• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

How do you play Pokemon in-game?

I've been making up challenges for myself and my siblings to make it harder or at least less predictable.

For SS/HG we're doing a random team where we random number generated 6 pkmn, with the exception you can't use ubers that are uber due to stats.

Then we design the pokemon and create them in Pokesav (we don't have time to play RNG with the breeding system trying to get a good nature) and you're only allowed to use those 6 throughout the entire game (well 5 of the 6 and one HM Slave), whoever finishes with the lowest levels wins.

It's fun because it forces you to make a team out of what you rolled and use pokemon you wouldn't normally. I'm working through with Wynaut, Ralts, Snorunt, Swinub, Omanyte, and Shaymin (got so lucky ><)


We've also played with monotyping through the game.


I burnt out on the GBA generation because I don't like how you can't control natures and IVs short of reloading over and over again, so I always ended up with a team of pokemon that could easily beat the game but were boxed afterwards. Crafting your team is a lot more fun, the standard game is too easy.
 
9 out of 10 doctors agree that I run on Max Repels. The other one was held at gunpoint.

Right now I'm climbing the Tin Tower with the 3 starter evos and Pidgeot. I hate the random levels in this game. Even though I'm nearly Level 40, all the opponents are still in the 20s, and then while programming Clair's gym, Game Freak remembered I had high level Pokemon.
 
I'm probably going to play through with a team from a random character from the Manga, or as close as I can get. Randomness will also include NNs, moves, gender, nature, etc, replacing moves and Pokemon when they aren't known/available.

And the lucky winner is.... Yellow.

Oh boy, now I get to go through with stuff like Butterfree and Ratticate. (Yes, I'm kinda excited, playing the game how you're supposed to is FUN.)
 
In Platinum I tried a two-Pokemon challenge with Infernape and Gyarados, but it was way too easy (especially after Infernape learned Thunderpunch), so now I am trying it with only one. Infernape was the obvious choice, but I'd already used him so I am using Gliscor, with Turtwig and Latias as HM slaves. Not the most convenient slave combo but I thought it would be funny to use a starter as an HM slave.
 
I just play...
I catch what I like, I train it if I feal like it, wander wherever I decide I want to go that day. I just play on whim and stuff, like I started a Leafgreen file on Sunday, and I'm already at Elite Four but I've spent the past while filling up my Pokedex, because thats whats interested me the past few days.
 
When I first go through a game, I play using what mons I find cool, occasionally check the pokedex to see what moves they learn when for more obscure stuff like Gastrodon. I mostly never spend my EQ and such TMs, even though I know you can get more EQ TMs at the Frontier, but oh well.

But when I play through games again, I keep some sort of theme to it. Like this time I'm doing a mono-Ground playthrough. Currently at Pastoria with a team lf Lvl 33 Graveler / Torterra / Gabite / Gliscor and Shellos in training. I just think its fun in the sense that every once in a while youll come across this trainer who will give you a really hard time, whereas other trainers become piss easy. Crasher Wake is going to be a nightmare though, his floatzel can probably OHKO each of my Pokemon and is probably faster than all of them .__.
 
Staying true to my world, I played through HG up until the point where you catch Ho-oh (because I'm SRing for a shiny one), and I found the game to be substantially harder this time around. I had to spend more time leveling up my Pokemon in the wild because the Pokemon I had up front was usually the one doing all the battling bceause I'm on SET. I also liked the fact that I actually had to think about switch-ins sometimes.

Unfortunately, I pseudo EV-trained a LITTLE more than I should have, but I don't really mind. It was a lot less than the EV-training of done in the past.

I tried to go for usable natures on my Pokemon. My Ampharos has a Quiet nature and my Noctowl has a Calm nature. Noctowl is going to be replaced by the shiny Ho-oh when I get it, but I found myself using Noctowl's Fly a lot more than Confusion, so perhaps a Careful one would have been better...unless the Pokemon is shiny, I just can't bring myself to using a Pokemon with a shitty nature, so it did take some time to find those two Pokemon. All the other Pokemon on my team were shiny, so I was okay with their crappy natures (Hardy Typhlosion, Quirky Raticate, and a Naive Heracross)

But yeah, I definitely had more fun playing on SET. It's a lot harder to keep your Pokemon all around the same level. You get punished by NPCs with things like Confuse Ray and Thunder Wave when you switch around a lot, too...


I was gonna type more, but I forgot what I wanted to say...but yeah, playing SET is the way for me from now on.

