Game: Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

Platform: Nintendo DS

Game length: To complete the main game about 25 hours. To finish all extra content, leveling, catching them all – up to 100+ hours.

Completed? Charis got to the Elite 4. Shawn stopped after Gym 7. (We set a minimum of 20 hours and 6 badges. We’ve both played and beat the originals, though)

Lead Reviewer: Shawn

As you all can probably tell, we love Pokemon around here. Many people get sick of the same story, going through the same movements, and playing to get the same outcome. Weirdly enough, that’s what is great about Pokemon; the formula is essentially perfect, so why fix it?

Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver are remakes of Gold and Silver, brought to life with new graphics and a few changes (I can’t call them improvements). It isn’t a major overhaul, but sometimes the little things can affect an entire game, enough to actually help you fall asleep within fifteen minutes of turning it on (more on that later). Additions such as the Pokewalker help bring the experience out of the game, but a pedometer-tamagotchi isn’t enough to carry the game’s faults.

Shawn: For those that have never played Pokemon, the concept is simple. You start out as a young boy or girl, and the local professor gives you a starting Pokemon so you can embark on your very own journey to be the very best… like no one ever was (dun, dun, dun, dun!). From this point on to capture them is your real test, and to train them is your cause. You then travel across the land, searching far and wide for new pokemon and to defeat gym leaders for gym badges. Along the way you stop whatever evil force is growing (in this case, Team Rocket) and save the day. All of this helps you understand the power that’s inside… POKEMON!

Charis: Wow, Shawn. I’m, speechless.

If you have played Pokemon before, you will be more than familiar with how the gameplay works. A few adjustments, such as a more stylus-oriented menu that covers the entire lower screen have been implemented, but nothing that takes away from the tried-and-true formula that makes Pokemon what it is. By now you know what moves work well against each Pokemon type, and each playthrough, at least for me, has been trying to improve on what I did the last time I played a previous version in the series.

Comparing the new and old.

With this being a remake to Gold and Silver, a couple of new things were brought in with it. While the story is basically the same, we now have polygons and color to add to the world. HeartGold and SoulSilver needed to keep a nostalgia factor of traveling through Johto, while adding the new, more 3D designs of Diamond and Pearl’s Sinnoh region. It uses the capabilities that the DS allows for with the touchscreen as well, without changing the essential gameplay of the originals. Almost the entire game, minus movement, can be played with only the stylus. No longer are the days of registering the fishing pole with the Y button, because it sits conveniently on the bottom screen. What’s great about this though, is if you don’t like change, you don’t need to use the stylus at all.

Shawn: I do like many of the stylus features they’ve implemented, and if you’ve played Diamond and Pearl, you know exactly what you’re getting into gameplay wise. Before I continue, let me make it clear that I like this game. However, I couldn’t help but be frustrated while playing it. Here is a short list of faults and frustrations that came up.

- Why won’t my phone stop ringing? Why does Joey have to tell me his Raticate is “elite” and better than all other Raticates? And then why does he hang up on me? The solution: Don’t give out your number in game, and don’t answer your phone. I’m sure most female gamers will already know to stay away from this kind of thing.

- Why am I still being prompted for actions? When I walk towards water, I should immediately start surfing. I don’t need to waste 10 seconds of my life with clicking “Yes, I’d like to surf” then watching a short animation. This applies to all HMs. No developers, I would not like to break that rock, but thanks for asking.

- Why can I still not delete HM moves for convenience? (Not without finding a move deleter, anyways)

- The whole “running in grass causes more battles” thing is outrageous. I swear this didn’t exist in previous titles, and if it did, I never noticed. In HeartGold/SoulSilver, however, you have two options. Running will be a battle every two steps or so, and walking will be a battle every four steps. Maybe it was just me, but my random encounter rate approached Final Fantasy VII type numbers.

- One of my biggest complaints with this version of the game is the Pokemon you can get throughout the adventure (prior to gym 6, really). This has to be the worst starting Pokedex ever. Every person I know playing the game has hardly any variation to their team, because it just isn’t offered. It’s so frustrating to have a team of Pokemon you don’t like.

- The BIGGEST complaint – why are all the trainer/random Pokemon at LEAST 10 levels lower than me for the entire game? Sure, I only consistently leveled three Pokemon, but when they are all level 30 fighting level 20’s, it’s boring. Then all the gym leaders have higher levels than mine. Hm.

Now, before everyone thinks I hate the game or the series, I don’t. I own boxed copies of every handheld Pokemon game (except Crystal), have played every version to completion for some reason, put over 300 hours into Pearl, and have EV trained my fair share of Pokemon. It’s one of my favorite series ever. I just don’t feel like they did enough to make the game world work for how far ahead games are from where they used to be. If they were going to go through the effort of upgrading the game to reach the level of Diamond/Pearl, they should have gone the extra mile to make it the best game they could. I feel like Fire Red and Leaf Green were done much better.

Why do I still have to be prompted to do this?

Charis: I shared many of these annoyances, but there is one more – the game is short. The core gameplay (by that I mean getting through Indigo Plateau and the Johto Region) can be beaten in around 20-25 hours depending on how many things you skip over/the way you play. More frustrating in how short the game is, is the level progression of the Pokemon. Having a level 56 Typhlosion at the end of the game, I’m still battling wild Pokemon under level 30. However, Pokemon is something that you get more out of it depending on how you play it. Besides the actual process of getting badges, there are other events, such as going through the Safari Zone, or creating a team for the Pokeathelon, that add a ton of lasting value… and don’t even get me started on the Voltorb game. I couldn’t stop playing it. Of course you can EV/IV train to battle online as well, so the game never really ends. When you want to be the very best, you need to work hard!

Conclusion?
We tried really hard to appreciate HeartGold/SoulSilver for what it was… which is only a good game, not a great one. It all comes down to the fact that every time we talked about it, there was too much complaining to have it excel beyond any expectations we may have had. While it does a great job at streamlining the experience using the touchscreen, the game world just isn’t as fun to explore this time around. Anybody looking for legends will absolutely have to get this game, as they are in abundance here. In the end, HeartGold/SoulSilver fall far short of the bar that Diamond/Pearl/Platinum set.

Score

7.0

(7’s and 8’s are good to great games that excel in certain areas, but fall short in others. It needs to have some great ideas and be consistently fun. Technical flaws may hold it back, or it may be held back by not expanding upon a previous entry in the series.)