Game Talk (I'm putting this extra little bit here because the original title was too short)

Just one more reason why ZX is amazing.

I find it annoying to have nothing to use the reward on, but I feel even more frustrated when I do it all for nothing but a sense of personal accomplishment. If I got some resolution for another plot point, fine, and if I get a new, awesome Keyblade, I can parade around with that, beat the final boss again with it, just kind of do a victory lap. If I beat the postgame and got nothing out of it, I'd go back and beat the final boss, just being as overpowered as I was for the postgame. I won't have anything to show for it, but I feel like I would have closure.

It's like the Omega Seal in FFV. Beat the Omega Weapon, a tough optional boss, and all you get is that useless Key Item and easier passage through one part of the final dungeon. Of course, in that case, it's encountered before the final boss.

Of course I hate having nothing to use it on that my levels wouldn't already make a joke out of. But having something to show for beating them is better than getting nothing.

And in that regard, I disagree. I hate having something potentially useful go to waste because there's nothing left that I haven't already done. I'm quite content with another star on the title screen saying "Great job," or a trophy for some "Ultimate Challenge" or some nonsense. Because if I clear the postgame...there's nothing for me to use my super-awesome new weapon on, and it just feels tacked-on to me. I'd much rather have the game just pat me on the back and say, "You did the hardest thing in the game, congratulations." But, of course, if you would rather get a weapon and just re-fight stuff, that's your preference, and you're entitled to it.

Of course, Gregar, in the case that you mentioned, Shinryu shows up right afterward and is an exceptionally hard boss, but you get Ragnarok for the final boss and the post game. And even the Omega Weapon (or... Ultima Weapon?) can be used on the Cloister of the Dead.

Also, I mentioned being paranoid and limiting my old-school pokemon teams to just three pokemon a while back, yes? Well... it was a resounding success in Red. Absolutely amazing. I had to get a couple HM slaves, but I beat almost all of the game using just three separate Pokemon, minus a Rattata I used to save my Bulbasaur from early flying types. My final team was

Venasaur
Razor Leaf
Body Slam
Leech Seed
Toxic

Vaporeon
Surf
Ice Beam
Acid Armor
Take Down

Alakazam
Psychic
Recover
Seismic Toss
Flash

They were all level 50 upon entering, and came out two levels higher each. I'm also doing a Crystal run, and for that my final team is going to be

Machamp (the Machop traded in Goldenrod)
Cross Chop
Strength
Earthquake
Vital Throw

Alakazam
Psychic
Fire Punch
Thunder Punch
Ice Punch

Lapras
Ice Beam
Surf
Body Slam
Confuse Ray

The Crystal run is a bit awkward because I used a Cyndaquil and Bellsprout to get the first two, and will shortly be getting Lapras. Yet, I'd already beaten Bugsy by the time I got Machop and Abra.

So, I see Alakazam there twice...do you just like Alakazam? Not to say it's unacceptable, but...I dunno, I always found the Abra family to be kinda OP for my taste. And yet I'll still use the Gastly family.

Well, in the first generation they are, but then they added types just to make Psychics less absurd in Gen II. Besides, if you have the time and patience to look for and capture Abra, you've earned it. Sure, you can cut out the wasting of resources a bit by saving, looking for Abra and trying to catch it until you run out of Pokéballs, then resetting instead of buying more, but it takes time and patience to keep looking for one, and to keep trying to capture it. The odds of encountering one aren't terribly high to begin with, and even then you've only got one chance to catch it before it escapes. All put together, it's... well, kind of a low chance to nab one. And then you have to level it up despite it not knowing any offensive moves. It's like training a Magikarp that will actively escape instead of fighting for you, and it's harder to find.

That's true. I've used an Abra/Kadabra before, and they tend to one-shot everything once they can actually attack. Though I remember that to make training them easier, I always taught them Focus Punch from a TM. I don't know why Focus Punch, because it doesn't match their stats at all, but still. And it is a little easier than training a Magikarp. Magikarp learns Tackle at level 20 or so and evolves at 25. Abra evolves at 16 and learns an offensive move immediately, assuming it doesn't have one before then.

