In HG/SS I liked how after you got all the Kanto badges and you went through the elite 4 again the levels and Pokemon were stronger. Lance was a dragon trainer who was actually able to have a variety of strong dragons. I LOVE Lance's HG/SS rematch team.
The devastation I ran into with just Lorelei's Lapras after finding this out all those years ago xD Used to use the E4 as a level up for many lower level Pokemon, after HGSS ? Nope xD
I would also heavily disagree with the Cut-seen argument I think it certainly speaks for HGSS that the legendarys have a story behind them and a cool Animation sequence especially cause it looks amazing and still holds up very well to this day I would actually go so far and say that the only reason one would like Crystal more is because of nostalgia which is an Argument I would respect as long as someone is honest about it
@@kaiserkater2308 I like the broken early gen mechanics and sprites. A split between nostalgia and art style preference for the sprites. HGSS was just a bit too clean for me and I like when you need to use a bit of imagination to interpret what you're seeing. Plus the end game grind is better and worse. Like you need to grind more, but also the elite 4 got buffed second rounds which I always love, but it can kinda become required work to go through a few times over to be ready for Red, whereas broken gen 2 can be brute forced at much lower levels, especially with the pre-ev system letting you max all your stats and the badge boosts to both your stats and moves corresponding to the types of the badges you had, letting you hit well above your level class. I believe that was removed in Gen 4
Fun fact: It's not actually the original music from gen II, but recreations designed to mimic what a Game Boy soundfont is. if you listen to the GSC version and the hgss GB sound version back to back, you'll probably notice the difference.
Fun fact: Insert a random something about this game that is neither obscure or clever and expect to sound smart when I really am not. -federico guitin-
@@powerfulberry237 I just mentioned it because the video doesn't but spends a lot of time comparing both s oundtracks. I never pretended to be smart or anything. Chill.
But why is he wrong? Lol, guy just spent 25 minutes explaining and you can't even explain whatsoever. HGSS's post game in Kanto including all the gym leader and elite 5 rematches and Red are all miserable unless grinding. Meet this person in this exact spot on this exact day at this exact time just to get their freaking phone #. Or like 5 massages or something from his sister to rematch Blue... The post game in HGSS is completely miserable when that should be the main selling point for these. With the original pre-nerfed EVs and lower levels on Red you can just play the the damn games like a normal human without grinding. The simplicity also creates room for not even using HM slaves in Crystal, which are b*tch in gen 4 including HGSS. I'm just kind of reiterating things here, but you haven't presented anything.
If I remember correctly Red's levels were boosted because Barry had become the strongest trainer since Crystal came out (his starter hitting level 85 after 20 wins in the Hall of Fame). Wanting to put Red in his rightful spot as the most monstrously powerful trainer in all of pokemon, they boosted his levels to surpass Barry.
@tabbender1232 maybe? Though honestly, her garchomp ties Pikachu for level so they may consider it tied even if she's got a few more total levels than him. It's very close. Red V Barry is actually a much bigger gap though there's only three levels between Pikachu and Barry's starter.
Red is supposed to present a challenge because the people playing this remake had grown up. Also, you’re given stronger elite four postgame and gym leader rematches in the fighting dojo. The “HeartGold’s pacing is infinitely worse than Crystal’s” take is the silliest one in this video. The o.g. Gen II games had some of the worst level scaling in the entire series. Level 5 wild Pokémon in the postgame? Like come on dude.
@greg5892 I get the scaling in gen II. They prioritized keeping the levels in Kanto the same as they were in gen I. They treated it like a fact of Kantos geography and not a game. Gen IV treats it more like a game requiring good balance. I also think Red is treated as a particularly legendary sort of encounter. He holds a special place where he needs to be treated as the GOAT of pokemon trainers. His levels were upped to specifically beat Barry who had topped him and they wouldn't make a stronger trainer for a long time, and when they finally did, they were careful not to top his Pikachu.
Pokemon Yellow was my favorite....until I played Crystal. It was 2017 and one of my friends recommended Crystal to me. I felt like I missed out for well over a decade
I noticed a few more things, as, you guessed, Gen 2 is also my favorite. 1- Your starter holds a Berry in the original games. This served not only as a backup healing for beginners, but to teach veterans (from Gen 1) that there was a new mechanic in these games. If you were replaying GSC for whatever reason, you could choose to take said berry and save it for the sick Miltank quest. Pure Genius. 2- In the original GSC as well as in HGSS there's diurnal and nocturnal pokémon, that only appear at day or night, respectively. In the originals, however, if you used headbutt there was a chance a NOCTURNAL pokemon would appear during the DAY, and vice versa. The best thing about this is that said pokémon would appear SLEEPING! This gave more immersion to the world, as nocturnal pokémon didn't just disappear during the day, they just went to sleep on the trees! I was BAFFLED they removed this in the remakes, such an amazing little detail! 3- No room decoration. This one always bothered me, not because it's a feature I loved, but because they went the extra mile to replicate the "Pokemon Pikachu 2 - GSC" connection features with the PokéWalker, so it felt strange not including something SO simple! It was very limited on the gameboy, because the game took the entirety of the 1MB cartridge, but just think about it, they could've included more giant dools, trophies, posters, really make it almost as good as the secret base system in Gen3.
All of this is why I disliked the remake it took a while yet I had my room looking so nice. Yes the "realism" of the time cycles having sleeping poke's being found would have been so much cooler to show to the newer kids playing it. To me Gen 2 and especially Crystal respected that we legit just came off of playing maybe 5 games so there as a lot of legacy and while easing people into the item system as you said.
Kris was removed because she was heavily associated with Crystal Version, so to preserve Crystal's legacy they created a new female trainer for the modern era and made both Ethen and Lyra the duality of HGSS for whichever gender you chose. Also what i really liked about HGSS is theres a cheatcode that let you play as Dawn/Lucas since their data remains in the game for union rooms/trading/battling. Also one of the great things about HGSS is that you can get the original starters as well as the Hoenn starters and even previous legendaries, tho it does suck that you have to wait post game to get suicune.
I’m definitely with you with the “not saving the world” plot. As a kid, what I loved about Crystal was that I did feel like an everyday trainer who was going at their own pace, doing their own thing. That made finding new things that weren’t pointed out to me so exciting! I love that catching legendaries is optional as it comes down to your exploration skills as well as the skills you’ve learnt battling and catching Pokémon throughout the game. When I think Pokémon, I don’t think of saving the world, I think of developing as a trainer, getting the gym badges and defeating some bad guys who are just evil without having some deep seeded lore (though I love lore when it comes to the region and locations within it).
Tbf in heartgold you're also supposed to do the silver + e4 stuff too before the red finale, as well as catching legendaries and collecting the gym leaders' numbers, etc. These have you facing off against late 60s-mid 70s trainers by the end of it, which puts the level gap between lance and red at around the same distance as red and blue was originally. Not to mention there's both a non-glitch way to infinitely grind rare candies (pokeathlon) and infinite rematches vs level 50-60 gym leaders & e4/lance (the best rematch options in the original was Cal's 3 level 50s and the level 40-50 e4 gauntlet no one likes using for grinding). So even with the jump in levels, hg/ss makes getting up in levels waaaaay easier - and it's actually viable to catch a pokemon in kanto and get them up to snuff without selling your soul or glitching cloned rare candies into existence.
Right? Did this guy miss like half of what they added to Kanto and should’ve been in there the first time if they hadn’t had to rush the game out while fitting it on a GBC cartridge?
Imma have to disagree by a long shot. As good as Crystal was, HGSS really fine tuned it completely. You have Pokemon following you, you have the literal best events every created in mainline games, you even have the original GBC music and many other things. Also being able to get Pokemon from D/P/PL and all GBA games like Emerald AND the pokewalker. You also don't need to hold down a button to run so that's definitely a plus. Did I also mention the special features involving your Pokemons nature? If you know, you know. Honestly there's just a bunch of little fine tuned features that made the remakes so remarkably great.
@@DebrisDiver lol I never understood why guys were creeps and liked playing as girls when the whole point it to imagine yourself as the main character, the reason for a girl character being added is quite self explanatory and is for girls who play the game and felt left out they didn’t have a character to represent them
@@A77738 I think some of them might just be eggs, like myself once upon a time. At least I hope that’s what it is, because I don’t like the alternative.
I enjoyed how clearly passionate you are about Pokémon Crystal and the relationship you developed with this game over the years and during your childhood. I mean, that's THE ESSENCE of Pokémon and why it's such an amazing, thriving franchise! Nonetheless... I still have to point out that all points pro-Crystal in detriment of HGSS are entirely nitpicks (with exception of the worse level curve with Red, that's fair). To be completely fair, you warned us about this, but still, most of this video can be grossely resumed to "oh, yeah, this thing in HGSS is amazing, but I enjoyed it more in Crystal because of nostalgia + art style". Playing devil's advocate, the art style and soundfont of Crystal is INCREDIBLY charming. At the end of the day, it's a matter of preference if you enjoy the retro style more than the new style, and that's completely understandable. But besides that, all other points are nostalgia speaking... HGSS, compared to Crystal, has the entire package of updates that come with being a Gen 4 VS a Gen 2 game (physical/special split, better movesets, Johto Pokémon evolutions like Weavile, Mamoswine and Yanmega, etc etc etc). On top of that, being remakes of GOLD and SILVER, there was literally no requirement by the creators to include Crystal elements like the Suicune and Eusine plot lines, something that they STILL did (imagine if BDSP had Platinum elements, how much better it would have been...). HGSS also has the Mareep line as an available Pokémon, a staple Johto Pokémon completely gone in Crystal. Now let's talk about the things that HGSS included that they had zero reason to add on, but included because the creators said "FUCK IT let's make this the most complete Pokémon game ever": - Pokémon following you - Pokeathlon (such a cool facility of extra content...) - Berry Farming - Safari Zone (and the BEAUTIFUL routes leading to it) - Cerulean Cave, Viridian Forest and most of the unfinished Kanto spots - GB Sounds for listening to the crispy, crispy GBC soundfont you love so much - THE. FREAKING. BATTLE. FRONTIER. This was supposed to be ONLY in Platinum! And they still did it! NOT EVEN ORAS DID THIS! - The possibility of getting all of: Latios/Latias, a Hoenn starter and Kyogre/Groudon + Rayquaza - Gym Rematches - And the cherry on top: the events of Celebi and Arceus that you could access at the time, that not only expand the lore of the game but gave us added new content that was mesmerizing to see (the confirmation of Giovanni being Silver's father, Sinjoh Ruins with the WACK cutscene that plays with Arceus surrounded by Unown, showing the player REAL LIFE IMAGES IN A POKÉMON GAME - also this cutscene ends with you recieving a Egg with either Palkia, Dialga or Giratina) There must be things I'm forgetting. I know there are. But HGSS is, essentially, an entirely unique Pokémon game in this franchise, and that's because the design philosophy behind the creation of these two masterpieces was something that completely changed over the years. For anyone still reading this, enjoy this treat of a Pokémon game, because, in the foreseeable future, there won't be anything like it.
@@robertlupa8273 It's just too bad they never made a full official GBA mix of the entire Johto soundtrack with how amazing the tracks we did get ended up being.
18:20 While I understand where you’re coming from here, I personally didn’t see it like that. I thought of it as more hopeful and uplifting. The fact that Blaine and some scientists (Formerly from the fossil lab/Pokémon Mansion I’d like to assume) all decided to band together and create a Gym that tells the rest of the world and the player Cinnabar lives on is kind of inspiring in a way.
this would probably be too much time consuming, but it would be kind of cool if it was a sort of side quest where you can't fight blaine because he's sad in the cave, so you find the former scientist friends and make a little gym of sorts. kind of like a message of even though nature can destroy stuff, people will find a way to build back.
The immersion is kind of ruined when you know why Cinnabar was actually cut from the game lol. Also makes it forgivable from the devs standpoint they likely weren't being lazy and it was legitimately done to fit the game on the cartridge
@@Vulpasit’s not running the tone, you can have something be gritty and have occasional uplifting moments. Like helping to heal Jasmine’s Ampharos or Silver’s redemption. You’re acting like gen 1 or 2 don’t have any hopeful moments whatsoever, how does a community coming together ruin the tone?
I also miss the old days of legendaries just being something you can go find if you want to, but in modern games it's all about the damn box legendaries. I've never cared much for legendaries, so I can agree with you on that one!
what? the entire point of pokemon is catching, people don't even wanna catch legendaries now? pokemon fans are the most insufferable fans I've ever seen
@@theamazingspooderman2697the point of Pokémon is to catch Pokémon that you *want* to catch. If you don’t want to catch a specific Pokémon they shouldn’t force you to in order to complete the game.
I played Sword as my first Pokémon game, and then around a year later, I played crystal, and it has been not only my favorite Pokémon game, but one of my favorite games of all time.
I like the Beep-boops of the Gameboy Color too. The music in Crystal just hits different. Also, I can't explain why, but the movement in Crystal feels better. If we had the Phys/Spec split, abilities and gen 8+ held items in Gen 2, they'd be the best games to date, and it wouldn't even be close. I feel as though fans are so spoiled with the new games and completely discredit the 2D era. Half the time I wish they would return to the 2D pixel era because the 3D models just look wrong sometimes. There's a reason gen 2 is so beloved and still hold up to this day. You can't say the same for other games like...let's say Sun & Moon. Not a single person on the planet is playing them anymore.
Regarding the Red level spike, people often forget about the stat experience mechanic in Crystal. It is designed with the idea that you will end up at Red underleveled and still win. It gives the fight tension by creating the illusion that you are not ready for it.
