WrenchNinja
Member
So after re-conquering Unova, Kalos, and Sinnoh, I decided that I would next head off to Johto
That above is Game Freak breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience how hard it is to actually remake a beloved classics. A look back at the original Pokemon Gold and Silver (and Crystal!) brings to mind many additions to the series like the ability to choose between a male or female protagonist, berries, Pokemon genders and breeding, hold items, Pokeball variants, the Steel and Dark type, Day and night cycle along with timed events, new methods of evolution, etc. Just looking at these things, it's hard to ignore that Gold and Silver were a big deal for the franchise. They're very much direct sequels to Red and Blue which is a rarity. But how well do these remakes stand out?
Both games were released in 2009 in Japan and 2010 in North America, closing off the 4th Generation of Pokemon games. Gameplay wise, they're not that different from the Sinnoh games. They have all of the benefits of the years of new additions to the series like abilities, natures, and the physical/special split. They run a little better, and they look a lot more brighter and colourful, so at this point it feels like Game Freak has a good understanding of the DS hardware, which go on to continue with Pokemon Black and White. Cool new gameplay mechanics involve the return of the awesome feature of Pokemon walking behind you. Not since Pokemon Yellow has a Pokemon been able to walk behind you the whole game, but in that game it was just Pikachu. This time it's been hugely revamped, Game Freak drew sprites for every single known Pokemon at the time, and every single one of them can walk behind you no matter how goofy it looks. You can talk to your Pokemon and see how they're doing, and often times they'll have context sensitive reactions. Like a fire type walking by a beach, in the rain or a pool will be very anxious and unhappy. Other new gameplay additions include the Pokeathalon, where you can train a team of your Pokemon for Olympic style events. These all revolve around the touch screen and are a nice time waster. Your reward is points that you can use to cash in for rare items like Moon Stones which help evolve certain Pokemon. They also happened to add two new additional routes to the west of Cianwood City that lead into something that wasn't in the original Gold and Silver, The Safari Zone. This Safari Zone is the best one in the series, as you get to customise the terrain and distribution of Pokemon in it yourself. There's also no step limit so you don't have to worry about that either. It's really quite outstanding. It also helps fix some of the problems of the original, like the lack of Dark type Pokemon available to you.
The Johto region is often time derided for being very small and unmemorable compared to other regions, but I beg to differ. I think Johto has a lot of personality, and this goes towards how it is a region of culture and history to contrast with its sister region of Kanto. There's a focus on specific Pokemon with many of these cities, a sort of connection to the way of life for the people. From the very start, you learn from the resident Professor that before Pokeballs, Pokemon just walked with their trainers. The first major city you visit is Violet City and North of the city is Sprout Tower, a Tower that is supposedly built around an ancient Bellsprout. Here you'll fight a bunch of monks to earn the Flash TM, but they all seems devoted to this Pokemon. Just on the outskirts of the city is the creepy Ruins of Alph. This place is very strange, if you access your radio you'll hear sounds that are otherworldly and if you solve a certain puzzle there, you'll trigger the awakening of the Unown, strange Pokemon shaped like the alphabet. As you travel, you come to another town called Azalea Town, and here Slowpoke is the Pokemon of the day. In ancient times, the town had very serious drought problem, until a Slowpoke yawned and brought rainfall back to the town and from that point the Pokemon is worshipped. You'll also learn of how Pokeballs used to be made with strange fruits call Apricorns, and in the Ilex Forest nearby there's an ancient guardian Pokemon protecting the place. A lot of the game is like that, with little bits of backstory injected into each city. It helps flesh the world out, something that Game Freak would go on to do with their later games. Altogether, it took me around 30 hours to finish the Johto portion of the game, which seems along the line how long it took me to finish other games in the series. Of course, Gold and Silver don't just end there...
