A big flaw of HeartGold/SoulSilver compared to other Gen 3-Onward Pokemon games.

[SirPentious]

HeartGold/SoulSilver is always regarded in the fandom as the best game in the franchise, for being the best game content wise, and the fact that it basically has two regions in one, and on this regard, I can agree with them. BUT, I personally believe that the game has a big flaw that can put off many players at certain point: grinding. Yeah, because unlike pretty much every game in the series starting with the third gen, this game lacks of a good way to farm experience for your Pokemon like the VS Seeker in FR/LG and Platinum, or the the PokeNav rematch system/Those two reporters in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (the latter even allowing rematches against Gym Leaders, post-League), or the Audino strategy in B/W 1 and 2. Basically once you beat all the trainers on the Routes and the various Gym Leaders, you're out of good ways to farm experience fast, the wild Pokemon in the game after a certain point are of SO low levels that don't give any good experience, and the rematches you can get from the PokeGear calls aren't NEARLY as efficient as the examples I made before. Not to mention: trying to get rematches with the Gym Leaders is a REAL pain as you have to locate them in specific points, in a specific day of the week, at a specific time, in order to get their phone numbers, and then call them on a specific day at a specific time to be able to rematch them in Saffron City... WHO AT GAME FREAK THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA? WHY NOT MAKING THE REMATCHES MORE DIRECTED LIKE EMERALD OR PLATINUM?

Also unless you have well leveled Pokemon, the Elite Four could be problematic to use as a good levelling spot after you get all 16 medals, because aftee that their Pokemon get to way too high level to even fight them easely...

I replayed the game recentely, but as much I loved it again, at the same time, I had quite a trouble in levelling my team, due to this problem, and I couldn't even defeat Red, because I couldn't find an efficient way to level up my Pokemon in order to defeat him easely, and I renounced to that, limiting in just keeping catching Pokemon with the ones I could get up to that point (which means I couldn't catch Kyogre, or get the gen 1 and 3 starter as those required defeating Red first). I tried the Pokemon League after getting all 16 medals, but that's way too hard as well...

So yeah. As much HG/SS can be praised for their content at the same time I feel they needed a more efficient way to farm experience honestly... did anyone have the same problem with this game here?

 

[GoodBlock11]

While I agree that the level curve is a huge downside to some great games, I'd like to suggest approaching the games with a different mindset. One of my favorite YouTubers, Tama Hero, brings this up in a video she made about Pokemon Crystal. Basically, approach the games less like a standard game and closer to an MMO or mobile game. Log in, play for abit, do your dailies (trainer rematches, berries, apricorns, etc), and chip away at the game slowly. It's a really fun way to play the games, especially if you have access to a Pokewalker!

 

[Daren]

Yeah, it's a bit annoying, though at least you can spam rematches with a Gym Leader when it's the right time of day so I think it's actually be easier to level up than Emerald. I think the Rematches working that way is because of the day event system for the Johto games that I honestly find more annoying than anything.
I think HG/SS might have the most to do in the whole series, but also a lot of problems.

 

[staticmoth]

While I agree that the level curve is a huge downside to some great games, I'd like to suggest approaching the games with a different mindset. One of my favorite YouTubers, Tama Hero, brings this up in a video she made about Pokemon Crystal. Basically, approach the games less like a standard game and closer to an MMO or mobile game. Log in, play for abit, do your dailies (trainer rematches, berries, apricorns, etc), and chip away at the game slowly. It's a really fun way to play the games, especially if you have access to a Pokewalker!

Huh never thought about it like that. The grind fest has always been HGSS' biggest flaw to me, but this approach adds some playability to the game... stretch it out over longer periods of time.

This (admittedly) is probably how it is intended to be played. Over months rather then in a few days like how most of us speedrun it and then get bored lol. I dunno, there's definitely a plus to being pick up the game and work through the postgame over a period of time rather then just the usual postgame activities such as battle facilities, completing the Pokédex, shiny hunting. etc. Maybe we'd all benefit from slow Pokémon (like slow food lol.)

