2nd Gen Johto was the worst region ever

[SOH972]

Wow when I thought this region wasn't overrated anyjmore, i come to the forums and check the stupid message above, "come and revisit the best region ever". Now let's start with the breakdown.

I always see on the internet a lot of hate on awesome regions like: Unova, Sinnoh, and even Hoenn. But the mayority of the pokemon community really like the awful region known as Johto, and i really want to know the true reason why this region gets a lot of love and some other regions don't. What's the secret? What do this region has that other regions don't? This region is easily the worst region out of the 7.

It's the region with most awful pokemons, and I am not talking designly, I am talking in BATTLE, which is what matters at last. Unown, Meganium, Dunsparce, Delibird, Corsola, Qwilfish, Ledian, Noctowl, Xatu, Sneasel, Gligar, Pichu, Cleffa, Piloswine, Aipom, Yanma, Sunflora, Jumpluff, Murkrow, Ariados, Octillery, Mantine, Stantler, Smoochum , Elekid, Magby, and Magcargo.

Besides, G/S/C are the games with the worst story of all the games, Pokemon rangers has a better story than those games. I mean what's the plot? Ethan has to become a champion once more, and a n a****** rival steals a pokemon from the lab, only to get wanted by the police who does absolutely NOTHING. You know who also doesn't do nothing? Your gender counterpart, which is commonly Lyra, if we compare it to the counterparts of the rest of the games, she has no importance in the story.

Plus who are the villains? Team Rocket again!! But guess what? They are a doofy and less threatening Team Rocket!! But they had to do something terrible on the story right? Let's see what did they do? They emitted waves that created a shiny Gyarados that later got catched by Gold, ok... That's.. something.. I guess... What other things they do? Wow, they took over a Radio Tower that nobody cared about only to try to bring back Giovanni, but guess what? He never came back!!! So all of their "efforts" was for nothing, finally they disband team rocket once and for all, how a great ending!!!

You beat a Kanto wanna be elite four, and then you travel back to Kanto, how original, they brought back Kanto so they could have decent games. Because Johto itself was literally half of other regions, so probably if they only included Johto people wouldn't like it that much right? And finally to give it a "awesome ending" you travel to mt silver, where you can finally catch the good pokemons that you needed at the beggining of the game, and you encounter nothing more and nothing less than Red. You beat him and he vanishes. No explanation of why that happens, and no acclaration of what exactly he was doing there. I honestly have seen episodes of Peppa Pig with a better plot than that game.

And all the arguments I just listed are just a few of more reasons on why this region is horrible.

But what are we gonna do? Everything are opinions finally, but some of them are opinions with nonsense arguments like "it corrected gen 1 mistakes". So I ask one more time: what do this region has, that other regions don't have?

 

[longlostsoldier]

First off:
1. It lets you travel to another region and face off against the true previous pokemon champion, allowing you to take his place. This makes it the only pokemon game that feels like a true sequel rather than just a spinoff.
2. You listed several /baby/ pokemon and unevolved pokemon. You completely missed the point of these pokemon: combat is not their purpose. Baby pokemon were introduced in G/S/C to give the game-changing egg system more fun and flair; with egg moves, and baby-pokemon specific moves, they have the potential to completely change the metagame, although I think the baby-moveset part was ultimately under-utilized. With babies, your evolved pokemon could learn moves that it could not know normally.
3. Meganium is 'hard mode' for that version. It's not effective as a grass against many of the gym leaders in Johto, which makes it seems worse than it actually is, but being hard to use is sort of the point of it. There are many people who only like to use it and no other gen2 starter.
4. It introduced a lot of cool pokemon and moves. I loved chasing the legendary dogs, although by the time you were tracking down the 3rd one it got to be a bit of a pain, and Psuedowudo was different. I also enjoyed Smeargol, Typhlosion, Mareep, and one of my absolute favorites is Quagsire. I liked the designs of almost all the pokemon (except maybe Delibird), which is more than I can say about most future gens.
5. It's not entirely fair to ask what the region has that others don't because most regions, coming after it, based themselves on what made Johto so beloved by people. By that marker, it is more successful than other regions, because more end up copying it than copying other gens.
6. In the remakes, universal followme. Not even Yellow did that. For some people this is their favorite aspect. Who can resist having their pokemon follow them around?

 

[Radiating]

You have a strong hatred for this generation, don't you?

While I agree that standing alone, GSC aren't very good games, they were meant to pair with RBY. They are the sequels were everything RBY needed: Balancing, more features, and new concepts. If you were a kid who just played RBY, GSC would have been the best sequel ever. It also set a base that future games build on.

 

[SirBoglor]

*Raises sleeve* Ya looking to fight, punk? >_>

But in all honesty, not a single argument that you make is really...well...valid? I wasn't around for the release of G/S/C. So from a viewpoint that lacks any nostalgia goggles, these games were honestly wonderful to play.

