Pokemon Soulsilver is the third mainline game I ever played, behind Diamond and Platinum. I remember begging my dad for this game and receiving it on Easter since he wanted an excuse to not just get it for me for no reason. Back when I first played this, I absolutely loved it. Playing through the game just to unlock Kanto! I had never played a gen 1 game before so it was amazing (and still is). Present day, this game is nearly flawless. Starting with the story, this is a weaker part of the game. This game follows up on the Team Rocket plot from before, with Team Rocket trying to get Giovanni back in the picture and to regroup. While interesting at first, it isn't anything particularly special. Their motivations are a bit more clear, but ultimately aren't a major motivator for the game. We do get more unique interactions with them though, like at the slowpoke well and the lake of rage. While these are moments that stand out, they still do not make Team Rocket very complex. Instead, the game's sense of adventure pushed me through. I wanted to explore every inch of this region again and all the unique aspects. The game has a lot of old theming around it, like Ecruteak city for instance. The burnt tower, Bell tower, and dance theatre perfectly show the inspirations for the region and how it is less technologically advanced than Kanto was represented. This is seen especially with the apricorn system for instance, though I did not utilize this much. There are many attractions throughout Johto, one of which being the Pokeathlon. This was and still is one of the best minigame systems put into a mainline Pokemon game. All of the minigames are enjoyable and can add hours upon hours of playtime onto this. There is also the Ruins of Alph, which has a set of puzzles and the Unown. This is a great side quest to go through and if you have an Arceus you can also go to the Sinjoh ruins for possibly one of the most strange Pokemon cutscenes ever. As for our rival, he is more complex than Blue primarily with how aggressive he is with us and his own Pokemon. It's interesting to see how he slowly realizes throughout the game that he needs to treat his Pokemon with love and care rather than view them through the lens of power. I don't like how the final quote where he realizes this is an optional battle at the dragon den however, as if this is missed then it could be frustrating not seeing his story end naturally. This also brings me to a point of contention. I do not like that the Celebi event was locked behind a limited time event. Now, I did use the DNS trick in order to do this event. The event is great, we go back in time and get backstory about Silver and Giovanni and also battle Giovanni. It re-contextualizes huge parts of the story and really completes lots of it as well. However, if there wasn't a custom DNS server open then this event would be impossible, meaning we would not be able to experience this in game without cheats. I understand the event system and having special pokemon for this, however this was too far when holding back integral story content. This aside, I do have a few smaller issues as well. The game feels very underwhelming in terms of difficulty and levels. Most mons were incredibly underleveled in each route up until victory road. This was irritating as I battle every trainer I came across and still felt underleveled. Then I got to the elite four only to realize the highest level Pokemon in the league was level 50. While this is okay if there's enough EXP beforehand, there really isn't a consistent amount in the game. Only one or two of my Pokemon were appropriately leveled and everything else was lacking severely. This also goes for the Kanto region. While I absolutely love this postgame (one of the best in the series, literally an entire region), I don't love the levels in it. You were regularly see level 15 pokemon in routes which is so below what you will have at that point. Yes, the trainers will have appropriately leveled mons but you cannot consistently grind against the route pokemon until you get to Mt. Silver. This is a bit ridiculous, all the Pokemon in the routes should have been scaled up. Now, the battle with Red. This is a GREAT fight. It's a great final fight and really does take a lot of prep. It feels a tad annoying having to grind for even longer due to the EXP deficit, but beating him is worth it. There are also many, many legendaries to catch over the course of the game, but I feel like they went slightly overboard with the roaming pokemon. Yes, Platinum has four roaming legendaries whereas Soulsilver only has three, but two out of those three know roar. I can manage this with mean look and hypnosis, but they broke out of this constantly and ended the fight, This made it so much more tedious and annoying. The amazing thing is though, even with all of those issues this game is still incredible and one of the best Pokemon games. The amount of content is honestly insane and will keep you busy for a very long time and is a must play for any Pokemon fan.

