Defending the “Worst” Pokemon Games

Image Source: The Pokemon Company

Did you all know that Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver are actually bad video games? Even though I grew up playing them, and didn’t notice any problems with them, they’re actually probably the worst games in the series. Yeah, it’s true. The internet told me so back in 2021. And that never sat right with me. How could these be the worst games when Sun and Moon exist?

HG/SS are some of my favorite games in the series. I replayed them a ton when I was a kid, and I never noticed any of these issues that people are bringing up. I thought that the games were hard, but the challenges were never insurmountable. Keep in mind these games came out when I was either 11 or 12, and I was an idiot when I was a kid. Yet I still managed to beat Red, who is cited as one of the strongest superbosses in the franchise.

So I come to you today, fresh off of TWO playthroughs of HG/SS to look at the complaints about the games that have popped up in recent years. I want to see if they hold any weight at all, or if it’s just people complaining for the sake of complaining. And the answer might surprise you.

Gym Leaders don’t use (Enough) Johto Pokemon

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

Let’s start off with an easy one. The Johto Gym Leaders don’t have enough new Johto Pokemon on their teams. This is a complaint that I’ve never really understood. I think that the Johto Gym Leaders are plenty strong as they are. But let’s humor the idea for a little bit. Going leader by leader, let’s see if adding new Johto Pokemon would make their teams any better.

Starting with Falkner, he has a Pidgey and Pidgeotto. That’s a solid, strong pair of Pokemon for the first Gym Leader. I’ve heard people say that he should have a Hoothoot rather than Pidgey, and I think that’s more of a sidegrade than an upgrade. You’d basically be trading a more offensive Pokemon for a defensive one. Plus, you also just fought against a handful of Hoothoot in the (now required) Sprout Tower dungeon. I also think that Pokemon like Natu or Delibird would be too strong for this point in the game. Falkner is only the first Leader, and this is a good team to test the player with.

Next is Bugsy. He has a Metapod, Kakuna, and Scyther. Zoinks, that’s all Kanto Pokemon! Bug Pokemon by nature are weaker than a lot of other Pokemon types (especially at low levels), so it’s hard to pick out Johto bugs for him to use. Be honest, would his team really be improved if he had Pineco, Spinarak, or Ledian? You could swap out his Scyther for a Heracross if you still wanted him to have a strong ace Pokemon, but his strategy in HG/SS revolves around leading with Scyther and pivoting out with U-Turn (a new move in Gen 4), which Heracross doesn’t learn.

Third up is Whitney. She has two Pokemon: Clefairy and Miltank. And we finally have our first Johto Pokemon! Of course Whitney’s team is infamous. Clefairy isn’t the strongest Pokemon, but it’s more like getting through fodder to get to the raid boss in an MMO. Miltank is the embodiment of early game powercreep. It will use Attract to potentially immobilize your Pokemon, Stomp to flinch them. Rollout which gradually gets stronger every turn. And Milk Drink to heal when she’s low on HP. Plus she has a Lum Berry equipped, letting it heal from statuses like Burn or Sleep one time. Whitney’s team doesn’t need any changes.

Over in Ecruteak, we have Morty. He has Gastly, two Haunters, and a Gengar. “Give Mortey a Misdreavus!” the masses shout. And yeah, that’s the only Ghost Pokemon added in Johto. But again, if we replace Gastly, it’s a sidegrade, not a direct upgrade. You’re replacing one Ghost type with the Levitate ability for another one that doesn’t hit as hard as the other. Honestly, I’m more disappointed that HG/SS took away Hypnosis & Dream Eater from Gengar. That shit was brutal back in the original Gold and Silver.

Next is Chuck, coming armed with Primeape and Poliwrath. And I’ll give the critics this one. He should’ve had an extra Pokemon. This is a really underwhelming team. I do think that Hitmontop or Heracross would’ve fit into his team very well. Hitmontop is a great lead with its Intimidate ability as well as priority moves like Fake Out and Sucker Punch. And for being the fifth Gym Leader, he should have more Pokemon than Falkner does. Good job haters. You got one right!

Onto my all time favorite Gym Leader, Jasmine. She has two Magnemite and a Steelix. This is a really cool team, actually. See, in Gen 1, the Steel type didn’t exist so Magnemite was a pure Electric type. Showing off that a Pokemon has changed its type is really cool. And Steelix is a new evolution to an existing Gen 1 Pokemon (Onix). I don’t think that Scizor or Forretress could go on her team since that’d overlap with Bugsy. And Skarmory would be cool, but again, we’ve already dealt with Flying types with Falkner. You could maybe give her Magneton, but it’s really the same difference. Magnemite and Magneton both die to a Ground type move.

