Oh how simple the 1st Gen was. :P
Indeed!
And it's actually a really nice change of pace. o.o I've been thinking a lot about this lately -- how Gen I, in its simplicity, has a lot of...
problems. Flaws that were removed in later gens for
very obvious reasons, especially in regards to how unbalanced a lot of things were and how a lot of Pokemon were absolute powerhouses and others were pretty much useless. Not to mention it takes
so long for Pokemon to learn moves that are even half-decent. @_@ And yet, despite the fact that I
know these things are considered "flaws" for a reason... there's something oddly refreshing about it. There's this
rawness to it that's just sort of interesting, and it really makes it feel
earned when you defeat a Pokemon that you
know is unfairly overpowered and when you
finally get the chance to teach your Pokemon decent moves and make them good fighters.
It made me realize that a lot of things are made easier for you in later games -- for good reason, mind you, but still. It's real easy to just breeze through a more modern Pokemon game -- especially if you're just playing casually -- without having to worry so much about what moves your Pokemon know or how to economize all your items because it's fairly easy to get what you need. It's a trend I'm starting to notice more and more in these long-lived franchises. You can understand
why they changed certain things and made them easier and fairer, but... it's very interesting to go back, and a really fun challenge.
And as for catching things?? Ohhhh don't get me started. OwO Because I
have filled the dex in Gen VI, but let me tell you it was
not the same experience as what's going on here. Because the only reason I'm so proud of my dex-filling in X is because it felt like you weren't
expected to fill the dex in that game. There's such an ungodly number of pokemon that I hardly even see Gamefreak seriously
use the "gotta catch 'em all" slogan anymore, much less any fans actually trying to live up to it. And I
hadn't been trying in most games. The only reason X worked out for me was because I saw some opportunities laid out in front of me and decided to go for the challenge, and I got there, but it was
work... The vast majority of it was just online trading, breeding, and evolving. That was it. Which... wasn't so bad for a lot of pokemon, given how many things in the game made it fairly easy to trade, breed, and evolve -- but
ugghhhh the event legendaries were a fucking
slog... You couldn't just passively trade them on the GTS, which meant you had to actively seek out trade negotiation partners -- and, not only is that system
incredibly annoying and makes it difficult to communicate what you want (I even resorted to spelling out what I was trying to say by showing my trade partner my Unowns, but I think most people just thought I was trying to offer Unowns...), but, the thing about event legendaries is that it's very unlikely that anyone will want to offer you one for anything other than
another event legendary (and I don't blame them). So basically, I had to spend an absurd amount of time relying on a small handful of 2-3 event legendaries that I had to use to trade for
other event legendaries, and if the person on the other end already had all the event legends that I was currently able to offer or just didn't want any of them then
oh well I just wasn't getting anywhere. And I just had to sit there, knowing they had exactly what I wanted but there was nothing I could do to make them give it up. It got to the point where, once I had only a few dex slots left, most of the actual thrill of it was gone -- I just wanted to
finish it, because the thought of leaving just those few slots unfilled after all the hard work I'd already done would just drive me insane.
BUT
THIS... this is different. I actually feel like they're asking for a number of Pokemon that's
reasonable and that I can actually go out and catch. It's
challenging, but not virtually implausible like it is today. Which makes it much more of a
fun sort of challenging. And it's the trading that's really exciting -- going out and finding real-life trade partners. Because, yeah, there are version-exclusive species, enough to actually make seeking out trade partners worthwhile, but it works because that's the central mechanic that the entire concept of Pokemon was
built around -- and, you know,
it's not like the majority of Pokemon on the dex can't even be caught in the local region or anything. There's a real sort of thrill to combing through the grass of each new area that you enter, looking around for all the new species that you can get, as well as evolving them, and all sorts of other miscellaneous means of obtaining Pokemon that come up throughout the game,
as well as poking around to ask if anyone has any of those species that you need to trade for, and filling up your dex bit by bit as you find those people. Because as a kid, I could hardly ever find anyone to trade with -- and even on those rare occasions when I did, the link cable
never fucking worked. So like, I was
sort of trying to fill the dex, but there were just so many pokemon that I knew I just
couldn't catch, which was really discouraging and prevented me from ever
seriously trying to fill the dex. But now, between the fact that you have a ton of nerds all playing these games at once due to the recent Virtual Console release, and the fact that you can trade using the much-more-reliable-and-convenient 3DS wireless communications, it's
actually possible for me to collect pokemon in the way that the game developers intended. And it feels
amazing and it is just so much fun. OwO
Plus, you know, there
are considerably fewer pokemon to catch -- which means that, although this is incredibly fun and exciting, I know that it won't take up nearly as huge a chunk of my life as filling the dex on X did.
And, you know, I'm confident that it won't be nearly as much of a slog towards the end, especially since there are only a few legendaries to catch, and, you know,
I'm capable of catching them all myself. In fact, the most tedious thing to obtain will probably be Porygon, if I can't get anyone to trade for it... but still, even
that will feel very much
earned, since it would only be
one incredibly tedious pokemon to catch, and not, you know,
a ton of them. Plus, a lot of this is entirely within my control as opposed to needing to rely so heavily on trades, so... yeah.
ALSO, THEY DIDN'T REMOVE ANY OF THE GLITCHES IN THE GAME,
SO YOU CAN STILL CATCH MEW, which is just the perfect little cherry on top.
