Intro

Currently playing through SoulSilver for the second time (never finished my first time, definitely got as far as Cianwood City but I forget how far). Decided to do a monotype Flying-type run that only uses the birdlike ones. I guess like what a Bird Keeper or Falkner would use if he were the protagonist. Speaking of Falkner,

People say you can clip flying-type Pokémon’s wings with a jolt of electricity… I won’t allow such insults to bird Pokémon!

—Falkner

Unfortunately, “people” are right because I’m losing hard to Jasmine. And Pryce. I figure it’ll be awhile before I strategize/grind my way out of this corner I painted myself into by not allowing myself to use anything outside the Flying-type, and further limiting myself to just the birdlike ones. I was going to save all my thoughts and do one big post, but given this roadblock I figured I’d post my collected thoughts now, and the rest once I actually finish the game.

Thumbnail picture chosen because god, the Pokémon following the player thing is so so so so cute. Dying of cuteness over here. It’s the entire reason why I picked HGSS to be my first Pokémon game (well, technically my first Pokémon game was Pokémon GO, so first mainline Pokémon game).

My thoughts

One thing I really like about HGSS is how NPCs actually initiate interactions with you. As much as I enjoyed Stardew Valley, initiating all the interactions in relationships that weren’t scripted events or letters I got sent did not feel good for a game supposedly about restoring and joining a community. If I’m your friend, wouldn’t you stop my farmer player character to talk with me every once in awhile? Now I can understand why this was done, because NPCs walk around the town and having people constantly stop your progress towards whatever you are doing would be annoying as a player. But still.

In HGSS, I can walk up and start a battle with an NPC, but if I’m physically close enough to them and they face me they can start it too. In quite a few cases (not all), if I don’t feel like a battle at the time being, I can just plan my route to avoid the NPC, somewhat overcoming the “gtg do stuff don’t bother me!” issue with letting NPCs initiate. NPCs also ask me for my phone number, and if I don’t want to hear from them I can just say no, you know, like a real human being. Or if I do, but later am too focused on my mission, I can just… not pick up the Pokégear. Let it ring. NPCs actually call me, and I can call them. The relationships actually feel at least somewhat two-sided, instead of like me being a pest and them pasting on a smiley face for me whenever I come over to bother them. I actually feel like part of the world proper.

Speaking of calls, I called someone right in front of me.

Huh? Do you like to talk to people nearby over the phone?

Pleasantly surprised by the reactivity! The radio demonstrates this too: standing on top of a radio transmission station? Playing the stations won’t work. Unironically a big fan of that.

Wow, you must be good to beat me! Keep it up!

—Beauty Victoria (Gym Trainer in Whitney’s Gym)

Her having such a good attitude about me defeating her feels good. Very used to the trope where women known for their beauty are nasty, evil, shallow bitches (nevermind that other women in-story look just as beautiful to us out-of-universe, even if in-story nobody comments on their looks) and it is nice seeing something different. A beauty just being a normal encouraging human being. Also reflects my personal life experiences: I have known mean people who were beautiful, yes, but also nice people who were beautiful. World’s bigger than a high school movie-level understanding of people, and it is super encouraging to see this reflected in children’s media from 2009.

Which brings me to Whitney herself. She’s hard with Flying-types who are all male thanks to Attract, and me totally forgetting about that from my first playthrough so I wasn’t specifically ensuring I caught female Pokémon. (Really bad roll of the dice with only acquiring males by her, I guess.)

Everyone dunks on her for the fact she cries every time you beat her, and yeah, namecalling the challenger who defeated you is pretty unprofessional, but after she’s done crying she handles the post-battle stuff totally normally as if she wasn’t just crying. What a quick recovery! (And probably similar to how I handle stuff in real life… I need a bit to process emotions, albeit I won’t name call people, and then I can zipper them up and be an adult about whatever bad thing just happened.) I do think she’s probably a minor, “The Incredibly Pretty Girl” is her title, and hey, mood swings and t(w)eenage girls…

Speaking of t(w)eenage girls, I find it entertaining how her presentation very much is “silly girl who just hopped on a trend,” she literally got into Pokémon just because everyone else was doing it, but this person who just trend-followed is actually really good at it. As much as I like them, I have to be honest and say Falkner and Bugsy’s gyms are both total pushovers even though both seem to be the type who have been obsessed with Pokémon from the cradle. Meanwhile it’s Whitney, who just got into this because it was popular and has probably not been doing it all her life, who is commonly cited as the Gym Leader people struggle to beat. I mean hey, people in real life have probably picked up hobbies just because they were trendy, because their friend or crush was doing it, and then they turned out to be good at it or really like it on its own merits, enough to continue after the trend passed or the friendship fell apart or the crush faded.

