07 06 2022

Heart Gold: So far, Red is the hardest battle so far. Supposed to be anyway. Does actual damage, very high level pokemon with the expectation that you will find that Pikachu difficult due to that level. I think they may even be EV trained? I actually don’t think so, but I was getting hit pretty dang hard. Then again, my pokemon also hit hard. Mt. Silver has more to it to get to Red, but instead of being in a weird cave in a hollowed out mountain with a very scary drop, it’s at the peak of the mountain. Looks much cooler. Also, colder. It’s snowing and the whole battle is under the Hail battle weather. Rolled the credits again. 

I went and got Lugia, it doesn’t have the full event or anything in Heart Gold. Still looks cool, but I can’t wait to see the version with cutscenes and stuff. Remembered Rock Climb exists and used it to get to Kyogre. HMs are kinda ridiculous in this game. Heck, in Kanto they have places that require Flash and it’s not an HM anymore. Cerulean cave required it. I have a pokemon with water HMs and another with the others. I keep Fly on a flying type, but at higher levels it does need replacing. 

Soul Silver: Ok, Lugia’s entrance is really cool. At first I was worried that the cave wouldn’t let them pull off cool stuff, but it works just as well. Will admit though that I find Whirl islands less fun and less appealing than Tin Tower. Half baked things from GSC carry over to HGSS in certain ways. 

MISC: Slowing down for a bit as I retread stuff in Soul Silver and play some other stuff before going into Platinum. I think I will be trading off between Platinum and Black. Platinum’s a case where I need to sit down with a guide to figure out where to go and just haven’t done that yet. For all the time I spent in Diamond and Pearl, the 2nd pair I bought at launch, I don’t remember much from the game. I remember the team ups and some of the places. And Cynthia. 

Black: Quickly booted up to just get a sense where I’m going. Finished cold storage to unlock the next gym. Maybe I missed a line or something,but it feels like something got lost in translation at some point. At the end of cold storage, one of the 7 sages, Zinzolin, is captured alongside the Plasma Grunt thieves freezing their asses off in a shipping container in a fridge warehouse. Cowboy ass Clay rounds them up, basically arresting them. Story continues upfront of his gym where Ghetsis seems to threaten Clay and get his people back without a fight. Certainly the Japanese script had an extra round about way of talking that gestured at it, but “Team Plasma has an interest in Driftveil City. There are many people who are only to be found here…” and Clay’s instant well let’s not fight , take them type of deal just feels like I missed something. Oh well. Definitely going to have to look at what GenV feels like in terms of power hierarchy

Platinum: I did end up just sitting down to continue platinum while writing this up after all. Found a lost key card for a room at this hotel/resort. And made it to Pastoria. After beating up the hyperactive rival, I took on Crasher Wake’s gym. For having a wrestling gym leader we sure don’t get enough cool wrestling in this game. His japanese name is Maximum Mask/Maximum Kamen, so the level of cool should be much higher. Maybe he does more stuff later in the story. I have a Luxray, and put grass knot on the promo Jirachi. It’s fun including event pokemon on teams, but sometimes they’re hard to fit in despite being supergood. Well. Good. He wasn’t too easy, but not too hard. AI willing to swap out pokemon in danger. His Buizel hits like a truck. Took a couple of faints to get good enough swap-ins to deal with it. I think maybe I don’t have high enough power moves on pokemon or something? Pokemon already in the 30 range, so maybe I’ll need to look into swapping around pokemon once I hit the next major story point town and have new pokemon to catch. 

    I basically forgot everything in Sinnoh’s story and I don’t know how much Platinum differs from Diamond/Pearl. But, Hyperactive Rival shows up and says a Team Galactic grunt was going on about a bomb. Go towards the location and KABOOM. Considering the escalation of games I’ve been playing, this is a big step up. Rocket takes over a company, has shady operation in Kanto. Rocket tries to return in Johto by testing the ability to make wild pokemon extra aggressive and takes over a radio tower. Hoenn has teams that screw up climate in ways that are apocalyptic. Sinnoh is going to be saved by some small children against a threat of… Terrorist org that might actually destroy humanity and uses normal explosives rather than pokemon stand-ins for munitions or power. Going back to what I’ve seen in Black… Do these people fail at community action somehow? Not quite sure. SM/USUM seem pretty good about having other trainers hop in and make things right. You’re still a kid, but maybe they figured out how to make supporting adults by then? Pretty sure GenIV did too, I remember thinking we got a lot of characters interacting with things. Chase the offending grunt for a bit, fight him and… he still gets away? Apparently the damage wasn’t bad according to the rival. Cynthia gives some medicine for Psyduck. Oh right, they were blocking a route. 

    I visited the Pokemon Mansion when I was effectively backtracking. I forgot the series had maid as a trainer type. Treat the Psyduck, able to move forward. Cynthia then arrives to give me something to bring to her hometown. Umm. I know these games have to have some sort of simple motivator to get people to the next area. Seems a little weird to be a proxy to all that. Maybe that’s why i don’t remember things in the story? Sometimes I’m tempted to restart a save, but so far doesn’t seem too bad. We shall see. 

During all this, something was bothering me. Something is wrong with Sinnoh’s map. I can’t quite place why but the layout feels rather chaotic. Maybe it’s all these L shaped routes? We had those before, but it just feels like nothing is connected in a coherent manner. The most flat-land theme park feeling of the games so far. It has elevation changes, but Johto/Kanto revisited in HGSS feels better somehow? Some routes are short and don’t have a lot. Some routes aren’t much longer but have so much traversal it feels tiring. There’s weather also, and I’ve hit fog. I know you can remove fog but I’m not going to waste a move slot on it. It’s the Flash HM of the DS games. The route has tricky terrain, tall grass you can’t bike leading to it, and the most annoying weather that makes it harder to hit with moves. I didn’t quite like Hoenn’s layout either but it did make some sense eventually. Maybe it’ll grow on me. Maybe BDSP have fixed it somehow? Sinnoh was their first mainline 3D map, despite making the angle and everything make it look so much more 2D most of the time.