I wondered what should be the mascot of the franchise based on what is appearing constantly in every game?
First, as in gen1 games later generations did not exist, any further candidate got eliminated.
Second, I eliminated all version-exclusives.
Third checked a Very Common Pokemon: Magikarp. It appears naturaly in every single major core game, so if a mon appears inany generation only by trading in from previous generation games, or a distribution-event, it is eliminated.
This still left a surprising amount of mons:
- jigglypuff, wigglytuff
- zubat, golbat
- horsea, seadra
- goldeen, seaking
- magikarp, gyarados
It is weird all of these are 2 step mons, but it is nice not all of them are water mons.
Now howto go further.
Well, aside the Major Core Games, bulbapedia lists other core games for whatever reason.
magikarp/gyarados does not appear in Colosseum and
. Let's see how the others do.
goldeen does the same.
horsea ditto.
zubat appears in
!
Thus, we have a winner. Who need pikachu when u have zubat?
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I LOVE the Gym in Driftveil. What a showoff! Easy but effective puzzle! That's how it should be.
Thereare some weird monster-level issues, but overal this part is good. But changing the clock to winter, which according to Nintendo/Japan lasts October-December, just to get a table of chocolate, which must not be consumed but instead used to revive some special pokemon half a country away... Now that's Sierra level bullshit. I'm not sure if this is a curse-phrase or a compliment though.
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Let's make a quick rundown on the series:
- gen1 was a very ambitious puzzle-game with a very strong collector-aspect. It was totaly buggy, but whatever.
- gen2 was a glorified expansion-pack. Mechanicaly it is the most obvious and clear game, as you literaly only have to tick the type-chart, and you're good to go. The "catch'em all" aspect was barely present.
- gen3 was a reboot. But despite being reboot, and its own problems (missing types, whatever), it was at least bug-free.
- gen4 was riddled with HM-hoarding, difficulty-issues, the pacing was horrible, the puzzles overcomplicated, but I can see an audience for such thing.
- gen5 is... Well, it creates continuity with the gen 1-2 games, so that's a plus. Has some very interresting design-choices visualy. The puzzles are mostly simple, unfortunately the backtracking almost disappeared. And to be honest, it looks bringing a 6 crew is needles, slows down the gameplay to frustration-level, and the choice of mons is a "bit" lackluster. But it seems going with only 1 mon is totaly dinamic experience. I started this as side-project, just to spice up the monotony, but I totaly abandoned my original crew (still have the savefile of course). The game, playing this way, feels ... small in some aspect. The catch-em-allaspect is totaly for the hardcores only, and even the teambuilding seems to disappear... Strange evolution of the franchise.
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It seems there's a Location Randomizer concerning items and trainers, so that gives the feel of exploration even if you have a premade map - which you obviously can't follow to the letter because of that. As a side-effect you'll have to make a mon learn Flash for exactly 1 (optional) location.
The HMs are a problem in this game though, given what you must learn to get everything, and in what distribution the mons can learn. Because in many instances you need a separate mon just to learn one friggin HM.
These are the useful HMs:
- cut (a lot of optional items, and a part of the story, probably mandatory)
- fly (fast travel, you want this as you can now just fly to the League if you visited it!)
- surf (an optional double-area, another optional area, and some other minor things)
- strength (some optional items, creating shortcuts, maybe mandatory?)
- dive (post game thing, no idea if it leads to anything interresting)
- dig (very convenient to leave some dungeons)
- flash (makes an optional area realistic to discover)
- waterfall (in Lostlorn Forest you can get 1 Rare Candy with it, and that's it before post-game, where it has 2 other location to use)
You know, by this I thought I compound how you should HM-slave. But that's a wee bit problematic, because if we exclude version exclusives, starters and starter based mons, as well as other choice-exclusive thing (eg. fossil mons), and we take account of accessibility, we end up with Basculin as our Waterfall-user, whatis stupid, because to get it you already must know surf... And you probably want to use Cut earlier, but whatever I think. At least it can (also) learn Dive.
But it goes well with Watchog, total early mon, which can do Cut, Strength, and Flash.
What we still need is a Surfer, which hopefully can also Fly. The perfect candidate is Ducklett. It's easy to get, there's no other mon appearing at its location which location is inevitable, and I think it comes at the right time.
The Elite Four here is very pathetic. No overlevelled pokemon (lvl 50-55-60), and they don't even have sixpacks!
Oh:
White is the definite version as W2/B2 are just glorified expansions, and Black has some pathetic battle for this final fight with only 1 mon. That's stupid. Make the full battle against 6! On top of it, that Zoroark is a funny surprise.