Current Events > Johto kinda sucks

(+) Yeah! (+)

The level curve is a big point against it, but even putting it aside, it's mostly just long stretches of paths with tall grass that MIGHT have some fences or some water.

7.8 too much grass

Yeah but at least you can catch all those cool new gen 2 Pokemon like Hound...I mean, like Murk...good old Larvit...never mind

What are you trying to say?

That's why Gen 2 romhacks are so popular to make. In fact there's a guy on youtube called TheSmithPlays that's workshopping his own gen 2 hack right now.

Heracross is single-handedly the best Pokmon to grace the face of this Earth.

HGSS does little to fix the problems GSC had. It's a shame people hold them in such high regard.

But you STILL gotta catch them all...

Sucks is a strong word, but even as a kid it didn't feel like gen 1. Even with all the new additions to the series, it lacked something gen 1 had.

HGSS didn't do anything for me neither.

ZMythos posted...

HGSS does little to fix the problems GSC had. It's a shame people hold them in such high regard.

HGSS is carried by its post game. BW is better in almost every regard.

Dont like it? Dont play it. Its that simple.

The reason why 'Johto kinda sucks' is because they did not know where they were going with the series at the time. They didn't know that we would have one thousand monsters or what game design would carry us here. Notice how Ruby and Sapphire established the general serial formula followed for more than a decade thereafter. Gold and Silver were sequels loaded with pasta-thrown-at-a-wall ideas, most heavily tied to Kanto necessarily.

PowerOats posted...

But you STILL gotta catch them all...

And be the best that you can be?

Not kinda

Straight up sucks

God, the level curve is just extraordinarily fucked, though. Clair is a HUGE level spike (every member of her team had at LEAST 5 levels on mine) and I'm not even running a full team of 6. I remember a previous playthrough where I did my absolute damndest to raise the level 5 Dratini you get from the Dragon's Den and it crippled me throughout all of Kanto. I don't know how the fuck I had less trouble as a dumb 9 year-old.

https://www.youtube.com/@smithplayspokemon

This guy is doing a Crystal hack that is a sensible approach to improving everything wrong with it.

I love Gen II but it's mostly nostalgia, I can admit. I'm excited about the end result of this project though.

As a kid Ill never get over the feeling of getting to go back to Kanto after everything. And the final fight with Red. That was some top tier 90s kid fan service stuff.

Gen 2 was awesome. I owned the third versions for the first 4 generations (skipped 3) only, so I got the refined versions.

Whitney gave me trouble with Miltank. I don't remember Elite 4 being that bad. But it's been a decade since I played HGSS (which iirc has four generations of Pokemon), and Crystal, 10 years before that.

Gen 2 was great for it's time. I honestly don't see any big flaws with HGSS.

"I was so surprised when I got to (a completely empty) Kanto!"
"But you get to fight Ash on Mt. Silver!"
"Miltank kicked my ass (because I leveled evenly instead of overleveling), it's so fun!"
"You get to choose which way to go!"
"But Houndoom is so cool!"

D/P gets shit on because there's only 1 Fire-type available, but Gen 2 gets a pass on everything because of pure nostalgia.
Hell, Gen 1 has nearly the same Fire-type issues (with just 1 being available until the Pokemon Mansion), has no Ghost moves, 1 Ghost line, 1 Dragon line... But it does manage to have great non-linearity without the level disparity problem. Erika, Koga, Sabrina, and Blaine can be taken on in almost any order so long as Koga comes before Blaine.
Gen 2 just needs to jack up the numbers on levels. Then look at Kanto and just fix that whole mess.

But, it's GameFreak. It'd be so easy to just fix a few numbers and make the game so much better, but they'd never put in the effort.

I always used Espeon and Ampharos myself.

Dabrikishaw15 posted...

In fact there's a guy on youtube called TheSmithPlays that's workshopping his own gen 2 hack right now.

TheLiarParadox posted...

https://www.youtube.com/@smithplayspokemon

This guy is doing a Crystal hack that is a sensible approach to improving everything wrong with it.