 

[GoodBlock11]

It's more of a commitment then just blasting through the game, but it makes for a more fulfilling adventure. Checking in for a few minutes on my lunch break, or in between classes, or on the bus to get apricorns, do a few wild battles, check the lottery, etc is a nice little break from the stresses of life. Any Pokemon game benefits from being played like this, but the Johto and Sinnoh games are where this style of play is at it's strongest.

 

[virtualpet2001]

While I agree that the level curve is a huge downside to some great games, I'd like to suggest approaching the games with a different mindset. One of my favorite YouTubers, Tama Hero, brings this up in a video she made about Pokemon Crystal. Basically, approach the games less like a standard game and closer to an MMO or mobile game. Log in, play for abit, do your dailies (trainer rematches, berries, apricorns, etc), and chip away at the game slowly. It's a really fun way to play the games, especially if you have access to a Pokewalker!

this sounds like a very good idea actually. even if it wasnt the intended way i think it fits the nature of the game better almost?! will have to try this next time i chip away at johto

 

[falinksedin]

100% agree with the "intended" way to approach Johto being a bit different to the subsequent entries in the series. I guess just a product of it being from a time when they were still experimenting with what exactly a Pokemon game was. Taking it slow and just booting up for the dailies/deliberately pacing your playthrough to catch certain events (eg. getting Surf on a Friday so you can backtrack to Union Cave) is a really cool experience, and very unique within Pokemon.

As for the level curve, the issue is there, but it's definitely overblown. Really the only unmanageable jump in level is Red, and I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be overlevelled because that's the only way they could make a team constrained entirely to "Kanto story mons" challenging. So long as you have a well rounded team and basic knowledge of the type chart, he should be beatable with minimal grinding past the level you're at when you finish the Kanto gyms (especially in HGSS where your GOAT mum straight up hands you the free win machine that is the Choice Scarf).

 

[Dorothy LaRouge]

I don't think treating the game as a daily task for a few minutes at a time really fixes the underlying issue, though. The fact of the matter is that Johto's level curve is borked, everyone knows it's borked, and everyone knows it's always been borked. If you have to invent an alternate playstyle out of whole cloth to resolve that issue, I think that's a problem. The final level of the game features wild Pokemon at an insufficient level to efficiently grind for the final boss of the game. That's a problem!

 

[falinksedin]

I don't think treating the game as a daily task for a few minutes at a time really fixes the underlying issue, though. The fact of the matter is that Johto's level curve is borked, everyone knows it's borked, and everyone knows it's always been borked. If you have to invent an alternate playstyle out of whole cloth to resolve that issue, I think that's a problem. The final level of the game features wild Pokemon at an insufficient level to efficiently grind for the final boss of the game. That's a problem!

I don't think it's "inventing" a playstyle, though. Imo it's the intended way to play. GS were the second Pokemon games ever made, and as such how exactly a Pokemon game played was still very much up in the air (same reason RBY are best approached as more traditional RPGs without thinking as much about a lot of the more mechanical aspects of Pokemon). Johto represents an experiment with the game being something you're encouraged to take more slowly and dip into - think Animal Crossing. They wouldn't have put all the daily stuff into the game if you weren't intended to engage with it. I don't necessaruly think judging it by modern standards (at least for the purposes of "which Pokemon game do I want to play?") is wrong, but I think writing it off because you can't engage with it exactly as you can the games that have come since is a bit backwards. The Pokemon formula as we know it today definitely began to materialise with gen 3, and so Johto being the way it is just stems from that formula not having been settled yet.

As for the level curve, it's a non-issue within Johto itself (the gym leader level curve actually matches Unova's almost exactly). The only real annoyance is lategame wild Pokemon being underlevelled makes them harder to add to your team. The curve flattens a little in Kanto, but that leaves you overlevelled if anything. And then Red represents a huge jump, but again, that's because him being overlevelled is necessary to give the fight challenge. His ace is a nfe Pokemon with a BST of 300. Even with the Light Ball, you plainly do not need to be at level 88 to beat it.

