Today’s game is some more Pokemon Emerald. I’ve been working on the Pokédex the last few days. And when I say working on it I mean really working on it. I’m trying to assemble a living Dex which is my main goal. It’s an interesting challenge, since I sometimes have to catch double. The roaming legendaries have been fun too. I found Latias today for example. I just bumped into it while trying to hatch eggs.
I also bumped into Steven in Meteor Falls. I had no idea you could find him here so that was a pleasant surprise.
That’s something I really like about these older games. I like the open style of the newer games, but with these more narrow style games It feels like it makes more nook’s and crannies to search. Kind of a little more rewarding for snooping around.
So far today has just been catching and breeding. That’s probably what tomorrow will be too just so I can finish it up. Then back them up and figure out what I’m gonna do next this hunt has been a lot of fun. My last complete Dex was Shield, and this feels like a challenge in comparison. It’s like comparing Halo 2 Legendary to Halo 3. Halo 2’s was difficult but so satisfying to do. This game’s Pokédex is similar.
Anyways, so my game-plan for tomorrow is fill out Dex hopefully and pick out another game.
Back on Gen 6 I organically filled a full dex (650 mons at the time) through a combination of Pearl, Black, X and Alpha Sapphire, with occasional exchanges with my sister who had the counterpart games. Also a few spin-off exports like Pokémon Ranger and Ranch.
At that time there was a distribution for the mythical pokémon too, so with all that I had everything.
After that I played through Gen 7 (Moon and Ultra Sun), and then completely lost interest when I learned the next gen wouldn't even let you use mons that are not in its regional dex (and then the reports of terrible performance. 3DS was already barely tolerable).
Of all I played, I'd say the most fun were Gen 5 (Black) and Alpha Sapphire. Pearl felt like a chore.
I’m planning to do something similar where I just trade them up game by game. So I take my Gen 3 Living Dex over to Gen 4, then add Gen 4 into that metaphorical “pool”. Then go to Gen 5, once I get to Gen 6 though I think I’m done with a living Dex because that’s kind of all I need to fill out Pokemon Home. Anything niche I’m missing I’m sure I can catch.
I’m with you on Pearl (or, well, in my case platinum). I love gen 4 but I can only play it once, with a second play through being hard to stomach.
I have never played platinum, but from what I gathered it is significantly improved compared to Pearl/Diamond. Those are really painful to play.
They're really clunky and repetitve, but the worst part is mon distribution. There are barely any fire types in the games, to the point the Fire-Type elite 4 has only 2 in his 5 mon team. And one of them is the evolved fire starter. There is literally no other fire type obtainable at that point.
They decided to keep most of the diversity in the post game (lots of old species that get a new evolution mostly) so until you get there it feels like you're meeting the same twenty different pokémon over and over again.
Bonus : Diamond has one dark-type easily accessible before psychic gym (which is already well into the game). Pearl doesn't have any. Its only dark-type comes in very late game. It's like nobody checked these games' balance.
Now that you point out the balance i can really see it. It never really occurred to me, especially the lack of fire types
Every time I played a Pokemon game throughout the years, I thought “This time I’m going to fill the dex!” But there was always some you just couldn’t reasonably get so I always gave up. Big disappointment, it’s really the reason I didn’t play the last few.
It’s impressive you managed it in Gen 6.
My partner filled their DEX in Sun and Moon, the last game with every single pokemon!
I did not even come close hahaha. I focused on making an incredible IV/EV team instead.
It was just me being very stubborn really.
Technically I went a bit further since I got full Sun/Moon dex next (though if I remember correctly not Ultra, I was missing one or two of the new Ultra Beasts).
It probably was just the right time really. The DS gens (4-5) are forever compatible because they just need local wifi to transfer. But 5 to 6 (and 6 to 7) need the pokémon bank and thus 3ds e-shop. I am not sure, but unless there is a third party way to do this, I believe that DS-3DS link would be broken today. And it's probably too late to transfer them to Switch through... Pokémon Home? I think? Is that still a thing?
And I did that right on time for that mythical pokémon distribution, because even in the past games they were only distributed in time-limited events. So I'd have no other way to get most of these.
Except for Mew. Pokémon Ranch on the wii had a way to get a Mew if you had Diamond/Pearl and transferred ONE FREAKING THOUSAND POKÉMON from it. So, of course I did it, like an idiot.