Unpopular opinions

[pika pal]

Reading through my guide for Emerald was a fun aspect of my childhood playthrough, and I also enjoyed reading through the guidebooks for Diamond/Pearl and Red/Blue Rescue Team even though I didn't own those games (I think I stole the books from my cousins' house). I feel like something that something that might be lost on people that didn't read them is that they were filled with a lot of official art and often some genuinely entertaining writing. The three books I had were written in the tone of voice of someone summarizing plot points and sharing tips with a friend. They weren't just dry lists of every secret and how to find them.

I'm surprised I haven't heard of any companies printing classic-style strategy guides for like preorder bonuses or something. It seems like it'd be a fun way to cash in on nostalgia.

Not Pokemon related but one of my favorites was the Paper Mario: TTYD guide from Nintendo Power I believe. The game used a visual map to basically point to everything and instead of long area descriptors, instead did captioned highlights for points of interest. Because of this short highlight-focused format, the writer decided to have some fun with quips. One of my favorites was the suggestion that Mario respond to a threatening message by beating up his Ch. 3 Opponents with a Steel chair (since the area was a big Wrestling homage). Or this bit from Chapter 7

"Considering most of the Bob-ombs speak with Russian accents, those of you who grew up in the '60s may feel a bit nervous when you see the enormous weapon rise from a silo. Resist the urge to hide under a desk and tuck your head between your legs."

I think this is what I miss about these kinds of game secrets and why I didn't mind guides as much in those days: there was a certain voice and the secrets were an addition to the experience instead of a bullet point on the back of the box, which extended to the guides paying notice to how obscure or amusingly weird some of the secrets were. Nowadays it feels like a lot of the secrets are just about the prize itself or simply being obscure so they can say "it'll take dozens of hours to find everything!" in bloated games (even Nintendo goes overboard at times with things like 100% to Odyssey or BOTW). Pokemon's case with this for me is the decline of how Mythicals have been handled since they became an acknowledged concept: in Gen 2-5 the Mythicals and the like had events with cutscenes and talk attached to give them context, so encountering them felt like you were part of a club, seeing something not everyone would or had been speculating on forever. Even in B2W2 where the Mythicals were distributed directly they still included scenes for them like Keldeo acknowledging this lore or showing stuff you wouldn't see without them.

I guess tag that on as an opinion of mine: Even if capturing makes SR-ing/Perfect Mon hunting much harder for Mythicals, I much prefer it in terms of the game experience to simple direct distribution. This in the context of Pokemon having to be Mythical to begin with (I much prefer game-justified "normal" encounters like Deoxys got in ORAS for example)

 

[Kurona]

I always thought the Day/Night cycle was pretty cute. It doesn't work for PLA so I'm glad they didn't use it there, but otherwise it's just a pretty fun thing to have in the games. The way SwSh handled it though - it's only in the Wild Areas, and towns/cities are always one particular time of day - was very weird.

 

[Celever]

I love the day/night cycle exclusively because of Rotom. All-but forcing kids to play their DS under the covers at midnight is wonderful game design that I'm sure left a nice imprint on a lot of younger players, I know that it did for me.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

A rave on Pokemon selection in Johto, and the level curve.

Someone who actually likes Johto Syndrome? And the Johto level curve? I don't think I have seen the likes of this before. I wish I could stay quiet and just let this pass by, but it seems like it isn't possible.

Let's rave.

Let's look at where we get them in Gold/Silver (and Crystal)

Since you are only talking about G/S/C and not HG/SS, I will do the same.

You listed where the Pokémon can be found. But how easy is it to find them? Let's take a look at that. I won’t go into full details because it feels pointless and it would take too long, so here’s a short summary:

The starters, Togepi and Sudowoodo are all elusive as you only get one of them.
Qwilfish and Remoraid (G/S) require a swarm, otherwise they can’t be found.
Dunsparce, Yanma, Marill and Snubbull are mythological outside of swarms. Snubbull is easier to find in Crystal though.
The following are uncommon/rare and appear only in one area: Mantine, Skarmory, Wobbuffet, Delibird, Gligar, Sunkern, Unown, Miltank, Swinub, Natu and Smeargle. The final two also require heavy backtracking and many HMs.
Some require a special method in the form of Headbutt or Rock Smash. And even so, it is not guaranteed that you get one. I think it is still okay though, it could be worse.
The following are the only ones that are actually common: Hoothoot, Hoppip and Wooper.

While the Johto Pokémon are available throughout the games, finding them will not always be easy. Early availability (relatively speaking) does not make up for them being a pain to find. While I think it is okay for every region/generation to have a few rare/uncommon Pokémon, I think Johto has way too many.

The Kanto-exclusive ones will be talked about later, so I won’t say anything about them for now.

Crystal: Really, only three of them gain much from this: Phanpy, Teddiursa and Sneasel.

Yeah, Crystal didn’t change all that much here, sadly. But it was better than nothing!

I want to talk about the midgame because that's where the level curve arguments come from. GSC, in my opinion, really lets you take the training wheels off midgame, in contrast to newer games that have a defined path they want you to go in. Its well known that you can do Chuck, Jasmine and Pryce's gyms in whatever order you want (which is why they all are around the same level, because if they weren't, there would still be a defined pathway they want you to take.

This is the issue. The games aren’t linear enough. I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally prefer having a set path to go through when it comes to Pokémon (and gameplay-driven RPGs in general). The way they set it up in Johto means that you will either be underleveled towards the end of the game, or you will have to grind a lot.

When you get past Clair, you still face Pokémon in the 20-30 range all the way to the E4, whose Pokémon range from level 40-50. The problem continues in Kanto where wild Pokémon are mostly at levels 5-25 while the Gym Leader teams are at 33-58, giving you no chance to train against wild Pokémon during the entirety of Kanto. Regular trainers aren’t very strong either, giving too little experience. Taking a quick look now, they seem to mostly have Pokémon in the 20-30 range, which is way too low. I can understand that they decided to have low levels in Johto to go along with the “exploration aspect”, but there’s no excuse for the low levels in Kanto. You have already beaten a guy with a level 50 Dragonite and you are facing Gym leaders with Pokemon around those levels, so why are you facing wild Pidgey at level 3? Bad game design, that's why.

And once you are done with Kanto, you get access to Mt. Silver. Finally some strong wild Pokémon and trainers! Right? Nope. Wild Pokémon now reach level 40+, 50 at the very best. There are no regular trainers, and when you get to Red, his team is at level 70-80. Overall, the bad level curve makes the Johto games very grindy, requiring you to spend a of time on training. Time that could have been spent on other, more enjoyable things. Speaking as someone who generally likes training Pokémon in the games, the main reason the Johto games are my least favorites is because of their bad training spots.

And once you defeat the seventh gym, you do get the request to go to the Radio Tower, but you can totally skip it and go explore Ice Path and Route 45 first (unlike in HGSS, the Slowpoke Tail guy only blocks you until you have the seventh badge). All of this has to be in consideration when designing the wild Pokemon because GameFreak left you the option to get them early. If you want to get a Girafarig before Morty (great choice btw!), go for it. If you need that Swinub to do the Rocket Tower to get some extra levels before Clair, go for it. That's why grinding for Clair is a pain, because they gave you the option to get here at the early 30s.

Can you really do this in G/S? From what I have heard, it is possible in Crystal but not G/S. I haven’t tested it myself so I can’t say.

And once more, if the levels were low because they wanted you to be able to explore more areas, that feels like bad game design to me.

"But why not just do a more linear game and boost the level curve?"
Why is that worth limiting player choice and exploration. This is a game that wanted to take some risks and it paid off, big time. There really isn't a mainline game that gives you this much freedom. You do have the Celedon/Fuschia/Saffron/Cinnabar gyms being relatively up to player choice (though Fuschia must be cleared before Cinnabar due to Surf. There is also a well defined level curve that encourages doing Celedon first and Cinnabar last). Otherwise there really isn't much room in other games that GameFreak lets you explore. In Gen 2, this flatter level curve is a conscious design choice to really encourage player exploration.

This is not true. You can have a game that is both linear (or has a clear progession), but offers room for exploration at the same time. I think the two most notable regions in Pokémon that do this the best are Sinnoh and Unova. Both have a clear progression but also offers several optional areas to explore along the way. Notably the Old Chateau, Wayward Cave and Iron Island in Sinnoh, as well as the Desert Resort, Lostlorn Forest and the Castelia Sewers in Unova. Plus many other optional areas and extenstions of mandatory areas. These regions also allow you, just like Johto, to open up more areas once you get HMs. For instance, Surf gives you access to Fuego Ironworks in Sinnoh or Mistralton Cave in Unova.

