15 05 2022

Leaf Green: Got through the S.S. Anne and hooray there’s a lady that heals the team in there. Yes, the game scrolls way faster than the gameboy games. The battles still do enough that it’s easier to go back and heal. The game’s dedication to being more a GBA remake of Gen I rather than a Gen III game set in Kanto is interesting. I walked into a position that would’ve started a double battle in RSE, but only consecutive single battles happened. The tileset here is actually pretty nice, even feels a little nicer than RS. This game also kept the check the trashcan stuff from the original.

    Lt. Surge was easy because I had a Dugtrio. Raichu was only annoying because it ended up spamming double team. The AI could feel the electric moves wouldn’t work. I forgot about it for a little bit, but I’m glad the save trick works for the Gym’s ‘puzzle’. It’s… gambling? You have to find a trashcan in a grid of trashcans and find the first switch. The second one is nearby. Which one, though? If you miss the second one, it resets the puzzle and moves the location of the first switch. It saves the state of the switches, so you can reset spam until you find it. 

Black: Finally Encountered the Ferris wheel event with N. I think this is the actual part where Gen V feels special. You have a team with a group of leaders and a king. N is the most different opponent character. Affiliated with the bad team, but acts different from them. Not evil bully or monster of the week frenemy. You battle not just to have some argument replacement, it’s also a cover for his team’s getaway. If someone told you such and such kids anime had a complex character and good writing, this is Pokemon’s version of that. Actually, weird to think about that writing bump when we technically got an age bump in player trainers and rivals. I haven’t watched a lot of something like Precure, but this feels in line with what I’ve seen in anime where characters were more in the 10-12 range like the previous gens have. I want to dig deeper into it, but over the course of Gen III and Gen V, it seems organizational changes happened. Clearly after GS they changed licensing, and after the TCG became more Nintendo/TPC developed and distributed. Gen V has a new localization setup. I feel like something changed with how they were writing this. 

    Elesa was easy, I brought a ground type in Drilbur and the Emolga throughout the gym got left to the Porygon I traded over and the Archen. While I’ll use it later, Drilbur is here to become Excadrill for later type advantages. I’m hoping I won’t be using it to counter fire types too much. Elesa’s gym is indoor dark coaster themed, fitting the theme park here. I think the themepark feel is a little weak here, but maybe it’s more county fair or pier park without the pier. If there is something that needs a fun fidelity lift in a remake, its her indoor coaster. I like the design, but the sense of speed is lost a little in the perspective. Despite that I still like the indoor coaster theme. Elesa is also one of my favorite Gym Leader designs. 

    After beating Elesa she shows to Route 5 where we meet up with Cheren. He’s being a jerk. He’s stuck in “winning and being strong is the only thing worth doing” mode. Between his look and the way things are progressing, he’s definitely that kid that is focused too much on school. We bump into the champion who has us fight some preschoolers. He fully gets whats up with Cheren immediately. Especially since Cheren was being rude and wondering why a champion is hanging out at this weird outdoor art/performance event. Yeah gee, why would wingood person be somewhere else??? After a bit, Cheren is challenged to think about what he’d do after winning. Champion’s job ain’t just winning, Cheren. Just ask Lance, one man anti-terrorist unit.

    Elesa calls the next leader, Clay, to lower the giant metal drawbridge. It’s pretty cool, I did this part at night and got a cool starry sky behind everything. We get across the big bridge, which has a few npcs on it even though it just got lowered. Weird. Where’d they come from? We meet clay and he’s busyman businessman. He’s blaming us for… lowering the bridge… which let some team plasma get away. Okay. He wants us to search for them. Cuz that’s what trainers do. We’re in driftveil now and thats where my white save stopped. I wonder if this stuff is why I stopped. It’s cool stuff next to some okay stuff, maybe I got tired when playing it twice at the same-ish time.