This was my first time playing through the gen 1 remakes. I have childhood memories of seeing others play through the gen 3 games but I had missed out on this. I got my first ever handheld in 2006 with the release of Pokemon Diamond, so I had just missed out on that previous generation. It was amazing to see others play this though, I caught glimpses of it during the bus and recess and the mysteries enthralled me. Especially the Pokemon mansion, imagining capturing mew and finding the secrets. Finally, I went through and played it as an adult now after also completing Emerald. I was let down to play through this now, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the story isn't anything too crazy. It's kept simple, Team Rocket is attempting to steal pokemon, capture buildings, etc. They are essentially the Pokemon mafia, which is interesting because they don't really hold back on the dialogue in this game. It feels mature even at this age with them threatening actual physical violence at times and the game mentioning Pokemon dying. I like the mature theming and makes the game feel like it ages better. The downside to this is that the story well, isn't really complex. It feels very disjointed, Giovanni doesn't really appear consistently and when he does appear it doesn't have a big impact. You beat him a few times and Team Rocket just disbands without issue. Your rival in the game is also not very fleshed out. I've heard him praised over the years, but I don't understand why. He's the most generic definition of the rival in the series thus far, he isn't mean enough to be intimidating but doesn't have enough dialogue to be likeable either. He's also obsessed with saying smell ya later, which was the one thing I enjoyed about him. As for gameplay, it suffers from standard old Pokemon gen issues. This is before the physical/special split, so strategies were inherently less complex. I am also a big enjoyer of the party wide EXP share. I play the pokemon games to get as many Pokemon as possible, level and evolve them. Having to swap train or use a single EXP share is tedious and can be annoying, since I have to grind for hours at times. The biggest issue I had with the game overall is the Pokemon variety. I understand this is a gen 1 remake, but they did introduce other regions mons in the Sevii islands. Having these spread throughout the game more would have helped immensely with the enemy variety. It felt absolutely terrible being at the end of the game and running into level 30 pidgeys or geodudes. At least remove the lesser evolutions at those higher levels to make it feel higher stakes. This was really my biggest issue for the game overall, it made it feel so repetitive and samey. Every route felt like a pidgey, sandshrew, or meowth simulator. Finally, the events. I was able to do all the in game events for the game and while I enjoyed capturing deoxys, ho-oh, and lugia, imagine my surprise that mew was unobtainable in this game but only in Emerald. I understand in the big picture this isn't a big deal, but why? This game would have made much more sense for it and would have fit right in. Regardless, overall this was a very tame experience that felt repetitive for me but I did not regret. I was nice going through Kanto for the first time and I'm eager to keep moving forward.

I've always heard of this game and seen others playing it so I was excited to play this! The story is interesting, with Chairman Drek planning on taking pieces of other planets (and ultimately destroying them) to rebuild his homeworld. Ratchet and Clank join up to stop him, with Captain Qwark employed by Drek to stop them. The story was enjoyable and the humour was a breath of fresh air. I didn't enjoy how Qwark was handled in the story. His outline is shown speaking with Drek and it's very obvious who it is, ruining the surprise. The tension between both Ratchet and Clank was also annoying, since Ratchet seems to not understand that Drek is already destroying planets but when he sees the plan for the big ray weapon he...learns that Drek is trying to destroy planets? But we already knew this and he seemed to not care, so it was a weird back and forth. The tension also lasted for what seemed like half the game, ruining a lot of good dialogue between the two of them. But the humour was funny and charming, i enjoyed the majority of it. I also don't know why but the gadgetron guy's voice was hilarious to me every time. As for gameplay, it was alright. There were a LOT of guns, but only a portion of them were actually good. I wish there were more standard wrench attacks as well. I will say the lack of checkpoints was frustrating, since there were some long stretches of areas that would send you all the way back if failed. Same with the final boss, he has three different areas but if you lose at the end you'll be all the way back again. It was annoying but I dealt with it. The game also did stretch out a bit too much, most of the game felt very repetitive of getting an infobot and starting a new planet, get new gadget and infobot, rinse and repeat. I enjoyed that for a while but it got a little stale. I overall still enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next games in the series.