Gotta Catch 'Em All?

Explorer of Time

Explorer of Time

Advocate of Ideals
  • Gold Heart Chatty Chatot Beast Ball Zekrom
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    We all know the famous tagline from the thread title, and every Professor sends you on a quest to catch lots of Pokemon. But how many people actually did or tried to catch 'em all? It doesn't have to be the whole National Dex, either; regional dexes count just as well, and so do spinoff, romhack, and fangame dexes, whatever they're called.

    Myself, I've never been that into catching Pokemon aside from Legendaries or team members, so I've never completed a Pokedex in any mainline game. I have, however, completed both the Fiore and Almia Ranger Browsers, which is pretty much it as far as catching 'em all goes. Ranger's capture mechanics are interesting to me in a way that the standard catching mechanics aren't, and I wanted to go out and find every Pokemon to experience their battle mechanics even if it didn't do anything besides fill in my Ranger Browser.
     
    Completed the regional Pokedexes for Generations 6-9, as well as Generation 1. Planned to trade with someone or another. Made sense to do so. Cannot say for sure beyond that. Definitely not for Generation 4 because of all of the corrupted save errors. Filled in all of one of the Pokedexes for Pokemon Pinball.

    Almost finished the National Dex for Home. Remains stuck on Volcanion and Marshadow. (Declines to do any direct trades here, even if just for the Pokedex entries.) Did not bother with any of the regional Dexes in Home.
     
    Immediately once I complete a mainline Pokemon game, my very next goal is to complete the Pokedex, Regional or National, whatever it may be. I'm the type that really enjoys a long-term goal with a checklist of things I can just tick off once I get them, so I always enjoy going through a big list of Pokemon and catching all of them, evolving or breeding for ones I'm missing, and getting any kind of reward whether it was just the certificate or now things like the Shiny Charm. I've kept a couple living dexes but since I don't pay for Pokemon Bank they're essentially just locked away if I ever decide to check in on them again.
    With Pokemon Home, I'd love to properly fill out my Pokedex and get multiple copies of everything, but since the process of getting Meltan/Melmetal is game-specific to games I don't have/play, it's not something I've been able to accomplish yet. When they announced a shiny Meloetta as a gift for the Scarlet/Violet Pokedexes, I did that immediately since Meloetta is my bf's favourite Pokemon, so I got it for him.

    It's interesting you brought up Pokemon Ranger because of the different catch mechanics. I usually feel like the process of finding the Pokemon in the first place (finding what route it's in, what time of day, farming for it if it's a rare encounter, etc.) to be the enjoyable part of the hunt rather than the catch itself (I can throw a Quick Ball at something on turn 1 and be satisfied) but that's an angle I've never looked at it from. I think spinoffs with a bigger emphasis on catching Pokemon are a lot of fun, and I think of Colosseum/XD as the perfect marriage between mainline Pokemon's battles and that emphasis on catching Pokemon, having to do it in the middle of a double battle when the game might not just give you an easy way to lower their HP or put a status condition on them. In mainline games I'll just breathe a sigh of relief and move on if I spent 50 turns trying to catch a legendary, but there are moments in Colosseum/XD such as trying to catch Dakim's Entei that really make you work for it, and it's not often that the act of catching the Pokemon itself is the highlight for me.
     
    I always make sure to complete the national dex in all games nowadays! Think I truly started this with gen 6, when I got a proper WiFi connection and didn't have to rely on the Nintendo WiFi Connector lol. It's so much easier now. A big part of the game is collecting for me, so just regional dexes aren't enough.. I gotta go all the way for the shiny charm!
     
    I'm mostly in it for the shiny charm, but yes I like completing the Pokédex! I like making a list of all the mons I need and crossing them off. Did it in White 2, Y, and Sun, and I'll get around to it in Ultra Moon once I'm done with the post game. The biggest "flex" was doing it in White 2 years after they shut down the DS wifi servers with the DNS trick. It was hard because the GTS pre-gen 6 is annoying to navigate, but I managed to get almost everything myself. I remember messaging with someone on PC to get the last few mons I needed.
     
    I did the National Dex once back in Gen 4. Had to use a Gameshark that I had at the time to finish it though, I couldn't really get a few event-only 'mons otherwise. Regional dex I did for PLA (but had to import a Cherubi from BDSP because holy fuck those never wanted to spawn for me), and I wanna say one other time, but I can't remember which game. I've multiple times tried to do the regional dex in other games, most recently SV, but I always get a lot of the way through and then give up because I don't wanna deal with trade evolutions or stuff like Palafin lol.
     
    I'm more interested in the battling aspect of the series, so catching them all wasn't a top priority. I'd rather collect and EV train Pokémon that I find fun to battle with.
     
    I vibe with some of the above stuff. "Gotta catch'em all" is just a marketing slogan and it doesn't even work when the anime has Ash of all people and for so long... oh well. No one said TPCi were genius at marketing.

    That said in many games I went with more or less, if I see a Pokémon I like I want to catch it as soon as I'm able, sometimes even faster. It's one of the reasons I detest things like the G3 / G5 "sorta resets" where you can only/mostly play with new Pokémon and to make it worse they make it so if you find a Pokémon a Trainer has in Rt. 20 it might not be available to you until like Rt. 40 and then you have to evolve it at level 56. In this day and age, I no longer have that type of bus commute to spend that time on (Monster Hunter beats Pokémon when it comes to bus time investment, anyway). But it did make me like X&Y a lot despite the plot issues.

    There's also that the company actively and hostilely acts to prevent you from catching them all, so... why bother?
     
    I tried to make a living dex a few times in 2022/2023, but I gave up around the 400 mark because breeding / leveling so many Pokemon I didn't care about at all became incredibly boring after the novelty of filling out boxes wore off. Catching is still an enjoyable activity I like engaging in while going through the main story, but I don't make any particular effort to fill the whole dex anymore.
     
    The only National Dexes I've completed so far are Diamond and X. Starting with X I've also completed all following Regional Dexes with the exception of Scarlet (only missing Iron Boulder and Iron Crown) and the Kanto and Sinnoh remakes which I don't own. Since completing the National Dex for the first time in X I want to keep my record of having owned every species of Pokémon at least once so I guess I'm taking the slogan seriously.

    I don't play many spin off games, but collecting all the Pokémon in them seems even trickier because there's more restrictions in regards to trading I think. All in all I can say I caught them all except the Violet DLC exclusives. Maybe in the future I'll try to fill up the Regional Dexes of older games too. Earlier this year I challenged myself to finally complete the National Dex in my old copy of Diamond and it was pretty fun using different methods to catch all the Pokémon like the dongle feature. My last capture was actually Zangoose on Route 208.
     
    I usually try to fill up the PokéDex where I can, but I've scarcely had a desire to catch em all (at least as an adult). I want to catch the entire Kanto regional dex in FRLG one day because I really like the Kanto Dex, but Gen I is ... so weird to play now.
     
    I've filled out my pokemon home dex with about 700 something out of the over 1000, so over half, all of these collected since i had x and y on the 3ds shortly before omega ruby and alpha sapphire came out
     
    I really tried completing the gen 3 Pokedex and I got super far but gave up. I got a Jirachi at least and the legendary beasts, but after some time it was just tiring. Getting Celebi would have required getting all the shadow pokemon on a JP copy of Colosseum. I didn't really know how to copy over a save file to my hacked Wii and I still needed to beat Colosseum to get the Johto mons. The hardest part would have been Ho-oh from completing the challenge in Colosseum and with that I just gave up.
     
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