Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
Side note, damn I am having fun in Shining Pearl. It's a lot more fun than I was expecting, ugly graphics aside :P Spent a lot of time playing it last night - got up to Pastoria(?) Gym (it was a water gym).
Then I stayed up until 4am playing Crystal -_- I told myself I was not gonna touch Crystal while I'm trying to finish up Pearl, but then I was like, well, it's Thursday, I should boot it up to get a haircut... and you know, while I'm in Goldenrod I can do the bug catching contest too... and I mean, I should probably get back to the spot I was in... and well, Red Gyarados is RIGHT THERE, I might as well go catch him.... and oh, Lance wants me to help take down Team Rocket, I should go do that quick... I nearly even did the gym but I forced myself to quit because it was stupid late :P All that said, got Zubat evolved to Golbat so now it doesn't suck so bad. Need to get a Crobat but I guess friendship isn't quite there yet. Still can't put fly on anyone in my team which is why I've been trying to get a Crobat. Meanwhile in Pearl I don't have a flier (besides a Staravia that I fully intend to dump soon) and I was worried until I remembered, oh yeah, HMs aren't a thing anymore. Woo! (tho I did briefly question whether Jirachi counted as a flier )
The third game on there is Pokemon Stars, that rumored Switch port of Sun & Moon that never happened. I had totally forgotten about that until now but what they say in here certainly sounds plausible. The thought is that Stars was real and part of Nintendo's strategy to release their three hottest IPs on Switch after Wii U's failure (Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon). But with Switch selling insanely well their problem became more of keeping the system in stock. And it's also pointed out that an up-rezed 3DS game could look bad on Switch, giving a poor impression of the system's capabilities. It's hard to say how true any of this is but I honestly think I might believe it. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are literally what the original rumor described, just only for 3DS. And it very much feels like Sword and Shield are built very similarly to Sun & Moon - perhaps they took the work they'd done porting that engine over and used that as a framework for Sword and Shield? It's all very interesting to think about anyways.
Finally made it to Victory Road on my White Hardcore Nuzlocke. (no items, with level caps equivalent to gym leaders best pokemon)
Had some bad lost pokemon to random trainers with crits on the way to the league. Worst being my Krookodile, who could have been real, real useful against the elite four. On the plus side, I caught a good Durant (has swarm and impish nature) so that could be real useful too. Gonna have to look up the elite four and look in my pokemon box to see what'll work best. Carracosta is the only pokemon I'm certain I'll use since I'm pretty sure I can set up with shell smash since my carracosta has sturdy.
Hey i have a TON of Genesects from Pokemon Go, i can send you one (or three) via Home.
The only 2 mythicals I need are Zeroara and Marshadow and I suspect theyll never do events for them ever again.
I dunno, they might once gen 9 rolls out. They've released so many of the other mythicals over the last few years. But they've definitely been less generous with more recent gens' mythicals (like gen 5+ I'd say... they've gone ham with like, Mew, Celebei, Jirachi, Darkrai, Shaymin, etc). But hopefully that will change over time. Still a little mad at myself for ignoring Zeraora and I thought I had a Marshadow but it might have been ate by Pokemon Bank, I dunno (or maybe I still have a card for it lying around the house somewhere unredeemed... I should really check..). Zeraora especially feels like I was dumb since they just flat out gave that one away a ton including shinies and I just ignored it. Never jumped on the gen 8 mythicals either so bleh.
Hey i have a TON of Genesects from Pokemon Go, i can send you one (or three) via Home.
The only 2 mythicals I need are Zeroara and Marshadow and I suspect theyll never do events for them ever again.
I dunno, they might once gen 9 rolls out. They've released so many of the other mythicals over the last few years. But they've definitely been less generous with more recent gens' mythicals (like gen 5+ I'd say... they've gone ham with like, Mew, Celebei, Jirachi, Darkrai, Shaymin, etc). But hopefully that will change over time. Still a little mad at myself for ignoring Zeraora and I thought I had a Marshadow but it might have been ate by Pokemon Bank, I dunno (or maybe I still have a card for it lying around the house somewhere unredeemed... I should really check..). Zeraora especially feels like I was dumb since they just flat out gave that one away a ton including shinies and I just ignored it. Never jumped on the gen 8 mythicals either so bleh.
I didn't get sword and sheild right away so I missed that event and its maddening that the pokemon day event thing was whatevermax for 3 starters that everyone can easily get instead of a an legendary
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
Been playing more Shining Pearl and Crystal. Shining Pearl I'm up to 6 badges now so getting there! Last thing I did was some weird Island of Iron thing which seemed optional? It gave me an egg so I guess I'll see what that ends up being. (current guess is a baby Lucario.. Riolo? Something like that)
I was supposed to put Crystal down to get Shining Pearl finished but having too much fun with it :P I'm up to the Elite Four. I tried to fight them but uh... I need to grind levels. I'm 5 levels lower than their weakest Pokemon That stupid Psychic guy was a battle of spamming revives because his Psychic one-shot almost everyone on my team I beat him and almost beat Koga but there didn't seem to be any way to escape or heal or buy more items so I had to reset the progress. Doesn't help that right now my team has a normal ass Eevee in it because I'm trying to both level it and turn it into an Espeon. I really need money though to buy up more items. I'm not sure how exactly I'm going to earn any with most of the trainer fights done Maybe I'll try the battle tower again. It only offered fights at stupid 10 level intervals so my team of like, level 21s were getting their asses kicked by level 30s (which I was forced to fight because I was too high for 20 -_-). But right now everyone's ~level 35-38 so with a bit more grinding I can get them in the high 30s and try level 40 of the tower. (I have to assume that gives me money but who knows...)
Edit: oh, side note.. Is it just me or does anyone find it weird that the BDSP ghost gym is like, entirely children trainers? There are two Ace trainers on the top level but everyone else is like 5. I know Pokemon has children trainers all the time but it's weird to see them not only all in one place, but inside a gym and a GHOST gym at that (I could maybe see a bug gym having a lot of children trainers). Like, there are literal pre-schoolers with Driftloons here... This feels unsafe? Also I mostly noticed because they give absolute garbage money for beating them, so a whole gym of this sucks. But it's just so weird to me. It feels like the other trainers at a gym should be like, I dunno, adults, or at least a mix :P
Well my 6 year old finally beat Sword... And now he's playing my copy of Diamond even though he's finished Pearl. I wonder if I should pick up a good RPG for him to play that's doable for a younger audience.
That's the biggest issue with Generation 2 games. The level curve, and also by extension to a much lesser degree the money curve... is really borked.
I think the way I got around this was to tell Mom to save my money, spend every last dime on heal items/Pokeballs/etc, and then repeatedly ram my party against the E4 without using items since that was one of the fastest ways to get EXP. You lose half your money IIRC when you faint, but that doesn't count what your Mom's holding. And since you get a decent payday from each of the E4 you beat, even the half you keep after fainting is enough to buy a few more healing items. The one Pokemon that this really won't work for is that Eevee, since every time it faints it'll like you less.
The Champion tops out at level 50, so you can probably win with a team at around level 45.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
That's the biggest issue with Generation 2 games. The level curve, and also by extension to a much lesser degree the money curve... is really borked.