Our penultimate Gym Leader is Pryce. He’s rocking Seel, Dewgong, and Piloswine. Okay, real talk. There’s no fixing this team. If he was like the third Gym Leader, you could throw Sneasel into this team and it wouldn’t be bad. But by the 7th Gym you should have dozens of ways to shatter an Ice type. Really you’d just be giving him Sneasel or Delibird as a novelty, not because it would actually help his team. Mamoswine could be a cool option, seeing as that was added into the HG/SS Pokedex. But they probably wanted to keep the bones of the original, and not get too crazy with changes. That said, you could also make the argument that it’s a remake, and this was their chance to adjust things about the original games. Who’s to say which was the right way to go.

And finally we have Clair, the Dragon Gym Leader. She has Gyarados, two Dragonairs, and Kingdra. Great team. No notes. Gyarados is an honorary Dragon type. Dragonair was the sole Dragon type in the original Red and Blue. And Kingdra is a fantastic Pokemon. Back then it was only weak to other Dragon types. This is a great final challenge, and you can’t really give her anything else. Unless you wanted to go crazy and give her something Dragon adjacent like Dragon Dance Feraligatr. While that’d be funny, it’s not necessary.

So yeah, I think that all except for two Gym Leaders have good teams for what they’re trying to accomplish. It’s not like there’s some arbitrary amount of Johto Pokemon that needed to be on their teams. And, at least for me, this wasn’t even something I noticed until it was pointed out. But one possible “fix” could be swapping Bugsy and Pryce, so Bugsy is the 7th Gym Leader, while Pryce is the 2nd. Ice types are a very strong offensive type, but an abysmal defensive type, and they share a couple of weaknesses with Bug (Fire & Rock). 

As for a team, you could give Pryce Sneasel, Swinub, and something small like Shellder to try and keep the idea of his original team. Sneasel is fast and hits hard enough to be a challenge at the early stages of the game (like Bugsy’s Scyther). Swinub has a unique typing to work around. And Shellder would take the role of Seel as an Ice-adjacent Water type.

As for Bugsy, with him as the 7th Gym Leader, you could go crazy with the Pokemon he uses. Bugs at low level suck, but bugs at high level are awesome. If you wanted to keep the spirit of his original team, you could go with Scizor, Ariados, and Beedrill. This would let him keep the U-Turn shenanigans, while making the rest of his team actually threatening, but not overbearing.

The Level Curve Is Bad

Image Credit: The Pokemon Company

One of the most common complaints about these games is that the level curve is bad. I see the argument, but I think I can explain it away. After you beat Morty in Ecruteak City, you’re given the ability to use the HM for Surf outside of battle. From here you can either go west toward Olivine and Cianwood City to challenge Jasmine and Chuck. However you could also go east toward Mahogany Town where you can deal with the Lake of Rage and the Rocket Hideout.

This kind of freedom for the player is very cool. And to allow the player to not get stonewalled immediately by difficulty, they had to make the trainers and wild Pokemon manageable. The highest Pokemon you’ll battle is either going to be Jasmine’s Steelix (level 35), or Pryce’s Piloswine (level 34). Then when you go down the other path, the enemy levels dip back down to the 20s. For most of the midpoint of the game you’ll be overleveled compared to what’s around you. 

It isn’t really until you get to the fight with Archer at the end of the Goldenrod Radio Tower where the levels start to catch up, and possibly overtake yours. After that, the game goes ballistic with enemy levels. Clair has a level 41 Kingdra (a Water/Dragon type that’s only weak to other Dragons), and Champion Lance’s strongest Pokemon is a level 50 Dragonite. AND he has two other Dragonites at level 49.

By the time you get to the Elite Four, your team is likely only in the low 40s. But there aren’t anymore trainers for you to fight, so that just leaves you with the wild Pokemon in Victory Road to grind off of. Those are all in the mid 30s, so they won’t give you that much EXP. So what the heck? How do you get even adequately leveled for the Elite Four and Champion?

Well, it’s actually a pretty interesting solution. See, throughout the game there are certain trainers that give you their phone number after you beat them. They’ll call you from time to time, and offer you flavor text. Very rarely they’ll call to challenge you to a rematch. However, once you beat Archer at the Radio Tower you can call any trainer in your phonebook and set up a rematch depending on what day it is, as well as the time. And these trainers scale to your team depending on how far into the game you are. To set up rematches, you just need to be out of the route they’re on and call them over and over to keep gaining EXP. The list of trainer rematch times can be found here.

Is this a perfect solution? No. But it’s better than the alternative.

Let’s look at Scarlet and Violet. These are open world games that tell you that you can go anywhere, and challenge things how you want. Except that you can’t because nothing scales to your level or progression. So unless you get super overleveled, you’re stuck doing it how the game wants you to. And I like Scarlet and Violet, but this will always be the biggest missed opportunity with that game for me.

I’ve also been playing Pokemon FireRed on the Switch recently. And the “weird level curve” problem exists there too. I’m currently in Celadon City and my team of five Pokemon are all in the low 30s. I haven’t done any grinding with the VS Seeker. Just by fighting every trainer I’m getting above the game’s levels. Plus, there’s another huge jump in levels between the 8th Gym and the Elite Four. Probably even worse than what’s in HG/SS. 