In addition, I think Hoenn and Kalos also encourage exploration in a similar way because they also have several optional areas you can explore, just not as many as Sinnoh or Unova. The DLC areas for S/S offer a lot of optional areas for exploration as well. And then there’s Hisui. While I have many issues with Legends, I think it totally aced it with the exploration aspect as you have very large optional areas to explore everywhere, while still having a functional level curve. So I think the other regions handled this way better than Johto did.

How would you say it paid off in Johto? You get a few Pokémon available earlier, and... that's it? Not worth it if you ask me. The game took risks, it gave some room for exploration (which most other regions also did but better) but it came at the cost of ruining the level curve.

On the whole, I’d say that non-linearity in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is frustrating when it is done without benefits. When it comes to Pokémon, I find non-linearity to be pointless at best (Kanto) and harmful at worst (Johto).

"But why are six of the families Kanto-only?"
Again, this encourages exploration. It makes these Pokemon feel special. As there isn't a Johto dex (its a renumbered National Dex), these are going to be some holes that need to be filled up in your PokeDex. Given the completely non-linear nature of Kanto, you do have some fun hunting for the last few new mons as you complete the dex.

The big question is why in the world they decided to make some Johto Pokémon only available in Kanto. It would have made more sense if they had focused on the Johto Pokémon in Johto, and the Kanto Pokémon in Kanto. It doesn't really make a difference for the Pokédex if the missing ones are from Kanto or Johto, hunting them down will be the same anyway.

Let's take a look at these Pokémon:
Showcasing Houndour/Murkrow/Sneasel early and then making them available much later feels like a bad decision. It creates an almost unfair situation for the player since opponents have Pokémon you can only get until much later.
Yeah, they really tried their best to make Dark-types feel special annoyingly hard and rare to get. Umbreon is the only one to be available before the E4. Really great way to show a completely new type, totally better than how X/Y showcased the Fairy-type! Not. While they did a somewhat better job with the Steel-type, I think it could have been handled better as well.
For Misdreavus, I'd say it is the opposite. Having it as a rare encounter in the last area is just what makes forgotten. Because of the way it was handled, few people will even know about it. If it had been available earlier and if Morty had used one (he really should), I think it would have been less forgotten.
Not sure why they decided to make Slugma only available in Kanto. They could have put it somewhere in Johto and it would just have been fine.

I guess I'm just echoing what Siggu said earlier, making these Pokémon available only in the post-game makes them feel useless and forgotten, not special.

"But why do we care about exploration?"
Because that's how you find the new mons, silly.

Yeah. If it had actually been easy to find them, that is. Compare this to other regions which both encourage exploration and do a great job at showcasing their new Pokémon. Some do it very well (Kanto, Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh, Unova), some do it okay (Kalos, Galar), some not so good (D/P Sinnoh, Alola). But I'd say all of them did a better job at it than G/S/C and Johto.

Personally, I consider Pokémon to be gameplay-driven rather than exploration-driven. While exploration is a part of the series, it was never the most important aspect of the games. Catching, training and battling is the most important thing in the series. For me personally, if nothing else.

Gen 2 does an amazing job at showcasing its new castmates through its new gameplay mechanics.

I can't disagree more. If anything, I think G/S/C did a terrible job at showcasing the new Pokémon through the new gameplay mechanics.

Swarms require you to activate them first, the Pokémon in question are otherwise mythological. You need the phone number to the correct trainer, then you must call them or wait for them to call you and hope that they will activate the swarm. And on top of that, you have a limit of 10 phone numbers. You also need to know which trainer activates which swarm. While there is a way to exploit this, I think there are a lot of players who don't know the method for it. I did personally not learn about it until last year.

I think Headbutt is an okay method, but certain Pokémon that are exclusive to it only appear in some areas, or even in some specific trees. It is better than the others, but you can be better than garbage and still belong in the dumpster.

The time-specific ones require you to play at different times since you can't change the time on G/S/C. Unless you restart? Not sure. Don't know how it works on the VC versions on the 3DS either. Other people have already explained the issues with this so I won't say more here. I am very happy that they abandoned the stupid old time system in L:A and made a new one which isn't tied to the time set on the console/cart, yet another thing that L:A did right which I hope will be the new standard for the series from here on.

Between these mechanics, we've actually covered most of the new families. The only ones left have to do with the cross-gen families, which, again, show off new mechanics!

Do they show off new mechanics? Yes. Are they doing a good job at it? No.

From what I remember when I played G/S/C as a kid (it was very long ago, so my memories are not particularly clear), I don’t recall that the game itself showcased breeding very well. And even if it did, there were very few hints towards baby Pokémon apart from Togepi which you got automatically anyway.

In order to get the baby, you need either a female parent along with a male parent it can breed with, or a parent of either gender and a Ditto. How and when do you get the parents for the baby Pokémon?

Pikachu: Kanto only, rare
Clefairy: Kanto only, rare
Jynx: Rare and available late
Jigglypuff: Rare
Electabuzz: Kanto only
Magmar: Rare in G/S, Kanto only in Crystal

Tyrogue is a bit different. It does not require breeding, instead, it is an elusive gift Pokémon you can get... after backtracking through Mt. Mortar with a lot of HMs and beating the Black Belt who resides there. And you need an empty spot in your party to get it.

Crystal is a little better thanks to the Odd Egg, giving you one of the baby Pokémon for free, but only one.

I think other games did the concept better by having some baby Pokémon in the wild. Notably the Sinnoh games where you can find wild Budew, Mime Jr. and Bonsly.

As for the trade evolutions, I don't think they were particularly good either. First you need to know that certain Pokémon evolve by trading when holding a certain item, and then you need to obtain said item as well. Metal Coat and Up-Grade are post-game only, while the others are one-time only. You are correct that some wild Pokémon can be found holding those items. At what rates? 2%, which means you must be very lucky or have a lot of patience in order to find the items through that method.

Friendship is an okay mechanic, but it can take a very long time for the Pokémon to reach a high enough friendship level to evolve. As for the Pokémon that evolve through it, Chansey is a mythological encounter in the post-game while Eevee is elusive, making Crobat the only relatively easy one to get (although Eevee is a gift, so you have a chance of getting one of the Johto Eeveelutions at least).

You get Bellossom from using a Sun Stone on Gloom. But how do you get a Sun Stone? Through winning the Bug-Catching Contest. Which is only held on certain days, and winning it can be very tough from what I remember. I know I'm far from the only one who have experienced this:

In the end, I think that Johto does a bad job at showcasing its own Pokémon. Many Johto Pokémon are only found in one area, often at low rates as well. Others require complicated mechanics to obtain, which the game does not always tell you about. And some are only available during the post-game.

We know from the beta that this connection was going to be further emphasized. The new Pokemon were intentionally very complimentary towards the Kanto dex.

We know from the beta that babies were going to be further expanded on, really selling this as a mechanic. There were plans for babies for: Tangela, Vulpix, Goldeen, Paras, Doduo, Meowth, Ponyta, Growlithe, Grimer and Mr. Mime (while still keeping all of the current baby mons). This was supposed to be a huge mechanic.

All of the new evolutions were here as well, with new ones for: Tangela, Ditto, Lickitung, Farfetch'd and Pinsir, a split evolution Weepinbell, and proto-Leafeon. This adds up to 34 Pokemon (the real and the cut ones), or about a third of what was planned. This shows that Gen 2's identity in Pokemon design was always about complementing the existing Pokemon, rather than replacing them. Hell, we didn't even get Sentret as our regional rodent in the beta, nor Tyranitar as a psuedo (Dragonite keeps the spotlight). In contrary, Pidgey/Hoothoot were always complementary (time of day), which carried to the final build.

The beta is interesting, that much is for sure. It is cool how many more baby Pokémon there were going to be, and some new evos as well. Some that we sort of saw later in the forms of Mime Jr., Tangrowth, Lickilicky, Sirfetch’d, Leafeon and Mega Pinsir. I think most of the scrapped baby Pokémon were really cute, makes me wish they had made it into the final games.

I wonder what the Johto games would have been like if they had been more like the beta? Better or worse? Different at least, that's for sure.

