marchionessofmustache (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marchionessofmustache) wrote2024-08-24 01:48 pm
marchionessofmustache) wrote2024-08-24 01:48 pm
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Pokemon Silver Skies part 1
So I started my Flying-types-only run of Pokemon Silver last night! The rules are posted here. Basically only flying types with experience being limited to trainer battles.
Gonna try to pay attention to the story/lore this time around and see all there is to see with my winged buddies. I mean, I was paying attention when I went through Gold but I'm gonna try to be extra particular this time. I'm not gonna try to preserve every little spoiler, so I'll talk about Silver before we know his name, and mention the Cinnabar Volcano, etc.
We start off with Professor Oak introducing us to the world of Pokemon. I think he's talking to us, the player, and not the character, and this is kind of non-canon game tutorial stuff. Either way, I think it's odd that this is the only game(s) in the series where the 'hometown' Professor isn't the one who introduces you to the game.
Anyway, we start off in our house in New Bark town with Mom telling us that next door's Professor Elm is looking for us. There's an interesting little tidbit we can only see in this first time in the house -- if we examine the kitchen stove, it says that Mom's specialty is "Cinnabar Volcano Burger." I'm assuming the dish was named before the destruction that Cinnabar Volcano caused in the past 3 years. If it was named after the disaster, that's kinda messed up.
Talking to people around town, we learn that Elm has a wife and a kid, unlike Oak who just had two grandchildren who were missing parents and he had no spouse of his own. Elm gets so wrapped up in his research that he forgets to eat.
Silver is staring in the side windows of the research lab, and he pushes us away if we try to talk to him.
We head out and talk to Professor Elm, who wants us to go talk to his colleague "Mr. Pokemon" who apparently finds rare stuff. He says "this time it's for real" though. Talking to Elm a second time reveals that Mr Pokemon apparently collects a lot of rare stuff -- but it's all just rare, not particularly of any value. I don't think I ever talked to him a second time before, so that's funny and interesting about Mr Pokemon.
To get to Mr Pokemon's house, we'll need a Pokemon. Now, this guy has aides and family and stuff in town who are already quite familiar with Pokemon. Why call on the rando 10 year old that lives nearby who you have no idea if he'd be good with Pokemon or not...? Well, it sounds like he knows us already, so maybe he "sees potential" in Gold or something.
We choose Totodile as our starter, who is just going to get boxed soon, but this is our first strategic decision of the game. If we pick Totodile, Silver will steal Chikorita, which is weak to Flying-type. *taps temple* smurt.
Once we arrive in Cherrygrove, the neighboring city to New Bark, we're given a tour and we get a Map Card. It's entirely possible to just never ask for the tour and never get the Map Card, so you don't have access to a map for the entire game. Very strange lol. I do really enjoy the PokeGear system in the game -- you have a little hub for various features, and it really feels like you have some kind of mobile device on you as you play. Very cool and cute.
There's a water route here to the west of Cherrygrove. I definitely overlooked it in my Gold playthrough. There's even some guy standing out there on the rocks! I need to go out there once I have the ability to Surf and see what's out there.
If we inspect the TVs in houses, we just get an "It's a TV." message, but if we inspect the radios, we get to listen to the radio! The station being played is Oak's Pokemon Talk, with co-host Mary. Professor Oak is the host, and he'll say where you can find certain wild Pokemon. Then Mary will say a randomly-generated comment about the Pokemon which can sometimes be quite strange and funny.
Eventually we get around to Route 30, where Mr Pokemon's house is. Just ... sitting out in the middle of some route away from town. Like no other houses in the game. Quite strange. But I guess this is a strange man, after all.
His new discovery is an egg. We don't know if it's a Pokemon egg or not, but it was gifted to him by the daycare couple. It's our job to escort the little eggy back to Elm. Entrusting a random child you just met with possibly the only Pokemon egg known to exist... yeah, smart, guys. Professor Oak, who was visiting his buddy Mr Pokemon, overhears and gives us the Pokedex, asking us for help filling it up, much like the first game.
If we look around Mr Pokemon's house afterward, we can find a pile of strange coins, shelves full of foreign magazines we can't read, and a broken computer. There's a lot of broken machines in this game. But it seems like he has some kind of supercomputer wired up in the back of his house with all kinds of wiring leading to a terminal at his desk.
