Hello, everybody! And welcome to my first ever Pokélog! This is gonna be where I share details on my Pokémon adventure through Pokémon Black!
Before the Journey Beings...
Before we dive into the actual Pokélog (And by extension, review of Pokémon Black), I'd like to go over a bit of my background and experience with the series as I think it's important to have a frame of reference for my feelings to Pokémon as a whole.
I've never played Black before, or many Pokémon games, really. My first Pokémon game was Fire Red, and I played it for the first time around 2014 when I was a junior in high school. It was a pretty decent game! I had a bit of fun playing, and I thought it was a good distraction during class (Specifically Speech and Debate), though I do remember getting annoyed by quite a bit, especially navigating caves.
Sometime after that, I got a hold of a Gameboy Color and a copy of Pokémon Red! Remembering that I had a pretty okay time with the remake, I decided to give the original a runthrough, just to see what it was like. I remember I was big into MLP back, then, so most of my pokemon were named after ponies (I think I got a good chunk of the mane 6 into my Hall of Fame, but I don't have the cart anymore, so I can't look). I also remember that I brought that game with me on a visit to my grandparents in New Mexico. We would go and visit them at least once or twice a year for around a week. I wouldn't have much to do, so the Gameboy was a big help in keeping myself occupied. I had similar thoughts on it as I had for the remake: Deceent game, a little annoying at parts, but not that awful.
I beat both games without much sidetracking, mostly going through things as fast as I reasonably could. I don't get to finish games often, so that definitely speaks to their entertainment value that I actually palyed them through.
Eventually, I gave some more modern titles a try: Heart Gold (Which i got stuck in and just put down because I couldn't figure out what I was missing to progress), Moon (Which I did not enjoy and stopped playing very early), and Scarlet (Which i played a bit with my husband, but not much past the first few days). I had pretty negative feelings towards Moon, thinking it was pretty boring in comparison to the earlier titles I'd played. The whole thing felt like a summer camp more than an adventure to me, which really stopped me from getting invested. Scarlet was fine, but really buggy, making it less enjoyable to play.
It's safe to say that my thoughts on Pokémon was that it was pretty mid: The early games had a lot going for them, but suffered heavily from their age and limitations, and the newer games just didn't feel captivating. So, I decided Pokémon probably wasn't for me and set it down for a few years.
Fast forward to present dayL: I'm now in a polycule with four different people, all who are giant Pokénerds. I listen to them talk about the games and learn little bits and pieces here and there. I find out some of the middle games have cool features I'd never heard about like competitions. Then, my husband and I started watching all of the Pokémon movies together (I'll write reviews on those sometime in the future because they're all pretty WILD (Excluding the Black/White movies, which are pretty boring and drawn out)). I really enjoy most of them, and my husband tells me a bunch of lore stuff while we watch. I start getting opinions on some of the Pokémon featured in the movies (And maybe develop a small crush on Latias as she is basically a nonverbal autistic girl and I think it's super cute). Eventually, I find myself making a Pokémon team for myself at the request of a couple of my partners and find I'm having a really good time! all of this eventually convinces me that I should give Pokémon another shot. I'm older, I'm wiser, and I've got much different tastes than when I was younger (And I've also gottenout of my "This thing isn't that good cause it's popular" phase, so that helps).
So I poll the polycule on which game they think is the best, almost unanimously get told Black/White, and I'm now ordering myself a 3DS.
It shows up after about a week and I instantly get onto softmodding it (No way in hell I'm gonna drop cash on actual carts with the prices they go for, sometimes). After about an hour of work, Black is on the console and boots without an issue! This is where my new Pokémon journey begins :)
A Fresh Start, and a New Beginning!
I must admit, I was a bit of a grumpy gus, back in my day. Up until recently, I didn't really have a good outlook on a lot of things, and I was pretty cynical, especially with popular media (Honestly, I think it's the PTSD, but I digress). I've recently learned to loosen up and just enjoy things, and I will say, I was genuinely excited to start my new foray into the world of Pokémon. A lot of the little guys were cute, and there were going to be a ton I'd never seen before, so I was excited to find some new favorites since I hadn't really updated my list since 2015.
Obviously, I choose the girl avatar because Hilda is a verified baddie.
First scene of the game: I'm in my bedroom, with my buds, and we've just gotten some cool Pokémon. Obviously, me and my cool friend Bianca decide to have a battle inside, absolutely thrashing my room
Needless to say, I'm impressed and ready for the game. My favorite part of the older Pokémon games I'd played was the sense of freedom and adventure the games offered, and I can tell that spirit is still here!