In closing of this probably quite unpopular opinion, I think GSC's level curve and Pokemon availability really show off the game's intended emphasis on exploration, and its a level of exploration that I still don't think has been passed by another Pokemon game.

Parts of this is definitely quite unpopular. I have seen people praise the openness of the Johto games many times in the past, but I have rarely seen anyone say that they like the level curve and the Pokémon distribution. As for exploration, I don’t think I have seen this argument before either. Nonetheless, I disagree with all of your opinions. I think the Pokémon distribution in Johto is the worst in the series and that the Johto games completely fail to showcase their new Pokémon in a good way. I think all other generations do a batter job at showcasing their new pokemon, notably Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh and Unova, as well as Kanto (though there was no choice as it only had new Pokémon by default). I think Kalos and Galar were okay, D/P Sinnoh and Alola had issues but they were better than Johto at least.

I am not a fan of the level curve since it makes it a pain to grind, especially together with the lack of good training spots. As for exploration, I said earlier that I think other regions do this much better, notably Sinnoh and Unova, but also Hoenn and Kalos.

With all that said, I can’t hate too much on G/S/C. They were good for their time despite their flaws, I had a lot of fun with them back in the day. Instead, I think the big offenders here are HG/SS which had an opportunity to fix the issues with G/S/C, but they did nothing. Instead, they kept most of the issues from G/S/C but not all of the good things, and that’s a big shame.

Some other things I want to talk a little about. One thing that was mentioned is that there is no point in training any new Pokémon when you have beaten the game. And that's mostly true. But for me personally, it doesn't matter if there's no point. I like to train new Pokémon for fun, during the post-game or even during the post-post-game. It is something I have done in all generations and most games, all the way from R/B to Sword. I think it is just really fun. I did it back in G/S/C as well, I remember that I even trained some of the end-game Pokémon such as Sneasel and Tyranitar. I can’t speak for the young fans of today but there’s a chance some of them are doing the same as I did (and am still doing to an extent).

The discussion of using guides for the games came up as well. When I was young, I had some guides for the early games. R/B (not Yellow), G/S, Crystal and 2 different ones for R/S. They were fun to read and they helped me with a lot of things in the games which I would never have found out about on my own. But they weren’t perfect. They were lacking regarding several things, so there were some I didn’t find out about even with the guides.

Nowadays though, there’s no real need for guides. I stopped using guides past R/S because I had the internet instead, there were sites like Serebii which had more and better information than the guides, and for free. As for the younger players of today, most kids have a smartphone nowadays, so they can just easily find the information they look for on the internet (as long as they are smart enough). Maybe they won’t use sites like Serebii or Bulbapedia like many of us older fans do, but there’s Youtube and Google at least.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

The following are the only ones that are actually common: Hoothoot, Hoppip and Wooper.

Don't forget Mareep.

I think the big offenders here are HG/SS which had an opportunity to fix the issues with G/S/C, but they did nothing. Instead, they kept most of the issues from G/S/C but not all of the good things, and that’s a big shame.

THIS.

 

[Peridorito]

The big question is why in the world they decided to make some Johto Pokémon only available in Kanto. It would have made more sense if they had focused on the Johto Pokémon in Johto, and the Kanto Pokémon in Kanto. It doesn't really make a difference for the Pokédex if the missing ones are from Kanto or Johto, hunting them down will be the same anyway.

The reason for that is that is the 100 new Pokémon introduced in Gen II weren't supposed to be "Johto Pokémon". Remember, that was the first time ever that new Pokémon were added. Nowadays, it is the norm for every gen to introduce a new region with new Pokémon that are native to it. But that wasn't the case back then. The new Pokémon in Gold/Silver aren't presented as being native to Johto, they are presented as species that were always there in the Pokémon world, including in Kanto, but humans had never found and catalogued them. The dex in those games isn't even called the "Johto Pokédex", it's called the "New Pokédex", because it's a new, updated dex with all the mons that were discovered and catalogued in the 3 years since the events of the Gen I games. So that explains why some of the new mons are found only in Kanto, and why most of them are so rare: they were always there living in that world, but no person had ever found them because of their rarity.

Of course, that doesn't mean anyone has to like how rare the new mons are and that some of them are locked to post-game, but it explains why they are so rare from a lore perspective.

 

[aegon the unlikely]

Someone who actually likes Johto Syndrome? And the Johto level curve? I don't think I have seen the likes of this before. I wish I could stay quiet and just let this pass by, but it seems like it isn't possible.

Let's rave.

Since you are only talking about G/S/C and not HG/SS, I will do the same.

You listed where the Pokémon can be found. But how easy is it to find them? Let's take a look at that. I won’t go into full details because it feels pointless and it would take too long, so here’s a short summary:

The starters, Togepi and Sudowoodo are all elusive as you only get one of them.
Qwilfish and Remoraid (G/S) require a swarm, otherwise they can’t be found.
Dunsparce, Yanma, Marill and Snubbull are mythological outside of swarms. Snubbull is easier to find in Crystal though.
The following are uncommon/rare and appear only in one area: Mantine, Skarmory, Wobbuffet, Delibird, Gligar, Sunkern, Unown, Miltank, Swinub, Natu and Smeargle. The final two also require heavy backtracking and many HMs.
Some require a special method in the form of Headbutt or Rock Smash. And even so, it is not guaranteed that you get one. I think it is still okay though, it could be worse.
The following are the only ones that are actually common: Hoothoot, Hoppip and Wooper.

While the Johto Pokémon are available throughout the games, finding them will not always be easy. Early availability (relatively speaking) does not make up for them being a pain to find. While I think it is okay for every region/generation to have a few rare/uncommon Pokémon, I think Johto has way too many.

The Kanto-exclusive ones will be talked about later, so I won’t say anything about them for now.

Yeah, Crystal didn’t change all that much here, sadly. But it was better than nothing!

This is the issue. The games aren’t linear enough. I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally prefer having a set path to go through when it comes to Pokémon (and gameplay-driven RPGs in general). The way they set it up in Johto means that you will either be underleveled towards the end of the game, or you will have to grind a lot.

When you get past Clair, you still face Pokémon in the 20-30 range all the way to the E4, whose Pokémon range from level 40-50. The problem continues in Kanto where wild Pokémon are mostly at levels 5-25 while the Gym Leader teams are at 33-58, giving you no chance to train against wild Pokémon during the entirety of Kanto. Regular trainers aren’t very strong either, giving too little experience. Taking a quick look now, they seem to mostly have Pokémon in the 20-30 range, which is way too low. I can understand that they decided to have low levels in Johto to go along with the “exploration aspect”, but there’s no excuse for the low levels in Kanto. You have already beaten a guy with a level 50 Dragonite and you are facing Gym leaders with Pokemon around those levels, so why are you facing wild Pidgey at level 3? Bad game design, that's why.

And once you are done with Kanto, you get access to Mt. Silver. Finally some strong wild Pokémon and trainers! Right? Nope. Wild Pokémon now reach level 40+, 50 at the very best. There are no regular trainers, and when you get to Red, his team is at level 70-80. Overall, the bad level curve makes the Johto games very grindy, requiring you to spend a of time on training. Time that could have been spent on other, more enjoyable things. Speaking as someone who generally likes training Pokémon in the games, the main reason the Johto games are my least favorites is because of their bad training spots.

Can you really do this in G/S? From what I have heard, it is possible in Crystal but not G/S. I haven’t tested it myself so I can’t say.

And once more, if the levels were low because they wanted you to be able to explore more areas, that feels like bad game design to me.

This is not true. You can have a game that is both linear (or has a clear progession), but offers room for exploration at the same time. I think the two most notable regions in Pokémon that do this the best are Sinnoh and Unova. Both have a clear progression but also offers several optional areas to explore along the way. Notably the Old Chateau, Wayward Cave and Iron Island in Sinnoh, as well as the Desert Resort, Lostlorn Forest and the Castelia Sewers in Unova. Plus many other optional areas and extenstions of mandatory areas. These regions also allow you, just like Johto, to open up more areas once you get HMs. For instance, Surf gives you access to Fuego Ironworks in Sinnoh or Mistralton Cave in Unova.