@@gabo8954 The first two generations of Pokémon used a different stat formula. Currently, Pokémon have Base Stats, Individual Values, and Effort Values. The biggest difference for gen 1 and 2 is the use of “stat experience” instead of EVs. Under the stat experience system, you get points using the base stats of the Pokémon you defeat. Like EVs, those points convert to actual stat points. Unlike EVs, you can max out every stat. EV/Stat Experience training can increase your stats high enough to beat untrained (zero EV/Stat experience) higher level Pokémon.
@@obits3 Ooooh I know what you mean now. Yeah like I think I just had Suicune over lv 40 when I beat the E4. & I dont think Ive ever gotten even close to reaching lvl 100 & still beating Red. I think this system also is like this because the fact that exp gaining in Crystal is so sloooow, because there arent many re fightable trainers with high lvl exp yields. they had to compensate somehow.
In my original file before the battery died when I was 15, my pokemon were all around level 80 before the 8th badge, but I also spent a lot of time just playing the game as a kid without intending to beat it. I finally got the idea to beat it when the battery was dead, tried again on the 2ds but then it got showered in coffee and I just don't have the heart to try to beat the game again. Convinced I have a curse at this point. I think being under leveled is only a problem if you rush through the game, and rushing through pokemon games isn't something I do. I like to walk around and train them and catch a bunch, usually have 24-27 hours in before even facing the first gym in most games.
A kindred spirit with the whole "You are the chosen one!" part! I remember feeling really annoyed with the forced capture of the box legendary. One of my favorite aspects of R/B/Y, G/S/C, was that legendary pokemon were things you needed to actively seek out. They might be mentioned, their locations might be hinted at, but it was always up to you and when you felt ready to go look for them. I have only ever caught Ho-Oh once in probably +20 playthroughs of G/S/C. (I actually vividly remember it, which is nice since it is one of the few memories I have over my grandmothers house, everything else is just 2 second bits and pieces). I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about my first time catching Groudon, or Kyogre. All those times blend together, and each time I wasn't actively trying to go out and find this legendary pokemon. Rayquaza however was like Ho-Oh, only caught it once, and I do remember it, so its not an age thing.
Red's fight in HG/SS made you WORK for that win. I think that makes Red cooler. This was the ultimate trainer of Kanto, and he kicked ass. I'm no gen wunner. I started with Platinum.
that is how I caught raikou and entei. master ball cloning glitch because I don't feel like wasting years. It can ruin your save file, I think, but it's worth it if it works.
@@zinniaq3020 Actually, it DOES work on Crystal version. The difference, however, is that the time limit is way shorter to perform it. But you can still clone the starters from the get go.
As someone who also grew up with Crystal, I can really appreciate this video. Crystal is so underrated but I don't think people that didn't get to experience it when it came out can understand
The title says why Crystal is better, but then the whole video is just why you personally like it more. I hate when people pull that crap in their titles. It’s not reflective of the actual video subject. The title should be “Why I Like Crystal More Than HGSS,” but I guess that wouldn’t get as many views.
How 'good' a game is will never be an objective fact, so when the title is "why Crystal is better" the implication is that it's the opinion of the video creator. You didn't expect a mathematical equation to prove scientifically that one game is more enjoyable than another, right?
@ I get what you’re trying to say, but “better” in this specific context CAN mean something objective. HGSS is Crystal with: -More appealing visuals to the general public -More appealing audio to the general public -Less glitches -More content/side modes -More in-depth battle mechanics -And even the option to play the old music if you have the item for it Yeah, some people might PREFER Crystal’s retro style, but that’s a very small percentage and not reflective of Crystal’s content and quality compared to HGSS.
@@laymankeepitbrief More content/side quests aren't objectively better; how good are the side quests? Are they better than the original game or just extra stuff for the sake of extra stuff? Depends who you ask. Is more complexity/in-depth mechanics objectively better? If that were the case more people would be playing Dota 2 and less would be playing Fortnite. The only argument from your list that is truly objective is the "less glitches" argument. And as far as "appealing to the general public" goes that's pretty much the case for all newer games regardless of if they are better or worse than past games. The majority of people will simply not consider playing a game that's 10+ years old even if it has better gameplay than the one that just came out. It's new, it's shiny, it's better, enough said.
@@FistfulOfGabagool Again, in this specific context, more content is better because players aren’t forced to engage with it if they just want the stuff that was also in Crystal. As for more in-depth battle mechanics, while you are right that simple and complex games appeal to different people, Pokemon is a case where adding abilities, natures, new moves, and other mechanics doesn’t change a whole lot for casual players since they likely will never fully utilize (or even understand) those mechanics, so they’ll just end up playing like how they did in Crystal, while hardcore players will use the new stuff there to the fullest. Basically, Pokemon HGSS is a case where all the new stuff doesn’t get in the way of the core experience of Crystal if that’s all you want to get out of it. It’s there for people who want it, making HGSS Crystal, but with additional content.
@@laymankeepitbrief But for those individuals(albeit the minority) that don't care for the additional content or the mechanics changes, it's not a better game.. I don't think that casting a wider net to appeal to a variety of people makes a game objectively better. I think that's a problem with modern games, they're too inclusive that they end up being lifeless and sterile as a result - I'm speaking in general now. I'd rather have 5 different games for 5 different types of people than one single game that tries to appeal to all of them. Sure you won't like 4/5 games but that 1 game is going to be perfect for you whereas any game that appeals to everybody is not going to be perfect for anyone.
I liked in crystal the discount sale at the goldenrod department store roof that would appear every once in a while. I also enjoy the Odd Egg that you get from the daycare man that could hatch into one of the 7 (not including togepi) baby pokemon and also had a 14% chance that the hatched pokemon would be a shiny.
I grew up playing gold. When I found out about the remakes from seribii i was ecstatic, especially about the following pokemon mechanic. Id say it was everything I was hoping for except the kimono girls. Discovering ho oh in the original felt like reaching a place I shouldn't have made it to, but in HG it felt unearned seeing all the kimono girls just waiting there for me...
Different experiences to different people. I for one saw far more infuriating difficulty grinding for Red in Crystal than in HGSS. HGSS is a little better for me in that regard. Regardless, in both gens, the level scaling of wild Pokemon is entirely broken.
Well Red might be a higher level, but THAT IS THE POINT. He is above everyone else and is up to YOU to show him that a well played strategy can win the fight, even with a lower level team
Tysm for talking about Crys i absolutely love her and was so mad that they removed her! She is so mouth better than Lyra in my opinion, there’s a fan game called liquid crystal where Crys is playable again with the remake sprites
This whole video boils down to playing crystal as a kid and loving it, of course you're not going to like the new thing when you're older even though it has numerous improvements to make it better.
A girl similar to Lyra was actually in the original gold version beta as the girl character. That's probably why she replaced Kris. In the leaked beta, the girl character is just Lyra without a hat.
BW/BW2 are my second favorite games in all of Pokémon. Love love love them. But if you mean in terms of music… well. It’s a very big reason why I want a remake…think of the beauty of Gen 5 music on a better sound system. Whew. Route 10’s remix in Smash is a good example of how good the remake’s OST could be.
In my experience; Black White is somewhat meh but Black White 2 is much better in terms of Pokémon availability. It's comparable to Firered Leafgreen and Ruby Sapphire plus both are similar too.
@@LapisandHamtarolover the whole point of BW was that there were 151 new pokemon so they didnt let you catch any non gen 5 pokemon until the postgame, I think it was a bold choice but I respect it from a creative direction. Also BW has a much much better story than BW2 but if you play them back to back the story of both fit together quite nicely
I wrote 6-pages of notes because of this video. Wow! That's a lot of words! They're point by point and about things I care about, at least enough to bring up. Notes start here: Whoa I'm writing this while cooking whoa Anyway point by point (that I care about) - Game speed doesn't matter for HGSS and GSC. They're both fine! Like literally perfectly fine! I don't even know what else to say. Like it's fine. - Map had to be expanded by nature of the engine and scope. This isn't a Gameboy game. - Harder Whitney is fine. - To say that the game has no plot is kind of wrong? Wrong might not be the best word. There's no centralized story as is the case w/ RSE onward but there's still a narrative. There's a pretty big focus in these earlier games (Gen 1 - 3) on how modern civilization interacts w/ nature, both positively and negatively. How we can coexist w/ the world around us instead of destroying it. In Johto, the entire region is interconnected between paths, caves, bodies of water, and cut tree shortcuts. Modern technology (Don't laugh) like radios (Don't laugh) can interact w/ the wildlife, this is furthered in the remakes, and the national park is home to many bird and bug species, though the existence of the park is twofold in nature due to destroying nature to exist and fostering large amounts of animals, similar to actual parks of this kind. These aren't the only things, there's the farm and the reverence towards Ho-Oh and Lugia that can be expanded upon, but the actual meat is in the inference. It's not a failing to miss themes, but they are there, and they are important. Ultimately, these early games weren't worried too much about a specific story (Besides Gen 3) and were focused more on the player centric role playing. This is largely left out of conversations regarding Pokemon and I think that's a failing of understanding the medium. - I think saying that anyone at GF worked w/in the box of limitations for GSC is evidently untrue. The game's long history of development and shifting ideas, alongside new information from data breaches definitely says otherwise. I get the point in theory, but for this series of games, that's untrue. - Cinnabar's new design is funnily enough, complete gibberish. This is just a random note, but Cinnabar doesn't make a single lick of sense. - This is the part where I'm going to lose even more people. Adding HMs/Environmental TMs, while annoying, isn't actually a problem. Environmental puzzles have been shoved out the way to the point of non-existence, all to make it so you don't have to use HMs/TMs to progress, though this has the unintended and now fully intended consequence of making it so there's no puzzles anymore. It actively kills team building and needing to keep a slot open for a key item, which is the obvious inspiration taken from Dragon Quest. It's not great that now and in the future (SV still isn't out yet), we don't have actual puzzles in a video game series that used to be full of areas w/ puzzles that made traversal actually have value and helped the target audience base, young children, develop actual skills that will benefit them in real life. It's fine that people don't like HMs, I don't particularly care for them usually, but this idea that they are a nuisance and a hindrance has led to pretty large problems in the now. This is on the scale of making it so trainers can't flag you down to battle you. Which SV is doing. That's incredibly bad and going to make the series worse off overall. - Needing to grind for Red is not something I agree w/ at all. While yes, the levels were raised post-E4, that includes daily events which give enough EXP to be fine, same as w/ GSC. Daily play and small, incremental progress is still how the game is structured, and they added even more daily aspects in the remakes so there's never any real feeling of being trapped. You can still beat Red w/ 50s and 60s, and you're most likely going to have 60s and 70s because of the increased levels across Kanto content. Is the fight harder? Sure. Isn't this also what Pokemon fans ask for every game?
When I first played Soul Silver in 2012, I went into the game blind. I had a terrible team from the very beginning until the end. I just wanted to rush through the game, so there was no real teambuilding. Johto was designed in a way that I was not used to because I played the other four regions at the time first. Being underleveled for Red is not one of my main problems with the Johto games. It is great to have a challenging battle at the end. My problem is that Johto's level curve always bothered and confused me so much. I have been hacking Pokémon Crystal in the recent years to fix the problems I have with Johto. Even before I played Soul Silver, I always compared Johto to every other region. I was confused when I saw the Johto Pokédex in 2011. My reaction was "They stuffed all the Kanto Pokémon in the Johto Pokédex?" because I only understood Pokémon games as following the Gen 3 model. I also viewed the Elite Four and Champion as the final bosses in all Pokémon games and I wanted Johto to recreate the experience I had in the Lance battle in Leaf Green. I only recently learned what the Johto games (ignoring the remakes) were designed to be: The Elite Four and Champion are not the final bosses of the Johto games. Finishing Johto (Clair being the end) is 2/3 of the game and you are 75% done with the game when you defeat the Elite Four and Champion and are able to access the rest of Kanto. It took me a very long time but I finally understand that Johto had to be weaker so that Kanto was not a boring experience. Kanto in GSC can't be compared to the post games from later generations because it was actually part of the main story.
I really enjoyed and appreciated the added cutscenes for the box legendaries. I thought the kimono girls looked badass dancing before the waterfall in the whirl islands. I think that they should have stuck to the monks for ho oh instead of the kimonos.
Really shows at the end of the day no Pokemon game is perfect because how we experience it is different than the person next to us. True there will be moments that universally loved by all but why they're loved can be different, your opinion was eye opening to me on why everyone finds games i dislike can be loved by another. Its pretty obvious when i saw it out loud, its our own life experience that make these games special to us.
Kris is the main reason I go back to crystal, as the original female protag (that managed to be fully implemented, anyway)she is kind of legendary in her own right, so axing her for Lyra was in SEVERLY poor taste that said, aside from that, my shared affinity for Crystal over HGSS is almost entirely due to nostalgic preference and such things like that, and objectively speaking I can hazard a guess that HGSS is almost certainly the better game overall
You didn't like Heartgold|Soulsilver but did you like the following pokemon mechanic? I think it's really fun that your partner is always with you, finding items or berries, having differents reactions. All of this is cute! My favorite aspect of the game (I got Soulsilver) It's well done in the Let's go games too 🙂Can't say the same for the Diamond and Pearl remakes. Every pokemon have not the right size AND can be stuck on walls which is annoying. I'm saying that and i don't have the games, i just saw a few reviews.
