2nd Gen Faults of G/S/C

The purpose of this thread is to take an objective look at the second generation games. This includes the new region, over 100 new Pok?mon, new held items, and more. Of course including your own thoughts will make this an even better discussion. I'm sure most of us have played through these games many times and have a good look at what works and what didn't.

The Level Curve:
This was the biggest pet peeve for me. There was just no consistency in terms of levels throughout the region. Not to mention this also spreads to the wild Pok?mon found making it pretty difficult to grind to be prepared for the Gym Leaders.

The lack of Dark-types during the game
Umbreon is the only Dark-type available during the game. Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel, and Larvitar are only obtainable until post-game which at that point, you have to go through hell and back trying to train them up to match the rest of your team.

My biggest problem was the level curve. Lance and the E4 had their Pokemon at their late 40's/early 50's while mine barely made it to to their 40's. It's worse after because then the kanto leaders have their levels at 50's while mine are still at 45. It's even worse with Red.

How did they not fix that in HGSS? I don't know, but other than that I thought the games were great.

Yeah the level curve was pretty tough, I mean it's acceptable with Red cause he was meant to be a really tough fight but otherwise it kinda sucked.

Luna said:

Yeah the level curve was pretty tough, I mean it's acceptable with Red cause he was meant to be a really tough fight but otherwise it kinda sucked.

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I get that, but the level jump from Kanto to Red is pretty insane, considering there are very limited, if any, training spots that are actually worth the EXP.

tokyodrift said:

I get that, but the level jump from Kanto to Red is pretty insane, considering there are very limited, if any, training spots that are actually worth the EXP.

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Yeah that's the thing, although Red is made tough on purpose, there's not really a solid way to train Pokemon to a really high level, so I often ended up beating him by spamming full restores and other cheap methods, which felt kinda lame.

Agreed with the level curve. I also didn't like it how a lot of Johto Pokemon weren't available until after the E4 (on top of the Pokemon mentioned in the OP, iirc Slugma was unavailable). It felt pretty annoying to have to wait so long to catch one, and then to have it be so underlevelled that it wasn't worth training up.

Also the lack of Johto Pokemon on the Gym Leaders' team was a bit disappointing as well. From memory, Falkner, Bugsy (I think?), Morty and Chuck didn't have any Johto Pokemon, even though there were Johto Pokemon to choose from. It definitely seemed like a missed opportunity to showcase new Pokemon.

In Gold and Crystal I wished Lugia had Aeroblast. Overall the wild pokemon levels.

I agree with what a bunch of people already pointed out about GSC's level curve.

I also dislike the roaming legends because chasing them around felt tedious. I think it would of been nice if you can find more gen 2 Pokemon in Johto such as Houndour, Murkrow and Slugma.

Also wish that you can find elemental stones before you reach Kanto. They kind of fixed this in Crystal but relying on phone calls to get the elemental stones feels a bit too random for my taste. In some cases it's best to trade over Pokemon to the gen 1 games and evolve them there.

My problems are what the original post said and what a few others have said.

The dark types. Murkrow, Larvitar, Sneasel and ESPECIALLY Houndour should be found earlier since there aren't a lot of fire types either if you don't pick Cyndaquil. I think only Vulpix/Growlith and Magmar are available.

I really wish the stones were available at the department store.

Also the rare pokemon in Red and Blue:
Pikachu 5% Viridian Forest
Chansey 1% Safari Zone
Tauros 10% Safari Zone
Dratini 25% Safari Zone Super Rod
Snorlax Only 2

are all tough to get but also much more useful in battle than...

Dunsparece 1% Dark Cave
Marril 1% Mt. Mortar
Yanma 1% Route 35
Snubble 1% Route 38
Sudawoodo Only 1

Now I know there are swarms but I can never get these people to call me. Then once you catch them they're not that great in battle.

Oh, well. Still my favorite gen!

The level curve was horrible. I get that they were trying to make the game less linear so the Pokemon had to be lower level, but come on. At least raise the levels of the Pokemon between Mahogany Town and Blackthorn City! Kanto had no excuse to have such low level Pokemon. Even Mt. Silver had weak wild Pokemon! The other problem with 2nd Gen is roaming legendaries. What, did they think the ridiculously low catch rate wasn't good enough? Now they have to run away from you on the first turn, too? I hate, hate, HATE roaming legendaries.

Johnny has a notable point, the wild encounters are all messed up by making all the good Pokemon just TOO DAMN RARE! Doesn't help that training in Johto is extremely boring because of the bad level pacing of the wild Pokemon, and was probably why I gave up on the region as soon as Black & White came out.

JohnnyGolduck said:

Dunsparece 1% Dark Cave
Marril 1% Mt. Mortar
Yanma 1% Route 35
Snubble 1% Route 38
Sudawoodo Only 1

Now I know there are swarms but I can never get these people to call me. Then once you catch them they're not that great in battle.

Oh, well. Still my favorite gen!

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Whoa, I remember Yanma and Snubbull being rare but had no idea they were 1% encounters outside of the swarms :O And didn't realise that Marill was that rare either - seems a bit strange since Marill was one of the Pokemon that they promoted quite a bit from memory.