In addition, I think Hoenn and Kalos also encourage exploration in a similar way because they also have several optional areas you can explore, just not as many as Sinnoh or Unova. The DLC areas for S/S offer a lot of optional areas for exploration as well. And then there’s Hisui. While I have many issues with Legends, I think it totally aced it with the exploration aspect as you have very large optional areas to explore everywhere, while still having a functional level curve. So I think the other regions handled this way better than Johto did.

How would you say it paid off in Johto? You get a few Pokémon available earlier, and... that's it? Not worth it if you ask me. The game took risks, it gave some room for exploration (which most other regions also did but better) but it came at the cost of ruining the level curve.

On the whole, I’d say that non-linearity in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is frustrating when it is done without benefits. When it comes to Pokémon, I find non-linearity to be pointless at best (Kanto) and harmful at worst (Johto).

The big question is why in the world they decided to make some Johto Pokémon only available in Kanto. It would have made more sense if they had focused on the Johto Pokémon in Johto, and the Kanto Pokémon in Kanto. It doesn't really make a difference for the Pokédex if the missing ones are from Kanto or Johto, hunting them down will be the same anyway.

Let's take a look at these Pokémon:
Showcasing Houndour/Murkrow/Sneasel early and then making them available much later feels like a bad decision. It creates an almost unfair situation for the player since opponents have Pokémon you can only get until much later.
Yeah, they really tried their best to make Dark-types feel special annoyingly hard and rare to get. Umbreon is the only one to be available before the E4. Really great way to show a completely new type, totally better than how X/Y showcased the Fairy-type! Not. While they did a somewhat better job with the Steel-type, I think it could have been handled better as well.
For Misdreavus, I'd say it is the opposite. Having it as a rare encounter in the last area is just what makes forgotten. Because of the way it was handled, few people will even know about it. If it had been available earlier and if Morty had used one (he really should), I think it would have been less forgotten.
Not sure why they decided to make Slugma only available in Kanto. They could have put it somewhere in Johto and it would just have been fine.

I guess I'm just echoing what Siggu said earlier, making these Pokémon available only in the post-game makes them feel useless and forgotten, not special.

Yeah. If it had actually been easy to find them, that is. Compare this to other regions which both encourage exploration and do a great job at showcasing their new Pokémon. Some do it very well (Kanto, Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh, Unova), some do it okay (Kalos, Galar), some not so good (D/P Sinnoh, Alola). But I'd say all of them did a better job at it than G/S/C and Johto.

Personally, I consider Pokémon to be gameplay-driven rather than exploration-driven. While exploration is a part of the series, it was never the most important aspect of the games. Catching, training and battling is the most important thing in the series. For me personally, if nothing else.

I can't disagree more. If anything, I think G/S/C did a terrible job at showcasing the new Pokémon through the new gameplay mechanics.

Swarms require you to activate them first, the Pokémon in question are otherwise mythological. You need the phone number to the correct trainer, then you must call them or wait for them to call you and hope that they will activate the swarm. And on top of that, you have a limit of 10 phone numbers. You also need to know which trainer activates which swarm. While there is a way to exploit this, I think there are a lot of players who don't know the method for it. I did personally not learn about it until last year.

I think Headbutt is an okay method, but certain Pokémon that are exclusive to it only appear in some areas, or even in some specific trees. It is better than the others, but you can be better than garbage and still belong in the dumpster.

The time-specific ones require you to play at different times since you can't change the time on G/S/C. Unless you restart? Not sure. Don't know how it works on the VC versions on the 3DS either. Other people have already explained the issues with this so I won't say more here. I am very happy that they abandoned the stupid old time system in L:A and made a new one which isn't tied to the time set on the console/cart, yet another thing that L:A did right which I hope will be the new standard for the series from here on.

Do they show off new mechanics? Yes. Are they doing a good job at it? No.

From what I remember when I played G/S/C as a kid (it was very long ago, so my memories are not particularly clear), I don’t recall that the game itself showcased breeding very well. And even if it did, there were very few hints towards baby Pokémon apart from Togepi which you got automatically anyway.

In order to get the baby, you need either a female parent along with a male parent it can breed with, or a parent of either gender and a Ditto. How and when do you get the parents for the baby Pokémon?

Pikachu: Kanto only, rare
Clefairy: Kanto only, rare
Jynx: Rare and available late
Jigglypuff: Rare
Electabuzz: Kanto only
Magmar: Rare in G/S, Kanto only in Crystal

Tyrogue is a bit different. It does not require breeding, instead, it is an elusive gift Pokémon you can get... after backtracking through Mt. Mortar with a lot of HMs and beating the Black Belt who resides there. And you need an empty spot in your party to get it.

Crystal is a little better thanks to the Odd Egg, giving you one of the baby Pokémon for free, but only one.

I think other games did the concept better by having some baby Pokémon in the wild. Notably the Sinnoh games where you can find wild Budew, Mime Jr. and Bonsly.

As for the trade evolutions, I don't think they were particularly good either. First you need to know that certain Pokémon evolve by trading when holding a certain item, and then you need to obtain said item as well. Metal Coat and Up-Grade are post-game only, while the others are one-time only. You are correct that some wild Pokémon can be found holding those items. At what rates? 2%, which means you must be very lucky or have a lot of patience in order to find the items through that method.

Friendship is an okay mechanic, but it can take a very long time for the Pokémon to reach a high enough friendship level to evolve. As for the Pokémon that evolve through it, Chansey is a mythological encounter in the post-game while Eevee is elusive, making Crobat the only relatively easy one to get (although Eevee is a gift, so you have a chance of getting one of the Johto Eeveelutions at least).

You get Bellossom from using a Sun Stone on Gloom. But how do you get a Sun Stone? Through winning the Bug-Catching Contest. Which is only held on certain days, and winning it can be very tough from what I remember. I know I'm far from the only one who have experienced this:

In the end, I think that Johto does a bad job at showcasing its own Pokémon. Many Johto Pokémon are only found in one area, often at low rates as well. Others require complicated mechanics to obtain, which the game does not always tell you about. And some are only available during the post-game.

The beta is interesting, that much is for sure. It is cool how many more baby Pokémon there were going to be, and some new evos as well. Some that we sort of saw later in the forms of Mime Jr., Tangrowth, Lickilicky, Sirfetch’d, Leafeon and Mega Pinsir. I think most of the scrapped baby Pokémon were really cute, makes me wish they had made it into the final games.

I wonder what the Johto games would have been like if they had been more like the beta? Better or worse? Different at least, that's for sure.

Parts of this is definitely quite unpopular. I have seen people praise the openness of the Johto games many times in the past, but I have rarely seen anyone say that they like the level curve and the Pokémon distribution. As for exploration, I don’t think I have seen this argument before either. Nonetheless, I disagree with all of your opinions. I think the Pokémon distribution in Johto is the worst in the series and that the Johto games completely fail to showcase their new Pokémon in a good way. I think all other generations do a batter job at showcasing their new pokemon, notably Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh and Unova, as well as Kanto (though there was no choice as it only had new Pokémon by default). I think Kalos and Galar were okay, D/P Sinnoh and Alola had issues but they were better than Johto at least.

I am not a fan of the level curve since it makes it a pain to grind, especially together with the lack of good training spots. As for exploration, I said earlier that I think other regions do this much better, notably Sinnoh and Unova, but also Hoenn and Kalos.

With all that said, I can’t hate too much on G/S/C. They were good for their time despite their flaws, I had a lot of fun with them back in the day. Instead, I think the big offenders here are HG/SS which had an opportunity to fix the issues with G/S/C, but they did nothing. Instead, they kept most of the issues from G/S/C but not all of the good things, and that’s a big shame.

Some other things I want to talk a little about. One thing that was mentioned is that there is no point in training any new Pokémon when you have beaten the game. And that's mostly true. But for me personally, it doesn't matter if there's no point. I like to train new Pokémon for fun, during the post-game or even during the post-post-game. It is something I have done in all generations and most games, all the way from R/B to Sword. I think it is just really fun. I did it back in G/S/C as well, I remember that I even trained some of the end-game Pokémon such as Sneasel and Tyranitar. I can’t speak for the young fans of today but there’s a chance some of them are doing the same as I did (and am still doing to an extent).

The discussion of using guides for the games came up as well. When I was young, I had some guides for the early games. R/B (not Yellow), G/S, Crystal and 2 different ones for R/S. They were fun to read and they helped me with a lot of things in the games which I would never have found out about on my own. But they weren’t perfect. They were lacking regarding several things, so there were some I didn’t find out about even with the guides.