 

[Daren]

Honestly, I don't think a slow "dailies" style was intended for the Johto games (did that style even exist at the time? I mostly associate it with latter era mobile games and MMOs) because outside the calendar events it's still designed like a 90s JRPG intended for longer sessions for leveling up (which is pretty slow in GSC), getting through routes and dungeons, the final climax with five boss fights in a row, and low percentage appearance rates from rare Pokémon. There just isn't enough meat on the games bones to drag it out for months.

 

[GoodBlock11]

I don't think treating the game as a daily task for a few minutes at a time really fixes the underlying issue, though. The fact of the matter is that Johto's level curve is borked, everyone knows it's borked, and everyone knows it's always been borked. If you have to invent an alternate playstyle out of whole cloth to resolve that issue, I think that's a problem. The final level of the game features wild Pokemon at an insufficient level to efficiently grind for the final boss of the game. That's a problem!

Yeah it doesn't fix the whole issue of the level curve being poor, but it does help remedy it abit. As for Red being extremely high level, he is supposed to be a superboss, and you don't have to be at his level to beat him.

 

[SirPentious]

Thing is... HG/SS are the only post-gen 2 games that suffer this problem. Thanks to specific strategies or better ordered things, it's pretty easy train your Pokemon for the story AND to make Pokemon evolve for the Pokedex completition in the other games (I can say that as someone who recentely replayed Fire Red and got pretty much every Pokemon in the game that don't need another person's trade to get without any trouble.... eeeexcept for Chansey and Blissey, but that's another story...). I honestly don't know why did they make the level grinding in HG/SS so much painful, when the other games of the time had way more viable ways to handle it...

 

[falinksedin]

HG/SS are the only post-gen 2 games that suffer this problem

I wonder what tie HGSS could possibly have to gen 2 games that would cause design elements to carry over to them specifically...

Jokes aside, if we're talking specifically about grinding required to evolve, Unova is the worst for that by a country mile. Wild mons in HGSS are a little underlevelled, but so long as you're picking fights with route trainers your mons should be evolving in a relatively timely manner. In Unova you can pick all the fights you want and it'll be for nothing because your whole team isn't going anywhere til they hit level 55 in the postgame.

 

[SirPentious]

I wonder what tie HGSS could possibly have to gen 2 games that would cause design elements to carry over to them specifically...

Jokes aside, if we're talking specifically about grinding required to evolve, Unova is the worst for that by a country mile. Wild mons in HGSS are a little underlevelled, but so long as you're picking fights with route trainers your mons should be evolving in a relatively timely manner. In Unova you can pick all the fights you want and it'll be for nothing because your whole team isn't going anywhere til they hit level 55 in the postgame.

Honestly? I played Black 2 for the first time a few years ago (only pre-Sun/Moon game I didn't play at launch) and... I didn't find the grinding that tedious and painful.

 

[falinksedin]

My point was less about Unova specifically (though fwiw I do think that it's kind of a shame that if you're playing with any kind of concerted effort to stay close to story fights level-wise you straight up won't have team members evolve until the postgame) and more just that it's less about the pure numbers of the Pokemon you're seeing but rather the levels at which Pokemon evolve relative to the XP curve in their region. Pretty much every gen 2 mon has an evolution level on the lower end, so anything you catch in the early-midgame evolves pretty quick, in spite of the levels of story fights being low relative to their equivalent fights in other games. Johto's only real sin in this regard imo is lategame wild Pokemon being underlevelled which makes them hard to add to the team.

 

[SirPentious]

My point was less about Unova specifically (though fwiw I do think that it's kind of a shame that if you're playing with any kind of concerted effort to stay close to story fights level-wise you straight up won't have team members evolve until the postgame) and more just that it's less about the pure numbers of the Pokemon you're seeing but rather the levels at which Pokemon evolve relative to the XP curve in their region. Pretty much every gen 2 mon has an evolution level on the lower end, so anything you catch in the early-midgame evolves pretty quick, in spite of the levels of story fights being low relative to their equivalent fights in other games. Johto's only real sin in this regard imo is lategame wild Pokemon being underlevelled which makes them hard to add to the team.

