Today’s game is some more Pokemon Emerald. I’ve been working on the Pokédex the last few days. And when I say working on it I mean really working on it. I’m trying to assemble a living Dex which is my main goal. It’s an interesting challenge, since I sometimes have to catch double. The roaming legendaries have been fun too. I found Latias today for example. I just bumped into it while trying to hatch eggs.
I also bumped into Steven in Meteor Falls. I had no idea you could find him here so that was a pleasant surprise.
That’s something I really like about these older games. I like the open style of the newer games, but with these more narrow style games It feels like it makes more nook’s and crannies to search. Kind of a little more rewarding for snooping around.
So far today has just been catching and breeding. That’s probably what tomorrow will be too just so I can finish it up. Then back them up and figure out what I’m gonna do next this hunt has been a lot of fun. My last complete Dex was Shield, and this feels like a challenge in comparison. It’s like comparing Halo 2 Legendary to Halo 3. Halo 2’s was difficult but so satisfying to do. This game’s Pokédex is similar.
Anyways, so my game-plan for tomorrow is fill out Dex hopefully and pick out another game.
On my end, I am playing Soulestination on Novice mode to develop my meta. The idea of the Magic Tower puzzle genre, is that there are finite resources. The order in which you use keys, kill enemies, collect resources, and the application of meta knowledge is fundamental to optimal routing. If you like numbers or exploring possibilities, this genre can be pretty neat.
Unfortunately, Soulestination has a trash translation. I recommend DROD RPG, which is also generally better balanced.
This seems like one of those really niche games with a lot of depth, like how i view Touhou. I’m kind of tempted to look into it out of curiosity
The Magic Tower genre is definitely that way, and Soulestination moreso, because it has a lot to consider from the mechanics. For example, the Soul system.
You have a capacity of Soul, and for each soul you collect, you increase your stats by 1%. When you get to your cap, you enter a state of Rage - doubling your strength, and being forced to attack any adjacent enemy. This can be good for bosses or removing multiple enemies at junctions from play. However, this resets your Soul pool to zero, and increases your capacity by 1. This means it takes longer to become enraged, but your power potential also increases.
In the Magic Tower genre, the timing of your actions is everything, despite being turn based. Changes in stats dictate which kinds of enemies you can afford to encounter. The defeat of enemies is both a price and reward, so you have to engineer bargains. For example, glass cannon enemies are exceedingly deadly, but if you can strike them down in one blow, everything behind them is a deluge of goodness. But emphasizing attack means that sturdy enemies can take their time tearing you apart.
Day 599 approaching the 600 milestone. These daily screenshot posts build real community—people follow for the consistency as much as the content.
I have fun doing these, even if I don’t offer as much content as the other people that are doing screenshots (I admire them for that, I’ve seen just how much planning can go into these).
In a way I like leaving a trail for people to follow and look at for game ideas. Hearing people say they learned about a game through me or decided to try one because of me makes me happy in a way I guess, because I feel like I got to broaden someone’s horizons a little and that’s a good thing. So basically, I like that I’m helping others
Back on Gen 6 I organically filled a full dex (721 mons at the time) through a combination of Pearl, Black, X and Alpha Sapphire, with occasional exchanges with my sister who had the counterpart games. Also a few spin-off exports like Pokémon Ranger and Ranch.
At that time there was a distribution for the mythical pokémon too, so with all that I had everything.
After that I played through Gen 7 (Moon and Ultra Sun), and then completely lost interest when I learned the next gen wouldn’t even let you use mons that are not in its regional dex (and then the reports of terrible performance. 3DS was already barely tolerable).
Of all I played, I’d say the most fun were Gen 5 (Black) and Alpha Sapphire. Pearl felt like a chore.
I’m planning to do something similar where I just trade them up game by game. So I take my Gen 3 Living Dex over to Gen 4, then add Gen 4 into that metaphorical “pool”. Then go to Gen 5, once I get to Gen 6 though I think I’m done with a living Dex because that’s kind of all I need to fill out Pokemon Home. Anything niche I’m missing I’m sure I can catch.