Nowadays though, there’s no real need for guides. I stopped using guides past R/S because I had the internet instead, there were sites like Serebii which had more and better information than the guides, and for free. As for the younger players of today, most kids have a smartphone nowadays, so they can just easily find the information they look for on the internet (as long as they are smart enough). Maybe they won’t use sites like Serebii or Bulbapedia like many of us older fans do, but there’s Youtube and Google at least.

As a Johto fan, agreed on nearly every count. The lack of availability of Johto mons and Dark-types in general is criminal, IMO.

However, you can change time on GSC, and you can make trainers call you pretty easily.

For the former, there is a special site and code. For the latter, all you gotta do is turn DST on/off with your Mom until trainers call you.

 

[pharaohcalvin]

Someone who actually likes Johto Syndrome? And the Johto level curve? I don't think I have seen the likes of this before. I wish I could stay quiet and just let this pass by, but it seems like it isn't possible.

Let's rave.

Since you are only talking about G/S/C and not HG/SS, I will do the same.

You listed where the Pokémon can be found. But how easy is it to find them? Let's take a look at that. I won’t go into full details because it feels pointless and it would take too long, so here’s a short summary:

The starters, Togepi and Sudowoodo are all elusive as you only get one of them.
Qwilfish and Remoraid (G/S) require a swarm, otherwise they can’t be found.
Dunsparce, Yanma, Marill and Snubbull are mythological outside of swarms. Snubbull is easier to find in Crystal though.
The following are uncommon/rare and appear only in one area: Mantine, Skarmory, Wobbuffet, Delibird, Gligar, Sunkern, Unown, Miltank, Swinub, Natu and Smeargle. The final two also require heavy backtracking and many HMs.
Some require a special method in the form of Headbutt or Rock Smash. And even so, it is not guaranteed that you get one. I think it is still okay though, it could be worse.
The following are the only ones that are actually common: Hoothoot, Hoppip and Wooper.

While the Johto Pokémon are available throughout the games, finding them will not always be easy. Early availability (relatively speaking) does not make up for them being a pain to find. While I think it is okay for every region/generation to have a few rare/uncommon Pokémon, I think Johto has way too many.

The Kanto-exclusive ones will be talked about later, so I won’t say anything about them for now.

Yeah, Crystal didn’t change all that much here, sadly. But it was better than nothing!

This is the issue. The games aren’t linear enough. I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally prefer having a set path to go through when it comes to Pokémon (and gameplay-driven RPGs in general). The way they set it up in Johto means that you will either be underleveled towards the end of the game, or you will have to grind a lot.

When you get past Clair, you still face Pokémon in the 20-30 range all the way to the E4, whose Pokémon range from level 40-50. The problem continues in Kanto where wild Pokémon are mostly at levels 5-25 while the Gym Leader teams are at 33-58, giving you no chance to train against wild Pokémon during the entirety of Kanto. Regular trainers aren’t very strong either, giving too little experience. Taking a quick look now, they seem to mostly have Pokémon in the 20-30 range, which is way too low. I can understand that they decided to have low levels in Johto to go along with the “exploration aspect”, but there’s no excuse for the low levels in Kanto. You have already beaten a guy with a level 50 Dragonite and you are facing Gym leaders with Pokemon around those levels, so why are you facing wild Pidgey at level 3? Bad game design, that's why.

And once you are done with Kanto, you get access to Mt. Silver. Finally some strong wild Pokémon and trainers! Right? Nope. Wild Pokémon now reach level 40+, 50 at the very best. There are no regular trainers, and when you get to Red, his team is at level 70-80. Overall, the bad level curve makes the Johto games very grindy, requiring you to spend a of time on training. Time that could have been spent on other, more enjoyable things. Speaking as someone who generally likes training Pokémon in the games, the main reason the Johto games are my least favorites is because of their bad training spots.

Can you really do this in G/S? From what I have heard, it is possible in Crystal but not G/S. I haven’t tested it myself so I can’t say.

And once more, if the levels were low because they wanted you to be able to explore more areas, that feels like bad game design to me.

This is not true. You can have a game that is both linear (or has a clear progession), but offers room for exploration at the same time. I think the two most notable regions in Pokémon that do this the best are Sinnoh and Unova. Both have a clear progression but also offers several optional areas to explore along the way. Notably the Old Chateau, Wayward Cave and Iron Island in Sinnoh, as well as the Desert Resort, Lostlorn Forest and the Castelia Sewers in Unova. Plus many other optional areas and extenstions of mandatory areas. These regions also allow you, just like Johto, to open up more areas once you get HMs. For instance, Surf gives you access to Fuego Ironworks in Sinnoh or Mistralton Cave in Unova.

In addition, I think Hoenn and Kalos also encourage exploration in a similar way because they also have several optional areas you can explore, just not as many as Sinnoh or Unova. The DLC areas for S/S offer a lot of optional areas for exploration as well. And then there’s Hisui. While I have many issues with Legends, I think it totally aced it with the exploration aspect as you have very large optional areas to explore everywhere, while still having a functional level curve. So I think the other regions handled this way better than Johto did.

How would you say it paid off in Johto? You get a few Pokémon available earlier, and... that's it? Not worth it if you ask me. The game took risks, it gave some room for exploration (which most other regions also did but better) but it came at the cost of ruining the level curve.

On the whole, I’d say that non-linearity in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is frustrating when it is done without benefits. When it comes to Pokémon, I find non-linearity to be pointless at best (Kanto) and harmful at worst (Johto).

The big question is why in the world they decided to make some Johto Pokémon only available in Kanto. It would have made more sense if they had focused on the Johto Pokémon in Johto, and the Kanto Pokémon in Kanto. It doesn't really make a difference for the Pokédex if the missing ones are from Kanto or Johto, hunting them down will be the same anyway.

Let's take a look at these Pokémon:
Showcasing Houndour/Murkrow/Sneasel early and then making them available much later feels like a bad decision. It creates an almost unfair situation for the player since opponents have Pokémon you can only get until much later.
Yeah, they really tried their best to make Dark-types feel special annoyingly hard and rare to get. Umbreon is the only one to be available before the E4. Really great way to show a completely new type, totally better than how X/Y showcased the Fairy-type! Not. While they did a somewhat better job with the Steel-type, I think it could have been handled better as well.
For Misdreavus, I'd say it is the opposite. Having it as a rare encounter in the last area is just what makes forgotten. Because of the way it was handled, few people will even know about it. If it had been available earlier and if Morty had used one (he really should), I think it would have been less forgotten.
Not sure why they decided to make Slugma only available in Kanto. They could have put it somewhere in Johto and it would just have been fine.

I guess I'm just echoing what Siggu said earlier, making these Pokémon available only in the post-game makes them feel useless and forgotten, not special.

Yeah. If it had actually been easy to find them, that is. Compare this to other regions which both encourage exploration and do a great job at showcasing their new Pokémon. Some do it very well (Kanto, Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh, Unova), some do it okay (Kalos, Galar), some not so good (D/P Sinnoh, Alola). But I'd say all of them did a better job at it than G/S/C and Johto.

Personally, I consider Pokémon to be gameplay-driven rather than exploration-driven. While exploration is a part of the series, it was never the most important aspect of the games. Catching, training and battling is the most important thing in the series. For me personally, if nothing else.

I can't disagree more. If anything, I think G/S/C did a terrible job at showcasing the new Pokémon through the new gameplay mechanics.

Swarms require you to activate them first, the Pokémon in question are otherwise mythological. You need the phone number to the correct trainer, then you must call them or wait for them to call you and hope that they will activate the swarm. And on top of that, you have a limit of 10 phone numbers. You also need to know which trainer activates which swarm. While there is a way to exploit this, I think there are a lot of players who don't know the method for it. I did personally not learn about it until last year.

I think Headbutt is an okay method, but certain Pokémon that are exclusive to it only appear in some areas, or even in some specific trees. It is better than the others, but you can be better than garbage and still belong in the dumpster.

The time-specific ones require you to play at different times since you can't change the time on G/S/C. Unless you restart? Not sure. Don't know how it works on the VC versions on the 3DS either. Other people have already explained the issues with this so I won't say more here. I am very happy that they abandoned the stupid old time system in L:A and made a new one which isn't tied to the time set on the console/cart, yet another thing that L:A did right which I hope will be the new standard for the series from here on.

