Brain Full of Games

Picking up where we left off last week, now that I have had a little more time to play (but not much- my work hours have been insane), we have finally reached the beautiful Goldenrod City.

Goldenrod City is one of my favorite locations in the Pokemon world. It has a pretty nice layout, the safari-zone-lite to the north, a game corner, adds to the Radio card/PokeGear with a physical location, a really fucking annoying gym battle (I HATE rollout! I HATE rollout!!!!), new useful items and systems (the bicycle, Daycare center, Pokemon breeding, lots of trainers who give you stuff when you exchange numbers): it’s great! Plus, it sets up later conflict by sprinkling Team Rocket around the town. Where you’ve got casinos, you’ve got organized crime. I’ve learned so much from Pokemon.

To go back a bit to where we left off: after getting the Violet Gym badge, I went to the Ruins of Alph and actually explored around. Adding the extra dex for Unknown, the mini games, and the text/intrigue was a great addition. I can’t remember exactly how that ties into the legendary dogs and birds, but I’m excited and intrigued by the Ruins.

I was able to play one morning and returned to earlier routes to grab morning-and day-only Pokemon, like Phanpy, and even got a phone call from Hiker Anthony telling me about a Dunsparce swarm! I’ve got 41 Pokemon, and basically have everything possible for this part of the game (I do have some bugs from the Bug catching contests I still need to grab) and have evolved quite a few early-game catches, and now I’ll be able to do even more with the Day Care Center there for me to skip some low levels for Pokemon like Spearow.

I think at a certain point I’m not going to be able to keep up with catching everything, because I really want to get ahead as the game’s story picks up after Ecruteak. Up until this point, it has been fairly easy for me to focus on catching Pokemon because there really isn’t much going on story-wise, and accomplishments are spread out and pretty simple and straightforward. The Slowpoke Well has only 4 battles and they are all in the same room, which honestly is pretty boring. There are a lot of areas blocked by Rock Smash, Surf, and Strength, that sort of annoy me because I don’t really want to have to back track to these places. On the other hand, by putting these sorts of locked areas everywhere, from Dark Cave to Union Cave, makes it worth it to come back and do lots of things all together in the same area. I guess I’ll just wait to see if that all pays off, but right now I’m really annoyed that I can’t access those areas..

Hoping to get far during the Christmas break because I really don’t want to do work, even though I have lots to do and could really use the over time after going a little crazy in Japan. Excited to have some things to share about the legendaries next time!