4th Gen LA’s Pokemon Pearl Perfect Playthrough

So, recently I've been running through playthroughs of the more current Pokemon games and found myself getting quite nostalgic (especially with all of the speculation of Gen IV remakes flooding the internet atm) which led me back to my very first cartridge for the DS: Pokemon Pearl. Back in the day this cartridge had over 600 hours of gameplay saved and basically everything possible unlocked/obtained throughout the game, including a 100% complete Pokedex with the exceptions of Darkrai, Arceus and Shaymin which I never got the chance to obtain the event for. To this day I still have some of the original Pokemon from that playthrough saved to other cartridges or into Pokemon Bank despite the save being wiped some time ago to start another adventure to satisfy a craving from something a bit different to the current offerings on the 3DS.

With all of the hype around the upcoming release of a new game on the Switch later in 2018 I have decided to playthrough Pearl once more and unlock as much as possible, just like I did 10 years ago. I'll even try to complete the Sinnohdex (no way am I going for the complete National) in full using support from my copy of Pokemon Diamond and a second DS system. There will be no other challenge-like constraints, no Nuzlocke rules, no gameover rules; there will only be a mission to complete the game in a journey I'm calling…

LA's Pokemon Pearl Perfect Playthrough​

Stage 1: Twinleaf Town to Eterna City​

Starting up the game, I button-mashed through the intro (which I must have played through 10+ times before) and made it to the starter selection screen. In the throws of nostalgia I picked my very first starter from the Sinnoh region, the mighty Turtwig, and set off collecting items and catching Pokemon here, there and everywhere.

As my balls began to run out I took a break at the PC to rearrange all of my captures and set them out in order according to the Sinnohdex. To prevent masses of grinding I decided not to train anything that I could catch the evolved forms for which allowed me to put more effort into raising Turtwig high enough to make the first Gym a cakewalk. Rather than capture an Abra myself I resorted to trading my Machop to an NPC in Oreburgh City and I also kept Zubat on the team with Turtwig to generate happiness as we travelled, ready for it to evolve into Crobat in the future. The same has now happened with Buneary and Chingling although they aren't participating in battle like Zubat is.

Reaching Eterna City, Turtwig and Zubat have both now evolved and the second Gym Badge is in hand thanks to Golbat's amazing Wing Attack and I'm ready to take on Team Galactic.

I'll be going back to pick up some more captures in the next section that I have missed but here's the state of my Pokedex at the end of this first stage:

This has been somewhat of a slow slog. I started off by going back through the previous routes to catch any Pokemon that I had missed and using Honey trees to find extra 'mons that could be obtained that way. It was somewhat successful but I still have not managed to find the elusive Munchlax and Heracross that could be hidden there. This reminded me of the first time I slathered Honey on a tree in Platinum and got a Munchlax as the very first Honey encounter of the game. Why can't this be as easy?!

I have also been spending some time trying to find an Armour Fossil to resurrect a Shieldon. Must have been searching for hours and still didn't find one. The best thing I've found so far is a Fire Stone but that's still pretty useless for me.

Moving on the Wayward Cave I sought out Mira to keep the team afloat with her neverending bag of heals and used the opportunity to train my Gastly up. I think I'll move onwards in the new year and use time at the weekend to make the most of the Honey Trees.

I really got into the flow of the storyline at the end of this week and raced ahead to Veilstone City. I hadn't planned to move on quite so quickly but nostalgia has a habit of sweeping me along with it and before it was time for a second cup of tea Maylene had been crushed and I had a lot of Pokemon hunting to complete.

Just like before I spent some time hunting for an Armour Fossil Underground and in my very first hole in the wall I found one!... but too late – the wall crumbled down before I could fully excavate it and so another lengthy hunt began. Thankfully it only took around an hour or so before I found the fossil and took it back to Oreburgh to get my Shieldon. Using one of my other 3DS units I set up the evolutions of my Haunter and Kadabra and even evolved my Pikachu thanks to the many hours spent Underground in Stage 2 which had uncovered a Thunderstone.Heracross and Munchlax continue to remain elusive as the Honey Tree hunt also continues…

The hardest capture in this Stage was the Chansey on Route 209. Even getting it down to a tiny amount of red health it still took around 20 Pokeballs to keep it still!

