LogFAQs > #941757351

BetrayedTangy posted...

Very well said on Heavy Rain! It was no doubt influential and was definitely something unique back when it was released, but better games have since come out and really showed how flawed Heavy Rain was all along.

I have similar feelings about Pokemon. It's always hard to get a new adventure going, but it becomes pretty relaxing once you get past the intro. Also I'm sure you've already thought about this, but I've found the best way to keep Pokemon fresh is by crafting unique teams with Pokemon you haven't used before. It really helps you grow an attachment to them.

I think it's a combination of trying new teams and making sure to use Pokmon you really like. I spent a while thinking of which Pokmon to use before I started, so hoping that works out!

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This Pokmon game, of all things, has been the hardest game of the project to get my hands on thus far. I was unlucky that Heartgold and Soulsilver were the ones to ultimately make the bracket. If it had been Black/White or Sun/Moon, I could have simply played on the cartridges I already had lying around. X/Y and OR/AS are easily available on Nintendo's EShop. This game, though, I had to find. I picked Heartgold because I had Gold as a kid and I like Ho-Oh. Gen II is actually the early Pokemon game I know the least. I could tell you without consulting Bulbapedia that Red gets Bellsprout, Growlithe, and Psyduck while Blue gets Oddish, Vulpix, and Staryu, and like wise that Ruby has Mawile, Zangoose, Solrock to Sapphire's Sableye, Seviper, Lunatone, but I don't really know what the exclusives are in Gold and Silver. Murkrow in one and Misdrevious in the other?

Anyway, the whole situation collided with good old COVID-19, since my local game store was closed down for a while during the early days of this project. When it re-opened, eager gamers bought up so much of the used stock that they didn't have a copy of Red Dead Redemption, let alone any DS Pokmon games. On the day I was supposed to start ME2, I tested a certain method of playing this game, and immediately realized it would be a very inferior way of experiencing it, which would be unfair to myself, the game, and its seemingly numerous fans on Board 8. This left me with no recourse but to order the game online - and the cheapest Amazon price was $150! Were it not for this project, I would definitely have waited until I found it locally or a more reasonable price was posted (and as I type this, there is an Amazon listing for $50.) But since ME2 was drawing to a close and I knew Heavy Rain would be short, I bit the bullet. Let it be known as an expression of my dedication that I shelled out one hundred and fifty smackers for a bloody Pokemon game. Of course, the lesson of this experience is that I need to keep far ahead on my games purchases.

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For all that struggle, there was a distinct advantage to buying a proper DS cartridge of Pokmon: I can play it with an old friend. To this end, there came Ronald, an enthusiastic kid who picked Chikorita as his starter. He themed his Pokemon names around U.S. presidents, with his initial partner being Teddy. He made it to Goldenrod, traded his three Pokemon to my buddy, and then retired to spend more time with his stamp collection. I really just picked the name Ronald because I feel a certain whimsicality in the name. I wish I had saved it for my proper playthrough, because once I started playing with it I realized no other name would feel quite as right. I know that makes no sense.

My decision to play as a female Shepard might have given the impression that I'm one of those kids who plays the girl in Pokemon despite being a boy. Without meaning any disrespect to those kids, that's never really been me, but I especially wouldn't do that in this game, because I think the male player character in HeartGold looks way cooler than the girl. He probably has the best Pokmon-specific fashion sense out of any playable character in the series, even if he does wear his hat backward. This time around, I choose the name Dylan. I imagined the character as a sort of wannabe Bob Dylan who names his Pokemon via literary references. My friend likes Totodile so I picked Cyndaquil to complete the trio despite sharing a preference for the little gator. I named him Romeo. It seemed funny to go with a reference to a passionate lover because this Pokmon is eventually going to get bred like a prize stallion, since that is the only way to acquire more of the starter species. Fire starters are usually a good pick anyway because decent grass and water types are available early on but fire tends to show up late.

One facet of the Gold/Silver intro that feels iconic to me is seeing your rival skulk outside Prof. Elm's lab and then him shoving the player away once noticed. Otherwise, it's the standard structure for the start of a Pokemon game - you get your starter, walk through some tall grass, fight your rival who only has a level 5 starter of the type yours is bad against, and then return and finally get Pok balls. This process is longer than ever in this game, because the path to Mr. Pokemon's house is a bit of a hike and Heartgold extracts whatever expedience the original game had - this is one of the most immediately apparent traits of the game, along with the very DS-oriented interface, which was mostly reverted by the time Black and White came around. Now whichever player character you didn't pick has a presence in the plot, meaning extra scenes, and tutorials like the old man showing you around Cherrygrove city and the capturing lessons are now mandatory. So it was a while before Dylan made his way back to his hometown and got a chance to name his rival. I wanted to call him Morrison, but the character limit forced me to reduce it to Morris, so it evokes the IT Crowd before The Doors. The prof suggested that Dylan visit his mother before starting his journey, but instead he was eager for some independence and left home in a hurry. I made a point of catching a Hoothoot, since I wanted to use it for a while, and suspended the literary references to name him Cedric, for one of the great video game owls. That was last night, when I didn't have the energy to write my Heavy Rain finisher, and with that task done I went to bed.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 5/129
Currently Playing: Pokemon HeartGold Version