Wolf Kanno
is a Level 99 Chocobo
Memento Mori
Site Contributor

Unlike the Gen III remakes, I actually think the Gen II remakes could make for a good replacement for the regular Gen II games as the story isn't changed too much (just some villains get a bit more personality) and the new stuff implemented to the remakes are, aside from the physical/special split that Gen IV introduced, pretty much unique to it, such as Pokemon walking with you on the field and the Pokeathlon. Additionally, you get access to the Gen IV Battle Frontier, so that's cool.

The Gen III remakes not only change things greatly by adding so many elements of Gen VI (super training, Pokemon Amie and affection, mega evolutions, the fairy type), but the story is so altered that it's even confirmed in-universe that it's an AU to the original Gen III games through the mulriverse theory.

That said, I enjoyed the Gen III remakes a lot, so if you don't mind the changes, you can go into that, but I know you like to try original versions of games first, so I just wanted to let you know what exactly you'd be going into if you went straight for the remake.

Yeah, I know :/

Well, at least the DS carts don't have that problem!

Let's hope that's not the case! And that you can still save because I heard that's a problem as well. At least you can legally emulate it of its broken - you have the cart, after all.

I'd say they're worth it! They bring nice closure to the events of Black and White, rven if the overall story isn't as well put together as in BW1. But then they also have some fantastic gameplay, for example with the Pokemon World Tournament where every single Pokemon gym leader and champion are pitted against each other in tournaments. It's just really fun to play. It's kind of to Black/White what Gold/Silver was to Red/Blue - it's interesting to see what's changed over those two years, including the influence of your previous player character.

Ah, right, forgot. Several places in Black are much more urban than in White. There's one town that's a big bustling futuristic city in Black and a quaint village in White, and the post-game additional "dungeon", so to speak, is the same, with one being a city and the other a tree.

As a general rule of thumb, the differences between the games are usually negligible, so most of the time it's down to which version-exclusive Pokemon you like better - or which cover-legendary because unlike in Gold and Silver where you could get both Lugia and Ho-oh in both, you only get the one on your cover while the other never appears.

Here's a general run-down of differences though:
- out of gen 3, I've only played Sapphire and I later picked up Alpha Sapphire out of nostalgia. There's two villainous teams - team Aqua who wants to expand the sea, and team Magma who want to create more land. In Sapphire you cooperate with Team Magma to defeat Team Aqua, and the opposite is true for Ruby. In Emerald, the main characters are redesigned, there's a new gym leader and champion while the old champion is an extra boss, the story is slightly reworked so you're against both teams and have access to both version-exclusive legendaries, and there's a huge post-game Battle Frontier complex that lets you experience challenging battles with unique rule sets (which still include the regular battle tower from the originals if you're just up for a gauntlet of battles).

- in Diamond and Pearl the difference isn't really that big. The plot diggers ever so slightly because the Diamond legendary controls time, while Pearl's controls space, so the means through which the big bad wants to achieve his goal is slightly different but nothing game-changing. Now I heard Platinum is a hug improvement - aside from the character design change, being able to catch both cover legendaries, and battle frontier which Emerald also did, Platinum fixes many of the issues people had with the games, redeeming gen 4 in the eyes of many. The regional Pokedex now has more than just two fire Pokemon evolutionary lines (yes, starter included), the pacing is better, and the story is greatly expanded, giving more depth to certain characters. Then again, I heard they also nerfed the champion, which is a shame, because the sheer absurdity of her battle compared to the other BPD trainers was what made them so memorable.
- in Black and White, the Black version legendary represents truth, while the White one represents ideals. Whichever aspect you're the champion of by the end depends on the version, so you're the champion of truth in Black, for example. And that's it. Same for the sequel - just go for Black 2 if you played Black and White 2 if you played White. The sequels also use your save files from the first games and I'm not sure if you have to use white for white 2, but I assume that is the case.

- I heard they're some tiny story differences between X and Y, but they're really negligible. They've really dialed back on the version differences since gen 3 and since they stopped releasing third versions.

I played Sapphire, Diamond, Black, Black 2 and X. I always went by which legendary on the cover appealed to me the most and I never felt like I made the wrong choice because the differences aren't that substantial. The third versions are usually much more compete games, so Id recommend Emerald and Platinum for gen 3 and 4. Aside from that - whichever Godzilla you like better, really.

Beat Jimenez today. It's incredible that this is a battle I was stuck on back then - he went down no problem this time around.

I think my book is finally moving along, by the way! I wouldn't say my mojo's back or anything since I've only written like a paragraph yesterday, and it will most likely end up scrapped, but I've started moving! And I feel the creativity coming back. A small voice at the back of my head is telling me it won't last, but I'm telling it to shut up because I don't care and I want to bring this story to the world.

Well, at least we both agree Dragon Quarter is great and its reputation is undeserved

I've never even touched Portal nor do I really feel the need XD

Still, it's cool you got all these games to play. Just thought I'd chime in and recommend it since I was very impressed with it when we beat it this weekend.