I think the way I got around this was to tell Mom to save my money, spend every last dime on heal items/Pokeballs/etc, and then repeatedly ram my party against the E4 without using items since that was one of the fastest ways to get EXP. You lose half your money IIRC when you faint, but that doesn't count what your Mom's holding. And since you get a decent payday from each of the E4 you beat, even the half you keep after fainting is enough to buy a few more healing items. The one Pokemon that this really won't work for is that Eevee, since every time it faints it'll like you less.
The Champion tops out at level 50, so you can probably win with a team at around level 45.
The problem is I want money FOR the Elite Four :P I tried to google money making tips and everyone was like "just fight the elite four with an amulet coin." Yeah, not helpful at this stage of the game :P Honestly I might be fine tho. I just need to grind my team up to ~40ish and I won't need nearly so many items. Tho I do still wanna evolve Espeon and may need to buy more X Speeds to cheese that.
Edit: It also doesn't help that it feels like gen 2 learnsets are really skewed towards higher levels. I practically had a Typhlosion before I learned another fire move besides Ember. Meanwhile my bellossom refuses to learn another grass move other than Absorb. *sigh* (edit 2: Oh, and apparently won't until Solar Beam at 55 -_- Maybe it's in my best interest to teach her Solar Beam from a TM...) Edit 3: Oh damn.. Espeon can learn Nightmare and Dream Eater? hehehehehe...... (granted I can't get Dream Eater until Kanto but still, that move feels so broken this gen just from seeing it used by Drowzees.. "Oh hey, let me put you to sleep and then take a huge chunk of your health and also heal me, and you can't fight back against this outside of using items or natural wake up")
Well my 6 year old finally beat Sword... And now he's playing my copy of Diamond even though he's finished Pearl. I wonder if I should pick up a good RPG for him to play that's doable for a younger audience.
I played a bunch of Zelda lttp when I was 6. It's on the snes online thing for a subscription so you wouldn't even need to buy it. I also played a bunch of the Gameboy dragonwarrior monster 2 games (Tara and cobis), but those would probably be difficult to get a hold of without sub legal methods. I suspect dragon quest 11 would be fine though.
That's the biggest issue with Generation 2 games. The level curve, and also by extension to a much lesser degree the money curve... is really borked.
I think the way I got around this was to tell Mom to save my money, spend every last dime on heal items/Pokeballs/etc, and then repeatedly ram my party against the E4 without using items since that was one of the fastest ways to get EXP. You lose half your money IIRC when you faint, but that doesn't count what your Mom's holding. And since you get a decent payday from each of the E4 you beat, even the half you keep after fainting is enough to buy a few more healing items. The one Pokemon that this really won't work for is that Eevee, since every time it faints it'll like you less.
The Champion tops out at level 50, so you can probably win with a team at around level 45.
The problem is I want money FOR the Elite Four :P I tried to google money making tips and everyone was like "just fight the elite four with an amulet coin." Yeah, not helpful at this stage of the game :P Honestly I might be fine tho. I just need to grind my team up to ~40ish and I won't need nearly so many items. Tho I do still wanna evolve Espeon and may need to buy more X Speeds to cheese that.
Edit: It also doesn't help that it feels like gen 2 learnsets are really skewed towards higher levels. I practically had a Typhlosion before I learned another fire move besides Ember. Meanwhile my bellossom refuses to learn another grass move other than Absorb. *sigh* (edit 2: Oh, and apparently won't until Solar Beam at 55 -_- Maybe it's in my best interest to teach her Solar Beam from a TM...) Edit 3: Oh damn.. Espeon can learn Nightmare and Dream Eater? hehehehehe...... (granted I can't get Dream Eater until Kanto but still, that move feels so broken this gen just from seeing it used by Drowzees.. "Oh hey, let me put you to sleep and then take a huge chunk of your health and also heal me, and you can't fight back against this outside of using items or natural wake up")
I don't understand the bolded comment. Spend all your cash on, say, Hyper Potions, then go into the E4 with ~$0 remaining. Beat the first guy, win ~$4000. Lose to second guy, faint and lose ~$2000. When you wake up at the Pokecenter, you've netted ~$2000. Spend that money, repeat. Just don't use those Hyper Potions you purchased until you're ready to take the fights seriously.
I'm still in the second area.
Just found this hit list of legendaries in the shrouded ruins that I will have to fill out.
Also recently had a time distortion with no Evo items.
Not sure what was up with that.
Just plates.
Anyway, headed to this bog to see if I can find more than one Cherrim.
Starting to wonder if I need to use the move tutor to get some of these moves for Pokedex entries.
Starter Pokemon is still sitting happily above my star level too.
Well my 6 year old finally beat Sword... And now he's playing my copy of Diamond even though he's finished Pearl. I wonder if I should pick up a good RPG for him to play that's doable for a younger audience.
I played a bunch of Zelda lttp when I was 6. It's on the snes online thing for a subscription so you wouldn't even need to buy it. I also played a bunch of the Gameboy dragonwarrior monster 2 games (Tara and cobis), but those would probably be difficult to get a hold of without sub legal methods. I suspect dragon quest 11 would be fine though.
He got to the dark world on LTTP and quit mainly because of his pokemon addiction lol. He's also completed Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 like 4or 5 times (literally starting a new game every time).
I really want him to finish LTTP though haha.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I don't understand the bolded comment. Spend all your cash on, say, Hyper Potions, then go into the E4 with ~$0 remaining. Beat the first guy, win ~$4000. Lose to second guy, faint and lose ~$2000. When you wake up at the Pokecenter, you've netted ~$2000. Spend that money, repeat. Just don't use those Hyper Potions you purchased until you're ready to take the fights seriously.
Is that how it works? I didn't think I'd get to keep any of that. In any case, I just took money from Mom in the end. It was enough to buy some extra stuff and also get Eevee evolved to Espeon (I probably overkilled this with X Speeds and vitamins but Eevee was level 35 and Espeon learned Psybeam at 36, so I kinda needed Eevee to evolve next level up...).
But yeah, beat them last night :P It's amazing how ~4 levels (~39-40, still lower than most of their pokemon but not like, 8 levels lower...) and the addition of an Espeon turned those fights from hard into kind of a joke (except Lance who, fuck you and your THREE Dragonites...). My Espeon had Bite (from Eevee) and Shadow Ball (from TM), so she absolutely wrecked the first three bosses almost single handedly. Two super effectives against psychic type (while also being psychic so she wasn't weak to any of his moves like my other dark types), then Psybeam for Poison and Fighting. Really, Psychic kind of destroys two of those trainers. The last one was Dark which should have been a problem but literally half of her pokemon weren't dark type and the ones that were had dual types so like, Houndoom got a big splash of water to his face, etc.
