This is easily the most effort Gamefreak put in to a Pokémon remake. So much is added without compromising anything from the originals. They even threw in the small Suicune subplot from Crystal. New areas, redesigned gyms, and new features, including everyone's favourite walking Pokémon system that they haven't been able to get right since.
Pokéathalon is still one of the best side activities in the games.
Unlike Fire Red and Leaf Green it also doesn't stop you evolving Pokémon into their new evolutions pre-national dex. Kind of... They do lock a ton of the items required to do so to post-game, but Pokémon that can evolve via knowing specific moves, like Piloswine and Aipom, are free to evolve into their non-Johto native forms.
It unfortunately did NOT fix Johto's horrible level curve. Route trainers just seem to scale completely differently to gym leaders, so you'll still face level 12 teams after fighting a level 19 gym leader. But where it gets at its worst is after the 4th gym where the game let's you go left on the intended path, or right to the "7th" gym. What that means is both routes are essentially balanced around being the 5th gym, so whichever one you don't pick first will be massively underlevelled. And that's sugarcoating it, because even if you go to the Lake of Rage immediately after the 4th gym, this route that is technically around the 7th gym, or optionally the 5th gym, has trainers with Pokémon lower levelled than the 3rd gym leader. The whole balance is such a mess and it needed an update more than anything.
The weirdest part is that while Gamefreak didn't do anything with Johto, Kanto's gym leaders WERE balanced. Before they were pretty much all jokes since most of them were in the lower elite 4 levels (keeping in mind you need to beat the champion just to get access to the Kanto leaders). Now the first gym leader you face in Kanto starts at the same level as the champion.
This is definitely a great remake and has a ton of soul, it's just a shame they didn't fix what was imo the biggest problem with the gen 2 games in the first place.
Pokéathalon is still one of the best side activities in the games.
Unlike Fire Red and Leaf Green it also doesn't stop you evolving Pokémon into their new evolutions pre-national dex. Kind of... They do lock a ton of the items required to do so to post-game, but Pokémon that can evolve via knowing specific moves, like Piloswine and Aipom, are free to evolve into their non-Johto native forms.
It unfortunately did NOT fix Johto's horrible level curve. Route trainers just seem to scale completely differently to gym leaders, so you'll still face level 12 teams after fighting a level 19 gym leader. But where it gets at its worst is after the 4th gym where the game let's you go left on the intended path, or right to the "7th" gym. What that means is both routes are essentially balanced around being the 5th gym, so whichever one you don't pick first will be massively underlevelled. And that's sugarcoating it, because even if you go to the Lake of Rage immediately after the 4th gym, this route that is technically around the 7th gym, or optionally the 5th gym, has trainers with Pokémon lower levelled than the 3rd gym leader. The whole balance is such a mess and it needed an update more than anything.
The weirdest part is that while Gamefreak didn't do anything with Johto, Kanto's gym leaders WERE balanced. Before they were pretty much all jokes since most of them were in the lower elite 4 levels (keeping in mind you need to beat the champion just to get access to the Kanto leaders). Now the first gym leader you face in Kanto starts at the same level as the champion.
This is definitely a great remake and has a ton of soul, it's just a shame they didn't fix what was imo the biggest problem with the gen 2 games in the first place.
Reddish
8 months ago