting, low accuracy moves like Hydro Pump and Fire Blast
5. Focus more on not being countered than on countering your Rival. For example, a strong Charizard or Dragonite can take out Pidgeot, Alakazam, and Arcanine without a lot of issues
6. Moves that cause Paralysis/Sleep/etc will also be very strong in this fight. Just remember that your Rival has Full Restores and isn’t afraid to use them

Key Pokémon/Types (Team Build)

Our Rival is pretty much our evil alter ego, so this isn’t a one size fits all situation like the other members of the Elite Four.

We’re going to have to rely on a balanced team to take him on.

Things get even more complicated against our Rival because his team changes depending on who we picked as our starter (see below). So we won’t all be relying on the same Pokémon to carry us through this fight.

No matter which starter you chose, a nice Electric type Pokémon is going to be useful.

Pidgeot is a constant on your Rival’s team, so a Thunderbolt will take it out quickly. If you chose anything except Charmander, you’ll also be able to quickly take care of Gyarados. If you chose Charmander, of course, you’ll be able to take care of Blastoise with an Electric type move.

So no matter what, you’ll want a healthy Electric type Pokémon.

Other than an Electric type, the rest of your key Pokémon types are going to depend upon your Rival’s party (AKA your starter). A Pokémon with some good Dark type moves will be good against Alakazam and Exeggutor, while Rock type moves would decimate Gyarados and Charizard.

Take a look at your Rival’s party below, and then determine the best Pokémon to Revive and heal for the battle.

If you have enough Revives and Full Restores to heal your whole party, then that’s perfect, otherwise you’ll want to take the path of least resistance.

Here’s my party for reference:

My plan is to take out my Rival’s Pidgeot and Blastoise with my Raichu, and then use Dragonite for most of the rest of his party.

I chose to fully heal my Dragonite because the only Pokémon it’ll have to worry about is Rhydon and its Rock type moves. My answer to Rhydon will be a tanky Snorlax that knows Surf!

I’ll also have a hard hitting Charizard for anything else he throws at me (Exeggutor, most likely). These are going to be my four key Pokémon in this fight, although I could probably get it done without Snorlax.

Our Rival’s E4 Pokémon Team

If You Chose Charmander As Your Starter

If You Chose Bulbasaur As Your Starter

If You Chose Squirtle As Your Starter

As you can see, no matter which starter Pokémon you chose in the beginning, your Rival will have a pretty balanced team.

But we’ve seen his team a few times by this point, so how hard could it be to put them in their place once more?

The wild cards here are:

• Arcanine
• Gyarados
• Exeggutor

You’ll face two out of three of these Pokémon. Which two depends on which starter you chose.

This is good because one of them is weak to your starter, while the other is the same type as your partner. Unless you picked Bulbasaur, then things get a little weird since it’s strong against Exeggutor and Gyarados, but also weak against Gyarados’s Flying type moves.

How To Beat Rival Champion

Our Rival’s team is very well balanced.

So we’re not going to see him spam the same move over and over like we did with the previous Elite Four members.

He’ll start with a Pidgeot, which means we want to have an Electric or Rock type leading our party.

Handling Rival’s Pidgeot

Pidgeot will likely alternate between Aerial Ace, an extremely strong Flying type move and Sand Attack, a very annoying move that lowers accuracy.

Pidgeot isn’t too hard to beat, even if you don’t have an Electric or Rock type in your party. Still, I’d avoid using anything with low HP and defense because Aerial Ace literally cannot miss. An unlucky crit could easily lead to an upset.

If you do use an Electric type Pokémon against Pidgeot, there’s a good chance your Rival will swap it out for Rhydon mid-battle.

If not, then Rhydon will still probably be your Rival’s second Pokémon.

Handling Rival’s Rhydon

Rhydon will probably use Take Down, Scary Face, or Rock Tomb.

So you probably don’t want to use a squishy Pokémon or a Pokémon that’s weak to Rock type moves (like Charizard, for example).

Rhydon, of course, is super weak to Water moves.

So if you have a Pokémon that knows Surf you’ll pretty much be able to one-shot it.

After Rhydon comes Alakazam.

Handling Rival’s Alakazam

Alakazam is a pure Psychic type, so it’ll be weak against Dark, Ghost, and Bug type moves.

You’ll have to watch out for its Psychic and Dark type moves yourself, but overall Alakazam is a pretty easy win.

Handling Rival’s Exeggutor

Next up is Exeggutor, which you’re only going to see if you chose Charmander (like me) or Bulbasaur.

Exeggutor will mostly try to put your Pokémon to sleep with Sleep Powder then slam it with Egg Bombs (Normal type move) or Giga Drain (Grass type move).

The good news is that while Exeggutor is part Psychic type, it doesn’t really use Psychic type moves.

Still, Egg Bomb is strong enough to KO your Pokémon if you’re not careful.

While our Pokémon are all awesome and deserve a rest, if Exeggutor puts one of yours to sleep, remember you can play the Poké Flute to wake it back up.

Once Exeggutor goes down, we’re going to be dealing with an Arcanine or a Gyarados.

Handling Rival’s Arcanine/Gyarados

Gyarados will be defeated easily by a strong Rock or Electric type move. It knows Hydro Pump, though, so using a Rock, Ground, or Fire type Pokémon will be extremely dangerous.

