Its hard to call any game the pinnacle when the leveling curb is so bad that "he actually leveled on cartridge" is considered a rare feat that nobody does. And that's something unchanged across both original and HGSS.
I'm not talking Smogon serious. I'm talking trying to beat Red with his 80+ level team when most wild Pokemon are in their 40s.
Grante HGSS did add the repeat Elite Four with their much higher leveled team to help with that gap, but its still an issue that shouldn't have survived the remake. They removed the "pick your path" options with remakes of Gen1 which makes it even more baffling to keep in Gen2.
The grind happens because of a legitimate design choice, the ability to choose your direction after a certain town and the requirement that all paths must have equal levels to accommodate that. A problem no other Pokemon game has because they have a defined level curve as you progress through the linear path the Gyms provide (until S/V which has the opposite issue).
Its a problem that only Gen 2 has and its not something you can just handwave off because its a dominating issue for the second half of the game until it culminates in Red basically having 20 levels on you if you play the game normally, or spend dozens of hours to catch up to him.
HG and SS also allowed you to refight the gym leaders with improved teams. iirc. There was more endgame content in that one than in the majority of other titles of the series.
It does, I'm not arguing its not a phenomenal game and a definite height of the series that makes many of the future games look like garbage in comparison.
Only that people seem to have placed it in this pedestal of nostalgia and forgotten that its equally flawed as any of them too, and its main flaw is bigger than most.
In most games you would find a Lucky Egg and farm Chanceys or the local EXP goblin. I don't think infinite Rare Candies were a thing after Gen 1 but I also skipped 4-7 so who knows.
And EVs/IVs are a neat idea (different animals having different apititudes from birth or training) that eventually panned out to just be garbage by how defining they are.
Because once the games started trying to be hard, you now had to discard basically your entire team you played the game with because their EVs would be totally screwed up and their IVs also likely poor (on top of their ability and on and on). Even worse is that its not interesting in any way to play with, its purely busy work. Which is why every "serious" played just injects rather than spend the hours making one, even if they pretend they don't.
There is a reason why most Pokemon ripoffs discard the idea. Sometimes its just IVs where a rarer one is purely better but its also obvious that its the better one (Coromon) or just the nature is at play giving that slight customization to their stats. There are a lot of ways to improve on the idea, but Pokemon as a franchise hates changing anything after the Special split. They just add a seasonal "supermove" variant and otherwise it plays exactly the same as it always does regardless of it clearly not being fun.
Frankly, in Gen 1 it serves as a sneaky way to empower the player. Most of the trash you fight will give you speed EVs which leads to your pokemon generally attacking first, which leads to easier farming and just a general feeling of player agency since their pokemon always take the lead during an engagement. Whether or not the inclusion of EVs is a good thing is a matter for further debate, but that's one silver lining I see to them in terms of game design that facilitates players getting to enjoy a bit of power fantasy.
Its hard to call any game the pinnacle when the leveling curb is so bad that "he actually leveled on cartridge" is considered a rare feat that nobody does. And that's something unchanged across both original and HGSS.
The games were never been to be taken this seriously. Smogon-seriously.
I'm not talking Smogon serious. I'm talking trying to beat Red with his 80+ level team when most wild Pokemon are in their 40s.
Grante HGSS did add the repeat Elite Four with their much higher leveled team to help with that gap, but its still an issue that shouldn't have survived the remake. They removed the "pick your path" options with remakes of Gen1 which makes it even more baffling to keep in Gen2.
JRPGs have grinding. You can minimize it, like in Chrono Trigger, but eliminating it just can't happen.
Chrono Cross tried to get rid of it, but it was undercut by its infuriating plot.
The grind happens because of a legitimate design choice, the ability to choose your direction after a certain town and the requirement that all paths must have equal levels to accommodate that. A problem no other Pokemon game has because they have a defined level curve as you progress through the linear path the Gyms provide (until S/V which has the opposite issue).
Its a problem that only Gen 2 has and its not something you can just handwave off because its a dominating issue for the second half of the game until it culminates in Red basically having 20 levels on you if you play the game normally, or spend dozens of hours to catch up to him.
HG and SS also allowed you to refight the gym leaders with improved teams. iirc. There was more endgame content in that one than in the majority of other titles of the series.
It does, I'm not arguing its not a phenomenal game and a definite height of the series that makes many of the future games look like garbage in comparison.
Only that people seem to have placed it in this pedestal of nostalgia and forgotten that its equally flawed as any of them too, and its main flaw is bigger than most.
In most games you would find a Lucky Egg and farm Chanceys or the local EXP goblin. I don't think infinite Rare Candies were a thing after Gen 1 but I also skipped 4-7 so who knows.
And EVs/IVs are a neat idea (different animals having different apititudes from birth or training) that eventually panned out to just be garbage by how defining they are.
Because once the games started trying to be hard, you now had to discard basically your entire team you played the game with because their EVs would be totally screwed up and their IVs also likely poor (on top of their ability and on and on). Even worse is that its not interesting in any way to play with, its purely busy work. Which is why every "serious" played just injects rather than spend the hours making one, even if they pretend they don't.
There is a reason why most Pokemon ripoffs discard the idea. Sometimes its just IVs where a rarer one is purely better but its also obvious that its the better one (Coromon) or just the nature is at play giving that slight customization to their stats. There are a lot of ways to improve on the idea, but Pokemon as a franchise hates changing anything after the Special split. They just add a seasonal "supermove" variant and otherwise it plays exactly the same as it always does regardless of it clearly not being fun.
Frankly, in Gen 1 it serves as a sneaky way to empower the player. Most of the trash you fight will give you speed EVs which leads to your pokemon generally attacking first, which leads to easier farming and just a general feeling of player agency since their pokemon always take the lead during an engagement. Whether or not the inclusion of EVs is a good thing is a matter for further debate, but that's one silver lining I see to them in terms of game design that facilitates players getting to enjoy a bit of power fantasy.