Overall, most RPGs are going to have a “level problem”. It’s on the player to either accept that they’re underleveled, use the in-game mechanics, or come up with creative solutions to the bosses that are walling them.

There’s No Johto Pokemon in Johto

Image Credit: Me :]

Our third and final major complaint. There’s no Johto Pokemon in the Johto Region. At face value, this seems like a legit problem. When you start the game, there are a ton of Kanto Pokemon that greet you on the first few Routes. Pokemon like Pidgey, Rattata, Caterpie, Weedle, Bellsprout, Geodude. It all contributes to Johto feeling like Kanto 2. Of course there are also a handful of Johto Pokemon mixed in like Sentret, Hoothoot, Ledyba, Spinarak and Dunsparce, as well as Mareep and Wooper after Violet City. But that’s not helpful to the narrative that the detractors are trying to spin.

I wanted to put this claim to the test and actually see how many Johto Pokemon you are able to obtain before you beat the Elite Four and go to Kanto. I put together a spreadsheet with how to obtain each Pokemon in the Johto Pokedex. Fortunately these are also very easy numbers to work with because Johto introduced a perfect 100 new Pokemon to the series. So, let’s break it down.

Starting off, 48 Pokemon are able to be caught in both versions with no stipulations in place. That’s almost half of the Johto Pokemon. Adding in the 11 version exclusives bumps it to 59 Pokemon. There are 9 Pokemon that are obtained via gifts. This includes Togepi, Tyrogue, Slugma, Shuckle, and Espeon and Umbreon from the Eevee that Bill gives you. You also have the 5 Legendary Pokemon: Entei, Raikou, Suicune, Ho-oh, and Lugia.

The Safari Zone was a brand new area added into HeartGold and SoulSilver, and this was used to give the player some new options to use on a playthrough. This includes Murkrow, Misdreavus, Wobbuffet, and Johto’s resident pseudo-legendary: Larvitar.

Now we come to the weird ones. Johto added a bunch of baby versions of Pokemon that you can't technically catch to use on your team, but their evolutions are available. This includes Cleffa, Igglybuff, Smoochum, Elekid, and Magby. Pichu is where it gets a bit weird. You can’t catch Pikachu until Kanto. But you can get a Pikachu via the PokeWalker accessory that came with the games on launch. Yeah, it’s an obtuse solution to a strange problem, but that’s what we’ve got to work with.

This leaves us with a grand total of 6 Pokemon that cannot be obtained until the post-game: Sneasel, Houndour, Houndoom, Blissey, Porygon 2, and Celebi. 5 Pokemon if you’re discounting Celebi because it’s a Mythical Pokemon that could only be obtained through events.

So yeah, 94 out of 100 Johto Pokemon are available before you beat the Elite Four. That sure seems like a lot more than “no Johto Pokemon”. I really have no idea where this argument came from, but it’s pretty flimsy if you analyze it for more than a few minutes. And to tack on another point against “Bosses don’t use Johto Pokemon”, your Rival uses Sneasel, and Archer uses both Houndour and Houndoom. So really, there’s only 3 Johto Pokemon that you don’t see in Johto.

This complaint also isn’t taking into account that you have access to some evolutions to Gen 2 Pokemon that were introduced in Gen 4. This includes Pokemon like Mamoswine, Yanmega, Tangrowth, Lickylicky, and even Magmortar if you use the PokeWalker to get the Magmarizer.

The Johto games added in a bunch of evolution to Gen 1 Pokemon, so it makes sense that those Gen 1 Pokemon would be available in this game so that you can use them. And these new evolutions are some of the coolest Pokemon around. We’re talking Scizor, Hitmontop, Umbreon, Politoed, Slowking, Steelix, Kingdra. It’s a real quality over quantity generation. It didn’t add a lot of Pokemon, but the ones they did add have left a huge mark on the series. I mean, this is the generation that gave us Smeargle. Any VGC player can tell you about the horrors of that thing.

Closing

Overall, I really feel like people who say that HeartGold and SoulSilver are bad games are just looking for something to complain about. Like does it really matter how many Johto Pokemon the leaders use? Would the game really be better if Falkner used a Hoothoot instead of Pidgey? These are incredible games that I feel capture the essence of what a remake is supposed to be. Keep the spirit of the original intact, while at the same time implementing new ideas from the other games in the series. 

From my point of view, HG/SS are the last truly good Pokemon remakes. I think that Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire were too safe. And I didn’t even play BD/SP because they looked stupid and bad. As it turns out, I made the right choice.

Call it nostalgia. Call it toxic positivity. I just don’t see why anyone would say that HG/SS are bad games. You all say that this game is too easy, but cry when you can’t beat Whitney’s Miltank. Maybe try using what’s available to you and come up with some solutions rather than folding when you have the smallest bit of trouble.