I actually think HGSS are arguably the best games in the entire series. Even minor things like making Totodile as good as Typhlosion thanks to the special physical split. Chikorita still sucks infortunately
Red in HGSS is an absolute monster. In GSC his team design is very linear. You can easily strategize around him. Like I used pokemon in their 40s for their resistances to pp stall Blastoise. But that kind of thing does not fly in HGSS.
I like reds team in pokemon crystal more too not because of just the level but for the team composition. Like I understand why they replaced espeon with lapras Lapras served as a more tanky special attacker than a glass cannon special attacker plus with lapras' ice type it can take advantage of the hail but still. In hgss half his team are weak to electric attacks while in gsc it was just 2 which isnt too bad. Espeon was also a better choice in not just typing but was an unexpected choice because it while you could get eevee in kanto in rby espeon wasnt an option (obviously). It also served as a potential nod or connection to manga's red who also had an espeon which i thought was neat.
What surprises me the most is that one of the default name options in the english version for Kris was Juana. Would have expected Joanne instead honestly.
Bruh no offense to the nostalgic stuff, but while i agree on that crystal has aspects that are better then the remakes, itd 500% not music or any small detail, but wild pokemon availability. Pokemon like sneasel, jigglypuff, Snubbull, teddiursa, growlith or Phanpy are available much earlier and allmost every singe route got some good changes and pokemon added to it in a game which 3 biggest problems are the shitty wild pokemon availability, trash enemy trainer teams (look at radio tower, a team of 3 lvl 21 and 2 lvl 23 ratata has no excuse to exist after the 7. Gym) and the broken level curve and content hole in kanto sucking out pokemon and levels out of the main game. Crystal managed to somewhat fix 1/3 of these extreme gameplay issues which make the game from a gameplay side better even of pretty much everything else in the remakes is better
Just bought crystal today on my 3ds. Gonna play it for the first time since the original one came out when I was a kid. I just recently played through soul silver so I’m looking forward to the comparisons
Johto in GSC always seemed like it would have a warm climate, but HGSS uses too many Gen 4 assets that make the region feel colder. The colder feel works for Sinnoh, but not Johto.
The national park theme on hgss always gave me big Studio Ghibli vibes and love it forever for that. But any gen 2 makes me a happy pokemon fan. Highly recommend the rom hack crystal clear a play, really peaks and leans into gen 2 battling in the best way
I must confess that I love how you can get Phanpy and Teddiursa at the very beginning of Crystal. It’s nice being able to play a true Johto game with those two pokemon since they are both late game version exclusives….. Oh god I gotta go take a dump now.
@@hpm1014in crystal, go to the route directly west of New Bark Town. There’s the gate to the north directly before cherry grove (it leads to a dead end route with ledges - that later connects to the dragon city). You can find a phanpy there in the morning. Rare.
@@hpm1014 you can catch Phanpy in the grassy area north of the very first route in the mornings. Gotta spam it with balls because it can run away. Yeah it’s one of the coolest things because….because… god I gotta take another shit.
I grew up playing Heartgold and Soulsilver, so I have nostalgia for Gen 4 instead. I didn't exist when the Game Boy era was booming. I could have been a baby or a toddler too. I'm not sure. But I started with gen 4 and my nostalgia for thise games is still very adamant. I think Platinum was better than the remakes though. But I did play Silver and Cyrstal a bit on my 3DS. Until I got distracted by something new and shiny 5 km in the distance. I get distracted very easily. I blame autism. But I personally enjyoed Heartgold as a kid, especially the legendary hunting while exploring every cave I can find. This is also what I loved about Gen 5 way more than in all the newer games. I like the newer games, but the exploration in Gen 4 and 5 was at it's peak and I loved finding new stuff in every corner of the region. I just hope Vilet will give me a similar feeling with similar exploration.
Interesting hot take. I mean, gen 2 is my favorite. Nostalgia and all that, and the way I played the pacing, was beneficial. I catch everything and evolve stuff as I am going. Being able to swap team members mid playthrough without needing an absurd amount of grinding to catch up in levels was nice. I think just the pokemon abilities and physical special split alone make the remakes better. Not considering the better fleshed out story and Kanto region.
I disagree with cinnabar. I think Blane having a gym and maintaining and rebuilding after disaster is a testament to perseverance and that despite the things we can't control, with our Pokemon pals we can continue on, even if it is a struggle! It's not like the volcano blew up yesterday, is the message better is Blane is miserable and alone living out a shell of the life he has taken from him by an indifferent natural event better than the enigmatic and energized old man motivating the next generation (trainers under him at the gym) to maintain community and stay strong together??
Great video, have been hyped since you teased it on stream. I'm generally team Crystal too, partially because it was KIND OF my first Pokémon game. My favourite thing compared to HGSS has always been the presentation, which I usually just call "crisp" because I can't think of a better word. The long Pokémon intro animations in Crystal were super unsustainable for future games, but beautiful in this one-off. The sprites and music are wonderful too and stretch the hardware to their absolute limit. A lot of the compositions (Mostly Johto as you mentioned) fit the GB soundchip better than the murky DS one too, even if the DS additions are really good, they just make me wish I was listening to a fan remastering/cover of it. A lot of the HGSS Kanto tracks are excellent, though. Like you, a lot of the exceptions to my GBC OST preference lie there. Kris' design is painfully '90s but I've always liked it, she was my first MC and I was always confused why she got replaced. Her addition to Masters sealed the game's Peak Fanservice status in my mind, which it's maintained ever since (having literally adding a playable Hex Maniac last month). Agree on the speed, the technical walk speed increase is noticeably diminished by the zones being bigger, to the point that I'm just thankful they added they added the run toggle. Holding B throughout the whole game would've just been miserable, and the godawful Gen 4 engine doesn't do it any favours either (still my favourite gen though). As for the story changes/Kimono Girls expansion, I've always preferred smaller-scale Pokémon stories because in my opinion they consistently flop when they go grand. For example, with the exception of the Unova games and maybe Platinum all of the more "dangerous" villains have been painfully uncompelling. HGSS isn't quite the same there since it has no real big bad but, the additions they make feel like flavour text time wasters more than anything, the events don't do anything to convince me that the world being in "danger" wasn't just stapled onto an already complete story. The 3 year timeskip was genuinely amazingly handled in GSC, though. The Blaine Gym changes aren't something I thought of, but as another commenter mentioned I do think they were going for a "move forward and rebuild" angle, even if it's still in the moment pretty bad whiplash on top of the (good) whiplash of stumbling upon the tragedy of Cinnabar in the first place. Otherwise, I generally like the HGSS gym designs more but Bugsy and Clair are two giant exceptions. Chuck and Pryce are pretty close and I'd probably just say that I prefer whatever game I played more recently's design. I also like Johto Victory Road, I'm partial to the GB-era cave tiles and the harsh soundfont serves the foreboding GSC OST well. I never liked the HGSS version of the track, felt like the instruments didn't sell the sense of danger very well, but it also doesn't feel like an "impending victory" track. The lack of trainers is also really practical with the lower levels in the Johto half of the game. If there were trainers I'd feel like I'm wasting my time for how generally easy of a game it is. Gen 2 never had modern EXP scaling, so even the relatively low level mons of G2!Kanto would usually get you to the levels expected to beat Red by the time you cleared all the gyms if you weren't rushing through. It sucks for re-clears and speedruns but I wouldn't consider it a design flaw, especially for what's essentially an optional, semi-secret superboss. (also yeah Rock Climb fucking sucks and I hate it) One thing you didn't mention is Suicune in HGSS. It keeps Crystal's Eusine subplot, and extended it into Kanto which gave that region some much needed story content, but only getting to catch it in the middle of the basically postgame was a pretty rough deal compared to G/S's roaming, or Crystal's late Johto Tin (Bell) Tower encounter. That always rubbed me the wrong way. Again, good vid. Never actually organized my thoughts on the remakes 'til now. None of the Pokémon remakes are near perfect imo (I'd say ORAS are easily the best though), it's frustrating how none of these games have truly definitive versions but hey, on the other hand it makes for interesting conversation.
Yeah HGSS could have been much better, and that's coming from someone who played it as my third game of the entire series (BW and B2W2 were first for me). It struggles with similar problems that BDSP does IMO, they both could have been much improved if they were based on the third game in the series. I think ORAS does this version exclusive thing much better due to the Teams getting much more narrative focus along with a design rework, and primal reversion being a feature introduced to increase the stakes surrounding their plot. Not only does it iterate on and add new helpful mechanics like DexNav, but it's story is also strengthened by the Delta Episode along with all of the otherwise awfully boring trainers like E4 getting more diverse teams (this has to be my biggest pet peeve with gen 3, I understand why this happened and it's not like only gen 3 struggles with this problem in the early gens but it's super silly that when they had options for trainers to have full teams of different pokemon for type specialists, they CHOSE to restrict them to only Hoenn pokemon). Wally's reworked fight is awesome and makes him a much more impactful character in the story. Megas were actually implemented well in the game design from an ingame perspective too, honestly better then XY's implementation, and that was the flagship game for the mechanic so that's saying a lot. The graphical updates it got from XY were substantial despite them really only being the framing of said graphics (which then got placed later on into SM and USUM with even greater improvements). In comparison, HGSS get really nice graphics and QOL, but struggle in the actual gameplay and story department, which is where it needed to improve to make gen 2 feel alive again. I like Giovanni's inclusion with Silver, but I wish that was far more fleshed out and explored in the games. The Ruins of Alph still amounted to next to nothing outside of the movies, when they could have had something much cooler there to flavor Unown's power better. The very cool arceus event was locked behind an unattainable event for no reason (gen 4 moment lmao) which is frustrating too. They do better with the first set of gym leaders, but more thought could have gone into Kanto and Mt. Silver in particular in regards to level scaling. I don't hate HGSS, I like them, they're just lower on my list relative to other pokemon players like Gen 4 tends to be in general for me. Plat is good, but Gen 5, 3, and 7 games outside of Fire Red and LGPE surpass it in terms of quality IMO due to more comprehensive story structure, better gameplay flow/level structuring, and lack of issues with HMs limiting gameplay options (Gen 5 only requires cut once in BW and introduces reusable TMs, Gen 7 gets rid of HMs entirely which is amazing, and Gen 3's HMs are just utilized very well and feel fun to use).
I haven't done the math, but it feels like Crystal hit the golden ratio in the design and feel of things despite the lack of pixels. The 8-bit music is where it really shines. It matches the low pixel nostalgic joy as much as it has that crunchy sound that scratches your brain in just the right place. Crystal is like a Master Swordsman with a spoon vs Newer generations who are amateur copycats with a high grade sword.
I didn't play it when I replayed HG this year, but I remember being pretty "meh" on it back when I first played it. I should really give it another shot
I have one thing regarding something you've mentioned in this video: The Lake of Rage/Route 42 theme. It's one of my favourite if not my favourite route theme in all of Pokemon, that's for sure. Surprisingly though, gen 2 version isn't my favourite one. It's not the gen 4 one either. It's actually the one used in gen 3, specifically in FRLG in Sevii Islands. Not sure why but it's just perfect to me. It's an amazing remix of the original one, it feels grand but overallnot too complicated. I have a sweet spot for gen 2 chiptune OST, but FRLG version of this one theme is just so good.
I loved the video and i agree with a lot of points you have made! Liked and followed also! but i also just wanted to leave a little tip whenever you wanna play Crystal again. where you have to guide the Farfetch'd back to them, you only have to talk to it a few times just go above it and talk to it and itll go down and do it again itll run into the treee and youll be done. Hope that makes the part of the game much more enjoyable for you Mamodxx! :)
Reasons why I think HGSS is better than the original: -Better graphics. -Better sound. -The Battle Frontier. -Empoleon exists. -No "internal battery running dry", erasing ALL my data! I spent so much time completing the 251 pokedex back in the day, and all was for nothing! Stupid game killed my shiny Donphan!
You made very good points (: I'm glad you're giving Crystal some love. I remember back in 2002 when it was my 11th birthday(yes I'm old lol), my dad took me to Walmart and said I could pick out anything I wanted for a gift. I picked Pokémon Crystal, Such a good game, easily one of my favorites in the series. I still enjoy the remakes but still Great video (:
I always liked Pokémon Crystal bc it was my 1st Pokémon Game, I see your points. For me now it's just the nostalgia that makes the game good. Once I played HG/SS, I'd never change that point of view. Why? The Postgame here is better designed and more enjoyable. Crystal didn't let you experience the whole Kanto Region with all its special places - while HG/SS indeed does that in a very nice way. All in all it felt more complete, enhanced. Like one of the best remakes despite OR/AS for the Nintendo 3ds.
While I think your opinion is beyond wild, I agree with the Kris take. I saw an interview or something recently and apparently the reason she didn’t return was actually because the art director literally forgot she existed… I can’t confirm the source but if true that’s hilarious/sad at the same time.
That wouldn’t make sense because Kris has an unused pokegear icon in HGSS. Someone did remember but for whatever reason they decided to make a completely new female mc.
The original battle against Red made me traumatized of Snorlax. Like it's so bulky and it has the AUDACITY to use rest! It's taunting me! I hate Snorlax in gen 2 >:V
This is my take on why they made Red significantly stronger in the remakes. Crystal came out only 2 years after Yellow. Therefore, it wasn't long ago you played the character. It was a neat feature they added to the sequel. HG/SS however, came out 6 years after Fire Red and Leaf Green. When you're a kid, 6 years feels like an eternity. So to battle the character you that played so long ago should feel like they must be beefed up after all those years.