Do they show off new mechanics? Yes. Are they doing a good job at it? No.

From what I remember when I played G/S/C as a kid (it was very long ago, so my memories are not particularly clear), I don’t recall that the game itself showcased breeding very well. And even if it did, there were very few hints towards baby Pokémon apart from Togepi which you got automatically anyway.

In order to get the baby, you need either a female parent along with a male parent it can breed with, or a parent of either gender and a Ditto. How and when do you get the parents for the baby Pokémon?

Pikachu: Kanto only, rare
Clefairy: Kanto only, rare
Jynx: Rare and available late
Jigglypuff: Rare
Electabuzz: Kanto only
Magmar: Rare in G/S, Kanto only in Crystal

Tyrogue is a bit different. It does not require breeding, instead, it is an elusive gift Pokémon you can get... after backtracking through Mt. Mortar with a lot of HMs and beating the Black Belt who resides there. And you need an empty spot in your party to get it.

Crystal is a little better thanks to the Odd Egg, giving you one of the baby Pokémon for free, but only one.

I think other games did the concept better by having some baby Pokémon in the wild. Notably the Sinnoh games where you can find wild Budew, Mime Jr. and Bonsly.

As for the trade evolutions, I don't think they were particularly good either. First you need to know that certain Pokémon evolve by trading when holding a certain item, and then you need to obtain said item as well. Metal Coat and Up-Grade are post-game only, while the others are one-time only. You are correct that some wild Pokémon can be found holding those items. At what rates? 2%, which means you must be very lucky or have a lot of patience in order to find the items through that method.

Friendship is an okay mechanic, but it can take a very long time for the Pokémon to reach a high enough friendship level to evolve. As for the Pokémon that evolve through it, Chansey is a mythological encounter in the post-game while Eevee is elusive, making Crobat the only relatively easy one to get (although Eevee is a gift, so you have a chance of getting one of the Johto Eeveelutions at least).

You get Bellossom from using a Sun Stone on Gloom. But how do you get a Sun Stone? Through winning the Bug-Catching Contest. Which is only held on certain days, and winning it can be very tough from what I remember. I know I'm far from the only one who have experienced this:

In the end, I think that Johto does a bad job at showcasing its own Pokémon. Many Johto Pokémon are only found in one area, often at low rates as well. Others require complicated mechanics to obtain, which the game does not always tell you about. And some are only available during the post-game.

The beta is interesting, that much is for sure. It is cool how many more baby Pokémon there were going to be, and some new evos as well. Some that we sort of saw later in the forms of Mime Jr., Tangrowth, Lickilicky, Sirfetch’d, Leafeon and Mega Pinsir. I think most of the scrapped baby Pokémon were really cute, makes me wish they had made it into the final games.

I wonder what the Johto games would have been like if they had been more like the beta? Better or worse? Different at least, that's for sure.

Parts of this is definitely quite unpopular. I have seen people praise the openness of the Johto games many times in the past, but I have rarely seen anyone say that they like the level curve and the Pokémon distribution. As for exploration, I don’t think I have seen this argument before either. Nonetheless, I disagree with all of your opinions. I think the Pokémon distribution in Johto is the worst in the series and that the Johto games completely fail to showcase their new Pokémon in a good way. I think all other generations do a batter job at showcasing their new pokemon, notably Hoenn, Platinum Sinnoh and Unova, as well as Kanto (though there was no choice as it only had new Pokémon by default). I think Kalos and Galar were okay, D/P Sinnoh and Alola had issues but they were better than Johto at least.

I am not a fan of the level curve since it makes it a pain to grind, especially together with the lack of good training spots. As for exploration, I said earlier that I think other regions do this much better, notably Sinnoh and Unova, but also Hoenn and Kalos.

With all that said, I can’t hate too much on G/S/C. They were good for their time despite their flaws, I had a lot of fun with them back in the day. Instead, I think the big offenders here are HG/SS which had an opportunity to fix the issues with G/S/C, but they did nothing. Instead, they kept most of the issues from G/S/C but not all of the good things, and that’s a big shame.

Some other things I want to talk a little about. One thing that was mentioned is that there is no point in training any new Pokémon when you have beaten the game. And that's mostly true. But for me personally, it doesn't matter if there's no point. I like to train new Pokémon for fun, during the post-game or even during the post-post-game. It is something I have done in all generations and most games, all the way from R/B to Sword. I think it is just really fun. I did it back in G/S/C as well, I remember that I even trained some of the end-game Pokémon such as Sneasel and Tyranitar. I can’t speak for the young fans of today but there’s a chance some of them are doing the same as I did (and am still doing to an extent).

The discussion of using guides for the games came up as well. When I was young, I had some guides for the early games. R/B (not Yellow), G/S, Crystal and 2 different ones for R/S. They were fun to read and they helped me with a lot of things in the games which I would never have found out about on my own. But they weren’t perfect. They were lacking regarding several things, so there were some I didn’t find out about even with the guides.

Nowadays though, there’s no real need for guides. I stopped using guides past R/S because I had the internet instead, there were sites like Serebii which had more and better information than the guides, and for free. As for the younger players of today, most kids have a smartphone nowadays, so they can just easily find the information they look for on the internet (as long as they are smart enough). Maybe they won’t use sites like Serebii or Bulbapedia like many of us older fans do, but there’s Youtube and Google at least.

Just going to say...Kanto's levels in gen 2 reflect the levels of those routes from gen 1. It is world building continuity and something I personally really like and something I think really needs to be in these sorts of games. I mean...it is not realistic that Kanto after a couple years is suddenly over ran with level 40-55 mons.

 

[Siggu]

Just going to say...Kanto's levels in gen 2 reflect the levels of those routes from gen 1. It is world building continuity and something I personally really like and something I think really needs to be in these sorts of games. I mean...it is not realistic that Kanto after a couple years is suddenly over ran with level 40-55 mons.

Yeah, it's a continuity nod... which helps show why Acceptable Breaks From Reality is a thing, and why they did not do this for BW2.

 

[Kurona]

The complaint of certain Johto Pokémon only being available in Kanto has always been a bit strange to me... many games keep new Pokémon or evolution methods until the postgame, and in GSC/HGSS' case it's a lot more justified because Kanto isn't just the postgame, it's practically half the game. The rarity of the new Pokémon and the levels you get things at in Kanto are pretty bad, but there's nothing wrong with the concept of only finding Slugma and Murkrow once you're 60% into the game.

 

[Bella]

The fact that steel hits fairy super effectively is stupid. The resistance is fine, but the super effective made the best defensive type with an ok offensive movepool into just the flat out best type in the game. It basically made poison moves (which is the other type to hit fairy super effectively) uneeded and unused when the whole point of fairy being weak to them was to give them a needed offensive boost, it was literally the worst offensive type in the game pre gen 6, and the fairy type would have bought new life to poison types and made more of them viable in higher tiers, but they just HAD to give steel cause "oh it needed a offence boost" hitting rock and ice isnt bad. There was literally no point of it and it just made steels all the more broken.
oh yeah, and resuspect drizzle in bdsp ou.

 

[Ironmage]

The fact that steel hits fairy super effectively is stupid. The resistance is fine, but the super effective made the best defensive type with an ok offensive movepool into just the flat out best type in the game. It basically made poison moves (which is the other type to hit fairy super effectively) uneeded and unused when the whole point of fairy being weak to them was to give them a needed offensive boost, it was literally the worst offensive type in the game pre gen 6, and the fairy type would have bought new life to poison types and made more of them viable in higher tiers, but they just HAD to give steel cause "oh it needed a offence boost" hitting rock and ice isnt bad. There was literally no point of it and it just made steels all the more broken.
oh yeah, and resuspect drizzle in bdsp ou.

I may be biased here, but cold iron has been the main weakness of fairies in folklore, so Fairy not being weak to Steel would feel just as wrong as e.g. Ground not being weak to Water. I think the lack of use for poison types into fairies has more to do with a lot of fairy types having at least one of Psychic coverage and a secondary type that is better against poison than steel.

 

[Samtendo09]

I may be biased here, but cold iron has been the main weakness of fairies in folklore, so Fairy not being weak to Steel would feel just as wrong as e.g. Ground not being weak to Water. I think the lack of use for poison types into fairies has more to do with a lot of fairy types having at least one of Psychic coverage and a secondary type that is better against poison than steel.

