I really wish Heart Gold and Soul Silver would have moved Houndour into Johto. Just have it so you find Growlithe and Houndour in the same spot. One dog for day, one dog for night. It makes so much sense.
Never understood how they had new Pokémon for this gen in Kanto, which is only reachable post game. Like what? Murkrow, houndour, and larvitar all post Pokémon league
True but to alleviate that, Heartgold and Soulsilver give you access to the Safari Zone after you beat Jasmine. The zone has many Kanto and Johto pokemon that you normally cannot get till post game. That includes ones like Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel, Larvitar and Misdreavus
@@aceclover758 I believe you can't find Houndour there until after the Safari Zone has been upgraded, which is still pretty late into the game. I'm not sure exactly how the mechanic works, but according to the Bulbapedia page Houndour is found in the Safari Zone at levels 41-42, which makes me think you still can't have access to it until pretty late. But I did not know that you could find Larvitar there pretty early until you mentioned it and I looked it up. I've been replaying HeartGold and now I need to go do that.
@@marcasieber Okay, so if I just read (and I remember getting Houndour pre E4), you can get it by the upgraded safari zone aka the block system. This is done by completing the Warden’s 2nd challenge of catching a SAndhsrew. He will call you 3 hours after the first challenge is completed. To catch a Sandshrew, you must create a desert area but that is the ONLY area you can create pre E4. Once you do that, then you can use the block system to catch Houndour. Funny thing is you can catch all the new Johto pokemon pre E4 EXCEPT HOUNDOUR without doing the 2nd challenge. Post E4 is to unlock more zones to create and the national dex poke
Thing is, it works well narratively. Rivals from Gen 3 onward are a bit neutered. (Hell, Brendan/May don't even fight you with a fully evolved starter in RSE). In Gen 1, your rival is the main recurring antagonist; even more so than Team Rocket. They don't go anywhere narratively, though. The Gen 2 rival actually changes through the game; they start as an incredibly dark person, and end up learning from you to the point where their final team has a Pokemon that can only evolve through friendship.
@@Ryan-jc3ip It really sucks that every Rival after Gen 2 is like ,,Oooohh we're best friends!! :*'', like, they all have adhd, autism or some other diseases ig. Give us some good rivals. Someone who's not like our friend or anything, give us someone with a personality or a backround which is not only being your friend. Or maybe have that he/she is your friend and turns evil or something like that. I have special hate for Barry and Tali, holy shit are they annoying and like nothing happens with them.
I had forgotten about that, but now remember that I had spent one playthrough catching and breeding a perfect gen 2 team, then sent the babies to a new game file. Started the game with lvl 2 houndour etc. I never finished that run
I always knew they were gen 2 because i grew up with pokemon when it was new and i remember when the celebi movie came out. Those new pokemon were all gen 2, that's how i always remembered it. 2, 3 and 4 actually. But i think 4 was when they had houndoom? Or no? Lol idk it's been a minute since i played anything
When I was a kid I thought Slugma was a gen 3 mon and that it evolves into either Magcargo (I actually didn't know Magcargo even exists at the time) and Torkoal
I love the rant about Unknown, I vividly remember being a kid and catching the entire damn alphabet of Unknown because obviously something cool needs to happen if you collect them all right? I mean the ruins where you catch them is weirdly empty and mysterious, clearly there was some secret to uncover.... No, there was nothing, just wasted time and broken dreams
There's a guy at the research centre next door who, upon catching all of them, allows you to use the game boy printer to print images of them lol But yeah upon seeing the Pokemon movie, I thought Unknown would do some cool stuff with Entei...
Gen 2 is indeed the Worst Generation, this video is so accurate. THE REGULAR POKÉMONS OF GEN 2 ARE GARBAGE/TRASH, That SO MANY GEN 2 POKÉMON GOT NEW PERMANENT EVOLVED FORMS in GEN 4. THAT’S WHY GEN 2 is My Least Favorite Gen, WEAK ROSTER OF POKÉMONS, A BAD STORY/PLOT, A LOT OF NEW UGLY POKÉMONS, BLAND CHARACTERS/GYM LEADERS, WEAK GYM LEADERS, WEAK NPC, They even copied the STARTERS, WEAK STARTERS, ALL GEN 2 STARTERS ARE MONOTYPED, FUCK GEN 2.
@@kerrywien6775 first of all. Tone down the caps lock lol. Secondly, all 3 starters are monotypes, except charizard isn’t monotype, and neither is venusaur, so your point stands for blastoise, even though their specs are almost opposite On that note most fucking starters are monotype. Torchic mudkip and treecko are ALL monotype.
Fun fact: out of the 58 Pokémon used by the 16 gym leaders, only ten of them are Johto Pokémon. That is roughly 17%. If you include the elite four and champion fights, it changes to 19 Johto Pokémon out of 90 Pokémon total, or 21%.
Yeah, the creators had this idea in their head to use none or few of the new Pokémon they designed. No earthly idea why, it's a new generation. I mean, in Gen 3, 4, 5 and even 6, they attempt to put around half a Gym's team (Gym trainers included) as Generation exclusive (new) Pokémon. It'd be so easy to fix. Bugsy? Spinarak line. Falkner? Hoot-Hoot, Murkrow for coverage. Claire? No fixing her when there's a whopping 4 Dragon types total between her and Lance. Morty having nothing but the Gastly line? Why? The only ones done justice are the Normal & Steel Gyms. IMO, we should have gotten rid of the Ice Gym and had a Dark Gym. Umbreon being sadly only real choice for pure Dark. Huge missed chance to make that happen, especially when they put a freaking Psychic E4 member as your first fight of the League! With bulky walls on his team, even worse when you refight him in the remakes!
@@traveller400 cven the steel gym has problems like there is one line that was in gen one that became steel type in gen two and there two of them in the fight, I understand having one to show that magnamite changed its type, but why two?
@@traveller400 If I had to give a reason it’s because gen 2 is the only generation that doesn’t pretend like their new Pokémon have always existed. Lore wise all of the “Johto” Pokémon where discovered within the 3 year timeskip after Gen 1. Jasmine for example has only recently started using the new steel type so recently in fact that her gym is still designed like a rock type gym. Other gym leaders are still using Kanto Pokémon because that was all there was up until recently.
Vs the virgin blue which isn’t even a rude rival. People have this Mandela effect that he’s far meaner than he is but that’s because the anime (who was an actual douche) influenced their view of him. The meanest blue ever is to players in the game is his “smell ya later” line
@@conic2721 I probably shouldn’t get worked up about it as much as I do, it just feels frustrating seeing everyone praise blue in the game for being something that he’s not, he’s genuinely chill with a rad disposition, dude literally calls us bud and wonders if we’re doing ok when he sees you before battles
@@RickyRiceB To be fair, he does leave all the Silph Co. employees at the mercy of a criminal organization. His only concern then was fighting you, so that's pretty douchey.
@@RickyRiceB well I would say. I don’t care if the rival is mean like silver, but what makes Blue better as a rival is because the beginning of Kanto is set up as a race to see who can get the badges first, and he’s always ahead of you and taunting you at every corner. Unlike every other story. Sinnoh was close, but it always felt like the rival in there was trying to be as good as you than you trying to be better than him
@Nick Cruz My Pokémon were around level 50-66 i think basically my Feraligator and my Kadabra killed all his team. But I died in various other attempts.
I always thought Skarmory was a gen 3 pokemon. He shows up once as a wild pokemon after the 8th gym, at like a 5% encounter rate. He's not used by a single trainer in the entire generation. It's not even like he's some kind of pseudo-legendary or something that would justify him being so hidden. It's just a wasted slot in a game that already only has ~100 new pokemon to begin with.
to be honest it was gen 2. it felt magical to find the "secret" und "unusual" bonus pokemon hidden around the game i agree that the gen3+ thing is better, but thats just a decision^^ source: played that shit as a kid and the playground rumors went insane, which was super fun
@@Maric18 Yeah I dunno what people are talking about. These were the days when you would buy magazines with these lists of Pokemon. Steel type was this cool and rare type, kind of like dragon type in gen 1, so you'd see Skarmory on the magazine, scour the entire region for it, and then feel really good about yourself when you found it. A lot of people judging Gen 2 here don't seem to know what it was like to be a kid with just a Gameboy and no internet around the time it released. You didn't play Pokemon to "win", you played it to find Pokemon that looked cool and put them on your team.
There's an easy way to let people challenge gyms in any order without making them all easy: have the leaders maintain multiple teams, and fight you with one based on how many badges you have. I mean, you figure that must be how it actually works in-universe, right?
Right? I wonder how difficult it was to implement scaling based on current badges. I used to think even scaling with levels and all gym leaders/elite-four having a full team of six would have elevated the challenge.
There is a rom hack named Crystal Clear, that actually does exactly that. It's basically open world, you can challenge all 16 gyms at any point, and they all have 16 different teams depending on the order, you chose.
The worst part, even if you don't want to make 8 different teams for each gym leader, you could divide the gym leaders into sets. First Gym leader has one team. Leaders 2,3&4 can be fought in any order, but have 3 teams and stronger than the first gym leader. Leaders 5,6,&7 can be fought in any order but also have 3 teams, stronger than the previous set of leaders. And then you have leader 8 who only has one team but is the strongest team. Maybe he uses Pokémon that aren't his specialized type. in the end, that's only 21 teams (1+9+9+1) you have to think about versus the 64 potential teams (8x8).
I agree and I don't think this would be difficult to implement at all. In theory this would just be a simple condition statement, for example: if(player has 6 badges) set the levels of gym leader ace pokemon to 35. They didn't need to change the team, just the levels. Moveset are irrelevant as all the pokemon had the last 3 moves they learned by level up and the TM the gym leader gives out so you don't need to hard code that just pull the data from the pokemon learnset which I assume is how they did it anyways.
I always thought typhlosion was weaker than Charizard. Really interesting though, i dont think Game Freak expected us to grow up and notice this shit show hahaha.
Typhosion and Charizard have the same stats, Venasaur and Meganium have similar but the Attack and Defense stats are swapped, and Blastoise and Feraligatr have different stats but the BST is the same
the second this video pointed it out, i started theorycrafting a new statline for typhlosion: 70 hp 100 atk 70 def 100 sp atk 80 sp def 115 spd. upgraded to 535 bst from 534 bst (imo all starters should be 535 bst. fun fact: until like, gen 5 the starters never had equal base stats amongst eachother) yep, i desire a nice glass canon who can attack both sides well. :D
@@djroscurro9859 mean...the spread i gae it nerfed it's special attack a tad in favor of aking it really fast and also making it hit pretty well on the physical side of curse stats are the last o typhlosion's concern, have you seen how meh this thing's movepool is?
I'm surprised you never addressed my biggest gripe with gen 2: All the TMs suck. You have to rely on elemental punches with limited distribution for coverage, the only decent fighting-type move is 50% accurate, and all the ones that are _actually good_ are in Kanto. What really pisses me off is that the only way to get Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, and Flamethrower is to waste all your time gambling, and _only_ in Crystal! Oh, and they did my boy Heracross dirty. Why even _make_ it a fighting type if you aren't going to give it any fighting STAB options? All that does is make it weak to the psychic types it would otherwise counter! What, was Megahorn too good? And why does it take until level 54 to learn it??? _AND WHY AM I NOWHERE NEAR THAT LEVEL WHEN I GET TO MOUNT SILVER???_
I feel you I regret playing this one, the level curve is what hurts the game plus you do not get good moves much, the poke walker doesn't help much at all. It feels like Kanto 2.0 , you gamble to get the good stuff and that sucks. Sad that many people like this and didn't see the major flaws and give it 10s for no reason. What the point getting 16 badges anyway? A waste of time.
@@thecrimsonfuckeralucardlor5087 there some good moves with bad accuracy, I stop playing because it feels like a chore to play than having fun. The rival is overrated too, I do not see what so special plus the game not too hard anyway. Why they trying to made red hard but I got the right pokemon to beat him, on level 69 to 74. The concept in pokemon kinda sucks, I do not want to play the new titles i do not want to recapture and trying to capture all pokemon because I can't catch em all.
@@ricardohuff8774 idk I always go for accuracy because if it misses it kills your run. That's why he chose magic leaf over giga drain in kaizo. Rip bartender
My least favorite part about the abysmal level curve is that it’s basically impossible to add a Pokémon to your party past the 3rd gym unless you want to grind for literal hours. Want to add a post-game specific mon to your team like houndour? Have fun leveling it up 40 levels by fighting nothing stronger than level 25 wild Pokémon.
You're not expected to grind. You're just expected to know what you're doing and have the skill to defeat the higher level trainers. Do you genuinely think you're expected to get all your Pokemon to level 80 or something??
@@tonymccurry8621 rock/ground have no clue if that was the cade back during gen 1 but i know it was during gen 2 by playing crystal to death and beyond.
Thank you the game is fucking disgusting to look at. Like the design of the poke balls is grotesque. The color scheme of towns is horrid. Generally not a fun game to play
Yeah, I love Quirlfish, Xatu, Kingdra, Ursaring, Donphan, Scarmory... Pokemondesign is bad, yes sure. I treate the Pokemondesign over Gen 3, my favorite.
As much as I love Gen 2, it definitely has huge issues. You can tell Game Freak wasn't quite sure with how to proceed following the unbelievable success of Gen 1. So they decided to make the newer Pokemon weaker and essentially add a whole second region with Kanto postgame. That's what made Gen 3 so great - they were clearly much more proud of their new mons and the balance curve/pacing was much more thought-out. All that said, Gen 2 has this very unique charm to it that I adore to this day. It feels... esoteric? Spiritual? Very, very Japanese? No other games in the series capture that vibe for me.
do you have any technical knowledge? to get the games running on gameboy still is amazing. they already had working builds in 1997. they took 2 more years to completely redo the games and polish them. that generation is the most defining for pokemon. it introduced not only the special split and breeding but so many small things that kept you playing and adventuring in the game. day and night cycle. a phone to be able to refight trainers. radio and even special events with it. ( special frequencies only having a station on certain parts of the plot ). berries, shinies and so much more. his only "valid" point is that he doesnt like the design.
@@shorewall not sure if youre just trolling or fallen for cognitive dissonance. unvalid points, from the video, i addressed: the games being rushed; games being unpolished; games being overrated.
@@Pacman-9312 There was a video I saw, where someone already had a Dragon Fang. Claire still sent them to the Dragon's Den, to retrieve the dragon's fang. There was some dialog where she notices that the dragon fang, isn't the one from the dragon's den.
@@naganut9718you don't get it because you clearly weren't there. It's one thing to say the game doesn't stand up to the standards and game design of the franchise today, it's another to tell people who played and loved gen 2 when it came out as having rose-tinted glasses because the game is bad. The latter is a bad argument because at the time gen 2 was exactly the type of game players wanted.
@@jprec5174 I don't care if I was there or not. HGSS are some of the most flawed Pokemon games. It barely fix any issues with the original. Whether slow pacing, level curve, lack of plot or climax, lack of good mons, etc. You can love it, doesn't mean I won't say its overrated
Man I REALLY felt that "Starter, Ampharos, Shiny Gyarados" call out at 7:30. Dude just described every Gen 2 team I ever built. Love Gen 2 but this is so true.
weird, I've never actually used an ampharos nor the gyarados. And I only used the starter in like 30% of my playthroughs. But then I'm weird and usually hold out to use a tyranitar for my sixth spot despite it taking literally the entire game to get there.
If we go by looks I'll say Typhlosion all the way, and we both know all the arguing with friends was just an attempt at sounding smarter than simply admitting you picked them because they look cooler. Charizard's a fatass even if he still looks like he could easily squeeze my head into juice, I hate that kind of dragon design.
This is why I loved Black/White 2. They did the whole "reexplore the old region" bit but actually scaled it, so you're on early routes from the previous games that have level 50s wild Pokemon and trainers who you aren't breezing through.
@Nick Cruz But all the pokemon you find in kanto are still only in their 20's. Meaning your forced to only use the pokemon you used in johto on the trainers if you want to have any chance of being anywhere near blue or red.
@Nick Cruz The reason you say you only need 4 is because you never intended to use an HM slave in battle. and thats because of the atrocious level curve in Johto. it's just easier to use 4 pokemon instead of 6. Especially considering the fact they can be 2 free revives/pivots for any battle since you dont care for them. The level curve in Johto is the reason why HM slaves are a thing in the first place.
Yeah it’s good game design but I can’t help but laugh at the fact that preschoolers have higher levels than the champion. The logic isn’t there but at least the level curve isn’t garbage
I remember as a kid i had my friend trade me a larvitar, a scyther holding the metal coat, and a seadra holding a dragon scale at like gym 5 or 6 just so I could use pokemon I wanted to use because everything else was either Gen 1 pokes or they sucked... man I still love Gen 2 but holy shit was it a mess 😔
@jaydenc367 at the time, Heracross didn't have actual good moves until Megahorn...which you get at level 54. Getting Heracross itself is through headbutting trees many times and it's the same for HGSS, but in the remake Heracross gets a improved movepool through TMs or level up. Basically, Gen 4 carried Gen 2 with HGSS since majority of Johto's mons and their movepool suck before the remake.
bc lance in his first battle in hg/ss has 6 pokemon weak to rock and in the rematch 5 (also just gonna bring up the fact that he has no pokemon from the region up until black and white 2 where he gets a kindra)
Watching somebody dunk on Gen 2 is strangely cathartic, because I always feel like it has a lot of issues nobody talks about. The level curve in particular is enough to make me get bored halfway through any given playthrough.
Red Violet I mean I think everybody talks about these very obvious problems in gen2/4. I think something the Pokémon base doesn’t talk about is this very obvious dip in quality between generations. Makes me wonder why PMC is afraid/refuses to truly put the effort in to making a truly great generation of Pokémon that deviates from the general formula that they have while maintaining the spirit of the game.
@@BarnyWaterg8 To be fair, they _did_ try to innovate once. It was Black and White. Whole new region, complete new PokeDex, an actual attempt at proper storytelling, animated sprites, injected difficulty, and a massive boost to what multiplayer was capable of. Problem was twofold. 1. It admittedly wasn't executed as well as it could have, and 2. Fuckin' _everyone_ hated on it within a few months of its release. We bashed the new Mons, criticized the sprites, lambasted the region. Everyone was clamoring for a return to form, and that was the thing. This was genuine innovation, but it went grossly unappreciated and the fandom cried out for the past, in an ironic twist. B2W2 remedied damn near every issue with Unova, built upon the first game, and all without being a cash grab third version. All biases aside, in terms of quantity and quality, B2W2 is up there in the S-tier of Pokemon titles. Unfortunately, it all went down from there. Gen 6 was focused too much on bringing in newbs and pandering to Kanto. Gen 7 was interesting, but really was a bit of a mess in retrospect. Gen 8 is unfocused and rather mediocre. Sure, the direction they took shows a change in their objective (bring in newbs, pander the game to casuals, and improve competitive). While these aren't bad things, it's really rather all over the place. Pokemon really does need to bring back the difficulty option from B2W2. That said, I can't help but think that the original reception to Gen 5 burned Game Freak away from trying to innovate something truly new. TL;DR: Blame the fans' (including me) original reception to Gen 5.
This. Even the gym leader’s Pokemon were weak and had very poor move sets. There are people who bash the newer games for being too easy whilst at the same time praise gen 2 as their favourite gen. It’s all nostalgia.
@@PhoenixBlazer39 Gen 5 is one of my favorite generations to this day, and I've loved it since it first came out. However, it did mark the peak of my interest for these games, and while I play the new games, I have not purchased multiple versions of the same generation since then. Maybe this was the height for me and everything else was downhill. Alola was kinda interesting tho, but kinda lost me in the post game.
@@woollychannel6759 Example of how new Pokemon games hold your hand and think we are dumb babies: In Gen 1 you have the option to catch level 30 snorlax, which is the highest level wild pokemon encounter up until that point. Much later in the game, near Fushia you are given a level 15 Lapras. X&Y reverse this, making the Snorlax you have to catch only level 15, while the Lapras that is given to you is level 30. Also, when you get the ability to megaevolve, they IMMEDIATELY give you a lucario with the mega stone. Gen 6 feels almost insulting in how easy it is.
This is an old video, but I just want to mention: Spinarak/ariados sucked hard back then, but it would have still been better than kakuna on Bugsy's team. Let's switch metapod for pineco too since we are at it. Seriously, why does the 2nd gym leader uses arguably the worst pokemons in the entire game? I understand scyther is busted stat-wise, but metapod and kakuna is just idiotic. They at least had offensive moves though.
Very late but Ledian fits the build better. Ariados has been used by both koga and Janine, not to mention the gym badge Bugsy gave is literally the shape of a ladybug
@Vale Sauce "It's made for kids" is probably one of the worst arguments you can make to defend bad decisions. The only other argument off the top of my head that's worse is, "It's just a game." It's hilarious that you talk about "the pro scene" and esports when a lot of adults do not give any shits about competitive Pokemon. A lot of people just want a good single player experience, and even if people don't analyze the games this much, they still feel that games like gen 2, or the newer Pokemon games, aren't as good as gens 3-5, because the way that the games are designed matters. Your argument is founded on the idea that the games were made for kids, so anyone's criticisms of them don't matter, and it completely falls apart if you decide to rub two brain cells together and come to the conclusion that the argument is stupid and bad. Come up with real arguments instead of filling the comment section with this garbage.
@Vale Sauce i'm honestly glad you had such a great experience with the gen 2 games. However, i don't think the man is nitpicking, his points are valid and not just thrown out there just to be edgy, you can tell he has give the topic a good deal of thinking. That's my take on it, at least. I can't pretend that have thought that much about any of the games i've played (did so until gen 4 and just this year been playing gen 5, but not much).
This is the hardest part about playing older games. Everytime I start playing through, I start thinking I want to do something different than I usually do, use a different Pokemon from a different route. Then as you start leveling them up, you realize how awfully weak they are compared to your starter or the normal standard Pokemon used in playthroughs and their movesets blow. ROM hacks are definitely the way to go with a lot of these older games because they generally fix a lot of the mundane experiences you have playing through the vanilla games and offer more a unique experience from playthrough to playthrough.
gotta play the game as it was actually meant to be played. Not to beat. But to catch them all. That was honestly the theme for the cartoon that kept playing in my head even when playing the game. So...trainers and all that was secondary. I went to fight trainers after I caught a few pokemon. Then switched them around to level them up. and when I went to another area, I restarted that whole routine. And the thing is...there wasn't THAT much to do back then compared to now..so while that seems boring and tedious to do now, that is based on the fact we KNOW that there are more options to do now. Ingame or out in the real world..or more into other virtual worlds. But gen2 was made in a time where the game in front of you was a big piece of your small options in virtual worlds. So..you spend so much time. Try to get a male and female version of each pokemon. try to use one type with certain moves and another of the same type, with yet different moves. Can't do much different with supermario 3 either, but if you go back to that mindset...you still have fun. Can't play the games of yesteryears with tomorrowyear's mindset. gotta just enjoy yesteryear's mindset
That cow was the bane of my existence in Pokemon gold. It took me forever to get passed Whitney and her heffer nightmare continually using rollout. I didn't have the guidebook as the game had just came out and got it for Christmas. I was not aware you could trade for a machop until well after I finally beat her
@@Ginraboy Or you could just do sand attacks on it, or get a geodude.. you could even have a Donphan that early in the game (phanpy in route 46, iirc, where the spearows were), and defense curl/rollout her ass with karma. But yeah, I also hated Whitney as a kid, lol.
My biggest problem with Gen 2 is the evo stones. You basically beat 8-11 gyms just to get a fire stone. I remember replaying Silver with a vulpix and having it unevolved up until you make it to Bills house in fucking kanto where you get the stone.
That problem was solved in HgSS, you can get all the stones at the Pokeathlon domain at each specific day of the week. On top of that playing Pokeathlon was actually fun unlike Voltorb balst..
Thats the same I felt listening to this. First, instantly donvoted, second, at least took away the downvote. I mean, even if its nostalgia only, I have really fun memorys of this gen. And on the boring side, I think so many of the new Pokemon have such a boring and/or stupid design, no matter how usefull they may be, I just cant take it seriously. But I totaly see his points.
I feel like with Unown they could've done a wishiwashi type of thing. In the movie it showed how when tons of Unown came together they could do amazing things, and they could've done that with the games.
@@pikarick8354 I mean, in keeping with the movie, rather than Entei being a roaming legendary, if you got enough Unown, there should have been milestones where you got each of the 3 dogs. Imagine how cool it would feel, if you caught another letter of Unown, and you see a mini cutscene where they all swarm around and Entei comes forth
I was thinking about what if they did some special moves that are unown only. like letters appear saying "BOOST", before they all glow and boost one of your stats. or letters appear saying "ATTACK", before they ram into the opponent's pokemon, damaging them. Mega could even be a glowing version of your unown surrounded by all 28 versions of unown, spinning around them or something like that. So much wasted potential with them
It would have been such a cool Pokemon boss to have a hive of Unknown or to just have them partake in any secret. Why the hell is there not a ritual thing like the Regi's have but with the Unknown?
I feel like HGSS ruined Giovanni by having him try to return. For the longest time, I always assumed Giovanni never showed up because after losing to Red, he knew that trying to brute force his way with power was the wrong decision. He sees remnants of his old team and he's ashamed because they're a desperate collection of grunts who are looking for him, and he sees himself in them, and he doesn't acknowledge them. But Celebi showing you that Giovanni tried to return to power ruined that sentiment. Also, why does a mythical pokemon give a fuck about what the mob is doing?
The fact that you don’t see a single Tyranitar (the strongest non legendary new Pokémon) in the whole game really says it all. I didn’t even know it existed for months 😰
Wait, are you serious about that? You'd think Red or Blue would have one (Blue does get a Tyranitar later on in FRLG and HGSS rematches, funnily enough)
I know the feeling. I played Gen 3 more than I did 1 or 2, so I didn’t know that some of the Pokémon existed that early on. Legit thought that Skarmory was a gen 3 Pokémon and that Murkrow was a gen 4.
“So these are the last Pokémon games, Gold and Sliver?” “Yes, they are.” “I guess the only ghost type Pokémon are Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar, right?” “No, there’s Misdreavus too.” “What? Where can you find it?” “You can only find it on Mount Silver.” “That’s a bit strange for a new ghost type only being found in Kanto after you get all 16 gym badges, but I didn’t find it on Mount Silver.” “It’s only found at night time.” “W-Why?” “And it’s nowhere near as strong as the other ghost types, so it’s not even worth it. Yep, that’s the only new ghost type added! Great idea!”
"We're going to create a whole new type (Dark) to nerf the Alakazam line, but only two of them are good and one's an Eeveelution while the other one isn't available until the postgame, and we're going to make dark moves special while making almost all dark type pokemon physical attackers"
Gen 2 is indeed the Worst Generation, this video is so accurate. THE REGULAR POKÉMONS OF GEN 2 ARE GARBAGE/TRASH, That SO MANY GEN 2 POKÉMON GOT NEW PERMANENT EVOLVED FORMS in GEN 4. THAT’S WHY GEN 2 is My Least Favorite Gen, WEAK ROSTER OF POKÉMONS, A BAD STORY/PLOT, A LOT OF NEW UGLY POKÉMONS, BLAND CHARACTERS/GYM LEADERS, WEAK GYM LEADERS, WEAK NPC, They even copied the STARTERS, WEAK STARTERS, ALL GEN 2 STARTERS ARE MONOTYPED, FUCK GEN 2.
@@kerrywien6775 Uh, the video is sorta right but you are mostly wrong. The gen in pokémon 2 aren't exactly garbage, and the reason they are fewer is because you have the pokémon from gen 1 included as well. Some of them have decent stats, it's not like other regions have an overall greater number of pokémon with better stats when compared to Johto's. Kanto pokémon also had many evolves forms in gen 4, like Electivire, Magmortar, Rhyperior, Tangrowth and Magneton. Mostly from Kanto, guess you're wrong huh. Dunno how the starters are copies but alright I guess. Also, Feraligatr is probably twice as better as Blastoise. Rest is acceptable, true.
@@fistofram5526 Agreed, though I’d still venture to guess Johto Pokemon are overall worse than any other region. There are simply far too many Pokemon that just don’t really do much functionally. Lower stats, nothing to make them stand out, or both. Legendaries aside, there’re like 5 *good* Pokemon, an okay amount of somewhat passable Pokemon, and a larger amount of downgrades/terrible Pokemon. The amount of passable Pokemon cuts down by over half if you consider them before buffs in future gens.
Another thing that bugs me about the Gen 2 national dex is that it's not really in 'order'. Usually they're in order of the route or area you would usually encounter them; this is easier to see in later dexes, even in Hoenn. Meanwhile, you got Scizor somewhere in the middle, despite Bugsy having Scyther, and Chinchou/Lanturn fairly near the start. It's just complete chaos.
i think the “nonlinear” problem could’ve been solved by adjusting gym leader levels and maybe adding a pokemon or two to their teams based off the order you fight them
They'd need some kind of AI check and separate code depending on what you choose. With how crammed in everything was, I highly doubt they could have fit it in for Gen 2. Gen 4, however. There was no excuse to make massive improvements and they just... didn't.
There's actually a rom hack that does just that, you can fight any gym leader in any order, and trainers and gym leaders get stronger and get new teams with each badge you get
@@poliorice3600 crystal clear right? I like crystal clear, but they didnt get to fully add modern features like physical special split because they want it to be compatible with the pokemon stadium games which I find really niche
@@soggywater7271 My biggest issue with Crystal Clear personally was how quickly the levels seemed to increase after every gym. Maybe I did something wrong but I would always be like 10 levels under the bosses. Probably because there were no Rocket events which gives out a decent amount of EXP.
Eh, it’s just a "nerd shit" type problem. Almost everyone playing the game for the first time did not know or care. The Typhlosion line (alone with the all the Johto starters) is fucking dope.
Exp in this game can CERTAINLY be a slog. It is more grind worthy compared to later games, and it taught me to make efforts to use more than 6 Pokémon. I don’t think there was a single Pokémon I didn’t swap out the box for at some point or another until like Clair. And even then it was only like Skarmory and Quagsire for a bit. I made sure to level up my team and I went to and revisited EVERY area. I am so glad I did. Some of the best Pokémon I got were on repeat visits to old areas.
RPGs are like a quimic formula. Screw up one number and you can change the entire thing. The developers should pay attention to all things to make the game balance. It doesnt seem to be the case with Gen 2.
@Nick Cruz In GSC Ampharos can simply use Thunderpunch which is not physical yet. Very easy access to elemental punches is one of the good things of GSC if you want to do a short and quick playthrough of gen 2.
"Ampharos is on everyone's team, great pokemon" except for like 10 year old me who only had crystal version and no trade cable. How is Ampharos not available in Pokemon crystal when it was in both gold version and silver version with nothing anywhere near as good available as a replacement for it. What my 10 year old self did is I ended up buying the Thunder Punch TM and then seeing what pokemon I had that could learn it. I saw that typhlosion could so Typhlosion ended up being my electric type pokemon even though he isn't an electric type...
Emerald tried similar stuff with Roselia, Medicham, and the version exclusive Zangoose and Lunatone, and Platinum just got rid of every DP version exclusive, save for the fossils, who are now based on Trainer ID. None of these sting nearly as much as Ampharos's removal though. I don't know why they would just get rid of one of the few good Pokemon in the entire game, except maybe to incentivise trading
Yeah, electric types didn't get much love in that gen, that was pretty sad. And when you see that the champion has a Gyarados on his team it gets even worse.
I only played gen2 once and with a bug-only team: made the mistake of getting heracross which made it too easy. REALLY enjoyed having ledian as an opener with no attacks and just buffing and baton passing though
Just a small nitpick really, but can we talk about Chikorita in Gen 2? Chikorita has a good matchup against Chuck's Poliwrath, and Will's Slowbro. That's it. The entire game, those are the only two notable pokemon Chikorita has a good matchup against. Bruno's Onix if you count it. On the other hand, Chikorita is at a disadvantage against Faulkner, Bugsy, Morty, Clair, literally every pokemon on the Rival's team, some of Pryce and Jasmine's pokemon, all of Team Rocket, Koga, and Lance. I probably forgot something. Who looked at that, and decided it was okay?
I think the gym types were purely chosen so as not to overlap with the Kanto ones. Clearly no one actually took a step back to see the problem for poor chikorita. There is literally no reason to use it.
@@woollychannel6759 There is one reason. It's the cutest little dickens of 'em all, and since Meganium is worthless too, there's no incentive to evolve it.
The Chikorita line is my favorite starter line in Gen 2, largely because of a Nuzlocke I saw of Soul Silver. The players chose their starter by their trainer ID number, got stuck with Chikorita, which was the last thing they wanted, named it Mr Stake because they originally wanted to name it Misstake until they saw it was a guy, and that stubborn bastard survived the entire Nuzlocke despite them constantly trying to kill it by putting it in situations where it really should've died. By the end, they loved it so much that one of them even named their dog after it. If it weren't for Mr Stake, I would hate all the gen 2 starters equally and think they were all irredeemably awful.
Another cool thing is to give each unown access to all moves that start with their letter. It'd be silly but fun! The S unown could learn Surf, Slash, etc
Very accurate. Gen 4 cemented how the pokemon games worked going forward. It's like going through middle school (gen 1), high school (gen 2), and college (gen 3) before you finally find who you are as an adult (gen 4). Yeah you still change a little as time passes but you're identity and who you see yourself as remains firm. It just Pokemon 4 generations to find themselves
@@MLGProMaster-tu9tz Gen 6 is when you have your midlife crisis and start trying out increasingly embarassing hobbies like temporary evolutions, special one-use moves, and inevitably becoming obese.
Gen 3 added the accretion problem. The national Dex fiasco of Gen VIII happened because Gen 3 set the precedent that you could get all the Pokemon that exist. This ultimately meant that they were severely limiting future design space for the franchise. Gen 3 was worse for the franchise than Gen 2.
Fun fact : the other johto starters stats are the kanto starters stats, except shuffled. Like it was just too hard for them to create 9 new stat spreads. That's 54 whole numbers they had to come up with. LITTERALLY 54 bytes of data.
@@adswers6900 What did I get wrong ? Afaik, the value of a pokemon stat is an integer between 0 and 255, ie 1 byte / 8 bits. You can quantify how much information the johto starter's stats represent when your prior knowldege is that a pokemon has all its stats between 0 and 255, and it's 54 bytes. I'm not claiming that it would've been easy to change it on the cartridge because I indeed have no clue about how these games are programmed - but no matter how you look at it, the information contained in a set of 54 numbers between 0 and 255 is (at most) 54 bytes of data, and that's quantifyably not much to come up with. I'm also assuming that, having 251 mons in the game, there exists some sort of "blank template" (the equivalent of a class in OOP) for a pokemon species, where you can just specify some stuff like typing or base stats to ease the process of implementing mons, but I might be very wrong here and would be very interested to learn how it actually works.
@@thsand5032 "It was just too hard for them to create 9 new stat spreads. That's 54 whole numbers they had to come up with. LITTERALLY 54 bytes of data." every pokemon contains 32 bytes of data in gen 2. to say they couldnt come up with 54 special bytes. while adding 3,2 kb of uniqe pokemon data, seems quite ridiculous. what do you mean by "blank template"? they have done great work with their compression of the data however, you can call every individual pokemon species. all of them are stored in rom, possibly through compressing algorithm.
@@adswers6900 That was my exact point. I was wondering why they chose the admittedly lazy "shuffle the stats" solution, for the starters of all pokemon, when they actually went through the trouble of creating brand new stats spreads for other, less important mons. By "blank template", I mean an equivalent to a class in OOP.
The fact you can only catch Houndour in one specific spot after 11 bloody badges is actually ridiculous, I don't get why some Pokemon are like that, so rare/late that they're just unpractical to use on a play through, Nuzlocke or not.
Because Pokémon, at this time, was about collecting. Battling wasn't the primary goal. Catching and raising were. At least that's my opinion on the matter.
@@lennyward7662 Pokemon isnt something like monster rancher or Tamagotchi. Bredding and so on is there but isnt the focus of the game. The game expects you to do battles to progress and this is something you would do most of the game.
@@lennyward7662 When they come out with a new gen, with new pokemon, LET ME CATCH THE NEW POKEMON AND PLAY WITH THEM!!! :D I cannot believe they gated the new pokemon, and in Kanto, of all places! They should have leaned towards gating the old gen pokemon and forcing you to use the new pokemon.
So true. I wanted to play the old gen games since my first gen was gen 5 and favorite mons were T-tar and Bisharp, I was so excited to get t-tar in crystal but when I realized I had to beat literally 95% of the game to get it was just absolutely absurd to me.
Especially when you consider that you can catch growlithe in that spot in gen 1... it would have been cool to just keep growlithe there and have houndour available around the 4th gym in johto... would have made a lot more sense
"Everyone has a starter, Ampharos and shiny Gyarados". I played Gold YEARS ago all the way, beat Red and I'm blown away about how accurate that is. I literally only remember those as my roster (And Gyarados took until he said 'go east for red gyarados'). And I suppose Ho-oh in end-game despite already having a fire type.
LOL I ohko’d my shiny gyarados with a crit from luxray, I totally forgot type advantages for a moment there. I also hadn’t saved in 5 hours of playing, so just accepted my fate
@@thescoobyshuffle9244 masuda’s boner for the number 151 was so dumb in this generation. Cutting out a lot of necessary variety for the sake of being faithful to gen 1’s pokedex total.
Most of Gen 2's problems especially the story and the sense of progression was fixed, made better, and moded by Drayano through Sacred Gold and Storm Silver. It's what Heart Gold and Soul Silver could've been. Even in the Goldenrod event, you get to actually fight Giovanni after defeating the sub-leader in Team Rocket. Drayano also buffs weaker 'mons in his rom hacks and they become useable. That's why I love his rom hacks and this is why the rom hacking community is important: they bring out the best in every previous Pokemon games out there.
Legit half the reason SGSS is such an amazing rom hack is making the level curve actually good, and making it so you actually can use so many mons. Like it’s clinically insane that the evolution stones were exclusive to postgame, the evolution items as well, and drayano makes that actually usable, even freaking Sunflora is really good now, sunflora
TL;DR: (slightly paraphrasing) 1. A significant chunk of the Gen 2 Pokemon are weaker than gen 1, stats-wise. So much so that new Gym Leaders still use primarily Gen 1 Pokemon, not the new ones. 2. A lot of the new Pokemon have weird evolution restrictions. (Friendship, evolution items only available post game) 3. There isn't a lot of "new" Pokemon to get hyped about using in a new game. Everyone defaults to using Ampharos, Gyrados, and their starter because the rest aren't very good. 4. A lot of the wild Pokemon/trainers/gym leaders are underleveled. 5. The game feels unpolished because it was quickly chruned out. (New names are dumb, stats of new starters are copied from Gen 1, possibly because this was supposed to be the "last" Pokemon game) 6. 2nd half is "non-linear" so the 2nd half isn't as challenging. 7. 2nd half story has no impact. No buildup or progression beyond "After the 7th Gym, the bad guys from the first game returned!" 8. The ending to the rocket storyline is a bit of an anti-climax. "We want Giovanni to reappear!" And then he doesn't. 9. Pacing slows everything down (Phone calls, lack of a bike for a long time, lots of "caves" and nothing else) 10. Kanto is there... But nothing feels like it's changed. Wasted potential.
i honestly dont like argument 3 (and the first half of argument 1) because it just feels like it can apply to gen 1, and even gen 3 to some extent. you can literally buy a magikarp right at the beginning of the game and no other gen 1 water option is gonna outclass that. theres so many pokemon in gen 1 like that. things like abilities and hold items would change this, but look at gen 1 stats and movesets. arbok? sandslash? parasect? flareon? onix? Golbat??? why even bother? and if we want to reverse that style of thinking, plenty of gen 2 pokemon are prefectly serviceable. quagsire is water/ground. there's *nothing* wrong with donphan. heracross' attack stat is great. crobat is just flat out good. the only thing houndoom ever did wrong is being such a late encounter. and girafarig isn't some super optimal pokemon, but its perfectly capable of doing anything johto is gonna ask of it with what it has. and thats another point in and of itself. gen 2 asks *nothing* of you. the pokemon don't even need to be good, a casual isn't gonna have a difficult time taking a noctowl all the way from the first patch of grass to the elite four, and most kanto gyms don't ramp up too hard. claire is the only gym leader in the all of johto who is likely to present any challenge if you just go in with whatever. gen 2 pokemon being worse on average is a problem on paper that shouldn't have happened, but its not a problem in execution and no one who is just playing the game blindly or casually is gonna be hindered.
@@Namingway248 What is more this whole argument is purely based on powercreep of gen4 and gen5...Gen 1 to Gen 3 pokemon pale in comparison to the raw stat power of the next gens up to 7.Yeah gen2 mons are slow and mostly unviable NOW(except from some that got better in next gens),and that charizard-Tymphlosion comparison proves he has got a point but for the metagame of their games,they were totally fine. I can get why he doesnt like the games as speedrunner now,when he can speedrun another faster better more interesting gen but his 3rd argument is not his best one.
My problems with Gen 2 1- Game Freak was lazy making gen 2, the argument "They wanted to be the last game" is bad because you are saying that just because is the last game they can make of anyway 2 - They could explore more Silver, he could be more cool and memorable like he wanting the control of Team Rocket and speaking of Team Rocket 3 - Their goals are dumb, in the First game was understable because...they are basicaly mafia wanting Power, and Giovanni clearly abandon Team Rocket for her guilt and he want to redenm himself 4 - Kanto is placed of unatural way making this be forced
I understand why people hate on my boi Sunkern, but that mofo has saved a nuzlocke in black and white two for me, and solo'd the poison gym. I am the only person alive that know's the power of sunkern/sunflora.
@@roccopiosaracino3681 that idk I feel like it was more for either popular or really bad Pokémon in older generations that were starting to get overshadowed by newer ones
The real problem, to me, is hardware limitations. Most of the problems, stem from. Them letting Kanto in also, and as a result, the rest of the game suffered. Oh and the leveling is insanely bad. Like what were they thinking? The champion has a lvl 50 ace dude Jesus. It was 65 in gen 1
it’s that low because you have to complete an entirely new region after and the trainers you fight before have a high level of like 40. lances leve 50 deagonite is an equivalent to blues 65 based on the level curves
@@Alhalmeya No. Even if the Champion has Level 60 Pokemon, they still can do a lot. Make the Gym Leaders have Level 60-70 Pokemon, then the rematch Champion Level 80, then Red level 95.
I mean level 40-40’s is the level the player would be around at that point. Giving him a level 65 dragonite would’ve just made people complain more about grinding.
@@benshapiroscrustyass1402that champion's team is so hilariously bad. Dude has _three of the same pokémon_ in order to fill up spots on his team, then three Pokémon that aren't even dragon type. He doesn't even use the only dragon type that was introduced in that gen, because the 8th gym leader already uses a Kingdra as her ace. For some reason they wanted a dragon type gym *and* a dragon type champion in a game where there are only two fully evolved dragon types. This is the result we got. Imagine having *Lance* as a final boss in your game. By far the lamest champion in the series, even compared to Diantha.
Team Rocket's end goal in Gold and Silver was to re-establish team rocket as the power house it was before. I felt like this was really clear. Red defeats team rocket, Gold disrupts their return to power. One of the major themes in Gold and Silver is escaping the shadows of the heroes that came before you. It's why the game cumulates into a final showdown between Gold the current protagonist and Red, the protagonist of yesteryear.
The problem he's pointing out is that the final battle didn't feel satisfying at all. There were two ways of fixing it: 1-Giovanni really returns and you fight him, completely crushing the attempt of returning. 2-Silver decides to take over Giovanni's place as the head of Team Rocket. Instead you defeat a random admin with 3 Pokemon that's it. Your build up for a final battle goes nowhere.
@@doctorplague6967 but that's the point though. there wasn't a megalomaniacal leader. Team rockets attempt to rise again wasn't top down. It was intentionally decentralised. If it wasn't it would've just undermined Red's accomplishment. Red wouldn't have been the guy that defeated team rocket, he would have been a guy who put a dent in their oppression. The final battle wasn't against the tree admin, it was against Red. It was a battle between the guy who destroyed team rocket, and the guy who prevented the return of team rocket. If Team rocket had a Giovani figure in gold and silver, then it would have been a battle between Red, the guy who thought he destroyed team rocket but actually didn't, and the guy who actually destroyed team rocket.
Personally I was never able to play the Celebi event in HG/SS. It was my first pokemon game and I loved it. I never knew the point of the rival though. I expected Ethan to be my Rival. It's always your neighbor, right? So what's the deal with the red head? Years later I now know, if you got the event Celebi you learn that Silver is Giovannis son. I never learned that until I watched the TV show "Pokemon Generations" a few weeks ago. Literally 10 years after I played that game for the first time. Why wasn't this more of a story point in the games? Team Rocket learning that Silver is the son, trying to "convert" him. He isn't too far off from Rockets. He stole his first Pokemon after all.
@@miwestraveler3986 but for people who never played the originals it's still kinda weird. at least it was for me. I've always only heard of the games and only knew that in red/blue your neighbor is the rival. and even with your point, you could have made him more interesting. for me personally, silver was just a boring and annoying person with 0 back story when I played it back in the days. it was my first game and I had no associations with him at all. N from black/white was completely differen ie. he had a story, character development etc. but I guess that's more the fault of rushed gold/silver versions when they were first released. I heard they didn't really take time to think the game through and never expected to make more games after that.
You've expressed my frustration with this generation of Pokemon. Johto feels so incomplete with a lackluster story (I gotta ask what even was the point of Lugia and Ho-oh being here?) and very little representation of the region because many of the Pokemon introduced in this generation don't appear until the late game or are in Kanto.
@keepitsecret-dl1pr Oh look, another "if it wasn't for x we wouldn't have y" argument. Pretty sure we would still have Pokemon even without the gen 2 games considering the fact that Pokemon was already insanely popular when it released. Kindly shut your mouth
@keepitsecret-dl1pr Honestly I’d rather have an actual Johto region than a soulless husk of both Kanto and Johto. The existence of Kanto is a cancer to the GSC games. Neat technical feat but that doesn’t equate to good game design bozo
really hurts looking back at the Johto Dex in its original state like that; most of the Pokémon in Gen II that we usually look back fondly on only _became_ cool later when they received good Abilities, better movepools, and/or evolutionary lines
Yep I went back and played Crystal a few months ago and couldn’t even finish past the 4th gym. Got bored and was trying so hard to come up with a decent team and I just couldn’t do it. The variety is terrible
gen 2 was just weak with it's casting.of pokemon and characters. This happened as a result of the nature of the game with being more a expansion of gen 1's characters and story rather then it doing it's own thing. Anyways let's start with pokemon. lugia and ho oh are legendries made to tie together with moltress and the other two birds being creations of lugia with he himself being related in some way to ho-oh. With the pokemon movie making mewtwo as iconic as he became. The birds fell to the wayside so their lore and background kinda became uninteresting compared to others at that time. I mean even cubone has more interest with his backstory of losing his mother and wearing her skull I guess you could over teams. Team rocket has always been muahaha conquer the world type villains. It's why the anime takes them as jokes compared to other teams like team galactic and magma who have actual goals and reasons for their villainy. Wanting to bring giovaini back was fine ig but with an already brand goal and general character, it's no wonder why the anime chose not to adapt that bit
The only thing exciting about starting a new gen 2 game is (if you’re playing crystal) getting something cool from the odd egg at the day care. I remember I played one game where I got a shiny Elekid from it. It was super cool considering it was before the 3rd gym and there is no other way to get Electabuzz before the post game without trading. Unfortunately, I lost it because of that god damn internal battery…..
As soon you started ranting about Typhlosion, my favorite Pokemon, and got to the stats, it wasn't anger that I felt, it was joy. I legitimately thought I was the only one who noticed that.
He is the first one that I saw talking about the stats of the typhlosion line, and I felt in the same way as you, happy to see that I am not the only one :)
Charizard's flying typing gives it more utility than weaknesses. Unfortunately there aren't many reasons to choose typhlosion over charizard, even though I love typhlosion too.
I don't see what the problem with that is? It's not like they just copy-pasted the pokemon, it has a different type and movepool. And he was just complaining about how all the stats suck, and then shows a pokemon with the exact same stats as fucking Charizard.
Looking back, I never realized how this generation was pretty much held back to due to relying too much on nostalgia. Most of the Gen 2 Pokemon felt like junk rares and are overshadowed by those from Gen 1. It's pretty much why Game Freak almost wiped the slate clean when developing Ruby and Sapphire.
About wiping the slate clean, I think that's mostly because gen 1 and 2 had too many bugs, you could spawn Mew with glitches and duplicate items too easily. They had to prevent transfers from gen 2. Funny how a duplication glitch slipped through the cracks anyway in Emerald, so we can dupe pokemon one at a time, or as many items as your total number of pokemon in PC at a time, so we still have infinite master balls shippable to all future gens. But at least we can't just perform a glitch to spawn any pokemon we want - just a shame they never found a way to prevent rom hacks from doing exactly that.
@keepitsecret-dl1pr You are aware sales don’t equal good right? Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are broken to high heaven but they sold really well. Mario All Stars was lambasted for their “limited release” practice, but that sold. Persona games consistently get updated versions years later but those vanilla versions still sold. Hell, look at the anime arena fighters everyone agrees is bad, the only flop was Jump Force.
"Typhlosion is a pretty cool Pokemon, right? Pretty cool." Pause at 9:24 "Do not use this Pokemon with the intent of winning games." Sorry, I had to LOL at that.
The gen 2 starters got some of the least new things as new gens came out. Look at how amazing venusaur’s move set is now. rip meganium, you never stood a chance.
@@josephsquires5883 it's been a long time but at least when I was a kid miltank was one I still remember being annoying to beat but so was steelix now that I think of it..
The problem with gen 2 Pokemon for me is that most of them are forgettable or some I thought were from other gens . Mostly gen 1 or gen 3 . For example slugma for the longest time I thought it was from gen 3
The fact that Houndoom and Tyranitar aren’t even accessible til the post game always rubbed me the wrong way. Why are the Pokemon native to Johto, not in fucking Johto?
My biggest thing was the leveling. I do not get their logic about needing lower levels just cuz there is a whole other region Just have the levels keep raising, that’s all. Not that complicated. Like Kanto should’ve had gym leaders at lv 50 and trainers in the low 40s Mt.Silver should’ve had Pokemon at minimum, lv 50 and go up to 65 like Unknown Dungeon did.
@@Dragonite43 If anything, Kanto shouldve been that way. I can see some areas like Johto remaining the same due to needing to grind lower level pokemon But I feel post game, certain areas or floors in dungeons pre E4 should be replaced with higher leveled pokemon Example: Post E4, Tin Tower, the top floors and the lowest floors of Whirl Islands can replaced with level 40+ pokemon. MT.Silver has higher levels in Crystal but it still shouldve been lv 50 minimum.
Honestly I always say Gen 2 was my favorite from nostalgia. That moment of opening up my map to see that I was in Kanto was one of my favorite moments in gaming as a bright eyed young lad. That being said, I can’t really argue with most of your points here lmao and I remember being SO disappointed when I couldn’t get into Cerulean Cave to catch Mewtwo. It felt so wrong, and at least they got that right on the remakes.
One option would be to give each gym leader 8 unique teams so that they would scale appropriately regardless of which order you battle them in. Canonically, we know that each gym leader matches the level of their pokemon to something appropriate for the challenger (at least according to the anime). Obviously, this wasn't feasible for this game with the technology at the time (I suppose)
Is not impossible, literally is as easy as making a checklist. Besides, level scaling is not the only way to solve the problem. Just do it like Gen 1. Try to predict more or less the levels of the Pokemons the players would have at that point. Gen 2 doesnt even do this right.
I'll give him that he at least tries to construct well based arguments (unlike most opinion pieces I've seen in the different RUclips fandoms). However, I found that some of his arguments are based on pure subjectivity. For example, him finding the team rocket conflict or some dungeons in the game being boring. Another thing that bothered me a bit is that he used subsequent games as a standard to measure an old game (which he did mostly when talking about the story and pacing but he did for other aspects as well). It's like comparing a rotary phone to a smart phone and calling it trash for not doing the things a smart phone can do. I could go on and be way more specific but this comment will be way too long. I will say, his most compelling argument lies in the new addition of pokemon, their stats and when can you get them. Also, small side note, I didn't like how he just said "leave the hate comments that I won't read and dislike the vid to raise the engagement" I get that hate comments can get annoying and excesive in this platform but it seemed like he said it to also dismiss any good critizims as well? I dunno, I don't think people would leave as much dislikes on the vid if he didn't present his arguments with the demenor of a RUclips critic that calls everything bad.
@@danieldsantiagorodriguez4955 his 2 main objectively stated arguments are the Pokemon and Pacing. For this, hes right. the Pokemon in terms of stats and usability were for the most part absolute garbage, and the pacing was also garbage. These are indisputable facts which then tie in to every other argument. While some of his point are quite subjective, the fact he can even make a case for so many of these points and for the community (not just his simp army) to be split on whether hes right or not proves that his points have at least some merit. Theres alot of people wearing nostalgia glasses when talking about gen 2 because of it being the first in color, Stadium 2 being an absolute banger of a Stadium game, and Gen 2 being much longer than most in the series. But, once you really break the game down and compare it to gen 1 and gen 3 specifically in terms of pokemon stats, level curve, and pacing, you realize that gen 2 was ok for its time but now that we have a ton of games to compare it to, has to be considered a bottom 3 gen AT BEST.
@@danieldsantiagorodriguez4955 the pokemon were problematic even in comparison to gen 1, and the team rocket arc in gen 1 culminated in fighting Giovanni in his gym. The problems were still there, technically speaking.
@@TheDieseI one must consider pacing is a common issue in Pokémon games be it from levels or story progression. At least you can start your backtracking post fly in jhoto. Sinnoh you get to start backtracking after one badge woohoo for garbage map designs it’s a pretty consistent Issue surprisingly. Jhoto does place it’s mons the worst of any game though.
In all honesty, after replaying the remakes and playing the originals, everything stated in this video couldn't be anymore true. The only bit of story i really got from the game was the Rivals character development. Its so slow and boring and its just a journey from point A to B with Kanto being bonus fodder. Which is probably why Gen 5 is my fav by far, even if Black and White had its own issues in terms of content that Black and White 2 had to make up for.
Even worse, it's a journey from point A to point B, where you can go to A1, A2, A3, etc. In any order, and the game won't change in difficulty to Acknowledge how much you've done
@@VelvetIcematoro it was fun for it's time. Judging it now, based on what's happening now makes no sense. That's like judging mario 64 when we have games like Just Cause.
I have a friend that keeps saying "Gen 2 has the best post-game, they somehow managed to add 2 whole regions for you to explore" when in reality the reason they managed to add Kanto was because Johto was so barebones in innovation that they had to fill the rest of the cartridge with a copy paste
Back then when it came out. Gen 2 was amazing and so much fun to play and it was the right move. It brought to the fans what they wanted and then they were able to branch out more in Gen 3 with the revenue it brought them.
@@jprec5174 Damn, it's crazy that your anecdotal experience doesn't speak for everyone. Definitely untrue that "everyone" liked G/S on release. It was a bigger Gen. 1, but so much of it was just re-hashed with worse scaling. I could see loving it if you hadn't played any other RPG though.
I did a no evolutions challenge in these games, where I only used pokemon that had no evolutions and were newly added, and I think it speaks for itself how weirdly natural it felt to play johto like that, there are just so many pokemon in those games that never evolve and you get them at a rate that honestly feels natural. And this is 100% a bad thing, your weird niche pokemon shouldn’t be easier to get then normal ones and they absolutely shouldn’t be easier to use. I had Dunsparce which you can get immediately in dark cave, quilfish which you can fish up during a swarm, heracross obviously, and boom you already have a decent team just after the second badge. Compare that to… idk, crobat? Ariados? Pineco?? Besides your starter and wooper if you didn’t pick totodile you don’t get anything good.
Crobat is likely the best pokemon of gen 2 aside from Ampharos. Yeah, it's a glass cannon, but it will take down half of the mons before they even touch him
I've been trying to get a Qwilfish swarm for my entire mono-water playthrough and I still have yet to get it. Hopefully it shows up while I start breeding for shinies because Intimidate Qwilfish is super cool in later games
I have never used a Houndoom in a playthrough and I thought that in the generation it was introduced, it would be easily acessable. What’s the deal with Game Freak and fire types?
@@mysteryman9488 same with Murkrow, which is found on the same route as Houndour and Slugma, which is only found on cycling road. It was so stupid. And really, those three are not considered the “best” or “strong” poke compared to many others at thaT time
@@aceclover758 Those should have been early game pokemon. Its stupid to think GF expected players to use those pokemon in late game when you've already become a champion and have a strong fully evolved team.
I started playing gen 2 a few days ago and I was literally ranting about not finding any gen 2 Pokemon in the wild/ in gym battles to my friend. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels that way lol
How to play Gen 2: 1. Use your starter 2. Ampharos 3. Gyarados 4. Finish the game Edit 1: Wasn't Feraligatr kept without the 'o' because the game couldn't keep the characters above 10? Edit 2: Typhlosion done dirty
Pro tip. Dump your starter dafter the 6th Gym. Meganium is vastly outclassed by be Victribell line and Feraligatr is just worse Gyrados. And after the steel type Gym fire types do nothing
@@rocketeer9183 so I made a rom hack on heart gold and made most of the version exclusives available while buffing mons like butterfree beedrill ledian ariados delcatty and chatot And I kinda fixed ledian (I don't remember what stats I changed) but I remember I gave ariados base 120 attack and better bulk and gave ledian around 40 or more attack which turns its attack to around 75 I think and I buffed the gym leaders, rocket executives and the elite 4 and champion (its pretty hard just below kaizo level since falkner has 5 pokemon which are all buffed namely pidgeotto noctowl which is buffed hard natu swablu and delibird all of which got buffed also noctowl has substitute nasty plot razor wind and air slash ;) )
@@axlr8deathpls294 is it a fan game entirely or just a rom hack? was wondering if anyone would be interested in a fan game I'm working on with someone.
@@outtaideas849 Gen5 was super good, yeah it has a ton of flaws like most Gens but Gen5 was great overall. WAAAY better than Gen2 or 6 which I'd say are the worst Gens overall. Gen7 is indeed quite good too.
@@outtaideas849 Lol, we have similar faves. My list goes from most to least favorite: 4 > 5 > 7 > 3 > 1 > 6 > 2. Never played 8 so I can't rate it accurately but I really don't like or respect many of the decisions TPC and Game Freak undertook in this current one. My Favorite is 4 since I consider Platinum the best mainline Pokemon game. Perfect blend of challenge, story and characters imo with an excellent spread of mons available. Diamond and Pearl are marginably worse in MANY different ways (they are SO FUCKING SLOW) so I recommend avoiding them entirely and while HGSS are definite upgrades over GSC they still have a crapton of problems in them, the terrible level pacing most of all since it makes the Johto lategame incredibly painful. After that goes Gen 5 with it's decent story and characters along with having a great spread of new Pokemon imo. BW2 especially is incredible and has such a wide variety of mons to catch that one can legitimately do 2 dozen full playthroughs (with a full 6 mon team in all of them) without needing to reuse a Pokemon. Third favorite is Gen7, I never played the Ultra games so I cannot say much about those but at the very least base Sun and Moon have great story and characters, amazing Pokemon variety. Sun and Moon is also surprisingly challenging if you go through it without using EXP Share which I did in my first playthrough (I remember how honestly impressed I was when I whited out while fighting Hau on the fight we have with him upon arriving in the third island, he kicked my ass and I respected him for it). Fourth is Gen3, all the games in this Gen are pretty good with no real stinkers. Decent Pokemon variety but the lack of Phys-Spec split hurts this one quite a bit at times, but at least a lot of the movepool problems from Gen1-2 are remedied. Also fast as fuck to play. Then goes Gen1...honestly incredibly broken gameplaywise but admittedly some of the story and pacing helps make up for that quite a bit. FRLG really is the definitive version of the Kanto games though so I'd say Gen1 is completely irrelevant for all reasons besides nostalgia since Gen3 quite literally did it better. Next is 6...great variety in Pokemon and Megas are a great addition when they are used to enhance Pokemon that really needed it (Mawile and Lopunny are some of my favorites so the fact that Megas made them actually good Pokemon to use was fantastic) but besides that this Gen really struggled, the shift to 3D was kinda rough and it lead to a real drop in visual quality compared to the sprite games (especially the Pokemon models). X & Y were without a doubt the most boring games in terms of difficulty (which is hilariously easy even without EXP Share) and plot (Team Flare is an absolute joke even when compared to the oftentimes jokey nature of previous teams) with only very few characters that stand out and the RS remakes introduced a bunch of new problems into an already solid set of games while not improving the gameplay enough to make up for that (and also completely crippling the difficulty even if you for go using EXP Share). Last and certainly the least is Gen2...just go watch the video again for an explanation on why Gen2 is the worst...Oh God, I just thought of something...it's well known that Game Freak had no clue how to add Kanto into GS because of cartridge space, but luckily Satoru Iwata took some time to essentially streamline the cartridge space GF were using, removing a ton of unnecessary junk data they left in and making them capable of coding Kanto into the game. What the hell would Gold and Silver would have been like if Iwata hadn't pulled Game Freak's metaphorical ass out of the fire that way? God knows what an absolute clusterfuck of a game it would have turned out to be...
I’ll always have a special place for gen 2 in my heart but your commentary was dead on. There’s a reason I ended up only leveling like 4 or 5 Pokémon in my playthroughs lol
I only use one or two, is way more easily, and the rest are just target dolls (for having a free turn for a potion or something). One is the starter and the other tries to have as much as varied attacks as possible to give the starter type coverage.
To be fair, gen 2 had some really cool Pokémon designs - Umbreon, Typhlosion, Mantine, Tyranitar, Lugia, Suicune, Ampharos, Azumarill, Totodile, just to name a few - it's just that most of the Pokemon's stats and movepools simply render them unusable, sadly. From a design perspective, I think the Pokémon introduced in G2 easily clear any of the generations after 4, and you could definitely argue that it tops G4 as well. This is why I love doing G2 ultra randomizers - every Pokémon's base stat total/distribution, typing, and move pools are completely random, meaning lots of normally useless Pokémon become really strong, and vice-versa. In my last playthrough, I ended up with a core team of Azumarill, Togetic and Lanturn, all of which were about as powerful as typical Mythicals.
@@shn4449 That's what a Remake should do. Be a 1:1 recreation and work out the kinks. That's not doing the "bare minimum", that's giving the original work RESPECT, chump.
@@mattleo3211 if the remakes are going to be literally the same game with updated graphics, what reason do we have to buy the new ones when we played exactly the same game a few years ago? There is no reason for me to play ORAS when Emerald, a GBA game was better. Same with gen 4. Gen 2 remakes never fixed all the problems with Johto listed above either. They just slapped a tiny pokémon sprite to follow you around and called it a day. Now look at FRLG. They added entire sevii islands to between 7th and 8th gym and also gave us a postgame that was absent from the original. That's how remakes should be in my opinion. Fixing stuff from the original while also adding new stuff to it.
The level curve is jank, the pacing is jank, you barely get any good pokemon, they barely give you any decent items until kanto (not even evolution stones until hgss where they are locked behind a trashy minigame)
Also the games are so over reliant on kanto. And the Pokémon are fucking weak and forgettable, so much so that i keep thinking that johto only has like 70 new Pokémon when it actually has around 150
The pacing is really bad, the exploration is not even good I don't why people love how nonlinear it is when there is nothing to explore expect some caves with zubats.
@@appy1487 "Why is this game that came out when only Kanto was available so reliant on Kanto?" Dunno, maybe because it's a sequel? It didn't have the pressure to be a marketing vehicle for plushies and toys?
I'm surprised he didn't mention the typing distribution of the gyms essentially nerfing an already weak Chikorita line further into the ground by having gyms with THREE TYPINGS that counter grass, two of which are literally THE FIRST TWO GYMS and NONE that Grass is good against. While also super buffing the clone Cyndaquil line by having the EXACT OPPOSITE ISSUE where there are THREE typings fire counters two of which are later gyms and the other being the second gym... And as for the Water type, well, every single gym is neutral... Sure each region has starters that are easier or harder to get through the game with, but Gen 2 did an absolutely HORRIBLE job with type balancing. Starting Cyndaquil you legit just burn through the ENTIRE GAME with absolutely no problem... Whereas with other starters to even get an actually decent fire type you have to wait until there's not even that much of a point of actively trying to go out and actually catch one... Gen 2 was a mess, have to agree on that one.
All of the problems with the gyms are really a problem caused by Kanto, again. Because Gen II used Kanto, and all of it's gyms, the Johto gyms were stuck with the leftover types.
@@geo4290 yeah, each gen had an easy, medium, and hard mode based on the starters. It's only a "problem" if you want each starter to function the same as the other two, but then you've got Yellow/Pikachu/Eevee for that.
To be fair, the Chikorita line does better than the Cyndaquil line in Kanto than in Johto. It's a matter of "do you want an easier time with Johto gyms while having more difficulty with Kanto, or do you want a harder time in Johto with an easier time in Kanto?" Meganium will sweep Brock and Misty pretty handily, resist Lt. Surge, stalemate Erika, have a weakness against Janine, neutral against Sabrina, weak to Blaine, neutral against Blue. Typhlosion will struggle against Brock and Misty, neutral with Lt. Surge, sweep Erika, neutral with Janine and Sabrina, stalemate Blaine, neutral against Blue.
I don't think the game opening up once you reach Morty would have been so bad if the levels in Ice Path/Blackthorn had been high enough to account for the fact that you're completing three separate questlines before that. Chuck/Morty/Jasmine/Pryce being roughly the same level doesn't bother me very much, and Clair's levels are also fine, but every trainer battle outside of her gym leading right up to the Elite Four is like, Level 20-30, with maybe one or two exceptions. I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
Oh my god, there are people who actually agree with me on this. You touched on every point I always make when talking to people about how Gen II is actually not very good, even as someone who personally has quite a lot of nostalgia for it. Glad to see there are others who don’t just wear rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and say Gen II is the best just because you get to revisit a half-baked region.
I actually also have a lot of Nostalgia for Gen 2, but yeah. They really aren't as good as people make them out to be. And the remakes, while having the benefits of including the gen 3 and 4 QoL improvements, literally fixed none of the issues the original game had.
I remember my first wakeup call that something was wrong with Gen 2 was even as a kid I had figured out all the returning pokemon from Gen 1 were just stronger. Seriously, the average stat of Gen 2 pokemon are just lower to Gen 1. Gen 2 has some cool designs and added much needed types and had good mechanics like held items. But the game kind of punishes you for trying to use Gen 2. Like, locking Larvitar until the game is 95% done was a really dumb idea. Dratini was available in Gen 1 not even halfway in. I didn't even know how to get most of Gen 2's pokemon. Gen 2 also has Dunspace. That's it, that's the whole argument. Dunsparce is just dex filler with no niche.
@L Lawliet Dunsparce has a cool evolution in Uranium where he becomes a dragon. BTW Uranium is still up and receiving updates, just harder to find it now after Nintendo tryed to kill it.
I'm more annoyed that Heartgold/Soulsilver didn't actually fix some of the more blatant issues that plagued these games. - The horrible low-level curve after Ecruteak City is still there. - Johto gym leaders are still lacking Pokemon from the damn region they're in. - The Johto villain story is still the same boring and simplistic "Team Rocket want their boss back" storyline. - Kanto overall still feels really barren with hardly any additional story or updates to the world setting. HGSS is super overrated.
I actually agree with most of that, but Emerald and Platinum are much better than HGSS by just being the 3rd games that fixed a lot of the issues that plagued RS and DP.
@@retloclive9118 ORAS is better than HGSS and RSE is better than GSC. I will never see RSE as better than HGSS. Platinum is almost as good as HGSS, but not quite.
"Why Gen 2 is the worst Game" And I took offense to that. JK let's sit and listen to what you have to say. "Amphaross is on everyone's team" Okay fam. We good
That's kinda the problem? Your team shouldn't be restricted to certain pokemon in a playthrough, it should have some variety. I did use an ampharos so I'm not saying it's bad you should just have more options.
I really wish Heart Gold and Soul Silver would have moved Houndour into Johto. Just have it so you find Growlithe and Houndour in the same spot. One dog for day, one dog for night. It makes so much sense.
Never understood how they had new Pokémon for this gen in Kanto, which is only reachable post game. Like what? Murkrow, houndour, and larvitar all post Pokémon league
True but to alleviate that, Heartgold and Soulsilver give you access to the Safari Zone after you beat Jasmine.
The zone has many Kanto and Johto pokemon that you normally cannot get till post game.
That includes ones like Houndour, Murkrow, Sneasel, Larvitar and Misdreavus
@@SirAuron777 Even gen 1 gave you Dratini before the post game.
@@aceclover758 I believe you can't find Houndour there until after the Safari Zone has been upgraded, which is still pretty late into the game. I'm not sure exactly how the mechanic works, but according to the Bulbapedia page Houndour is found in the Safari Zone at levels 41-42, which makes me think you still can't have access to it until pretty late. But I did not know that you could find Larvitar there pretty early until you mentioned it and I looked it up. I've been replaying HeartGold and now I need to go do that.
@@marcasieber Okay, so if I just read (and I remember getting Houndour pre E4), you can get it by the upgraded safari zone aka the block system.
This is done by completing the Warden’s 2nd challenge of catching a SAndhsrew. He will call you 3 hours after the first challenge is completed.
To catch a Sandshrew, you must create a desert area but that is the ONLY area you can create pre E4.
Once you do that, then you can use the block system to catch Houndour.
Funny thing is you can catch all the new Johto pokemon pre E4 EXCEPT HOUNDOUR without doing the 2nd challenge.
Post E4 is to unlock more zones to create and the national dex poke
i was dreading for you to get onto Quagsire, but when you said, “Quagsire: great,” i felt a joyous smile spread across my face
Whoopy boi is still better though
@@BuildaBarb objectively false
.w. the closest i can get to a quagsire smile face sorrry
No one can hate on the Quag.
@@BuildaBarb both. both are good
"The rival is also a total edgelord."
This is hilarious in hindsight due to his recent cameo in Jaiden Animations.
He became the thing he hates the most lmaoo
Thing is, it works well narratively.
Rivals from Gen 3 onward are a bit neutered. (Hell, Brendan/May don't even fight you with a fully evolved starter in RSE).
In Gen 1, your rival is the main recurring antagonist; even more so than Team Rocket. They don't go anywhere narratively, though.
The Gen 2 rival actually changes through the game; they start as an incredibly dark person, and end up learning from you to the point where their final team has a Pokemon that can only evolve through friendship.
@@Ryan-jc3ip It really sucks that every Rival after Gen 2 is like ,,Oooohh we're best friends!! :*'', like, they all have adhd, autism or some other diseases ig. Give us some good rivals. Someone who's not like our friend or anything, give us someone with a personality or a backround which is not only being your friend. Or maybe have that he/she is your friend and turns evil or something like that. I have special hate for Barry and Tali, holy shit are they annoying and like nothing happens with them.
@@chris3683 Bede
The jackass who gets character development
@@chris3683 N fro Gen V was a pretty cool rival tho
The Houndour thing actually blows my mind. Its introduced so late into the game that I thought it was a Gen 3 Pokemon.
Same with me hahaha.
I had forgotten about that, but now remember that I had spent one playthrough catching and breeding a perfect gen 2 team, then sent the babies to a new game file. Started the game with lvl 2 houndour etc. I never finished that run
I always knew they were gen 2 because i grew up with pokemon when it was new and i remember when the celebi movie came out. Those new pokemon were all gen 2, that's how i always remembered it.
2, 3 and 4 actually. But i think 4 was when they had houndoom? Or no? Lol idk it's been a minute since i played anything
Same with me and Slugma. I also know a few who had that with Natu.
When I was a kid I thought Slugma was a gen 3 mon and that it evolves into either Magcargo (I actually didn't know Magcargo even exists at the time) and Torkoal
I love the rant about Unknown, I vividly remember being a kid and catching the entire damn alphabet of Unknown because obviously something cool needs to happen if you collect them all right? I mean the ruins where you catch them is weirdly empty and mysterious, clearly there was some secret to uncover.... No, there was nothing, just wasted time and broken dreams
Yeah i think after catching the unown ! and ? it's done
Dawg same!! God I wished more happened
Same dude! That took me fucking hours ill never get back. A to z for fuckall!
There's a guy at the research centre next door who, upon catching all of them, allows you to use the game boy printer to print images of them lol
But yeah upon seeing the Pokemon movie, I thought Unknown would do some cool stuff with Entei...
They're literally living hieroglyphics how is that not the sickest s*** in the world
Gen 2 was the first game to let you skip the “how to catch a Pokémon” tutorial and it took 6 generations for them to bring it back.
The catching tutorial is also skippable in Red and Blue, but they made it mandatory in future Kanto games, including Yellow.
Gen 2 is indeed the Worst Generation, this video is so accurate.
THE REGULAR POKÉMONS OF GEN 2 ARE GARBAGE/TRASH, That SO MANY GEN 2 POKÉMON GOT NEW PERMANENT EVOLVED FORMS in GEN 4. THAT’S WHY GEN 2 is My Least Favorite Gen, WEAK ROSTER OF POKÉMONS, A BAD STORY/PLOT, A LOT OF NEW UGLY POKÉMONS, BLAND CHARACTERS/GYM LEADERS, WEAK GYM LEADERS, WEAK NPC, They even copied the STARTERS, WEAK STARTERS, ALL GEN 2 STARTERS ARE MONOTYPED, FUCK GEN 2.
@@kerrywien6775 and people said Silver the best rival of the series, what about Blue?
@@kerrywien6775 first of all. Tone down the caps lock lol. Secondly, all 3 starters are monotypes, except charizard isn’t monotype, and neither is venusaur, so your point stands for blastoise, even though their specs are almost opposite
On that note most fucking starters are monotype. Torchic mudkip and treecko are ALL monotype.
@@riplix20 “secondly all 3 starters are monotypes except for over half of them
Feraligatr didn't get a species name, it got a username.
Oof, to true. Poor Ferali
And they didn't even fix in Gen 6!
I've heard it's because they had a ten character limit for names back in the day for names
@@decoral I mean, they used it for so long that it didn't make sense to change
666 likes spooky
Fun fact: out of the 58 Pokémon used by the 16 gym leaders, only ten of them are Johto Pokémon. That is roughly 17%. If you include the elite four and champion fights, it changes to 19 Johto Pokémon out of 90 Pokémon total, or 21%.
Yeah, the creators had this idea in their head to use none or few of the new Pokémon they designed. No earthly idea why, it's a new generation. I mean, in Gen 3, 4, 5 and even 6, they attempt to put around half a Gym's team (Gym trainers included) as Generation exclusive (new) Pokémon.
It'd be so easy to fix. Bugsy? Spinarak line. Falkner? Hoot-Hoot, Murkrow for coverage. Claire? No fixing her when there's a whopping 4 Dragon types total between her and Lance.
Morty having nothing but the Gastly line? Why? The only ones done justice are the Normal & Steel Gyms. IMO, we should have gotten rid of the Ice Gym and had a Dark Gym. Umbreon being sadly only real choice for pure Dark. Huge missed chance to make that happen, especially when they put a freaking Psychic E4 member as your first fight of the League! With bulky walls on his team, even worse when you refight him in the remakes!
@@traveller400 cven the steel gym has problems like there is one line that was in gen one that became steel type in gen two and there two of them in the fight, I understand having one to show that magnamite changed its type, but why two?
Jhoto is just a Kanto DLC
@@Coconut_Prrson You nail it
@@traveller400 If I had to give a reason it’s because gen 2 is the only generation that doesn’t pretend like their new Pokémon have always existed. Lore wise all of the “Johto” Pokémon where discovered within the 3 year timeskip after Gen 1. Jasmine for example has only recently started using the new steel type so recently in fact that her gym is still designed like a rock type gym. Other gym leaders are still using Kanto Pokémon because that was all there was up until recently.
Gen2 had the best rival...that dude straight up has the cops looking for him
Vs the virgin blue which isn’t even a rude rival. People have this Mandela effect that he’s far meaner than he is but that’s because the anime (who was an actual douche) influenced their view of him. The meanest blue ever is to players in the game is his “smell ya later” line
@@RickyRiceB Like, I never watched the first season, and I think Blue is not a bad person.
I even like the character
@@conic2721 I probably shouldn’t get worked up about it as much as I do, it just feels frustrating seeing everyone praise blue in the game for being something that he’s not, he’s genuinely chill with a rad disposition, dude literally calls us bud and wonders if we’re doing ok when he sees you before battles
@@RickyRiceB To be fair, he does leave all the Silph Co. employees at the mercy of a criminal organization. His only concern then was fighting you, so that's pretty douchey.
@@RickyRiceB well I would say. I don’t care if the rival is mean like silver, but what makes Blue better as a rival is because the beginning of Kanto is set up as a race to see who can get the badges first, and he’s always ahead of you and taunting you at every corner. Unlike every other story. Sinnoh was close, but it always felt like the rival in there was trying to be as good as you than you trying to be better than him
How to play Gen 2:
1. Catch Abra
2. Learn Elemental Punches
3. Sweep
How to evolve abra?
@@akuilaopo3231 Kadabra evolves by level but you need to trade it in order to evolve it to Alakazam
@Nick Cruz i used in crystal Feraligator, Kadabra, Noctowl, Togepi, Sandshrew and Victreebell.
Doesn't work on the remakes.
@Nick Cruz My Pokémon were around level 50-66 i think basically my Feraligator and my Kadabra killed all his team. But I died in various other attempts.
"Never have I been so offended by something that I 100% agree with."
Same
Foreal heart gold is like my favorite Pokémon game cause it’s the first one I ever played
@@damsanspokemon6413 heart gold is in gen 4
@@Abcdefg-rk8jk a lot of what he talked about still applied to hg/ss, gen don't matter coz the original material was still there
I was just watching that James Acaster stand up. Excellent reference
I always thought Skarmory was a gen 3 pokemon. He shows up once as a wild pokemon after the 8th gym, at like a 5% encounter rate. He's not used by a single trainer in the entire generation. It's not even like he's some kind of pseudo-legendary or something that would justify him being so hidden. It's just a wasted slot in a game that already only has ~100 new pokemon to begin with.
Yeah.
It's crazy how Skarmory is more connected to the FRICKING champ of Gen. 3 than his home region.
to be honest it was gen 2. it felt magical to find the "secret" und "unusual" bonus pokemon hidden around the game
i agree that the gen3+ thing is better, but thats just a decision^^
source: played that shit as a kid and the playground rumors went insane, which was super fun
@@Maric18 Yeah I dunno what people are talking about. These were the days when you would buy magazines with these lists of Pokemon. Steel type was this cool and rare type, kind of like dragon type in gen 1, so you'd see Skarmory on the magazine, scour the entire region for it, and then feel really good about yourself when you found it. A lot of people judging Gen 2 here don't seem to know what it was like to be a kid with just a Gameboy and no internet around the time it released. You didn't play Pokemon to "win", you played it to find Pokemon that looked cool and put them on your team.
@@seeibe thats cool, until you realize that slugma is actually a gen 2 pokemon and not a gen 3
@@Maric18 yeah the issue is that this clearly isn't a good design and the fact HGSS doesn't fix the shit really hurts it
There's an easy way to let people challenge gyms in any order without making them all easy: have the leaders maintain multiple teams, and fight you with one based on how many badges you have. I mean, you figure that must be how it actually works in-universe, right?
Right? I wonder how difficult it was to implement scaling based on current badges. I used to think even scaling with levels and all gym leaders/elite-four having a full team of six would have elevated the challenge.
There is a rom hack named Crystal Clear, that actually does exactly that. It's basically open world, you can challenge all 16 gyms at any point, and they all have 16 different teams depending on the order, you chose.
The worst part, even if you don't want to make 8 different teams for each gym leader, you could divide the gym leaders into sets. First Gym leader has one team. Leaders 2,3&4 can be fought in any order, but have 3 teams and stronger than the first gym leader. Leaders 5,6,&7 can be fought in any order but also have 3 teams, stronger than the previous set of leaders. And then you have leader 8 who only has one team but is the strongest team. Maybe he uses Pokémon that aren't his specialized type. in the end, that's only 21 teams (1+9+9+1) you have to think about versus the 64 potential teams (8x8).
@@EnigmaBarry yep also 2,3,4 and 5,6,7, packs don't need many changes maybe one or two pokemon evolve and that's all, so this is a really good idea
I agree and I don't think this would be difficult to implement at all. In theory this would just be a simple condition statement, for example: if(player has 6 badges) set the levels of gym leader ace pokemon to 35. They didn't need to change the team, just the levels. Moveset are irrelevant as all the pokemon had the last 3 moves they learned by level up and the TM the gym leader gives out so you don't need to hard code that just pull the data from the pokemon learnset which I assume is how they did it anyways.
This man just blew my mind with the charizard and thyplosion stats.
I always thought typhlosion was weaker than Charizard. Really interesting though, i dont think Game Freak expected us to grow up and notice this shit show hahaha.
Typhosion and Charizard have the same stats, Venasaur and Meganium have similar but the Attack and Defense stats are swapped, and Blastoise and Feraligatr have different stats but the BST is the same
@@BoneThugsRTheBest maybe it could be because Typhlosion is a purely fire type, while Charizard is fire and flying, probably not though
@@KingYoshiXXIV bst?
Same man, I had no idea.
I thought you were gonna do my boy Typhlo dirty then I realized the game did.
the second this video pointed it out, i started theorycrafting a new statline for typhlosion:
70 hp
100 atk
70 def
100 sp atk
80 sp def
115 spd.
upgraded to 535 bst from 534 bst (imo all starters should be 535 bst. fun fact: until like, gen 5 the starters never had equal base stats amongst eachother)
yep, i desire a nice glass canon who can attack both sides well. :D
@@gypsysprite4824 I 90% agree with this spread. Only thing is that with how intense Typhlosion is I think it would hit a good bit harder.
@@djroscurro9859 mean...the spread i gae it nerfed it's special attack a tad in favor of aking it really fast and also making it hit pretty well on the physical side
of curse stats are the last o typhlosion's concern, have you seen how meh this thing's movepool is?
@DEAD CHANNEL I mean by then you should already have a Pokemon to fight Clair
Not only did they not do anything with his stats all of the starters move pools are really shallow. They seem to hate this generation
I'm surprised you never addressed my biggest gripe with gen 2: All the TMs suck. You have to rely on elemental punches with limited distribution for coverage, the only decent fighting-type move is 50% accurate, and all the ones that are _actually good_ are in Kanto. What really pisses me off is that the only way to get Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, and Flamethrower is to waste all your time gambling, and _only_ in Crystal!
Oh, and they did my boy Heracross dirty. Why even _make_ it a fighting type if you aren't going to give it any fighting STAB options? All that does is make it weak to the psychic types it would otherwise counter! What, was Megahorn too good? And why does it take until level 54 to learn it??? _AND WHY AM I NOWHERE NEAR THAT LEVEL WHEN I GET TO MOUNT SILVER???_
i dont blame you if you are underleveled in this game. seriously, LV 23 wild pokemon in 8th gym? with lv 40 Kingdra?
I feel you I regret playing this one, the level curve is what hurts the game plus you do not get good moves much, the poke walker doesn't help much at all. It feels like Kanto 2.0 , you gamble to get the good stuff and that sucks. Sad that many people like this and didn't see the major flaws and give it 10s for no reason. What the point getting 16 badges anyway? A waste of time.
The sad thing is mega horn isn't even that good because the shit accuracy lol
@@thecrimsonfuckeralucardlor5087 there some good moves with bad accuracy, I stop playing because it feels like a chore to play than having fun. The rival is overrated too, I do not see what so special plus the game not too hard anyway. Why they trying to made red hard but I got the right pokemon to beat him, on level 69 to 74. The concept in pokemon kinda sucks, I do not want to play the new titles i do not want to recapture and trying to capture all pokemon because I can't catch em all.
@@ricardohuff8774 idk I always go for accuracy because if it misses it kills your run. That's why he chose magic leaf over giga drain in kaizo. Rip bartender
My least favorite part about the abysmal level curve is that it’s basically impossible to add a Pokémon to your party past the 3rd gym unless you want to grind for literal hours. Want to add a post-game specific mon to your team like houndour? Have fun leveling it up 40 levels by fighting nothing stronger than level 25 wild Pokémon.
You're not expected to grind. You're just expected to know what you're doing and have the skill to defeat the higher level trainers.
Do you genuinely think you're expected to get all your Pokemon to level 80 or something??
@@roralize1358 no amount of skill can save you when your team is under levelled.
@@Emobullymaguire dude you can beat Red with Pokemon in the high 40s-low 50s. You just have to be patient and skillful enough.
@@roralize1358 you still have to grind a lot to even have a chance against against red
@@actuatioN352 No you really don't. This whole "level gap grinding" thing in Gen II literally does not exist.
*Sudowoodo
Me: Don't you dare say anything bad.
*Cool design.
Me: Good
Sudowoodo is one of the few Pokémon in these games to actually have a decent level-up movepool, so it's sorta worth using for that
@@Nekogami04 Today I learned that Geodude isn’t a mono-rock type. I always just assumed.
@@tonymccurry8621 rock/ground have no clue if that was the cade back during gen 1 but i know it was during gen 2 by playing crystal to death and beyond.
As someone who mainly use Sudowoodo in online battles in Sword and Shield, i agree
He’s just a funny tree I love him
"The designs are genuinely very ugly."
[Furret at the center of the screen]
"Peace was never an option."
Thank you the game is fucking disgusting to look at. Like the design of the poke balls is grotesque. The color scheme of towns is horrid. Generally not a fun game to play
Yeah, I love Quirlfish, Xatu, Kingdra, Ursaring, Donphan, Scarmory...
Pokemondesign is bad, yes sure.
I treate the Pokemondesign over Gen 3, my favorite.
Gen 2 had the best looking 8 Bit Pokemon, beats Gen 1’s Sprites out of the Water
I actually liked Gen 2 sprites and designs. Were all of the great? No but they weren't bad.
@@8bitsniper568 "Beats Gen 1's sprites out of the water"
Isn't that the point of a newer game?
As much as I love Gen 2, it definitely has huge issues. You can tell Game Freak wasn't quite sure with how to proceed following the unbelievable success of Gen 1. So they decided to make the newer Pokemon weaker and essentially add a whole second region with Kanto postgame. That's what made Gen 3 so great - they were clearly much more proud of their new mons and the balance curve/pacing was much more thought-out.
All that said, Gen 2 has this very unique charm to it that I adore to this day. It feels... esoteric? Spiritual? Very, very Japanese? No other games in the series capture that vibe for me.
do you have any technical knowledge? to get the games running on gameboy still is amazing.
they already had working builds in 1997. they took 2 more years to completely redo the games and polish them. that generation is the most defining for pokemon. it introduced not only the special split and breeding but so many small things that kept you playing and adventuring in the game. day and night cycle. a phone to be able to refight trainers. radio and even special events with it. ( special frequencies only having a station on certain parts of the plot ). berries, shinies and so much more.
his only "valid" point is that he doesnt like the design.
@@adswers6900 no doubt.
@@adswers6900 Nothing you said addressed anything in this video. :D
@@shorewall not sure if youre just trolling or fallen for cognitive dissonance.
unvalid points, from the video, i addressed:
the games being rushed;
games being unpolished;
games being overrated.
The Gen 2 vibes are simply immaculate, like the OST goes so hard (probably because it has to carry the rest of the game on its shoulders).
It pains me that I absolutely love Gen 2 and agree with everything in this video.
Holy shit it's the king himself!! :O
I guess they had to DO IT AGAIN but better with heart gold and soul silver
Same...
I grew up loving gen 2 tried to play it recently and couldn't stand playing without speed up
@@mcihele hgss still didn't fix a lot of the flaws gsc had
Good thing Fletchinder didn’t exist in Gen 2, we didn’t need to see anything named Fletchindr alongside Feraligatr.
Pokemon Gaia:"Chuckles" I'm in danger
Farfetch'd
@@apucomeagain3883 farfetched fits 10 letters
Knowing gen 2 the evolution would end at Fletchindr. And then Talonflame would be added in gen 4
There isn’t an e, it’s farfetch’d
Did you laugh when two of the gym leaders refused to hand over their badges directly after losing? One was Whitney, and the other being Claire.
Both happen to be women. I wonder what game freak was trying to say? lol
@@Pacman-9312 Whitney is a Child
Claire is a karen
@@Pacman-9312 There was a video I saw, where someone already had a Dragon Fang. Claire still sent them to the Dragon's Den, to retrieve the dragon's fang. There was some dialog where she notices that the dragon fang, isn't the one from the dragon's den.
@@stellarknight04 which is strange, because Gen 2 even has an Elite 4 named Karen who is for some reason one of the coolest characters in the game
@@O.D25 Well tbh I like both Claire and Karen, idk why but they're the most badass lol
When the most memorable part of the region is the fact you can go outside of it, you've done something wrong.
Thats what all the people who grew out of the hobby say. Its much more memorable then that if you were there. Its such a massive improvement over Gen1
@@Kaynadian1337we get it, doesn't make the issue any less relevant
@@Kaynadian1337Kanto sucked in gen 2, HGSS made it a tiny bit better
@@naganut9718you don't get it because you clearly weren't there.
It's one thing to say the game doesn't stand up to the standards and game design of the franchise today, it's another to tell people who played and loved gen 2 when it came out as having rose-tinted glasses because the game is bad. The latter is a bad argument because at the time gen 2 was exactly the type of game players wanted.
@@jprec5174 I don't care if I was there or not. HGSS are some of the most flawed Pokemon games. It barely fix any issues with the original. Whether slow pacing, level curve, lack of plot or climax, lack of good mons, etc. You can love it, doesn't mean I won't say its overrated
Man I REALLY felt that "Starter, Ampharos, Shiny Gyarados" call out at 7:30. Dude just described every Gen 2 team I ever built. Love Gen 2 but this is so true.
weird, I've never actually used an ampharos nor the gyarados. And I only used the starter in like 30% of my playthroughs. But then I'm weird and usually hold out to use a tyranitar for my sixth spot despite it taking literally the entire game to get there.
The team I used to beat Red:
1. Typhlosion
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
And an Espeon/Umbreon, because you can't even find evolution stones without getting calls
My first team was only Typhlosion,A sentret and the Shiny Gyarados.I never picked Ampharos even tho I like it
@@user-pp6pr5fg8w it’s not hard to get calls if you know about them
Wow, all the time my friends and I spent arguing about Typhlosion vs Charizard seems silly now
Yeah it’s really sad. Typhlosion is like literally taking care of your drunk clingy friend while you sober. You literally have to cater it
gl with stealth rock lmao
If we go by looks I'll say Typhlosion all the way, and we both know all the arguing with friends was just an attempt at sounding smarter than simply admitting you picked them because they look cooler. Charizard's a fatass even if he still looks like he could easily squeeze my head into juice, I hate that kind of dragon design.
Charizard does have an extra typing, hence extra moves, extra advantages and one immunity, but also few more weaknesses
Fun fact : Typhlosion's Stats are literally the same as Charizard's
This is why I loved Black/White 2. They did the whole "reexplore the old region" bit but actually scaled it, so you're on early routes from the previous games that have level 50s wild Pokemon and trainers who you aren't breezing through.
@Nick Cruz But all the pokemon you find in kanto are still only in their 20's. Meaning your forced to only use the pokemon you used in johto on the trainers if you want to have any chance of being anywhere near blue or red.
@Nick Cruz The reason you say you only need 4 is because you never intended to use an HM slave in battle. and thats because of the atrocious level curve in Johto. it's just easier to use 4 pokemon instead of 6. Especially considering the fact they can be 2 free revives/pivots for any battle since you dont care for them. The level curve in Johto is the reason why HM slaves are a thing in the first place.
Yeah it’s good game design but I can’t help but laugh at the fact that preschoolers have higher levels than the champion. The logic isn’t there but at least the level curve isn’t garbage
@@kmav2213 Iris in the rematch is one of the highest level trainers in the game so it makes sense in that regard
Isn't that similar to Johto though? Once you get to Kanto, route 1 has much higher level Pokemon than in Gen 1
I remember as a kid i had my friend trade me a larvitar, a scyther holding the metal coat, and a seadra holding a dragon scale at like gym 5 or 6 just so I could use pokemon I wanted to use because everything else was either Gen 1 pokes or they sucked... man I still love Gen 2 but holy shit was it a mess 😔
Your friend is a major w must of been a pain trying to level that larvitar though
Eh...they didn't all suck, you could get Pokemon like Heracross pretty early on.
@jaydenc367 at the time, Heracross didn't have actual good moves until Megahorn...which you get at level 54.
Getting Heracross itself is through headbutting trees many times and it's the same for HGSS, but in the remake Heracross gets a improved movepool through TMs or level up. Basically, Gen 4 carried Gen 2 with HGSS since majority of Johto's mons and their movepool suck before the remake.
One problem I’ve noticed: *How did Lance get WEAKER since the last time you see him?!*
Well there's not much overall EXP in the gen 2 games so if he was in the 60's or above in Johto it would be unfair I guess
@@fst-biggie5056 They could have easily fixed the progression to lead to Lance being stronger. I think they were just being dumb. Haha
Bruno too
bc lance in his first battle in hg/ss has 6 pokemon weak to rock and in the rematch 5 (also just gonna bring up the fact that he has no pokemon from the region up until black and white 2 where he gets a kindra)
@@thenotsogreatape933 he has a kingdra on FRLG's rematch
Watching somebody dunk on Gen 2 is strangely cathartic, because I always feel like it has a lot of issues nobody talks about. The level curve in particular is enough to make me get bored halfway through any given playthrough.
Red Violet I mean I think everybody talks about these very obvious problems in gen2/4. I think something the Pokémon base doesn’t talk about is this very obvious dip in quality between generations. Makes me wonder why PMC is afraid/refuses to truly put the effort in to making a truly great generation of Pokémon that deviates from the general formula that they have while maintaining the spirit of the game.
@@BarnyWaterg8 To be fair, they _did_ try to innovate once. It was Black and White. Whole new region, complete new PokeDex, an actual attempt at proper storytelling, animated sprites, injected difficulty, and a massive boost to what multiplayer was capable of. Problem was twofold. 1. It admittedly wasn't executed as well as it could have, and 2. Fuckin' _everyone_ hated on it within a few months of its release. We bashed the new Mons, criticized the sprites, lambasted the region. Everyone was clamoring for a return to form, and that was the thing. This was genuine innovation, but it went grossly unappreciated and the fandom cried out for the past, in an ironic twist. B2W2 remedied damn near every issue with Unova, built upon the first game, and all without being a cash grab third version. All biases aside, in terms of quantity and quality, B2W2 is up there in the S-tier of Pokemon titles. Unfortunately, it all went down from there. Gen 6 was focused too much on bringing in newbs and pandering to Kanto. Gen 7 was interesting, but really was a bit of a mess in retrospect. Gen 8 is unfocused and rather mediocre. Sure, the direction they took shows a change in their objective (bring in newbs, pander the game to casuals, and improve competitive). While these aren't bad things, it's really rather all over the place. Pokemon really does need to bring back the difficulty option from B2W2. That said, I can't help but think that the original reception to Gen 5 burned Game Freak away from trying to innovate something truly new.
TL;DR: Blame the fans' (including me) original reception to Gen 5.
This. Even the gym leader’s Pokemon were weak and had very poor move sets.
There are people who bash the newer games for being too easy whilst at the same time praise gen 2 as their favourite gen.
It’s all nostalgia.
@@PhoenixBlazer39 Gen 5 is one of my favorite generations to this day, and I've loved it since it first came out. However, it did mark the peak of my interest for these games, and while I play the new games, I have not purchased multiple versions of the same generation since then. Maybe this was the height for me and everything else was downhill.
Alola was kinda interesting tho, but kinda lost me in the post game.
@@woollychannel6759 Example of how new Pokemon games hold your hand and think we are dumb babies:
In Gen 1 you have the option to catch level 30 snorlax, which is the highest level wild pokemon encounter up until that point. Much later in the game, near Fushia you are given a level 15 Lapras.
X&Y reverse this, making the Snorlax you have to catch only level 15, while the Lapras that is given to you is level 30. Also, when you get the ability to megaevolve, they IMMEDIATELY give you a lucario with the mega stone.
Gen 6 feels almost insulting in how easy it is.
This is an old video, but I just want to mention:
Spinarak/ariados sucked hard back then, but it would have still been better than kakuna on Bugsy's team. Let's switch metapod for pineco too since we are at it.
Seriously, why does the 2nd gym leader uses arguably the worst pokemons in the entire game? I understand scyther is busted stat-wise, but metapod and kakuna is just idiotic. They at least had offensive moves though.
Very late but Ledian fits the build better. Ariados has been used by both koga and Janine, not to mention the gym badge Bugsy gave is literally the shape of a ladybug
Bugsy's kakuna and metapod both evolve earlier than level 14, so literally all of his pokemon are capable of evolving, but he doesn't evolve them.
Before watching: HOW DARE YOU?!
After watching: the man is on to something.
@Cristopher Diez Vasquez Um
Cristopher Diez Vasquez ew no
@Vale Sauce Can I say something? Saying something is marketed to kids is a terrible excuse! Adults are children grown up Vale!
@Vale Sauce "It's made for kids" is probably one of the worst arguments you can make to defend bad decisions. The only other argument off the top of my head that's worse is, "It's just a game."
It's hilarious that you talk about "the pro scene" and esports when a lot of adults do not give any shits about competitive Pokemon. A lot of people just want a good single player experience, and even if people don't analyze the games this much, they still feel that games like gen 2, or the newer Pokemon games, aren't as good as gens 3-5, because the way that the games are designed matters. Your argument is founded on the idea that the games were made for kids, so anyone's criticisms of them don't matter, and it completely falls apart if you decide to rub two brain cells together and come to the conclusion that the argument is stupid and bad. Come up with real arguments instead of filling the comment section with this garbage.
@Vale Sauce i'm honestly glad you had such a great experience with the gen 2 games. However, i don't think the man is nitpicking, his points are valid and not just thrown out there just to be edgy, you can tell he has give the topic a good deal of thinking. That's my take on it, at least. I can't pretend that have thought that much about any of the games i've played (did so until gen 4 and just this year been playing gen 5, but not much).
This is the hardest part about playing older games. Everytime I start playing through, I start thinking I want to do something different than I usually do, use a different Pokemon from a different route. Then as you start leveling them up, you realize how awfully weak they are compared to your starter or the normal standard Pokemon used in playthroughs and their movesets blow. ROM hacks are definitely the way to go with a lot of these older games because they generally fix a lot of the mundane experiences you have playing through the vanilla games and offer more a unique experience from playthrough to playthrough.
gotta play the game as it was actually meant to be played. Not to beat. But to catch them all. That was honestly the theme for the cartoon that kept playing in my head even when playing the game.
So...trainers and all that was secondary. I went to fight trainers after I caught a few pokemon. Then switched them around to level them up. and when I went to another area, I restarted that whole routine. And the thing is...there wasn't THAT much to do back then compared to now..so while that seems boring and tedious to do now, that is based on the fact we KNOW that there are more options to do now. Ingame or out in the real world..or more into other virtual worlds.
But gen2 was made in a time where the game in front of you was a big piece of your small options in virtual worlds. So..you spend so much time.
Try to get a male and female version of each pokemon. try to use one type with certain moves and another of the same type, with yet different moves.
Can't do much different with supermario 3 either, but if you go back to that mindset...you still have fun.
Can't play the games of yesteryears with tomorrowyear's mindset. gotta just enjoy yesteryear's mindset
@@agonleed3841 or....
We play a rom hack!
@@joobtheboob lol or do that, yes lol
Git gud
"Miltank is okay"
*Several flashbacks* No,.. It's not okay.
That cow was the bane of my existence in Pokemon gold. It took me forever to get passed Whitney and her heffer nightmare continually using rollout. I didn't have the guidebook as the game had just came out and got it for Christmas. I was not aware you could trade for a machop until well after I finally beat her
@@Ginraboy But that just makes your win more earned
I just took the cheap way to win by adding Machop to my team.
@@Ginraboy Or you could just do sand attacks on it, or get a geodude.. you could even have a Donphan that early in the game (phanpy in route 46, iirc, where the spearows were), and defense curl/rollout her ass with karma.
But yeah, I also hated Whitney as a kid, lol.
Bayleaf with Reflect
My biggest problem with Gen 2 is the evo stones. You basically beat 8-11 gyms just to get a fire stone. I remember replaying Silver with a vulpix and having it unevolved up until you make it to Bills house in fucking kanto where you get the stone.
That problem was solved in HgSS, you can get all the stones at the Pokeathlon domain at each specific day of the week. On top of that playing Pokeathlon was actually fun unlike Voltorb balst..
@@Mr.Magcargo I spotted the person who is ass at Voltorb flip so they claim instead that it's boring.
"Weeeeeell, you can go to Kanto" is all I ever wanted as a ~10yr old. It blew my damn mind at the time.
same.. _when you thought you finished the game only to discover you can go to Kanto._ I was blown away.
@@Rude_Boi too bad it was a one hit wonder
@@sun332s7 nah it was a _two hit wonder_ 😂
The problem is the trick wears off when you get older, I guess
Bra same
My heart: HOW THE HELL CAN HE SAY THESE THINGS
My brain: He do be kinda right tho
do you mean you're... heart gold
*runs fast enough to get away*
my soul silver just exited my body reading this comment
But also I think it's kind of a bad take like if you want to talk about bad progression X and Y tho exp makes u to high and with out makes u to low
Thats the same I felt listening to this. First, instantly donvoted, second, at least took away the downvote. I mean, even if its nostalgia only, I have really fun memorys of this gen. And on the boring side, I think so many of the new Pokemon have such a boring and/or stupid design, no matter how usefull they may be, I just cant take it seriously.
But I totaly see his points.
Is that how your brain speaks? Unfortunate
I feel like with Unown they could've done a wishiwashi type of thing. In the movie it showed how when tons of Unown came together they could do amazing things, and they could've done that with the games.
one could hope that one day thet will do something about it.
Imagine if they made it that when you collected all the unowns then they would all fuse and turn into an epic legendary pokemon
@@pikarick8354 I mean, in keeping with the movie, rather than Entei being a roaming legendary, if you got enough Unown, there should have been milestones where you got each of the 3 dogs.
Imagine how cool it would feel, if you caught another letter of Unown, and you see a mini cutscene where they all swarm around and Entei comes forth
I was thinking about what if they did some special moves that are unown only. like letters appear saying "BOOST", before they all glow and boost one of your stats. or letters appear saying "ATTACK", before they ram into the opponent's pokemon, damaging them. Mega could even be a glowing version of your unown surrounded by all 28 versions of unown, spinning around them or something like that. So much wasted potential with them
It would have been such a cool Pokemon boss to have a hive of Unknown or to just have them partake in any secret. Why the hell is there not a ritual thing like the Regi's have but with the Unknown?
I feel like HGSS ruined Giovanni by having him try to return. For the longest time, I always assumed Giovanni never showed up because after losing to Red, he knew that trying to brute force his way with power was the wrong decision. He sees remnants of his old team and he's ashamed because they're a desperate collection of grunts who are looking for him, and he sees himself in them, and he doesn't acknowledge them.
But Celebi showing you that Giovanni tried to return to power ruined that sentiment. Also, why does a mythical pokemon give a fuck about what the mob is doing?
I always though in my mind that Giovanni just decided to commited suicide 🤣
@@sebastiankulche Actually, I'm pretty sure that was a popular fan theory at one point.
@@oranjaglad8648 Oh i didnt know.
More HGSS writing decisions for me to haye
I laughed loud at the end 😂
The fact that you don’t see a single Tyranitar (the strongest non legendary new Pokémon) in the whole game really says it all. I didn’t even know it existed for months 😰
bruh i legitimately thought for the longest time it's a kanto mon bc i never found it anywhere on GSC, but i could easily found it on FRLG
Wait, are you serious about that? You'd think Red or Blue would have one (Blue does get a Tyranitar later on in FRLG and HGSS rematches, funnily enough)
I thought it was a gen 4 mon for the longest time and I had no idea why
I know the feeling. I played Gen 3 more than I did 1 or 2, so I didn’t know that some of the Pokémon existed that early on. Legit thought that Skarmory was a gen 3 Pokémon and that Murkrow was a gen 4.
@@irui7087 same but with gen 3
Wow I learned something new today. I never knew that slugma was gen 2. I always thought he was 3 wtf
I thought Skarmory was a gen 3 mon until gen 6 lmao
A bunch of gen 2 mons I've heard people say this about. "Honorary gen 3" gang
I've been struggling with remembering this since I was 7, I'm 22 rn lol
@@idontcheckmynotifications Yeah skarmory is another along with misdreavus and sneasel for me
Same, slugma and skarmory looks like a gen 3 pokemon for me. I only realized after playing pokemon gold lol
Your not along
“So these are the last Pokémon games, Gold and Sliver?”
“Yes, they are.”
“I guess the only ghost type Pokémon are Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar, right?”
“No, there’s Misdreavus too.”
“What? Where can you find it?”
“You can only find it on Mount Silver.”
“That’s a bit strange for a new ghost type only being found in Kanto after you get all 16 gym badges, but I didn’t find it on Mount Silver.”
“It’s only found at night time.”
“W-Why?”
“And it’s nowhere near as strong as the other ghost types, so it’s not even worth it. Yep, that’s the only new ghost type added! Great idea!”
"We're going to create a whole new type (Dark) to nerf the Alakazam line, but only two of them are good and one's an Eeveelution while the other one isn't available until the postgame, and we're going to make dark moves special while making almost all dark type pokemon physical attackers"
Gen 2 is indeed the Worst Generation, this video is so accurate.
THE REGULAR POKÉMONS OF GEN 2 ARE GARBAGE/TRASH, That SO MANY GEN 2 POKÉMON GOT NEW PERMANENT EVOLVED FORMS in GEN 4. THAT’S WHY GEN 2 is My Least Favorite Gen, WEAK ROSTER OF POKÉMONS, A BAD STORY/PLOT, A LOT OF NEW UGLY POKÉMONS, BLAND CHARACTERS/GYM LEADERS, WEAK GYM LEADERS, WEAK NPC, They even copied the STARTERS, WEAK STARTERS, ALL GEN 2 STARTERS ARE MONOTYPED, FUCK GEN 2.
@@kerrywien6775 Uh, the video is sorta right but you are mostly wrong.
The gen in pokémon 2 aren't exactly garbage, and the reason they are fewer is because you have the pokémon from gen 1 included as well.
Some of them have decent stats, it's not like other regions have an overall greater number of pokémon with better stats when compared to Johto's.
Kanto pokémon also had many evolves forms in gen 4, like Electivire, Magmortar, Rhyperior, Tangrowth and Magneton.
Mostly from Kanto, guess you're wrong huh.
Dunno how the starters are copies but alright I guess.
Also, Feraligatr is probably twice as better as Blastoise.
Rest is acceptable, true.
@@fistofram5526 Agreed, though I’d still venture to guess Johto Pokemon are overall worse than any other region. There are simply far too many Pokemon that just don’t really do much functionally. Lower stats, nothing to make them stand out, or both.
Legendaries aside, there’re like 5 *good* Pokemon, an okay amount of somewhat passable Pokemon, and a larger amount of downgrades/terrible Pokemon. The amount of passable Pokemon cuts down by over half if you consider them before buffs in future gens.
@@fistofram5526 i can definitely agree with you I'd say the worst gen is probably gen 7
Another thing that bugs me about the Gen 2 national dex is that it's not really in 'order'. Usually they're in order of the route or area you would usually encounter them; this is easier to see in later dexes, even in Hoenn. Meanwhile, you got Scizor somewhere in the middle, despite Bugsy having Scyther, and Chinchou/Lanturn fairly near the start. It's just complete chaos.
In what world does miltank being at the end of the list of gen 2 pokemon make sense when you can first catch one right after whitney lel
i think the “nonlinear” problem could’ve been solved by adjusting gym leader levels and maybe adding a pokemon or two to their teams based off the order you fight them
They'd need some kind of AI check and separate code depending on what you choose. With how crammed in everything was, I highly doubt they could have fit it in for Gen 2. Gen 4, however. There was no excuse to make massive improvements and they just... didn't.
There's actually a rom hack that does just that, you can fight any gym leader in any order, and trainers and gym leaders get stronger and get new teams with each badge you get
@@poliorice3600 crystal clear right? I like crystal clear, but they didnt get to fully add modern features like physical special split because they want it to be compatible with the pokemon stadium games which I find really niche
@@soggywater7271 honestly one of the only two things wrong with it, old gen mechanics, and limited to gen 1 and 2 pokemon
@@soggywater7271 My biggest issue with Crystal Clear personally was how quickly the levels seemed to increase after every gym. Maybe I did something wrong but I would always be like 10 levels under the bosses. Probably because there were no Rocket events which gives out a decent amount of EXP.
Here I am, a year later, still laughing my arse off at the Charizard/Typhlosion line comparison. That shit gets me EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Nah, it’s funny. People cutting corners and getting called out on it is funny
Look at blastoise and meganium stats.
I still come back to this video every once in a whole to get a good laugh too lmfao
Eh, it’s just a "nerd shit" type problem. Almost everyone playing the game for the first time did not know or care. The Typhlosion line (alone with the all the Johto starters) is fucking dope.
@@yowatchieWRONG
3:45
"Sunkern, iconic trash!"
What an honor that must be. An honor the YT Comments share.
“Wtf is Dunsparce???” Made me laugh more than it should
This game would've been really good if exp gains were actually decent, you find trainers with level 20s when you have 15 badges.
Exp in this game can CERTAINLY be a slog. It is more grind worthy compared to later games, and it taught me to make efforts to use more than 6 Pokémon. I don’t think there was a single Pokémon I didn’t swap out the box for at some point or another until like Clair. And even then it was only like Skarmory and Quagsire for a bit. I made sure to level up my team and I went to and revisited EVERY area. I am so glad I did. Some of the best Pokémon I got were on repeat visits to old areas.
RPGs are like a quimic formula. Screw up one number and you can change the entire thing.
The developers should pay attention to all things to make the game balance. It doesnt seem to be the case with Gen 2.
Fun fact: You wanna use ampharos in gen2 right, that line isn't even in Crystal AT ALL
@Nick Cruz In GSC Ampharos can simply use Thunderpunch which is not physical yet. Very easy access to elemental punches is one of the good things of GSC if you want to do a short and quick playthrough of gen 2.
Yes but you don’t really need thunderbolt when it can just use thunder punch or discharge instead
Now let’s see when did the physical special split happen again?
@@Nerbto Gen 3, so in Gen 2 you use the special thunderpunch and in Gen 4, since thunderpunch is now physical, you use discharge instead
@@pokedexholderorange8868 gen 4 was the physical special split not gen 3 (if that was a typo then nevermind)
"Ampharos is on everyone's team, great pokemon"
except for like 10 year old me who only had crystal version and no trade cable. How is Ampharos not available in Pokemon crystal when it was in both gold version and silver version with nothing anywhere near as good available as a replacement for it.
What my 10 year old self did is I ended up buying the Thunder Punch TM and then seeing what pokemon I had that could learn it. I saw that typhlosion could so Typhlosion ended up being my electric type pokemon even though he isn't an electric type...
Wait, no Ampharos in Crystal ?
[Check on Bulbapedia if Mareep is available in Crystal]
[It doesn't]
God, it's Raichu all over again !
Emerald tried similar stuff with Roselia, Medicham, and the version exclusive Zangoose and Lunatone, and Platinum just got rid of every DP version exclusive, save for the fossils, who are now based on Trainer ID. None of these sting nearly as much as Ampharos's removal though. I don't know why they would just get rid of one of the few good Pokemon in the entire game, except maybe to incentivise trading
Typlosion being able to use thunder punch is the coolest thing they can do and that's mostly it lol
Thunderpunch on Gen 2 Typhlosion is awesome though. He gets a lot of use out of it because it's a special move in that generation.
Yeah, electric types didn't get much love in that gen, that was pretty sad. And when you see that the champion has a Gyarados on his team it gets even worse.
I only played gen2 once and with a bug-only team: made the mistake of getting heracross which made it too easy. REALLY enjoyed having ledian as an opener with no attacks and just buffing and baton passing though
LEDIAN IS A GEN 2 POKEMON ???? HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS ?????????
You can tell with it's stat spread lol@@dekusi1857
Just a small nitpick really, but can we talk about Chikorita in Gen 2?
Chikorita has a good matchup against Chuck's Poliwrath, and Will's Slowbro. That's it. The entire game, those are the only two notable pokemon Chikorita has a good matchup against. Bruno's Onix if you count it.
On the other hand, Chikorita is at a disadvantage against Faulkner, Bugsy, Morty, Clair, literally every pokemon on the Rival's team, some of Pryce and Jasmine's pokemon, all of Team Rocket, Koga, and Lance. I probably forgot something.
Who looked at that, and decided it was okay?
The bright side is that you can get pokemon to help counter the those type advantages when you choose Chikorita. So it's not all bad
THANK YOU. That's one of my main issues with this gen, with how biased it is against not only Chikorita, but grass types in general.
I think the gym types were purely chosen so as not to overlap with the Kanto ones.
Clearly no one actually took a step back to see the problem for poor chikorita. There is literally no reason to use it.
@@woollychannel6759
There is one reason.
It's the cutest little dickens of 'em all, and since Meganium is worthless too, there's no incentive to evolve it.
The Chikorita line is my favorite starter line in Gen 2, largely because of a Nuzlocke I saw of Soul Silver. The players chose their starter by their trainer ID number, got stuck with Chikorita, which was the last thing they wanted, named it Mr Stake because they originally wanted to name it Misstake until they saw it was a guy, and that stubborn bastard survived the entire Nuzlocke despite them constantly trying to kill it by putting it in situations where it really should've died. By the end, they loved it so much that one of them even named their dog after it. If it weren't for Mr Stake, I would hate all the gen 2 starters equally and think they were all irredeemably awful.
They could give Unkown a similar ability to wishiwashi as its hidden ability. So it gathers all the Unknown until it goes under 25% HP
the combination shldve beeen the Unown forms of U,N,O,W,N or something like A,R,C,E,U,S
Another cool thing is to give each unown access to all moves that start with their letter. It'd be silly but fun! The S unown could learn Surf, Slash, etc
Call it alphabet soup
@@mustabindawind Without the soup :P
>Has 150 in all stats when in this form
>looks mighty memacing
>probably best Pokemon ever
>still can only use Hidden Power
>is useless in every tier
Gen 2 was growing pains. Gen 3 was where modern Pokemon really started existing and was more or less fully formed in gen 4.
Very accurate. Gen 4 cemented how the pokemon games worked going forward. It's like going through middle school (gen 1), high school (gen 2), and college (gen 3) before you finally find who you are as an adult (gen 4). Yeah you still change a little as time passes but you're identity and who you see yourself as remains firm. It just Pokemon 4 generations to find themselves
@@zyggybaranowski6852 then Gen 5 is when you reach the peak of your life, after which your life goes downhill
@@MLGProMaster-tu9tz Gen 6 is when you have your midlife crisis and start trying out increasingly embarassing hobbies like temporary evolutions, special one-use moves, and inevitably becoming obese.
Gen 3 added the accretion problem. The national Dex fiasco of Gen VIII happened because Gen 3 set the precedent that you could get all the Pokemon that exist. This ultimately meant that they were severely limiting future design space for the franchise. Gen 3 was worse for the franchise than Gen 2.
@@IronicTB I like gen 6. Partially because breeding mechanics improved and the clothes.
Fun fact : the other johto starters stats are the kanto starters stats, except shuffled. Like it was just too hard for them to create 9 new stat spreads. That's 54 whole numbers they had to come up with. LITTERALLY 54 bytes of data.
fun fact: you dont know how data works, especially pokemon data.
@@adswers6900 What did I get wrong ?
Afaik, the value of a pokemon stat is an integer between 0 and 255, ie 1 byte / 8 bits.
You can quantify how much information the johto starter's stats represent when your prior knowldege is that a pokemon has all its stats between 0 and 255, and it's 54 bytes.
I'm not claiming that it would've been easy to change it on the cartridge because I indeed have no clue about how these games are programmed - but no matter how you look at it, the information contained in a set of 54 numbers between 0 and 255 is (at most) 54 bytes of data, and that's quantifyably not much to come up with.
I'm also assuming that, having 251 mons in the game, there exists some sort of "blank template" (the equivalent of a class in OOP) for a pokemon species, where you can just specify some stuff like typing or base stats to ease the process of implementing mons, but I might be very wrong here and would be very interested to learn how it actually works.
@@thsand5032 "It was just too hard for them to create 9 new stat spreads. That's 54 whole numbers they had to come up with. LITTERALLY 54 bytes of data."
every pokemon contains 32 bytes of data in gen 2. to say they couldnt come up with 54 special bytes. while adding 3,2 kb of uniqe pokemon data, seems quite ridiculous.
what do you mean by "blank template"? they have done great work with their compression of the data however, you can call every individual pokemon species. all of them are stored in rom, possibly through compressing algorithm.
@@adswers6900 That was my exact point. I was wondering why they chose the admittedly lazy "shuffle the stats" solution, for the starters of all pokemon, when they actually went through the trouble of creating brand new stats spreads for other, less important mons.
By "blank template", I mean an equivalent to a class in OOP.
@@thsand5032 what is OOP ?
The fact you can only catch Houndour in one specific spot after 11 bloody badges is actually ridiculous, I don't get why some Pokemon are like that, so rare/late that they're just unpractical to use on a play through, Nuzlocke or not.
Because Pokémon, at this time, was about collecting. Battling wasn't the primary goal. Catching and raising were.
At least that's my opinion on the matter.
@@lennyward7662 Pokemon isnt something like monster rancher or Tamagotchi. Bredding and so on is there but isnt the focus of the game. The game expects you to do battles to progress and this is something you would do most of the game.
@@lennyward7662 When they come out with a new gen, with new pokemon, LET ME CATCH THE NEW POKEMON AND PLAY WITH THEM!!! :D
I cannot believe they gated the new pokemon, and in Kanto, of all places! They should have leaned towards gating the old gen pokemon and forcing you to use the new pokemon.
So true. I wanted to play the old gen games since my first gen was gen 5 and favorite mons were T-tar and Bisharp, I was so excited to get t-tar in crystal but when I realized I had to beat literally 95% of the game to get it was just absolutely absurd to me.
Especially when you consider that you can catch growlithe in that spot in gen 1... it would have been cool to just keep growlithe there and have houndour available around the 4th gym in johto... would have made a lot more sense
"Everyone has a starter, Ampharos and shiny Gyarados". I played Gold YEARS ago all the way, beat Red and I'm blown away about how accurate that is. I literally only remember those as my roster (And Gyarados took until he said 'go east for red gyarados'). And I suppose Ho-oh in end-game despite already having a fire type.
As a kid I straight-up only used Gyarados. Tried meshing other Pokemon with my team and it just didn't work out, so Gyarados solo run it was.
LOL I ohko’d my shiny gyarados with a crit from luxray, I totally forgot type advantages for a moment there. I also hadn’t saved in 5 hours of playing, so just accepted my fate
@@arielabraham6683 a luxray..?
@@kartermanthey7796 traded it from my pokemon pearl copy
Had the starter, suicune and blissey on the team. Didn't use ampharos or gyarados. So what was that about "everyone"?
This is why I love Gen 4, the fact that they completed a lot of unfinished evolution lines
Which weren’t available until platinum
@@thescoobyshuffle9244 I hated that cause the sinnoh dex sucked and all the pokemon I wanted to use were locked behind the national dex
@@thescoobyshuffle9244 masuda’s boner for the number 151 was so dumb in this generation. Cutting out a lot of necessary variety for the sake of being faithful to gen 1’s pokedex total.
@@elmuchacho3379 LMFAO BONER FOR 151 🤣
Most of Gen 2's problems especially the story and the sense of progression was fixed, made better, and moded by Drayano through Sacred Gold and Storm Silver. It's what Heart Gold and Soul Silver could've been. Even in the Goldenrod event, you get to actually fight Giovanni after defeating the sub-leader in Team Rocket. Drayano also buffs weaker 'mons in his rom hacks and they become useable. That's why I love his rom hacks and this is why the rom hacking community is important: they bring out the best in every previous Pokemon games out there.
Legit half the reason SGSS is such an amazing rom hack is making the level curve actually good, and making it so you actually can use so many mons. Like it’s clinically insane that the evolution stones were exclusive to postgame, the evolution items as well, and drayano makes that actually usable, even freaking Sunflora is really good now, sunflora
TL;DR: (slightly paraphrasing)
1. A significant chunk of the Gen 2 Pokemon are weaker than gen 1, stats-wise. So much so that new Gym Leaders still use primarily Gen 1 Pokemon, not the new ones.
2. A lot of the new Pokemon have weird evolution restrictions. (Friendship, evolution items only available post game)
3. There isn't a lot of "new" Pokemon to get hyped about using in a new game. Everyone defaults to using Ampharos, Gyrados, and their starter because the rest aren't very good.
4. A lot of the wild Pokemon/trainers/gym leaders are underleveled.
5. The game feels unpolished because it was quickly chruned out. (New names are dumb, stats of new starters are copied from Gen 1, possibly because this was supposed to be the "last" Pokemon game)
6. 2nd half is "non-linear" so the 2nd half isn't as challenging.
7. 2nd half story has no impact. No buildup or progression beyond "After the 7th Gym, the bad guys from the first game returned!"
8. The ending to the rocket storyline is a bit of an anti-climax. "We want Giovanni to reappear!" And then he doesn't.
9. Pacing slows everything down (Phone calls, lack of a bike for a long time, lots of "caves" and nothing else)
10. Kanto is there... But nothing feels like it's changed. Wasted potential.
i honestly dont like argument 3 (and the first half of argument 1) because it just feels like it can apply to gen 1, and even gen 3 to some extent. you can literally buy a magikarp right at the beginning of the game and no other gen 1 water option is gonna outclass that. theres so many pokemon in gen 1 like that. things like abilities and hold items would change this, but look at gen 1 stats and movesets. arbok? sandslash? parasect? flareon? onix? Golbat??? why even bother? and if we want to reverse that style of thinking, plenty of gen 2 pokemon are prefectly serviceable. quagsire is water/ground. there's *nothing* wrong with donphan. heracross' attack stat is great. crobat is just flat out good. the only thing houndoom ever did wrong is being such a late encounter. and girafarig isn't some super optimal pokemon, but its perfectly capable of doing anything johto is gonna ask of it with what it has. and thats another point in and of itself. gen 2 asks *nothing* of you. the pokemon don't even need to be good, a casual isn't gonna have a difficult time taking a noctowl all the way from the first patch of grass to the elite four, and most kanto gyms don't ramp up too hard. claire is the only gym leader in the all of johto who is likely to present any challenge if you just go in with whatever.
gen 2 pokemon being worse on average is a problem on paper that shouldn't have happened, but its not a problem in execution and no one who is just playing the game blindly or casually is gonna be hindered.
@@Namingway248 What is more this whole argument is purely based on powercreep of gen4 and gen5...Gen 1 to Gen 3 pokemon pale in comparison to the raw stat power of the next gens up to 7.Yeah gen2 mons are slow and mostly unviable NOW(except from some that got better in next gens),and that charizard-Tymphlosion comparison proves he has got a point but for the metagame of their games,they were totally fine.
I can get why he doesnt like the games as speedrunner now,when he can speedrun another faster better more interesting gen but his 3rd argument is not his best one.
A lot of Gen 2 Pokémon’s aren’t even available until you get Kanto which is so strange.
@@Begeru and these pokemon are good like Larvitar, Houndour and etc
My problems with Gen 2
1- Game Freak was lazy making gen 2, the argument "They wanted to be the last game" is bad because you are saying that just because is the last game they can make of anyway
2 - They could explore more Silver, he could be more cool and memorable like he wanting the control of Team Rocket and speaking of Team Rocket
3 - Their goals are dumb, in the First game was understable because...they are basicaly mafia wanting Power, and Giovanni clearly abandon Team Rocket for her guilt and he want to redenm himself
4 - Kanto is placed of unatural way making this be forced
“Iconic TRASH” literal LMAO
Lmao
so.....Xenoblade 2 basically
I understand why people hate on my boi Sunkern, but that mofo has saved a nuzlocke in black and white two for me, and solo'd the poison gym.
I am the only person alive that know's the power of sunkern/sunflora.
@@nertmagert3231 No I understand the power of sunflora because she's one of the best explorers in our guild
@@axlr8deathpls294 Straight facts
The fact that the champion has no Pokémon introduced from the generation ...
Wait a second how do I recognize this first now
And O.O
Thank god the champion from gen 8 doesn't have a gen 1 pokemon as their ace
@@roccopiosaracino3681 at least he has 1 gen 8 Pokémon and diantha a gardevoir as her ace is to show off the new mechanic
@@thenotsogreatape933 on that page, why the fuck does no normally obtainable gen 6 pokemon get a mega
@@roccopiosaracino3681 that idk I feel like it was more for either popular or really bad Pokémon in older generations that were starting to get overshadowed by newer ones
The real problem, to me, is hardware limitations. Most of the problems, stem from. Them letting Kanto in also, and as a result, the rest of the game suffered.
Oh and the leveling is insanely bad. Like what were they thinking? The champion has a lvl 50 ace dude Jesus. It was 65 in gen 1
it’s that low because you have to complete an entirely new region after and the trainers you fight before have a high level of like 40. lances leve 50 deagonite is an equivalent to blues 65 based on the level curves
@@Alhalmeya No.
Even if the Champion has Level 60 Pokemon, they still can do a lot. Make the Gym Leaders have Level 60-70 Pokemon, then the rematch Champion Level 80, then Red level 95.
dude, that shit's hilarious. The champion has a team full of dragonite that aren't even high enough level to evolve.
I mean level 40-40’s is the level the player would be around at that point. Giving him a level 65 dragonite would’ve just made people complain more about grinding.
@@benshapiroscrustyass1402that champion's team is so hilariously bad. Dude has _three of the same pokémon_ in order to fill up spots on his team, then three Pokémon that aren't even dragon type. He doesn't even use the only dragon type that was introduced in that gen, because the 8th gym leader already uses a Kingdra as her ace. For some reason they wanted a dragon type gym *and* a dragon type champion in a game where there are only two fully evolved dragon types. This is the result we got.
Imagine having *Lance* as a final boss in your game. By far the lamest champion in the series, even compared to Diantha.
Team Rocket's end goal in Gold and Silver was to re-establish team rocket as the power house it was before. I felt like this was really clear. Red defeats team rocket, Gold disrupts their return to power. One of the major themes in Gold and Silver is escaping the shadows of the heroes that came before you. It's why the game cumulates into a final showdown between Gold the current protagonist and Red, the protagonist of yesteryear.
The story is like meh it felt like super rushed the only reason we like Johto is because of kanto
@@213riteshvig2 why did you reply to me?
The problem he's pointing out is that the final battle didn't feel satisfying at all.
There were two ways of fixing it: 1-Giovanni really returns and you fight him, completely crushing the attempt of returning.
2-Silver decides to take over Giovanni's place as the head of Team Rocket.
Instead you defeat a random admin with 3 Pokemon that's it. Your build up for a final battle goes nowhere.
@@doctorplague6967 but that's the point though. there wasn't a megalomaniacal leader. Team rockets attempt to rise again wasn't top down. It was intentionally decentralised. If it wasn't it would've just undermined Red's accomplishment. Red wouldn't have been the guy that defeated team rocket, he would have been a guy who put a dent in their oppression.
The final battle wasn't against the tree admin, it was against Red. It was a battle between the guy who destroyed team rocket, and the guy who prevented the return of team rocket. If Team rocket had a Giovani figure in gold and silver, then it would have been a battle between Red, the guy who thought he destroyed team rocket but actually didn't, and the guy who actually destroyed team rocket.
@@jinofthethunder always nice to hear a pokemon fan who appreciates a bit of subtlety
Gen 2 is like the second head attached to weezing
This is the best comment
That is painfully accurate
I always said Jotho is like a parasite living on Kanto.
Something like this comment.
Every other Gen's a Magneton, they complement the original Pokemon they're copying off of.
yowWWWWW lmaooo
Personally I was never able to play the Celebi event in HG/SS. It was my first pokemon game and I loved it. I never knew the point of the rival though. I expected Ethan to be my Rival. It's always your neighbor, right? So what's the deal with the red head? Years later I now know, if you got the event Celebi you learn that Silver is Giovannis son. I never learned that until I watched the TV show "Pokemon Generations" a few weeks ago. Literally 10 years after I played that game for the first time. Why wasn't this more of a story point in the games? Team Rocket learning that Silver is the son, trying to "convert" him. He isn't too far off from Rockets. He stole his first Pokemon after all.
you can play the celebi event right now actually
@@lloydirving6209 On a regular NDS system with no cheats involved?
@@Nigolasy yes ruclips.net/video/pbsY_illQms/видео.html
Ethan didnt exist in the original version so obviously he couldnt be the rival.
They could have added new battles for him though.
@@miwestraveler3986 but for people who never played the originals it's still kinda weird. at least it was for me. I've always only heard of the games and only knew that in red/blue your neighbor is the rival. and even with your point, you could have made him more interesting. for me personally, silver was just a boring and annoying person with 0 back story when I played it back in the days. it was my first game and I had no associations with him at all. N from black/white was completely differen ie. he had a story, character development etc. but I guess that's more the fault of rushed gold/silver versions when they were first released. I heard they didn't really take time to think the game through and never expected to make more games after that.
You've expressed my frustration with this generation of Pokemon. Johto feels so incomplete with a lackluster story (I gotta ask what even was the point of Lugia and Ho-oh being here?) and very little representation of the region because many of the Pokemon introduced in this generation don't appear until the late game or are in Kanto.
@keepitsecret-dl1pr People are allowed to voice their complaints so kindly pipe down yourself.
@keepitsecret-dl1pr Oh look, another "if it wasn't for x we wouldn't have y" argument. Pretty sure we would still have Pokemon even without the gen 2 games considering the fact that Pokemon was already insanely popular when it released. Kindly shut your mouth
@keepitsecret-dl1pr Honestly I’d rather have an actual Johto region than a soulless husk of both Kanto and Johto. The existence of Kanto is a cancer to the GSC games. Neat technical feat but that doesn’t equate to good game design bozo
really hurts looking back at the Johto Dex in its original state like that; most of the Pokémon in Gen II that we usually look back fondly on only _became_ cool later when they received good Abilities, better movepools, and/or evolutionary lines
Yep I went back and played Crystal a few months ago and couldn’t even finish past the 4th gym. Got bored and was trying so hard to come up with a decent team and I just couldn’t do it. The variety is terrible
Azumarill is one of my favourite Pokémon ever, but it's awful in gen 2 without any good stats beyond HP :(
gen 2 was just weak with it's casting.of pokemon and characters. This happened as a result of the nature of the game with being more a expansion of gen 1's characters and story rather then it doing it's own thing.
Anyways let's start with pokemon.
lugia and ho oh are legendries made to tie together with moltress and the other two birds being creations of lugia with he himself being related in some way to ho-oh.
With the pokemon movie making mewtwo as iconic as he became. The birds fell to the wayside so their lore and background kinda became uninteresting compared to others at that time. I mean even cubone has more interest with his backstory of losing his mother and wearing her skull
I guess you could over teams.
Team rocket has always been muahaha conquer the world type villains. It's why the anime takes them as jokes compared to other teams like team galactic and magma who have actual goals and reasons for their villainy. Wanting to bring giovaini back was fine ig but with an already brand goal and general character, it's no wonder why the anime chose not to adapt that bit
The only thing exciting about starting a new gen 2 game is (if you’re playing crystal) getting something cool from the odd egg at the day care. I remember I played one game where I got a shiny Elekid from it. It was super cool considering it was before the 3rd gym and there is no other way to get Electabuzz before the post game without trading. Unfortunately, I lost it because of that god damn internal battery…..
It is the only Pokemon games I have never finished and I have all three on the 3ds. I bought them on launch. Still haven't beaten any of them lmao
My saving grace for gen 2 is crobat. Is a sick design pokemon that is really solid, easy to obtain, and very realiable even 6 gens later.
No, it isn't that easy to obtain.
@@fistofram5526 In my play throughs it is. My golbat usually evolves into crobat like a level or two after evolving from zubat
@@fistofram5526 raising happiness is hard? You literally just have to walk around and win lol
He's been my go to flyer since gen 2. Wonder Pokemon.
Also houndour and sneasel (for coolnes)
As soon you started ranting about Typhlosion, my favorite Pokemon, and got to the stats, it wasn't anger that I felt, it was joy. I legitimately thought I was the only one who noticed that.
He is the first one that I saw talking about the stats of the typhlosion line, and I felt in the same way as you, happy to see that I am not the only one :)
Charizard's flying typing gives it more utility than weaknesses. Unfortunately there aren't many reasons to choose typhlosion over charizard, even though I love typhlosion too.
I don't see what the problem with that is? It's not like they just copy-pasted the pokemon, it has a different type and movepool. And he was just complaining about how all the stats suck, and then shows a pokemon with the exact same stats as fucking Charizard.
@@Slazors At least typhlosion doesn't have a 4x weakness against stone
@@silas6213 Like I said, it's typing gives it more utility than weaknesses. Watch the How Good was Typhlosion Actually video.
Looking back, I never realized how this generation was pretty much held back to due to relying too much on nostalgia. Most of the Gen 2 Pokemon felt like junk rares and are overshadowed by those from Gen 1. It's pretty much why Game Freak almost wiped the slate clean when developing Ruby and Sapphire.
About wiping the slate clean, I think that's mostly because gen 1 and 2 had too many bugs, you could spawn Mew with glitches and duplicate items too easily. They had to prevent transfers from gen 2.
Funny how a duplication glitch slipped through the cracks anyway in Emerald, so we can dupe pokemon one at a time, or as many items as your total number of pokemon in PC at a time, so we still have infinite master balls shippable to all future gens. But at least we can't just perform a glitch to spawn any pokemon we want - just a shame they never found a way to prevent rom hacks from doing exactly that.
@keepitsecret-dl1prWe in the business call statements like this “copium.”
@keepitsecret-dl1pr
You are aware sales don’t equal good right? Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are broken to high heaven but they sold really well. Mario All Stars was lambasted for their “limited release” practice, but that sold. Persona games consistently get updated versions years later but those vanilla versions still sold. Hell, look at the anime arena fighters everyone agrees is bad, the only flop was Jump Force.
*"He's fucking destroying our childhood omg"*
-Blummy 69
timestamp?
@@jimmy-the-hedgehog1169 12:47
"Typhlosion is a pretty cool Pokemon, right? Pretty cool."
Pause at 9:24
"Do not use this Pokemon with the intent of winning games."
Sorry, I had to LOL at that.
The gen 2 starters got some of the least new things as new gens came out. Look at how amazing venusaur’s move set is now. rip meganium, you never stood a chance.
@@josephsquires5883 ground type attacks will wreck it too... but the real deal is the moooooo of hell
@@josephsquires5883 it's been a long time but at least when I was a kid miltank was one I still remember being annoying to beat
but so was steelix now that I think of it..
@@josephsquires5883 just use surf
The problem with gen 2 Pokemon for me is that most of them are forgettable or some I thought were from other gens . Mostly gen 1 or gen 3 . For example slugma for the longest time I thought it was from gen 3
Same with skarmory and wobbuffet
I thought Aipom was from gen 4, not gen 2.
I’m glad I’m not the only one I always thought steelix was introduced in gen 4
That's probably because you can't even catch it until post game.
I think
Me too
The fact that Houndoom and Tyranitar aren’t even accessible til the post game always rubbed me the wrong way. Why are the Pokemon native to Johto, not in fucking Johto?
My biggest thing was the leveling.
I do not get their logic about needing lower levels just cuz there is a whole other region
Just have the levels keep raising, that’s all. Not that complicated.
Like Kanto should’ve had gym leaders at lv 50 and trainers in the low 40s
Mt.Silver should’ve had Pokemon at minimum, lv 50 and go up to 65 like Unknown Dungeon did.
That's basically the case in HGSS.
I would've liked it if they increased the levels of the pokemon in each area and each gym, depending on the amount of badges you had.
@@Dragonite43 exactly... Adapt to what the player has
@@Dragonite43 If anything, Kanto shouldve been that way.
I can see some areas like Johto remaining the same due to needing to grind lower level pokemon
But I feel post game, certain areas or floors in dungeons pre E4 should be replaced with higher leveled pokemon
Example: Post E4, Tin Tower, the top floors and the lowest floors of Whirl Islands can replaced with level 40+ pokemon.
MT.Silver has higher levels in Crystal but it still shouldve been lv 50 minimum.
10:27 Now I understand why Typhlosion is called the Johto Charizard
Johtozard
But better
Definitely better
Introducing Charizard without wings!
Honestly I always say Gen 2 was my favorite from nostalgia. That moment of opening up my map to see that I was in Kanto was one of my favorite moments in gaming as a bright eyed young lad.
That being said, I can’t really argue with most of your points here lmao and I remember being SO disappointed when I couldn’t get into Cerulean Cave to catch Mewtwo. It felt so wrong, and at least they got that right on the remakes.
One option would be to give each gym leader 8 unique teams so that they would scale appropriately regardless of which order you battle them in. Canonically, we know that each gym leader matches the level of their pokemon to something appropriate for the challenger (at least according to the anime). Obviously, this wasn't feasible for this game with the technology at the time (I suppose)
Is not impossible, literally is as easy as making a checklist. Besides, level scaling is not the only way to solve the problem. Just do it like Gen 1. Try to predict more or less the levels of the Pokemons the players would have at that point. Gen 2 doesnt even do this right.
The point where every playthrough has an ampharos and gyrados hits hard. It’s so true
I feel like I'm the only person who didn't use Amphoros. I used Magneton instead.
@@Seven_DB I used Raikou when I was a kid on my first play through
I skip ampharos because I'll just end up using raikou
@@Seven_DB I'm with you. I always used jolteon for electric and suicune for ice/water
This dude is one of the few Guys who have an opinion and ACTUAL arguments to support it.