This whole video essay can be summarized like this: "2nd gen remakes are just too hard for me and I wish they were easier". As a person who probably also enjoys originals slightly bit more, even though I love HG/SS a lot too, out of sheer nostalgia (and few other things which are also very much nitpicky), I still feel obligated to address few things you pointed out as I feel they are not examples of inferiority of the remakes. That part with Farfetch'd in Ilex Forest - yeah, it was made slightly more challenging in HG/SS but I don't see what is the problem about that, really. The puzzle is still very easy and adding a bit of more challenge is not bad. I get that you probably feel like it's a pacebreaker but it's good the games are not just about going from battle to battle but there is some other stuff to do as well. Next, as for Red's team - I guess the levels of his team are the result of different level progression throughout the game. But his team was made more difficult not just as a result of that but also as a reult of zeitgeist. Remakes are part of fourth generation. Until that time many new things have been introduced to Pokemon, including abilities and some new items. As such, it's no surprise HG/SS are utilizing those too to add some more challenge and fun. It's not about beating Red as fast as possible. Better to take your time, strategize some more, to level-up your Pokemon some more... There are also a lot of new ways for that in the remakes. For instance, I very much enjoyed the idea of re-matching gym leaders with much tougher teams on different days of the week. It gives a lot of exp. Only when your team is around lv. 60-65 you can tackle Red with confidence and it's fine. Anyway, my coplaint about Red's team, if anything, is that they replaced his Espeon with Lapras. Like, seriously? That Espeon was such a chalenge, fast and very tough offensively. That Lapras, on the other hand, is probably just there to utilize Hail mechanics which honestly was just as redundant. It's not the same feel to that battle anymore. But other than that, I enjoyed that battle in modern rendition.
on my opinion the sprites from crystal is the coolest of all. geting he cartridge and open the manual with that old ken sugimori arts inside was pretty cool too
16:44 I could argue IF some hacks fixes Blaine's gym from HGSS, I would say to do quest for him, that he alone in that cave wanted to revive that town and having a respectful gym maybe start something and then you go and battle against his trainers during you venture throught Kanto and as a reward, he wont battle you, he gives you the bagde but a SPECIAL "TRAINER'S EYES MEET" music plays and Blaine says "OH-HO-HO-HO!! Even if I gave you the Volcano Bagde as a Gym Leader, I'm still a pokémon trainer and as you should know by now already, when we cross-eyes at each other, there is no escape but to battle!"
I have all the nostalgia in the world for gen 1 and 2. But hgss is way better than crystal lol. Just the safari zone and gym leader rematches alone do that for me. Then factor in the physical special split and it's over.
I dont understand why people like gen 2. The majority of the pokes introduced here are way too weak, the routes had way less variety compared to Kanto, Hoenn, Sinnoh etc, battles take way longer and meta is very slow in general, difficulty spikes are random and almost non existent... Out of the 5 first gens, gen 2 is easily the weakest one.
Gen 2 is just a chill adventure and has a great aesthetic and my favorite sprite work in the series. You don’t need strong Pokémon to beat a Pokémon game. And most people don’t care about the Gen 2 meta. Competitive Pokémon didn’t really get going till around the tail end of Gen 3. And took off in Gen 4. I’d also argue that diamond and pearl are more of hassle to play nowadays and that those are actually the worst of the first 5 generations. Platinum was great though.
while the whole "chosen one" quest to get the legendary is like, grand and epic, i actually do love when the legendaries are kind of a thing that you find hidden away somewhere as a normal kid who's just adventuring and exploring around. they feel more legendary like that imo, like the regis in gen3 or the birds in gen1.
also i agree SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY about some the music being "too ambitious" in HG/SS. i've never been able to put into words why i prefer some of the songs in g/s/c and that really explains it.
The kimono girls give you the legendaries because they see you as truly worthy of getting them. Your the chosen one because of your skills and courageous heart, not because of some prophecy.
Will never forget being 10 playing crystal and on getting the HMs to peak at victory road for the first time only to find a sneak peak to a whole other region. Finding a shiny zubat exploring the small cave just before exiting near the slowpoke cave. Crystal will always be my favorite game
Aesthetically, I love Gen 2. There's just something about the sprites and the limited colors, especially when you're playing it on an old GBC with no backlight. Maybe it's because it reminds me of old Tamagotchi but it makes me feel close to my Pokemon somehow, like they're my virtual pets.
I played Silver, Soulsilver and then Crystal (in that order) in my life. After all that, I would put Crystal comfortably in second place. While I’m nostalgic for the art style, atmosphere, and music from Crystal, the graphical overhaul in SS made me fall in love with Johto for the first time all over again. The game looked, sounded and played like how my child brain imagined it to be. Full color, more layered instruments, additional battle mechanics, QOL improvements. Don’t get me wrong, I still boot up my Silver/Crystal cartridges for trips down memory lane. But if I had to start a journey all over again, I would pick SS.
There's never been a time, before or since, in a Pokemon game that really restricts your movement AFTER getting Fly like G/S/C did -- getting to Vermillion really does feel like you're in a completely different region for a good long while. While you CAN fly to Indigo Plateau, then walk back through Victory Road and the routes beyond all the way to New Bark Town, the only other way is to transit the regions is to wait for whenever the SS Aqua sails. That really amps up the pressure to get the Magnet Train moving again. And even after it DOES, you still find yourself usually going to Goldenrod/Saffron to make the jump between the regions. Yes, they're connected, but their relative separation makes the whole world feel so much BIGGER than anyplace else. And then in HGSS, you just... fly from Kanto to Johto and back again. The Magnet Train is pretty much deprecated before you even get it running. Kanto's just "more places" rather than its own distinct region. Bleh.
@@Eevee860 I would disagree, I think; "gameplay" is the sum total that results from everything else in the game -- it's not simply speed or efficiency. Constraints on the player can improve gameplay -- see the pushback in some MMOs and open-world RPGs that allow the player fast travel between locations, and how that cheapens movement or the overall experience.
@@korossyl No, time is valuable, fast travel is better than walking 100% of the time. Visuals are not gameplay, gameplay is pressing buttons and that directly making things happen, walking long distances is bad gameplay
Not just the slice of life, but the exploration. Tyrogue is at the front of Mt. Mortar now, and there’s a shrine at the bottom of Whirl Islands. Ho-oh I could accept as a plot encounter, but not Lugia.
100% agree, and especially the part about Blaine’s gym. Having a guy that lost everything due to the volcano, but HGSS ruins that by giving him a actual gym
I love analysis/review videos about pokemon, in the ocean of top 10 and challenge videos watching videos like these is always refreshing. I don't even like the Johto games that much, but the video was still really good Only opinion I disagreed with was about Team Rocket. Every Team Rocket section drags on for really long in both games imo TLDR: I hope videos like these get the attetion they deserve, especially since a people are getting more critic on pokemon games
the farfetch'd puzzle - you can just step on the twigs to make it face that direction, and then you go behind it while avoiding other twigs that make it face in another direction. hope this helped
It is for storytelling following RGBY! It actively follows up on the themes of nature and what is lost in modernization. As the forest is cut down for town building, nature itself ends up dying over time. Years have passed and now there's just kind of nothing around anymore. Obviously, the empty nature is due to hardware limitations more than anything else, though it does actively serve a purpose. Hope that helps!
you can just spam full restores which is what you suppose to do against red, but further then that, red pokemon typings are all easy to counter, grass,water,fire,normal,electric,ice. you have no dual type that is hard to counter. its not like you dont have those pokemons anyway. feraligtr has ice fang, typhlosion can learn earthquake, its really not that hard of a battle
I played pokemon crystal for the first time recently, and i have to agree the pacing is excellent. I beat the game in 3 days, very little grinding necessary. Trainer Red is also pretty easy, i had very underlevelled pokemon and still beat him on the second try. The collecting pokemon aspect is my favourite, as the morning/day/night system for random encounters is very well done as i have to plan things ahead of time to collect all the pokemon available. I love the simplicity of the combat. No abilities, simple physical/special dmg mechanics. Best casual pokemon experience by far, even better than emerald
Gonna sound like a gate keeper or an old man but going into Kanto just can't hit the same for people who didn't experience it at the time. To have the entire (sorta) region from the last pokemon game, all the gym leaders and more pokemon to catch was mind blowing. I can see how it's disappointing, empty in content. Even in hg/ss, but it's at least properly finished with the legendaries and stuff added back. I was just happy to ride around the Kanto region in color and find the secret red battle 🤷♀️
@@CGoody564 Lol I never experienced it with a Pokemon game. but that reminds me of those old cheat code sites that would make up parts of the game that don't exist. It was like some area of SpongeBob BFBB that I spent forever looking for, because some dolt entered it on a cheat codes/tips website.
@@tylerd1297 "if you fly to koga city, then fly to the city with the ghost tower, go to the top floor, use an escape rope, then fly to celadon city and enter a cave, it will take you to a secret city where you can find mewthree!"
I prefer the original gen 2 games. But I disagree that Crystal is balanced better than HGSS. it’s just an easier game in general because the opponent AI is garbage and the way that EVs work in gen 2. You can easily stomp Red with a level 50 team because he chooses dumb moves and his Pokémon have weaker stats than yours
I actually think G/S were better in some ways. Those games really used the day and night cycle better than any other game in the series. There's also more of a focus on catching Pokémon in general, and in many areas, there are rare creatures up for grabs if you get lucky or are persistent. For example, at the start of the game, it is possible to encounter Jigglypuff on Route 46 (in Crystal it's a Phanpy, but only in the morning). It's a great addition to any team at this point in the game, but both Pokémon are not in that area in HG/SS. It may be a same thing, but little details like that really added to Gen II's more naturalistic atmosphere when compared to Gen I.
In HG/SS I liked how after you got all the Kanto badges and you went through the elite 4 again the levels and Pokemon were stronger. Lance was a dragon trainer who was actually able to have a variety of strong dragons. I LOVE Lance's HG/SS rematch team.
The devastation I ran into with just Lorelei's Lapras after finding this out all those years ago xD Used to use the E4 as a level up for many lower level Pokemon, after HGSS ? Nope xD
I loved the dual battle with you and your rival vs Lance and Clair
I would also heavily disagree with the Cut-seen argument I think it certainly speaks for HGSS that the legendarys have a story behind them and a cool Animation sequence especially cause it looks amazing and still holds up very well to this day
I would actually go so far and say that the only reason one would like Crystal more is because of nostalgia which is an Argument I would respect as long as someone is honest about it
@@kaiserkater2308 I think you mean "cutscene", but other than that you're absolutely correct.
@@kaiserkater2308 I like the broken early gen mechanics and sprites. A split between nostalgia and art style preference for the sprites. HGSS was just a bit too clean for me and I like when you need to use a bit of imagination to interpret what you're seeing. Plus the end game grind is better and worse. Like you need to grind more, but also the elite 4 got buffed second rounds which I always love, but it can kinda become required work to go through a few times over to be ready for Red, whereas broken gen 2 can be brute forced at much lower levels, especially with the pre-ev system letting you max all your stats and the badge boosts to both your stats and moves corresponding to the types of the badges you had, letting you hit well above your level class. I believe that was removed in Gen 4
Fun fact: Once you reach Celadon in Heartgold you can obtain the GBSound, a key item that allows you to select the original music from gen II.
Fun fact: It's not actually the original music from gen II, but recreations designed to mimic what a Game Boy soundfont is. if you listen to the GSC version and the hgss GB sound version back to back, you'll probably notice the difference.
I usually use my action replay to activate it so I can listen to the ost from the beginning 😅
Fun fact: Insert a random something about this game that is neither obscure or clever and expect to sound smart when I really am not. -federico guitin-
@@powerfulberry237 I just mentioned it because the video doesn't but spends a lot of time comparing both s
oundtracks. I never pretended to be smart or anything. Chill.
You gotta get all badges first to get it tho
I’m here to say you’re wrong, but I’ll watch the video and respect your opinion anyway.
thanks konsino
Thank you Konsino please make a response video proving kyle wrong
You're wrong. I won't watch the video and I don't respect anything except salads named after weird old men.
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
But why is he wrong? Lol, guy just spent 25 minutes explaining and you can't even explain whatsoever. HGSS's post game in Kanto including all the gym leader and elite 5 rematches and Red are all miserable unless grinding. Meet this person in this exact spot on this exact day at this exact time just to get their freaking phone #. Or like 5 massages or something from his sister to rematch Blue... The post game in HGSS is completely miserable when that should be the main selling point for these. With the original pre-nerfed EVs and lower levels on Red you can just play the the damn games like a normal human without grinding. The simplicity also creates room for not even using HM slaves in Crystal, which are b*tch in gen 4 including HGSS. I'm just kind of reiterating things here, but you haven't presented anything.
If I remember correctly Red's levels were boosted because Barry had become the strongest trainer since Crystal came out (his starter hitting level 85 after 20 wins in the Hall of Fame). Wanting to put Red in his rightful spot as the most monstrously powerful trainer in all of pokemon, they boosted his levels to surpass Barry.
I love they kept the respect for Red.
Does that mean they will boost him again in a future remake because of BDSP Cynthia?
@tabbender1232 maybe? Though honestly, her garchomp ties Pikachu for level so they may consider it tied even if she's got a few more total levels than him. It's very close. Red V Barry is actually a much bigger gap though there's only three levels between Pikachu and Barry's starter.
Red is supposed to present a challenge because the people playing this remake had grown up. Also, you’re given stronger elite four postgame and gym leader rematches in the fighting dojo. The “HeartGold’s pacing is infinitely worse than Crystal’s” take is the silliest one in this video. The o.g. Gen II games had some of the worst level scaling in the entire series. Level 5 wild Pokémon in the postgame? Like come on dude.
