22 March 2022
Heart Gold: Booted it up for a little bit to progress past the Mr. Pokemon stuff. Game just feels so much faster and probably is. Don’t want to catch up to Crystal too quickly just yet, so just got the game to the part where I can catch stuff and play it like a pokemon game. I plan to abuse the Secret Code stuff when I can. I think the reason I didn’t end up using Chikorita in Gold/Silver despite wanting to, because I liked Venusaur the first gen, is because I got extra annoyed with the bug pokemon on the early routes when I uhh… played the japanese version. Totally knew my 日本語。Yup. Totally didn’t play a weird emulated SPEED TRANSLATED MESSY ENGLISH PATCHED ROM BEFORE GOLD AND SILVER CAME OUT HERE IN THE STATES. 金 and 銀 totally weren’t some of the first kanji I recognized for a while. Nope.
Soul Silver: Yeah, only going to touch this one once in a while since I’m replaying HG. The save is also as old as the games themselves so I don’t remember what I was aiming for. Booted it up, remembered that the last thing I did was find Jasmine, went to her, and beat her. Saved. Moved on for now. Sometimes I wish we got a remake in GenV’s engine. Not necessarily G/S/C, just that we got D/P, Pt redo, remakes, multiple side games that connect all in GenIV. GenV feels less messy and visually more interesting. Actually now that I think about it we never got remake games in both GenV and Gen VII… And those two share several praises. Huh. Weird.
Platinum: Apparently if I had just walked back last time I booted up I could’ve gotten the HM for Cut. Cynthia gives it to you and just introduces herself as another trainer. Makes me wish BDSP were slightly higher fidelity so that “mysterious goth lady trainer who knows to give you something useful at the right moment” got more of an impact. Now that I have it, I find out whatever team I have has nobody to learn Cut. Oops.Swapped machop for a buneary and hope I don’t actually need a fighting type for a while. Beat up Team Galactic, got a bike, rode around, went through a mountain. Stuff happens but not a lot. Getting to Hearthome means getting introduced to contests and getting a pretty dress. I might try contests later, but not feeling it right now. Beat Fantina. Grinded out Luxray. Such a handy pokemon.
White: Had an old save and booted it up. Found I had four badges, I was clearly playing it alongside Black at one point. Will look into more later once I catch up in Black. I actually don’t remember a lot of details, just the feeling it was charming and some basic themes. So I will have to replay more before I continue.
Black: Caught a Drilbur after much difficulty. It feels too early to be engaging with mechanics that basically only work if you have good luck and repels. Keep on running back to the preschool every one or two battles, hoping to get some meat on my pokes before the next gym. They’re taking damage. Actually, during my pickup of UltraMoon I was thinking to myself how much damage was being done. Compared to gen I or gen II where early game can be slow, where battles can be won with small chips in damage most of the time, this is already starting to feel pretty damaging. Funny thing is that some of my pokemon also don’t feel quite as effective yet. Though, hopefully soon will. Should’ve tried to catch a blitzle with an electric move from the start.
I got to the point where I could get a fighting type for the normal gym and I forgot how the forest was laid out. More trainers outside than I remembered. What I did remember is the nurse you fight right before the entrance to the forest. B/W actually has more of a tutorial feel to them than the other games I’ve played recently. (As in, games I can remember.) It’s like they both understood this game had more damage and that they wanted to make sure any new players really really understood or had an easy time getting into the type matchup part of the game. Honestly, my hazy memory of casual online armchair self-proclaimed-experts’ crit at the time still had a lot of people talking about just over leveling. That pokemon was easy enough to ignore the type mechanics. I don’t know what they were hearing at Game Freak, but I see the trio of type matchup monkeys, a gym that forces you to engage with the basic type matchup triangle, and having battles with both type advantage and disadvantage rivals as a warning that ‘HEY YOU WILL TAKE DAMAGE, USE THE TYPE MATCHUP MECHANICS, WE’RE HANDING YOU A USEFUL TYPE PLEASE USE IT.’ On top of that, the nurse and the daycare/preschool lady are in early larger routes that the player was expected to grind/catch in. When you defeat the nurse, she will heal your pokemon. The preschool is close to a town, but the daycare worker will also heal your pokemon. Both are near areas with groups of trainer battles and near towns. They both exist to reduce the amount of walking back to heal. Nobody is earning enough early in the game to get consistent stock of potions and antidotes, so players will run back. Save that for in battle emergencies. It reduces the tedium. Long walks back can be pretty demotivating for people and the early game is for onboarding people. With the early game level ranges, I was seeing more crits. It’s very possible lots of matchups end up with your pokemon getting two or three hits before fainting. I’m assuming most teams would be closer to what mine are right now and will be walking back to heal after a battle or two. After the first gym I had with pokemon between level 9 and 14. Looking up the walkthrough, Narcene’s leader Lenora has lvl 18 and 20 pokemon. Considering how much damage I’m taking, I don’t think lower level teams work out at this point, maybe they do. I have a Sawk I’m going to probably use unless I source a Throh. Timburr is available but at this point, single stage pokes with decent stat totals will help with any extra training npc pokes in the gym might have.