Lance was a bitch and nearly killed me with his damn OP Dragonites. Still, Espeon MVP and Psybeam did quite a bit of damage despite not being super effective. There was a lot of hypnotizing and stalling as I revived pokemon but I did it in the end :P
P.S. - FUCK Battle Tower. What a god damn bullshit thing. After I got everyone in 39-40 range I tried to do level 40 of it. But every pokemon there had bullshit moves, leftovers, etc. Oh, you were gonna use that grass type against the ground type? Yeah, he has Ice Beam. Shit like that. It's like every pokemon had coverage for all of their weaknesses and were IV trained and shit. Screw that. Not worth it.
Also, I went looking for the Nightmare TM, couldn't find it. I was so pissed at myself thinking I had sold it because I wanted to do a Nightmare/Dream Eater combo on Espeon later. As I was heading to do the Elite Four, I checked my PC... no, I just deposited it in there -_- So phew, I still have it. Though now I kinda like my Espeon's moveset so I dunno. I taught her Shadow Ball and Iron Tail.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
Man, I forgot how weird gen 2 Kanto is. You start in the middle and can't even go from Cerulean City to Pewter City because the road is a one way... so apparently I need to go all the way through Cinnabar Island and swim up to Palette Town just to get to that side of the map? At least I got the stupid train unlocked now so it's easy to travel between Johto and Kanto. Oh also I realized I had somehow set my time wrong (maybe I chose the wrong DST option at the start?) and apparently resetting your clock in that game is super weird and complicated? Like, I had to enter the equivalent of the Konami code and then go to a website so I could gen a password using my name, current money and trainer ID. I'm not exactly sure how anyone was meant to figure this out back when the game first released (I mean, the internet was garbage back then)... I can only assume this was like a "you call up Nintendo Help Line and they tell you the password" thing. On the plus side, I kept me from missing Wesley while I was rushing there at 11:58pm and having to fight literally every trainer and their 20 magikarps because apparently I never visited that side of the lake of rage -_- I thought I just barely made it only to look at my in-game time and see it was still only ~11pm.
Also I caught Palkia in Shining Pearl, so yay, getting close to done (well, before end game). My Gamefly free trial ends on April 1st and I am still debating if I just pay for a month so I can get Darkrai :P (it's like literally available when I'd need to send the game back.... uggg...)
P.S. - Fuck you npc girl in shining pearl that traded me a Haunter holding an everstone. You are the worst.
Yeah Gen 2 used to be my favorite, but I think it was mostly nostalgia. Having Kanto in the games was just so cool as a kid, but it's not really done very well. Kanto is mostly pretty... empty in the Gen 2 games.
I recall reading that including Kanto wasn't even originally planned, but after Satoru Iwata saved the game's development they decided to try cramming it into all the space he freed up.
Man, I forgot how weird gen 2 Kanto is. You start in the middle and can't even go from Cerulean City to Pewter City because the road is a one way... so apparently I need to go all the way through Cinnabar Island and swim up to Palette Town just to get to that side of the map? At least I got the stupid train unlocked now so it's easy to travel between Johto and Kanto. Oh also I realized I had somehow set my time wrong (maybe I chose the wrong DST option at the start?) and apparently resetting your clock in that game is super weird and complicated? Like, I had to enter the equivalent of the Konami code and then go to a website so I could gen a password using my name, current money and trainer ID. I'm not exactly sure how anyone was meant to figure this out back when the game first released (I mean, the internet was garbage back then)... I can only assume this was like a "you call up Nintendo Help Line and they tell you the password" thing. On the plus side, I kept me from missing Wesley while I was rushing there at 11:58pm and having to fight literally every trainer and their 20 magikarps because apparently I never visited that side of the lake of rage -_- I thought I just barely made it only to look at my in-game time and see it was still only ~11pm.
Also I caught Palkia in Shining Pearl, so yay, getting close to done (well, before end game). My Gamefly free trial ends on April 1st and I am still debating if I just pay for a month so I can get Darkrai :P (it's like literally available when I'd need to send the game back.... uggg...)
P.S. - Fuck you npc girl in shining pearl that traded me a Haunter holding an everstone. You are the worst.
You don't have to go through Cinnabar... in fact, I think that way is blocked. Go through Diglett Tunnel! But you'll have to wake up that Snorlax first....
Man, I forgot how weird gen 2 Kanto is. You start in the middle and can't even go from Cerulean City to Pewter City because the road is a one way... so apparently I need to go all the way through Cinnabar Island and swim up to Palette Town just to get to that side of the map? At least I got the stupid train unlocked now so it's easy to travel between Johto and Kanto. Oh also I realized I had somehow set my time wrong (maybe I chose the wrong DST option at the start?) and apparently resetting your clock in that game is super weird and complicated? Like, I had to enter the equivalent of the Konami code and then go to a website so I could gen a password using my name, current money and trainer ID. I'm not exactly sure how anyone was meant to figure this out back when the game first released (I mean, the internet was garbage back then)... I can only assume this was like a "you call up Nintendo Help Line and they tell you the password" thing. On the plus side, I kept me from missing Wesley while I was rushing there at 11:58pm and having to fight literally every trainer and their 20 magikarps because apparently I never visited that side of the lake of rage -_- I thought I just barely made it only to look at my in-game time and see it was still only ~11pm.
Also I caught Palkia in Shining Pearl, so yay, getting close to done (well, before end game). My Gamefly free trial ends on April 1st and I am still debating if I just pay for a month so I can get Darkrai :P (it's like literally available when I'd need to send the game back.... uggg...)
P.S. - Fuck you npc girl in shining pearl that traded me a Haunter holding an everstone. You are the worst.
You don't have to go through Cinnabar... in fact, I think that way is blocked. Go through Diglett Tunnel! But you'll have to wake up that Snorlax first....
Oh really? I sorta forgot they were talking about that. It's still very weird to me that it's blocked off. (But Snorlax was like literally the next thing I had to do so I probably would have figured it out).
P.S. - Fuck you npc girl in shining pearl that traded me a Haunter holding an everstone. You are the worst.
IIRC that is standard whenever an NPC offers you a trade evo.
I don't think so. I recall one gen (gen 1?) there's actually an NPC that gives you an evo trade (I feel like it was a Machoke -> Machamp). The girl even trolls with a "Wow did it change form after I traded it? Haha, no, I gave it an everstone so it wouldn't" bullshit.
I mean, overall it's fine, I wasn't gonna use Gengar or anything and I probably *could* get one by trading with a friend if I really cared (and I have a bazillion in Home too). But like, Gengar is one of my favorites so it was kind of a massive FU from that NPC. It's just like a letdown :P
P.S. - Also Jesus Christ Luxray needs to hurry up and learn some actual moves. How TF is Spark still my best electrical move at level 50? Where is Thunder Fang? (edit: Wow, his learnset is garbage... Wild Charge at 90?! Doesn't even learn Thunder Fang in this game. There's gotta be a TM somewhere... or any fangs.. ice fang would be nice...)
