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What was with DP's Pokédex?
Recently in my discussions with others, this subject has been coming up, and we always come to the same conclusion: Diamond and Pearl had a really terrible Regional Dex.
First of all, I don't know why GF chose to return to a Dex of 151 for Sinnoh to begin with. It's very hard to have good diversity with a Dex that small (even Kanto was overloaded with Poison/Water/Normal and starving for Ghost/Dragon/Dark/Steel), and it's even less excusable when the National Dex is nearly 500 (as it was at the time). To make matters worse, DP's Dex didn't even include all of the Pokémon that were introduced in Gen 4! And, I'm not just talking about Legendaries, but normal Pokémon like Gallade, Yanmega, and Mamoswine. Even if they were new Evolutions of older Pokémon, they were still new Pokémon, which is what DP were supposed to be promoting. But, worst of all was the complete lack of type diversity. As bad as Kanto was, it had nothing on DP Sinnoh. You expect certain types like Ghost and Dragon to be rare (for better or worse), and while the latter, at least, was also very rare in Sinnoh, another type that you wouldn't expect to be "rare" was also similarly scarce--Fire. Infernape and Rapidash. That was it as far as Fire types went, and one of those was a Starter. Rather insultingly, these games also introduced the first Fire type Elite Four member, and yet, he couldn't even have a team that was mostly Fire, let alone a full Fire team. What the hell, GF? Of course, some have argued that Fire types being rare in Sinnoh made sense because Sinnoh was supposed to be a cold region. The PCs both wore scarves, and many areas were covered in snow. So, that meant we must've gotten a lot of Ice types to make up for the lack of Fire, then, right? Nope. Abomasnow and Weavile, and that's it. Yup, in this "cold" region, Ice was just as non-existent as Fire. That's why the games' Ice Gym Leader had a use a Medicham of all things to fill out her team. In fact, only one significant NPC after Byron had a monotype team--Lucian. The tiny Dex had just enough Psychic types (even without Gallade) to give him a full team (albeit, with some really terrible Pokémon like Mr. Mime and Girafarig). The rest all had to use Pokémon of other types to fill slots without resorting to dupes or NFEs (with Volkner and the aforementioned Flint being the very worst examples). Well, what type was the Sinnoh Dex plentiful in? Water, of course. Everyone's favorite Repel-wasters, Tentacool and Wingull, returned with a vengeance, and for whatever reason, GF thought the game just wouldn't have been "complete" without the likes of Magikarp/Gyarados, Psyduck/Golduck, Goldeen/Seaking, Barboach/Whiscash, Wooper/Quagsire, and Azurill/Marill/Azumarill. Looking at that Dex, you would've thought that Sinnoh was as water-logged as Hoenn. (In reality, it only had a few Water routes.) There was plenty of Normal, as well. Many of the new Pokémon were Normal types (including one that combined Normal with the games' other favorite type), and Girafarig, Cleffa/Clefairy/Clefable (Normal types at the time), and Hoothoot/Noctowl were also all brought back for some reason. Now, DP's Dex did have one big gameplay bonus--It made certain Gym Leaders and E4 Members harder than they would've been. Because many of them were using Pokémon of different types, you couldn't as easily beat them just by exploiting one major weakness. But, this was almost a kind of Fake Difficulty, as the only reason those trainers were like that in the first place was because of the tiny, limited Regional Dex. Thankfully, Platinum came along and fixed Sinnoh's Dex, expanding it to 210 and adding more of the types that were scarce in DP (as well as the Gen 4 Pokémon that were missing in DP). But, this is a fix that should've never been necessary to begin with. Why did DP have such an awful Dex? How did you cope with it? Are you afraid that eventual Gen 4 remakes will reuse DP's Dex over Platinum's? |
This was definitely something worthy of mention. I didn't have too much variety in between my playthroughs of DP, as there wasn't that much I found exciting to use. And if they do make remakes of DP I would hope they go with the Pokédex from Platinum instead, mainly because HGSS had Mamoswine, Ambipom, Tangrowth and Lickilicky, while ORAS had the full evolution lines of the Pokémon present with ones such as Gallade and Roserade.
