for a game that had been hyped up to me for years... it was, uhhhhhhh, just ok. not bad. not bad at all. but... I dunno, I hesitate to say it's like, really good. it does what it was supposed to, and it does that well. it's not a bad remake. but many problems from original gen 2 still persist. problems from gen 4 are now added to the mix. I'm not going to go over all of that, lots of reviews already have. requiring Rock Climb for Mt. Silver was a mistake. absolute nonsense. wasn't required for anything else. why that one thing?
the biggest problem imo, is that the whole Team Rocket segment is still ridiculously long. maybe it feels even longer. it's been long enough since I've experienced gen 2 in any form, but that segment is the low point of the game because it's so excessive. breaking it up like how the gen 3 Evil Team stuff was broken up may have helped, but I dunno.
my personal experience can be summed up with one word: underwhelmed. I think the reason this game is beloved by many is largely a nostalgia thing. I was unable to get one of these remakes at release. just never had the money, sadly. growing up poor af as a gamer sucked, lemme tell you. I had to play this emulated because I wasn't going to pay the price for a physical copy, and my old 3DS is pretty junky now. even so, it wouldn't have compared to having it back then with the Pokewalker and perhaps people to really share the joy with.
I am not 100% sure how the reception for the gen 3 remakes was, but I know the gen 4 ones were... pretty bad. so I get why people would cling onto this, because it's really good in comparison. it just suffers most of the flaws of the originals.
I used a pretty weird team. Feraligatr(K. Rool), Houndoom(BlackShuck), Forretress(Nokama), Porygon(Dunsparce), and Gligar(Bitcrush). I did have a 6th Pokemon, a Nidoking(The Guy), solely for the sake of learning HMs so my Feraligatr didn't have to have 3 HM moves. and to keep others free of them. 3/5 of my Pokemon were... not particularly great at anything. Forretress and Gligar suffered the most in this aspect. a shame, really. perhaps I should have cheated in TMs to maybe make them better. ah well. I did things the hard way, and it never really paid off. I loved my team regardless. but I did struggle a lot. pretty constantly. I used a 2x exp cheat and had my Pokemon holding lucky eggs that were cheated in, to mitigate/avoid real grinding. about halfway through Kanto, I also decided I was done fighting every trainer because fighting them just took so much time.
at Mt. Silver, I chose to use cheated in rare candies to level my Pokemon to 70. should have gotten them to 75, probably, but it's ok. the struggle against Red was what it should be, and that's not a terrible thing.
the game looks great... I was giddy at so many things. I wish Pokemon games still had more unique sprites, or I guess models now... trainer types should have a couple of variations. even if they were just recolors with maybe very slight changes. but the NPCs in this game having more distinct overworld sprites than in the original made me happier than it should have. lol
the music, uhhhhhhh. well. it gets better in Kanto. I was not a fan of much of what you hear in Johto. I dunno why remakes/remasters mostly seem to ruin the vibes with the new music. anyway, while the vibes with the Kanto music are different, it works in that case. though overall, it's a bummer that most of the pep of the original non-battle tracks is gone. I know the GB sounds thing exists, but it doesn't work quite right because the DS can't play chiptunes correctly.
I am happy that a decent chunk of the reduction of Kanto was undone, Viridian Forest being an Actual Place again was so nice. I didn't expect it. I didn't really check it out because honestly I wasn't very interested but at least there was something to check out.
the amount of extra content in this game is a lot... I didn't bother with any of it because I personally don't care and it doesn't particularly add much to the experience imo. still, it's very cool, and definitely not something that'd happen in a more modern Pokemon remake.
gen 2 is my favorite, but playing this remake left me wondering why. perhaps it's just some immense nostalgia tied solely to the originals, I dunno. my lack of love for gen 4 is likely related to why I didn't enjoy this remake as much, honestly. something I could try to unpack at some point but not sure I really care to
the biggest problem imo, is that the whole Team Rocket segment is still ridiculously long. maybe it feels even longer. it's been long enough since I've experienced gen 2 in any form, but that segment is the low point of the game because it's so excessive. breaking it up like how the gen 3 Evil Team stuff was broken up may have helped, but I dunno.
my personal experience can be summed up with one word: underwhelmed. I think the reason this game is beloved by many is largely a nostalgia thing. I was unable to get one of these remakes at release. just never had the money, sadly. growing up poor af as a gamer sucked, lemme tell you. I had to play this emulated because I wasn't going to pay the price for a physical copy, and my old 3DS is pretty junky now. even so, it wouldn't have compared to having it back then with the Pokewalker and perhaps people to really share the joy with.
I am not 100% sure how the reception for the gen 3 remakes was, but I know the gen 4 ones were... pretty bad. so I get why people would cling onto this, because it's really good in comparison. it just suffers most of the flaws of the originals.
I used a pretty weird team. Feraligatr(K. Rool), Houndoom(BlackShuck), Forretress(Nokama), Porygon(Dunsparce), and Gligar(Bitcrush). I did have a 6th Pokemon, a Nidoking(The Guy), solely for the sake of learning HMs so my Feraligatr didn't have to have 3 HM moves. and to keep others free of them. 3/5 of my Pokemon were... not particularly great at anything. Forretress and Gligar suffered the most in this aspect. a shame, really. perhaps I should have cheated in TMs to maybe make them better. ah well. I did things the hard way, and it never really paid off. I loved my team regardless. but I did struggle a lot. pretty constantly. I used a 2x exp cheat and had my Pokemon holding lucky eggs that were cheated in, to mitigate/avoid real grinding. about halfway through Kanto, I also decided I was done fighting every trainer because fighting them just took so much time.
at Mt. Silver, I chose to use cheated in rare candies to level my Pokemon to 70. should have gotten them to 75, probably, but it's ok. the struggle against Red was what it should be, and that's not a terrible thing.
the game looks great... I was giddy at so many things. I wish Pokemon games still had more unique sprites, or I guess models now... trainer types should have a couple of variations. even if they were just recolors with maybe very slight changes. but the NPCs in this game having more distinct overworld sprites than in the original made me happier than it should have. lol
the music, uhhhhhhh. well. it gets better in Kanto. I was not a fan of much of what you hear in Johto. I dunno why remakes/remasters mostly seem to ruin the vibes with the new music. anyway, while the vibes with the Kanto music are different, it works in that case. though overall, it's a bummer that most of the pep of the original non-battle tracks is gone. I know the GB sounds thing exists, but it doesn't work quite right because the DS can't play chiptunes correctly.
I am happy that a decent chunk of the reduction of Kanto was undone, Viridian Forest being an Actual Place again was so nice. I didn't expect it. I didn't really check it out because honestly I wasn't very interested but at least there was something to check out.
the amount of extra content in this game is a lot... I didn't bother with any of it because I personally don't care and it doesn't particularly add much to the experience imo. still, it's very cool, and definitely not something that'd happen in a more modern Pokemon remake.
gen 2 is my favorite, but playing this remake left me wondering why. perhaps it's just some immense nostalgia tied solely to the originals, I dunno. my lack of love for gen 4 is likely related to why I didn't enjoy this remake as much, honestly. something I could try to unpack at some point but not sure I really care to