Electric is usually a type that you'll face around the midpoint of your adventure. Pretty much every single Electric gym leader is somewhere in the range of the third gym leader to the fifth gym leader in that region. There's one glaring exception to the rule, however, which is Volkner from Sinnoh.

You see, Volkner is actually the 8th and final gym leader of the Sinnoh region. You face him after you abolish Team Galactic and after catching your legendary. The only other types to have gotten the distinction of being the final gym type are Ground, Dragon, Water, and Ice. Volkner should feel proud and honored for representing his favorite type.

He resides over Sunnyshore City, an oceanside city with a big lighthouse, a bustling market area and high technology pathways and bridges. The latter really sell the whole Electric theme home.

Volkner will hand players the Beacon Badge upon being defeated, allowing the use of HM07 Waterfall outside of battle.

Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl

The player first hears of Volkner after arriving in Sunnyshore City. A man with a fire colored afro named Flint talks about his friend Volkner being holed up in his gym, bored out of his mind. Flint senses potential in the player and urges you to go talk to Volkner. Because a 10 year old child really should be responsible for cheering up a depressed adult.

Anyway, you find Volkner at the top floor of the Sunnyshore City Lighthouse. He mentions how empty and bored he feels because he hasn't had a single challenger make him feel excited during battle in a very long time. He seems to be giving up on the gym leader idea, but senses something in the player and decides to give it one last go. Essentially he is holding you responsible for not giving him a burnout. Great.

Volkner's gym is very fun! It's a gear puzzle. You have to walk across pathways on gears and press buttons to rotate said gears around to access new areas. You end up going over the same gears multiple times in the process. It's revealed that Volkner actually designed this puzzle himself! He's an inventor (fitting for his type I suppose). Although this one wasn't a passion project but a boredom project. Oh well, C's get degrees as they say. It did end up taking out a large chunk of the Sunnyshore powergrid which is funny. Sinnoh as a whole just has really creative gym designs, definitely my favorite in the series.

Once you finally navigate your way to Volkner, it's time to battle him! Unfortunately, Volkner is another victim of the Sinnoh Dex Curse. Due to the many cross generational evolutions being locked to the post-game, mainland Sinnoh has quite a small roster of Pokemon. As a result there aren't many Electric Pokemon to go around, causing Volkner to end up with a bunch of Pokemon that don't even have the Electric typing. At least in other cases, such as Candice's Medicham, there was some thematical link between the Pokemon and the town or type. In Volkner's case, I genuinely can't tell you why he has some of the party members he does.

In Diamond, Pearl, Brilliant Diamond, and Shining Pearl, Volkner leads with a Raichu. The classic Electric type, no complaints there! He then follows this up with... an Ambipom? It's neat to see this cross generational Pokemon actually be represented by an important character, but what does Ambipom have to do with electricity or Volkner? It's got quite a threatening moveset however. It sets up +2 stages of special attack and speed with Nasty Plot and Agility respectively. It can then either fire off strong Shock Waves, given a 50% power boost by Ambipom's Technician ability, or it can Baton Pass and give all those stat buffs to a different team member of Volkner. K.O. it fast! Volkner's third Pokemon is... Octillery? Yeah I've got nothing. It's not even a new Sinnoh evolution! Luckily Volkner's ace is, as Luxray is a cool finisher that fits his personality (and color scheme).

In Platinum they gave his team a makeover, probably due to Platinum expanding the regional dex, allowing more electric types to be obtainable. Volkner maintains his Raichu and Luxray, although the latter is no longer his strongest Pokemon. His lead is now the new addition Jolteon! Another eeveelution used by a gym leader. Finally, his ace is the newly evolved Electivire! This guy was unobtainable until the post-game in Diamond and Pearl, so it's neat to see it here.

After whooping his butt, Volkner is magically cured of his depression and lives happily ever after.

Normally you get to rematch gym leaders at their gym or something similar in the post-game, and this holds true for Volkner too. However he is one of the rare cases where you actually battle him at a different point in the story of Pokemon Platinum.

In the post-game, the player unlocks the battle island. This smaller island next to mainland Sinnoh is home to some challenging terrain and trainers. When the player first makes it to the Fight Area, you are eventually led into a double battle against Volkner and his buddy Elite Four member Flint. They each use three of their Pokemon, with Volkner dropping his Raichu for the fight. This can be quite the difficult fight, as your rival (who is your double battle partner) can be quite stupid with who he targets. I've frequently ended up in a 2v1 situation against Volkner and Flint.

There is also the regular rematch with Volkner. He adds a Lanturn to his team, giving him more type diversity as his whole team was mono-electric before. Finally, in the remakes he leads with a Pelipper. This is solely due to Pelipper having the ability Drizzle, setting up the rain so Volkner can spam 100% accurate Thunder attacks.

Pokemon Black 2, White 2

Volkner returns alongside his fellow Sinnoh Gym Leaders for the Pokemon World Tournament. He can be fought in the Sinnoh Leaders and Type Expert challenges.

Volkner retains the Pokemon he had before, whilst also adding the likes of Rotom and Electrode to his teams.

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I think Volkner was a really cool concept for a final gym leader. Typically these characters feel like very intimidating and over the top strong opponents, but his melancholic demeanor was a nice change of pace. I liked seeing some more realistic and human sides to a Pokemon character such as burnout and depression. Was he the strongest final gym leader? Not by a long shot, and I'd argue Candice was a tougher opponent in the end. But he didn't really need to be in order to be memorable.

What I also liked is that despite his initial hostile attitude to the player, you learn that Volkner is actually a really caring person. He's well liked by the townfolk (although some being annoyed at his power outage antics), and most importantly he has friends that care about his wellbeing. You rarely even hear of Elite Four members in Pokemon games, let alone physically meet them. The fact that Flint saw his friend feel depressed and felt helpless to do something about it himself was compelling. There's also Jasmine, a Johto gym leader who comes to visit Volkner and is presumably a friend of his as well. She is glad that the player ends up battling him, showing that she cares about Volkner too.

I know I poked fun at it earlier because we are like 10, but seeing him get his spark back for battling was refreshing and I felt like I really helped his character in the story. I hope we see Volkner and Flint again in some cameo.