When we leave the house, we get a call from Elm saying that a disaster has happened at the lab, and we need to come back quickly. Now, we're on an important mission, and we may not have even finished, but he's demanding we come back to investigate what turns out to be a break-in and theft. Why, exactly, do you need this child to come back and see it? What's he going to do?
Anyway, we head back and on the way run into Silver, who has stolen Chikorita, and battle him (I lost because I took away the Berry from Totodile lol). We get the idea that this guy is kind of a jerk, but importantly he reveals his goal -- to become the best Pokemon trainer.
When we get to the lab, we learn that it was broken into by Silver and report his name to the police. Then Elm just kinda forgets about it immediately and asks what Mr Pokemon's discovery was about. We hand over the egg and he freaks out.
When we tell him about the Pokedex, he tells us that Oak is great at seeing potential in trainers and we may have what it takes to be Champion, and suggests we try to take the Gym Challenge. This is a little complaint about the game I have -- the direction they give you is just kinda... weird. In the first game, the story is about exploration. We're specifically asked to go on a grand quest to document all the Pokemon in the world. In this one, we're kinda asked to do that as a side thing, and then after a whopping one battle (which we lost), this guy tells us we could possibly be champion, and SUGGESTS we TRY the Gym Challenge. That's... such vague direction. I guess it makes it feel more like your "own" adventure, but I prefer having more purpose given to me.
We leave the lab and one of the aides gives us five Poke Balls. We head back to Cherrygrove to head to Violet, where we can find a Pokemon Gym to attempt. We get a glimpse at a rare back sprite of "Dude" which is completely missable if you tell him you don't want to know how to catch Pokemon.
Then I headed up to Route 46 which has a little grassy patch (the rest is cliffs you can't climb) where you can catch a few Pokemon. I thought Zubat was here but after running around for quite a while and finding like 10 of the rare Jigglypuff, I figured there was no Zubat and decided to head on. I could have looked it up but I was lying down and feeling lazy :P
So we have to start with a different Pokemon -- Hoothoot, whom I named Edea. I decided to name my team after the FF8 playable characters roster. Just kinda at random, since there are 6 of them and they're easy to remember. I don't plan on keeping Hoothoot around so I named her Edea (if it was a male I would have gone with Seifer :P) who is technically a playable character at a point.
One little detail I'd like to point out is that when you catch a Pokemon, the Pokeball actually changes colors to a little color scheme that matches the Pokemon. IDK if there are actually 251 unique ball color schemes or if some get reused, but either way, I think this is a cute little touch that never got used again outside of Gen 2.
Oh, and another addition to Gen 2 -- the Special Stat Split. In Gen 1, Special Attack and Special Defense weren't two separate stats -- you just had one overpowered Special stat. Now they're separated into two separate stats which give some variety to how Pokemon are used. There are some really nice mechanical changes like this in Gen 2.
Before we can get to our first cave to find a Zubat (omg I just realized there might be Zubat on Route 30... I didn't even think to check... we may not have even had to start with Hoothoot... OK I looked it up and no Zubat there) we have to pass through a single trainer, Youngster Mikey. Everyone else is skippable. He has a couple Rattata which are not quite enough to bring Edea to level 6 yet.
In Dark Tunnel or Dark Cave or whatever it's called, we run around til we find a level 2 Zubat. It's possible to catch one as high as level 4, but I went with the lowest possible level, even though that means we'll have to spend more of our precious limited EXP on leveling it up an extra two times. I did this because leveling up increases friendship, and we're going to need max (or near max) friendship to evolve Golbat into Crobat, and I want to get him as early as possible.
Either way, welcome our first permanent member of the team, Squall! I'll use this screenshot opportunity to comment on a great new feature (after all of my complaining in the last post) that was added in Gen 2 -- and that's Hold Items! They're a real game changer, literally. Now Pokemon get to equip an item with varying effects during battle. For now we're going to be giving Squall all our Berries, which restore a little bit of HP once his HP reaches 50% or lower.