I lost three Pokemon in Black 2 to twist mountain, because I wasn't expecting all the rotation and triple battles,(I'm playing mostly blind except to look up what the challenge mode level caps are) luckily once you get through twist mountain you get access to like five areas to catch new pokemon.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
That feeling when I put three pokemon on gts just to see if I could get a trade:
-Moltres for a Cosmog
-Mewtwo for a Type: Null
-Marenie for a Slaking
I figure, well the Slaking I'll get for sure but no one will trade for these easy gen1 legendaries they give out for free in like every game. Currently Slaking is the only one not successful yet.... Literally how? I needed the two Alolan Legendaries because of the stupid evos not counting retroactively. Never thought they'd actually trade them (literally all the searches wanted like specific furfrou cuts and galar articunos and crap)
That feeling when I put three pokemon on gts just to see if I could get a trade:
-Moltres for a Cosmog
-Mewtwo for a Type: Null
-Marenie for a Slaking
I figure, well the Slaking I'll get for sure but no one will trade for these easy gen1 legendaries they give out for free in like every game. Currently Slaking is the only one not successful yet.... Literally how? I needed the two Alolan Legendaries because of the stupid evos not counting retroactively. Never thought they'd actually trade them (literally all the searches wanted like specific furfrou cuts and galar articunos and crap)
I honestly have thought about getting sword and the dlc just to restart them for dupes of the new legendaries because thats all people seem to want
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
So now I'm doing a single stage pokemon challenge run nuzlocke in black. That means pokemon that can't evolve and which no pokemon can evolve into. The first one you can catch is Audino in rustling grass, which can't appear until after you beat the first gym leader, so I started the run there, caught an audino, and released the three pokemon I'd gotten before then. (I also had to beat the double battle trainers on route 3 since unlike most double battles, which won't activate if you only have one pokemon in your party, these two pre-schoolers will literally block your path if you haven't beaten them yet.)
Its been pretty fun. You have an opportunity at one more single stage pokemon before the 2nd gym, that being either Sawk or Throh. I'm playing black, so Sawk was the one that was much easier to get. I'm at the fourth gym. Early on I had to really think about experience gain since with just one/two pokemon for the first three gyms I had to be conscious of not over-leveling them past the gym leader level cap. Lenora was for once not hard since Audino and Sawk are kind of the perfect duo for dealing with her two pokemon. Burgh was harder, but for once I EV trained to try and guarantee that Sawk was faster than his ace pokemon. Now I'm on gym number four, and there's actually a chance to get two of three additional pokemon before gym 4. You can get either Sigilyph or Maractus (can't get both since they're only found in the same area) and an emolga. I got a Sigilyph and an Emolga. They're both quite good pokemon, but unfortunately they're both weak to the electric gym leader Elesa. (Maractus would have been too, since two/thirds of Elesa's pokemon are also flying type, and her last pokemon has a fire type attack option.) Oh also Sawk is weak to her flying types. So I'm gonna have to think hard about how to deal with her.
Since I can only catch like... let me think... 11 out of 13 possible single stage pokemon at most-assuming I don't fail any catches-it's kind of extra important I try to not lose any Pokemon.
Gundi on
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited March 2022
Mostly done with Crystal at this point. I've gotten all the Kanto badges, basically just need to catch Ho-Oh and fight Red who is still like 20 levels above me because GameFreak apparently doesn't understand level curves in gen 2.
I have to say, Kanto was really disappointing from what I remembered. You can tell they could *barely* fit this in because it's missing most of the "attractions" from the first game. Off the top of my head:
-Safari Zone is gone (there's literally a wall with no door.. lol)
-Cinnabar Island (aka really the Pokemon Mansion) is mostly gone (I'm ok with story reasons here but this was totally just to get rid of the Pokemon Mansion)
-Mewtwo's cave is gone
-Freaking Viridian Forest is gone and replaced with a god damn hedge maze (seriously, it's a 1x1 wide made of bushes with no tall grass or anything in sorta the same shape as the original... they could have just duplicated Ilex Forest here and it would have looked less stupid than this)... The no tall grass is especially weird.. what, were you afraid I was gonna catch a Pikachu?
-Some underground path is gone (I honestly didn't even remember this but there's a big sign on the door saying it's closed)
-Pewter Museum is gone (hilariously ALSO missing its door... you guys know you can just put *locked* doors in, right? You don't have to take the doors off the building to keep people from going inside....)
I feel like Celadon's casino is gone but I honestly haven't explored that city thoroughly enough to say for sure. I didn't see it though, just the dept. store. Also the whole world seems to be somewhat condensed in that it's clear they shrunk some of the paths between towns by quite a bit. Even the gyms are heavily nerfed with a lot of the extra trainers removed and all of the puzzles removed (other than kinda Fushia?). Also just from a random sampling of the tall grass around Kanto most of it just seems to be duplicate Pokemon from Johto. There are a few exceptions (Tangela below Palette Town being an obvious notable one) but like a lot of the grass is just pidgeys and ratattas and noctowls and stuff. I'm going to have to go over a guide and see what unique spawns Kanto actually has because I've barely found any. (Don't ask me why I expected them to adjust spawns to match a post game area because everything's like level 10 too :P)
It's all just really weird. It's still cool it's there I guess but yeah, I was shocked at how much was dumped just to fit it on the cart. Safari Zone and Viridian Forest felt like the worst offenders - Johto doesn't even have a Safari Zone so that feature is just gone from gen 2. And Viridian Forest is just so nostalgic so I hate to see it looking like a weird Zelda 1 forest screen...
In any case, caught most of the legendaries. I still need to get Ho-oh like I said but that should be easy enough. I will say, holy shit the Legendary Dogs are the most bullshit thing in maybe any Pokemon game ever. I did not remember how absolutely ASS these things were. Thank god Suicune is a free catch in Crystal. And I used my Master Ball on Raikou (THANK CHRIST) so really it was just Entei but holy shit was that the most frustrating thing I have ever seen in a Pokemon game. First off, I looked up a guide on how to do it "optimally" because I didn't want to search around blindly for hours for them (it's here if you're curious - this is actually an extremely good guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/7c2jlm/how_to_catch_raikou_suicune_and_entei_a/ ). So the guide recommends getting a Jinx to level 40 (for Max Repel strats) with Lovely Kiss and Mean Look - easy enough (*cough*after changing my clock because Jinx apparently only spawns in Morning and Day, not Night*cough*). I find Entei right away, Lovely Kiss misses, he runs turn 1. Ok, whatever, he's in my Pokedex. I find Raikou and throw the Master Ball at him because I figure what else am I gonna use it on? Then the pain.
