#game-review #jrpg #finishedgame2023 # Pokémon Heart Gold Version  [Console:: Nintendo DS] [Status:: Beaten] [Approximate Start Date:: 2022-07-29] [Finish Date:: 2023-02-09] [Clear Time:: 58h 6m] [Total Play Time:: 61h] [nReplays:: 0] (*Previous playthroughs not combined with [[Pokemon Soul Silver|Pokémon Soul Silver]]) ## [Rating:: 92] Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver are worth every penny. There's so much to do. You think you've done everything, think again. Oh you beat the Pokemon League? Nope, there's Kanto. Oh and you think there's nothing to do in Kanto, well why not take some time to explore the new (to you) region and see how things may have changed, and if there's anyone you can help! Oh you beat the Kanto Leaders? Nope, there's Red. Oh you beat Red? Nope, there's the Battle Frontier. And you can't forget the double battle with your rival in the Dragon's Den after you fight him in Mt. Moon too. Oh you caught Ho-Oh? Cool, did you catch Lugia? Or how about the Roaming Legendries, Entei, Raikou and LATIAS? And did you finish the Suicune Sidequest? Or how about Groudon / Kyogre and Rayquaza? And what about Zapdos, Moltres and Articuno? And you can't honestly forget about Mewtwo, can you? And hey, once you've caught all of those legendaries, you can take on the Pokeathalon, or go see the Clefairies dance on Monday nights, or hey, did you find all of the Shiny Leaves? And what about the day of the week Siblings? How about the Gym Leader Rematches? And Mt. Mortar, did you find the Karate King? Have you bothered playing around with the Safari Zone? Did you get the GB Sounds from the Game Freak Staff in Celadon City? Have you found the Lapras in Union Cave, and did you solve the mystery of the Ruins of Alph? There's genuinely so many things you can do in Pokemon Heart gold and Pokemon Soul Silver, and that's before all of the events that you can't do anymore like the Celebi event canonizing Silver and Giovbanni's relationship, or the Sinjoh ruins arc where you literally learn the creation myth of the Pokemon universe. That's not to say the game is perfect. People will complain about how you're encountering level 20-25 wild Pokemon in Victory Road, which admittedly is a real problem. I understand why, as a kid I ended up just raising my starter: it's incredibly difficult to raise more than like three or four Pokemon in a team after beating Whitney. However, I can confidently say that once you realize that Lance is only halfway through the game, the level curve is a lot more tolerable. The game is better and better as it goes along, but I cannot deny that there are a lot of slow parts in the mid-Johto campaign, especially the trek after Ecruteak, and having to grind to be at a reasonable level between Chuck, Jasmine and Pryce. Still, the leap from Blue to Red is a huge one, and while I understand *why* the Game Designers chose to make Red's levels in the 80s, it doesn't change the fact that there's not a great way to grind beyond the Elite Four Rematches. Oh yeah, did you do the Elite Four Rematches too? See, there's so much you can do. It's excellent. Once you can make it past the tedious grinding in the middle parts of the Johto campaign, this game rocks. Johto as a region is so great too. # Playthrough Notes - [[General Thoughts on my Heart Gold Team from the 2022-2023 Playthrough]] I got "very tired" one Friday evening and so I opened up Heart Gold to soft reset for a shiny starter. I didn't care which starter I got, but if I didn't get anywhere by the end of a certain undecided time period I'd just choose Chikorita and play through the game. I soft-reset the game for about an hour and then logged off for the evening. The following morning I returned and continued to soft-reset for about 10-15 minutes maximum before I happened upon a shiny Chikorita. It was excellent since that basically motivated me to keep playing through the game as I had planned :] I've been continuously soft-resetting for other gift mons and overworld encounters, which has dramatically extended the time it has taken to progress in the game. Clear time is skewed significantly by soft-resets and I marked it after beating Red compared to beating Lance ## Reset Values: - Chikorita: ~150 - 200 - Sudowoodo: ~3,500 - Eevee ~ 2,000ish - Gyarados - 1 - Electrode ~ 45 