I'm a huge fan of this game. I've been playing through the game with hardcore Nuzlocke rules, and it's a pretty stellar time. I think Heart Gold is, while not my personal favorite, one of the single best Pokemon games. It's brought down by the weird level curve mostly, but otherwise this is some of the most content, fun map design, encounters variety, and best superficial add-ons like Pokemon following you or Pokeathalon. However, the level curve as well as some of the pacing makes it a little wack. And the difficulty curve, while fairly normal in the beginning, gets weird and bad by late game. That's why this game is so great. I wouldn't call it a "difficulty hack", but the gyms are significantly harder and more fleshed out. The encounter variety is even better than before, with a fun solid mix of types and strengths on a solid curve. The story has been made linear, the Rockets are expanded upon, and overall the pacing and level curve are excellent. This is, in many ways, a more definitive version of Heart Gold to fans of the series.

Buuuut...

I know I said this isn't a difficulty hack, but I still find the difficulty a bit confusing. You know in Kanto games, when you get to Vermilion City and you can catch a Diglett right next door to the electric type gym and sweep it with no problem? There's kind of a lot of that in this game. And in general, a lot of sweeping opportunity. Jolteon, Magnemite, Luxio, Flaafy, Geodude, and more are all obtained incredibly close to Falkner and make his fight trivial. You get a free Spiritomb right before Whitney, and half her Pokemon have no way to hit it. There's a Shadow Claw TM in Ecruteak, only a city after getting access to unlimited Swords Dance TMs. So on so fourth. Which means that sometimes, in practice, fights are only marginally more interesting than base game. What's the difference between spamming Surf on Blaine's 3 Pokemon vs pressing Swords Dance once and spamming Shadow Claw on Morty's 8? Very little. This is only frustrating because it doesn't have to be this way, even with the exact same encounters. More varied movepools and use of dual types would make these gyms take a lot more thought without spiking the difficulty. Give Falkner a Gligar for example. Bugsy is a spike in difficulty because her team has STAB U-Turn as a very strong option, Rain Dance to counter fire types, rock moves for flying types, Swords Dance Scyther, etc, to make this not a sweepable fight. All the Rockets get a lot more freedom in their teams and it makes them super interesting to fight. I'm not asking for Kaizo difficulty, I don't think I'd want that, but these teams are more expressive and fleshed out versions of the same one note teams of base game, instead of more varied thoughtful teams.

That all said, this game is still insanely good and any Pokemon fan should play it. Great work Drayano :)

Reviewed on Jan 28, 2022


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