Edit: Oh yeah, this time around, I had many urges to catch multiple Pokemon, even though I knew I wouldn't use them on my in-game team. I never actually caught these Pokemon, but each and every time, it was a serious mental struggle for me not click the Bag and go to the PokeBall pocket, haha. I'll probably catch SOME Pokemon when I play through SoulSilver, though.
 
I finished HeartGold in less than a week just by using 4 guys - Feraligatr, Steelix (evolved from an in-game traded Onix), Jumpluff, and Flareon. I usually playthrough with 4 ~ 5 pokes, as I EV train/ IV Breed after pwning the Elite Four. I usually catch anything I can that isn't registered as "caught" in the dex and end up with roughly 40% of the regional dex completed by the time the credits roll.
 
I don't know if this matters or not, but I'm gonna go ahead and post anyway.

I generally have favorites from each of the games that just happen to be OU, so I usually stick with those on each playthrough. For example, I always have a Kadabra on my team, the normal/flying type you get early in the game, my starter and then some other Pokemon like Beautifly, Breloom, Ampharos, etc. I don't vary much from the plan because, if it helps me win and I like it, why change? This is especially true since I usually focus on in-game learnsets as a basis for what Pokemon go on my in-game team; that's why, aside from Gen III, I've never liked the Water-type starter. It's gotten harder in HG though; I don't know who to keep in my team anymore! I wanted to run with Togetic, Typhlosion, Alakazam (hopefully I get to trade this time), Pidgeot, Ampharos, and Furret, but I'm trying to raise a Zubat's happiness with my Walker so I can get a Crobat really early and I want a Ghost-type, so now the decision making is hard :(.

As far as levels go, I like to keep my starter two to three levels ahead of everyone else, and then keeping everyone else within each other's levels to create some kind of balance. I rarely use TMs you can't buy, since I don't like breeding (too much work), and I usually only use HMs on Pokemon that I won't regret using it on later (like Fly on my Flying type, for instance). I always let them evolve, and I try to have them learn every move (even if I don't like the new move). Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to unfavorable movesets, like CM, Flare Blitz, CC and MAch Punch on my Infernape in Platinum (which happens to have better SP. Atk than Atk and can't really make use of it :( ).

Before, I used to just focus on type matchups, but now the way I play ingame is nearly the same way I play online, minus the perfect EVs and natures and movesets. It's quite fun when you get something you like, like my Modest Flaffy in HG.

As for nicknames, I used to never nickname my Pokemon, but now I've taken a liking to human-sounding names. I don't really know why...I guess it's cause I kind of consider my Pokémon my babies lol. I make a point to give each one I catch it's own unique name, and try to give it one gender appropriate (unless it's genderless, then I either pick it's gender or go with something generic, like Aegis or Bracket).
 
For my Platinum version, I asked my friend to breed me a bunch of eevees, evolve Leafeon and Glaceon and give me the rest of the stones to evolve the remaining five. I then proceeded to beat the game with the seven "eeveelutions," trading them out as they leveled and training them equally. I did have to us HM slaves through. It was really fun, regardless of the fact that I now have seven useless 80-100 level pokemon to use for whatever.

In my SS, I planed everything out, but didn't really know what I wanted for sure. I'm over halfway through the game, and I only have four out of the six I want. One thing I did was decide to use my Rayquaza as my HM slave. It had a bad nature, and it entertained me to think that my character was flying around on this huge legendary pokemon. Other then that, I don't worry about IVs and Evs, just natures and movesets. I don't really catch anything ether, and have only been powering through because there's a lack of stuff to power through? SS seems kind of easy compared to Platinum.

Addition: It's not fair, in the anime Ash only have to point his pokedex at a pokemon to have it registered. Or however that works. But in the game we have to catch them ALL...

Nicknames? Maybe someday. I think I prefer the pokemon's species to anything I would come up with.
 
Aw... Eeveelutions is a cute idea. ^_^ I'll have to do it some day.

Anyways, I prefer to play the games as they were made- like an adventure. I use my favorite pokemon for in-game play. My current HG team consists of Quilava, Marill, Zubat, and an HM slave. Marill won't evolve cause I like her the way she is. =3 For my other team members, it will probably be a random catch. I'll run in to something interesting in the wild and I'll think that it could be a fun addition to my current team. I try to use different pokes on each run-through I do to experience different styles of battling.

I always nickname my pokes, too. It gives them a more 'personal' feature if you ask me. I don't really care too much about natures in game... I definitely don't care about EVs. That's entirely too much of a pain at such an early point in the game.

Uhm, other than that, I pretty much play like a twelve year old kid. ^_^ I talk to everyone in the game, visit every building, etc etc... It bothers me if there are places unexplored!