minutes of soft-resets so maybe 200? Wow that was fast - Ho-Oh - 8,282 # My Thoughts ## General (WOW I'M LEAVING THIS ONE HERE) I've never played Heart Gold, only Soul Silver. The games aren't all that different, but I still find this game to be enjoyable. I was playing with a fastforward on, so I was able to mindlessly get through random encounters without being too frustrated with things. This made it so that my Pokemon were always pretty overlevelled, especially when compared to my previous playthroughs of the DS Johto remakes. Not that this was a problem necessarily, I was able to use Pokemon I hadn't ever used in a playthrough before like Meganium, Golem, Slowbro, Forretress, Umbreon and Ho-oh. - [[The Level Curve in Heart Gold is Bad]] - [[Soft Resetting for Shiny Pokemon as a Concept feels absurd]] - [[The Shiny Leaf Sidequest is Very Unique because of how hidden it is]] - [[The Olivine Lighthouse Balcony is a Cool Spot because of the Perspective Switch]] - [[The Rocket Climax Route in HGSS is Interesting Because of the Spaces You Visit]] - [[Goldenrod City is where I'd Want to Live in the Pokemon Universe]] - [[Going to Kanto after beating Lance RULES]] - [[Red and his Lapras are the Final Boss of Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver]] ## After 16 Badges It's crazy how Heart Gold and Soul Silver still afford you opportunities to explore even after collecting all 16 badges. You get Rock Climb and now you can finally go investigate every little nook and cranny that you had seen with those 5-pip patterns on ledges. I really appreciate how Greedy the devs of HGSS were when it came to adding consistent things to do throughout the game experience. You can compare tis to later games in the franchise like Pokemon Sword and Shield or [[Pokemon Scarlet]] and Violet and how the world ends up kind of empty after you exhaust all the things to do. Not Heart Gold and Soul Silver, there's almost always something to do. ### The World is Alive Sort of a sub note of the post-16 badges things to do, the world really feels alive. There are trainers with routines based on the internal clock and you can go and find them out in the world DOING THINGS, and while that's more of a point for Pokemon Gold and silver, it really stands out in Heart Gold and Soul Silver, what with literally everything else in the games. You can find Gym Leaders like Janine delivering food to her dad Koga at the Elite Four, Bugsy out hunting bugs in Viridian Forest, Pryce walks to the Lake of Rage every morning, etc. And then there's the siblings that go out each day of the week, and you can go the whole game just without finding them unless you find the house on Route 26 This might be because the original Gold and Silver were designed to be the ultimate Pokémon games. The Johto Region is entirely based off of the southern part of Japan, with cities, towns, and major landmarks all kind of perfectly fitting. Violet City is Nara, Goldenrod City is Osaka, Olivine City is Kobe, the Ruins of Alph are the ruins found near Asuka, etc. ## Heart Gold Prioritizes Friendship as a Primary Theme I guess you can say that this builds off of gold and Silver's ideas, but I think they're best captured here - Silver's relationship with his team, many Pokemon on his team only evolve through friendship with Pokemon (Crobat) or friends IRL to trade (Gengar and Alakazam), which we don't see until the post-game in Mt. Moon where silver realizes this - The Shiny Leaf Mechanic is literally about being friends with your Pokemon Partners, as they follow you through the world. - see [[What Does it Mean When Our Pets Give Us Something - The Shiny Leaf Appreciation Essay]] and [[The Shiny Leaf Sidequest is Very Unique because of how hidden it is]]. - The Happiness value was introduced in Gold and Silver # Favorite Moments / Memories - The fact that it took fewer than 200 Soft-resets to get a Shiny Chikorita. - Watching [[Ping Pong the Animation]] and [[Haibane Renmei]] while Soft-resetting for Ho-oh. - Finding Red in Mt. Silver # What were you doing when not playing this? - Summer 2022, I was just doing my best with understanding the [[Cramer-Rao Lower Bound]] paper that I was reading ([[@shyCramerRaoBound2022]]) - Beat Red the week of my migraine and the day my catalytic converter got stolen. # Relevant Links -