The guide actually has a really great strategy of flying to Violet City (because it connects to many different routes) and checking where he is and based on that, exiting to a certain route and checking if he moved to the same route. It works surprisingly well (except when he decides to be an ass for a half an hour and move the opposite way every time). So first time I see him (after the initial time) it's going good. I got him to sleep, I've got Mean Look up, his HP is down to like 2-3hp. I start chucking Ultra balls at him. Something like 20 ultra balls later he still isn't caught and when he wakes up this time, he uses Roar and causes me to run away -_- *sigh* Reset, try again. All my encounters basically then went one of three ways:
1. Lovely Kiss misses, he flees turn 1
2. Lovely Kiss hits, I use Mean Look, he wakes up after one turn of sleep and uses Roar (this happened a STUPIDLY large number of times)
3. Lovely Kiss hits, use Mean Look, get him down to 1-2hp, chuck an insane number of Ultra Balls at him which never catch, then he eventually wakes up and Roars
After I kid you not, like FOUR HOURS I finally caught him. This may be the most absolutely bullshit pokemon in any pokemon game ever. I seriously can't think of any Pokemon catch in any other game designed to actively HATE the player like this. First off, the dogs are totally random spawns throughout the entire world so unless you've seen them once, you can't track them at all and running into them is just a matter of luck. Then they always flee turn one, so hope you have a sleep as your lead and it hits. If you prevent them from fleeing, they have Roar which forces a flee. And if you get through all of that bullshit, the catch rate is ridiculously low. Seriously Game Freak, what did I do to make you hate me so much? Like, I get the random running around stuff, that's the design so they are more of a surprise. I get that, that's fine. But your average player (especially back when this came out and there weren't extensive internet guides on how to do this shit) is going to find them, try to fight and have them run turn 1 every time. That's bullshit. But even then, they come back prepared for the fleeing, but you've given them Roar and an insane catch rate and that's just going way too far. I had less trouble catching Celebi, a god damn mythical pokemon, who I caught in a DIVE BALL because swag (and it was literally the only Kurt ball I had on me) and had zero trouble with (I had to try a few times because I only had four balls but for something with basically no boosted catch chance it was really easy). Really, I could tolerate everything else if the catch rate wasn't like 0.1% or whatever bullshit it's set to. Ultimately I feel like if you can get the thing to sleep and down to 1hp it should just be a free catch at that point. I'm so thankful I threw a Master Ball at Raikou because if I had to go through this shit twice I may have literally thrown my 3DS at the wall. This was so un-fun it made me like this game less, that's how much I hated this damn thing. I don't know how I ever caught this shit in Silver back in the day, maybe I got lucky (or 16 year old me had a lot more tolerance for bullshit game design).
*sigh* So that was my weekend with Crystal -_- Like I said, I'm basically done except for Ho-Oh and the Red fight. Was surprised at no fan-fare for 16 badges. There's still a handful of trainers around Kanto I literally just skipped passed because I wanted to get to the towns for Fly access (and they are all a joke anyways with Pokemon ~level 20-30 that just melt to my team of 40-50s). I need to do some cleanup of catches too, though it's basically impossible for me to complete the Pokedex without trading available. But I'd like to at least catch most of what's out there to catch. I also want to make my Parasect with False Swipe which is currently being held back by a lack of male Scyther (seriously, I put a female Scyther and Ditto in daycare to try for a male and these eggs are taking foreeeeeeeeeeeever.... it doesn't help I accidentally clicked no on one of them and then after that they refused to give me another egg for so long I literally thought the game was broken and took Scyther back and put her back in just to "reset" the daycare... I eventually did get another egg but they take a stupidly long time to hatch for some reason... I'll probably hit Bug Catching Tuesday before I hatch this new one...)
They might have taken the game corner out of the gen 2 3ds eshop releases, I'm pretty sure it's in gen 2 proper. I think og gen 4 was the last time games had a proper slot machine style game corner.
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
They might have taken the game corner out of the gen 2 3ds eshop releases, I'm pretty sure it's in gen 2 proper. I think og gen 4 was the last time games had a proper slot machine style game corner.
Like I said, I may have just missed it (I honestly don't remember where it's supposed to be.. I thought it was near the Dept. Store?). Celadon was like the one city I didn't really explore that well because it was super late when I got to it. There's soooo many buildings with no doors tho.
I will say, holy shit the Legendary Dogs are the most bullshit thing in maybe any Pokemon game ever. I did not remember how absolutely ASS these things were. Thank god Suicune is a free catch in Crystal. And I used my Master Ball on Raikou (THANK CHRIST) so really it was just Entei but holy shit was that the most frustrating thing I have ever seen in a Pokemon game
I remember. I remember
Kid me never ended up catching Entei
So many days chasing it around at red HP, putting it to sleep, chucking a couple of balls, then having to track it down again
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I think it was the Entei rage that did it, but for some reason I found myself looking up Pokemon rant videos on youtube for funsies. Haha. There was one about gen 2 that I was surprised I agreed with a lot of. Granted, this guy hated gen 2 and I think it's still pretty fun, but man playing through it again you really notice the issues. One thing he brought up and absolutely blew my mind was that the Cyndaquil line has IDENTICAL stats to the Chamander line. Like literally, each evo has the exact same stats (the only difference being that Charizard is also flying type and Typhlosion is not). It's nuts and holy shit is it lazy. He was also right that most of the new gen 2 pokemon were either complete garbage (in this game at least, a lot were fixed later) or not available until post game. I mean, playing Crystal I didn't want to use Gen 1 Pokemon as much as possible but even then my team had a Poliwrath (because trade evos suuuuuucccckkkkk), a Bellosum which is just a new Oddish evo, a Crobat which is just a new Golbat evo, and an Espeon which is just a new Eevee evo. Haha. I wanted to use more stuff but the majority of what was available was either gen 1 stuff or garbage. The only true Gen 2s I used were Typhlosion and Donphan (who I've been frequently boxing for specialty mons or eggs because he honestly doesn't contribute much to the team).
This guy went on some other tangents that I had mixed opinions on. Yes, leveling curve is broken in gen 2. Yes, you shouldn't be catching level 20s outside the 8th gym. No, I think the gen 2 pokemon designs are actually really good (weird criticism on his part, gen 2 had some strong designs IMO even if a lot of the actual pokemon were garbage). Yes Kanto just kind of exists as opposed to being a true post game area. No, I think you're wrong that Game Freak only added Kanto because they thought this would be the last Pokemon game (?!). No idea where he pulled that from.
There was another one I probably shouldn't have watched (because I never beat those games) but it was some guy reading Gen 8 rants. There were a few spoilers but honestly not much I hadn't guessed already or anything too shocking.
Oh no, dynamax energy comes from some legendary pokemon.. *gasp!* What, Chairman Rose is a bad guy!?!?!? It's not like I didn't predict that two seconds into meeting him...
The guy was mostly just reacting to what other people were complaining about but some of the stuff was hilariously dumb. Someone complained that Hop never got humbled and both the guy and me are like, uh, yes he totally lost to Bede and got super depressed about it... I do agree with the complaint that Hop looks exactly like Hau... that always bugged me. One of the complaints was that some of the gyms had death traps like pits that would be a liability risk and the guy's like, wtf are you talking about? haha.. it was a lot of dumb stuff like that.
Really my main complaints about gen 8 were the story and the wild area. I was finding re-playing and avoiding the wild area was doing very good things for my enjoyment of the game. I can overlook a dumb story but man the wild area just frustrated the shit out of me and even in this new playthrough I could tell anytime I spent out there was just starting to piss me off. I wonder if the DLC wild areas are better. I've heard they are.
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
Man, is it sad that I'm actually considering buying Ultra Moon? I kinda have the itch to replay gen 7 but I hate to erase my full regional dex save of Sun (plus I kinda want the new ultra beasts they added). This might be a good excuse to do so and also check out the new stuff that's been added in.... hmmm...