I still remember the rival's Abra in LeafGreen...it didn't know how to attack the first two or three times you fight it, so it just spams Teleport and it's free EXP. I always thought that was really funny.

Huh... makes you wonder if your rival is stupid or a genius. I mean, sure, he's going into battle with a Pokémon that he can't even use to fight with yet, but he's training it so it can be a powerhouse. Plus, Teleport has its own utility, and maybe he didn't count on running into you, and forgot to switch in a different Pokémon. ...Or maybe it's not his style to have reserve Pokémon, since he could've just used Teleport to return to town without having to walk, unless he wanted to harvest EXP from beating other trainers and wild Pokémon...

I'm overthinking this.

Yeah...all we really need to know is that the rival from Gen II is a complete moron.

"Everything that is weak is worthless and I consider you weak even though you repeatedly annihilate every member of my hand-picked team which would make me weak by extension!"

...Seriously, Silver? Seriously?

Yeah, I have no justification for that. I'm not bad at playing devil's advocate, but Silver is irredeemably stupid. Pretty much everything he says and does counter his own goals and ideals. I can imagine the reason why he was designed like that was because Game Freak didn't want to make the new rival identical to the old one, so instead of making him arrogant because he's related to Professor Oak and has both a knack for Pokémon and access to more information than most people, they made him an arrogant prick who thinks loving your Pokémon is dumb and pointless, and that strength is all that matters. And they wanted it to be super-obvious that the guy who believes that in the Pokémon world is wrong and stupid, so they forgot that that's supposed to be a little more subtle.

Instead, it's in-your-face how stupid he is. Maybe if it weren't for game mechanics requiring you to beat him at every turn, he could have been credible, but no, he's just... stupid. He even tells you his friggin' name after you beat him for the first time, right after he stole a goddamn Pokémon from Elm's lab! And then you go and tell a police officer his name! What the hell! In the remake, at least it's that you snatched his Trainer Card, but I bet that had more to do with not having a modern game with a line of dialogue saying "MY NAME IS ???." or because a few people actually thought they were supposed to name him "???".

Pokémon Special made Silver much better, as he didn't bother with the stupid strong-Pokémon-are-everything love-is-for-the-weak generic Poké-villain philosophy nearly so much, and used guile and cunning to escape direct confrontation while building up his team. And he ended up being a sympathetic main character.

Here I was thinking that the way to make him better would be to maintain his personality from Vietnamese Crystal, in which he not only repeatedly proclaims that he is better than you, but also states at least twice that he loves MC. It's actually extremely entertaining.

This would be an improvement, in that he's more entertaining. But people would be even MORE confused about his motives, and what the hell he's doing.

...He doesn't have motives. He just wants to get strong. It's not like Blue-Green-Gary Oak, who wants to one-up your MC, as well as please his grandfather to a degree. It's not like May/Brendan, who's just being friendly competition. He's not trying to show you how much he's improved. He just wants to be strong. As for what the hell he's doing...he's wandering. I mean, he has a pretty linear route to go through. It's not like Johto wasn't streamlined to the extreme. He walked forward, and occasionally found MC. He has no motives, and he's just going places, and he's part of the reason I don't really like Gen II all that much, with another part being Neo Team Rocket and their non-objectives. The worst they do is take over a radio tower, then announce that they've taken over the radio tower...and that's about it.

Yeah. People would barely be able to figure out that much with his mangled dialogue if he were replaced with Vietnamese Crystal Version Silver.

Well, it was more his actions than his dialogue that led me to the conclusion that he's just wandering aimlessly, but as to his "I'mma get strong" goals...come to think of it, he doesn't really say anything like that in Viet Crystal...

Well, he always seems to be ahead of you. I suppose that there was no good way to justify the rivalry on his end unless you just happened to cross paths with him and battled him, since, y'know, you weren't rivals from childhood who left town at the same time or anything. So, he's kinda pointless.