A lot of Fairy learn Mystical Fire too vs Steel-type since Generation 7 or 8. Then again, with some of the most borked Pokémon alive being Fairy / Steel, and a lack of immunity vs Steel yet to exist, it’s not that hard to see why.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Steel hitting Fairy super effectively from a gameplay standpoint holds the same logic as to why Poison does. Much like with Dark and Steel back in Gen 2, Fairy's type matchups barring the Bug resistance are built on the premise of "nerf the best, buff the worst". Steel may be a strong defensive type, but prior to Gen 6 it was in fact an extremely poor offensive type, arguably the second worst offensive type behind Poison. Okay yeah it hits Rock and Ice...but that really wasn't saying much because both of those types are pretty bad defensively and it's completely redundant with Fighting. Meanwhile it was resisted by Water, Electric, and incidentally itself, and all three of those types are pretty powerful defensively. Both Poison and Steel were poor attacking types, so much so that many Poison and Steel-types themselves didn't even run a Poison or Steel attacking move because both types were offensively extremely poor (and that is of course adding to the fact that Poison and Steel were basically never run as coverage types). The very few exceptions were Jirachi's Iron Head and Scizor's Bullet Punch, but they ran those as STAB specifically because they had a distinct strategy/gimmick behind them (Jirachi's Serene Grace Iron Head constantly flinching, and Scizor having powerful priority with STAB+Technician), not because Steel was a good offensive type.

The goal of Fairy specifically being weak to Poison and Steel is to incentive the use of both types from an offensive standpoint, so that there is actually a reason to have non-Poison or Steel-types actually run Poison or Steel moves as coverage, and also has the secondary effect of incentivizing the mons with said types to actually run said STAB offensively. Meanwhile most of its resistances and immunities are to types that were particularly powerful offensively, as it's immune to Dragon (obviously), resists Fighting, which in Gen 5 was an exceptional offensive type, and also resists Dark. All of those types were particularly prominent and strong offensive types while Poison and Steel were remarkably poor offensively. With such a change in matchups, Pokemon who are Fighting or Dragon-type would be incentivized to run a Steel or Poison move as coverage to deal with Fairies, and thus Poison and Steel now have genuine merit as attacking types whereas they had next to none previously. It's a similar logic to how Dark and Steel were implemented in Gen 2: Psychic and Normal were both extremely powerful types in Gen 1 from an offensive standpoint, but Dark is immune to Psychic while Steel resists both Psychic and Normal, meanwhile Fighting was a laughably underpowered type in Gen 1, thus both Dark and Steel became weak to it so the Fighting-type gained offensive merit. Fire was also a mediocre type offensively in Gen 1, which pushed Steel to be weak to it.

For the record, both types have still been used offensively to various degrees since Fairy, and neither has obsoleted the other offensively. Poison has the advantage of hitting Azumarill harder than Steel moves would, and in some cases a powerful move like Gunk Shot has more oomph than say, Iron Tail or Iron Head. Not to mention something like Goodra more or less would only have Poison moves as coverage from the offensive side, and in some cases Poison Jab is the best and most accurate anti-Fairy coverage some Fighting or Dragon mons have, while Iron Tail has the issue of being inaccurate. Poison has gained some merit offensively in that regard, so I'd say Fairy succeeded in giving Poison a bit of a boost there. Not many Poison-types themselves gained use in higher tiers because not many of them were all that good to begin with, and the only good offensive ones are stuff like the Nidos. When a Poison-type is good though, it is definitely very strong: look as Toxapex for instance, who has the perfect build to make use of Poison-type's strong defensive qualities.

 

[Sonikku A]

I still don't get why Dark was nerfed. The only overbearing one Gen 5 was Darkrai, and that's due to stats + Dark Void
Even thematically, it doesn't make sense for Fairy to beat it, since Fairies have been known to be pranksters or flat out chaotically destructive
Even worse, Bug is resisted, the type that was already the worst across gens

 

[Sceptilian70]

I want more sidequests. I love sidequests, specifically sidequests that have special Pokemon. I restarted Ultra Sun recently and was really annoyed to learn that I was missing Larvesta and Volcarona for my Pokedex. I became downright angry when I realized it has a 1% encounter rate in one cave in the whole game. Even if it took a boring siequest to get, I would prefer that to this "rarity" thing that ends up just being a test of patience. I would love a sidequest that has to do with the mythology of Volcarona being like a sun god. I could totally imagine that in PLA, and I would love it! And prefer it to those stupid encounter rates that are so common in Pokemon.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Don't forget Mareep.

How in the world could I forget Mareep? Though I wouldn't call it common since it is only found on three routes. But at the same time, it isn't quite as uncommon as many of the others. So I guess it is semi-uncommon, or something like that.

The reason for that is that is the 100 new Pokémon introduced in Gen II weren't supposed to be "Johto Pokémon". Remember, that was the first time ever that new Pokémon were added. Nowadays, it is the norm for every gen to introduce a new region with new Pokémon that are native to it. But that wasn't the case back then. The new Pokémon in Gold/Silver aren't presented as being native to Johto, they are presented as species that were always there in the Pokémon world, including in Kanto, but humans had never found and catalogued them. The dex in those games isn't even called the "Johto Pokédex", it's called the "New Pokédex", because it's a new, updated dex with all the mons that were discovered and catalogued in the 3 years since the events of the Gen I games. So that explains why some of the new mons are found only in Kanto, and why most of them are so rare: they were always there living in that world, but no person had ever found them because of their rarity.

Of course, that doesn't mean anyone has to like how rare the new mons are and that some of them are locked to post-game, but it explains why they are so rare from a lore perspective.

I guess that's one way to look at it. Even so, I think many of the new Pokémon could have been more common in Johto itself since Johto was a new region which players hadn't been able to explore previously.

However, you can change time on GSC, and you can make trainers call you pretty easily.

For the former, there is a special site and code. For the latter, all you gotta do is turn DST on/off with your Mom until trainers call you.

I knew that you could turn the DST on/off to get trainers to call you (that's what I was referring to when I said there was a way to exploit the swarms), but I didn't know that you could actually change the time as well. Thanks for letting me know.

Just going to say...Kanto's levels in gen 2 reflect the levels of those routes from gen 1. It is world building continuity and something I personally really like and something I think really needs to be in these sorts of games. I mean...it is not realistic that Kanto after a couple years is suddenly over ran with level 40-55 mons.

You are right about how they reflect the levels from Gen 1. But I don't think that was a good thing. If worldbuilding makes the gameplay worse, then I disapprove of it. But for me, levels are more of a gameplay element than something that has to do with worldbuilding, so it doesn't really work in my eyes. I would have preferred if the levels had been higher in Kanto in Gen 2. I think Unova did the right thing by increasing the levels of wild Pokémon on the routes that were early-game in B/W but post-game in B2/W2.

The complaint of certain Johto Pokémon only being available in Kanto has always been a bit strange to me... many games keep new Pokémon or evolution methods until the postgame, and in GSC/HGSS' case it's a lot more justified because Kanto isn't just the postgame, it's practically half the game. The rarity of the new Pokémon and the levels you get things at in Kanto are pretty bad, but there's nothing wrong with the concept of only finding Slugma and Murkrow once you're 60% into the game.

Fair enough. But my perspective is different. When it comes to the Johto games, I personally prefer to see Johto as the main game and Kanto as the post-game (or part 2 of the game). When I played through the Johto games, I had usually obtained a full team by the time I had beaten the E4, I did not train a new team or new Pokémon when I was exploring Kanto. I guess I just preferred to stick with the Pokémon I had already trained instead of raising new ones. Another reason was probably the low levels, not so much the Pokémon availability. Houndoom is cool, but why should I bother with training a Houndour (which can be caught at levels 15-18) when there are no good training spots? That said, I do often train new Pokémon for battle facilities or for fun after having beaten the entire game, but usually not when exploring new areas. The only time I really did that was for the DLC areas in Sword, but those were "post-game" only because I had beaten the main game when the DLC was released.

As for other games keeping new Pokémon/evolution methods locked to the post-game... I think Johto has way more than your average Pokémon game. Looking at the statistics, there's between 13-16 Johto Pokémon (depending on if you are playing G/S or Crystal) which are available only during the post-game. I don't have the raw stats for the other regions, but on top of my head I know that D/P locked a large chunk of the new Pokémon to the post-game (which was fixed in Platinum), B2/W2 had some Unova Pokémon which were post-game only (13 regular and 3 legendaries), and there were a few in Hoenn too. Kanto, Kalos, Galar and Alola mostly had legends (and UBs in the case of Alola) locked to the post-game.

