Time to take off the nostalgia glasses, people. I'm tired of people holding Generation II up as the pinnacle of the franchise, and an 11th placing on GAF's Essential RPGs - 2013 Edition was the final straw. So now I'm going to explain exactly why GSC are the worst Pokémon cames so you can all become better people.
Johto is the worst region in the franchise
And by a good margin. It's easily the smallest, with the fewest regions, most of them being short and linear. But what is arguably worse is the Pokémon diversity throughout Johto. The new Pokémon show up less often as Kanto staples with staples Which leaves the whole experience feeling stale. How is it a new adventure when I'm still running into Ratatta and Pidgey on the first route?
Actually take the first Route in GSC as an example. The tall grass ancounter rates are:
55% Pidgey
40% Hoothoot
5% Ratatta
That's a 60% chance to run into a RBY Pokémon as the first thing you do in a new game. And the trend continues throughout.
The "story" is painfully dull
Team Rocket? Again? It just feels like cheap pandering to make them the antagonist a second time round, especially when their driving motivation is the find their leader who disbanded three years prior. It's just pointless and almost undoes the efforts of the player in Red/Blue/Yellow.
Silver is also a poor rival. His talk about hating the weak rings hollow when he is constantly losing to the PC. At least RBY mitigated the Badass decay by having Blue constantly be one step ahead of the player when it came to earning badges. And Black/White's Cheren goes one step further by having it become part of his character development.
I don't like Lance either. Why is an Elite Four member getting promoted to Champion? Having someone new come to take the role would have been better than "that guy I beat in the first game". Also, his cape is stupid.
The Johto League is laughably easy
It's so pedestrian it hurts. There's maybe one fight in the whole game that comes close to a challenge (And I don't get how people had trouble with Whitney, I steamrolled her first time), while everything is just pounding on Youngster Joeys. Lance is also the lowest levelled champion in the series and is a cakewalk to anyone with enough brain cells to remember that he used dragons in RBY and that Dragons are weak to Ice-type attacks.
Kanto is an absolute trainwreck
The region gets absolutely gutted in the transition from Gen I to Gen II. For starters, Cerulean Cave, Seafoam Islands, Pokémon Mansion, Power Plant, Safari Zone and Viridian Bloody Forest are all missing, with the other points of interest drastically scaled down. The oft-lauded Kanto Gym leaders are just as easy as the rest of the game, too. In fact, Blue's team as Viridian city Gym leader is lower levelled than his team as Champion in RBY. The whole place is hollow and lifeless, little more than half a region. And not even the half that's missing from Johto!
The fact that Kanto is in the game makes the underexposure of the Gen II Pokémon in the first half all the more baffling.
In Conclusion
The game takes place in two half-regions instead of a whole one. The repetition of old Pokémon and characters throughout the main story makes the game feel small. The new Pokémon and characters either don't show up nearly enough or are just boring. Finally, it chooses Generation I nostalgia bait over actual post-game content.
TL;DR
You remember wrong. GSC suck. Go play Black and White instead.
Johto is the worst region in the franchise
And by a good margin. It's easily the smallest, with the fewest regions, most of them being short and linear. But what is arguably worse is the Pokémon diversity throughout Johto. The new Pokémon show up less often as Kanto staples with staples Which leaves the whole experience feeling stale. How is it a new adventure when I'm still running into Ratatta and Pidgey on the first route?
Actually take the first Route in GSC as an example. The tall grass ancounter rates are:
55% Pidgey
40% Hoothoot
5% Ratatta
That's a 60% chance to run into a RBY Pokémon as the first thing you do in a new game. And the trend continues throughout.
The "story" is painfully dull
Team Rocket? Again? It just feels like cheap pandering to make them the antagonist a second time round, especially when their driving motivation is the find their leader who disbanded three years prior. It's just pointless and almost undoes the efforts of the player in Red/Blue/Yellow.
Silver is also a poor rival. His talk about hating the weak rings hollow when he is constantly losing to the PC. At least RBY mitigated the Badass decay by having Blue constantly be one step ahead of the player when it came to earning badges. And Black/White's Cheren goes one step further by having it become part of his character development.
I don't like Lance either. Why is an Elite Four member getting promoted to Champion? Having someone new come to take the role would have been better than "that guy I beat in the first game". Also, his cape is stupid.
The Johto League is laughably easy
It's so pedestrian it hurts. There's maybe one fight in the whole game that comes close to a challenge (And I don't get how people had trouble with Whitney, I steamrolled her first time), while everything is just pounding on Youngster Joeys. Lance is also the lowest levelled champion in the series and is a cakewalk to anyone with enough brain cells to remember that he used dragons in RBY and that Dragons are weak to Ice-type attacks.
Kanto is an absolute trainwreck
The region gets absolutely gutted in the transition from Gen I to Gen II. For starters, Cerulean Cave, Seafoam Islands, Pokémon Mansion, Power Plant, Safari Zone and Viridian Bloody Forest are all missing, with the other points of interest drastically scaled down. The oft-lauded Kanto Gym leaders are just as easy as the rest of the game, too. In fact, Blue's team as Viridian city Gym leader is lower levelled than his team as Champion in RBY. The whole place is hollow and lifeless, little more than half a region. And not even the half that's missing from Johto!
The fact that Kanto is in the game makes the underexposure of the Gen II Pokémon in the first half all the more baffling.
In Conclusion
The game takes place in two half-regions instead of a whole one. The repetition of old Pokémon and characters throughout the main story makes the game feel small. The new Pokémon and characters either don't show up nearly enough or are just boring. Finally, it chooses Generation I nostalgia bait over actual post-game content.
TL;DR
You remember wrong. GSC suck. Go play Black and White instead.