It's kind of crazy how much Legends: Arceus got me hyped up to revisit all the old Pokemon games again
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I'm pretty sure any shiny legendary I got in X, ORAS and Moon were hacked. Somehow they got wondertraded to me.
Then I stayed up until 4am playing Crystal -_- I told myself I was not gonna touch Crystal while I'm trying to finish up Pearl, but then I was like, well, it's Thursday, I should boot it up to get a haircut... and you know, while I'm in Goldenrod I can do the bug catching contest too... and I mean, I should probably get back to the spot I was in... and well, Red Gyarados is RIGHT THERE, I might as well go catch him.... and oh, Lance wants me to help take down Team Rocket, I should go do that quick... I nearly even did the gym but I forced myself to quit because it was stupid late :P All that said, got Zubat evolved to Golbat so now it doesn't suck so bad. Need to get a Crobat but I guess friendship isn't quite there yet. Still can't put fly on anyone in my team which is why I've been trying to get a Crobat. Meanwhile in Pearl I don't have a flier (besides a Staravia that I fully intend to dump soon) and I was worried until I remembered, oh yeah, HMs aren't a thing anymore. Woo! (tho I did briefly question whether Jirachi counted as a flier
Edit: Was watching through this:
The third game on there is Pokemon Stars, that rumored Switch port of Sun & Moon that never happened. I had totally forgotten about that until now but what they say in here certainly sounds plausible. The thought is that Stars was real and part of Nintendo's strategy to release their three hottest IPs on Switch after Wii U's failure (Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon). But with Switch selling insanely well their problem became more of keeping the system in stock. And it's also pointed out that an up-rezed 3DS game could look bad on Switch, giving a poor impression of the system's capabilities. It's hard to say how true any of this is but I honestly think I might believe it. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are literally what the original rumor described, just only for 3DS. And it very much feels like Sword and Shield are built very similarly to Sun & Moon - perhaps they took the work they'd done porting that engine over and used that as a framework for Sword and Shield? It's all very interesting to think about anyways.
Had some bad lost pokemon to random trainers with crits on the way to the league. Worst being my Krookodile, who could have been real, real useful against the elite four. On the plus side, I caught a good Durant (has swarm and impish nature) so that could be real useful too. Gonna have to look up the elite four and look in my pokemon box to see what'll work best. Carracosta is the only pokemon I'm certain I'll use since I'm pretty sure I can set up with shell smash since my carracosta has sturdy.
The only 2 mythicals I need are Zeroara and Marshadow and I suspect theyll never do events for them ever again.
I dunno, they might once gen 9 rolls out. They've released so many of the other mythicals over the last few years. But they've definitely been less generous with more recent gens' mythicals (like gen 5+ I'd say... they've gone ham with like, Mew, Celebei, Jirachi, Darkrai, Shaymin, etc). But hopefully that will change over time. Still a little mad at myself for ignoring Zeraora and I thought I had a Marshadow but it might have been ate by Pokemon Bank, I dunno (or maybe I still have a card for it lying around the house somewhere unredeemed... I should really check..). Zeraora especially feels like I was dumb since they just flat out gave that one away a ton including shinies and I just ignored it. Never jumped on the gen 8 mythicals either so bleh.
Hope we get events for them soon
I didn't get sword and sheild right away so I missed that event and its maddening that the pokemon day event thing was whatevermax for 3 starters that everyone can easily get instead of a an legendary
I was supposed to put Crystal down to get Shining Pearl finished but having too much fun with it :P I'm up to the Elite Four. I tried to fight them but uh... I need to grind levels. I'm 5 levels lower than their weakest Pokemon
Edit: oh, side note.. Is it just me or does anyone find it weird that the BDSP ghost gym is like, entirely children trainers? There are two Ace trainers on the top level but everyone else is like 5. I know Pokemon has children trainers all the time but it's weird to see them not only all in one place, but inside a gym and a GHOST gym at that (I could maybe see a bug gym having a lot of children trainers). Like, there are literal pre-schoolers with Driftloons here... This feels unsafe? Also I mostly noticed because they give absolute garbage money for beating them, so a whole gym of this sucks. But it's just so weird to me. It feels like the other trainers at a gym should be like, I dunno, adults, or at least a mix :P
I think the way I got around this was to tell Mom to save my money, spend every last dime on heal items/Pokeballs/etc, and then repeatedly ram my party against the E4 without using items since that was one of the fastest ways to get EXP. You lose half your money IIRC when you faint, but that doesn't count what your Mom's holding. And since you get a decent payday from each of the E4 you beat, even the half you keep after fainting is enough to buy a few more healing items. The one Pokemon that this really won't work for is that Eevee, since every time it faints it'll like you less.
The Champion tops out at level 50, so you can probably win with a team at around level 45.
Yes, that was great. "Are you failing this quiz on purpose?" Yes, yes I am small child
The problem is I want money FOR the Elite Four :P I tried to google money making tips and everyone was like "just fight the elite four with an amulet coin." Yeah, not helpful at this stage of the game :P Honestly I might be fine tho. I just need to grind my team up to ~40ish and I won't need nearly so many items. Tho I do still wanna evolve Espeon and may need to buy more X Speeds to cheese that.
Edit: It also doesn't help that it feels like gen 2 learnsets are really skewed towards higher levels. I practically had a Typhlosion before I learned another fire move besides Ember. Meanwhile my bellossom refuses to learn another grass move other than Absorb. *sigh* (edit 2: Oh, and apparently won't until Solar Beam at 55 -_- Maybe it's in my best interest to teach her Solar Beam from a TM...) Edit 3: Oh damn.. Espeon can learn Nightmare and Dream Eater? hehehehehe...... (granted I can't get Dream Eater until Kanto but still, that move feels so broken this gen just from seeing it used by Drowzees.. "Oh hey, let me put you to sleep and then take a huge chunk of your health and also heal me, and you can't fight back against this outside of using items or natural wake up")
I have to say, it's pretty dumb that the Galarian birds don't learn any moves from their old type
In the cinematics they show Zapdos with sparks flying all the time when it runs and its signature move is called Thunderous Kick
It learns Blaze Kick but not Wild Charge? Just weird
And Moltres is literally on fire and its move is called Fiery Wrath
I played a bunch of Zelda lttp when I was 6. It's on the snes online thing for a subscription so you wouldn't even need to buy it. I also played a bunch of the Gameboy dragonwarrior monster 2 games (Tara and cobis), but those would probably be difficult to get a hold of without sub legal methods. I suspect dragon quest 11 would be fine though.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
I don't understand the bolded comment. Spend all your cash on, say, Hyper Potions, then go into the E4 with ~$0 remaining. Beat the first guy, win ~$4000. Lose to second guy, faint and lose ~$2000. When you wake up at the Pokecenter, you've netted ~$2000. Spend that money, repeat. Just don't use those Hyper Potions you purchased until you're ready to take the fights seriously.
Just found this hit list of legendaries in the shrouded ruins that I will have to fill out.
Also recently had a time distortion with no Evo items.
Not sure what was up with that.
Just plates.
Anyway, headed to this bog to see if I can find more than one Cherrim.
Starting to wonder if I need to use the move tutor to get some of these moves for Pokedex entries.
