Poll of the Day > So, I thought Heart Gold was the best Pokemon game.

(+) Yeah! (+)

But it's not and I discovered that recently.

I got sick last week and decided to play Pokemon in bed all weekend. I watched this YouTube video essay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dx9_X5fM6o and decided to challenge my view of Gold/Heart Gold as one of my favourite games since I haven't played it in 10 years.

First of all, this game has a lot to offer, obviously. I would say though that most of it is available in the post-game. And what I'm looking for is different nowadays. Ideally, I want a Pokemon game that is more replayable with plenty of depth and options, and a bit of challenge along the way from hometown to the Champion.

A lot of people do mention the level curve as a major fault of GSC, and its remakes by extension since they didn't do anything to fix it. For some reason I've been oblivious, could be nostalgia. But it just broke the game for me completely. I could not believe how boring it was to play through the rocket hideout in Mahogany and then the radio tower, warehouse, just I cannot believe I ever thought it was an acceptable standard of gameplay. Grunt after grunt of level 20 Rattatas, Zubats, Koffings just trash trash trash. It was horrible and it lasted for hours.

I called it quits at the Kimono Girls, which was a part I completely forgot about. Basically the league and Ho-Oh in this game is locked behind a series of 5 battles against level 38 Eeveelutions. I found this to be particularly tough.

I'm playing through SS rn, I'm about to catch Lugia and I still have like half a game left

Rest of the post: Kimono Girls.

Yeah, forgot to prepare for this battle and I did not have a single Pokemon that could survive more than 2 Thunderbolts from the level 38 Jolteon. I decided I would go catch a Graveler, and they are available on a route near the 8th gym.

But here is what exemplifies the problem with this game... They were like level 23 in the wild. And then I remembered that this is the game, this is what you do. It all came back to me, I had repressed memories from childhood of grinding my Pokemon against level 20 Tentacruels and Stantlers in the wild for hours just to get them up to speed with my party. And I did not really want to do that anymore.

So yeah, wild Pokemon suck, especially in Kanto, trainers are too weak, dark types are locked to postgame. It's all just so glaring and I don't think the good parts make up for it to be honest.

I'm replaying Gold right now and I agree. Gen 2 is still sentimentally my favourite Pokemon gen, but it's like they never had anyone test the game out. Trainers basically have the same level Pokemon in gym 4 as they do leading up to gym 7.

Even after completing all 16 gyms, your Pokemon likely aren't going to be much higher than level 50 or so. In Gen 1, that's what they'd be going into the Elite Four.

faramir77 posted...

I'm replaying Gold right now and I agree. Gen 2 is still sentimentally my favourite Pokemon gen, but it's like they never had anyone test the game out. Trainers basically have the same level Pokemon in gym 4 as they do leading up to gym 7.

Even after completing all 16 gyms, your Pokemon likely aren't going to be much higher than level 50 or so. In Gen 1, that's what they'd be going into the Elite Four.

There is definitely problems, imo the biggest are the awful level curve and the fact that a lot of new pokemon are locked to post game, but it's still a great game imo. One of the top games in the series for the fact that you get to fight the old gym leaders and the former protagonist. It works so well as a sequel.

I though HGSS was kinda shit because the gameplay was stupidly slow and it was a remake of what I considered possibly the weakest entries in the main franchise (overall, anyway -- several other titles moved the needle less in terms of the Pokemon they added, etc)

In general, I've been kinda split on the remakes. FRLG was amazing and, although I'll play RB for nostalgia, I prefer FRLG. Conversely, I'd rather play GSC or RSE over their remakes (although ORAS is alright, it just doesn't do it for me).

I never really got the HGSS praise, but I always suspected it was nostalgia from people who started with gen 2. Personally, I thought gen 3 was more or less exactly what I wanted from the franchise, although I enjoyed gen 6 and, to a certain extent, gen 7.

Omega Ruby was the next game I played. I have this game and never finished it until now. I think I was a little jaded at the time with the new narrative stuff being added which rubbed me the wrong way.