Probably the thing these games are most remembered for is the post game where you return to the Kanto region. Being able to see how much the region has changed in the three years since Red and Blue is such a great delight, and the remake managed to expand and fix some things. Things like Viridian Forest was just a collection of bushes in the original Gold and Silver, but now it has returned in full glory along with awesome music too. The Rock Tunnel has largely expanded, and the Unknown Dungeon has returned. Speaking of music, defeating the all of the Kanto gym leaders and talking to the Game Freak sound designer in Celadon City nets you with the GB sounds key item, which allows you to listen to the Gameboy version of music tracks of Gold and Silver. Now that is serious fanservice. Some chocie tracks from this game:
Azaelea Town: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdqNzFd86vc
Route 47: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc5YFrh8mVM
Route 30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx3pM_OHmGk
Route 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053CMsCnmHg
Viridian Forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcUHZv5o41I
Champion Battle theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDFEUfS4r_A
The story of these games is weird, cause there really isn't one. It feels like a bunch of loosely connected side stories. There is a through line here that was added with the remakes, a bunch of Kimono girls have chosen you to tame the box legendary of whatever game you're playing, but it's really in the background and gets largely resolved without much fanfare. It's actually kind of quaint, it's just you on an adventure, traveling and seeing the sights. There's no larger goal here, and in that way, I guess it's easier to appreciate each place you visit. The villainous is team of this game is Team Rocket, who has returned and set their sights on bringing back their former leader Giovanni. This plan largely goes kaput thanks to you and the Champion Lance's help.
Rival theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5quTVDGb1_0
I've got to talk about the rival character. He's great, a really douchebag who grows to be a lot nicer by the end of the game. He freaking steals a starter Pokemon, hates Team Rocket, and wants to kick your butt so bad. Throughout the game, people comment on how he is cruel to his Pokemon, and that because of that he cannot win. In a neat sort of merging of gameplay and story, in some of your later battles, he's become much more stronger than before, his Golbat has evolved into a Crobat. Something that can't happen unless it loves its trainer. This is the sort of neat touch Gold and Silver has.
These games do have some problems though, some of which were problems with the original Gold and Silver. The leveling curve is really bad. Wild Pokemon are too weak, along with regular trainers. They don't really prepare you enough with the experience to challenge the trainers in the gyms. It's a seriously annoying problem, which results in you having to have to grind at times. There's a huge difficulty spike once you get to the eighth Gym leader and have to deal with her dragons, they don't really give you the tools to deal with her despite her town literally being next to Pokemon with her weakness. Some people will also dislike the Pokemon distribution having so many Kanto Pokemon in Johto, but this wasn't really a big deal to me as I found there still to be plentiful amounts of new species to use.
All in all, HeartGold and SoulSilver are largely still awesome games which easily live up to the originals. If you can still find a copy, I wholly recommend picking them up and going on your own Johto journey.
That above is Game Freak breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience how hard it is to actually remake a beloved classics. A look back at the original Pokemon Gold and Silver (and Crystal!) brings to mind many additions to the series like the ability to choose between a male or female protagonist, berries, Pokemon genders and breeding, hold items, Pokeball variants, the Steel and Dark type, Day and night cycle along with timed events, new methods of evolution, etc. Just looking at these things, it's hard to ignore that Gold and Silver were a big deal for the franchise. They're very much direct sequels to Red and Blue which is a rarity. But how well do these remakes stand out?
Both games were released in 2009 in Japan and 2010 in North America, closing off the 4th Generation of Pokemon games. Gameplay wise, they're not that different from the Sinnoh games. They have all of the benefits of the years of new additions to the series like abilities, natures, and the physical/special split. They run a little better, and they look a lot more brighter and colourful, so at this point it feels like Game Freak has a good understanding of the DS hardware, which go on to continue with Pokemon Black and White. Cool new gameplay mechanics involve the return of the awesome feature of Pokemon walking behind you. Not since Pokemon Yellow has a Pokemon been able to walk behind you the whole game, but in that game it was just Pikachu. This time it's been hugely revamped, Game Freak drew sprites for every single known Pokemon at the time, and every single one of them can walk behind you no matter how goofy it looks. You can talk to your Pokemon and see how they're doing, and often times they'll have context sensitive reactions. Like a fire type walking by a beach, in the rain or a pool will be very anxious and unhappy. Other new gameplay additions include the Pokeathalon, where you can train a team of your Pokemon for Olympic style events. These all revolve around the touch screen and are a nice time waster. Your reward is points that you can use to cash in for rare items like Moon Stones which help evolve certain Pokemon. They also happened to add two new additional routes to the west of Cianwood City that lead into something that wasn't in the original Gold and Silver, The Safari Zone. This Safari Zone is the best one in the series, as you get to customise the terrain and distribution of Pokemon in it yourself. There's also no step limit so you don't have to worry about that either. It's really quite outstanding. It also helps fix some of the problems of the original, like the lack of Dark type Pokemon available to you.