@greg5892 I get the scaling in gen II. They prioritized keeping the levels in Kanto the same as they were in gen I. They treated it like a fact of Kantos geography and not a game.
Gen IV treats it more like a game requiring good balance.
I also think Red is treated as a particularly legendary sort of encounter. He holds a special place where he needs to be treated as the GOAT of pokemon trainers. His levels were upped to specifically beat Barry who had topped him and they wouldn't make a stronger trainer for a long time, and when they finally did, they were careful not to top his Pikachu.
Also the virtual console version of Crystal let you catch celebi
Shiny hunted Celebi in the virtual console. Cloned it and transferred one to Pokémon home. May try and do a few more hunts.
I hope it will by in nso to!
And HGSS lets you catch Mewtwo, Moltres, Zapdos, Articuno, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Latios...
@@dmaxwell910901Which are all pokemon you can really easily get now, you literally cannot get celebi without crystal vc.
@@dmaxwell910901 yeah but what about Latias
Pokemon Yellow was my favorite....until I played Crystal. It was 2017 and one of my friends recommended Crystal to me. I felt like I missed out for well over a decade
I noticed a few more things, as, you guessed, Gen 2 is also my favorite.
1- Your starter holds a Berry in the original games. This served not only as a backup healing for beginners, but to teach veterans (from Gen 1) that there was a new mechanic in these games. If you were replaying GSC for whatever reason, you could choose to take said berry and save it for the sick Miltank quest.
Pure Genius.
2- In the original GSC as well as in HGSS there's diurnal and nocturnal pokémon, that only appear at day or night, respectively.
In the originals, however, if you used headbutt there was a chance a NOCTURNAL pokemon would appear during the DAY, and vice versa. The best thing about this is that said pokémon would appear SLEEPING! This gave more immersion to the world, as nocturnal pokémon didn't just disappear during the day, they just went to sleep on the trees!
I was BAFFLED they removed this in the remakes, such an amazing little detail!
3- No room decoration.
This one always bothered me, not because it's a feature I loved, but because they went the extra mile to replicate the "Pokemon Pikachu 2 - GSC" connection features with the PokéWalker, so it felt strange not including something SO simple! It was very limited on the gameboy, because the game took the entirety of the 1MB cartridge, but just think about it, they could've included more giant dools, trophies, posters, really make it almost as good as the secret base system in Gen3.
All of this is why I disliked the remake it took a while yet I had my room looking so nice. Yes the "realism" of the time cycles having sleeping poke's being found would have been so much cooler to show to the newer kids playing it. To me Gen 2 and especially Crystal respected that we legit just came off of playing maybe 5 games so there as a lot of legacy and while easing people into the item system as you said.
Yea the remakes did leave a lot of to be desired
Kris was removed because she was heavily associated with Crystal Version, so to preserve Crystal's legacy they created a new female trainer for the modern era and made both Ethen and Lyra the duality of HGSS for whichever gender you chose. Also what i really liked about HGSS is theres a cheatcode that let you play as Dawn/Lucas since their data remains in the game for union rooms/trading/battling. Also one of the great things about HGSS is that you can get the original starters as well as the Hoenn starters and even previous legendaries, tho it does suck that you have to wait post game to get suicune.
it worked
kris is freaking awesome. by replacing her, they made everyone love her, lyra is cool too, she is also good, both are
@puddi Then just update her outfit like they did to all the other outdated GSC outfits?
HGSS Are Equal To Digimon World Dawn/Dusk In Terms Of Quality!Like If You Agree!
@@chimuoma390 ... the fuck does that mean?
@@crcoghill It Means HGSS Are GREAT GAMES!!!!
I’m definitely with you with the “not saving the world” plot. As a kid, what I loved about Crystal was that I did feel like an everyday trainer who was going at their own pace, doing their own thing. That made finding new things that weren’t pointed out to me so exciting!
I love that catching legendaries is optional as it comes down to your exploration skills as well as the skills you’ve learnt battling and catching Pokémon throughout the game. When I think Pokémon, I don’t think of saving the world, I think of developing as a trainer, getting the gym badges and defeating some bad guys who are just evil without having some deep seeded lore (though I love lore when it comes to the region and locations within it).
It's like you reached inside my brain and made all you found there into this comment lmao
NO WONDER WHY I LOVE OLD POKEMON GAMES SO MUCH-
Sounds boring.
Yeah always loved this about Gen 2.
Tbf in heartgold you're also supposed to do the silver + e4 stuff too before the red finale, as well as catching legendaries and collecting the gym leaders' numbers, etc. These have you facing off against late 60s-mid 70s trainers by the end of it, which puts the level gap between lance and red at around the same distance as red and blue was originally.
Not to mention there's both a non-glitch way to infinitely grind rare candies (pokeathlon) and infinite rematches vs level 50-60 gym leaders & e4/lance (the best rematch options in the original was Cal's 3 level 50s and the level 40-50 e4 gauntlet no one likes using for grinding).
So even with the jump in levels, hg/ss makes getting up in levels waaaaay easier - and it's actually viable to catch a pokemon in kanto and get them up to snuff without selling your soul or glitching cloned rare candies into existence.
Right? Did this guy miss like half of what they added to Kanto and should’ve been in there the first time if they hadn’t had to rush the game out while fitting it on a GBC cartridge?
Imma have to disagree by a long shot. As good as Crystal was, HGSS really fine tuned it completely. You have Pokemon following you, you have the literal best events every created in mainline games, you even have the original GBC music and many other things. Also being able to get Pokemon from D/P/PL and all GBA games like Emerald AND the pokewalker. You also don't need to hold down a button to run so that's definitely a plus. Did I also mention the special features involving your Pokemons nature? If you know, you know.
Honestly there's just a bunch of little fine tuned features that made the remakes so remarkably great.
No Kris tho.
I'm team Crystal.
@@DebrisDiver lol I never understood why guys were creeps and liked playing as girls when the whole point it to imagine yourself as the main character, the reason for a girl character being added is quite self explanatory and is for girls who play the game and felt left out they didn’t have a character to represent them
@@A77738 I think some of them might just be eggs, like myself once upon a time. At least I hope that’s what it is, because I don’t like the alternative.
@@DebrisDiver dumb take
You don't get the gb sounds player until after you beat the elite 4, all the way in Kanto region.
I enjoyed how clearly passionate you are about Pokémon Crystal and the relationship you developed with this game over the years and during your childhood. I mean, that's THE ESSENCE of Pokémon and why it's such an amazing, thriving franchise!
Nonetheless... I still have to point out that all points pro-Crystal in detriment of HGSS are entirely nitpicks (with exception of the worse level curve with Red, that's fair). To be completely fair, you warned us about this, but still, most of this video can be grossely resumed to "oh, yeah, this thing in HGSS is amazing, but I enjoyed it more in Crystal because of nostalgia + art style".
Playing devil's advocate, the art style and soundfont of Crystal is INCREDIBLY charming. At the end of the day, it's a matter of preference if you enjoy the retro style more than the new style, and that's completely understandable. But besides that, all other points are nostalgia speaking...
HGSS, compared to Crystal, has the entire package of updates that come with being a Gen 4 VS a Gen 2 game (physical/special split, better movesets, Johto Pokémon evolutions like Weavile, Mamoswine and Yanmega, etc etc etc). On top of that, being remakes of GOLD and SILVER, there was literally no requirement by the creators to include Crystal elements like the Suicune and Eusine plot lines, something that they STILL did (imagine if BDSP had Platinum elements, how much better it would have been...). HGSS also has the Mareep line as an available Pokémon, a staple Johto Pokémon completely gone in Crystal.
Now let's talk about the things that HGSS included that they had zero reason to add on, but included because the creators said "FUCK IT let's make this the most complete Pokémon game ever":
- Pokémon following you
- Pokeathlon (such a cool facility of extra content...)
- Berry Farming
- Safari Zone (and the BEAUTIFUL routes leading to it)
- Cerulean Cave, Viridian Forest and most of the unfinished Kanto spots
- GB Sounds for listening to the crispy, crispy GBC soundfont you love so much
- THE. FREAKING. BATTLE. FRONTIER. This was supposed to be ONLY in Platinum! And they still did it! NOT EVEN ORAS DID THIS!
- The possibility of getting all of: Latios/Latias, a Hoenn starter and Kyogre/Groudon + Rayquaza
- Gym Rematches
- And the cherry on top: the events of Celebi and Arceus that you could access at the time, that not only expand the lore of the game but gave us added new content that was mesmerizing to see (the confirmation of Giovanni being Silver's father, Sinjoh Ruins with the WACK cutscene that plays with Arceus surrounded by Unown, showing the player REAL LIFE IMAGES IN A POKÉMON GAME - also this cutscene ends with you recieving a Egg with either Palkia, Dialga or Giratina)
There must be things I'm forgetting. I know there are. But HGSS is, essentially, an entirely unique Pokémon game in this franchise, and that's because the design philosophy behind the creation of these two masterpieces was something that completely changed over the years.
For anyone still reading this, enjoy this treat of a Pokémon game, because, in the foreseeable future, there won't be anything like it.
Also, you don't have to catch the box legend just end the fight.
About music from gen 2:
I actually prefer the Gen 3 versions instead of the originals OR HGSS versions, the GBA REALLY MADE THEM STICK AND BE GRAND!
GBA Route 38 and Violet City will always be the best versions of those themes.
I actually agree on that...which is weird because I absolutely *hated* the remixes for the Gen 1 tracks. XD
@@Hijiri_MIRACHION YES! YES! The FRLG version of Violet City is just do amazing!
@@robertlupa8273 It's just too bad they never made a full official GBA mix of the entire Johto soundtrack with how amazing the tracks we did get ended up being.
Wait, there are Gen 3 versions of Gen 2 music???
18:20 While I understand where you’re coming from here, I personally didn’t see it like that. I thought of it as more hopeful and uplifting.
The fact that Blaine and some scientists (Formerly from the fossil lab/Pokémon Mansion I’d like to assume) all decided to band together and create a Gym that tells the rest of the world and the player Cinnabar lives on is kind of inspiring in a way.
That's true. I guess I only looked at it from a more negative point of view. Very good point
this would probably be too much time consuming, but it would be kind of cool if it was a sort of side quest where you can't fight blaine because he's sad in the cave, so you find the former scientist friends and make a little gym of sorts. kind of like a message of even though nature can destroy stuff, people will find a way to build back.
The immersion is kind of ruined when you know why Cinnabar was actually cut from the game lol. Also makes it forgivable from the devs standpoint they likely weren't being lazy and it was legitimately done to fit the game on the cartridge
Well, we don't need hopeful and uplifting. Gens 1 & 2 were a bit grittier as far as Pokemon goes, don't ruin the tone.
@@Vulpasit’s not running the tone, you can have something be gritty and have occasional uplifting moments. Like helping to heal Jasmine’s Ampharos or Silver’s redemption. You’re acting like gen 1 or 2 don’t have any hopeful moments whatsoever, how does a community coming together ruin the tone?
Rock Climb would be a better move if it were a rock type move instead of normal
I also miss the old days of legendaries just being something you can go find if you want to, but in modern games it's all about the damn box legendaries. I've never cared much for legendaries, so I can agree with you on that one!
what? the entire point of pokemon is catching, people don't even wanna catch legendaries now? pokemon fans are the most insufferable fans I've ever seen
@@theamazingspooderman2697the point of Pokémon is to catch Pokémon that you *want* to catch. If you don’t want to catch a specific Pokémon they shouldn’t force you to in order to complete the game.
Thank you so much for the Kris appreciation. She was my first Pokémon protag so she means a lot to me. I adore Crystal, it’s also my favorite!
I played Sword as my first Pokémon game, and then around a year later, I played crystal, and it has been not only my favorite Pokémon game, but one of my favorite games of all time.
thats a really unusual order haha
From a bad experience to an even worse one
@@MilkJugA_ yeah lol
You're an idiot Ho, just say that and be done with it.
You started with potentially the worse pokemon game lol
I like the Beep-boops of the Gameboy Color too. The music in Crystal just hits different. Also, I can't explain why, but the movement in Crystal feels better. If we had the Phys/Spec split, abilities and gen 8+ held items in Gen 2, they'd be the best games to date, and it wouldn't even be close. I feel as though fans are so spoiled with the new games and completely discredit the 2D era. Half the time I wish they would return to the 2D pixel era because the 3D models just look wrong sometimes. There's a reason gen 2 is so beloved and still hold up to this day. You can't say the same for other games like...let's say Sun & Moon. Not a single person on the planet is playing them anymore.
Regarding the Red level spike, people often forget about the stat experience mechanic in Crystal. It is designed with the idea that you will end up at Red underleveled and still win. It gives the fight tension by creating the illusion that you are not ready for it.
Cant imagine a bigger cope than this comment. The red fight was just a thought in some devs head that got implemented way too late in development
What are you talking about Pal?
@@gabo8954 The first two generations of Pokémon used a different stat formula. Currently, Pokémon have Base Stats, Individual Values, and Effort Values. The biggest difference for gen 1 and 2 is the use of “stat experience” instead of EVs. Under the stat experience system, you get points using the base stats of the Pokémon you defeat. Like EVs, those points convert to actual stat points. Unlike EVs, you can max out every stat. EV/Stat Experience training can increase your stats high enough to beat untrained (zero EV/Stat experience) higher level Pokémon.
@@obits3 Ooooh I know what you mean now. Yeah like I think I just had Suicune over lv 40 when I beat the E4.