Berries are a cool new system, too, and probably the most interesting use of the RTC. Each day, every berry tree in the game grows a new berry, so you can collect them. Kinda fun. Berries are hold items that your Pokemon will actually eat in battle when necessary. So if you have PsnCureBerry, as soon as the Pokemon becomes poisoned, it will eat the berry if it is equipped. Very cool. Hold items bring a whole new level of strategy to the game, and let you customize your team just a little more.
Anyway. From there on, we return to the beginning of Route 30 to fight the trainers there. First up we have Youngster Joey, the infamous top percentage Rattata kid.
When I first started this battle, I decided to just send Squall out and see how he fared. Well, it was not good. He got a critical hit on Joey's Rattata and barely did any damage, while in return he got hit with a single Tackle and lost more than half his HP.
And our first reload happens :)
The second time, I lowered Rattata's HP down to near-death with Edea, and then I used Growl over and over to weaken it, waiting for it to eventually knock out Edea. The goal here is to get Squall to gain all the experience points from the battle. We want Edea to absorb as little experience as possible, as she's not going to be on the permanent team. Every EXP point she gains is basically a waste, as we could be giving that EXP to the main team.
We continue using similar strategies on the other trainers across Routes 30 and 31. Caterpie were a little easier to defeat, as their tackles only did 1 damage, and Leech Life healed 1 damage, so we could take them out slowly without having to worry about Edea. But this led to us eventually using all 15 PP for Leech Life in a single battle against Bug Catcher Don who had four bugs (three Caterpie and a Weedle). This means Squall ended up having to use Struggle, the move that you use when you have no other moves. I think this was my first time actually using Struggle strategically -- it actually did a lot of damage (with the caveat of hurting Squall in the process). But the recoil damage wasn't terrible, and it allowed me to crush through the Caterpies when I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
I did end up absorbing half a Weedle's worth of EXP with Edea to make things go a little faster because I was getting a little tired of slowly Leech Lifing everything. I will regret this later in the next post.
There were surprisingly a lot of trainers -- like 4 or 5 -- on the way to Violet City. I guess that's not too crazy, we had to go through the entire Viridian Forest in RGBY before we get to Pewter, now that I think about it.
And with that, we arrive in Violet City with Squall leading the way, and Edea on die-alot backup. We'll explore the city and nearby areas in the next entry :) I'm definitely having fun having to use unique strats outside of "spam strongest supereffective attack." If we were using Totodile and doing water-only we wouldn't be doing anything nearly as interesting at this point XD
Gonna try to pay attention to the story/lore this time around and see all there is to see with my winged buddies. I mean, I was paying attention when I went through Gold but I'm gonna try to be extra particular this time. I'm not gonna try to preserve every little spoiler, so I'll talk about Silver before we know his name, and mention the Cinnabar Volcano, etc.
We start off with Professor Oak introducing us to the world of Pokemon. I think he's talking to us, the player, and not the character, and this is kind of non-canon game tutorial stuff. Either way, I think it's odd that this is the only game(s) in the series where the 'hometown' Professor isn't the one who introduces you to the game.
Anyway, we start off in our house in New Bark town with Mom telling us that next door's Professor Elm is looking for us. There's an interesting little tidbit we can only see in this first time in the house -- if we examine the kitchen stove, it says that Mom's specialty is "Cinnabar Volcano Burger." I'm assuming the dish was named before the destruction that Cinnabar Volcano caused in the past 3 years. If it was named after the disaster, that's kinda messed up.
Talking to people around town, we learn that Elm has a wife and a kid, unlike Oak who just had two grandchildren who were missing parents and he had no spouse of his own. Elm gets so wrapped up in his research that he forgets to eat.
Silver is staring in the side windows of the research lab, and he pushes us away if we try to talk to him.
We head out and talk to Professor Elm, who wants us to go talk to his colleague "Mr. Pokemon" who apparently finds rare stuff. He says "this time it's for real" though. Talking to Elm a second time reveals that Mr Pokemon apparently collects a lot of rare stuff -- but it's all just rare, not particularly of any value. I don't think I ever talked to him a second time before, so that's funny and interesting about Mr Pokemon.
To get to Mr Pokemon's house, we'll need a Pokemon. Now, this guy has aides and family and stuff in town who are already quite familiar with Pokemon. Why call on the rando 10 year old that lives nearby who you have no idea if he'd be good with Pokemon or not...? Well, it sounds like he knows us already, so maybe he "sees potential" in Gold or something.