I love Gen II but it's mostly nostalgia, I can admit. I'm excited about the end result of this project though.

It's nice to see SmithPlays getting some love. I've been following this project for a while, I like most of the changes he's already shown off, and I can't wait to see and play the finished product. My favorite change so far is the decision to switch Dark-type moves to being physical and all 2 Ghost-type attacking moves in gen 2 to being special, which is brilliant and helps a lot of Pokemon.

What do you specifically mean by level curve? Because one thing I remember about gold silver crystal is that the elite 4 were like 10-15 levels lower than they were in red blue yellow.

While in rby the elite 4 pokemon were like 50s-60s, in gsc it was more like 40s-50s weirdly enough.

Don't know if it was because they were saving the higher levels for Kanto or something

I played through Crystal again on 3DS, and damn, it's such a slog. The QoL improvements by the time of HG/SS did so much.

at least I caught a shiny Lugia.

Disagree, best region easily

Gen 2 is the best and will always be the best.

Revisited posted...

What do you specifically mean by level curve?

I think it's mostly just that wild Pokemon are drastically underleveled. Looking at Bulbapedia, Victory Road in Gen 1 had Pokemon in the early-to-mid 40s. In Gen 2, the absolute max is one level forty Graveler on the encounter table in Crystal with low-to-mid 30s being more common.

Lance, the champion in that gen, maxes out at level 50, so you can imagine how obnoxious it is to try and grind levels.

I like it a lot and have beaten it several times. But the leveling curve sucks, as does the small pool of new pokemon. So does gf's insistence at leveling one at a time, instead of the traditional team level. It's a good thing you can get called for trainer rematches, that really helps your teams out. The Elite 4 aren't terribly difficult either.

Revisited posted...

What do you specifically mean by level curve? Because one thing I remember about gold silver crystal is that the elite 4 were like 10-15 levels lower than they were in red blue yellow.

While in rby the elite 4 pokemon were like 50s-60s, in gsc it was more like 40s-50s weirdly enough.

Don't know if it was because they were saving the higher levels for Kanto or something

The wild pokemon don't match your team's levels as they ought to, which can make grinding a real slog in the later parts of the game. Not nearly as bad as R/B/Y.

Lil_Bit83 posted...

The wild pokemon don't match your team's levels as they ought to, which can make grinding a real slog in the later parts of the game. Not nearly as bad as R/B/Y.

Ah right. I assume instead of battling wild pokemon to grind, the phone feature and being able to re-battle trainers was what gsc was doing instead. Besides the whole grinding the elite 4 and the red trainer on Mt moon or wherever.

GSC is the eternal GOAT, deal with it.

MICHALECOLE posted...

Dont like it? Dont play it. Its that simple.

People who say this don't understand the concept or purpose of criticism.

I have the happiest memories of playing Silver as a kid. Level curve? I have no idea what that is. I'm having the time of my life. There's day and night, held items, berries, rematches . . . it's brilliant!

Dark_Arbron posted...

People who say this don't understand the concept or purpose of criticism.

what about if you dont like it make your own fuckin game you crybaby

I have fond memories of GSC but don't know if I could back... Bought GSC on 3DS before the store closed but haven't started them yet...

Region-wise, I don't remember it being as boring as Sinnoh but I don't want a replay to change my mind...

It has some terrible distribution. It is still full of route 1 fodder, the new pokemon hardly appear until way later in the game, and there are so many repeats.

Gen 2 shines in the town designs and the music. Holding items, and eggs were good too. But the Pokemon distribution and routes suck.

You kinda suck!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75RibBHgJHQ

Johto is such a boring region. There is nothing going on there. People only like it because you go to Kanto too.

Ahh, GSC. Gen 1's DLC expansion pack.

DKBananaSlamma posted...

Johto is such a boring region. There is nothing going on there. People only like it because you go to Kanto too.

I prefer Johto over empty Kanto. The leveling curve is even worse.

