#Pokemon Gen I | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

icarusavery · 9 months

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I beat Pokémon Generation I (Pokémon Red specifically) for the first time in many, many years over the last week or so. 26 hours of playtime, about 75 Pokémon species caught, and a bit too much grinding and inventory management, and I became the Indigo League Champion. Now I wanna get out some of my thoughts.

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For context, I started with Gen IV (Diamond) back in 2008 or so, and I've played most games in the mainline series, with the only ones I haven't being Gen V Part 2 (B2W2), Gen VI (XY specifically, I have played Alpha Sapphire), Gen VII Part 1 (SuMo), and Gen IX (ScVi).

Firstly, I wanna comment on my team, because some certain quirks of Gen I - namely the limited selection of Pokémon, the prevalence of certain types and the absence of others (both in the wild and on enemy teams), and the classic Generation I Spaghetti Code - led to me picking some Pokémon I likely wouldn't give a second thought. For instance, in terms of Kanto starters, I've always been a Squirtle fangirl (turtles are one of my favorite animals IRL) but I ended up going with Bulbasaur because of a certain quirk of Gen I's code: high-crit moves basically always crit, so Razor Leaf (normally a 55 base power move that's not worth all that much) suddenly became effectively a 165 base power gatling gun of death that killed basically anything that didn't resist it in one clean shot. Anything that Razor Leaf couldn't take out, Body Slam would clear away with ease (great for all those Psychic-types with glass bones and paper skin.)

I filled out my party with a Gyarados, a Nidoking, and an Alakazam (I used PKSM on 3DS to evolve it into an Alakazam, I don't have a spare 3DS to trade with). The Gyarados was a bitch to train, but it eventually became my coverage champ: with Surf, Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, and Strength, nothing could stand in its way (especially with base 100 Special, which for those who don't know, Special is both your Special Attack and Special Defense.) Nidoking wasn't exactly a powerhouse - its stats are somewhat middling, with only a 75 base Special and a 92 base Attack - but it soon became my best choice for dealing with many of the Pokémon that could take a bit of a beating from my special attackers. As a physical sweeper, it's great, especially once you snag Earthquake from Silph Co. and get a 100 base power (150 with STAB), 100% accurate Ground-type move that annihilates basically anything that doesn't resist or is immune to Ground. With all the Poison-types in Kanto, it was a massive help, and that applies doubly to Alakazam. It doesn't have the insane coverage of Alakazam in Gen II, where it's the reigning Elemental Punch-Out League heavyweight champion, but it does have Psychic, which mops the floor with basically anything that looks at you funny, and with 135 base Special and 120 base Speed, it could reliable OHKO virtually any threat that wasn't just as stronk as it (namely, other Psychic-types).

For my HMployee, I picked up that traded Farfetch'd, since it could learn Fly and Cut. Surf and Strength went to Gyarados and Nidoking (Nidoking only getting the latter owing to its meager Special) while Flash went to a Pokémon I raised for a bit but eventually boxed, my Butterfree. Butterfree was honestly a Pokémon I had no idea would be as useful as it was, but damn if it didn't get the job done. I also decided to raise a Geodude for a short while (though ultimately dropped it, Rock-Ground wasn't that essential for me) and caught a Dugtrio basically just to use for Lt. Surge before boxing it. My Hall of Fame team also included a Moltres, but all he did was die a couple times so I could revive another Pokémon I wanted instead, and he Fire Blasted Blue's Exeggutor to death, which was pretty pog of him.

There were also a lot of Pokémon whose designs I found myself enjoying in Gen I a lot more than I remember, even if they never made it into my team. Grimer's adorable, even if I think Muk is just a straight downgrade and so I never want to evolve Grimer. Gen I Pikachu honestly looks way better than he ever did once they slimmed down his previously football-shaped body. Even Gen I Electrode looks (marginally) better, thanks to him having more defined eyeballs instead of just having some pinpricks.

