Pokemon Silver was the last game I played in the long running series since I had took a long hiatus from the franchise. Three years ago I played Emerald which I found okay and a bit too easy and this year I was nostalgic for the early days of the series and decided to play Soul Silver so I could experience both the new and the old at once. This DS remake was released back in 2010.
As being a remake that came after Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum it features mechanics, updated graphics, and pokemon from that generation. Game Freak re-stylized the game with 3D models, but movement is still confined in a 2d environment. The female character model from Crystal has been replaced by a girl named Lyra, the pokemon in your front most slot follows you around while you're walking, and new moves added from generation iv has been added to TMs, an HM, and movesets of pokemon in this game to name most of the differences.
Having not played Silver since 2000, the game felt mostly fresh while at the same time brand new thanks to redone graphics and new additions. As the premise of all the pokemon games, you play as a trainer who collects eight badges across a region to challenge The Elite 4 and then the champion. What makes these games enjoyable is the combat and collecting as many different pokemon as you can along the way. The battle system still utilizes the rock, paper, scissors format with the type weaknesses. Water beats fire, fire beats grass, grass beats water. As simplistic as it can seem once you remember each weakness, this game makes it challenging by having trainers that fight better, with pokemon that hit harder and utilize moves that are outside of their type. I lost quite a few times in my playthrough even when I concentrated on exposes weaknesses. You may think you might win when you have a fighting type against a steel type, but once that steel type hits you with a psychic move you find yourself on the defensive. That's just one of the many examples I found through this playthrough. This might not matter as much if the game gave you more experience points during battles. At every gym in the game outside of the first I found my pokemon to be below the level of the gym leader's strongest. Having bosses above your level did make for challenging fights, but at the same time it felt frustrating and as if I wasn't where I was suppose to be. Grinding for levels is difficult because of the experience output. Wild pokemon hardly give experience and trainers give just enough. Some trainers can be fought multiple times depending on the day of the week if you've collected their number. Despite that experience problem I didn't feel for the most part that I had to do a lot of grinding. The only time where I felt this was necessary was for the Viridian City Gym that's available after the main game.
As for catching pokemon, this game offers many ways to catch pokemon. You can do it the standard way by running into them in the wild, you can fish, go to the Safari Zone, trade, evolution stones, and breeding. As varied the methods are for catching these creatures, I think they should have integrated generation III and IV pokemon better. You will not run into any pokemon from those generations until you have beaten the Elite 4 and the few that you can are mostly tied to listening to a radio station on a specific day while in a place that triggers a random encounter. I was expecting a more natural integration of pokemon from those generations since this is a remake that uses the engine of Diamon/Pearl/Platinum and it would have been fun to mix some of my old favorites while finding new favorites.
I did discover too late that there is a great hack of the game that adds more pokemon to the game, gives more experience while also making the game harder, adds a bit more story content, and makes some items more accessible. As the game is I found it great, though flawed and frustrating at times. The content after you beat The Elite 4 is great. I remember being astounded by it when I was a child, but replaying through Kanto this time around was a real experience. I loved how they progressed the events from Red/Blue/Yellow and made Kanto feel like a living breathing world. You can encounter characters you met and played as in that game and see what they have been doing since then. The battle against Red was one of the most exhilarating experiences I had in a game. This is a great entry to the pokemon series and if you haven't I would recommend it and if you can play one of the hacks titled Sacred Gold & Storm Silver. I certainly will when I plan on a replay.
8.5/10
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