Salnax said:
Because I have been too nice for too long.
In rough chronological playthrough order...
- What is up with the Bulbasaur family? The initial starting Pokemon aren't that bad, but Bulbasaur definitely gets the worst final form of the trio. Charmander becomes a dragon, Blastoise gets a couple of cannons, Venusaur gets a flower. And aesthetics aside, Venusaur doesn't learn as many useful moves as its counterparts. No wonder it never got on the cover of the game in the West.
- As for Charizard, why is it not a Dragon? There is no abundance of Dragon Pokemon in G1, and no shortage of Flying Pokemon. A Fire/Dragon starter would have been cool.
- Actually, speaking of Dragons, why are they even here? There is one family of Dragon Pokemon,, the Dratini line, and a single move, Dragon Rage, which does fixed damage. Unless having tons of types is really important, there is no reason to have the Dragon type at all.
- Same with Ghosts. The single Ghost line in this game is part Poison and lacks the moves to make it useful against Psychic types, thus negating the entire point of the Ghost type. That's two redundant Types from the word go. GameFreak could have used that space to include more Pokemon in other under-represented types, like Fire, Electric, and Fighting.
- Pokemon Yellow has the worst starter in the franchise. You are given a Pikachu that can not evolve in a time before items like the Light Ball could make up for it. Other than dealing with Zubats on Mt. Moon and Misty, it is obsolete as soon as you get a Mankey, Nidoran, or Butterfree. It is ineffective against 3 of the first 4 gyms and too weak afterwards. Worse, the damn thing will whine every time you put it in Bill's PC.
- The first thing you do with your starter is cross Route 1. There, you get stuck in Viridian City until you complete a fetch quest. This is padding.
- You only get the Pokedex after going across Route 1 the second time, and only get the Poke Ball tutorial after the third trek across the route. Until then, you can only fight or run from foes due to your lack of equipment and the Poke Mart not selling anything.
- When the Poke Mart finally does open up, they don't sell Potions (except in Yellow). Why the **** would you sell Burn Heals and not Potions? You're just going to get new players to waste money on useless garbage they won't know is nearly useless until much later, when they actually can afford them.
- Speaking of which, remember the Town Map? Don't get it. It doesn't do much of anything, and inventory space is very limited for some reason. Even your PC can't hold all the junk you will end up collecting.
- Money is also a mess. First, you lose half your money every fight, and since there's nowhere to keep it like in Gen 2, there's little reason to ever spend money. Not to mention that since trainers never fight you again, there is basically a fixed amount of cash in the game until you can beat the Pokemon League. Said amount shrinks drastically if you are saving up to buy expensive items and get beaten in a fight.
- Route 22 is a great place to capture party members, especially in Yellow, but putting the Rival here with a tough team early on is cruel. Two Pokemon at levels 9 and 8 are pretty tough if one happens to wander here early on, especially if they haven't caught any Pokemon yet and are just looking around. Plus, in Red/Blue, a rival with Charmander will have a huge advantage over your Bulbasaur and will not be weak against any Pokemon you can catch at this part of the game.
- Route 2 is surprisingly dull. At least give us an item to find or a trainer to fight. Sure, the grass contains Bugs, but considering the nearby Bug-themed forest, that's not exactly exciting.
- About 30% of wild Pokemon in Viridian Forest are literally incapable of attacking you. This probably convinced countless children that letting their Caterpie or Weedle evolve would make them useless. In a Pokemon game, that is a terrible lesson to teach.
- Bug Catchers have largely disappeared from the series, and this game shows why few care. They obviously trained their Metapods and Kakunas to be stronger than the wild Pokemon, but still only use Harden? The game's first dungeon should not be so tedious.
- Red and Blue both make one of the two Bugs rare, but not impossible to find. Interesting, but I should be running into Caterpie/Weedle more than 5% of the time. Yellow solved this problem by removing the Weedle and useful version of Pikachu.
- Pewter City is a decent place, but the Science Museum is a nasty newbie trap. The fee is not too high, but considering the lack of tangible rewards and the scarcity of cash, it only serves to punish the curious player.
- Brock's Rock-type Gym is pretty nice, giving the basic formula of being able to avoid gym trainers at the cost of XP and cash, but he obviously hired the wrong Jr Trainer. He uses a Diglett and a Sandshrew, neither of which have anything to do with the Rock-type.
- Brock himself is a good fight, but there has to be a better TM for him to give than Bide. Even sticking to G1 Technical Machines, Rage would be a great fit.
- On Route 3, literally 90% of the wild Pokemon you run into are Normal/Flying. Because lord knows that everywhere other than Viridian Forest so far hasn't included enough Normal/Flying Pokemon to catch.
- Also, why are all of the trainers to the far west end of the Route? The first couple of leges have a whopping seven trainers to fight, and the remaining 80% of the route has one you can walk around.
- I actually like paying for the Magikarp in the Pokemon Center, but this is a good oppurtunity to mention that Gyarados is not Water/Dragon. That would both make more sense and be cooler, so there's no excuse.
- Mt Moon is a great dungeon to show everything Pokemon has to offer with its dungeons. It is a big maze loaded with items, trainers, and plot points. It's just a shame that 75% of the Wild Pokemon are Zubats.
- For those of you more experienced with Zubat's recent incarnations, please remember a few things. First, there was no Crobat yet, so the long-term viability of this line is minimal. Second, Poison/Flying is one of the most boring combos to work with in Gen 1, due to the lack of Poison and Flying moves and abundance of the two types. Third, Zubat only ever learns six moves naturally, the first one of value, Bite, coming a few levels later than Mt Moon Zubat. Fourth, the Zubat family can't learn many moves via TM or HM, including anything appropriate for its Typing. For example, it can't use Fly. So 75% of the time, you're facing a Pokemon that you will likely have no desire to ever catch.
- There are some interesting wild Pokemon in Mt Moon. Though pretty weak, Paras and Parasect can cause status ailments and have a unique typing for this gen. Clefairy is not that powerful, but can learn a lot of diverse TM moves. However, they show up so rarely, it's entirely possible one would not know that they show up in Mt Moon.
- Why can you only take one of the fossils? It's not like getting here was a collaborative effort. The Super Nerd was going to take both a moment ago before proceeding to ambush a kid who had just taken on the mob. Not to mention that this will lead to far too many Twitch Plays Pokemon references than appropriate.
- Remember all that treasure you wanted to get in Mt. Moon but weren't able to get to the first time around? Well, I hope you don't mind not being able to go back for hours, because this route goes one way only!
- Go to the Pokemon Center in Cerulean City immediately. Your Rival can ambush you before you know you're leaving the city, with the most powerful team you've faced yet.
- Even after you heal up, you are now basically trapped. You need to beat your rival to head north or elsewhere, can't go back to Mt Moon, and also have to beat Misty. If you didn't level up very much in Mt Moon or were foolish enough to start with Charmander, become acquainted with that small patch of grass to the west. You will spend ages here.
- Also, since you can get Jynx here, I am legally and morally obligated to denounce Jynx.
- Nugget Bridge is a cool concept, but one has to wonder about the state of this region's security when Team Rocket is able to employ a Bug Catcher. If Team Rocket can just hire any random Bug Catcher to stand around on a bridge all day, they've already won.
- Bill, the Pokemaniac, gives a nice reward for helping him out, a ticket to a cruise ship. That's great. The problem is that he invites you to look at his computer's database of Pokemon. There are four of them. Some maniac he turned out to be...
Feel free to suggest your own additions!
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