LA’s Legion of Regions Journey

Since SailorVee has managed to give me that itch to hit a 35-game travel journal with a target to complete all main series games within one year, I took the crazy decision to make a start on New Year's Eve. In my much less coordinated approach, I'll just throw myself at the games and treat each one as a mini "race" for myself as A) I won't be able to play every day and B) I am typically very slow at completing Pokemon games.

For this run I will try to ensure that each team per game is made up of Pokemon that were new to that region/generation. I have also included a dupes clause to keep the selections as diverse as possible and even run with Pokemon that I have never used before. This means that generally speaking every team will be planned out before I pick up a cart but there's clearly more Pokemon available in each game than actually needed so there is room for a swap or two along the way.

This week saw the beginning of six games which I targeted to complete 2 gyms a piece. Turns out I am awful at setting nicknames because I never do this on a regular run so the theming has turned out to be more than questionable… In Generation 1 I have decided that since the games are named after colours, my Pokemon will be named after… colours. Yeah. And so on!

Since I covered so much and editing this post took so long, I'll keep the review to a minimum but include more details next time around.

Nice start to your journey! I applaud you for trying to use teams consisting of only new/native Pokemon! I'm doing the same for most of the recent games, but I didn't want to make it a set rule because Johto exists lol. The Johto games really do a fantastic job at promoting Gen I Pokemon and keeping all of the cool new ones locked to the post-game for some reason. (Not even the gym leaders use Johto Pokemon most of the time!)

One little note: I'm not sure if this is an issue with my computer, but none of the Pokemon sprites aside from Quilava's (HG) are showing up for me? I can just see the nicknames and the levels.

The sprites are so weird - it all worked for me earlier and now about half are gone... Will have a tinker with it!

So, the early part of this challenge has been thoroughly distracted by my efforts in the Hisui region, change in job, and DMing for my D&D group. Needless to say it has been pretty hectic and I have fallen behind in the plan to complete this challenge! Saying that, I have put a load of time into my BDSP games and so I can probably just give those an end summary rather than start over.

I decided to put focus on the Gen 1 games and ran with those back in January. For some reason, I forgot to post about their progress back then so when I put some time in this week and came to write an update there was a big jump in content.

In Red, I felt that giving myself a Parasect-shaped challenge would be fun (because, who uses Parasect?!) and give the mushbug Dig. Best. Choice. Ever. This thing hits like a truck and because of the janky move weakness/resistance table being incorrect he can mash through poison types with Leech Life with no worries. The other choices can all be considered pretty standard for many Gen 1 playthroughs although Haunter may seem like an odd choice because of its trade evolution requirements. Thankfully, I have numerous DS units and so performing the trade with another game isn't a problem.

Over on Blue, it turns out Wigglytuff is a big pile of poop :D That thing is super frail and doesn't do anywhere near as much damage as her allies. I may have just made things worse by adding Seaking (F- yeah!) to the party. Surely no-one uses this silly fish! I guess I'll find out how much of a handicap that is in the next session!

And finally, Yellow got the most attention recently and I've ended up at the doors of the Viridian gym with my final team. Before anyone says "Using legendary Pokemon is so lame!", I AGREE. However, how often do we actually get to use legends!? To be very honest, I avoid using them in regular playthroughs and for once I thought it would be nice to include one per playthrough if I can. In this game, Zapdos is the monster of choice and I am yet to use it but have taught it Fly and Thunderbolt, ready for it to bring some value to the group.

In a final push towards the end game I spent this week catching up Red and Blue with Yellow, meeting finally in the Viridian City Pokemon Center after obtaining the 8th and final badges on each game.

On Red the main point of frustration was actually having Taupe the Dugtrio on the team. I had spent ages waiting for him to learn Earthquake since Dig only has 10 PP and its power didn't seem to be as good as it used to be in the earlier stages of the game. After looking it up and realising that I'd have to wait until level 47, I taught him the TM that I found in Silph Co. This didn't come without reservations as I seem to remember being told when I was a kid that TMs taught to a Pokemon that learn a move naturally will be weaker than usual… That is probably a pack of lies but I'm still one of those players who holds Down+B when throwing a Pokeball in Gen 1 so can't say I would necessarily listen to anyone who proved that theory wrong!