& I dont think Ive ever gotten even close to reaching lvl 100 & still beating Red. I think this system also is like this because the fact that exp gaining in Crystal is so sloooow, because there arent many re fightable trainers with high lvl exp yields. they had to compensate somehow.
In my original file before the battery died when I was 15, my pokemon were all around level 80 before the 8th badge, but I also spent a lot of time just playing the game as a kid without intending to beat it. I finally got the idea to beat it when the battery was dead, tried again on the 2ds but then it got showered in coffee and I just don't have the heart to try to beat the game again. Convinced I have a curse at this point.
I think being under leveled is only a problem if you rush through the game, and rushing through pokemon games isn't something I do. I like to walk around and train them and catch a bunch, usually have 24-27 hours in before even facing the first gym in most games.
A kindred spirit with the whole "You are the chosen one!" part!
I remember feeling really annoyed with the forced capture of the box legendary. One of my favorite aspects of R/B/Y, G/S/C, was that legendary pokemon were things you needed to actively seek out. They might be mentioned, their locations might be hinted at, but it was always up to you and when you felt ready to go look for them.
I have only ever caught Ho-Oh once in probably +20 playthroughs of G/S/C. (I actually vividly remember it, which is nice since it is one of the few memories I have over my grandmothers house, everything else is just 2 second bits and pieces). I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about my first time catching Groudon, or Kyogre. All those times blend together, and each time I wasn't actively trying to go out and find this legendary pokemon. Rayquaza however was like Ho-Oh, only caught it once, and I do remember it, so its not an age thing.
Red's fight in HG/SS made you WORK for that win. I think that makes Red cooler. This was the ultimate trainer of Kanto, and he kicked ass. I'm no gen wunner. I started with Platinum.
Who remembers on the OG crystal you could clone Pokemon by turning off ur game IMMEDIATELY when they it says don't save at the CPU. I'm a dinosaur. 😂
It doesn’t work for Crystal. Only for gold and silver
@@zinniaq3020 damn sure right cause I had gold
that is how I caught raikou and entei. master ball cloning glitch because I don't feel like wasting years.
It can ruin your save file, I think, but it's worth it if it works.
I remember teaching my class mates how to do this at school 😂
@@zinniaq3020 Actually, it DOES work on Crystal version. The difference, however, is that the time limit is way shorter to perform it. But you can still clone the starters from the get go.
As someone who also grew up with Crystal, I can really appreciate this video. Crystal is so underrated but I don't think people that didn't get to experience it when it came out can understand
I one of those dudes who can appreciate old games and still dont enjoy my time with Crystal.
I still Play the Crystal open World emulator
@@gabo8954is it Crystal Clear by chance? If so it's a good one.
Same. Crystal is the GOAT.
No game shocked me like going from gen 1 to gen 2... And being able to go back to Kanto. It was so cool!
The title says why Crystal is better, but then the whole video is just why you personally like it more. I hate when people pull that crap in their titles. It’s not reflective of the actual video subject.
The title should be “Why I Like Crystal More Than HGSS,” but I guess that wouldn’t get as many views.
How 'good' a game is will never be an objective fact, so when the title is "why Crystal is better" the implication is that it's the opinion of the video creator. You didn't expect a mathematical equation to prove scientifically that one game is more enjoyable than another, right?
@ I get what you’re trying to say, but “better” in this specific context CAN mean something objective. HGSS is Crystal with:
-More appealing visuals to the general public
-More appealing audio to the general public
-Less glitches
-More content/side modes
-More in-depth battle mechanics
-And even the option to play the old music if you have the item for it
Yeah, some people might PREFER Crystal’s retro style, but that’s a very small percentage and not reflective of Crystal’s content and quality compared to HGSS.
@@laymankeepitbrief More content/side quests aren't objectively better; how good are the side quests? Are they better than the original game or just extra stuff for the sake of extra stuff? Depends who you ask. Is more complexity/in-depth mechanics objectively better? If that were the case more people would be playing Dota 2 and less would be playing Fortnite. The only argument from your list that is truly objective is the "less glitches" argument. And as far as "appealing to the general public" goes that's pretty much the case for all newer games regardless of if they are better or worse than past games. The majority of people will simply not consider playing a game that's 10+ years old even if it has better gameplay than the one that just came out. It's new, it's shiny, it's better, enough said.
@@FistfulOfGabagool Again, in this specific context, more content is better because players aren’t forced to engage with it if they just want the stuff that was also in Crystal. As for more in-depth battle mechanics, while you are right that simple and complex games appeal to different people, Pokemon is a case where adding abilities, natures, new moves, and other mechanics doesn’t change a whole lot for casual players since they likely will never fully utilize (or even understand) those mechanics, so they’ll just end up playing like how they did in Crystal, while hardcore players will use the new stuff there to the fullest.
Basically, Pokemon HGSS is a case where all the new stuff doesn’t get in the way of the core experience of Crystal if that’s all you want to get out of it. It’s there for people who want it, making HGSS Crystal, but with additional content.
@@laymankeepitbrief But for those individuals(albeit the minority) that don't care for the additional content or the mechanics changes, it's not a better game.. I don't think that casting a wider net to appeal to a variety of people makes a game objectively better. I think that's a problem with modern games, they're too inclusive that they end up being lifeless and sterile as a result - I'm speaking in general now. I'd rather have 5 different games for 5 different types of people than one single game that tries to appeal to all of them. Sure you won't like 4/5 games but that 1 game is going to be perfect for you whereas any game that appeals to everybody is not going to be perfect for anyone.
I almost clicked off the video when he said he like sword and shield
I liked in crystal the discount sale at the goldenrod department store roof that would appear every once in a while. I also enjoy the Odd Egg that you get from the daycare man that could hatch into one of the 7 (not including togepi) baby pokemon and also had a 14% chance that the hatched pokemon would be a shiny.
I grew up playing gold. When I found out about the remakes from seribii i was ecstatic, especially about the following pokemon mechanic. Id say it was everything I was hoping for except the kimono girls. Discovering ho oh in the original felt like reaching a place I shouldn't have made it to, but in HG it felt unearned seeing all the kimono girls just waiting there for me...
calling lyra a rival is like calling dawn or lucas a rival lol
Only thing that made crystal lacking was when they removed mareep from being able to be caught in game
Yeah that was a shocking decision (pun intended)
😭🐑
I was going to make the same comment.
No Mareep = automatic worst of the trilogy.
@John John only if you get lucky with the egg
Literally the only comment I was looking for
Pokemon Theory: Was the eruption of Cinnabar’s volcano a result of Groudon awakening and having that massive showdown with Kyogre in the Hoenn region?
Timeline doesn't match. gen 3 and gen 1 happen around the same time but gen 2 is set 3 years after gen 1 and 3
Different experiences to different people. I for one saw far more infuriating difficulty grinding for Red in Crystal than in HGSS. HGSS is a little better for me in that regard. Regardless, in both gens, the level scaling of wild Pokemon is entirely broken.
Well
Red might be a higher level, but THAT IS THE POINT. He is above everyone else and is up to YOU to show him that a well played strategy can win the fight, even with a lower level team
Cala a boca
Tysm for talking about Crys i absolutely love her and was so mad that they removed her! She is so mouth better than Lyra in my opinion, there’s a fan game called liquid crystal where Crys is playable again with the remake sprites
Dont get me wrong i love pokemon crystal.... but HGSS has just got so much over it
Crystal is criminally underrated it deserves the same praise as Emerald & Platinum
This whole video boils down to playing crystal as a kid and loving it, of course you're not going to like the new thing when you're older even though it has numerous improvements to make it better.
A girl similar to Lyra was actually in the original gold version beta as the girl character. That's probably why she replaced Kris. In the leaked beta, the girl character is just Lyra without a hat.
Yep I remember
I kind of want to hear your take on Black and White/Black and White 2. Especially since Route 10 is one of my top favorite zones in all of pokemon
I don't!
BW/BW2 are my second favorite games in all of Pokémon. Love love love them. But if you mean in terms of music… well. It’s a very big reason why I want a remake…think of the beauty of Gen 5 music on a better sound system. Whew. Route 10’s remix in Smash is a good example of how good the remake’s OST could be.
In my experience; Black White is somewhat meh but Black White 2 is much better in terms of Pokémon availability. It's comparable to Firered Leafgreen and Ruby Sapphire plus both are similar too.
Easiest S tier of my life. Goated gen
@@LapisandHamtarolover the whole point of BW was that there were 151 new pokemon so they didnt let you catch any non gen 5 pokemon until the postgame, I think it was a bold choice but I respect it from a creative direction. Also BW has a much much better story than BW2 but if you play them back to back the story of both fit together quite nicely
I wrote 6-pages of notes because of this video. Wow! That's a lot of words! They're point by point and about things I care about, at least enough to bring up. Notes start here:
Whoa I'm writing this while cooking whoa
Anyway point by point (that I care about)
- Game speed doesn't matter for HGSS and GSC. They're both fine! Like literally perfectly fine! I don't even know what else to say. Like it's fine.
- Map had to be expanded by nature of the engine and scope. This isn't a Gameboy game.
- Harder Whitney is fine.
- To say that the game has no plot is kind of wrong? Wrong might not be the best word. There's no centralized story as is the case w/ RSE onward but there's still a narrative. There's a pretty big focus in these earlier games (Gen 1 - 3) on how modern civilization interacts w/ nature, both positively and negatively. How we can coexist w/ the world around us instead of destroying it. In Johto, the entire region is interconnected between paths, caves, bodies of water, and cut tree shortcuts. Modern technology (Don't laugh) like radios (Don't laugh) can interact w/ the wildlife, this is furthered in the remakes, and the national park is home to many bird and bug species, though the existence of the park is twofold in nature due to destroying nature to exist and fostering large amounts of animals, similar to actual parks of this kind. These aren't the only things, there's the farm and the reverence towards Ho-Oh and Lugia that can be expanded upon, but the actual meat is in the inference. It's not a failing to miss themes, but they are there, and they are important. Ultimately, these early games weren't worried too much about a specific story (Besides Gen 3) and were focused more on the player centric role playing. This is largely left out of conversations regarding Pokemon and I think that's a failing of understanding the medium.
- I think saying that anyone at GF worked w/in the box of limitations for GSC is evidently untrue. The game's long history of development and shifting ideas, alongside new information from data breaches definitely says otherwise. I get the point in theory, but for this series of games, that's untrue.
- Cinnabar's new design is funnily enough, complete gibberish. This is just a random note, but Cinnabar doesn't make a single lick of sense.
- This is the part where I'm going to lose even more people. Adding HMs/Environmental TMs, while annoying, isn't actually a problem. Environmental puzzles have been shoved out the way to the point of non-existence, all to make it so you don't have to use HMs/TMs to progress, though this has the unintended and now fully intended consequence of making it so there's no puzzles anymore. It actively kills team building and needing to keep a slot open for a key item, which is the obvious inspiration taken from Dragon Quest. It's not great that now and in the future (SV still isn't out yet), we don't have actual puzzles in a video game series that used to be full of areas w/ puzzles that made traversal actually have value and helped the target audience base, young children, develop actual skills that will benefit them in real life. It's fine that people don't like HMs, I don't particularly care for them usually, but this idea that they are a nuisance and a hindrance has led to pretty large problems in the now. This is on the scale of making it so trainers can't flag you down to battle you. Which SV is doing. That's incredibly bad and going to make the series worse off overall.
- Needing to grind for Red is not something I agree w/ at all. While yes, the levels were raised post-E4, that includes daily events which give enough EXP to be fine, same as w/ GSC. Daily play and small, incremental progress is still how the game is structured, and they added even more daily aspects in the remakes so there's never any real feeling of being trapped. You can still beat Red w/ 50s and 60s, and you're most likely going to have 60s and 70s because of the increased levels across Kanto content. Is the fight harder? Sure. Isn't this also what Pokemon fans ask for every game?
When I first played Soul Silver in 2012, I went into the game blind. I had a terrible team from the very beginning until the end. I just wanted to rush through the game, so there was no real teambuilding. Johto was designed in a way that I was not used to because I played the other four regions at the time first. Being underleveled for Red is not one of my main problems with the Johto games. It is great to have a challenging battle at the end. My problem is that Johto's level curve always bothered and confused me so much. I have been hacking Pokémon Crystal in the recent years to fix the problems I have with Johto. Even before I played Soul Silver, I always compared Johto to every other region. I was confused when I saw the Johto Pokédex in 2011. My reaction was "They stuffed all the Kanto Pokémon in the Johto Pokédex?" because I only understood Pokémon games as following the Gen 3 model. I also viewed the Elite Four and Champion as the final bosses in all Pokémon games and I wanted Johto to recreate the experience I had in the Lance battle in Leaf Green. I only recently learned what the Johto games (ignoring the remakes) were designed to be: The Elite Four and Champion are not the final bosses of the Johto games. Finishing Johto (Clair being the end) is 2/3 of the game and you are 75% done with the game when you defeat the Elite Four and Champion and are able to access the rest of Kanto. It took me a very long time but I finally understand that Johto had to be weaker so that Kanto was not a boring experience. Kanto in GSC can't be compared to the post games from later generations because it was actually part of the main story.
I really enjoyed and appreciated the added cutscenes for the box legendaries. I thought the kimono girls looked badass dancing before the waterfall in the whirl islands. I think that they should have stuck to the monks for ho oh instead of the kimonos.
Really shows at the end of the day no Pokemon game is perfect because how we experience it is different than the person next to us. True there will be moments that universally loved by all but why they're loved can be different, your opinion was eye opening to me on why everyone finds games i dislike can be loved by another. Its pretty obvious when i saw it out loud, its our own life experience that make these games special to us.