Now that I have 3 badges I have decided to make some team members permanent so that I can always have a good strong group to progress with the game. These are currently Crobat, Grotle and Ponyta who are at levels 30, 29 and 28 respectively.

enjoyed reading through this and looking forward to keeping up with your progress! I just recently embarked on a new journey in my Pearl version myself alongside a few other playthroughs, but this is making me want to dive back into Pearl, which I will do like rn haha

Stage 4: Veilstone City to Canalave City​

A bit of a big chunk, I managed to clear quite a lot of the game recently and tried to make sure I picked up new Pokemon and hidden items wherever possible. This was especially lengthy with the unlocking of Surf since so many secret areas were made available on previous routes.

The hunt for Munchlax continues on the Honey Trees and it is starting to drive me insane. On my original playthrough I got a Snorlax transferred through Pal Park and bred it but on a later playthrough of Platinum I got a Munchlax on the very first tree that I smeared Honey on. This time around my luck really isn't holding out, I guess. To try and target my search I looked up a method to work out the 4 Munchlax trees available in game and found that I can only use a calculator to work out 2 from my Trainer ID. Apparently, I won't be able to work out the other 2 in the same way so I guess I'll just keep working at it… To make sure I can actually complete the Pokedex I included a Snorlax on a recent trading session with Diamond version which I'll breed if no Munchlax has come calling by the time I reach the end of the game.

Another area that I hadn't completely appreciated was the Great Marsh. There's a list of Pokemon that are available daily and these change from day to day meaning that it can be a waiting game to pick up Pokemon like Croagunk and Skorupi. I've been quite lucky so far getting most of them but Drapion and Golduck have evaded me so far.

A couple of things that I forgot about in this area of the game were the presence of the massage girl in Veilstone and the Galactic Grunt chase after the Fen Badge.

The fourth member of my team joined in this section during my trawl through Iron Island; now that I have Riolu I'll be putting everything I have into its happiness to get a Lucario before levelling it up as quickly as possible. The VS seeker has been really great for this as I have been using it to evolve the rest of my Pokemon to complete the living Sinnoh Dex.

You're making awesome progress! Wish you the best of luck with that pesky Munchlax!

So far I think I've been pretty fortunate with progression through the game due to keeping my main team small and having Pokemon that seem to always have a strength over the upcoming gyms. The Canalave Gym was no problem for Torterra and Snowpoint's Candice really should have diversified more since my Rapidash just trashed her team with one hit a piece.

It has really been a very long time since I played this far through the game (I have an awful habit of restarting around the Maylene stage) so going through the Galactic storyline again felt like the first time! It was a total shock to me that the Lake Trio were captured and experimented on to make the Red Chain even though I must have passed through this area maybe 4 times in the past. I know that I want to catch one of them for my team but I don't remember if I can before fighting the Elite 4. If I can then it will definitely be Azelf on the team since I like its design best.

No updates on the **** honey trees. I'm really starting to lose patience with this now but will continue until I'm on the final hunt of the playthrough; being a completionist is one thing but a masochist is another.

The team so far: Torterra (47), Rapidash (44), Crobat (44), Lucario (37)

Stage 6: Galactic HQ to Sunyshore City​

Moving on from the detour in our badge collection, I made a beeline for the final badge and arrived in Sunyshore ready to take on Volkner. This city was full of celebrities – not only did I get to speak to Volkner before our match but Flint and Jasmine also made appearances.

Most of this gameplay was glossed over while watching something on Netflix so any major details were mostly shrugged off. With my recently acquired HMs I did make a point of returning to inaccessible areas in the earlier parts of the game which earned me a bunch of TMs and some more entries for the Pokedex. After picking up my Gible, however, I realised that I've got a very long way to train him up before getting a Garchomp for the living dex. This means that I'll probably miss out on training my Azelf from now just to make sure that our little dragon can get the vital Exp he needs to grow quickly (grinding takes so much longer!)