I'll give him that he at least tries to construct well based arguments (unlike most opinion pieces I've seen in the different RUclips fandoms). However, I found that some of his arguments are based on pure subjectivity. For example, him finding the team rocket conflict or some dungeons in the game being boring. Another thing that bothered me a bit is that he used subsequent games as a standard to measure an old game (which he did mostly when talking about the story and pacing but he did for other aspects as well). It's like comparing a rotary phone to a smart phone and calling it trash for not doing the things a smart phone can do. I could go on and be way more specific but this comment will be way too long. I will say, his most compelling argument lies in the new addition of pokemon, their stats and when can you get them. Also, small side note, I didn't like how he just said "leave the hate comments that I won't read and dislike the vid to raise the engagement" I get that hate comments can get annoying and excesive in this platform but it seemed like he said it to also dismiss any good critizims as well? I dunno, I don't think people would leave as much dislikes on the vid if he didn't present his arguments with the demenor of a RUclips critic that calls everything bad.
@@danieldsantiagorodriguez4955 his 2 main objectively stated arguments are the Pokemon and Pacing. For this, hes right. the Pokemon in terms of stats and usability were for the most part absolute garbage, and the pacing was also garbage. These are indisputable facts which then tie in to every other argument. While some of his point are quite subjective, the fact he can even make a case for so many of these points and for the community (not just his simp army) to be split on whether hes right or not proves that his points have at least some merit. Theres alot of people wearing nostalgia glasses when talking about gen 2 because of it being the first in color, Stadium 2 being an absolute banger of a Stadium game, and Gen 2 being much longer than most in the series. But, once you really break the game down and compare it to gen 1 and gen 3 specifically in terms of pokemon stats, level curve, and pacing, you realize that gen 2 was ok for its time but now that we have a ton of games to compare it to, has to be considered a bottom 3 gen AT BEST.
@@danieldsantiagorodriguez4955 the pokemon were problematic even in comparison to gen 1, and the team rocket arc in gen 1 culminated in fighting Giovanni in his gym. The problems were still there, technically speaking.
@@danieldsantiagorodriguez4955 haha
@@TheDieseI one must consider pacing is a common issue in Pokémon games be it from levels or story progression. At least you can start your backtracking post fly in jhoto. Sinnoh you get to start backtracking after one badge woohoo for garbage map designs it’s a pretty consistent Issue surprisingly. Jhoto does place it’s mons the worst of any game though.
In all honesty, after replaying the remakes and playing the originals, everything stated in this video couldn't be anymore true. The only bit of story i really got from the game was the Rivals character development. Its so slow and boring and its just a journey from point A to B with Kanto being bonus fodder. Which is probably why Gen 5 is my fav by far, even if Black and White had its own issues in terms of content that Black and White 2 had to make up for.
Even worse, it's a journey from point A to point B, where you can go to A1, A2, A3, etc. In any order, and the game won't change in difficulty to Acknowledge how much you've done
@@VelvetIcematoro it was fun for it's time. Judging it now, based on what's happening now makes no sense. That's like judging mario 64 when we have games like Just Cause.
I have a friend that keeps saying "Gen 2 has the best post-game, they somehow managed to add 2 whole regions for you to explore" when in reality the reason they managed to add Kanto was because Johto was so barebones in innovation that they had to fill the rest of the cartridge with a copy paste
This. Some companies should learn that selling a game just for the technology is a terrible idea.
Back then when it came out. Gen 2 was amazing and so much fun to play and it was the right move. It brought to the fans what they wanted and then they were able to branch out more in Gen 3 with the revenue it brought them.
@@heybaeuwb8888 Gen 2 was definitely not amazing when it came out. Even as a kid it was obviously just re-hashing Gen 1 but worse.
@@DemonLordRaidensaid no one. Everyone loved gold/silver when it came out. It was literally a bigger/better red and blue
@@jprec5174 Damn, it's crazy that your anecdotal experience doesn't speak for everyone. Definitely untrue that "everyone" liked G/S on release. It was a bigger Gen. 1, but so much of it was just re-hashed with worse scaling. I could see loving it if you hadn't played any other RPG though.
I did a no evolutions challenge in these games, where I only used pokemon that had no evolutions and were newly added, and I think it speaks for itself how weirdly natural it felt to play johto like that, there are just so many pokemon in those games that never evolve and you get them at a rate that honestly feels natural. And this is 100% a bad thing, your weird niche pokemon shouldn’t be easier to get then normal ones and they absolutely shouldn’t be easier to use.
I had Dunsparce which you can get immediately in dark cave, quilfish which you can fish up during a swarm, heracross obviously, and boom you already have a decent team just after the second badge. Compare that to… idk, crobat? Ariados? Pineco?? Besides your starter and wooper if you didn’t pick totodile you don’t get anything good.
Crobat is likely the best pokemon of gen 2 aside from Ampharos. Yeah, it's a glass cannon, but it will take down half of the mons before they even touch him
I've been trying to get a Qwilfish swarm for my entire mono-water playthrough and I still have yet to get it. Hopefully it shows up while I start breeding for shinies because Intimidate Qwilfish is super cool in later games
I have never used a Houndoom in a playthrough and I thought that in the generation it was introduced, it would be easily acessable. What’s the deal with Game Freak and fire types?
GF can make questionable decisions sometime
Game Freak doesnt like any fire type that is NOT CHARIZARD.
You can't find Houndour anywhere in the region it was introduced in but you can find it on Kanto...Like what.
@@mysteryman9488 same with Murkrow, which is found on the same route as Houndour and Slugma, which is only found on cycling road.
It was so stupid. And really, those three are not considered the “best” or “strong” poke compared to many others at thaT time
@@aceclover758 Those should have been early game pokemon. Its stupid to think GF expected players to use those pokemon in late game when you've already become a champion and have a strong fully evolved team.
I started playing gen 2 a few days ago and I was literally ranting about not finding any gen 2 Pokemon in the wild/ in gym battles to my friend. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who feels that way lol
How to play Gen 2:
1. Use your starter
2. Ampharos
3. Gyarados
4. Finish the game
Edit 1:
Wasn't Feraligatr kept without the 'o' because the game couldn't keep the characters above 10?
Edit 2:
Typhlosion done dirty
Edit 1 is right the exact reason it feels rushed, still love the name
Pro tip. Dump your starter dafter the 6th Gym.
Meganium is vastly outclassed by be Victribell line and Feraligatr is just worse Gyrados.
And after the steel type Gym fire types do nothing
@@frankwest5388 I used both Feraligator and Gyarados
If you were to take six pokemon from this game and make the best possible team, the list would go
1. Typhlosion
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Overleveld gator 5 hm slaves and revive switch-ins.
“Ledian why is it complete garbage?” Caught me off guard
"Why does it have no attack" had me bother people with loud laughter
Seriously Ledian's moveset is pretty impressive. It has too much coverage to be dog shit.
@@rocketeer9183 so I made a rom hack on heart gold and made most of the version exclusives available while buffing mons like butterfree beedrill ledian ariados delcatty and chatot
And I kinda fixed ledian (I don't remember what stats I changed) but I remember I gave ariados base 120 attack and better bulk and gave ledian around 40 or more attack which turns its attack to around 75 I think and I buffed the gym leaders, rocket executives and the elite 4 and champion (its pretty hard just below kaizo level since falkner has 5 pokemon which are all buffed namely pidgeotto noctowl which is buffed hard natu swablu and delibird all of which got buffed also noctowl has substitute nasty plot razor wind and air slash ;) )
@@axlr8deathpls294 is it a fan game entirely or just a rom hack? was wondering if anyone would be interested in a fan game I'm working on with someone.
@@rocketeer9183 not a fan game just an edited version of heartgold that buffs weak mons and movesets while having more mons available in the game
"the game feels rushed"
Oh boi, sure Gamefreak has learned and has taken its time to develop the following games :'D
Well, Gen 7 was pretty good. Not Gen 5, but lots of charm, fun characters, decent story, lots of things to do, etc
@@outtaideas849 Gen5 was super good, yeah it has a ton of flaws like most Gens but Gen5 was great overall. WAAAY better than Gen2 or 6 which I'd say are the worst Gens overall. Gen7 is indeed quite good too.
@@rotciv557 What is your list? I really only have 5,4,7 for my top 3. Rest, I dunno
@@outtaideas849 Lol, we have similar faves.
My list goes from most to least favorite:
4 > 5 > 7 > 3 > 1 > 6 > 2. Never played 8 so I can't rate it accurately but I really don't like or respect many of the decisions TPC and Game Freak undertook in this current one.
My Favorite is 4 since I consider Platinum the best mainline Pokemon game. Perfect blend of challenge, story and characters imo with an excellent spread of mons available. Diamond and Pearl are marginably worse in MANY different ways (they are SO FUCKING SLOW) so I recommend avoiding them entirely and while HGSS are definite upgrades over GSC they still have a crapton of problems in them, the terrible level pacing most of all since it makes the Johto lategame incredibly painful.
After that goes Gen 5 with it's decent story and characters along with having a great spread of new Pokemon imo. BW2 especially is incredible and has such a wide variety of mons to catch that one can legitimately do 2 dozen full playthroughs (with a full 6 mon team in all of them) without needing to reuse a Pokemon.
Third favorite is Gen7, I never played the Ultra games so I cannot say much about those but at the very least base Sun and Moon have great story and characters, amazing Pokemon variety. Sun and Moon is also surprisingly challenging if you go through it without using EXP Share which I did in my first playthrough (I remember how honestly impressed I was when I whited out while fighting Hau on the fight we have with him upon arriving in the third island, he kicked my ass and I respected him for it).
Fourth is Gen3, all the games in this Gen are pretty good with no real stinkers. Decent Pokemon variety but the lack of Phys-Spec split hurts this one quite a bit at times, but at least a lot of the movepool problems from Gen1-2 are remedied. Also fast as fuck to play.
Then goes Gen1...honestly incredibly broken gameplaywise but admittedly some of the story and pacing helps make up for that quite a bit. FRLG really is the definitive version of the Kanto games though so I'd say Gen1 is completely irrelevant for all reasons besides nostalgia since Gen3 quite literally did it better.
Next is 6...great variety in Pokemon and Megas are a great addition when they are used to enhance Pokemon that really needed it (Mawile and Lopunny are some of my favorites so the fact that Megas made them actually good Pokemon to use was fantastic) but besides that this Gen really struggled, the shift to 3D was kinda rough and it lead to a real drop in visual quality compared to the sprite games (especially the Pokemon models). X & Y were without a doubt the most boring games in terms of difficulty (which is hilariously easy even without EXP Share) and plot (Team Flare is an absolute joke even when compared to the oftentimes jokey nature of previous teams) with only very few characters that stand out and the RS remakes introduced a bunch of new problems into an already solid set of games while not improving the gameplay enough to make up for that (and also completely crippling the difficulty even if you for go using EXP Share).
Last and certainly the least is Gen2...just go watch the video again for an explanation on why Gen2 is the worst...Oh God, I just thought of something...it's well known that Game Freak had no clue how to add Kanto into GS because of cartridge space, but luckily Satoru Iwata took some time to essentially streamline the cartridge space GF were using, removing a ton of unnecessary junk data they left in and making them capable of coding Kanto into the game.
What the hell would Gold and Silver would have been like if Iwata hadn't pulled Game Freak's metaphorical ass out of the fire that way? God knows what an absolute clusterfuck of a game it would have turned out to be...
@@rotciv557 I love 7 the most
I’ll always have a special place for gen 2 in my heart but your commentary was dead on. There’s a reason I ended up only leveling like 4 or 5 Pokémon in my playthroughs lol
I only use one or two, is way more easily, and the rest are just target dolls (for having a free turn for a potion or something). One is the starter and the other tries to have as much as varied attacks as possible to give the starter type coverage.
To be fair, gen 2 had some really cool Pokémon designs - Umbreon, Typhlosion, Mantine, Tyranitar, Lugia, Suicune, Ampharos, Azumarill, Totodile, just to name a few - it's just that most of the Pokemon's stats and movepools simply render them unusable, sadly. From a design perspective, I think the Pokémon introduced in G2 easily clear any of the generations after 4, and you could definitely argue that it tops G4 as well.
This is why I love doing G2 ultra randomizers - every Pokémon's base stat total/distribution, typing, and move pools are completely random, meaning lots of normally useless Pokémon become really strong, and vice-versa. In my last playthrough, I ended up with a core team of Azumarill, Togetic and Lanturn, all of which were about as powerful as typical Mythicals.
I’m miffed that the fundamental problems with Johto weren’t fixed in HG/SS.
It’s the reason why I quit my Nuzlocke run in SS.
The following Pokemon gimmick, being mandatory, annoyed me more than helped. Great looking games, still wonky with everything mentioned here.
Same. Gen 2 is why I never complain about the XP share on Gen 6 and onward.
The pokemon company does only the absolute bare minimum when it comes to remakes.
@@shn4449
That's what a Remake should do. Be a 1:1 recreation and work out the kinks. That's not doing the "bare minimum", that's giving the original work RESPECT, chump.
@@mattleo3211 if the remakes are going to be literally the same game with updated graphics, what reason do we have to buy the new ones when we played exactly the same game a few years ago? There is no reason for me to play ORAS when Emerald, a GBA game was better. Same with gen 4. Gen 2 remakes never fixed all the problems with Johto listed above either. They just slapped a tiny pokémon sprite to follow you around and called it a day.
Now look at FRLG. They added entire sevii islands to between 7th and 8th gym and also gave us a postgame that was absent from the original. That's how remakes should be in my opinion. Fixing stuff from the original while also adding new stuff to it.
The level curve is jank, the pacing is jank, you barely get any good pokemon, they barely give you any decent items until kanto (not even evolution stones until hgss where they are locked behind a trashy minigame)
Also the games are so over reliant on kanto. And the Pokémon are fucking weak and forgettable, so much so that i keep thinking that johto only has like 70 new Pokémon when it actually has around 150
The pacing is really bad, the exploration is not even good I don't why people love how nonlinear it is when there is nothing to explore expect some caves with zubats.
@@appy1487 "Why is this game that came out when only Kanto was available so reliant on Kanto?"
Dunno, maybe because it's a sequel? It didn't have the pressure to be a marketing vehicle for plushies and toys?
I agree, but the Pokeathalon is absolutely not a trash mini game
@@The_Meev bro it takes forever, is repetitive, and it murders my touch screen
I'm surprised he didn't mention the typing distribution of the gyms essentially nerfing an already weak Chikorita line further into the ground by having gyms with THREE TYPINGS that counter grass, two of which are literally THE FIRST TWO GYMS and NONE that Grass is good against. While also super buffing the clone Cyndaquil line by having the EXACT OPPOSITE ISSUE where there are THREE typings fire counters two of which are later gyms and the other being the second gym... And as for the Water type, well, every single gym is neutral...
Sure each region has starters that are easier or harder to get through the game with, but Gen 2 did an absolutely HORRIBLE job with type balancing. Starting Cyndaquil you legit just burn through the ENTIRE GAME with absolutely no problem... Whereas with other starters to even get an actually decent fire type you have to wait until there's not even that much of a point of actively trying to go out and actually catch one...
Gen 2 was a mess, have to agree on that one.
All of the problems with the gyms are really a problem caused by Kanto, again. Because Gen II used Kanto, and all of it's gyms, the Johto gyms were stuck with the leftover types.
Your first point. It was the same with charmander and Bulbasaur.
@@geo4290 yeah, each gen had an easy, medium, and hard mode based on the starters. It's only a "problem" if you want each starter to function the same as the other two, but then you've got Yellow/Pikachu/Eevee for that.
Dusklicious dont forget the sprout tower right before the 1st gym. Cyndaquil SWEEPS that area
To be fair, the Chikorita line does better than the Cyndaquil line in Kanto than in Johto. It's a matter of "do you want an easier time with Johto gyms while having more difficulty with Kanto, or do you want a harder time in Johto with an easier time in Kanto?"
Meganium will sweep Brock and Misty pretty handily, resist Lt. Surge, stalemate Erika, have a weakness against Janine, neutral against Sabrina, weak to Blaine, neutral against Blue.
Typhlosion will struggle against Brock and Misty, neutral with Lt. Surge, sweep Erika, neutral with Janine and Sabrina, stalemate Blaine, neutral against Blue.
I don't think the game opening up once you reach Morty would have been so bad if the levels in Ice Path/Blackthorn had been high enough to account for the fact that you're completing three separate questlines before that. Chuck/Morty/Jasmine/Pryce being roughly the same level doesn't bother me very much, and Clair's levels are also fine, but every trainer battle outside of her gym leading right up to the Elite Four is like, Level 20-30, with maybe one or two exceptions. I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
Oh my god, there are people who actually agree with me on this. You touched on every point I always make when talking to people about how Gen II is actually not very good, even as someone who personally has quite a lot of nostalgia for it. Glad to see there are others who don’t just wear rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and say Gen II is the best just because you get to revisit a half-baked region.
I actually also have a lot of Nostalgia for Gen 2, but yeah. They really aren't as good as people make them out to be. And the remakes, while having the benefits of including the gen 3 and 4 QoL improvements, literally fixed none of the issues the original game had.
@@NeoArashi You nail it.
Gen 2 was my favorite and i never played gen 1
@@topshelf5032 Play it then 🤷♂️
@@sebastiankulche no? I dont fuck with gen 1
I remember my first wakeup call that something was wrong with Gen 2 was even as a kid I had figured out all the returning pokemon from Gen 1 were just stronger. Seriously, the average stat of Gen 2 pokemon are just lower to Gen 1. Gen 2 has some cool designs and added much needed types and had good mechanics like held items. But the game kind of punishes you for trying to use Gen 2. Like, locking Larvitar until the game is 95% done was a really dumb idea. Dratini was available in Gen 1 not even halfway in. I didn't even know how to get most of Gen 2's pokemon.
Gen 2 also has Dunspace. That's it, that's the whole argument. Dunsparce is just dex filler with no niche.
Not even mentioning Dratini being readily available for Whitney in Gen 2, a whole gym ahead of Gen 1's
@L Lawliet Dunsparce has a cool evolution in Uranium where he becomes a dragon.
BTW Uranium is still up and receiving updates, just harder to find it now after Nintendo tryed to kill it.
@TrainerblueTube Yeah, it's like 2000 coins.
I learned that larvitar/tyranitar existed by reading a strategy guide magazine in the grocery store. I had already beaten the game of course.
Dunsparce is god.
"You're just explaining how that problem came to be, but that doesn't excuse it" is actually such a good quote
how is "nothing more could fit on that tiny cartridge" not a valid excuse?
@@pablofmc because they wasted space shoving parts of the first game in in the first place
@@pablofmc That doesn't excuse the abysmal level curve (which is Johto's biggest problem IMO) at all
@@pablofmc Also, mainly because they could've used a 4MB maskrom easily, but wanted to save money, so didn't. So it could've fit on the cartridge.
@@nunya2587 That wasn't a waste of space, it made for a good post game, but it did affect the main campaign.
I'm more annoyed that Heartgold/Soulsilver didn't actually fix some of the more blatant issues that plagued these games.
- The horrible low-level curve after Ecruteak City is still there.
- Johto gym leaders are still lacking Pokemon from the damn region they're in.
- The Johto villain story is still the same boring and simplistic "Team Rocket want their boss back" storyline.
- Kanto overall still feels really barren with hardly any additional story or updates to the world setting.
HGSS is super overrated.
AMEN
no
Overrated but still better than RBY, GSC, RSE, FRLG, DPP, XY, SWSH and BDSP.
I actually agree with most of that, but Emerald and Platinum are much better than HGSS by just being the 3rd games that fixed a lot of the issues that plagued RS and DP.
@@retloclive9118 ORAS is better than HGSS and RSE is better than GSC. I will never see RSE as better than HGSS. Platinum is almost as good as HGSS, but not quite.
I still remember as a kid watching in awe as my Golbat evolved without me knowing it could.
"Why Gen 2 is the worst Game"
And I took offense to that. JK let's sit and listen to what you have to say.
"Amphaross is on everyone's team" Okay fam. We good
yes I was ready to protect my child and the Dashing Wanderer
i didnt had an amphaross, i hate slow pokes
I also had no ampharous, i traded a pikachu to myself. I always use pikachu in every game
That's kinda the problem? Your team shouldn't be restricted to certain pokemon in a playthrough, it should have some variety. I did use an ampharos so I'm not saying it's bad you should just have more options.
Facts