Kris is the main reason I go back to crystal, as the original female protag (that managed to be fully implemented, anyway)she is kind of legendary in her own right, so axing her for Lyra was in SEVERLY poor taste
that said, aside from that, my shared affinity for Crystal over HGSS is almost entirely due to nostalgic preference and such things like that, and objectively speaking I can hazard a guess that HGSS is almost certainly the better game overall
You didn't like Heartgold|Soulsilver but did you like the following pokemon mechanic? I think it's really fun that your partner is always with you, finding items or berries, having differents reactions. All of this is cute! My favorite aspect of the game (I got Soulsilver) It's well done in the Let's go games too 🙂Can't say the same for the Diamond and Pearl remakes. Every pokemon have not the right size AND can be stuck on walls which is annoying. I'm saying that and i don't have the games, i just saw a few reviews.
They really screwed up the gen 4 remakes. I was beyond disappointed since I was waiting for it for the longest time.
They should put HeartGold on GBA and Hoenn on DS
I actually think HGSS are arguably the best games in the entire series. Even minor things like making Totodile as good as Typhlosion thanks to the special physical split. Chikorita still sucks infortunately
Red in HGSS is an absolute monster. In GSC his team design is very linear. You can easily strategize around him. Like I used pokemon in their 40s for their resistances to pp stall Blastoise. But that kind of thing does not fly in HGSS.
I like reds team in pokemon crystal more too not because of just the level but for the team composition. Like I understand why they replaced espeon with lapras Lapras served as a more tanky special attacker than a glass cannon special attacker plus with lapras' ice type it can take advantage of the hail but still. In hgss half his team are weak to electric attacks while in gsc it was just 2 which isnt too bad. Espeon was also a better choice in not just typing but was an unexpected choice because it while you could get eevee in kanto in rby espeon wasnt an option (obviously). It also served as a potential nod or connection to manga's red who also had an espeon which i thought was neat.
What surprises me the most is that one of the default name options in the english version for Kris was Juana. Would have expected Joanne instead honestly.
And it's misspelled, should be Joana actually.
Bruh no offense to the nostalgic stuff, but while i agree on that crystal has aspects that are better then the remakes, itd 500% not music or any small detail, but wild pokemon availability.
Pokemon like sneasel, jigglypuff, Snubbull, teddiursa, growlith or Phanpy are available much earlier and allmost every singe route got some good changes and pokemon added to it in a game which 3 biggest problems are the shitty wild pokemon availability, trash enemy trainer teams (look at radio tower, a team of 3 lvl 21 and 2 lvl 23 ratata has no excuse to exist after the 7. Gym) and the broken level curve and content hole in kanto sucking out pokemon and levels out of the main game.
Crystal managed to somewhat fix 1/3 of these extreme gameplay issues which make the game from a gameplay side better even of pretty much everything else in the remakes is better
Just bought crystal today on my 3ds. Gonna play it for the first time since the original one came out when I was a kid. I just recently played through soul silver so I’m looking forward to the comparisons
Gym Leader rematches is the main reason HGSS is the best Pokemon mainline game
Johto in GSC always seemed like it would have a warm climate, but HGSS uses too many Gen 4 assets that make the region feel colder. The colder feel works for Sinnoh, but not Johto.
The national park theme on hgss always gave me big Studio Ghibli vibes and love it forever for that. But any gen 2 makes me a happy pokemon fan. Highly recommend the rom hack crystal clear a play, really peaks and leans into gen 2 battling in the best way
I must confess that I love how you can get Phanpy and Teddiursa at the very beginning of Crystal. It’s nice being able to play a true Johto game with those two pokemon since they are both late game version exclusives….. Oh god I gotta go take a dump now.
How was your dump?
@@yotube161 I shotgunned the toilet but overall it wasn’t too….. oh….. oh GOD I gotta go take another shit.
I know you can grt Teddiursa in the cave, but Phanpy? Can you really catch it at the beginning? Where? 😱
@@hpm1014in crystal, go to the route directly west of New Bark Town. There’s the gate to the north directly before cherry grove (it leads to a dead end route with ledges - that later connects to the dragon city). You can find a phanpy there in the morning. Rare.
@@hpm1014 you can catch Phanpy in the grassy area north of the very first route in the mornings. Gotta spam it with balls because it can run away. Yeah it’s one of the coolest things because….because… god I gotta take another shit.
I grew up playing Heartgold and Soulsilver, so I have nostalgia for Gen 4 instead. I didn't exist when the Game Boy era was booming. I could have been a baby or a toddler too. I'm not sure. But I started with gen 4 and my nostalgia for thise games is still very adamant. I think Platinum was better than the remakes though. But I did play Silver and Cyrstal a bit on my 3DS. Until I got distracted by something new and shiny 5 km in the distance. I get distracted very easily. I blame autism. But I personally enjyoed Heartgold as a kid, especially the legendary hunting while exploring every cave I can find. This is also what I loved about Gen 5 way more than in all the newer games. I like the newer games, but the exploration in Gen 4 and 5 was at it's peak and I loved finding new stuff in every corner of the region. I just hope Vilet will give me a similar feeling with similar exploration.
Interesting hot take. I mean, gen 2 is my favorite. Nostalgia and all that, and the way I played the pacing, was beneficial. I catch everything and evolve stuff as I am going. Being able to swap team members mid playthrough without needing an absurd amount of grinding to catch up in levels was nice. I think just the pokemon abilities and physical special split alone make the remakes better. Not considering the better fleshed out story and Kanto region.
The physical/special split is especially huge.
@@greg5892Feraligatr became so much better in gen 4 because of it.
Gen 2's biggest flaw is how quick the save batteries run dry. I'm glad HGSS exists because it doesn't have this problem for hardware players
I disagree with cinnabar.
I think Blane having a gym and maintaining and rebuilding after disaster is a testament to perseverance and that despite the things we can't control, with our Pokemon pals we can continue on, even if it is a struggle!
It's not like the volcano blew up yesterday, is the message better is Blane is miserable and alone living out a shell of the life he has taken from him by an indifferent natural event better than the enigmatic and energized old man motivating the next generation (trainers under him at the gym) to maintain community and stay strong together??
Great video, have been hyped since you teased it on stream. I'm generally team Crystal too, partially because it was KIND OF my first Pokémon game.
My favourite thing compared to HGSS has always been the presentation, which I usually just call "crisp" because I can't think of a better word. The long Pokémon intro animations in Crystal were super unsustainable for future games, but beautiful in this one-off. The sprites and music are wonderful too and stretch the hardware to their absolute limit. A lot of the compositions (Mostly Johto as you mentioned) fit the GB soundchip better than the murky DS one too, even if the DS additions are really good, they just make me wish I was listening to a fan remastering/cover of it. A lot of the HGSS Kanto tracks are excellent, though. Like you, a lot of the exceptions to my GBC OST preference lie there.
Kris' design is painfully '90s but I've always liked it, she was my first MC and I was always confused why she got replaced. Her addition to Masters sealed the game's Peak Fanservice status in my mind, which it's maintained ever since (having literally adding a playable Hex Maniac last month).
Agree on the speed, the technical walk speed increase is noticeably diminished by the zones being bigger, to the point that I'm just thankful they added they added the run toggle. Holding B throughout the whole game would've just been miserable, and the godawful Gen 4 engine doesn't do it any favours either (still my favourite gen though).
As for the story changes/Kimono Girls expansion, I've always preferred smaller-scale Pokémon stories because in my opinion they consistently flop when they go grand. For example, with the exception of the Unova games and maybe Platinum all of the more "dangerous" villains have been painfully uncompelling. HGSS isn't quite the same there since it has no real big bad but, the additions they make feel like flavour text time wasters more than anything, the events don't do anything to convince me that the world being in "danger" wasn't just stapled onto an already complete story. The 3 year timeskip was genuinely amazingly handled in GSC, though. The Blaine Gym changes aren't something I thought of, but as another commenter mentioned I do think they were going for a "move forward and rebuild" angle, even if it's still in the moment pretty bad whiplash on top of the (good) whiplash of stumbling upon the tragedy of Cinnabar in the first place.
Otherwise, I generally like the HGSS gym designs more but Bugsy and Clair are two giant exceptions. Chuck and Pryce are pretty close and I'd probably just say that I prefer whatever game I played more recently's design. I also like Johto Victory Road, I'm partial to the GB-era cave tiles and the harsh soundfont serves the foreboding GSC OST well. I never liked the HGSS version of the track, felt like the instruments didn't sell the sense of danger very well, but it also doesn't feel like an "impending victory" track. The lack of trainers is also really practical with the lower levels in the Johto half of the game. If there were trainers I'd feel like I'm wasting my time for how generally easy of a game it is.
Gen 2 never had modern EXP scaling, so even the relatively low level mons of G2!Kanto would usually get you to the levels expected to beat Red by the time you cleared all the gyms if you weren't rushing through. It sucks for re-clears and speedruns but I wouldn't consider it a design flaw, especially for what's essentially an optional, semi-secret superboss. (also yeah Rock Climb fucking sucks and I hate it)
One thing you didn't mention is Suicune in HGSS. It keeps Crystal's Eusine subplot, and extended it into Kanto which gave that region some much needed story content, but only getting to catch it in the middle of the basically postgame was a pretty rough deal compared to G/S's roaming, or Crystal's late Johto Tin (Bell) Tower encounter. That always rubbed me the wrong way.
Again, good vid. Never actually organized my thoughts on the remakes 'til now. None of the Pokémon remakes are near perfect imo (I'd say ORAS are easily the best though), it's frustrating how none of these games have truly definitive versions but hey, on the other hand it makes for interesting conversation.
It’s like a thesis
Yeah HGSS could have been much better, and that's coming from someone who played it as my third game of the entire series (BW and B2W2 were first for me). It struggles with similar problems that BDSP does IMO, they both could have been much improved if they were based on the third game in the series. I think ORAS does this version exclusive thing much better due to the Teams getting much more narrative focus along with a design rework, and primal reversion being a feature introduced to increase the stakes surrounding their plot. Not only does it iterate on and add new helpful mechanics like DexNav, but it's story is also strengthened by the Delta Episode along with all of the otherwise awfully boring trainers like E4 getting more diverse teams (this has to be my biggest pet peeve with gen 3, I understand why this happened and it's not like only gen 3 struggles with this problem in the early gens but it's super silly that when they had options for trainers to have full teams of different pokemon for type specialists, they CHOSE to restrict them to only Hoenn pokemon).
Wally's reworked fight is awesome and makes him a much more impactful character in the story. Megas were actually implemented well in the game design from an ingame perspective too, honestly better then XY's implementation, and that was the flagship game for the mechanic so that's saying a lot. The graphical updates it got from XY were substantial despite them really only being the framing of said graphics (which then got placed later on into SM and USUM with even greater improvements).
In comparison, HGSS get really nice graphics and QOL, but struggle in the actual gameplay and story department, which is where it needed to improve to make gen 2 feel alive again. I like Giovanni's inclusion with Silver, but I wish that was far more fleshed out and explored in the games. The Ruins of Alph still amounted to next to nothing outside of the movies, when they could have had something much cooler there to flavor Unown's power better. The very cool arceus event was locked behind an unattainable event for no reason (gen 4 moment lmao) which is frustrating too.
They do better with the first set of gym leaders, but more thought could have gone into Kanto and Mt. Silver in particular in regards to level scaling. I don't hate HGSS, I like them, they're just lower on my list relative to other pokemon players like Gen 4 tends to be in general for me. Plat is good, but Gen 5, 3, and 7 games outside of Fire Red and LGPE surpass it in terms of quality IMO due to more comprehensive story structure, better gameplay flow/level structuring, and lack of issues with HMs limiting gameplay options (Gen 5 only requires cut once in BW and introduces reusable TMs, Gen 7 gets rid of HMs entirely which is amazing, and Gen 3's HMs are just utilized very well and feel fun to use).
I haven't done the math, but it feels like Crystal hit the golden ratio in the design and feel of things despite the lack of pixels.
The 8-bit music is where it really shines. It matches the low pixel nostalgic joy as much as it has that crunchy sound that scratches your brain in just the right place.
Crystal is like a Master Swordsman with a spoon vs Newer generations who are amateur copycats with a high grade sword.
The thing is the pokelathlon is the best thing soooooo....
I didn't play it when I replayed HG this year, but I remember being pretty "meh" on it back when I first played it. I should really give it another shot
I have one thing regarding something you've mentioned in this video: The Lake of Rage/Route 42 theme.
It's one of my favourite if not my favourite route theme in all of Pokemon, that's for sure. Surprisingly though, gen 2 version isn't my favourite one. It's not the gen 4 one either. It's actually the one used in gen 3, specifically in FRLG in Sevii Islands. Not sure why but it's just perfect to me. It's an amazing remix of the original one, it feels grand but overallnot too complicated. I have a sweet spot for gen 2 chiptune OST, but FRLG version of this one theme is just so good.
I loved the video and i agree with a lot of points you have made! Liked and followed also! but i also just wanted to leave a little tip whenever you wanna play Crystal again. where you have to guide the Farfetch'd back to them, you only have to talk to it a few times just go above it and talk to it and itll go down and do it again itll run into the treee and youll be done. Hope that makes the part of the game much more enjoyable for you Mamodxx! :)
Reasons why I think HGSS is better than the original:
-Better graphics.
-Better sound.
-The Battle Frontier.
-Empoleon exists.
-No "internal battery running dry", erasing ALL my data!