I liked Gen II just because of the updates they made, like the multi-pouch bag for organization, the Select command, and the fact that you could even go to Kanto and listen to all the old music as you run around cleaning up the rest of the story.

See, I never played Gen I. I played LeafGreen version, which is the same thing, but with Gen III enhancements. Having played both Gold and SoulSilver, I can safely say that Gen IV is the only one that's overall less than Gen II in my opinion. I mean, if you look at the villains and rival of each series--let's leave the designs aside because that's a matter of opinion--it's pretty clear that Neo Rocket have the least goals and the rival is an idiot. That said, something about Gen IV was just never interesting enough to warrant an extra run. Both of your rivals are thoroughly uninteresting recycled tropes, and...honestly, I don't remember what the hell Team Galactic's goals were. In fact, the only thing I remember them doing at all was draining the lakes, which allowed us to access the Lake Trio later on. At least I remember Neo Team Rocket...

But enough whining about stuff. All I'm saying is, looking back, Generation 2 isn't really bad, it's just...kinda inferior. And even among Gen IV's boringness and tiring music...it had Dialga, which is among my favorite designs for Legendaries of the series, alongside Kyurem (alternate forms included) and Rayquaza.

Alakazam is on there twice because Alakazam is broken in the first three Generations. Because of Psychic being resisted only by other Psychic types, Darks, and Steel in those Gens, the Abra family will rock your socks. Add in the type coverage you can get in Goldenrod? Hooooooly shit, Disc One Nuke coming through. I literally only have to make sure that if Alakazam /doesn't/ one shot something that either A) One of the backups is still alive and B) that I have a Potion/Revive handy if Zam gets thrashed.

I actually caught it using the Bellsprout I mentioned earlier to Sleep Powder them (needed one for the traded Machop), then I believe I used Vine Whip or Wrap to whittle it down a little, and then used a single Great Ball on each, which I believe were picked up in earlier routes. I know one of them came from the Crystal version of the Ruins of Alph.

Blue's always been cocky, he probably had Abra to see how well it would do but stuck with it being in his party both times to get it experience. Which brings me to my point, that Blue likely didn't have a dead Raticate, like the saying goes, but the fact that it only had one level up after the Cerulean fight to the SS Anne fight, whereas everything else had more, and were a few levels higher, made me think that Blue figured out "eh, he was nice to start, but he's not useful now."

Silver got an update in HG and SS, where instead of being a complete asshole the entire time, instead comes to terms slowly with the fact that maybe Gold/Crystal (MaMC and FeMC) has it right, and that maybe kindness will help. He demonstrates this during his challenges to you before you re-challenge the Elite Four some days by saying "Hey, making sure you're on your A-game" and after losing, says "Oh hey, sorry, don't forget to heal your Pokemon!". And he's also seen in Dragon's Den training with them in solitude.

Speaking of Pokemon Special, I haven't read all of the Gen II stuff but what happens there actually ends up becoming canon in HG/SS in the Celebi event regarding Silver and Giovanni. Which also shows /why/ he has something he has to prove, and why he's obsessed with the Rockets.

The Radio Tower wasn't the worst. The worst was farming and hurting Slowpoke for their tails and then selling them off as delicacies in order to fund their takeovers. On top of which, they were mass-producing Gyarados. Magikarp aren't very hard to come by, so catching a few and then letting them evolve, assuming the Rockets could get badges to train them, would be a cinch, and a single Gyarados is extremely scary in the Pokemon world, imagine a whole Team using multiple Gyarados in their teams.

Game-design wise, Gen II was /AMAZINGLY/ better than the initial installment of Gen I, being overall less buggy, having a more solid color enhancement, more pokemon, the ease features Gregar mentions, and the addition of some baller new features like Shinies and Battle Tower. Though it still wasn't quite as streamlined and organized as Gen III (pokemon menu was still cluttered, bag had finite space, etc.) and didn't have the convenience of the more streamlined re-battle system, though free gifts was always nice and I always get Juggler Irwin's number because fanboys are awesome.

I haven't played Gen IV yet, but I plan to soon. I hope it goes at least moderately well, considering it's the only one I haven't played yet (besides VI). Which reminds me... please, PLEASE no spoilers, but is Team Flare any good? Like... how do they compare to the original Rockets?

Well, I'll say this much...the Team Flare members are all total losers, and I think you're supposed to ironically like them, but every time I see them, I just think, "Oh, great, these idiots again..." However, their leader is a much more sympathetic villain than Giovanni and comes off as much more human. As for their actions, they do stuff that's a lot worse than running a shady game corner, but maybe not quite on the level of taking over a massive corporation. As for their actual objectives...well, let's just use the word "scary."

Gen VI has managed to become my second favorite, after Gen V--mostly the initial games, though the sequels do make for pretty good follow-ups.

My problem with Gen V was... that I took it too seriously. Not that the game took itself so seriously that I couldn't, not that I wasn't smart enough to play properly, but that I took it so seriously that I thought I'd need to stop and rest before challenging Victory Road.

...And then I took about a year and a half to pick it up again.

I haven't even touched the stuff after you beat 'em and return home, just because I was so burned out, and Pokémon X and Y were on the horizon. And it turned out that B/W's Victory Road was the EASIEST IN THE FRANCHISE. I should've gone through and waited at the end, where I wouldn't have been discouraged by the idea of Victory Road being ahead of me, keeping me from picking it up...

Bleh. Totally my fault, but it still soured my feelings on that one. Early on, I was really happy because it seemed like they had upped the challenge, as the first three Gyms gave me trouble. Then... the Gyms just started to fall at my feet from there, like they usually do in Pokémon games.

And I never got a chance to play the sequel, so I don't know a thing about it.

I really better get back to beating X, or it might end up the same way... speaking of, was this supposed to be the hardest game yet? I've heard some people say it was the toughest, but... I only saw evidence of that in the first Gym.

Easiest Victory Road? I'm sorry, but Generation II has that one beat: in three and a half minutes, if you use Repel, you can get through Victory Road with a couple of the better items and get to the fight with your rival. And you only need the Strength HM. Whereas in Gen V you need Strength, possibly Surf, and it takes like ten minutes even if you know where to go. And Gen VI is supposedly by far the easiest and I haven't seen any real indications otherwise: from watching only a single LP (it was a Nuzlocke as well), I've seen that you get a free dragon, two starters, a Lucario with its Mega Stone, and (since it was cut short by the YouTube copyright fiasco) presumably the "On-Box Legendary" is after you get a Master Ball, and then the last is Hawlucha or Talonflame because I hear nothing but praise for them.

And thanks for that Haar, though with Team Flare I honestly kind of expected /everyone/ to be either flamboyant or stupid XD Good to hear the leader of it is sympathetic. Though I think Giovanni's appeal was that he /didn't/ care about redemption until he had been beaten not just in his own lair, but in front of the CEO of Silph Co. during a hostage situation, /and/ as a Gym Leader. At which point he's like "yeah whatever, I need to git gud so later mate." and strolls off.

I remember it being like an ordinary cave, just bigger, and slightly more complicated. In the case of Gen II, I don't even remember it well enough. I once had the Gen I Victory Road MEMORIZED, which was the only reason it didn't try my patience on any additional runs, but I remember Gen III and IV having hellish ones, requiring multiple HMs, having long, winding paths, and in the case of Gen IV, alternate paths leading to a different area than the Elite Four. It's a cool idea, but  it's so tangled and insane that I don't want to have any extra paths to deal with!

And Gen V Victory Road was beatable in under 30 minutes by me after having put the game down for over a year, without consulting anything. It wasn't that it was as absurdly easy as Gen II, it's that it was pretty much normal-dungeon difficulty.