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After how ORAS were handled, though, I do fear that Platinum will be largely ignored in DP's remakes, which could include the Platinum Dex and Gym Leader/E4 teams. I know how much Sinnoh fans would hate that. :( |
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DP was a bit of a transitional game. They gave us a poor 150 Sinnoh Dex, but you could get certain new evolutions in the postgame, and they really wanted you to use the dual-slot mode to get more Pokémon, which was sadly restricted to the postgame too but could've been useful in the main game. I think the biggest problem with the DP dex is that it's quite unorthodox. Most people like to have a Fire-type Pokémon, but if you don't choose Chimchar all you have is Ponyta. Some good Pokémon like Vespiquen, Snorlax and Heracross require Honey, and they're rare on top of that. There were a few unusual type combinations like Abomasnow's Grass/Ice, or Drifblim's Ghost/Flying. I can still build a good team in DP, but it requires more effort. Chimchar is probably the most efficient starter, because the other ones have good aternatives. I prefer Diamond because of Honchkrow. Murkrow is a nice alternative to Starly, because it starts very powerful (it's as strong as the grown up Swellow!) and doesn't need evolution until late in the game. Personally the RSE Dex has 200 and I find it to be around the same level as the 150 Sinnoh Dex i.e. not very good. But it's possible to have a Pokédex with only 150. Kanto's Dex was excellent IMO. Heck, it's far easier to build a team in FRLG than in RSE and DP! |
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There needs to be some Gameplay and Story Segregation applied. Storywise, it makes sense for there to be a million Water types and hardly any Dragon types, but it doesn't make for good gameplay. If you love Dragons and hate Water, you're out of luck. Quote:
The best "small" Dex was probably BW Unova. As controversial of a move as it was to restrict you to using only new Pokémon, they, at least, made an effort to give you more variety instead of just cramming the game full of Poison, Water, Normal, or whatever. (The fact that Elesa is the only type specialist in BW who has dupes is a testament to this, although Drayden/Iris also have a NFE. Restricting the Gym Leaders to 3 Pokémon each and E4 members to 4 Pokémon each probably also helped in this regard, as it meant that they had less space to fill.) But, even BW had its blind spots, such as Ice (only 3 fully-evolved ones, and they're all crappy mono-Ices) and ironically, Water (few good alternatives to Samurott). It's best to just have a large Dex with lots of variety. |
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Sinnoh introduced only one non-legendary Dragon-type, and it was enough, because Garchomp is overpowered anyway and even doubles as the best Ground-type. Unova had only two viable options for Dragon-types: Druddigon and Haxorus. Hydreigon is unusable in the main game since it evolves too late. Quote:
Vanilluxe is pretty strong, and Seismitoad, Carracosta, Swanna and Jellicent are all great alternatives to Samurott, all of them dual-types, too. Unova is probably the best example of a small Dex with good distribution, but that's obviously because it doesn't have as many Water-types as the Kanto Dex. Still, a lot of Kanto's Water-types are dual-typed, too. I just don't see what's so bad about the Kanto Dex, except for people who want to do monotype runs. I'm perfectly fine with having only Dragonite to choose from, since it's very powerful. The Unova E4 can't be compared with the others, because its members only have four Pokémon the first time around, so obviously it's easier to fill in the gaps. If Shauntal had to use five Pokémon, she'd be one Pokémon short of being able to have a mono team. The gym leaders in Unova also have less Pokémon than in other regions, and, even then, Drayden/Iris had to use a Fraxure in their teams, probably because the game wanted to preserve Deino for later. |
I don't get much of the griping about there not being enough types in the local dexes and too much of other types. It doesn't make much sense to have equal amounts of each typing because it doesn't work like that in real life. If you're living in an island region of course there's gonna be a lot of Water type Pokemon, because you're next to their native habitat. Likewise unless you have an area where Ghost types would live, you're not gonna run into any. Making it so that each type appears in the same amount would mean making a cluttered region that looks more like a Minecraft world than real life, and that wouldn't make much sense, especially considering where that place is located in the world.