I mean, the fact that most Pokemon evolve soon, doesn't mean much when then you'll still have trouble in training them for the rest of the game... To be fair, the mainline story (I mean Jotho) is not really that hard all things considered, you can handle it with just the trainers you find on the Routes (... as long you don't mess it up and realize that the Pokemon you have are not really that great). The problem starts with the Post-game (Kanto), as the Gym Leaders are pretty tough and you don't really have viable ways to train your Pokemon, and the trainers in the routes and the Gyms might not be enough to train your Pokemon well enough. I still managed to beat them all in my last playthrough, but now without issues (especially with Blue).

And then with Red the whole thing gets from pretty struggling to completely disastrous. His team is WAY too overlevelled, and there's just no viable way to get your whole team at a good enough level to beat him. As I said, I abandoned any will to beat Red (and consequently renounced to catch Kyogre and get the Gen 1 and 3 starters) and stopped after I got all the medals, because it was just too tedious, and there was just no efficient way to train my Pokemon... again: I honestly don't know why wouldn't Game Freak put a viable way to train your Pokemon in a game that REQUIRES a lot of training for the post-game, when other games had ways that made it way more simple and easy... (like seriously: training for the League rematch in FR, was pretty much a joke in comparison)

 

[falinksedin]

The problem starts with the Post-game (Kanto), as the Gym Leaders are pretty tough and you don't really have viable ways to train your Pokemon, and the trainers in the routes and the Gyms might not be enough to train your Pokemon well enough.

The first gym you come to in Kanto (Vermilion) has its highest level Pokemon at level 53, just three levels higher than Lance's (Vermilion is the third-lowest in the region; Brock's ace is level 52 and Janine's is level 50). The highest-levelled gym in the region (Blue's), has its ace at level 60, just 7 levels higher (10 higher than Janine's). You could dodge every single fight in the region aside from the gyms and still probably be ahead of the level curve.

 

[Daren]

The Johto games are generally leaner on XP than usual but I don't think it's that bad outside preparing for Red if you're thorough and do every area and fight every trainer, but it's a pretty rough time replacing a party member later on.
HGSS bigger problem for the post-game is that Voltrob Flip makes getting good TMs slow and tedious.

GSC had less Xp available than the remakes--the Kanto leaders were much weaker and I think they had fewer Junior trainers--but I think gen 2 mechanics compensated, and GSC may be overall easier than HGSS thanks to badge bonuses and Stat Experience making your Pokémon punch well above what their level suggests.

 

[SirPentious]

You could dodge every single fight in the region aside from the gyms and still probably be ahead of the level curve.

Not really that simple when you try to train a full team of 6 in a game that doesn't really offer a good way to exp. Admittedly no all the Kanto Gym Leaders gave me trouble, as I had type advantaged Pokemon against them anyway, so I still managed to handle it for the most part (paradoxally, Surge IS one of the ones that gave me trouble, as I didn't have any supereffective move against electric type AND... I chosen Totodile as Starter... yeah). But not for everyone is gonna be the case. If they don't train the right Pokemon for these battles, they're gonna have a really hard time, because once you chose your team, you have to stick to it, as training new Pokemon is a real pain... I think the problem is gonna be more situational from player to player.

Besides, the problem with Red still remains. Not really wise to upscale of nearly 30 levels for him. I get it he's supposed to be a Super Boss, but that was still way too much personally...

 

[Daenerys]

I don't deny that grinding/leveling up in HG/SS was a chore at times, but even then it wasn't that big of a problem in hindsight, what with Wi-Fi trading making it easier to get Lucky Eggs, and the Gym Leader rematches in the second half of the game also helping to make leveling up post-E4 much easier (though why GF made obtaining some of the Gym Leader's phone numbers so tedious is anyone's guess).

They could've fixed the leveling curve issues by changing some stuff around but I guess they wanted to be as faithful to the original G/S/C as possible, warts and all.