Oh? That's not what I mean. That's like saying Gen V is easy because it hands you the Lucky Egg. It's not mechanically easier than the others, it just gave you an extra tool to use to mitigate the difficulty! I don't even use the gifted Lucario, I had my own, superior one trained up already! I don't bother with legendaries because that cuts down on the variety I can add to my team, in a region where every route has tons of Pokémon to encounter and capture! I caught a Riolu on Route 6! I caught a slew of Eevee in another route! This game is just asking players to make their dream team. And I imagine that potentially cuts the difficulty down, but that's not the same as the game itself being easy!

See, look at Persona 4. It's not necessarily easier than Persona 3, but you have more options to work with which can make it easier to beat. Imagine if you set the other party members to AI, and didn't use the fox to heal up. It wouldn't be nearly as simple, as you would have much more difficult and inefficient battles, and you would always have to waste an extra day whenever your characters ran out of SP.

Gen III's was fairly retarded from what I remember of it, and I don't remember it at all. And Gen IV? Oh goodie. I have that to totally look forward to. =__= Gen V's was asinine in my opinion because of the slopes, which they fixed in Gen V-2 (B2/W2) by making it a completely different Victory Road. One without redundant choices.

I mean, it hands you several Pokemon that sweep the main game from what I hear and that is kinda what I mean. Gen VI not only gives you experience boosts for not evolving and friendship, but also lets you get the upgraded Exp. Share/All. Which gives your Pokemon at least half experience. Gen V /was/ hard in the fact that I legitimately had to go on Bulbapedia to find suitable additions to my team because everything, literally everything I had at that point was a /massive/ glass cannon. Nothing has decent defenses. I had to grind my Pokemon up to level 55 from what I had them at (mid forties maybe) because I heard Ghetsis was a huge prick to most players. Even still, that's a /lot/ of fucking Audino grinding, that Pokemon, time and time again, refused to remedy until recently. I'm /glad/ for the Exp. Share/All, whatever it is.

Persona 4 is easier in two ways: you can theoretically infinitely grind after you get the fox (by money grinding on easier dungeons to make up the balance) and it's easier to get Personas and has easier bosses. It is harder, however, to level up Personas and get good Persona combos. Persona 3 on the other hand, has stat-boosting items, easier combos, and easier grinding, but much more frequent and hard bosses, as well as the tired system, though there /is/ the always free refills for HP and SP, and fairly frequent stops between segments. And you literally /don't/ need any more that 1 GoHo-M in case Reaper shows up.

There were no Goho-M items in P3. In Portable, there were Traesto Gem items, and the Traesto spell, but that aside, you had to use Access Points or reach a Tower Boss floor and use the teleporter. Or, once Fuuka leveled up enough, and her Persona transformed, she learned Escape Route, letting you leave the dungeon at any time with no cost.

Traesto Gems were what I meant. That and Fuuka's ability I suppose.

Oh, yeah, Gen V's Victory Road...it was so redundant that I forgot about it. So many vulture-things whose name I can't remember...though I have fond memories of my team in Gen V-2 as we're calling it now. Crobat, Galvantula, Arcanine, Zoroark, Lucario, and Samurott. And my Crobat was the best Glass Cannon I've ever used. Even if it was almost entirely Zoroark and Lucario who beat the Elite Four for me.

As for P4...Golden allows you to simply CHOOSE what spells to pass on, rather than grind the RNG until you get a good set. Part of me really likes that, and a smaller part is mildly annoyed that I have to choose between Tarukaja and Rakunda...that said, I had next to no trouble with most of P3P, so...eh. I never really used the escape routes, but the fact that it let you continue from whatever floor you left off at rather than having to warp up probably helped a lot. I liked that you couldn't go TOO high and get too overleveled, though I'm disappointed at the lack of explanation as to why Tartarus suddenly just decides, "Eh, okay, you can go farther now." Point being, though, I never really felt the need to leave early...it just wasn't really hard enough that I needed to.

P4 on the other hand...well, I often wasted a whole day grinding before taking on the dungeon boss, with the result being that the final teammate's Shadow was a complete joke when I took it on. I think Yosuke was the only one who had any trouble with it...but aside from that, I needed to level-grind for an in-game day just to get on the bosses' level. It was kinda annoying, but easier in P4G.