Starter Pokemon is still sitting happily above my star level too.
He got to the dark world on LTTP and quit mainly because of his pokemon addiction lol. He's also completed Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 like 4or 5 times (literally starting a new game every time).
I really want him to finish LTTP though haha.
Is that how it works? I didn't think I'd get to keep any of that. In any case, I just took money from Mom in the end. It was enough to buy some extra stuff and also get Eevee evolved to Espeon (I probably overkilled this with X Speeds and vitamins but Eevee was level 35 and Espeon learned Psybeam at 36, so I kinda needed Eevee to evolve next level up...).
But yeah, beat them last night :P It's amazing how ~4 levels (~39-40, still lower than most of their pokemon but not like, 8 levels lower...) and the addition of an Espeon turned those fights from hard into kind of a joke (except Lance who, fuck you and your THREE Dragonites...). My Espeon had Bite (from Eevee) and Shadow Ball (from TM), so she absolutely wrecked the first three bosses almost single handedly. Two super effectives against psychic type (while also being psychic so she wasn't weak to any of his moves like my other dark types), then Psybeam for Poison and Fighting. Really, Psychic kind of destroys two of those trainers. The last one was Dark which should have been a problem but literally half of her pokemon weren't dark type and the ones that were had dual types so like, Houndoom got a big splash of water to his face, etc.
Lance was a bitch and nearly killed me with his damn OP Dragonites. Still, Espeon MVP and Psybeam did quite a bit of damage despite not being super effective. There was a lot of hypnotizing and stalling as I revived pokemon but I did it in the end :P
P.S. - FUCK Battle Tower. What a god damn bullshit thing. After I got everyone in 39-40 range I tried to do level 40 of it. But every pokemon there had bullshit moves, leftovers, etc. Oh, you were gonna use that grass type against the ground type? Yeah, he has Ice Beam. Shit like that. It's like every pokemon had coverage for all of their weaknesses and were IV trained and shit. Screw that. Not worth it.
Also, I went looking for the Nightmare TM, couldn't find it. I was so pissed at myself thinking I had sold it because I wanted to do a Nightmare/Dream Eater combo on Espeon later. As I was heading to do the Elite Four, I checked my PC... no, I just deposited it in there -_- So phew, I still have it. Though now I kinda like my Espeon's moveset so I dunno. I taught her Shadow Ball and Iron Tail.
This is a good pocket monsters.
Also I caught Palkia in Shining Pearl, so yay, getting close to done (well, before end game). My Gamefly free trial ends on April 1st and I am still debating if I just pay for a month so I can get Darkrai :P (it's like literally available when I'd need to send the game back.... uggg...)
P.S. - Fuck you npc girl in shining pearl that traded me a Haunter holding an everstone. You are the worst.
You don't have to go through Cinnabar... in fact, I think that way is blocked. Go through Diglett Tunnel! But you'll have to wake up that Snorlax first....
IIRC that is standard whenever an NPC offers you a trade evo.
Oh really? I sorta forgot they were talking about that. It's still very weird to me that it's blocked off. (But Snorlax was like literally the next thing I had to do so I probably would have figured it out).
I don't think so. I recall one gen (gen 1?) there's actually an NPC that gives you an evo trade (I feel like it was a Machoke -> Machamp). The girl even trolls with a "Wow did it change form after I traded it? Haha, no, I gave it an everstone so it wouldn't" bullshit.
I mean, overall it's fine, I wasn't gonna use Gengar or anything and I probably *could* get one by trading with a friend if I really cared (and I have a bazillion in Home too). But like, Gengar is one of my favorites so it was kind of a massive FU from that NPC. It's just like a letdown :P
P.S. - Also Jesus Christ Luxray needs to hurry up and learn some actual moves. How TF is Spark still my best electrical move at level 50? Where is Thunder Fang? (edit: Wow, his learnset is garbage... Wild Charge at 90?! Doesn't even learn Thunder Fang in this game. There's gotta be a TM somewhere... or any fangs.. ice fang would be nice...)
-Moltres for a Cosmog
-Mewtwo for a Type: Null
-Marenie for a Slaking
I figure, well the Slaking I'll get for sure but no one will trade for these easy gen1 legendaries they give out for free in like every game. Currently Slaking is the only one not successful yet.... Literally how? I needed the two Alolan Legendaries because of the stupid evos not counting retroactively. Never thought they'd actually trade them (literally all the searches wanted like specific furfrou cuts and galar articunos and crap)
I honestly have thought about getting sword and the dlc just to restart them for dupes of the new legendaries because thats all people seem to want
Its been pretty fun. You have an opportunity at one more single stage pokemon before the 2nd gym, that being either Sawk or Throh. I'm playing black, so Sawk was the one that was much easier to get. I'm at the fourth gym. Early on I had to really think about experience gain since with just one/two pokemon for the first three gyms I had to be conscious of not over-leveling them past the gym leader level cap. Lenora was for once not hard since Audino and Sawk are kind of the perfect duo for dealing with her two pokemon. Burgh was harder, but for once I EV trained to try and guarantee that Sawk was faster than his ace pokemon. Now I'm on gym number four, and there's actually a chance to get two of three additional pokemon before gym 4. You can get either Sigilyph or Maractus (can't get both since they're only found in the same area) and an emolga. I got a Sigilyph and an Emolga. They're both quite good pokemon, but unfortunately they're both weak to the electric gym leader Elesa. (Maractus would have been too, since two/thirds of Elesa's pokemon are also flying type, and her last pokemon has a fire type attack option.) Oh also Sawk is weak to her flying types. So I'm gonna have to think hard about how to deal with her.
Since I can only catch like... let me think... 11 out of 13 possible single stage pokemon at most-assuming I don't fail any catches-it's kind of extra important I try to not lose any Pokemon.
I have to say, Kanto was really disappointing from what I remembered. You can tell they could *barely* fit this in because it's missing most of the "attractions" from the first game. Off the top of my head:
-Safari Zone is gone (there's literally a wall with no door.. lol)
-Cinnabar Island (aka really the Pokemon Mansion) is mostly gone (I'm ok with story reasons here but this was totally just to get rid of the Pokemon Mansion)
-Mewtwo's cave is gone
-Freaking Viridian Forest is gone and replaced with a god damn hedge maze (seriously, it's a 1x1 wide made of bushes with no tall grass or anything in sorta the same shape as the original... they could have just duplicated Ilex Forest here and it would have looked less stupid than this)... The no tall grass is especially weird.. what, were you afraid I was gonna catch a Pikachu?
-Some underground path is gone (I honestly didn't even remember this but there's a big sign on the door saying it's closed)
-Pewter Museum is gone (hilariously ALSO missing its door... you guys know you can just put *locked* doors in, right? You don't have to take the doors off the building to keep people from going inside....)