Not much of the game remains - there's only Victory Road and the Elite Four remaining - but there's still a number of entries to gather for the Pokedex. Mostly my issues are with water types so I'll take an excursion with my fishing rod in the next section to see what I can do about filling up some more spots.

The team so far: Torterra (50), Rapidash (45), Crobat (46), Lucario (46), Empoleon (45)

Stage 7: Sunyshore City to the Pokemon League​

I continued through the rest of the game but found unexpected challenges on the water route north of Sunyshore; for some reason the average level of opponents had shot up since the Gym match and I had to return to the Pokemon Centre multiples times before reaching Victory Road.

It had been so long since playing this generation of games that Victory Road felt completely new to me. Thankfully I was well-equipped with HMs otherwise the trip back to Sunyshore would have been extremely annoying. My team levelled up pretty evenly through the cave and when I finally reached the league they were all in the late 40's.

The Elite Four didn't give me too much trouble but damn was Cynthia tough. No wonder everyone thinks she is the most challenging Champion! Her Garchomp and Milotic were insane but thanks to Leech Seed and some carefully planned switches I managed to get through and laid victory!

Now, completing the living Sinnohdex was one of my objectives and so far I'm doing really well. Some Pokemon remain super elusive and I've decided to take some extreme measures to get them. Here's where I'm at so far:



So, it's pretty noticeable what is missing... mostly Diamond exclusives and fully evolved Pokemon. In order to get these final entries I'll employ a mixture of trading and breeding. Some entries in particular are going to be very very annoying to get (I'm looking at you, Munchlax, Feebas and Spiritomb) so I've looked into my other options to have these populated in my living Sinnohdex.

Munchlax
Notice that I didn't include Snorlax in the list? Yep, I've traded one in. All I need to do is find the Full Incense and breed it; those Honey Trees are such a waste of time for this. If I don't breed then there is one more way of finding Munchlax...

Feebas
I tried hunting for this the other day... DAMN WAS IT ANNOYING! It took hours and I only covered 1/4 of the cavern lake but I gave in and the tiles rest for the next day. Like Munchlax, there is another option of how to get Feebas...

Spiritomb
There is simply no way that I'm going to get this with the traditional method; I just don't have the patience. Instead, I quickly googled it and there is a long winded way of me getting Spiritomb without the use of the underground...

That's right, I have fired up a new game of Soul Silver along with a Pokewalker! The final unlock able Route on the Pokewalker opens up all three of these rare creatures without the need for mindless grinding. Completing the living Sinnohdex is a challenge but one that I intend to complete with a little help of Pearl's Gen IV friend, Soul Silver. The next update should really focus on the Pokedex completion but could be a while before we get there. In the meantime I'll fire up a new journal for Soul Silver and focus on that for now.

Stage 8: The Living Sinnohdex and Beyond​

Last time, I had decided that the final few Pokemon on my Sinnohdex list were pretty unobtainable. However, since then I have made some strides in the progression of the 'dex. First off, I managed to find Feebas in Mt. Coronet. This was, after so many previous attempts, annoyingly easy as I found her in less than 10 tiles which made all of the previous effort rather laughable. I still haven't evolved one into Milotic (that is possibly one of the most annoying processes ever) but at least I have the opportunity now. Reinvigorated, I loaded up a second DS and started the long-winded button mashing to get Spiritomb and completed some version-exclusive trades.

This means that my living Sinnohdex is almost complete! All I need is Milotic, Dialga and Manaphy!

Now, Manaphy is likely to be one of those Pokemon that I simply can't get. There IS a way, using a Mystery Gift glitch but I don't have access to a WEP network so that might have to be an uncontrollable limit on what I can achieve…

Since defeating the E4 and reaching this point, the masochist in me decided to go a bit further. My next mission is to fill out the National Dex as far as possible, with my limit set as anything catchable with newly accessible Routes, PokeRadar and GBA-insertion games. Here is my progress to date: