FRLG has always been an enigma to me in that i never quite understand what it is people prefer about this game to the originals. i'm willing to accept that i'm obviously in the minority on this one, but i think as far as remakes go, this really pales in comparison to what the original games were. there was an energy and vision in RB that seems to have been lost in FRLG. in probably the worst way, this is the most literal and exact remake you could do of RB, and it's for the worse because of that.
for the uninitiated, i'm not going to repeat word-for-word what my feelings are on RB, but i'm going to give a brief refresher for what they are. RB is the most abstract game in the series because it was pokemon before pokemon became pokemon (yes this sentence makes sense to me). there was less specificity in what type of world RB presented and what priorities you, as a player, should have. you were given so much room to go hogwild and determine what works for you in your playthroughs. were there bad pokemon? absolutely. but you were given recourse to make bad pokemon good (i.e. the nearly universally-applicable body slam to any bad pokemon's moveset). in a sense, RB was maybe too easy because of how unbalanced it was in tandem with easily exploitable AI, but it didn't seem to matter much when RB was a game about the experience, less than the details.
FRLG, by comparison, feels marred by needing to be the abstract RB in gen 3, a generation that was making pokemon more details-oriented. pokemon now have natures, most TMs are balanced such that the best moves are usually hidden away at endgame or the game corner, bad pokemon are truly doomed without massive amounts of babying, held items exist but only for your opponents because god forbid you have access to berries in kanto and ruin the "authenticity" of a kanto remake, etc. etc. a lot of the things that they did decide to add to FRLG didn't ignite flames of curiosity from me either. has there ever been anyone who didn't find the sevii islands to be a gigantic combo of wasted time + squandered opportunities? at least the vs. seeker was cool and a much welcome addition to the formula, though fuck knows why you can't use it in places like gyms or victory road. and let's not forget the fame checker, the most vital addition to any pokemon game ever.
so when you get to the design philosophy of FRLG, it's just "remake all the kanto content as flavorlessly as possible". the lack of context for a lot of RB that worked for that game now stands out horribly here. whereas team rocket somehow hiding their base underneath the game corner was kind of a cute "use the limitation of technology" thing i could overlook in RB, it stands out like a sore thumb here. and pokemon tower just feels. . . whereas in RB, it felt creepy due to the ambiguity of whether or not the channelers were being maliciously possessed by their gastly or maybe even some other type of entity, in FRLG, it just feels like they're larping. in many ways, FRLG photocopies kanto in a 1:1 manner without understanding the intent behind a lot of those decisions. i ask this in very good faith: was the FRLG team (largely) the same team that originally did RB? i'd be incredibly surprised if they were, because so much of FRLG feels like someone interpreting RB in modern graphics rather than trying to remake it. very much like someone doing an extremely literal translation of a foreign work that misses out on wordplay and cultural references. sure, the effort and knowledge is there, but the spirit was lost.
and this is going to sound nitpicky as all shit! but the first thing, the very very FIRST thing i think of when i think about FRLG? i think about how shitty the trainer battle theme sounds compared to the original! maybe it's just me, but so many of the songs in FRLG sound deflated compared to the original RB mixes. even FRLG songs i like, like the champion theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4vpdkEkup8), still live in the shadow of RB's version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgAj5KdAC0). compare the former's grandiose feeling and borderline claustrophobia in its cacophony to the latter's restraint and usage of negative space. by giving the song more room to breathe, RB's champion theme feels more arresting, more colossal, more final. there's something to be said about how you can extrapolate the entirety of how i feel about FRLG vs. RB here. FRLG tries to recapture a simplicity in RB without understanding what made that simplicity work.
i think i would like FRLG more as their own games if they actually doubled down on being these detail-oriented kanto games, but they do not. held items are scarce and the ones you're going to be using are largely unnecessary. i was still using amulet coin by the time i fought the elite four. and don't lie, until someone on the internet told you about it, you didn't know that you could get two leftovers from the snorlax location by using itemfinder. these games are bereft of what actually made RS feel new and exciting. you're stuck in a generation where there's quite a bit of shitty pokemon that you cannot improve meaningfully and have no access to breeding or (most) held items that would help you with that. again, i get the authenticity to RB's kanto was vital to gamefreak here, but it sacrificed FRLG's potential to be the definitive kanto experience. do i think this is a bad game? absolutely not, and, on this recent replay, i still enjoyed myself. but do i think this is a great game? both as a remake of RB and as a standalone experience, no, i don't.
i've gone out of my way to avoid referencing HGSS at all until now because i want end this by saying that HGSS embody what a pokemon remake should be like. HGSS added more meaningful content while changing design flaws of the original. it spun both the "stay true to the original" and "build on the original's foundation and modernize it" plates without compromising anything. so, ultimately, i think FRLG served as a learning experience for gamefreak in that way. i'm not going to say gamefreak viewed this game as a failure, but i think this was a stepping stone to getting a game like HGSS. and, if only for that, this game had a point.