Arcanine is a pure Fire type Pokémon. So a Water, Rock, or Ground type is going to be a really good choice here.

You’ll want to avoid anything weak against Fire type attacks because Arcanine knows Flamethrower.

It also knows Extreme Speed, which is a Normal type attack similar to Quick Attack, except it moves much faster.

You should be wary of Extreme Speed if you have a low HP Pokémon because Arcanine is going to go first 99% of the time with this move.

It doesn’t do a ton of damage, but it’ll do enough to KO a weak Pokémon.

Handling Rival’s Starter

Finally, your Rival will use their starter Pokémon.

Sometimes they may not save them for last. If you use your starter to KO one of your Rival’s Pokémon, then they’re very likely to send out their own starter in response.

No matter which starter your Rival has, it will know a very powerful move of its type.

Charizard, for example, will know Fire Blast.

Since I chose Charmander, my Rival has Blastoise. If you’re against Blastoise, then your Rival will likely start with a Rain Dance to boost his Water type moves for a few turns.

Afterwards, they’ll start using the hard-hitting Water type move Hydro Pump.

Hydro Pump already does a lot of damage, but with Rain Dance on top it’ll be extremely hard for any Pokémon to survive (whether they’re weak against Water or not).

Hydro Pump also has a pretty low accuracy, though. So if you can hit a Smokescreen or any other move that lowers accuracy then Blastoise will miss most of his Hydro Pumps and you’ll be able to take it out.

If you have a healthy Electric type Pokémon, it’s a great option here too.

If you can’t one-shot the Blastoise, then you can Paralyze it and then chip it down.

My Suggested Strategy

My strategy is to start out with Raichu because I know our Rival is going to send out Pidgeot first.

Once Pidgeot goes down and Rhydon comes out, in a perfect world I’d send in Snorlax since it knows Surf.

However, my Snorlax is so weak that Rhydon would one-shot it.

Instead I’m going to send in Dragonite and pretty much coast on its Outrage.

Your Pokémon choices in this battle don’t have to perfectly counter your Rival’s. You just have to make sure his choices don’t counter yours!

Most of his Pokémon are pretty squishy, which means a hard hitting move will take them down pretty fast.

For example, none of my conscious party had any Ghost or Dark type moves, so I sent my Charizard in against Alakazam. Two Flamethrowers is all it took to take it down.

You can stick with this logic against most of your Rival’s Pokémon. You don’t need to counter them, you just need to hit them very hard and not get one-shot yourself.

The hardest part is going to be getting through your Rival’s starter Pokémon.

In my case, this was a Blastoise which is very tanky and hits like a truck with Hydro Pump.

You should save an answer for this Pokémon in your back pocket as well as some status effects.

For example, I paralyzed Blastoise with my Raichu’s Thunder Wave, and then used a couple of Double Teams. After that, Blastoise could hardly move – and when it could move, it probably missed its Hydro Pump.

Of course, a strong Electric type move like Thunder would’ve done the trick much faster.

Final Victory

I won’t lie, the Champion battle is difficult.

I barely pulled through and only won due to my Snorlax’s high defense and some super powerful Hyper Beams.

After you defeat the Champion, you’ll have to listen to your Rival complain a little bit before Oak makes his way into the room.

Oak will also chastise your Rival a bit before bringing you to the Hall of Fame room.

The Hall of Fame is just a little showcase of which Pokémon you used to defeat the Elite Four.

This part is actually pretty awesome and a wonderful way to close out our journey.

Once you place your Poké Balls in the machine, it’ll give you a summary of your Pokémon and show them all together.

Afterwards, you’ll be shown a little summary of your journey:

Your name, your ID, and how long it took you to “win” the game.

At some point during this, your game will be saved and then you’ll be shown the final end credits.

The credits are pretty nice as well, so I recommend watching them – but since your game was saved there’s nothing stopping you from just resetting to skip the credits sequence.

After the credits, you’ll be taken back to the main menu where you can continue your game.

You’ll be back in Pallet Town, where Oak will greet you and take a look at your Pokédex.

While this is where our main story walkthrough ends, there’s still a decent amount more for you to explore in Kanto and in Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen.

So I encourage you to continue your journey even further (possibly into the Sevii Islands) and catch as many Pokémon as you can!

BACK TO THE MAIN GAME Pokémon FRLG Full Strategy Guide

Guide Navigation

• Pokémon FRLG
  • E4 Champion & Beating the Game: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 20

ReOcelot

115 articles

A jack of all trades when it comes to gaming. I can sit down for hours in a casual playthrough of Pokémon, or I can spend months trying to hit Diamond in League of Legends. I love and appreciate everything about games, and love sharing that passion with my readers.

View Writer's Posts →

Related Posts:

How To Beat E4 Lance: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 19 How To Get Through Victory Road: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 15 Silph Co. & Saffron City: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 10 How To Beat E4 Agatha: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 18 How To Beat Lorelei + E4 Preparations: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 16 Pallet Town to Viridian City: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 1 Mt. Moon: Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 4 Sevii Islands (One Island to Three Island): Pokémon FRLG Walkthrough Part 13