I think that there are two main issues with your viewpoint here.

1. You fail to understand that these games are a sequel to gen I, they're not their own separate thing. The difference between gen I and II isn't the same as the gaps from other games. You need to look at Gold and Silver as expansions to Red and Blue, not as their own brand new separate adventure. Also, you appear to be making claims of Kanto pandering? You know when these games came out, right?

2.Your arguments as to why gen II was bad apply to every other generation. "There were garbage pokemon in the roster!" So did every other gen. "There was a garbage starter!" Same thing for pretty much every other gen except III. "The story was bad!" That's actually a fair opinion that I'm totally okay with, but if you think gen II's story was bad then there's no way that you think the other gens aren't guilty of this too. You're using complaints that apply to the entire franchise, for the purpose of trashing one specific generation. Not a very good approach.

It sounds to me like you're just clawing for reasons to trash these games. I understand if you don't like gen II, but at least give me good reasons as to why if you're going to trash them so badly. And besides, you don't even have to have a reason to dislike these games. I dislike certain Pokemon, and I don't have a good reason for it. And that's okay. But I don't go ranting about why I hate them and list invalid reasons for doing so just to push the argument. Just respectfully say that you don't like them, and move on. No need to include the salt.

 

[Megan]

I'd argue that Johto is actually an interesting region and there's a lot more to it than most people seem to realize. You have that somewhat eastern theme going on in the majority of towns, a big emphasis of life and death, big focus on the history of the region (something Kanto lacked, so it was somewhat of a novelty at the time) combined with the game focusing on exploration and gameplay as opposed to the more story oriented games that came out afterwards.

If anything, I'd say, if something made gen 2 worse it's the inclusion of Kanto as a second region. Though, you can mostly address that to it being particularly bland due to time constraints on the dev's sides; at least I hope that was the reason. {XD}

Also, keep in mind that the first two generations had a different design philosophy as opposed to future generations. You could even argue that the weird balancing gen 2 had was pretty well done. Back then balancing was something entirely different, with only 251 Pokemon around. That allowed for a different approach to difficulty, something that can't exactly be done anymore, due to powercreep, etc.
If there's a lot of particularly weak Pokemon, that's just another option to add challenge; kind of similar to how the somewhat bad movepool of most Pokemon and one time use TMs force you to play more resourceful.

 

[Lunar]

If you have a problem with the forumla of taking on gyms etc and becoming the Champion then you really shouldn't be playing Pokemon lmao

 

[SOH972]

Wow I knew there laughable Johto fanboys in Gamefaqs, but now that i see pokecommunity, the fanboys disgust me. @SirBoglor, yes, all the generations have good and bad pokemons, but if we look Johto from my point of view, it was the region that introduced most thrash and pointless pokemons. Yes, I'm admitting it introduced cool and strong pokemons as Tyranitar, Scizor, Feraligatr, Kingdra and Houndoom, but was it enough to be a good region? No, Unova introduced way better and cool looking pokemons such as: Serperior, Excadrill, Samurott, Conkeldurr, Hydreigon, Haxorus, Darmanitan, etc.

A lot of fanboys need to get out of your f****** bubble if you think that piece of thrash was the best region, who's the idiot that putted that in the introduction to the forum anyway?

 

[tokyodrift]

i think you're taking this a bit too seriously because in reality, you're mad about a pokemon game

 

[Pendraflare]

i think you're taking this a bit too seriously because in reality, you're mad about a pokemon game

Well, it wouldn't be the FIRST time we've seen a user over-the-top salty over a main series game… I won't name that user, but it looks like said game has grown on said user to at least some degree, and at least some of his comments I have to believe were meant as a joke (even if they were insanely inappropriate).

That being said, I don't care for GSC that much in the big picture, but that's more that I would just rather play the other games. I will say that Kanto felt unnecessary at times what with how underleveled they were there. I'd say more, but I'm on my phone right now.

 

[tokyodrift]

Well, it wouldn't be the FIRST time we've seen a user over-the-top salty over a main series game… I won't name that user, but it looks like said game has grown on said user to at least some degree, and at least some of his comments I have to believe were meant as a joke (even if they were insanely inappropriate).

That being said, I don't care for GSC that much in the big picture, but that's more that I would just rather play the other games. I will say that Kanto felt unnecessary at times what with how underleveled they were there. I'd say more, but I'm on my phone right now.

I mean yes, GSC had it's issues, but what main series game doesn't? Is it to the extent that op is making it to be? Probably not. Kanto was a great part of the game, it didn't feel as hard, though the level discrepancy from the completion of that part of the game to Red is undoubtedly the most insane part. Let us not forget exactly how long ago these games were released.

 

[Cool_Porygon]

OP taking a little too seriously? We are talking about games released about 17 years ago. A lot of people like the retro games that have been superseded by newer ones.