I never knew that they were actually that rare to find. What's sad is that Heracross has a higher chance of being found through the Headbutt method with a 30% chance to be found.

My main beef with G/S/C is the imbalance in Starter usability. Cyndaquil stood pretty much on top, while Totodile was the next best. A bit hard but still very good. Then Chikorita. Her stats continue to be terrible throughout her evolutions.
I would also like to cite the lack of Dark Pokemon and Fire Pokemon, how hard it was to find Evolution stones, and the absolute lack of anything like a post game. Roaming legendaries and poor level curves didn't make it much better, neither did the weird and obscure moves/techniques you had to learn to catch said roaming legendaries.

There are several faults to G/S/C that peeved me, including:

• Most of the then-new Pokémon were considerably slower than much of their Generation I counterparts.
• The new catch algorithm made the PokéBalls significantly weaker than they were in Generation I (I was trying to catch a Zubat, and despite its HP being well into the red, it took three PokéBalls just to capture it, whereas the exact same circumstances (catch rate 255, no status, and HP into the red) would have all but guaranteed capture in Generation I.)
• The standard legendary trio entries for that generation were all roamers making them next to impossible to catch, greatly aggravated by the aforementioned weakening of the capture balls.

These are my favorite of the main series games, but I can still find several flaws with them:


- Awful level curve.

- Too many Gen 2 Pokémon were either rare or unavailable until Kanto.

- Major trainers rarely used Gen 2 Pokémon. Why didn't Falkner use Hoothoot or Morty use Misdreavus? Why give Jasmine two unevolved Magnemites instead of Skarmory or Forretress?

- Removal of Ice Beam and Thunderbolt TMs. Surprised nobody mentioned this, but losing those two really great TMs hurt the usefulness of a lot of Pokémon in GSC. The Elemental Punches were an imperfect substitute as they were weaker, and only Pokémon with arms could learn them. Crystal attempted to right this wrong with the Move Tutor, but it was only available in the postgame on certain days of the week.

- Elemental Stones were made extremely rare and limited to the postgame. Ditto here. What was the point in getting rid of buyable Fire/Water/Thunder/Leaf Stones and making you wait until Kanto to only get one of each? Another wrong Crystal attempted to right with the phone calls, but it was still too random and unreliable. And, speaking of phone calls...

- Lack of a reliable way to rematch trainers. Phone calls were annoying, random, and you could only store a maximum of 10 numbers at a time. These games could've badly used the VS Seeker.

- Lame E4. Not only were they underleveled, but they needlessly ditched Lorelei and Agatha in favor of one of the easiest Kanto Gym Leaders and a pathetic excuse for a Psychic trainer (anyone who uses Xatu for an ace isn't E4 material, IMO). Karen was cool (and I love her quote), but I otherwise would've preferred RBY's E4.

- Lack of story for Lugia. Ho-Oh at least got a little bit in Crystal with its relationship to Entei/Suicune/Raikou being better fleshed out. But, where's Lugia's story? In all three games, it literally doesn't do anything but sit in a cave and wait for you to catch it. I've always wanted its relationship to Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres actually fleshed out in the games and not restricted to an anime movie.

- No P/S Split. Yeah, I know, but playing hacks that have it has made me realize just how much pre-Gen 4 games would've benefited from it, especially since the split of the Special stat in GSC hurt the attacking power of many Pokémon at the time (Gyarados being the worst example).

- Kris not being in GS. It's tough to go back and play games that lack a female option, and I also feel that GF may have treated her better had she been in all of Gen 2 and not just Crystal. She may not have been needlessly dumped for Miss Mario in HGSS.

I honestly can't say much more than you guys did. o_o
Um... I guess maybe after playing Pokémon Yellow that I kinda hoped they expanded on the "Pokémon following you" mechanic but instead didn't include it?

The Unown caverns/ruins were pretty neat, but in the end, solving the puzzles only gave you more Unown letters and then hardly any payoff for getting them all. Heck, they only have 1 move! oO Sigh... was hoping they'd unlock more secrets. ^^ But back then, when I had little knowledge, found them cool. =)

Well... I hope this added a little more to the conversation, even if it wasn't much. *sweat*

The contrast between Jotho and Kanto in terms of exploration. Jotho was full of stuff like story, legendaries, optional dungeons that either lead to some "lore" (e.g. Ruins of Alph), some legendary (Ho-OH and Lugia come to mind), some other secrets (that Blackbelt who gives you a Pokemon) and so on. Compared to that Kanto felt stripped down and boring: no legendaries, no story, no interesting NPCs, they even cut out some areas. Taking into account the time constraints, that still doesn't change the fact that Kanto was boring in gen 2.

Radiating said:

How did they not fix that in HGSS? I don't know, but other than that I thought the games were great.

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I assume that level curve was intentional and was supposed to make the player think more about strategy in order to overcome later difficulties. Considering that I've beaten gen 2 with a team at level 50 I know it's possible. It just seems like nobody else has catched on to this.