I’m with you on Pearl (or, well, in my case platinum). I love gen 4 but I can only play it once, with a second play through being hard to stomach.
I have never played platinum, but from what I gathered it is significantly improved compared to Pearl/Diamond. Those are really painful to play.
They’re really clunky and repetitve, but the worst part is mon distribution. There are barely any fire types in the games, to the point the Fire-Type elite 4 has only 2 in his 5 mon team. And one of them is the evolved fire starter. There is literally no other fire type obtainable at that point.
They decided to keep most of the diversity in the post game (lots of old species that get a new evolution mostly) so until you get there it feels like you’re meeting the same twenty different pokémon over and over again.
Bonus : Diamond has one dark-type easily accessible before psychic gym (which is already well into the game). Pearl doesn’t have any. Its only dark-type comes in very late game. It’s like nobody checked these games’ balance.
Now that you point out the balance i can really see it. It never really occurred to me, especially the lack of fire types
Every time I played a Pokemon game throughout the years, I thought “This time I’m going to fill the dex!” But there was always some you just couldn’t reasonably get so I always gave up. Big disappointment, it’s really the reason I didn’t play the last few.
It’s impressive you managed it in Gen 6.
My partner filled their DEX in Sun and Moon, the last game with every single pokemon!
I did not even come close hahaha. I focused on making an incredible IV/EV team instead.
It was just me being very stubborn really.
Technically I went a bit further since I got full Sun/Moon dex next (though if I remember correctly not Ultra, I was missing one or two of the new Ultra Beasts).
It probably was just the right time really. The DS gens (4-5) are forever compatible because they just need local wifi to transfer. But 5 to 6 (and 6 to 7) need the pokémon bank and thus 3ds e-shop. I am not sure, but unless there is a third party way to do this, I believe that DS-3DS link would be broken today. And it’s probably too late to transfer them to Switch through… Pokémon Home? I think? Is that still a thing?
And I did that right on time for that mythical pokémon distribution, because even in the past games they were only distributed in time-limited events. So I’d have no other way to get most of these.
Except for Mew. Pokémon Ranch on the wii had a way to get a Mew if you had Diamond/Pearl and transferred ONE FREAKING THOUSAND POKÉMON from it. So, of course I did it, like an idiot.
I remember trying to get my living Dex sent over to gen 4 via the pal park. It was before heartgold and soul silver, so 6 pokemon a day. I’d do things like get middle stage Pokémon ready to evolve by getting them one level away, or holding the stone they need, etc, then as soon as I got them in Platinum, I could evolve them immediately and go get an egg. Called it “compressing” them, because the pal park was such a bottleneck, it was easier to rebreed them. Level 31 bulbasaur, for instance, send it, get it to 32 for a venusaur, get two eggs, hatch them, get one of those bulbasaur to evolve into ivysaur, so then I could store the proper living Dex trio in gen 4. Good times.
I had no idea the Pal Park was so limiting. Damn. I’ve just been using PKHex/PKSm to move them over since I don’t have any legit copies I can use
It became unlimited in HG/SS, which made it easier, but also more annoying for me when I had Platinum as my hub, because it meant I needed to catch a bunch of junk to trade over to my SS if I grabbed a Pokémon from the GBA games.
Such is life.
Although there are emulators that support loading the GBA games on DS, so if you want that pal park experience you can have it properly even on emulator.
Damn, i’m not a big HS/SS fan so of course that’s the game without the limit lmao. I just finished my dex and moved everything over today using pkhex, if i had known it wasn’t limited on HS/SS though i might have looked more into it
By catching double, do you mean you have one of each final evolution, or that you have one of the entire evolution line? So for example, do you own a Beautifly and Dustox, or do you own a Wurmple, Silcoon, Cascoon, Beautifly, and Dustox? I’ve heard of people doing the latter, but that sounds like a pain in the ass even for me lol.
The latter lol. It’s a pain but really fun. I’m Mostly doing it because when I move them over to Bank on the 3DS to trade them over, the Dex entries don’t carry over for the pre evolutions. So I basically need a living Dex to get all the Dex entries in home.
Gardevoir has a decent level.
