30 March 2022
Yellow: Just did a little more of SS Anne. As I remember more of the first gen, it gets harder to put time into it. Going slow because this part is a little bit slow and I have more entertaining things around me. I am running back a lot because multiple pokes are getting owned. Again, it feels real rough to go back to. It’s still interesting to think about, especially with how disconnected from ‘console cycles’ the original GameBoy was. I’ve had Kirby on the mind with the new one out. Certain Kirby games come out as the herald to the end of a console’s life. A more polished game if it’s not the first (mainline) game and sometimes just more polished because HAL’s been doing other work on the system. 1995’s Kirby’s Dreamland 2 is technically this for the original Gameboy. It was considered ‘old’ at that point. Dreamland 2 is a huge leap from Dreamland and plays very well for a Gameboy game. 1996 brought Pocket Monsters to Japan and it clearly revived the system. The GB feels like such an oddity when you look at its timeline. What tried to compete with it, and the first two generations of pokemon have such a huge influence over that. GBC was 1998, GBA in 2001, and the DS was 2004. Those were much shorter generations than the original gameboy, GBC felt like an upgrade when I got mine. We had DMG that I played on until we got a gbc. Some part of me wants to get a Pocket just to hold it still.
Crystal: Hatched a Cleffa, cleaning up the routes while prepping to beat the next few gyms. I had access to a fire type the first time I got to Jasmine, so let’s see how I do without fire. I might train a Growlithe if I catch one as backup, but Heracross has a fight move now. If there's something that HGSS fix it’s learnsets. I really really could’ve used a fighting move before Whitney. Freakin Miltank. Gen II is slightly easier to get back into after enjoying the more modern games, but it really makes you appreciate how much better of an RPG the later games are.
Heart Gold: Progressed to get eggs from Primo in Violet city. Now just grinding and walking to hatch.
Black: Used Sawk to beat Lenora. Grinded it up quite a bit. The story event afterward maybe isn’t as amazing as I remember, but it’s a nicely paced gauntlet to get the player to level up and get to the next area. For how long it looks geographically, the forest and the bridge, it didn’t take too long… though maybe the encounter rate is a bit high. Kinda broke the pacing when I got battle, step, battle, step battle. Was forced to run back and heal. Still relatively high damage, but my team is starting to get out of it’s awkward phase. A few of them can take a hit! Guess that’s the advantage of having the levels where they are right now, starters will be evolved and their movesets are pretty good. Might ditch blitzle when I get a chance. It really really doesn’t leave its low damage and weak defense mode until it evolves. Felt like mixing it up and traded over a few things from the other game, specifically crafted a few low level PorygonZ a long time ago and using it for now. Mostly been backup because it really shines when it learns some moves past lv50.
Caught some pokes on the early part of Route 4 just in case I need them later. Trained everything to around lv20. Was easier because I’m jugging an ingame traded Petilil, Drilbur, and Tranquil. Beat up more trainers in Castelia and finally moved the story ahead. Team Plasma stole Bel’s pokemon, they rented out a hideout across the gym, and some of the seven sages are there to have words with the gym leader. This sequence also introduces Iris who is there to support Bel. The characters are really coming through in the dialogue and tiny little sprites. A part of me wonders still if there’s some japanese characterization that isn’t coming through because sometimes I can’t get a read on Team Plasma or the Sages. This replay, I kinda read them as cartoon villain, especially when the grunts are doing little Plasmaaaa themed jokes and stuff. Sure, it has a plot that is going “okay, but why are we keeping these pokemon around and ordering them around and stuff?” but on replay maybe it isn’t the super cool and thought out story people make it out to be sometimes. It’s still a nicer story so far, but the thing that’s making it fun are the hometown friend rivals, the slightly more actual character gym leaders, and villains that actually banter throughout. We’re in range of badge 3 and a lot has happened! I hope it keeps up!
Speaking of badge number three, I did get it. The gym has these weird honey walls that your trainer has to smush themselves through. I remember this part being a little harder the first time I played it on one of my versions, but I went with the pig this time and just burned them up. Oh and Drilbur has Metal Claw to make work of Dewble.
Castelia is a major city clearly based on New York City and full of tall buildings with long streets. It feels like the team made something that informed how they handled behind the back camera in X/Y in its big city. For some reason every building, office or some residential club, has rackmount servers. Everyone got enterprise grade network storage.
Emerald: I sat down and beat the next few sections in one sitting. I did skip some optional stuff that I’ll return to soon, but I had this feeling that I’d forget where I was in the main progress if I took too many breaks. Also, this is where story stuff happens. I beat Petalburg, the one where the leader is the trainer’s dad. I remember ORAS being pretty nice, but if there’s a thing I would want from a Pokemon RPG with more stuff in it it would be more character interaction. It’s actually quite sweet that you win against Dad and he has a tiny little dad feels about it. If you visit home, your Mom also gives you something. It kinda feels like the sweet cheesy thing parents would do. II think later gens get there, but replaying old games with some simpler things remind me where that hunger for a bigger Pokemon game comes from.