Another issue with Johto is that this is the case in every Johto game. In comparison, Platinum fixed the issue in D/P by making all non-legendary Sinnoh Pokémon available during the main game, while B/W had all the non-legendary Unova Pokémon available during the main game (save for Hydreigon and Volcarona which are practically impossible to obtain before beating the game). So I think this is a bigger issue for Johto since they did this with a larger amount of new Pokémon than any other region, and they haven't fixed it yet despite having a great opportunity to do so in HG/SS.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

I still don't get why Dark was nerfed. The only overbearing one Gen 5 was Darkrai, and that's due to stats + Dark Void
Even thematically, it doesn't make sense for Fairy to beat it, since Fairies have been known to be pranksters or flat out chaotically destructive
Even worse, Bug is resisted, the type that was already the worst across gens

Steel lost its Dark resistance and the already-incredible Knock Off became one of the best attacks in the game. Dark got buffed.

 

[Scorpio]

Johto Pokemon

Just popping in to bring up the fact that, in both my HG and SS playthroughs, a good 1/2 of my team in each consisted of Kanto Pokémon. And even then, in each game one of those was my starter, and another one was a cross-gen evo, leaving a whopping one entirely new Pokémon on my team for each game (keep in mind that I prefer to have a full team of six by the time I challenge the fifth gym at the latest).

Yeah Johto has some availability issues.

 

[theotherguytm]

Re: type chart changes in Gen 6, they were clearly meant to balance out the best typings, but that didn't really happen in practice.

The thing is Steel and Poison have underlying issues as offensive typings outside their lacking SE matchups. Steel is resisted by Water and Steel, the two best defensive typings in Gen 5, and two of the best 3 today. Poison outright does nothing to one of the best defensive types in the game, and is resisted by two common defensive typings in Ground and Poison. You can argue Poison is passable as neutral coverage and comes with free poison chip a bunch of the time, and Steel almost always has STAB behind it thanks to the prevalence of the type defensively, but these don't make up for their shortcomings. The result of making Fairy weak to both of them is making a brand new typing with only 2 weaknesses that are both very difficult to exploit, as opposed to giving these two things the intended boost. The same thing can be observed with the Fire resist: if you're going to give a typing three weaknesses and you want it to be terrible defensively, it's hard to look beyond the 3 Fire has. One extra resistance, however good, isn't going to make up for that.

(They do make sense in flavour terms too, but I actually think the flavour fit is explicitly why Fairy type was chosen to be the new typing, as opposed to other possible types that could have been added. In other words, they decided to buff Steel and Poison, then thought up a new type that fit the required flavour.)

As for the defensive end, Dragon immunity was obviously needed, Outrage was such a broken move in Gens 4&5 that there had to be a way of punishing it introduced (Specs Draco Meteor was similarly bonkers, but at least took some positioning). Fighting resist was also needed. Bug resist... I guess they thought U-turn really needed more resists huh.

I still don't get why Dark was nerfed. The only overbearing one Gen 5 was Darkrai, and that's due to stats + Dark Void
Even thematically, it doesn't make sense for Fairy to beat it, since Fairies have been known to be pranksters or flat out chaotically destructive

Dark+Fighting was and is extremely commonly used coverage and it was perfect coverage pre-Fairy. With the other buffs Dark got, not having Fairy resist Dark would have made it utterly absurd. In case you're wondering how good it was, Scraggy was considered viable in lower tiers as a Bulk Up sweeper (that's right, the unevolved one). It kinda does make sense IMO since Fairy's pranks foil Dark's schemes, and enough Fairy moves use light or positivity that I think Dark hating Fairy is pretty logical (name one self-proclaimed badass Dark mon who would take a Draining Kiss in public without internal suffering).

 

[pharaohcalvin]

Yeah, it's a continuity nod... which helps show why Acceptable Breaks From Reality is a thing, and why they did not do this for BW2.

Might be part of the reason why B/W2 were bad games.

Continuity is good for world building, and world building is core for rpgs. Pokemon is an rpg.

I see no reason why Kanto's wild mon levels need to be higher when it is a part of the game that is there for fan service. You can already just walk right through it like it was nothing.

You are right about how they reflect the levels from Gen 1. But I don't think that was a good thing. If worldbuilding makes the gameplay worse, then I disapprove of it. But for me, levels are more of a gameplay element than something that has to do with worldbuilding, so it doesn't really work in my eyes. I would have preferred if the levels had been higher in Kanto in Gen 2. I think Unova did the right thing by increasing the levels of wild Pokémon on the routes that were early-game in B/W but post-game in B2/W2.

But here is the crazy thing...it doesn't make it worse. If you need to grind to beat the kanto gym leaders I really really question how you even made it to Kanto.

 

[AquaticPanic]

I feel like if I can have the suspension of disbelief that you can't pass through a gate because there are people dancing there or the suspension of disbelief that a rat can fart out lightning, I can have the suspension of disbelief that wild mons randomly get different levels for the sake of game design lol

 

[pharaohcalvin]

I feel like if I can have the suspension of disbelief that you can't pass through a gate because there are people dancing there or the suspension of disbelief that a rat can fart out lightning, I can have the suspension of disbelief that wild mons randomly get different levels for the sake of game design lol

The dancing people was dumb and a better way to block off the path could have been found. And considering the game is about animals with power of course belief has to be suspended for them. It is what is to be expected.

But, randomly for no good reason making the levels of mons in a fan service part of a game higher level is not worth the lost of world building.

But I guess because all the good features of older pokemon are unpopular because they create some degree of friction at all despite them having more benefits then negatives is the go too now...

I love
-4th gen not having all cross generational evolutions able to be captured through the playthrough to the elite 4. It creates more exploration and discovery for players after the e4 is cleared as well created stories to tell others at lunch at school.
-Second gen's new mons being rare. It rewarded exploration and created cool stories to tell other kids at lunch when we were younger.
-Safari Zones. The harder to catch mons met that you either got lucky or you spent a lot of time working for a rare mon. This mon would likely be something else your friends didn't play through the game with once again creating cool stories to tell.
-Non Liner Maps. Being able to go different ways and encounter different mons at different points is fun, and once again creates stories to tell others. (This does not mean being able to fight any gym leader you out of order, through that can be a part of it)
-Hidden Side Areas to explore. They are flat cool and they also created stories to talk about. "Hey! I found a cool cave hidden over on..."
-Not having an exp share all (for the main story) and being somewhat forced into a set team or having to grind. This creates choice, important player choices that directly effects your journey.

All of these seem to be unpopular now days yet....they are so core to what made this series popular. Your journey. What you experienced and you telling your friends about it and sharing stories. Gen 1, and gen 2 didn't even need hard stories to be amazing games that were as successful as they were because it was simply a huge world for you and your friends to explore together and talk about. This is not to say that a pokemon game can't have a story. Both third gen and 4th gen have one and are great games but they still had all these sort of things...stuff newer games have left out of the series. Random side areas basically do not exist now. Even simply trying to figure out how a pokemon evolves is not even really needed now days considering you can just catch like everything in the wild. Safari Zones are dead. Non Liner Maps died when B/W came out. And rare hard to get mons are just super rare now.

~sigh~ I am not saying all the new games are bad. (Well SW/SH are shit) But, I just hope some people can realize that a little of inconvince in some form can have huge pay offs elsewhere.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

The levels of wild Pokemon have always felt like gameplay contrivances. What are the odds that all the wild animals around your home town are little wimps, and all the wild animals in a given area get stronger in a steady rate that just so happens to match your path through a region?

 

[Siggu]

Might be part of the reason why B/W2 were bad games.

Continuity is good for world building, and world building is core for rpgs. Pokemon is an rpg.

But as with every game, the story, the world, has to serve the gameplay. If the world or the lore provides a subpar gameplay experience, you change it.

"The Pokémon grew in levels to be a good source of experience for no reason" works better than "For the sake of continuity, the levels are as low as before. Too bad if you wanted to use them".

But here is the crazy thing...it doesn't make it worse. If you need to grind to beat the kanto gym leaders I really really question how you even made it to Kanto.

... but if you want to use one of the many Kanto-exclusive Pokémon for the Kanto section you're in for a very slow haul.