I spent so much time completing the 251 pokedex back in the day, and all was for nothing!
Stupid game killed my shiny Donphan!
You made very good points (: I'm glad you're giving Crystal some love. I remember back in 2002 when it was my 11th birthday(yes I'm old lol), my dad took me to Walmart and said I could pick out anything I wanted for a gift. I picked Pokémon Crystal, Such a good game, easily one of my favorites in the series. I still enjoy the remakes but still Great video (:
Hey other people in their 30s don't appreciate being called out lol 🧓
0:50 It's true. We're still getting games that are on the same par, graphically, as these Gens....in 2023.
You like sword and shield? bruh.....
I always liked Pokémon Crystal bc it was my 1st Pokémon Game, I see your points. For me now it's just the nostalgia that makes the game good. Once I played HG/SS, I'd never change that point of view. Why? The Postgame here is better designed and more enjoyable. Crystal didn't let you experience the whole Kanto Region with all its special places - while HG/SS indeed does that in a very nice way. All in all it felt more complete, enhanced. Like one of the best remakes despite OR/AS for the Nintendo 3ds.
While I think your opinion is beyond wild, I agree with the Kris take. I saw an interview or something recently and apparently the reason she didn’t return was actually because the art director literally forgot she existed… I can’t confirm the source but if true that’s hilarious/sad at the same time.
That wouldn’t make sense because Kris has an unused pokegear icon in HGSS. Someone did remember but for whatever reason they decided to make a completely new female mc.
BEYOND WILD
The original battle against Red made me traumatized of Snorlax. Like it's so bulky and it has the AUDACITY to use rest! It's taunting me! I hate Snorlax in gen 2 >:V
So my favs are definitely:
- Yellow
- Crystal
- FireRed
- HeartGold
- Black
- Black 2
- Sun
- Ultra Sun
Not sure what I was expecting from this video but these were nitpicks at most im sorry
This is my take on why they made Red significantly stronger in the remakes.
Crystal came out only 2 years after Yellow. Therefore, it wasn't long ago you played the character. It was a neat feature they added to the sequel.
HG/SS however, came out 6 years after Fire Red and Leaf Green. When you're a kid, 6 years feels like an eternity. So to battle the character you that played so long ago should feel like they must be beefed up after all those years.
Bruh.... The champion theme was sooooooo much better in crystal. I would play through the elite four JUST to hear it.
This whole video essay can be summarized like this: "2nd gen remakes are just too hard for me and I wish they were easier". As a person who probably also enjoys originals slightly bit more, even though I love HG/SS a lot too, out of sheer nostalgia (and few other things which are also very much nitpicky), I still feel obligated to address few things you pointed out as I feel they are not examples of inferiority of the remakes. That part with Farfetch'd in Ilex Forest - yeah, it was made slightly more challenging in HG/SS but I don't see what is the problem about that, really. The puzzle is still very easy and adding a bit of more challenge is not bad. I get that you probably feel like it's a pacebreaker but it's good the games are not just about going from battle to battle but there is some other stuff to do as well. Next, as for Red's team - I guess the levels of his team are the result of different level progression throughout the game. But his team was made more difficult not just as a result of that but also as a reult of zeitgeist. Remakes are part of fourth generation. Until that time many new things have been introduced to Pokemon, including abilities and some new items. As such, it's no surprise HG/SS are utilizing those too to add some more challenge and fun. It's not about beating Red as fast as possible. Better to take your time, strategize some more, to level-up your Pokemon some more... There are also a lot of new ways for that in the remakes. For instance, I very much enjoyed the idea of re-matching gym leaders with much tougher teams on different days of the week. It gives a lot of exp. Only when your team is around lv. 60-65 you can tackle Red with confidence and it's fine. Anyway, my coplaint about Red's team, if anything, is that they replaced his Espeon with Lapras. Like, seriously? That Espeon was such a chalenge, fast and very tough offensively. That Lapras, on the other hand, is probably just there to utilize Hail mechanics which honestly was just as redundant. It's not the same feel to that battle anymore. But other than that, I enjoyed that battle in modern rendition.
on my opinion the sprites from crystal is the coolest of all. geting he cartridge and open the manual with that old ken sugimori arts inside was pretty cool too
16:44
I could argue IF some hacks fixes Blaine's gym from HGSS, I would say to do quest for him, that he alone in that cave wanted to revive that town and having a respectful gym maybe start something and then you go and battle against his trainers during you venture throught Kanto and as a reward, he wont battle you, he gives you the bagde but a SPECIAL "TRAINER'S EYES MEET" music plays and Blaine says
"OH-HO-HO-HO!! Even if I gave you the Volcano Bagde as a Gym Leader, I'm still a pokémon trainer and as you should know by now already, when we cross-eyes at each other, there is no escape but to battle!"
I have all the nostalgia in the world for gen 1 and 2. But hgss is way better than crystal lol. Just the safari zone and gym leader rematches alone do that for me. Then factor in the physical special split and it's over.
I dont understand why people like gen 2. The majority of the pokes introduced here are way too weak, the routes had way less variety compared to Kanto, Hoenn, Sinnoh etc, battles take way longer and meta is very slow in general, difficulty spikes are random and almost non existent... Out of the 5 first gens, gen 2 is easily the weakest one.
Gen 2 is just a chill adventure and has a great aesthetic and my favorite sprite work in the series. You don’t need strong Pokémon to beat a Pokémon game. And most people don’t care about the Gen 2 meta. Competitive Pokémon didn’t really get going till around the tail end of Gen 3. And took off in Gen 4. I’d also argue that diamond and pearl are more of hassle to play nowadays and that those are actually the worst of the first 5 generations. Platinum was great though.
while the whole "chosen one" quest to get the legendary is like, grand and epic, i actually do love when the legendaries are kind of a thing that you find hidden away somewhere as a normal kid who's just adventuring and exploring around. they feel more legendary like that imo, like the regis in gen3 or the birds in gen1.
also i agree SO WHOLEHEARTEDLY about some the music being "too ambitious" in HG/SS. i've never been able to put into words why i prefer some of the songs in g/s/c and that really explains it.
@@sierranicholes6712like which tracks in your opinion?
A random bird that is basically on the beaten path feels more legendary?
The kimono girls give you the legendaries because they see you as truly worthy of getting them. Your the chosen one because of your skills and courageous heart, not because of some prophecy.
@@RobertoWCruz Route 29 was doing way too much imo. The original wasn’t a masterpiece either but at least it was a catchy tune that I could hum.
Will never forget being 10 playing crystal and on getting the HMs to peak at victory road for the first time only to find a sneak peak to a whole other region. Finding a shiny zubat exploring the small cave just before exiting near the slowpoke cave. Crystal will always be my favorite game
I strongly disagree. Crystal has 1 major flaw, and that is it lacks Mareep.
Aesthetically, I love Gen 2. There's just something about the sprites and the limited colors, especially when you're playing it on an old GBC with no backlight. Maybe it's because it reminds me of old Tamagotchi but it makes me feel close to my Pokemon somehow, like they're my virtual pets.
HG/SS is the best in the franchise. Nothing not even Crystal can't compare.
i really like the viridian forest theme in hgss, the route feels friendlier
Idk about that, both sound friendlier enough. I still prefer the g/s/c version also prefer the forest how it was in g/s/c
I played Silver, Soulsilver and then Crystal (in that order) in my life. After all that, I would put Crystal comfortably in second place.
While I’m nostalgic for the art style, atmosphere, and music from Crystal, the graphical overhaul in SS made me fall in love with Johto for the first time all over again. The game looked, sounded and played like how my child brain imagined it to be. Full color, more layered instruments, additional battle mechanics, QOL improvements.
Don’t get me wrong, I still boot up my Silver/Crystal cartridges for trips down memory lane. But if I had to start a journey all over again, I would pick SS.
There's never been a time, before or since, in a Pokemon game that really restricts your movement AFTER getting Fly like G/S/C did -- getting to Vermillion really does feel like you're in a completely different region for a good long while. While you CAN fly to Indigo Plateau, then walk back through Victory Road and the routes beyond all the way to New Bark Town, the only other way is to transit the regions is to wait for whenever the SS Aqua sails. That really amps up the pressure to get the Magnet Train moving again. And even after it DOES, you still find yourself usually going to Goldenrod/Saffron to make the jump between the regions. Yes, they're connected, but their relative separation makes the whole world feel so much BIGGER than anyplace else.
And then in HGSS, you just... fly from Kanto to Johto and back again. The Magnet Train is pretty much deprecated before you even get it running. Kanto's just "more places" rather than its own distinct region. Bleh.
It's bad to make the player waste time on some train just to be "distinctive", I don't care how distinctive it is, gameplay comes first and foremost.
@@Eevee860 I would disagree, I think; "gameplay" is the sum total that results from everything else in the game -- it's not simply speed or efficiency. Constraints on the player can improve gameplay -- see the pushback in some MMOs and open-world RPGs that allow the player fast travel between locations, and how that cheapens movement or the overall experience.
@@korossyl No, time is valuable, fast travel is better than walking 100% of the time. Visuals are not gameplay, gameplay is pressing buttons and that directly making things happen, walking long distances is bad gameplay
Not just the slice of life, but the exploration. Tyrogue is at the front of Mt. Mortar now, and there’s a shrine at the bottom of Whirl Islands. Ho-oh I could accept as a plot encounter, but not Lugia.
100% agree, and especially the part about Blaine’s gym. Having a guy that lost everything due to the volcano, but HGSS ruins that by giving him a actual gym
idunno, the only real difference about Blaine between the two games is that in HGSS Blaine had prep time
It’s a make shift gym on a small island
I was a stupid kid and didnt understand cinnabar was destroyed by a volcano. I thought it just SUCKED. Lol
I love analysis/review videos about pokemon, in the ocean of top 10 and challenge videos watching videos like these is always refreshing. I don't even like the Johto games that much, but the video was still really good
Only opinion I disagreed with was about Team Rocket. Every Team Rocket section drags on for really long in both games imo
TLDR: I hope videos like these get the attetion they deserve, especially since a people are getting more critic on pokemon games
the farfetch'd puzzle - you can just step on the twigs to make it face that direction, and then you go behind it while avoiding other twigs that make it face in another direction. hope this helped
I was half expecting Mamo to try and argue why the Crystal version of Viridian Forest was better than the remake's version.
absolutely not
I despise it in both games but Crystal's is definitely worse
It is for storytelling following RGBY! It actively follows up on the themes of nature and what is lost in modernization. As the forest is cut down for town building, nature itself ends up dying over time. Years have passed and now there's just kind of nothing around anymore. Obviously, the empty nature is due to hardware limitations more than anything else, though it does actively serve a purpose.
Hope that helps!
"Since Ethan represented gold they needed someone to represent silver"
...
Silver, aka Buttface, is sad.
The thing I really liked about HGSS over crystal is the safari zone giving access to stuff like Larvitar (im a huge ttar fan) pre-E4
You can get Larvitar? :0!!!
Ttar W
you can just spam full restores which is what you suppose to do against red, but further then that, red pokemon typings are all easy to counter, grass,water,fire,normal,electric,ice. you have no dual type that is hard to counter. its not like you dont have those pokemons anyway. feraligtr has ice fang, typhlosion can learn earthquake, its really not that hard of a battle
No it's not. It doesn't have Ampharos, one of the best Pokemon of all time
I played pokemon crystal for the first time recently, and i have to agree the pacing is excellent. I beat the game in 3 days, very little grinding necessary. Trainer Red is also pretty easy, i had very underlevelled pokemon and still beat him on the second try. The collecting pokemon aspect is my favourite, as the morning/day/night system for random encounters is very well done as i have to plan things ahead of time to collect all the pokemon available. I love the simplicity of the combat. No abilities, simple physical/special dmg mechanics. Best casual pokemon experience by far, even better than emerald
Gonna sound like a gate keeper or an old man but going into Kanto just can't hit the same for people who didn't experience it at the time. To have the entire (sorta) region from the last pokemon game, all the gym leaders and more pokemon to catch was mind blowing.
I can see how it's disappointing, empty in content. Even in hg/ss, but it's at least properly finished with the legendaries and stuff added back. I was just happy to ride around the Kanto region in color and find the secret red battle 🤷♀️
This. I got so used to the idea that I spent countless hours trying to get to the previous regions in the 3rd gen.
@@CGoody564 Lol I never experienced it with a Pokemon game. but that reminds me of those old cheat code sites that would make up parts of the game that don't exist. It was like some area of SpongeBob BFBB that I spent forever looking for, because some dolt entered it on a cheat codes/tips website.
@@tylerd1297 "if you fly to koga city, then fly to the city with the ghost tower, go to the top floor, use an escape rope, then fly to celadon city and enter a cave, it will take you to a secret city where you can find mewthree!"
I prefer the original gen 2 games. But I disagree that Crystal is balanced better than HGSS. it’s just an easier game in general because the opponent AI is garbage and the way that EVs work in gen 2. You can easily stomp Red with a level 50 team because he chooses dumb moves and his Pokémon have weaker stats than yours
I actually think G/S were better in some ways. Those games really used the day and night cycle better than any other game in the series. There's also more of a focus on catching Pokémon in general, and in many areas, there are rare creatures up for grabs if you get lucky or are persistent. For example, at the start of the game, it is possible to encounter Jigglypuff on Route 46 (in Crystal it's a Phanpy, but only in the morning). It's a great addition to any team at this point in the game, but both Pokémon are not in that area in HG/SS. It may be a same thing, but little details like that really added to Gen II's more naturalistic atmosphere when compared to Gen I.