 

[SirBoglor]

Wow I knew there laughable Johto fanboys in Gamefaqs, but now that i see pokecommunity, the fanboys disgust me. @SirBoglor, yes, all the generations have good and bad pokemons, but if we look Johto from my point of view, it was the region that introduced most thrash and pointless pokemons. Yes, I'm admitting it introduced cool and strong pokemons as Tyranitar, Scizor, Feraligatr, Kingdra and Houndoom, but was it enough to be a good region? No, Unova introduced way better and cool looking pokemons such as: Serperior, Excadrill, Samurott, Conkeldurr, Hydreigon, Haxorus, Darmanitan, etc.

A lot of fanboys need to get out of your f****** bubble if you think that piece of thrash was the best region, who's the idiot that putted that in the introduction to the forum anyway?

1. Whether designs are bad or not is 100% opinion based and changes with each person so...yeah. Idk why so many people try to use this argument in regards to any generation.

2. It's not hard to express an opinion without being annoyingly toxic with everything that you say. I'd suggest that you try it sometime.

 

[moon]

Interesting discussion! Personally, I love the Johto games for many reasons, but I agree on some of the OP's points. The "plot" was basically non-existent, mainly. The region in itself was beautiful however! The routes were actually fun to traverse, as opposed to many Kanto routes.

Keep a friendly tone if you want to discuss this, however. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and when it clashes with yours, calling names is not the way to go.

 

[SOH972]

i think you're taking this a bit too seriously because in reality, you're mad about a pokemon game

I am not mad about those horrible games, they can go f*** themselves. What I am mad about is of the fanboys that think really cool and good regions like Sinnoh, Hoenn, and Unova are garbage and Johto is perfect. When in reality, it's the worst region ever.

Right now, based on my personal experienes, 80% of the community thinks Johto is thrash. And 20% of the community love that region and are commonly fat nerds still living on their parents basements.

It's really stupid to see how far the community has been teared appart because of stupid opinions and stubborn Johto fanboys that can't accept their "precious" Johto is not as good as they re saying.

 

[Feroniamon]

While I understand fanboys are hyping their favorite region like crazy it's unnatural (overhype is bad, bad and unnecessary! It's not only about Pokémon regions, it's in the game industries overall because of nostalgia filter and that's annoying), I don't think Johto is the worst region. Sure, it has a horrible level curve, finding good Pokémon is painful (even if, there are more Kanto Pokémon than Johto Pokémon) and the story seems to be non-existent. But:

1. There is more in Johto than at the first look, especially in HGSS. I just love the Japanese flair in the region and if you are researching about the origins, you can be baffled there are real-life references. I just realized it as I was searching a real-life equivalent for Greenfield from the third movie (I assume if it's in the games, it would be on Route 32 because there's a Pokémon Center and the Alph Ruins are not too far away, which is important) - I discovered the origins of the Burned Tower and Bell Tower and I was surprised how the bird statues on the roofs gave the base for Ho-Oh resting on the Bell Tower roof before the incident. It's the culture which makes Johto fascinating and there's always something new to learn. And the landscapes, some routes are fun to travel while they tend to be short (I like the Whirl Islands at most).

2. GSC was intended as a sequel of RBY and there's another interesting thing here about this connection: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Johto#Etymology_and_design_concept. It also explains why Team Rocket was the evil team again, which gave me the impression Kanto wasn't enough to disband the team. The Time Capsule also helps the connection between Kanto and Johto via time-travel between Gen 1 and Gen 2.

3. Competitively in Gen 2 is different than Gen 7 as the current one and the Gen 2 Pokémon's stats are fitting for this time, not the current one. As a example Porygon2 was OU in Gen 2, but as in Gen 6 it's rarely used. Later generations have similar factors like Kingdra was feared before Gen 6 because of it's type (before Fairy type came in).

However... Johto seems to work with Kanto, without it's neighbor it seems to be incomplete like one half is missing. And there... lies my own problem because of Kanto pandering., which is rampant since two years (how many years actually? I noticed it started with XY, but it seems to be more rampant after ORAS) because of the anniversary (and it gets another one because the anime turns 20, too). Maybe there's more a Genwunner problem and even I tend to be annoyed by Genwunners who are saying Gen 1 (or by extension Gen 2 too) are the best and the later ones are nothing - just because they don't fit in their nostalgia filter!

I'm just saying it while I like Johto, it isn't perfect and HGSS didn't fix most of the problems which annoys me greatly. Nor is Kanto, who is unnecessary overhyped and are just barebones (I prefer to flesh it out). Nor is Hoenn, which is my favorite region. Nothing is perfect and every region has it's own charm. It's better to calm yourself down, raging around would make things worse than before. There's always a Genwunner around and I doubt their mind can be changed unless they do from their own will.

 

[moon]

There are certainly more civil ways to discuss what makes Johto a good (or bad) region. Unfortunately, this thread started off a bit on the heated side. Let's try a different approach.

-locked