Anyway, I beat Petalburg a little quicker than expected. I had remembered the lead up to Flannery being longer, but maybe I overdid my team a little bit. Now that I have surf I can… ignore all that stuff that I just got access to and advance progression! The last two bits between gyms left me with a feeling of too much battling. And y’know what? I ran into that here despite skipping the optional stuff! This time however, I slapped down cash for repels. I only grinded specific pokemon to get evolution for stats, and focused on specific wants. I’m replaying these games technically. I played Ruby *and* Sapphire back in the day and actually put some time into them so I’m not catching them all. I am going for type/move matchups. I’ll poke through this stuff later, leaving a bunch of trainers out there is probably fine. My team isn’t perfectly balanced and may need to grind out some alts. I don’t remember what Hoenn Elite 4 are like right now. I’ve been referencing Bulbapedia’s walkthrough to make notes on side content I’m doing and not doing in games, but I’m not looking too far ahead. I did find Smogon’s in-game tier list when trying to look up HM mules, but only made note of interesting catches. I sometimes try to used Pokes I haven’t used in other games recently. For example, I skipped on Skarmory because I used one for a bit in two newer games. I don’t know if they toned it down in Emerald yet, but I remember feeling annoyed at how many HMs had to be on your pokemon.
Progression! Weather Institute on one of the routes with too many battles! I still don’t know how I feel about this section. I think it exists to make you appreciate using Fly when you get it. Inside the Weather Institute we beat the crap outta Team Aqua. Emerald having both teams actually makes more sense. It gives them each specific motivations and relations to locations based on what their team wants. For winning, you win a Castform here. It changes type based on weather! Cool! I don’t know how to use this cutie in any way! Maybe I’ll give it a shot later. I’m sure it was intended for something doubles related but… What’s actually something reliable with it? Even reliable for in-game stuff? You beat up your rival and are reminded your rival has an actual personality. He was peeved, but put up a nice face for me.
Fortree City is pretty cool, but also reminded me of something I wanted from the secret base stuff. I want a treehouse here! Not like one of the small ones you can make with the move, but like… a bigger one. Dunno, maybe I should just make one in a tree next time I boot up. I usually end up using a cave I think. Some part of me find the pacing of the next part weird. You can’t fight the gym because you have to go part way into the next route and are given a Devon Scope to look at Kecleon so that you can catch another special gimmick pokemon and see the Keckleon blocking the way to the gym. You then have a chance to breeze through the gym. Y’know. If you don’t mind trading or doing other things, getting a pokemon with decent special attack (since I think most of them are special, not physical) and a half decent ice move will burn through this section. I don’t think you can normally get one in this gen, and maybe I’m underselling Manectric’s power, but several parts of this game were balanced to be harder based on not really having catch-all answers. Despite having Gardevoir, I think Gardevoir gets more powerful in later games. Anyway, I can fly now. The route after where you basically have to go back down really sells that Fortree is some sort of remote place. And you know what? This is something that probably would have felt more like it in a higher fidelity game. Or something. I just feel like something is missing. Honestly, the make-up of these routes feels different after I’ve had rural Japanese driving and train videos on as background. The amount of cliffs, fences, etc. Emerald bringing out the thoughts today. Going back to the games pulled from Japanese areas makes me hope they plan on going back to Japan with a newer high fidelity game. Let’s Go and BDSP being closer to their originals was disappointing. Slightly less for Let’s Go since that has some charming art in it. I think doing another region based on a part of Japan would be cool.
Going to Lilycove for the flight point, backtracking to Mt. Pyre and ignoring the inside with a lot of items to just advance the story to the first real big interaction with the enemy teams. Also, the part that I was looking forward to. Sort of. In Emerald, this next section has our trainer knocking down the front door to Team Magma, then Team Aqua’s bases. Sure they’re just trainer gauntlets, and Aqua’s is a damn teleporter maze. Not even that fun of one. But it just brings something to the special player character trainer. Maybe this is why the later games get absurd with player trainer power levels. Emerald’s protag has some pretty powerful pokemon to deal with later, but takes it a step further by having the energy to run through two enemy team bases. These teams start to feel like weird cults here, and some middle school aged kid who sleeps in a cave/tree just decided to wreak havoc in two organization’s bases. Perhaps even on the same day. At the end of going through Magma’s base, Groudon is now awake and has escaped. At the end of Aqua’s so far, they’ve escaped in a stolen deep sea submarine. I’m now saved in Mossdeep thinking about how I’m going to tackle the gym and hoping that any dive sections I do feel like doing are going to be entertaining. I think I remember seeing that a bunch of the side stuff is up soon.