The Johto region is often time derided for being very small and unmemorable compared to other regions, but I beg to differ. I think Johto has a lot of personality, and this goes towards how it is a region of culture and history to contrast with its sister region of Kanto. There's a focus on specific Pokemon with many of these cities, a sort of connection to the way of life for the people. From the very start, you learn from the resident Professor that before Pokeballs, Pokemon just walked with their trainers. The first major city you visit is Violet City and North of the city is Sprout Tower, a Tower that is supposedly built around an ancient Bellsprout. Here you'll fight a bunch of monks to earn the Flash TM, but they all seems devoted to this Pokemon. Just on the outskirts of the city is the creepy Ruins of Alph. This place is very strange, if you access your radio you'll hear sounds that are otherworldly and if you solve a certain puzzle there, you'll trigger the awakening of the Unown, strange Pokemon shaped like the alphabet. As you travel, you come to another town called Azalea Town, and here Slowpoke is the Pokemon of the day. In ancient times, the town had very serious drought problem, until a Slowpoke yawned and brought rainfall back to the town and from that point the Pokemon is worshipped. You'll also learn of how Pokeballs used to be made with strange fruits call Apricorns, and in the Ilex Forest nearby there's an ancient guardian Pokemon protecting the place. A lot of the game is like that, with little bits of backstory injected into each city. It helps flesh the world out, something that Game Freak would go on to do with their later games. Altogether, it took me around 30 hours to finish the Johto portion of the game, which seems along the line how long it took me to finish other games in the series. Of course, Gold and Silver don't just end there...
Probably the thing these games are most remembered for is the post game where you return to the Kanto region. Being able to see how much the region has changed in the three years since Red and Blue is such a great delight, and the remake managed to expand and fix some things. Things like Viridian Forest was just a collection of bushes in the original Gold and Silver, but now it has returned in full glory along with awesome music too. The Rock Tunnel has largely expanded, and the Unknown Dungeon has returned. Speaking of music, defeating the all of the Kanto gym leaders and talking to the Game Freak sound designer in Celadon City nets you with the GB sounds key item, which allows you to listen to the Gameboy version of music tracks of Gold and Silver. Now that is serious fanservice. Some chocie tracks from this game:
Azaelea Town: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdqNzFd86vc
Route 47: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc5YFrh8mVM
Route 30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx3pM_OHmGk
Route 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=053CMsCnmHg
Viridian Forest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcUHZv5o41I
Champion Battle theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDFEUfS4r_A
The story of these games is weird, cause there really isn't one. It feels like a bunch of loosely connected side stories. There is a through line here that was added with the remakes, a bunch of Kimono girls have chosen you to tame the box legendary of whatever game you're playing, but it's really in the background and gets largely resolved without much fanfare. It's actually kind of quaint, it's just you on an adventure, traveling and seeing the sights. There's no larger goal here, and in that way, I guess it's easier to appreciate each place you visit. The villainous is team of this game is Team Rocket, who has returned and set their sights on bringing back their former leader Giovanni. This plan largely goes kaput thanks to you and the Champion Lance's help.
Rival theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5quTVDGb1_0
I've got to talk about the rival character. He's great, a really douchebag who grows to be a lot nicer by the end of the game. He freaking steals a starter Pokemon, hates Team Rocket, and wants to kick your butt so bad. Throughout the game, people comment on how he is cruel to his Pokemon, and that because of that he cannot win. In a neat sort of merging of gameplay and story, in some of your later battles, he's become much more stronger than before, his Golbat has evolved into a Crobat. Something that can't happen unless it loves its trainer. This is the sort of neat touch Gold and Silver has.
These games do have some problems though, some of which were problems with the original Gold and Silver. The leveling curve is really bad. Wild Pokemon are too weak, along with regular trainers. They don't really prepare you enough with the experience to challenge the trainers in the gyms. It's a seriously annoying problem, which results in you having to have to grind at times. There's a huge difficulty spike once you get to the eighth Gym leader and have to deal with her dragons, they don't really give you the tools to deal with her despite her town literally being next to Pokemon with her weakness. Some people will also dislike the Pokemon distribution having so many Kanto Pokemon in Johto, but this wasn't really a big deal to me as I found there still to be plentiful amounts of new species to use.
All in all, HeartGold and SoulSilver are largely still awesome games which easily live up to the originals. If you can still find a copy, I wholly recommend picking them up and going on your own Johto journey.