for the uninitiated, i'm not going to repeat word-for-word what my feelings are on RB, but i'm going to give a brief refresher for what they are. RB is the most abstract game in the series because it was pokemon before pokemon became pokemon (yes this sentence makes sense to me). there was less specificity in what type of world RB presented and what priorities you, as a player, should have. you were given so much room to go hogwild and determine what works for you in your playthroughs. were there bad pokemon? absolutely. but you were given recourse to make bad pokemon good (i.e. the nearly universally-applicable body slam to any bad pokemon's moveset). in a sense, RB was maybe too easy because of how unbalanced it was in tandem with easily exploitable AI, but it didn't seem to matter much when RB was a game about the experience, less than the details.
FRLG, by comparison, feels marred by needing to be the abstract RB in gen 3, a generation that was making pokemon more details-oriented. pokemon now have natures, most TMs are balanced such that the best moves are usually hidden away at endgame or the game corner, bad pokemon are truly doomed without massive amounts of babying, held items exist but only for your opponents because god forbid you have access to berries in kanto and ruin the "authenticity" of a kanto remake, etc. etc. a lot of the things that they did decide to add to FRLG didn't ignite flames of curiosity from me either. has there ever been anyone who didn't find the sevii islands to be a gigantic combo of wasted time + squandered opportunities? at least the vs. seeker was cool and a much welcome addition to the formula, though fuck knows why you can't use it in places like gyms or victory road. and let's not forget the fame checker, the most vital addition to any pokemon game ever.
so when you get to the design philosophy of FRLG, it's just "remake all the kanto content as flavorlessly as possible". the lack of context for a lot of RB that worked for that game now stands out horribly here. whereas team rocket somehow hiding their base underneath the game corner was kind of a cute "use the limitation of technology" thing i could overlook in RB, it stands out like a sore thumb here. and pokemon tower just feels. . . whereas in RB, it felt creepy due to the ambiguity of whether or not the channelers were being maliciously possessed by their gastly or maybe even some other type of entity, in FRLG, it just feels like they're larping. in many ways, FRLG photocopies kanto in a 1:1 manner without understanding the intent behind a lot of those decisions. i ask this in very good faith: was the FRLG team (largely) the same team that originally did RB? i'd be incredibly surprised if they were, because so much of FRLG feels like someone interpreting RB in modern graphics rather than trying to remake it. very much like someone doing an extremely literal translation of a foreign work that misses out on wordplay and cultural references. sure, the effort and knowledge is there, but the spirit was lost.
and this is going to sound nitpicky as all shit! but the first thing, the very very FIRST thing i think of when i think about FRLG? i think about how shitty the trainer battle theme sounds compared to the original! maybe it's just me, but so many of the songs in FRLG sound deflated compared to the original RB mixes. even FRLG songs i like, like the champion theme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4vpdkEkup8), still live in the shadow of RB's version (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgAj5KdAC0). compare the former's grandiose feeling and borderline claustrophobia in its cacophony to the latter's restraint and usage of negative space. by giving the song more room to breathe, RB's champion theme feels more arresting, more colossal, more final. there's something to be said about how you can extrapolate the entirety of how i feel about FRLG vs. RB here. FRLG tries to recapture a simplicity in RB without understanding what made that simplicity work.
i think i would like FRLG more as their own games if they actually doubled down on being these detail-oriented kanto games, but they do not. held items are scarce and the ones you're going to be using are largely unnecessary. i was still using amulet coin by the time i fought the elite four. and don't lie, until someone on the internet told you about it, you didn't know that you could get two leftovers from the snorlax location by using itemfinder. these games are bereft of what actually made RS feel new and exciting. you're stuck in a generation where there's quite a bit of shitty pokemon that you cannot improve meaningfully and have no access to breeding or (most) held items that would help you with that. again, i get the authenticity to RB's kanto was vital to gamefreak here, but it sacrificed FRLG's potential to be the definitive kanto experience. do i think this is a bad game? absolutely not, and, on this recent replay, i still enjoyed myself. but do i think this is a great game? both as a remake of RB and as a standalone experience, no, i don't.
i've gone out of my way to avoid referencing HGSS at all until now because i want end this by saying that HGSS embody what a pokemon remake should be like. HGSS added more meaningful content while changing design flaws of the original. it spun both the "stay true to the original" and "build on the original's foundation and modernize it" plates without compromising anything. so, ultimately, i think FRLG served as a learning experience for gamefreak in that way. i'm not going to say gamefreak viewed this game as a failure, but i think this was a stepping stone to getting a game like HGSS. and, if only for that, this game had a point.
Pookiemookie
1 year ago