Generation IV Pokemon

[hatkirby]

EDIT: This thread was called Pokemon HeartGold for a while, but I decided to rename it to Generation IV Pokemon so it can cover all of my exploits in Gen 4 overall.

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Some thoughts on Pokemon HeartGold after hyping it up to myself for almost a decade:

I do think it's really cute. It combines the nostalgia I had for both gen 2 and gen 4, along with some QoL updates on top of them both. The thing with having your lead Pokemon follow you in the overworld is so good; I know they did this again in Let's Go and BDSP but it's great seeing the original (not counting Yellow). I'm 4 badges in right now, so I've got a long way to go.

The main frustration I'm having is with the Pokewalker. This was kind of of the reason I finally decided to play the game in the first place. I wanted to encourage myself to take more walks and go places that I needed but didn't want to go to. And it's been working, but I'm unsure whether it's going to stay fun enough that I keep it up. The Pokewalker is cool because you can take one of your mons from HGSS on a walk with you in real life, and it can level up and find you items and you can even play a little minigame to catch mons based on a route that you pick when you start the stroll.

The problem with it is that the rewards feel underwhelming once you get used to them. Your Pokemon can only level up once per-excursion, and it doesn't take into consideration how much experience it had before the walk started, so if you go on a walk with a Pokemon that's close to leveling up, it's a little bit of a waste. I'm not sure if there's a set amount you have to walk before it triggers a level up, and if that changes based on its current level. But like it could've been interesting if the amount you'd walked translated into experience, rather than a flat level up. Then it wouldn't feel like there was a waste involved.

Mons also cannot learn moves or evolve from leveling up in the Pokewalker, which doesn't matter much for evolving, but missing moves as it levels up means that your Pokemon can fall behind, and you don't have a chance to get any of those moves back until Violet City, which is pretty deep into the Johto half of the game. I kind of realized this was happening when I noticed that my Growlithe (who I'd been going on a bunch of walks with since I caught it later than the rest of my party) still only had Ember. It's bizarre that the regular level-up procedure doesn't play out once you get the mon back in the game. It means that before you go on a walk, you have to check whether your Pokemon is close to leveling up already (in which case you probably don't want to waste that experience), and whether it's set to learn a new move you want on the next level.

All this being said, it does sort of seem like this would lead to the Pokewalker being more valuable later in the game, since leveling up becomes harder anyway, and you might already have a moveset you're happy with. On top of that, one of my other frustrations with HGSS is that I am being reminded how much harder it is to have a well-balanced team in the older games, having most recently played SuMo back in December. The lack of the party-wide Exp Share, as well as not getting experience from catching Pokemon, does have an impact. So it does mean that maybe, with more careful planning, the Pokewalker could still be a good way to bolster my party in this part of the game.

Re the other Pokewalker rewards: I haven't been too impressed thus far? The items and mons I've gotten have been lackluster, but again, I'm in the earlier-ish part of the game, and maybe the routes that are harder to unlock have better stuff in them. Unlocking routes is the main reward from using the Pokewalker and I know like half of them are locked behind the National Pokedex.

Other things about HGSS: it's definitely not easy! I've been focusing on trying to raise a well-rounded party, and like I said it's hard given the lack of experience sharing and the number of trainers around. I'm fighting every trainer as I come across them, but I still end up underleveled for rival fights and stuff. Johto is also notoriously populated with a lot of single-type Pokemon species, so it's harder to round out your team more with fewer mons.

I'm still hype to encounter more of what this game has to offer. It's been quite a long time since I've played gen 2, so it's fun experiencing the story again, and I know there's new parts of it that I get to try out, like the Pokeathlon. I'll post a pic of my party at some point.

(Not sure if this should've been a blog post, at this length, lol)

[BeelieveinBees]

I really enjoyed Soul Silver, not that I had a functional pokewalker. Some of the Pokeathlon minigames are really fun, and I got so attached to my togakiss, even more so then my starter. I should replay it at some point, I still have the game.

I don't remember it being especially hard, but I've only played the early gen pokemon games (not counting legends), specifically gens 3 and 4, and they all seemed about the same level of difficulty. I think having more 'mon options and a group share XP would do a lot! But I've never had those so I'm not used to them.

[hatkirby]

I'm looking forward to trying the Pokeathlon! Gen 4 really had a bunch of inventive minigames and later gens didn't go quite as hard on it (like I'm sure the Pokeathlon was the equivalent of Hoenn/Sinnoh's Contests, which also got voiped in the next gen). I tried it once and did pretty poorly, but I bet it's something I could research and optimize like I did with contests.

Older gens are harder once you've gotten used to newer gens, I think. Gens 3 and 4 are comparable, and PLA is pretty different from the rest of the series + more difficult than average anyway. But I also think PLA is difficult in a different and less grindy way than HGSS.

