Pokemon was a phenomenon in the late '90's, one me, my little sister, and a large percentage of our friends got swept up in. I often attribute Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z as my entry into anime and manga...but, to be honest, my first steps in were Pokemon, and the other series that melded it with Tamagotchi, Digimon. They both came on on Saturday mornings back to back when I was living in Dallas. Yu-Gi-Oh would be my next step forward before I'd really start going off in every direction for various anime's, but they were my stepping stones. The stories of Red/Ash were interesting to my nine year old mind.
My friends and I had been dabbling with some of their older brothers' Magic the Gathering cards, but then Pokemon's trading card game came out, and we played it at every chance we had. In the advanced class, we went on a trip once a year as a learning experience. We spent most of our time that year playing it, watching others play it, or once lights out happened, retreating to our beds and building our decks. Some of the guys spent all night playing. I was the only girl into it, so I didn't.
Luckily for me...I had my Gameboy with me and I was playing Yellow most of that night. For the record, Yellow is my favorite in the series (as you might've seen if you read my top 10 roadtrip games list). This was because I liked the Anime, I liked the Manga, and I loved having Pikachu, Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle.
Plushes me and my sister own
Pokemon Silver is my second favorite in the series, but still one of my favorite games, in that it takes everything in Yellow and doubled it, save for my favorite parts, of course. They'd never again make a game that really chronicled the tales of Ash Ketchum...and that's sad. Maybe one day will get a full 3D story based Pokemon game, until then, Pokemon Yellow and Silver will remain on the top of my lists for the series.
So without further ado, I give you my review of Pokemon Silver.
Now, in preperation for this title, rather than sit down and played it for a few hours, I've logged (according to the time stamp at the END credits) 82 hours and 34 minutes. This game is long, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And yes, the last 15 hours or so was just grinding for the final boss, someone 30 levels above everyone else. And you get nothing for beating him (at least not that I've found).
Anyways, the story. Um...non-existant? No, that's not fair...after all, it is a Pokemon game, so the story is the same as it is for every other in the main series, save Yellow. You play as a youth who wants to catch every single Pokemon and become the champion of the Pokemon league as he journeys through the world, defeating League Gym Leaders for qualifying badges so that he can compete with the Elite Four and the League Champion. There is a subplot of foiling Team Rocket, as there always is to some extent, but here it's lesser than in some later games, i.e. Ruby and Sapphire.
The story's not why we play though, is it? No...we play for that drive to be the best, to collect them all, and to defeat them all. A good story wouldn't hurt though.
Gameplay in this one is mostly unchanged from the first set of games with one addition, hold items, items that can be held (duh!) to give your Pokemon additional stats or a quick heal/ailment cure. It's a nice feature, but if you play like me, you equip class specific buff items based on their element, like the Dragon's Fang that boosts all Dragon Pokemon attacks.
If you haven't played a Pokemon game, and thus don't know how to play it, what follows is just a brief summary of the gameplay. If you have, you can skip this, and the example video following, however, it does kind of give some look at what I just had to level up for for 15 hours.
A standard Pokemon battle involves a one on one fight between two trainers, each with the ability to have up to six pokemon at their disposal. Most NPC trainers will stick to a specific element class (fire, water, grass, etc.), however, a few will switch it up. First one to run out of usable Pokemon loses. Battles themself are turnbased affairs where you can assign one task to the trainer, he can call out one of four commands for the Pokemon, change Pokemon, use an item to cure or buff a Pokemon, or in the situation of a wild pokemon, to catch one, or the fourth option, run away. The last one only works with Wild (trainerless) Pokemon. Levels work like other RPG's, the higher you are the better, and element class works in a rock-paper-scissor set up that you can figure out pretty quick (fire beats grass beats water beats fire, and others).
The Final Boss of Pokemon Silver (not me playing)
Graphically, this was the prettiest Gameboy game. It's series was also the very last three games even released that were playable on the system. After it, all games were released for the Gameboy Color, and it even was a fully functioning Color game (they did something with the cartridge so that it worked with both easily to maximize profits). It was a smart move on their part. Battles were smoothly animated in a first person view of the battle (from the trainer's eyes). The animations are still not as amazing as their 3D counterpart yet, but they're getting better as the games progress.
My experience with this game has been wonderful. The first time I played it, I was ten years old and my sister and I'd just gotten Gold and Silver as early Christmas presents (something that happened often as we drove eight hour trips to my Grandmother's frequently at the time). We'd already become competitive with Red and Yellow and we were ready to see how this one changed things. First, we were both pissed. We loved our Charmander and Squirtle and Bulbasaur...who were these replacements?!? We quickly remedied this, and I actually like Chikorita over Bulbasaur most days. As my sister and I both had the Gameboys and we're planning on linking games, I pulled out Blue, the one I hadn't touched in a while and started four new games to get us both Charmander and Squirtle. I've since learned to love Cyndaquil and Totadile, too, but anything beyond those six just annoy me, really.
However, as I made mention to earlier, I just spent 82 and a half hours freshening up on the game. My party was Cyndaquil, Kadabra, Dragonite, Azumarill, Weepinbell, and Graveller, ranging in level from 63 to 72 at the end of the battle with Red. This was a pretty good range of the characters available in the game. I've still never had much love for Dark type attacks, simply because I don't understand them, however, Houndour is cute trying to be all tough like that. I like this range because it makes me an impeccable fighter in most circumstances. My sister is the same way, however, the flaw with the way we play is if one player get's the upperhand, generally, it's only a matter of time.
Multiplayer's harder like that. With the NPC Trainers...they fall into three patterns, defensive, offensive, and a middle ground. Playing against actual people is something entirely different. One part poker, one part chess, one part Rock-Paper-Scissors, this is a tough game to formulate a strategy to play...however, if you want to play a turnbased RPG, this is still the best one to do in versus mode. However, I've not played a Pokemon title in depth since Silver, so things might've changed somewhat since then (I know it has in some parts with multiple pokemon battles, which could change the play of the game entirely).
Pokemon Silver's a pretty amazing game, hence it being amongst my favorites, and strategies for playing it range greatly too, however, it's rare that I find someone still playing this title, maybe one of these days I'll pick up a newer one (maybe the remake soon to come out for the DS) so I can play multiplayer again, but for now, I'm happy playing this wonderful game by myself.
So, let me know what you think. I like Silver...do you think I should try other Pokemon games? Are there stories like Yellow's in other games in the later series that combine elements from the two games together? How does multiplayer handle these days? Are the additional Pokemon really worth it?
-Sara
And on that note, I leave you with this piece of epic that sums up the series (game, anime, and manga) all in one minute...
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