We choose Totodile as our starter, who is just going to get boxed soon, but this is our first strategic decision of the game. If we pick Totodile, Silver will steal Chikorita, which is weak to Flying-type. *taps temple* smurt.
Once we arrive in Cherrygrove, the neighboring city to New Bark, we're given a tour and we get a Map Card. It's entirely possible to just never ask for the tour and never get the Map Card, so you don't have access to a map for the entire game. Very strange lol. I do really enjoy the PokeGear system in the game -- you have a little hub for various features, and it really feels like you have some kind of mobile device on you as you play. Very cool and cute.
There's a water route here to the west of Cherrygrove. I definitely overlooked it in my Gold playthrough. There's even some guy standing out there on the rocks! I need to go out there once I have the ability to Surf and see what's out there.
If we inspect the TVs in houses, we just get an "It's a TV." message, but if we inspect the radios, we get to listen to the radio! The station being played is Oak's Pokemon Talk, with co-host Mary. Professor Oak is the host, and he'll say where you can find certain wild Pokemon. Then Mary will say a randomly-generated comment about the Pokemon which can sometimes be quite strange and funny.
Eventually we get around to Route 30, where Mr Pokemon's house is. Just ... sitting out in the middle of some route away from town. Like no other houses in the game. Quite strange. But I guess this is a strange man, after all.
His new discovery is an egg. We don't know if it's a Pokemon egg or not, but it was gifted to him by the daycare couple. It's our job to escort the little eggy back to Elm. Entrusting a random child you just met with possibly the only Pokemon egg known to exist... yeah, smart, guys. Professor Oak, who was visiting his buddy Mr Pokemon, overhears and gives us the Pokedex, asking us for help filling it up, much like the first game.
If we look around Mr Pokemon's house afterward, we can find a pile of strange coins, shelves full of foreign magazines we can't read, and a broken computer. There's a lot of broken machines in this game. But it seems like he has some kind of supercomputer wired up in the back of his house with all kinds of wiring leading to a terminal at his desk.
When we leave the house, we get a call from Elm saying that a disaster has happened at the lab, and we need to come back quickly. Now, we're on an important mission, and we may not have even finished, but he's demanding we come back to investigate what turns out to be a break-in and theft. Why, exactly, do you need this child to come back and see it? What's he going to do?
Anyway, we head back and on the way run into Silver, who has stolen Chikorita, and battle him (I lost because I took away the Berry from Totodile lol). We get the idea that this guy is kind of a jerk, but importantly he reveals his goal -- to become the best Pokemon trainer.
When we get to the lab, we learn that it was broken into by Silver and report his name to the police. Then Elm just kinda forgets about it immediately and asks what Mr Pokemon's discovery was about. We hand over the egg and he freaks out.
When we tell him about the Pokedex, he tells us that Oak is great at seeing potential in trainers and we may have what it takes to be Champion, and suggests we try to take the Gym Challenge. This is a little complaint about the game I have -- the direction they give you is just kinda... weird. In the first game, the story is about exploration. We're specifically asked to go on a grand quest to document all the Pokemon in the world. In this one, we're kinda asked to do that as a side thing, and then after a whopping one battle (which we lost), this guy tells us we could possibly be champion, and SUGGESTS we TRY the Gym Challenge. That's... such vague direction. I guess it makes it feel more like your "own" adventure, but I prefer having more purpose given to me.
We leave the lab and one of the aides gives us five Poke Balls. We head back to Cherrygrove to head to Violet, where we can find a Pokemon Gym to attempt. We get a glimpse at a rare back sprite of "Dude" which is completely missable if you tell him you don't want to know how to catch Pokemon.
Then I headed up to Route 46 which has a little grassy patch (the rest is cliffs you can't climb) where you can catch a few Pokemon. I thought Zubat was here but after running around for quite a while and finding like 10 of the rare Jigglypuff, I figured there was no Zubat and decided to head on. I could have looked it up but I was lying down and feeling lazy :P
So we have to start with a different Pokemon -- Hoothoot, whom I named Edea. I decided to name my team after the FF8 playable characters roster. Just kinda at random, since there are 6 of them and they're easy to remember. I don't plan on keeping Hoothoot around so I named her Edea (if it was a male I would have gone with Seifer :P) who is technically a playable character at a point.
