[twillight]

Red: I've done all the grinding, so with the 12 rare candy, I can be lvl 100 niversity Magikarp. Went on the shopping sprea, got rid of the Splash PPs, everything ready for the Elite Four + Rival Final. The first 2 Elite Foure will be easy, the most problematic will be the 3rd, for it has all those ghosts, and those can only be hurt by dragon rage - no critical, no X-item boost.

Platinum: I dislike this game, awefuly paced. Doing it with a solo hippo, struck wall 3 times already, at the 2nd I decided to not evolve as long as possible. there are 14 Rare Candies (at least) that help, the 14th being locked behind collecting all the Unown. Fortunately the game is very generous with pokeballs, so my 4 HM-slave, all the trade-pokemons the 28 unown and more are perfectly feasable for free.
So the problem with this is the lack of trainers to battle (Gen 1 had twice-thrice the amount per area), the aweful roadblocks that railroads you, and the ginormous difficulty-spikes. With this pokemon specificaly the grass type gym (lvl 35 - twice the level that is required for like any solo mon in the gen 1 games for the 2nd gym), the water type gym (lvl 61+, I don't know what this gym is: the apprentices are pathetic, don't even have water types, but sea-birds, and thenthe boss has grandiose stat pokemons), and no, not the ice type gym, you get plenty enough exp until there, and you can support yourself with a handful variety of held items. the problem is Cyrus, right before Giratina. That's like a lvl 85+ challenge, and that's way more than is sohuld be, even then heavily luck-based if my suspicion is correct. the only good thing is, thanks to the Rare Candies and the new, clear EV-system, you know you won't get hindered if you eat the candies after grinding to a not-that--high level, what'll still take forever of course. point is, why isn't an elevator at this fight that'd bring you back to the exit to gather more exp if needed? Darn!

Emerald: with the disappointment platinum was, I am curious how this game was. Gen 2 had disgusting graphics, so none cares for that, but I see no Latios/Latias playthrough for this on youtube, so another reason to boggle down with this.

X: I found a working copy of this, so we'll see why this is such a neglected part of the core series.

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One compaint of mine, at least definitely for Emerald is, if you want to do EV-training with your starter, you are pretty F-ed up. Well, you can find decently HP, Attack, Speed, even Defense EVs, crap, even Special Defense has a place with 20% chance to appear, but you'll be shredded by a hedgehog if you need SpecialAttack.
I'm like 4 paged in the walkthrough (friggin hidden items! - actualy, I don't even bother with them this time, so why I even use a walkthrough), and there's 2 places to fins SAtk, one with 4% chance (that's more like 1%), the other 10%, and that's just not enough.
Emerald also suffers form the fact, to get your optimal HM-slaves, you need to level them up a bit, to lvl 14 and 16, unlike other games where you just capture the beasts, and all is fine and dandy.

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Some criticism:
- Gen 1: sure, it's kinda buggy, like Fallout 2 without its patch (that patch ruins everything), but you can work around that, like for Fallout 2 without its patch (that patch makes everything worse).
Its faulty mechanics is a list too: the Hidden Item system is entirely garbage, its multilevel puzzles are a chore, there's no telling what is where, you can't catch 'em all, you can't just come up with your own group you like (without insane level of grinding), and the Elite Four is a massive trollblock for most parties.
Still, it has its charm, and the maps are small enough to make backtracking manageable. The game is also mostly open-world within its route-system.
- Gen 2: sure, it's in colour now, but it's darn ugly! It's also still a buggy mess.
Can't tell much about its Pkegear (no fresh memories about it), but the apricorns are truly the origin of the abhorrent berry-system. This "1 thingy per day" is ridiulous.
The god news is, Speed no longer effects critical rate, and there is no one unified Special stat.
The breeding-system is on the other hand furiously bad for me. Maybe it targeted competitive gamers?
- Gen 3 is pretty bad. It pushes you to be constantly overlevelled, and especialy for special attackers, just wastes your time. And it's not just the new eV-system, but for example there is the pokeflutes, non-consumable niceys, which makes you walk a lot in Tall Grass, aka. encountering pokemon, and that'll make you oneshot all of them, and that accumlates to even more levels.
Plus while you get to pretty high levels, the ... no, no story, but the game just does not advancing, and there's kinda nothing to do. Doesn't help either there are no maps with all the items, especialy hidden items on them, so I'm currently skipping those. In the other games there are stuff happening, but here it seems they focused on the Battle tents, and those were a horrible idea. Random battles with random conditions, where moves are executed randomly. Talk about gambling integrated...
There is also no Town Map. Just WHY? (EDIT: ok, there is the map in the pokenav - which I seen no reason to use, and only checked for misclicking)
Also, the pokenav's constant calling, combined the lack of ability to delete the useless trainers is absolutely infuriating feature.
The abilities/natzres/held items/etc. make the game way to complex for a proper design, resulting in the later (gen 5+( generation just being way too easy.
there are double-battles, and even the promise of tripple-battles. Annoying, because there is a promise by design you can still just do solo battles, but that option is soon taken away, and you have to do obligatory double battles. And no tripple battle is possible, depsite the clear intention.
Lastly, the contests: pure uselessness.
There's also the problem you can't run inside buildings (next gen fixed this).
Lacking feature: why don't you get some reward, any reward for getting the best rate on the cycling road?
My main complaint will be, there's rly nothing happening, and the Fly, aka. Fast Travel option is not useful anymore at the point you gain it. Not as useful as it is in any other game up to gen 6, which I've not played yet. This game is VERY linear. And before I forget again: there's nothing that pushes you to catch pokemon. In all the other games I know of, you gain stuff for doing so, but here - nothing.
What annoys me to no end, and for that this will never be a good game, is the limited inventory space.
Bonus: the champion is Wallace. Your "Second Rival" is Wally. There was an obvious rewamp here, and was just executed lazly.
- Gen 4: the puzzles are all too easy, and Giratina's puzzle is way too hard. The power-spikes are pretty harsh. Not enough population.
The good news is, the Hidden Item finding hits the bare minimum.
The poketch is a fine addition - until you accumlate an infinite number of apps, which you can not delete. Ever. there are also massive chunk of multiplayer-only parts everywhere, and that just anoys me to no end.
While this gen fixed running, it destroyed using bikes. They are too sensitive, becoming a nuisance.
- Gen 5: Lackluster story, way too easy, you still can't capture the cool pokemons early. There's neither a game+ mode after completion where you can start the game with whatever you want. Would be a clear improvement.
Again massive amount of multiplayer content - without the customisations that'd improve that experience.
And seasons? Seasonal changes? Season-exclusives? You went too far, GameFreak.
The company also doubled down on double-battles with triple-battles, and the even more complicated rotation-battles.
The good news is, finaly TMs are not one-time-only.
"HM"s no longer requiring badges to use outside of battle doesn't interrest me much, but that was pacing-opportunity, so that's not good in the end.
- Gen 6: why is "Sky Battles" a thing? People did nt use flying type enough, or what? Also, the item-finder is horrible in this one. But otherwise, it's surprisingly good until now, though the pacing seems odd, as gyms are few and far between, and good pokemons are also rare. This volume heavily suffers from the Cutsiemon Syndrome.
- Gen 7: ?
- Gen 8: ?
- Gen 9: terrestralysing changes your pokemon's type - of course for the "small prize" of microtransaction.