I got overleveled really easily with EXP share which kinda made it too easy. Other than that, I liked it a lot. Ruby was my next childhood favourite but I think it aged a lot better than Gold.

There are some slogs in Ruby like the long routes/team magma sections in between gym 3 and 4, and then later between gym 6 and 7. But not as bad as in Gold.

Some of the "modern" things added in Omega, mainly reusable TMs are extremely high value in this gen. I love reusable TMs. It's a shame to hear that BDSP did away with them, probably won't be playing that one.

They did a good job of mitigating the tedium of the water parts in the remake with surfing speed up and encounters down.

Delta Episode is pretty dull and not much to say about it. Flying around to old places to fight more grunts. They really could have done more with this.

I also wish they did away with HMs, as there are too many in this game.

Count_Drachma posted...

In general, I've been kinda split on the remakes. FRLG was amazing and, although I'll play RB for nostalgia, I prefer FRLG. Conversely, I'd rather play GSC or RSE over their remakes (although ORAS is alright, it just doesn't do it for me).

I agree about FRLG. Also, LGPE was better than I thought. I think both games are good remakes of gen 1 for different reasons.

Count_Drachma posted...

I never really got the HGSS praise, but I always suspected it was nostalgia from people who started with gen 2. Personally, I thought gen 3 was more or less exactly what I wanted from the franchise, although I enjoyed gen 6 and, to a certain extent, gen 7.

Yeah, that is pretty much the story for me. I started with gen 2. I think I would still rather play the remakes though. I guess my problem is that they should have done more to fix the whole thing, but at a baseline I guess they are still at least good compared to the originals.

Gen 2 has the most content. Anyways I thought it was generally accepted that B2 & W2 were the best?

BlackScythe0 posted...

Gen 2 has the most content. Anyways I thought it was generally accepted that B2 & W2 were the best?

It was a good game I think. A lot of what I remember was good, but also I recall juggling a Lucky Egg around quite a bit more than I wanted.
I liked BW a lot because they were brave introducing a whole new region with no old Pokemon. That was also the first Pokemon game that I played the Japanese launch and discussed a lot on gamefaqs. So it stands out to me maybe more than BW2.

acesxhigh posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dx9_X5fM6o

Dude actually liked Infinite the first time he played it, shit taste.

As much as I liked the amount of content that gen of Pokemon had had, I will agree it was a prime example of RPGs that overdo the grind or games, ion general, that overdo the number of battles you MUST endure to get to the end. The former could be handled with a cheat device, if that's your thing, but the latter was trickier. I love Crystal, it's my favorite Pokemon game, but by the gods those two issues that could and should have been addressed.

When I was last playing that, I used a homebrew program that let you set Action Replay codes and then swap carts, all I enabled was rebattle trainers. That one thing was a massive improvement for levelling. Didn't touch anything else, but with trainer battles, I didn't need to. Admittedly inflated my money beyond what I needed. Wish the rebattle key item from FRLG made it to HGSS.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Gen 2 has the most content. Anyways I thought it was generally accepted that B2 & W2 were the best?

Never finished BW2, but I thought BW1 sucked, especially the storyline. The Pokemon it added were also sketchy, but part of the problem was they were kinda redoing everything.

I generally enjoy Gen 2. Ive always wanted to visit the area its based off of and I like the new Pokmon added. I think the pacing is weird and the Kanto postgame in Gen 2 was lacking (fixed in the remakes, I will give it that). Overall Id consider G/S/C some of my more favored games in the series. Overall I think my order would be something like this:

4>5>3>2>1>6>7>9>8

With Platinum being my favorite game, followed closely by B2W2 and FRLG.

Count_Drachma posted...

Never finished BW2, but I thought BW1 sucked, especially the storyline. The Pokemon it added were also sketchy, but part of the problem was they were kinda redoing everything.

B&W are fairly forgettable. But the second games give a lot of diversity in team selection and are the last games before the exp share controversy. Technically they are the only games with a hardmode as well, which really should be standard for all of the games.

I couldn't get into Diamond and Pearl, battles took forever to start in that gen

I enjoy the series overall and think the games can be fun but honestly I don't think many of them are good