With that griping aside though, the Sinnoh Dex did have a lot of flaws. What doesn't make much sense is the fact you CAN catch Johto Pokemon there, and yet hardly any of them could be found anywhere. If you could catch them using the Pokeradar, why couldn't you just run into them normally? So what if there's some duplicate entries; if it makes sense for that Pokemon to be there, there's no point in leaving it out because it's not in the Regional Dex. There were also a large deficit of ice types in a region that had a huge snow covered area. They should have had a lot more. It doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be so few Ice types on an island that's no less than 30% snow. At least Platinum rectified some of this, but still it should have had more Ice types. The lack of Fire types was an issue too. It doesn't make a lot of sense that the only Fire-type you can obtain in the wild is Ponyta. I know it's rare to really run into Fire types outside of their perspective habitat but there are some Fire types that inhabit abandoned buildings and normally grassy areas like Vulpix and Growlithe. Why couldn't they have those? I think the biggest insult to injury though is there being a huge island with a lot of non-native Pokemon, including some types not normally available. They should have had some of those Pokemon on the mainland too. |
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(And, even worse, it included dupes (Gengar), NFEs (Haunter and later, Golbat), and a weakling (Arbok)--The three things that *no* good E4 team should have.) At least, Flint's team was fixed in Platinum. Agatha got no such saving grace, not even in the FRLG rematch. Quote:
In fact, it took all the way until Fantina in Platinum for us to have a Ghost specialist who had a full team without dupes, NFEs, or other types. Dragon was even worse, not seeing a true type specialist (ie. full team, no dupes/NFEs/other types) until Drayden in B2W2. Quote:
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In fact, very few of those oodles of Poison types were even "above average," battle-wise. Pretty much just Venusaur and the Nidos. Maybe, Gengar if you can deal with the lack of STAB. (And, Victreebel if it's old school Blue or Yellow.) That is really bad game design, to have a type be so dominant, yet so full of useless, underpowered Pokémon. (Especially in comparison to its two biggest weaknesses.) Quote:
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Looking at the list of Pokemon available on the Regional Dex for DP is actually quite astonishing. It definitely seems like they just randomly threw a group of 151 Pokemon together from different Regions, lacks type diversity for sure. When you compare to how B2W2 had the Dex, that was way better with over double the amount of Mons available. Platinum slightly improved on this, but I'd definitely say this is one of the downfalls of the Gen IV games.
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I know that Water has always been the games' most common type, but that doesn't mean that it has to be the dominant type in every Regional Dex. (Something that had the unintended effect of obsoleting Water starters, as it made them more easily replaceable than Grass and Fire starters.) Luckily, GF seemed to have learned their lesson with Unova and Kalos, which weren't nearly as infested with Water types as previous Gens were. |
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Also, good call on Sendoff Spring. Ghost seems to constantly get shafted in the games. :( |
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But really, I can't say it enough; Sinnoh badly needed more Ice types, and why they didn't bother to add any is unknown to me. You'd figure we'd be running into Lapras and Seel and Spheal and Snorunt and Swinub and other Ice types both within the mountain and near Snowpoint but nah, we gotta run into loads of Bronzong and Bronzor instead. The place should be a treasure trove of Ice types, considering besides Unova it's pretty much the coldest region around. Same deal goes for Ghost types; there's an entire route that randomly appears and vanishes, and you'd assume supernatural entities from all around would be drawn here, especially with the fact that Giratina the Phantom King happens to live in a world connected right there. And there's also a tower, and a haunted mansion in Eterna Forest that for some reason seriously lacks Ghost Pokemon and also Pokemon that would be right at home living in an abandoned building, like Rattata and Vulpix. Sinnoh should be the ghostliest region around, what with it being right next to the dimensional nexus between Heaven, Earth and the Torn World. Maybe they didn't want to add any of the older Pokemon because Game Freak figured the kids could just import them in from Emerald and FireRed? |