I have a Togetic in my game! I named them Madeline.

[hatkirby]

I got to Cianwood City and walked into the gym -- big mistake. I'm a little underleveled for it, and also my Togetic's Extrasensory apparently does barely anything even though it's super effective (it's the Fighting type gym). My Pokemon feel pretty weak overall, which is frustrating.

However! I have devised a plan. I looked up what Pokemon can learn Aerial Ace, since that is a good Flying type move and will probably help in the gym. And it turns out Heracross can! A nice Johto pokemon! You can catch it on various routes by headbutting certain trees, and this lead me down the path of learning how headbutt trees work in HGSS. It's pretty interesting: most routes have two headbutt encounter groups, and then every headbuttable tree in the area gets assigned to either group (or to no group) based on your trainer ID.

So I had to go to Route 42 and start headbutting trees. Both groups in this area have Spearow and Aipom, and one of them also has Heracross. The interesting thing is that the Spearow and Aipom in the Heracross group are slightly lower levels than in the other group. So, the first tree I found that had mons in it had a Spearow that was too high a level, so I knew there couldn't be a Heracross in it. I kept trying and I eventually found one!



I wanted to name it Legislascerator but it didn't fit. I mean, this name didn't even fit. Oh well.

Anyway, it already knows Aerial Ace, which is great! I'm gonna level it up by taking walks with it, but I have to make sure I don't miss out on any moves (it learns Brick Break at 19, which I definitely want). It's gonna take a number of walks to get it to parity with the rest of my team (and more importantly, to a place where it can take on the gym). Another notable thing about leveling up in the Pokewalker is that you don't get any EVs because you're not fighting mons. So my Heracross at level 27 is going to be weaker than a level 27 Heracross trained without the Pokewalker. We'll continue to see as time goes on whether the Pokewalker really does help with training a whole party like this or not.

[BeelieveinBees]

It's really interesting to hear more about how the pokewalker works! I had a broken one when I started playing soul silver, and I kinda regretted it at the time, but I'm not so sure they're a good idea - I don't think I would have noticed I was missing out on getting moves!

[hatkirby]

My strategy worked out! I got Heracross to level 21 mostly using the Pokewalker (although I did 18->19 in-game so it would learn Brick Break). Then I was like ok this is taking a while, and decided to see if I could battle some trainers in the Cianwood Gym. It did really well! Most of my Pokemon feel weak for their level, but my Heracross is stronger than expected! It's a pretty strong species in general, I guess.

I actually decided to fight the gym leader, whose Pokemon were level 29. Heracross took out the first one (a Primeape) fairly easily. The second was a Poliwrath, so I decided to let my Flaaffy (level 28) take care of it. It was a bit rough. Electric is super effective against Water, so it should've been easy, but my Flaaffy's ThunderShock barely does anything. I just kept hitting it over and over again, and then Poliwrath had a Sitrus Berry, and then the gym leader used a Hyper Potion, and I just kept whittling it down. It mostly only worked because the Poliwrath kept using Focus Punch, which did nothing because I was hitting it every turn. At some point it decided to use Surf instead though, which took Flaaffy out. Poliwrath was at pretty low health by then, though, with all healing options used up, so Heracross was able to take it out! My most underleved mon, lol.

Beating the Cianwood Gym gets you Fly, so that's super nice. Now I can get back to Olivine City without surfing through the wilderness. I can also go back to Azalea Town every once in a while to get poke balls made from Apricorns. I gave some Pink Apricorns to Kurt like a week ago and I finally went back today and he gave me some Love Balls. I sure do, man.

I was slightly confused as to how to proceed now, though. I remembered that you have to help the Ampharos in the Lighthouse in order for Jasmine to go back to her gym, but I didn't know how to get to her or how to get the medicine. There's an elevator in the Lighthouse, but Jasmine and the Ampharos are in a closed off section, so the elevator doesn't help. I went up the stairs from the bottom and fought trainers, but then I got to a dead end and was pretty confused.

Turns out you have to legit jump out a window.



You come up on the right side there, and the ladder up just goes to a dead end. You have to jump out that window and land on a balcony outside! That cannot be good for you. The layout of the Lighthouse is completely different from the original games, but it was cool to figure that out. Although, looking at those images, I'm confused as to how you can fall out of that window (you visually see your character fall from the top of the screen when you do it) onto a balcony, but the door on that balcony goes to a place that looks like is on the same level as the window. Hmm.

Then I talked to Jasmine, went to Cianwood for the SecretPotion, came back to heal Ampharos, and now I'll be able to fight Jasmine in the gym!