Olivine City Gym spoilers

Jasmine’s Gym having no Gym Trainers for you to fight is pretty interesting. I just checked Bulbapedia and these two NPCs in her Gym are supposed to be her trainers, but they just let you pass for helping her out with getting medicine for Ampharos. It’s really cool seeing something like that happen. I think I’m learning that I really like the “forgo the battle you are expecting as part of the formula for story related reasons” trope. I sure liked it in a certain other more modern, but also popular video game that I also probably can’t say the name of without spoiling it a lot.

I headcanon that Falkner and Morty are friends because their Gyms are OSHA violations in the exact same way. Although you can walk straight off the path on Morty’s Gym, and the game doesn’t let you do that in Falkner’s Gym.

The worldbuilding is charming. I love the radio and the bad radio drama I get to listen to. I also am a bit too old for it now, but the radio provides a nice in-game way to learn about the world and some game mechanics without explicitly being a tutorial. As an adult who knows this stuff already, it feels a bit heavy-handed, but I know I am not the target audience. If it weren’t for that, it would be nicely immersive. I also appreciate the Pokéathlon. Shows that Pokémon are that ingrained in peoples’ lives and what they do, but that for most people there is more to life amongst Pokémon than only battling them.

One annoying thing about the Pokéathlon though is that Whitney finds us a uniform, and we wear it whenever we compete. But then when we see her or any other NPC opponent while they are competing against us in the Pokéathlon, they’re dressed like their normal selves!

“Huh? Were you going to participate in the Pokéathlon looking like that? You’re not prepared at all, are you? So… Are you a medium or a small? You look more like a medium… OK! I’ll get you a jersey that suits you! You want to look your best if you’re going to participate in the Pokéathlon, don’t you? Wait right there!”

—Whitney, before your first participation in a Pokéathlon event. Are they actually mandatory and we should imagine everyone else in uniforms but for game memory/time limitations on spritework? Or does she just think your clothes look horrible and that the jersey looks better, but you absolutely would have been allowed to compete in your normal clothes? I admit I’m biased because I like Ethan and Lyra’s normal clothes much much better than the tracksuit, and I feel it looks dumb when the player character is in a tracksuit and nobody else is. Maybe it’s an intentional choice by the devs so we can still recognize NPCs who we might not otherwise recognize if they wore a uniform and had to get rid of any hat they were wearing?

I love that the sailor NPC brought just fish to the Jump Pokéathlon event when everyone else brought Pokémon with wings. Very in-character.

Miscellaneous thoughts, no nice transition between them or related topics placed near each other

Hate that the Bird Keepers have blonde hair and a black and red outfit for an overworld sprite while their battle sprite is brunette with a blue outfit. But given that the Bulbapedia file name for the overworld sprite is Bird_Keeper_Guitarist_HGSS_OD.png maybe there’s a Guitarist trainer or NPC in the game that the Bird Keeper has to share a sprite with for memory limitations or something like that.

Met Bill and he immediately talks about the Pokemon PC storage system attributed to him and how all these other people helped him build it. Good open source guy Bill; god I love that this is something I can pick up on after learning about open source (didn’t really know much about it when I did my first playthrough).

Noticed that other Pokémon trainers do not black out and faint if they lose to me, but I do if I lose to them? Huh. What’s up with that?

Hey, you’re young and fit! Don’t ride your Pokémon! Swim!

—Swimmer on Route 40 or 41

I feel called out and this isn’t even me, it’s my little player character.

DRAGONITE: Gyafooha!

Huh? When I talked to Pokémon NPCs in the game it said something that sounds like (part of) their name… and I checked the original Japanese name and it sounds nothing like “Gyafooha”. Wonder what that’s all about.

The Lance Dragonite hyper beam meme feels interesting because I just had that scene happen and the Dragonite just pushed the guy aside, no laser beam.

We’ll keep appearing until you trip a secret switch.

—Team Rocket Grunt

I get that this is a prompt to find the switch to stop the encounters. But you keep saying that like I am not intentionally triggering all the Rocket encounters so I can grind you for XP.

Fought two sisters in a dual battle and when I beat them, they talked about how their other sister would try to avenge them. I beat her too, but, hey, encouraging to see for variety from the typical “my brother will beat you up”.

This was definitely my first time in the Safari Zone in a mainline game. However, I did play PokéClicker before. And in that game, which copies the plot and locations of mainline games but replaces the gameplay with incremental/clicker/idle gameplay, the Safari Zone had an option to throw ROCKS at Pokémon. Which leads me to believe that was you did in previous games’ Safari Zones. …I’m so glad HGSS has you throw mud instead.