This is actually the first time I'm not trying to 'catch them all.' I finally did that in Platinum, so I just have like no motivation to do it in HG. If I want something unique, I'll just trade it over. =P
 
godudette said:
Aw... Eeveelutions is a cute idea. ^_^ I'll have to do it some day.

Anyways, I prefer to play the games as they were made- like an adventure. I use my favorite pokemon for in-game play. My current HG team consists of Quilava, Marill, Zubat, and an HM slave. Marill won't evolve cause I like her the way she is. =3 For my other team members, it will probably be a random catch. I'll run in to something interesting in the wild and I'll think that it could be a fun addition to my current team. I try to use different pokes on each run-through I do to experience different styles of battling.

I always nickname my pokes, too. It gives them a more 'personal' feature if you ask me. I don't really care too much about natures in game... I definitely don't care about EVs. That's entirely too much of a pain at such an early point in the game.

Uhm, other than that, I pretty much play like a twelve year old kid. ^_^ I talk to everyone in the game, visit every building, etc etc... It bothers me if there are places unexplored!

This is actually the first time I'm not trying to 'catch them all.' I finally did that in Platinum, so I just have like no motivation to do it in HG. If I want something unique, I'll just trade it over. =P
Click to expand...

Lol, that's almost exactly what I did. I didn't go to Kanto until I had made sure everything was explored and done with.
 
Well usually to give my team a bit more oomph when facing the E4 the first time, I have at least one legendary in my party for good measure (In this case, Lugia).

Also at the beginning this time I transferred over almost all my level 1's I never bothered raising, thinking this to be a good opportunity. Other than that, all stuff I caught.

In this game, Quagsire, along with doing great against fire/rock/electric/steel types for me in-game, it's also become my Swiss Army Pokemon. Back in the day I used to distribute 1 HM to each Pokemon in my party, but not anymore, I don't want to defile my good ones in any way like that.
 
godudette said:
Uhm, other than that, I pretty much play like a twelve year old kid. ^_^ I talk to everyone in the game, visit every building, etc etc... It bothers me if there are places unexplored!
Click to expand...

I love the Itemfinder in HGSS, I literally rode all over Johto with my bike, my right thumb on the Itemfinder all the while, just to make sure I didn't miss anything. Since Ecruteak it's become second nature for me to walk/bike with my thumb on the Itemfinder.
 
Well, my how I have played pokemon in-game has changed over time, so I’ll list it by game/generation.

red/blue/yellow: Well, when I first played, I spent most of the game figuring out how everything worked. After I got through the game the first time, I would go back and play through again with different starters and such, and of course use the missingo glich to the max once I found out about that one, until yellow when they fixed it. I generally only caught a few pokemon and had a team of 5-6 that I trained, usually including several high-level pokemon caught through the missingo glich. And of course, my starter, bulbasaur. Yellow was the first version I actually went the distance with and caught all 150 pokemon on, after which I promptly lost the game for about 6 years until it literally fell on my head.

Silver/gold: Man, I had fun with these versions. Started out with Chikorita, keeping with grass starters. Caught whatever pokemon I thought looked cool, like the shiny Gyrados, and trained until I beat all the gyms and elite four. Always tried to evolve my Eevee into Espeon, which the first time, happened at mount moon at level 56 due to me having no clue how to boost friendship. After a while though, I got the hang of it and was evolving shortly after I got Eevee. I would go through kanto, beat red, then restart and go through again with a different starter.

Crystal: At first, I played this pretty much the same as silver and gold, but then I got a gameshark. When I got that, I would pretty much play through with whatever pokemon I liked, making up a sort of fan-fiction story to go along with it, or testing out how my team in the fan-fiction would work. I went though the whole game with just Eevee and its evolutions, just an articuno I raised from level one, or my personal favorite, just a blue mew. Heck, I still have that game saved to the cartridge, with the almost completed pokedex I finally gave up on because it was taking to long.

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/FR/LG: The first time I went through these game like most before it, just going through with whatever pokemon I felt like catching. After that though, I started planning out my pokemon team beforehand, and actually care about Natures and trained a little for EV’s. Also, I started realizing that I had depended on legendaries far to much to beat the elite four, so I decided to stop using them.

Diamond/Pearl/ Platinum: Play through with my starter and 5 other well trained pokemon, catching everything as I went, maybe doing a little EV training on some weaker pokemon. After I beat the elite four I would really begin training a team for more competitive battling.

HG/SS: Well, I’m working my way though this still, starting once more with Chikorita, and catching whatever pokemon I felt like catching and training. Doing a little EV training, like right now I’m battling Goldeen to raise my Gyrados’s attack and… Oh shiny Goldeen! Wait a second….