Crystal: Quickly beat the trainers leading to the Sudowoodo and caught it. I think I killed that my first time through or something. Team is in a weird state where I have some strengths, some weaknesses and my pokes are still getting owned pretty easily. Hoping I can balance the team out soon, I may need to spend time grinding a fire type up.
Yellow: Leveled up Drowzee to get Confusion, so finally have my Psychic canon for the game. I thiiink I avoided using Abra/Kadabra because I wasn’t sure if I could fully evolve it, I’m going to keep going with *saur line so I won’t use exeggutor. I do want to get Blastoise but also don’t want to invest too much time in yellow, so no Starmie either. Gen1 really feels like a completely different game, but the improvements and changes in later games make so much more sense when I have Emerald and Leaf Green in my rotation. Attacks missing slightly more than in later games. There are battles that feel like fighting with pool noodles and barely doing anything. The mess of status effects in this game. Just a mess. Confusion still exists in later games, but it feels like they toned down confusion and sleep statuses.
Leaf Green:Still in mount moon, just booted it up to clarify where I was going with my team after figuring out what I was doing in Yellow.
Emerald: Leveled stuff to get Shedinja and a few moves. Going to slowly explore the surrounding area. I think this is where I got a little lost last time I got to this point. Sped through the trainer battles, meeting Lanette, kicking Team Magma’s butt, and beating Flanery. The story at this point hasn’t gotten too different or interesting, but pacing wise went quicker since I skipped some battles. I think this section is way more of a slog if you’re playing normally. Flannery was actually harder on the last few pokemon. They did plan for a trainer bringing a Marshtomp, planned for low chance that the player has a female starter or other water/ground pokemon with Attract. Mostly playing to refresh my memory so more looking forward to later stuff when Emerald deviates more.
Pokemon Masters EX: Well, I remembered it was a Pokemon game. One I’ve occasionally made progress in. This is the least generous gacha game I’ve put time into and despite the fun and charming characterizations, fun animations, cool and cute outfit variations, and the sometimes quick gameplay… I’ve got better things to put time into. Sure as heck not money. Some of the “Sygna Suit” variations are just inspired. Lillie in a galaxy dress to match Lunala. Gave goth champion Cynthia a gothier Giratina themed outfit. I already consider the character design in the games better than most and Masters just does fun things with it. The gameplay issue is that the game just goes right into tougher content that requires actual team composition that the game doesn’t really tutorialize well. Or provide fun “standard” options for team building. For how much information someone has to juggle, there’s a lot behind menus (on a phone!) that actually ends up being harder to parse than most of the modern mainline games. After basic content it really requires getting good rolls in a way that other games haven’t for years. Once you finish the current ‘story’ there’s side events and stuff but that easy content runway is rather short. It really feels like they don’t want to give you enough “free” things that can reward ways to roll. Heck, standard “free” gem distribution is done on the page to buy gems. Compared to other Nintendo-affiliated games, Dragalia has its own issues but it was much better… Oh wait, that was Cygames. *Cygames sometimes is like the Microsoft of mobile games. They (sometimes) do ‘nicer’ things in addictive games because they really screwed it up big time already and need to dodge doing so again.
Makes me wish we got a robust fashion thing for our trainers in the main series. Give us full costumes that are more outlandish. Let us wear designs they would’ve reserved for pokestar studios and contests in battle. Pikachu kigurumi. Wooper mascot costume. Y2k/cyber Porygon dress. Gengar themed suit. Monster hunter looking Slacking armor. Gardevoir ballroom gown. SwSh stuck us in footballer gear, let us customize more!
*(Cygame’s Granblue Fantasy is one of the reasons why your favorite mobile game has some sort of safety mechanism for rolling a lot to acquire something specific and why outside promos happen way less or in specific ways. Someone spent a couple thousand (or something) on rolling for a featured character and didn’t get it. I don’t remember what the rates were like back then or if it was a featured character, but it was big enough to get English coverage before there was a big Eng. playerbase. There was also a character whose primary distribution was by signing up for a Japanese credit card. A credit card!!! WHY NOT GO INTO DEBT ROLLING ON OUR GAME!)
