Over two decades later, this game still holds up pretty well for what it is. Nostalgia has always been hard for me to fully indulge in as much as I would love to let it determine my experience with old games, but I genuinely had a good time replaying this. The music and animated sprites are still just as charming as they were. Johto is an interesting region to traverse, even if they did go overboard with Water HMs; it's an effort to get to some places on this map which is a key part of the adventure in these games so ultimately I appreciate the intention there. The most difficult part of Gen 2 is the then-new split between special and physical Attack and Defense which makes some Pokemon less useful due to which stat their type uses and how limited their movepools are. This combined with the best TMs in the game being found post-E4 made building a mechanically interesting team more of a challenge than it maybe should be considering the introduction of two new under-utilized Pokemon types as well. The Kanto half of the game is just as disappointing today as it was back in 2000, but I give them credit for trying. It was a very cool idea.

Pretty much all of the old Pokemon games are improved with some imagination on the players' part, which is probably why I had so much fun with them as a kid. Despite how dated this game is, I still feel like it's possible for players today to make each playthrough their own. This time I beat the E4 with all stage 1 Pokemon, which is a really fun challenge in early Pokemon gens when the games were a little harder. What Crystal lacks in balancing and pacing, it makes up for in entertainment value. It's still a really solid game to spend time with however you choose to do it.