I'm sure my Pokemon are even more underleveled than ever before, though. So I'm going to take some more Pokewalker walks and try to shore them up a bit. It'd be good to level up Heracross in particular, since Fighting will be good against Jasmine (a Steel trainer). I'm beginning to suspect that your Pokemon gains 1 EXP per step you take in the Pokewalker, capped at the amount needed to level up once. So it is going to mean that I'm going to very quickly get to a point where I need to take multiple walks to level up my Pokemon. They're sure not making things easy for me! We'll see how sustainable all this exercise/motivation is.

[hatkirby]

I neglected to post a picture of my party before, so here they are!



I have a feeling Laughsasin's gonna be the MVP but we'll see! My Teeth just evolved into Ampharos today too. Madeline is a little underpowered unfortunately but I don't want to send them away... Anthrocon is also underleveled compared to the rest of them and that's because it's hard to keep a team of 6 Pokemon at parity back in gen 4! I still feel underleveled compared to trainers around me but I was able to beat Jasmine and she has a level 35 Steelix, so :lucas_shrug: (ok that's another emote I need to add to this forum because I use it so often).

I was delighted to go across the cliffs that lead from Cianwood to the Safari Zone, since they aren't there in gen 2. It's cool to see a new area in a place I'm familiar with. The Safari Zone itself is a little boring because the Pokemon aren't very exciting but I'm pretty sure it gets more exciting later on.

I need to take more walks! It's been a rough week. It could be good to dedicate some time to leveling up Anthrocon because at level 34 it learns Flamethrower and then I can just give it a Fire Stone and it'll be v strong. Also it'll be fun to go on a walk with my puppy.

[BeelieveinBees]

I love how you name pokemon. And I'm so impressed at how close all these guys in are in level, I always have my starter way overleveled compared to the rest of the party

[hatkirby]

Okay so since my last post, I've both dismantled Team Rocket's plan to control Pokemon by taking over the Radio Tower, and defeated the 7th gym (Pryce, the Ice type leader). I didn't actually level up my mons too much in the Pokewalker. The Team Rocket trainers were around my level or lower, and Pryce's mons were only a little bit higher. And were easily handled with both Heracross (Fighting) and Ampharos (Electric).

Now, the problem is Clair (the Dragon type leader). Her Pokemon are definitely a bit too high for mine to handle right now, and Dragon Pokemon tend to just be strong anyway. My Croconaw knows Ice Fang, and Ice is super effective against Dragon, but I wanted a stronger Ice type move to get an in, so I decided to procure an Ice Beam TM. There's a trio of elemental moves that are really solid: Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, and Ice Beam. These moves have high power and no downsides. The problem is that you have to pay for them with game corner coins. The localized version of HGSS is the first Pokemon game after ratings boards told Pokemon that they couldn't have gambling in their games anymore, so they replaced it with this other minigame called Voltorb Flip. Here's what it looks like:



It's honestly a pretty interesting puzzle game. The numbers on each side tell you both the sum of the numbers in that row/column, and how many Voltorbs there are. You need to reveal all of the numbers greater than 1 (which are multiplied together to get your score) without revealing any Voltorbs. You can use your skill and judgment and judgment and skill (turns out I am quoting a sketch from A Bit of Fry and Laurie that does not have a transcript on the website and also does not have a youtube video) to deduce certain point locations. However, there's pretty much always some point where you cannot tell for certain the next safe place to tap, and you have to use an educated guess.

Playing this game, while interesting at first, got tiring because you just can't help but lose often. Luckily, there is a website (http://voltorbflip.com/) that you can put your board into and it will iteratively tell you what tiles to tap on. It'll always present you with the safest tile to click on next, whether it's guaranteed to not have a Voltorb, or whether it just has the lowest chance of any other tile at the moment. You can then tell the website what number ended up being on that tile, and it'll deduce more stuff. It's a better tactic than sitting down and trying to solve all of the puzzles by hand, because of the fact that I need 10,000 coins to get Ice Beam (or Flamethrower or Thunderbolt) and you don't get many coins at once. The first level of the game only nets you like 30 coins, and the amount increases as you increase in level (level 7 gets you like 700) but you start dropping levels when you lose games, which of course happens randomly, so it's rare to get to or stay at level 7.

This is all to say that I spent a long time last night playing Voltorb Flip ("playing", since I was just asking the website to dictate moves for me) and I did finally get enough coins for Ice Beam. And I taught it to my Croconaw. And then realized that my Croconaw actually has a much higher Attack than Special Attack, and I'm not actually 100% certain that Ice Beam is stronger than Ice Fang in its case. It probably is? But I'm not sure. Aaaaaa.

Anyway, I think some more leveling up is in order before I fight Clair. Those Dragon Pokemon are tough. I'm gonna go on a walk with Heracross this morning but I gotta think about what else I can do to make my Croconaw stronger.

[BeelieveinBees]

Oh oooof on not realizing that stat problem until you'd already gotten and taught him the move. The puzzle is interesting, I don't think I ever played that one. Don't think I'd want to play it long enough to get 10k points though!