I'm not very far into the adventure yet, but I'm having a good time.

A lot of people have stated that these installments have rewakened old feelings of the original Red/Blue - that is to say a new adventure, a fresh cast, and that renewed sense of "gotta catch 'em all." I'm far too early in the adventure to completely dismiss that feeling, and I can see where that thought process comes from, but I'm just not feeling the same way I felt when I played Blue for the first time.

It's probably a combination of factors: I'm twelve, nearly thirteen years older than I was when I put Blue into my Super Game Boy for the first time and nostalgia is a powerful thing. Also, the improvements between R/B with G/S were night and day (literally). So much was added that didn't interfere with the formula already in place. G/S truly were the benchmarks for all future sequels. The series since then has added bit by bit, and I'm not saying the series has been trash after G/S, but the improvements have been one step forward and one step back.

I know that B/W have made wonderful refinements and have kept the best and minimized the worst aspects of PKMN. Random battles are much faster, trading is much easier (when the servers are working ), and the interface is so much cleaner.

I guess the moral of this little story is that when a series changes over time, and you were there at the start, it's hard not to pine to the "glory days." Pokemon Blue will always have a special place in my Gamer's Heart, along with Final Fantasy IV, Chrono Trigger, and many other games from the early to late 90s. That was when I became a gamer and it's hard to let new things in sometimes. I don't hate B/W, far from it, and it probably is the best Pokemon has to offer from a logical standpoint. But does that mean I'm going to love it the same way I love the original games? I doubt it. I'll just treat it the way I perceive it it: a new game in on of my favorite game series, and I'll leave it at that.

The same reason you can't delete HMs at will. You could leave yourself stranded in your previous game.


You know GameFreak! Two steps forward, one step back!

 

I do hope it's back in the third version. It's especially baffling seeing how they'd only need to make walking sprites for the new Pokemon. Most of the work is already done!
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My feelings on these games are very positive. I didn't get into Pokemon until a few years ago, and I'd only played part of Yellow, and all of Diamond and Soul Silver. There are so many little things I could list that are huge (and often overdue) improvements, like assigning multiple items to Y, de-emphasizing HMs, and the list goes on. There are definitely poor design decisions as well, like removing walking Pokemon, 'Deposit' and 'Withdraw' still existing in the PC, etc., but overall I think this was a big step in the right direction.

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Also, I'd like to mention, I have all the starters from every gen in my White now, as well as Zorua and Zoroark. I can breed any of those if anyone wants them.

And a couple protips!

Have you seen how much experience Audinos drop? You can force them to spawn for easy leveling. Just run back and forth (not over too large a space) beside any grass. After 200 steps-ish, shaking grass will appear, which more frequently has Audinos in it than not. Make sure you listen for the noise in case it spawns behind a tree or something.

And if you want to activate the Zorua/Zoroark events with the Shiny Beasts and Celebi, do NOT transfer them through the normal Poketransfer Lab. You have to talk to this guy in Castelia and give him this passcode:

EVERYONE HAPPY
SIMPLE CONNECTION

which activates the Relocator on the opening menu and then you transfer them through that.

I feel like I'm sort of a bug/rock type kind of trainer. elite 4 is tough too.  Funny, I started my adventure two weeks ago on launch.

There's really no way of telling unless you can hack check yourself or somebody does it for you.  It could have been cloned in Emerald and imported via pal park for all you know.  It doesn't sound illegitimate in any way, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.  Personally never use GTS for this reason.