Over on Blue, I spent quite some time levelling up Tangerine the Seaking (mostly using him throughout the Silph Co area with Surf and Ice Beam) but I was pleasantly surprised with the results! The overgrown koi was pretty hard-hitting once he was brought up to around level 30 and from there it wasn't difficult to one-shot most of the encounters that he was pitted against. On the other hand, Peach the Wigglytuff was still a big pile of cotton candy garbage and I'm so glad that I gother entry into this saga of games out of the way early-on. I taught her Psychic and Tri-Attack in an attempt to add value and the only reasonable thing she can take out is Kadabra… Never again.

Three games, one Generation completed. On this day I sat down with a coffee and started the battle for the crown…

Starting with Red and Blue I jumped into the Pokemon Center and completed trades to evolve Haunter and Graveler. With my teams fully-evolved I made sure to stock up on a few Repels (because victory road is annoying enough with those boulders) and a few Hyper Potions to make it through in one hit.

On Red, the final team member of Moltres was added to the group and the TMs came out across all teams before the slog through to the Champion.

All said, the end game was pretty easy. If I had to pick out one member of the E4 being the biggest challenge I would have to pretty ironically say it was Lorelei. Somehow her team seemed to carry the largest bulk and both Red and Blue struggled against her Amnesia-weilding Slowbro and Lapras before getting the W. Everything else, including the Champion, was pretty smooth sailing.

Something that I noticed that was pretty odd was that even if you have animations turned off, they turn back on when you fight the Champion. This must be Game Freak's way of saying "you WILL have the drama!" and to be honest, I'm cool with that!

With my first three Hall of Fame entries made, I'll move on to Johto and Generation 2…

After the major slog of triple Kanto, Johto got some love these past few weeks with focus being put into all five games, bringing each of them up to (but not including) the encounter with Sudowoodo on the road to Ecruteak City. This most recent week I took a full break to focus on work and D&D but will get back to my daily dose of DS pretty soon.

You'll notice when opening the spoilers below that I am managing to successfully have only new generation Pokemon (i.e. new to Gen 2 when G/S/C were released and new to Gen 2 or Gen 4 when HG/SS were released) but there is one exception…I found a shiny Pokemon and simply had to add it to the team!

On Gold I have been pleasantly surprised with the combo of Bayleef and Quagsire which for some reason I was expecting to be bulky but not overly hard-hitting. Turns out, this is not the case on a general playthrough so this game hasn't presented too much of a challenge. The one point where I though oh, this is going to be lame was the potential hunt for Pineco as the past has taught me Self-destruct is its move of choice but thankfully I successfully enslaved the second encounter and plough through to my save point.

Silver brought nothing in particular of note (I suspect the team choice of Feraligatr, Ampharos and Crobat will be nothing but power) but Crystal sure did!

Since my mission is to use as diverse Pokemon as possible, Crystal's choice of early game 'mons gave me a great opportunity to use Pokemon that typically do not get a lot of love: Phanpy and Teddiursa! With these critters many players probably do not know that they can flee from battle and have a 50% chance to do so every turn. This has proven to be infuriating in the past back thankfully for me I caught the first Phanpy and second Teddiursa encountered! The two team members were under-levelled at first but after a short grind and dosing of TMs we were well on our way to… SHINY! One of my very first encounters in the Ilex forest was a shiny Weedle; my very first ever 2nd Gen shiny!!! I caught it and promptly added it to the group :D

Flash forward to the future and Heart Gold and Soul Silver also got some attention this time around! Heart Gold was relatively straightforward, despite the challenge of raising a Spinarak, but Soul Silver was altogether a different story.

Since the majority of early-game Johto Pokemon had been sued up my selections were pretty narrow for the first couple of gyms. Sentret, Hoothoot, Hoppip, Dunsparce… none really stand out to me so I went with the cute raccoon and took some time to hatch m favourite of Primo's eggs – the Slugma! For anyone that doesn't know, there is a dude in the Pokemon Center in Violet City who will give you an egg of either Mareep, Slugma or Wooper depending on secrets phrases that you give him. Those phrases are based on your trainer number and can be resolved with an online calculator. Between the grinding and hatching of the egg, Soul Silver is behind on time but from now on the time spent on each game should be pretty equal.

Seems like you got ahead of me in terms of completed games. I've also altered my strategy and am trying to tackle one game at a time though. I don't really have the time to dedicate several hours each day to playing one specific game after all. I don't think I could handle completing all games of a certain region in one go though. Especially Johto because those are so long.