One little detail I'd like to point out is that when you catch a Pokemon, the Pokeball actually changes colors to a little color scheme that matches the Pokemon. IDK if there are actually 251 unique ball color schemes or if some get reused, but either way, I think this is a cute little touch that never got used again outside of Gen 2.
Oh, and another addition to Gen 2 -- the Special Stat Split. In Gen 1, Special Attack and Special Defense weren't two separate stats -- you just had one overpowered Special stat. Now they're separated into two separate stats which give some variety to how Pokemon are used. There are some really nice mechanical changes like this in Gen 2.
Before we can get to our first cave to find a Zubat (omg I just realized there might be Zubat on Route 30... I didn't even think to check... we may not have even had to start with Hoothoot... OK I looked it up and no Zubat there) we have to pass through a single trainer, Youngster Mikey. Everyone else is skippable. He has a couple Rattata which are not quite enough to bring Edea to level 6 yet.
In Dark Tunnel or Dark Cave or whatever it's called, we run around til we find a level 2 Zubat. It's possible to catch one as high as level 4, but I went with the lowest possible level, even though that means we'll have to spend more of our precious limited EXP on leveling it up an extra two times. I did this because leveling up increases friendship, and we're going to need max (or near max) friendship to evolve Golbat into Crobat, and I want to get him as early as possible.
Either way, welcome our first permanent member of the team, Squall! I'll use this screenshot opportunity to comment on a great new feature (after all of my complaining in the last post) that was added in Gen 2 -- and that's Hold Items! They're a real game changer, literally. Now Pokemon get to equip an item with varying effects during battle. For now we're going to be giving Squall all our Berries, which restore a little bit of HP once his HP reaches 50% or lower.
Berries are a cool new system, too, and probably the most interesting use of the RTC. Each day, every berry tree in the game grows a new berry, so you can collect them. Kinda fun. Berries are hold items that your Pokemon will actually eat in battle when necessary. So if you have PsnCureBerry, as soon as the Pokemon becomes poisoned, it will eat the berry if it is equipped. Very cool. Hold items bring a whole new level of strategy to the game, and let you customize your team just a little more.
Anyway. From there on, we return to the beginning of Route 30 to fight the trainers there. First up we have Youngster Joey, the infamous top percentage Rattata kid.
When I first started this battle, I decided to just send Squall out and see how he fared. Well, it was not good. He got a critical hit on Joey's Rattata and barely did any damage, while in return he got hit with a single Tackle and lost more than half his HP.
And our first reload happens :)
The second time, I lowered Rattata's HP down to near-death with Edea, and then I used Growl over and over to weaken it, waiting for it to eventually knock out Edea. The goal here is to get Squall to gain all the experience points from the battle. We want Edea to absorb as little experience as possible, as she's not going to be on the permanent team. Every EXP point she gains is basically a waste, as we could be giving that EXP to the main team.
We continue using similar strategies on the other trainers across Routes 30 and 31. Caterpie were a little easier to defeat, as their tackles only did 1 damage, and Leech Life healed 1 damage, so we could take them out slowly without having to worry about Edea. But this led to us eventually using all 15 PP for Leech Life in a single battle against Bug Catcher Don who had four bugs (three Caterpie and a Weedle). This means Squall ended up having to use Struggle, the move that you use when you have no other moves. I think this was my first time actually using Struggle strategically -- it actually did a lot of damage (with the caveat of hurting Squall in the process). But the recoil damage wasn't terrible, and it allowed me to crush through the Caterpies when I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.
I did end up absorbing half a Weedle's worth of EXP with Edea to make things go a little faster because I was getting a little tired of slowly Leech Lifing everything. I will regret this later in the next post.
There were surprisingly a lot of trainers -- like 4 or 5 -- on the way to Violet City. I guess that's not too crazy, we had to go through the entire Viridian Forest in RGBY before we get to Pewter, now that I think about it.
And with that, we arrive in Violet City with Squall leading the way, and Edea on die-alot backup. We'll explore the city and nearby areas in the next entry :) I'm definitely having fun having to use unique strats outside of "spam strongest supereffective attack." If we were using Totodile and doing water-only we wouldn't be doing anything nearly as interesting at this point XD