HG and SS were my least favorite Pokemon games in a long time. I hated, hated, hated the PokeAthlon and thought it was a terrible replacement for the Contests in Gen 3 and 4 that should have been included in HG and SS. The "plot" was awful, and should have had a major overhaul from GSC. Instead it was just a tiny update. There was no where to grind for the E4 or anything after (Victory Road is a joke). Early game Pokemon were still incredibly weak and virtually unsuable after a certain point.
Admittedly, I think I'm so hard on these games because I was a GSC kid. I really expected these games to blow my mind by combining the nostalgia of Gen 2 with the epic scale and fun of later Generations, but instead all I got was GSC with better graphics and an awful gimmick called the PokeAthlon. Also the Safari Zone was dumb and needlessly complicated. :(
That's odd... My first Pokemon game EVER was Gold, and I am absolutely loving HG/SS (just found my copy and dumped it onto my laptop since my DS is fried). I mean, it
is a remake, not a new game based off an old one. GSC had no areas to level grind before the Elite Four, had no contests or activities at all, and had no Safari Zone. I'll admit they overcomplicated a good system by adding in the time aspect for rare Pokemon, but overall I think Nintendo got HG/SS completely right.
Several things I didn't like, with the first two being the most egregious faults.
*Red's team is still incredibly weak. Thunderstone, or better yet Jolteon or Ampharos would be helpful. So would only having one Water-type.
*Leaf appears nowhere in game. No option to have her replace Red. Girl champions need love too...
*Mt. Silver now involves using the pathetic Rock Climb HM. It's the reason I only went up there to beat Red once.
*Can't delete Pokegear numbers. Had to start over and remind myself to tell Joey "NO!"
*Can't buy coins directly at Game Corner anymore. Hence getting TM13 and TM24 was made a thousand times more difficult.
*TR Executives were woefully weak. C'mon, Archer at least needed 4-5 Pokemon, fully evolved, with better diversity and movesets. Higher levels wouldn't hurt either.
*Safari Zone so confusing I didn't even try it. At the end of the day, it's still the old Rock/Bait system anyway regardless of the number of bells and whistles they put on it.
I swear I had an eye twitch reading this. Not trying to flame, just explain as best I can...
*It's a remake. While some trainers did get substantially stronger (a la Falkner), the Red battle was perfect, IMO. His team was fine. It's how it was structured in the originals, and how it was meant to be structured. His Pikachu was still the strongest Pokemon you ever fight period... Who cares if it didn't get evolved? He just didn't want to evolve it is all.
*Can't change canon. Leaf never existed for GSC. Red is
the ultimate Champion, and you can't write him out to be a different gender in the interest of fairness. He is a he because that's the way Nintendo wrote the games (both GSC and HG/SS).
*Rock Climb is more powerful than Strength. My Zoom Lens'd Slaking didn't have a problem with it.
*Absolutely agree on this point. It's dumb that you can't delete, though I forget if you could in the originals or not.
*I would be more concerned about this, but then again, I play this on DeSmuME now, which has built in AR support, so I'm neutral.
*It makes more sense that they would be weaker, actually. They just got absolutely swamped by Red three years previously, their leader is in hiding, and the best they can come up with is occupying a building with one entrance and one exit in a city reachable in about an hour's time from the Indigo Plateau. They were desperate, and they couldn't wait any longer to train up. That's how I see it, anyways. That's how I rationalized it in GSC as well.
*I agree that it's confusing and the time aspect was unnecessary, but at least they tried something different than just doing the same old system.
I don't mean to sound rude in any of this, by the way.