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Two Gengars isn't good for variety but they made Agatha harder, as Gengar isn't exactly easy to get rid of in RBY. Quote:
Lance could've had Kingdra, but his team in GSC is a nod to RBY. It's almost the same, with the addition of Charizard. Three Dragonites are no joke if you don't have the correct moves. Quote:
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Seismitoad gets STAB on Ground moves. Carracosta gets Aqua Jet to patch up its low Speed. Swanna, as a Flying-type, is better than the alternative Unfezant. Jellicent is superior to Samurott, with better typing. They're not all better than Samurott, but they're all decent alternatives and don't exactly force you to choose Oshawott at the beginning. I've used Carracosta, Swanna and Jellicent and they were more than adequate for the game. Quote:
Also, I don't mind not having any Dark-types to choose from in the Kanto games, as I understand why the game doesn't have any. Quote:
I'm surprised you don't complain about Misty's roster when RBY had a gazillion Water Pokémon to choose from... {XD} Then again, gym leaders, especially early ones, aren't always supposed to have completely balanced teams. Their first Pokémon are usually just a stepping stone for the player. She could've had a Shellder, for example, but Staryu fits her style better, and is much superior offensively. Quote:
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This was always one of the most baffling things about D/P. It makes it always hard for me to get good enough coverage, and is pretty much the sole reason why I always choose Chimchar when I attempt to replay Diamond or Pearl, simply because I'd definitely not enjoy being stuck with a Ponyta.
And also, Pendraflare made a good point because if we got Sinnoh remakes anytime soon I really have to hope they can learn from how they improved Hoenn's Pokedex in OR/AS by at least remaking D/P but incorporating Platinum's Sinnoh Dex instead of Diamond & Pearl's. The Pokedex issue was also to blame for several of Sinnoh's Gym Leaders and Elite Four not having teams completely made up of Pokemon of their specialized type, some notable examples being Flint (having a Steelix, Drifblim and Lopunny alongside only two Fire-types), Volkner (has only two Electric-types, with an Octillery and Ambipom thrown in), Candice (especially her Medicham, which doesn't fit well in an Ice-type team) and Aaron (has the Poison/Dark Drapion in a Bug-type team, but I guess the fact its pre-evo is Bug might have to do with it). Also, I can easily agree with who mentioned the Dex is mainly dominated by Water and Normal-types, leaving other types with little options until the postgame, along with leaving some of the new evolutions entirely out of the main story. Game Freak have pretty much learned their lesson from these games and pretty much improved the way regional Dexes are handled in the future, such as the more recent generations being a bit kinder with type diversity in the regional Dex. |
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(Thank goodness GF, at least, had enough sense to not put a Dragon specialist in Sinnoh. Just imagine how horrible their team would've been, and it's something that even the Platinum expansion wouldn't have been able to fix.) Quote:
(Which, sadly, may have been part of the reason for both Platinum's Dex expansion and HGSS being made. Before Platinum/HGSS, a large swath of Pokémon couldn't be obtained outside of RSE/FRLG/Colosseum/XD, which literally made completing the National Dex impossible for those with a DSi.) Quote:
You were clearly doing something wrong if you didn't instantly kill Arbok with Psychic/Earthquake/Dig. Even then, Glare has shaky accuracy, and Arbok's stats are poor. (Not a single one is higher than Base 85.) And, yes, Bruno shouldn't have had Onix, either. If they didn't want to give him Primeape and Poliwrath for whatever reason, then, he should've gotten Rhydon and Golem, instead. He'd still be a pushover, but, at least, those two can actually hurt things. Quote:
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When Ice Punch was a TM, and so many powerful Special Attackers could learn it... Yeah, those (underleveled) Dragonites were a joke. The same Kadabra (let alone Alakazam) that beat Morty could also beat Lance without hardly breaking a sweat. Again, Kingdra actually would've slowed it down, like you probably learned the hard way from Clair. Quote:
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There's still options for people who don't want to run mostly Water types, but I do agree there is a critical shortage of types that should be in abundance like Psychic, Ghost and Ice. I think the main problem wasn't so much we have too many dang Water types (which is admittedly true,) but that the Dex is too small and Game Freak for some reason didn't think to put in enough of other types in. You could still have a reasonable amount of Water types and at the same time have other types, even Fire, that could still live there since their main habitat is urbanized areas, like Flareon, Vulpix, and Growlithe, and even mountainous areas. The main problem is the Dex is way too small for a region that with freaking Pokeradar enabled lets you run into far more Pokemon that for some reason were invisible to you without it. Why couldn't we run into Mareep in Valley Windworks in regular grass again? Also I notice in Gen 4 only 5 unique Fire type Pokemon were even made. Why? I understand Fire Pokemon don't want to live in areas that are damp and cold but there's still a good part of the region that is hospitable to them. Heck we have an iron forging factory, which you'd figure would attract at least some type of Fire Pokemon like Slugma. Quote:
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Platinum, at least, fixed this by expanding the Dex to 210 and adding more underrepresented types, but it's a fix that shouldn't have been needed in the first place. Luckily, GF seems to have learned their lesson if the Unova and Kalos games are any indication; diversity is a good thing. Quote:
Granted, I highly doubt that GF could predict in 2006 that Nintendo would eventually kill GBA compatibility, but it's something that they should've prepared for after what had happened just four years earlier with the GBA and GB/C. Plus, as you said, many Pokémon (especially those from Gen 2) were hard to obtain in the Gen 3 games (in many cases, needing to be transferred all the way from Colosseum/XD), so it wasn't a practical way to complete DP's Pokédex to begin with. |
They were either holding back for Platinum at that time or they were simply nuts when they developed DP.
DP felt like a beta, an uncompleted game from upon first playthrough. Sadly, that feeling intensified when Pt came to life. :( |
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Luckily, though, Platinum happened, and people got to experience Sinnoh without any of the things that held DP back. This was a Gen where a Third Version really WAS warranted over a sequel or prequel. |
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Just look how beautiful is Pt and everything's almost perfect on HGSS. XY sorta followed DP's footsteps, not gonna elaborate more or I'm straying out of topic. Just remind me not to buy the initial pairs when we're in an even number generation. P.S. The Darkrai and Shaymin glitch were the best thing ever in Pokémon history. {XD} |
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I don't understand why people complain about this. The last time we saw trade restrictions was Gen III. Don't like the Pokemon in the Pokedex? That's fine, just trade in one you like. Problem solved.
As far as Gym Leaders / Elite Four, I much prefer DP to Platinum. The added variety was something different. You could still definitely tell their preference, but rather than focusing on Pokemon of their chosen type, they focused on Pokemon that could learn moves of their chosen type. That actually feels like something a half-competent trainer would do if they wanted to focus on a particular type. Platinum turned Volkner into "spam Earthquake to win", Flint into "spam Surf to win", and Candice into "spam Flamethrower to win". Steven was a steel-type specialist, but half his team wasn't Steel-type, but nobody complained then or called it "fake difficulty". I've never really had any problems with DP's Pokedex. Some types are rarer than they should be, but so what? Take Ice for example, Kanto and Johto has a bunch of mediocre Ice-types and a couple pretty good ones. Sinnoh has a couple pretty good ones. Sure, more variety wouldn't hurt, but ultimately, they're good enough if you actually want to use an Ice-type. Which, you don't, because nobody uses Ice-type Pokemon. To be honest, the only time I decided to trade in a non-native Pokemon to play through the game was Heart Gold. Once I got Eevee, I traded it over to Platinum to evolve it to Leafeon and traded it back. And, note, that wasn't because of a lack of grass-types - HGSS has plenty - but simply because I didn't like the ones available. Also, let me just say that I really dislike BW2 and XY's Pokedex. They're too big. While I've never had a problem with it, I can at least understand people complaining about 150 being too small. But 200 or 250 is more than enough; bigger than that is just pointless. Pokedex bloat is annoying because all it does is add weak filler Pokemon in the name of variety. Plus, because the Pokemon games aren't really long enough to handle huge Pokedexes, they increase the number of Pokemon available per area, and the number of Pokemon exclusive to a particular area. |
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I just don't understand why Volkner ensuring he has no chance against Ground-types supposedly makes for a better game. |
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