I feel like Celadon's casino is gone but I honestly haven't explored that city thoroughly enough to say for sure. I didn't see it though, just the dept. store. Also the whole world seems to be somewhat condensed in that it's clear they shrunk some of the paths between towns by quite a bit. Even the gyms are heavily nerfed with a lot of the extra trainers removed and all of the puzzles removed (other than kinda Fushia?). Also just from a random sampling of the tall grass around Kanto most of it just seems to be duplicate Pokemon from Johto. There are a few exceptions (Tangela below Palette Town being an obvious notable one) but like a lot of the grass is just pidgeys and ratattas and noctowls and stuff. I'm going to have to go over a guide and see what unique spawns Kanto actually has because I've barely found any. (Don't ask me why I expected them to adjust spawns to match a post game area because everything's like level 10 too :P)
It's all just really weird. It's still cool it's there I guess but yeah, I was shocked at how much was dumped just to fit it on the cart. Safari Zone and Viridian Forest felt like the worst offenders - Johto doesn't even have a Safari Zone so that feature is just gone from gen 2. And Viridian Forest is just so nostalgic so I hate to see it looking like a weird Zelda 1 forest screen...
In any case, caught most of the legendaries. I still need to get Ho-oh like I said but that should be easy enough. I will say, holy shit the Legendary Dogs are the most bullshit thing in maybe any Pokemon game ever. I did not remember how absolutely ASS these things were. Thank god Suicune is a free catch in Crystal. And I used my Master Ball on Raikou (THANK CHRIST) so really it was just Entei but holy shit was that the most frustrating thing I have ever seen in a Pokemon game. First off, I looked up a guide on how to do it "optimally" because I didn't want to search around blindly for hours for them (it's here if you're curious - this is actually an extremely good guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/7c2jlm/how_to_catch_raikou_suicune_and_entei_a/ ). So the guide recommends getting a Jinx to level 40 (for Max Repel strats) with Lovely Kiss and Mean Look - easy enough (*cough*after changing my clock because Jinx apparently only spawns in Morning and Day, not Night*cough*). I find Entei right away, Lovely Kiss misses, he runs turn 1. Ok, whatever, he's in my Pokedex. I find Raikou and throw the Master Ball at him because I figure what else am I gonna use it on? Then the pain.
The guide actually has a really great strategy of flying to Violet City (because it connects to many different routes) and checking where he is and based on that, exiting to a certain route and checking if he moved to the same route. It works surprisingly well (except when he decides to be an ass for a half an hour and move the opposite way every time). So first time I see him (after the initial time) it's going good. I got him to sleep, I've got Mean Look up, his HP is down to like 2-3hp. I start chucking Ultra balls at him. Something like 20 ultra balls later he still isn't caught and when he wakes up this time, he uses Roar and causes me to run away -_- *sigh* Reset, try again. All my encounters basically then went one of three ways:
1. Lovely Kiss misses, he flees turn 1
2. Lovely Kiss hits, I use Mean Look, he wakes up after one turn of sleep and uses Roar (this happened a STUPIDLY large number of times)
3. Lovely Kiss hits, use Mean Look, get him down to 1-2hp, chuck an insane number of Ultra Balls at him which never catch, then he eventually wakes up and Roars
After I kid you not, like FOUR HOURS I finally caught him. This may be the most absolutely bullshit pokemon in any pokemon game ever. I seriously can't think of any Pokemon catch in any other game designed to actively HATE the player like this. First off, the dogs are totally random spawns throughout the entire world so unless you've seen them once, you can't track them at all and running into them is just a matter of luck. Then they always flee turn one, so hope you have a sleep as your lead and it hits. If you prevent them from fleeing, they have Roar which forces a flee. And if you get through all of that bullshit, the catch rate is ridiculously low. Seriously Game Freak, what did I do to make you hate me so much? Like, I get the random running around stuff, that's the design so they are more of a surprise. I get that, that's fine. But your average player (especially back when this came out and there weren't extensive internet guides on how to do this shit) is going to find them, try to fight and have them run turn 1 every time. That's bullshit. But even then, they come back prepared for the fleeing, but you've given them Roar and an insane catch rate and that's just going way too far. I had less trouble catching Celebi, a god damn mythical pokemon, who I caught in a DIVE BALL because swag (and it was literally the only Kurt ball I had on me) and had zero trouble with (I had to try a few times because I only had four balls but for something with basically no boosted catch chance it was really easy). Really, I could tolerate everything else if the catch rate wasn't like 0.1% or whatever bullshit it's set to. Ultimately I feel like if you can get the thing to sleep and down to 1hp it should just be a free catch at that point. I'm so thankful I threw a Master Ball at Raikou because if I had to go through this shit twice I may have literally thrown my 3DS at the wall. This was so un-fun it made me like this game less, that's how much I hated this damn thing. I don't know how I ever caught this shit in Silver back in the day, maybe I got lucky (or 16 year old me had a lot more tolerance for bullshit game design).
*sigh* So that was my weekend with Crystal -_- Like I said, I'm basically done except for Ho-Oh and the Red fight. Was surprised at no fan-fare for 16 badges. There's still a handful of trainers around Kanto I literally just skipped passed because I wanted to get to the towns for Fly access (and they are all a joke anyways with Pokemon ~level 20-30 that just melt to my team of 40-50s). I need to do some cleanup of catches too, though it's basically impossible for me to complete the Pokedex without trading available. But I'd like to at least catch most of what's out there to catch. I also want to make my Parasect with False Swipe which is currently being held back by a lack of male Scyther (seriously, I put a female Scyther and Ditto in daycare to try for a male and these eggs are taking foreeeeeeeeeeeever.... it doesn't help I accidentally clicked no on one of them and then after that they refused to give me another egg for so long I literally thought the game was broken and took Scyther back and put her back in just to "reset" the daycare... I eventually did get another egg but they take a stupidly long time to hatch for some reason... I'll probably hit Bug Catching Tuesday before I hatch this new one...)
Like I said, I may have just missed it (I honestly don't remember where it's supposed to be.. I thought it was near the Dept. Store?). Celadon was like the one city I didn't really explore that well because it was super late when I got to it. There's soooo many buildings with no doors tho.
I remember. I remember
Kid me never ended up catching Entei
So many days chasing it around at red HP, putting it to sleep, chucking a couple of balls, then having to track it down again
This guy went on some other tangents that I had mixed opinions on. Yes, leveling curve is broken in gen 2. Yes, you shouldn't be catching level 20s outside the 8th gym. No, I think the gen 2 pokemon designs are actually really good (weird criticism on his part, gen 2 had some strong designs IMO even if a lot of the actual pokemon were garbage). Yes Kanto just kind of exists as opposed to being a true post game area. No, I think you're wrong that Game Freak only added Kanto because they thought this would be the last Pokemon game (?!). No idea where he pulled that from.
There was another one I probably shouldn't have watched (because I never beat those games) but it was some guy reading Gen 8 rants. There were a few spoilers but honestly not much I hadn't guessed already or anything too shocking.
Really my main complaints about gen 8 were the story and the wild area. I was finding re-playing and avoiding the wild area was doing very good things for my enjoyment of the game. I can overlook a dumb story but man the wild area just frustrated the shit out of me and even in this new playthrough I could tell anytime I spent out there was just starting to piss me off. I wonder if the DLC wild areas are better. I've heard they are.
It's kind of crazy how much Legends: Arceus got me hyped up to revisit all the old Pokemon games again