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Now that my team comp is out of the way, let's talk about gameplay. It's basically just what you'd expect from Pokémon, just a little bit less. No abilities, no held items, no genders, no Special Defense, and moves are still divided into physical and special categories based on their type rather than the individual move. The battle system still works about how you'd expect, albeit with some considerable jank, and it's still a fun experience overall. I did find myself seriously underleveled by endgame - my lv48 Venusaur was my highest leveled Pokémon compared to Blue's lv65 Charizard - but it never felt like I was out of my league. The challenge mostly ranged from "piss easy" to "fairly easy" to "below average" and only got a bit braintaxing once I hit Victory Road, barring a few one-off encounters, like a Rocket grunt in Silph Co. with a lv28 Hypno that did my shit in for a bit owing to some nasty curse from RNGiratina. The early game was the worst part - having to grind for a few hours in Viridian Forest just to get my Pokémon in a state where I could reasonably fight Brock. Other than that, no part of the game felt overly grindy or annoying.

The main problem was mostly dungeon design - I'm glad this game even has dungeons, unlike some others (cough gen viii cough) but they're often a bit undercooked, most of them reusing the same cave tileset (literally five of thirteen dungeons, and four of the ten required dungeons use the same cave tileset, and they're also generally the longest dungeons outside of the eleven-story megadungeon that is Silph Co.), and the main "challenge" in basically all of them is just some variety of "do a maze" - many of them relying on teleporter puzzles to work (and good god do those teleporters get annoying.) Other than that, the ride is a mostly smooth one, though I do wish the game was a bit better at telling you where to go next. It's not impossible to figure things out and the game does often point you in a direction to go at least, but more than once did I finish up an objective and then go "okay, well now what?"

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Gen I does have some considerable problems outside of dungeon design, sadly, and most of them are related to quality-of-life features. Your inventory is almost comically small - a mere 20 items. Organizing it is a Sisyphean task, owing to its complete lack of any kind of tabs and the wonky item swap controls, but worse than that is the hilarious bad PC inventory. You can store items in your PC if they don't fit in your bag, but 1). you need to have space in your bag to pick up an item, it can't go straight to the PC, and 2). you only have 50 spaces in your PC. Given you can't get rid of old, useless Key Items like the S.S. Ticket or the Secret Key, this basically means you're shit out of luck for collecting things like TMs or whatnot. It's a use-it-or-lose-it kinda game, and you're constantly having to get rid of old items to fit new ones.

There's also a distinct lack of polish in Gen I compared to future titles. Beyond the graphics being a bit… primitive (poor Gen I Geodude, he's not doing great), there's a lot of little things that add up. There's no descriptions of moves or even a way to see their power and accuracy in-game, forcing you to have a guide open to check basic information like that. HMs don't activate when you interact with a relevant object, but instead require you to go and select the HM from your party menu. A lot of little things like that really do detract from the experience and make it feel very janky compared to what it could be.

I'll also say that Kanto is certainly not my favorite region. It's not got a lot that's particularly interesting about it - especially in terms of unique landmarks. The aesthetic of every town is damn near identical - liking owing to hardware limitations - and no route really stood out as unique, unless you want to count Viridian Forest. The Pokémon in the region are also often pretty bland, including Rattata, Pidgey, and Venomoth, but this applies especially to evolved forms. Frequently an evolved form is just "the previous form, but bigger" (see: Poliwhirl into Poliwrath, Mankey into Primeape, Grimer into Muk, the whole damn Pidgey line), or it's just "add another thingy" (see: Doduo into Dodrio, Koffing into Weezing, Magnemite into Magneton, Diglett into Dugtrio - though I actually really like that last one.) The worst offender is probably Electrode - I really like Voltorb, it's a neat take on an RPG mimic, but Electrode is by far one of the laziest designs in the whole damn series.

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All that said, I still had fun with Pokémon Red. It's a fun experience that, while certainly janky as all hell, has a certain charm to it that future Pokémon games don't quite have. That's not to say it's better than future games, oh God no - I'd still rather play RSE or ORAS or USUM over this - but for what it's worth, it's a good time.

On a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being "actively harmful to society," 1 being "basically unplayable," 5 being "completely middle of the road, neither good nor bad," and 10 being "as close to perfect as possible," I'd give it a 6.5/10, maybe a 7 if I'm in a good mood. It's worth your time, just don't be surprised if it's a bit dated or clunky.

#pokemon #pokemon red #pokemon gen 1 #pokemon gen i #kanto #avery reviews a thing

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