Will you end your challenge after beating Lance at the E4 or go all the way to Red? I've beaten the league on my Silver copy but I'm unsure if I want to keep going and do Kanto as well.

Totally understandable; I manage to get about 40 mins in each morning with my coffee before work 😉 For Johto I am pretty certain I will stop after Lance as the grind up to Red can be very time-consuming! 😅

Living Arrow said:

Totally understandable; I manage to get about 40 mins in each morning with my coffee before work 😉 For Johto I am pretty certain I will stop after Lance as the grind up to Red can be very time-consuming! 😅

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That's fair! I think I'm gonna collect all of the Kanto badges and rematch the E4 a couple of times before giving Red a shot. If I can't beat him, I'll probably just call it a day and move on to the next game.

Most of this section was complete by 23rd April but Silver and Crystal ended up causing some delays through captures, along with some effort being put into my Legends Arceus playthrough.

Gold really has not been giving me any serious difficulty so far; just look at the play time compared to the other games! Sudowoodo has been a pleasant surprise as it hits pretty hard so wasn't as much of a burden as it could have been, traveling over the water routes and defeating the Fighting and Steel gym leaders. I just picked up GIrafarig and hope that wasn't a huge mistake…

On Silver, I'm starting to get frustrated that Golbat has not evolved as in the later games I seem to get one around level 24-26. There's still plenty of time though before we go to the E4 so I'll treat him to a hair cut or two and see where that gets us. The latest team member, a Heracross called Caesium, was pretty tricky to find and I actually end up saving 1 hour of recorded playtime by not saving and switching the game off when my DS's battery went low. He's now equipped with the Exp Share as we progress to the next stage.

This section started out as daunting on Crystal as the team was still made up of unevolved Pokemon and a Beedrill… Saying that, the team has been consistently surprising me and the game has not suffered too much with the proof being the success at Jasmine's gym with a relatively low-levelled team and a lack of type advantages. The second slow "capture" was the selective Mystery Egg hatching from the daycare center; I kept resetting the egg until I got the Tyrogue which meant a load of trips up and down the route that connects to Goldenrod City. Thankfully, I faced no problem in trying to force the Hitmontop evolution with vitamins as little Perspex reached level 20 with everything in line, where it needed to be.

I am really looking forward to the series of evolutions that is about to happen in Heart Gold and this could not be coming at a better time. Ariados and Aipom have limited usability at the moment so some fire power in a Typhlosion or Ambipom is sorely needed. Similarly in Soul Silver, Cedar the Slugma is so overdue an evolution; it is pretty frail and is resting on Exp Share for the time being…

All games have reached the hideout in Mahogany Town with 6 badges.

I've hardly played in the last months as my arm is suffering an impinged nerve which made games and typing really difficult. With some mini-sessions I have been chipping away at the Johto games and have ended up with the completion of the Gen 2 installments and a bit more progress on Gen 4. This time around though I'll just cover Gen 2's updates.

As I said before with the Gen 1 games, I am trying to catch a legend to use in each playthrough if possible and so this final slog saw the captures of Ho-Oh, Lugia and Suicune to battle through to the crown.

In Gold, it turned out that Girafarig was a good choice after all. It's fast and Stomp did a pretty decent amount of damage with reliable flinching so Barium became something of an MVP in the playthrough. Forretress on the other hand was a nuisance as it didn't get any decent moves (its best was Strength) and I found it sitting in the back with the Exp Share on more than actually using it.

Over on Silver, Golbat FINALLY evolved en route to the Elite Four so I managed to beat the game with a fully evolved squad. There was a point where I was starting to think this wouldn't be the case! Through the rest of the playthrough I didn't have much in the way of true disappointments although Heracross's movepool was pretty shallow and Sunflora's low defences made her only truly useful for one-hit wonders against rock/ground types.

Lastly on Crystal, two of my MVPs dropped a rank as their usefulness subsided with age. Both Ursaring and Beedrill's defences left them unable to take on many of the E4 opponents and instead the party was led by Suicune, Xatu and Donphan. The real tragedy was the lame lame lame movepool and HP/speed of Hitmontop who really added nothing for the whole game. This really surprised me as I had expected him to offer so much more but this is the great thing about using different mons in playthroughs – it's a very different experience from online competitive play!