Ok, I caught it. Anyway, once I get through the game, I’ll probably focus more on raising a competitive battling team once I get through everything else.
 
For me playing in-game is the only time where you can forget about EV training and just go in and have fun with your favorite pokemon. Then things like Battle Tower/Frontier is when I get back into being competative ingame-wise.
 
For SS I've been EV training a lot more than I really should be. I've only given 3/4 points away to my Quilava than I should of. Basically at the start there's loads of areas to level up in Speed and Attack, but not so much SpAtk, so my Cyndaquil didn't gain as many levels as say my Rattata or Pidgey. I'd then lead my team with a Pokémon I'm not planning on using, Bellsprout or Sentrent, in case I got into any random battles that messed up my evs. When in battle I will then check Bulbapedia to see what kind of Pokémon I'm up against and then switch accordingly, which puts me at a disadvantage cause they automatically get the first hit.

So right now I have a Raticate and a Pidgeotto that's higher levelled than the Pokémon I'm actually planning to use in game; my red Gyarados (Natsy), my Quilava (Alejandro), my Skiploom (Dumpweed).

The only bad part about doing it this way is that I hate my strongest Pokémon and I can't play the game away from my computer unless I somehow learn all the ev points by heart. Really can't wait to get to Blackthorn and hope I get some Effort Ribbons.
 
You should never be trying to EV train your team in-game. The story mode is to have fun, and EV training isn't even that much of a help. Don't make yourself miserable and just be a kid again and have a blast.

I mean, if Cyrus is telling you to loosen up and have fun, then you really should.
 
Ironically ev training has been a lot more fun than usual :P I hate my Pidgeot and Raticate because they are my strongest and if I'm in doubt of the evs a Pokémon gives out I just use them. So when I reach a gym battle and I'm horribly underlevelled and need to kill everything with a Raticate I send out my Gyarados and spam Leer until it faints (so it doesn't get the evs) then send in one of the weaker Pokémon to capitalise on the weakened defence. Honestly, my wafer thin Skiploom has been taking down Pokémon twice it's level, I love it.

A lot of revives though x]
 
On my first playthrough, I find EV training to take too much time and more work than necessary. Later on, I EV train, but not immediately. I like to plan a team ahead of time, but this time in HG, I had a bit more issues deciding. I knew i wanted Espeon and Crobat, but I was stuck between Kingdra and Starmie (picked Starmie), Typhlosion and Arcanine (picked Typhlosion), Ampharos and Electabuzz (picked Electabuzz [from pokewalker]), and my last slot was a random bunch, ranging from the cow pokemon, Kangaskhan, and Donphan. I ended up finding Larvitar in the Safari Zone, so I opted for that. I am interested in playing a themed one, something like Eeveelutions, or based off a trainers pokemon (show or manga). That would be fun.
 
I plan my team meticulously, often spending days deciding upon which of the pokemon I fancy will make the cut for my in-game adventure. Arcanine is a frequent choice given it is my favorite pokemon and successfully maintaining him in competitive play is difficult and not entirely partical. Nevertheless he will bow in favor of Houndoom, whom I have not used since playing the original Gold, oh so many years previous. I debated relentlessly between Espeon/Gengar, Kingdra/Feraligatr and Swellow/Crobat, eventually opting for latter in all three respective categories. In my FireRed file I had no means by which to evolve Haunter, so now with Wi Fi, I intend to do just that.

Anyhow if you had not realized already, I breed from a previous generation and trade over immediately following the restriction removal. Although it may be preceived strange, I prefer hatching on the current file, thus avoiding the EXP bonus due to diminishing the already light challenge and admittedly because I fancy the delusion of them being "this trainer's pokemon."

As of late I had begun developing a storyline to some degree to compliment the trainer. For example I played a female trainer who bred eevees, thus her team consisted entirely of eeveelutions, although I never did conclude that file. Since then I find mysef choosing the female trainer because the character design is simply superior in my opinion, and in every file her name and that of her rival is a name I would likely name a future child. Yes call it cheesy however c'est la vie.

There you have it, how I play my Pokemon adventure. Now perhaps I should play the game instead of planning to play it, XD

Edit: If you were curious, the final member of my team will be Sceptile. In addition those names were... (started this only with Diamond and on)

Diamond - Amber/Dawson
Platinum - Alicia/Dawson
HeartGold - Selene/Marcus (Unintentional Underworld reference there)

Oh and finally I provide each of my five main pokemon with a Japanese nickname dervied upon their element type, appear or whatever enters the mind. HM Slave for the useless slot filler because I am a heartless person and must reaffirm Bibarel's failure at life. :P
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top