I skipped Gen2, played Gen3, then later played HG/SS. With that perspective in mind, the towns in HG/SS were nice overall (Goldenrod is one of my favorite cities in the franchise), but the space between was completely forgettable, especially when weighed against R/S/E's superior biome diversity.

Johto does have nice towns. It also brought some nice and important firsts to the series. Choice between boy/girl trainer, day and night pokemon, rematches, breeding, shinies, timed events, swarms, assigning items to buttons, being able to sort through your items more efficiently.

People that shit on the leveling curve forget that most of the Pokemon games have crappy leveling curves. Even after exp share, it was still bad.

It's hard to hold gsc leveling curve down when the original games is even worse. The first nasty jump is from the 4th to 5th badge, and then the mons somehow keep up the "same" leveling curve despite there not being nearly enough content to get a full team to the right levels.

It's a popular criticism with this game despite that being consistent across the board for each Pokemon game. No, the bigger issue is having new mons in the post game of gsc. That is dumb.

ArtiRock posted...

People that shit on the leveling curve forget that most of the Pokemon games have crappy leveling curves. Even after exp share, it was still bad.

It's hard to hold gsc leveling curve down when the original games is even worse. The first nasty jump is from the 4th to 5th badge, and then the mons somehow keep up the "same" leveling curve despite there not being nearly enough content to get a full team to the right levels.

It's a popular criticism with this game despite that being consistent across the board for each Pokemon game. No, the bigger issue is having new mons in the post game of gsc. That is dumb.

People probably bitch about it when talking about the first and third gens too. Though i remember the third was more consistent. Never played the fourth, so can't comment. I think it was either five or six that brought traditional team leveling to the series and made grinding less of a tedious chore.

Anyway you weren't still fighting 25s and 35s with the last couple gym areas. Nor were the pokemon set back to first route levels in the post game.

I do prefer Crystal to Yellow. And I wish they'd brought FR/LG to the 3DS eshop as well.

Gen 2 is all over the place.

They could fit basic Kanto on the cartridge, but couldn't implement a good levelling system?

Ultimately I think it just aged badly, Gamefreak were well into being lazy by the time of the remakes.

My biggest gameplay gripe with HG/SS was that your leveling / grinding options were dogshit: random 'mons were particularly weak / low exp. throughout the course of the game, and the trainer rebattling system was a waste of time as well. Of course these games came right off the heels of the glory days of the Vs. Seeker, which was perfect, so naturally GF forever chucked it in the bin in favor of a retro and / or inferior system.

masterpug53 posted...

My biggest gameplay gripe with HG/SS was that your leveling / grinding options were dogshit: random 'mons were particularly weak / low exp. throughout the course of the game, and the trainer rebattling system was a waste of time as well. Of course these games came right off the heels of the glory days of the Vs. Seeker, which was perfect, so naturally GF forever chucked it in the bin in favor of a retro and / or inferior system.

Is it? I thought it was supposed to be an improved remake?

Lil_Bit83 posted...

Is it? I thought it was supposed to be an improved remake?

I have no frame of reference personally, since I skipped gen2 and only played HG/SS. And HG/SS came after the Vs. Seeker, which was far and away the simplest and most effective trainer rebattle system in the series (at least up thru gen6, that's about when I stopped playing). HG/SS's system may very well have been an improvement over whatever G/S/C had, I honestly don't know; but it was such a step down from the Vs. Seeker that I rarely even bothered with it.

Gen 1 and 2 are the only Pokemon games I've ever played because I pretty much lost interest after that, although they were so good that I still go back and play them every few years. Anyway I don't have any complaints about Johto aside from a few minor ones like the fact that Pryce is weaker than Jasmine even though you fight him after her. Kanto on the other hand was disappointing because you don't do anything besides fight the gym leaders. I can kind of understand it since it was just meant to be an extra bonus, but still, I wish they had included at least one thing from gen 1 like the Safari Zone or something. Also the gym leaders were very weak aside from Blue. I think Janine's Pokemon are actually weaker than Jasmine's even though you're about 15-20 levels higher than you were in Olivine City.