Catching all 151, er, 368, er ... a lot: The Pokemon Infodump Party!

me and my brother started with the original diamond/pearl and neither of us knew shit and we enjoyed ourselves tremendously, so i support this decision of yours.
Most of the bigger ah... quality of life? changes happened in the 3ds games, but they'll all be in the d&p remakes anyway (mostly changes to the way you earn xp to make levelling up a whole lot easier, and, like... autosave). original dpp (diamond, pearl, platinum) remain good starters if you ever want to get a more 'original' pokemon experience, though don't feel like you have to by any means.

 

I see no reason why it wouldn’t be a good first Pokémon game! One thing I love about the series is honestly that there’s really no bad introductory point—the games are set up in such a way that you can pick any main series game up having never played a Pokémon game in your life and pick it up fairly fast, and while the tutorial parts are definitely a bit annoying for longtime players they’re short enough to not feel like too much of a slog, while still explaining what you need to know.

 

this game is a good game and perfect for illness times

however either I'm playing it wrong or it's way too easy to be overleveled lol. are you supposed to catch and train a whole bunch of everything because I really just want to wander around with my pet monkey that at this point can at least threeshot every trainer's pokemon I run into...

 

Some people beat the games with nothing but an unevolved magikarp. So you can play the things pretty much however you want. Things like the type advantages and HMs show that the devs do intend for you to use a variety of pokemon from a variety of types nothing is really stopping you from just using one you happen to really like.

 

You’re supposed to catch and train multiple Pokémon, yeah.

 

The idea is you have a team of at least six, that being the maximum you can have out with you at once, and there's the whole 'gotta catch em all' slogan lmao but as Aon said you can really play however you darn well please, and you're not expected to have out with you and train up every single pokemon you ever catch unless you feel like it
the changes to xp gain do make it easy to be overlevelled if you grind even a little, mostly the xp share that gives all your party pokemon a share of the xp gained from a battle even if they didn't partake; you might be able to turn that off, I know you could in earlier games that had it. I personally enjoy being able to curbstomp any motherfucker who dares challenge me, so it suits me fine, but I know it's a point of contention with others who like more of an active challenge.
If you find your one pokemon too powerful, try deliberately only using pokemon you've only just caught or something who are much lower level. Or just cultivate the most powerful monkey in the world, I'm not here to tell you how to do shit, it really is up to you.
if you do find that after this you want a pokemon game that at the very least forces you to grind more and doesn't hand you xp on a plate, try the older ones! I find black and white/black and white 2 particularly grindy personally but others may have other recommendations

 

yeah, I have a team of 6 and I obviously catch each new one I find because I Must Catch Them All, but even with that none of the gyms have been real challenges - I don't really have to put in the effort of thinking about strategy and type matches, and if I do, I end up one- or twoshotting every pokemon the gym leader puts out... I'm only a couple levels ahead of them, and that's without trying to grind, just naturally running around looking for new guys. I have to keep my monkey in a box all the time to keep things reasonable :P

however now that I'm starting to get more of a collection that I need to train up I think things are improving. it's getting easier to keep everyone on more or less the same page. and regardless of anything I'm still having a lot of fun lol.

 

Ha, yeah, even I, Curbstomp McGee, get a little disappointed when it's supposed to be a big challenge and I just blast through lmao. But I also pay basically 0% attention to all the stats and behind the scenes things that alter your power and all that so I know I can probably make it a challenge for myself if I want to just by putting even less effort into picking the right pokemon
Sounds like you're working out a way to play that suits you and that's the whole idea imho so! I'm really glad you're enjoying it, Pokemon can be such a joyful thing

 

I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far! :D Who do you have on your team atm?

 

I forgot to respond!!

here are what I would consider that be my favorite guys:


plus a handful of other guys who have the potential to be favorite maybe of I end up using them enough:


I've ended up using a pretty decent assortment of pokemon! I'm not too overleveled anymore either. and since I think I unlock the snowy area next, I finally get to use my starter again without getting bubble beamed to death :D

I've gotten pretty far in the game but there's a while ton of stuff I haven't even begun to look at yet - I've been in the grand underground a total of once lol. and I haven't used a single TM. the options are overwhelming -_- I might finally use Fly just so I can have my beloved Birdo carry me around instead of a random staraptor from the heavens.

I'll probably start looking into proper strategy and things more after I beat the game, but for now I'm just having fun wandering around with whichever of my guys the area's native types won't beat up :)

 

sword and shield looks to be hot garbage overall but the soundtrack kicks ass

 

sword and shield has ball guy and ball guy is beautiful. a game cannot be saved by ball guy alone but. ball guy.

 

Ball Guy did not make an appearance in RTGame's shiny wooloo only playthrough. this wiki search is the first I have seen of Ball Guy. Ball Guy looks absolutely delightful.

 

eh each to their own i really enjoyed swsh. i know there's a lot of criticism to be had but i'm not really interested in it, i'm only interested in whether or not i actually had fun playing, and i did

 

valid! and I haven't actually played it, only watched it played, so my perception could be off. to me it looks like it's one of those stories with a lot of potentially very good bits but with shoddy writing tying them together. I do quite like the rivals though, especially Bede! toxic edgelord kid gets adopted by fairy grandma <3

 

oh i mean the writing wasn't spectacular but idk. i don't really go to pokemon for in-depth storytelling i guess? it was a fun little story that i enjoyed playing through and can fuck about with of my own accord if i wanna, and i guess that's all i ask.
X&Y had the best story of all the games anyway

 

at some point i may end up playing gen 8 but i am kind of hrmghghrghlh. i do like pokemon but i've just always had trouble following through on the games to the end. and i just end up replaying gen 1, 2, or 3 again. so it is hard to justify getting sword and shield. we are going to be playing platinum soon though. after i get through my run of emerald. and i am still undecided on if i want to fuck with the battle frontier. currently our team in emerald is...

• Daniil the Marshtomp (named after the Bachelor in Pathologic)
• Bob the Azumarill
• Ninjaboy the Ninjask
• Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, or Barkley for short, the Shedinja
• Thomas the Manectric

i also have a poochyena in the party who exists to know rock smash and nothing else. his name is borker. i have a rule of not using any pokemon i have ever used before. which is making dealing with may's team very hard because i can't just one shot her grovyle. grass types in general have been the hardest thing for me and there was a point in time where i legitimately dreaded seeing a shroomish. i still dread seeing shroomish.

 

a run of red++ resulted in my fearing oddish more than life itself because i didn't have anything that could one shot the little bastards. the fairy typing being added in to the game has also made all the girls who have jigglypuffs and clefairies in gen 1 absolutely horrifying to come across too.

 

Bob was vital for defeating May on this note. I wasn't able to beat her starter at all with my available options until I got Bob rollout. Then defense curl+rollout took out the bird and thankfully built up enough power to take out the treecko. I tried before that but the fucking lizard kept gaining back so much health that I literally could not kill it. It had become the most powerful treecko in the world. My brother laughed. I laughed. We all laughed because holy shit we can't easily beat rival 2 for once because my personal limitation rules have prevented me from using anything that isn't weak to her starter.

 

My stubborn refusal to grind outside of destroying every trainer who so much as breathes in my presence and my stubborn dedication to my team made the Tate and Liza fight very fucking hard. As we didn't really have the best team for dealing with them. Thomas could only really help against the Xatu which is mostly a non-issue anyway. The bugs meanwhile die too fast and in Ninjaboy's case can't do much to hurt the rocks. Claydol destroys most of the team due to its moveset. Getting a freeze off ice beam from Daniil was needed to lock the fucking thing down and let me kill it by ganging up on it. But then we ran into the issue of uh. Solrock oneshotting Daniil? So I had to swap into a sacrificial lamb to bring Daniil back and get him healed up and then also heal up Bob. At least Thomas was able to take out the Xatu while I did that.

Almost as horrifying was the battle against Maxie and Tabitha that Steven insists he be part of. As that just threw shit off entirely, especially how I deal with items during double battles. I was able to get through them on one go but like. We got real close to being taken out.