I eventually get to choose my starter and I end up going with Snivy because it looks sassy as fuck.
I also name him Cunty for the same reason
I get into my first battle and Cunty lives with 1 HP
I win the fight, Cunty holds his head high, and Professor Juniper thankfully doesn't ask why I named my little guy that.
Bianca also wants to fight me, but I 1 shot her, so there isn't really much to go over at this point.
I start making my way through the routes, and actually find myself grinding around in the grass for a bit, looking for different types of Pokémon to catch. I'm this is just because I'm not medicated for my ADHD, but I started just running around aimlessly immediately in this game. There were many little guys afoot, and I wanted to get them!
I catch a Lillipup and name her Dunkachino
Striaton City Gym
I get through the Striaton City gym pretty easy! The game is really generous and gives you a Pokémon with a type advantage for the one of three trainers you fight, which I think is both neat, and kind of kills the tension with the fight (But I suppose I didn't have to use the Panpour if I really felt it was cheap). It's a neat little introduction to the game, gyms, and I think helps subtly introduce you into types advantages if you're new to the game, so overall not a bad first showing.
This is a small sidebar on the journey, but my husband sent me an Audino with a really silly and cute message that legit almost made me tear up.
Nacrene City Gym
I ended up expanding the team out with a Sawk (Aptly named Rock Lee) before moving onto the second gym. I remember having very little trouble in these earlier gyms in the games I'd played before, so I didn't really expect to need any super strong Pokémon and mainly caught him because an NPC tells you that Lenora is weak to fighting types (News to me. I don't know the type advantages beyond the obvious basics). Between then and the gym battle, I got in a fight with N and completely clobbered him. Honestly, catching the Sawk was a much ahrder task than actually fighting N. I now move to Lenora and have a super easy time taking out the trainers before her with Sawk. All Normal Pokémon kneel before the almighty Rock Lee!!
Then I tried to beat Lenora without him and almost party wiped. Thaknfully, Sawk was in my back pocket to save the day, but it was clear my team was underleveled. So began my grind session. I once again thank my husband for letting me know that I can grin about 8x faster so long as I'm fine decimating the local Audino population. For some reason, they give significantly more EXP than other Pokémon in the area and can be easily drawn out by running alongside patches of grass (Though my luck was abysmal and I had to run for quite a long time to get all the EXP I needed).
Castelia City Gym
So, I'm gonna start this seciton off saying how much I loved the introduction to Castelia City. I think the developers did an excellent job expressing the scale of Castelia City in spite of the graphical limitaions they were given. Obviously, in a top-down game like Pokémon, it can be difficult to show just how big something is. If it's too tall, it'll just get cut off by the top of the screen, and the height is uncertain. This can make it difficult to accurately convey something's scale, and it is definitely more difficult to express distance since you see everything once screen at a time, and actual distance tends to get lost in translation. The devs at Game Freak must have realized this, and decided to use unique, sweeping camera angles, zoom-outs, and fog to help simulate this experience. Seeing the camera pull back to almost level with the horizon for the first time all game gives the sense of you, the player, looking up from your top-down view and instead looking ahead. The bridge to Castelia is long, tall, and has plenty of traffic to give a sense of how far up you are on your walkway (Cars are much smaller than you, making you feel like you're on a suspended platform high above the actual bridge, giving it more vertical depth). Also, when you do look forward towards Castelia City, they made the smart decision of putting fog between you and the end of the bridge. This fog, implying some distance, unforseen destination, mixed with the already established scale of the bridge, makes the distance we're about to cover seem far, far farther than it actually is. My big criticism is that I thought the actual skyline for Castelia City was pretty underwhelming. I'm not really a fan of urban architecture in an aesthetic sense, but there are ways you can make it look attractive, and I just think the ball was dropped a bit. They even make a mention that the skyline looks different at night, and I actually revisited it at night! But I was pretty sad that not a lot of rpetty lights were added to make the skyline more lively and magical .-. Can't all be winners, I suppose. Overall, I think it was a phenominal experience, 8/10.
Beating Burgh wasn't all that difficult, but it was real weird going throough their honey doors O.O
Nimbasa City Gym
Once Burgh was down, I started walking. I kept walking, Cunty evolved into BIG Cunty, and I got my bike! I was so happy to finally have it (And it's pink! One of my favorite colors!).
I got so excited about my bike, actually, that I accidentally rode into the carnival and ran into N before I could heal up my team from the journey. So now I'm stuck on a ferris wheel with this fast talkin' twink, 2 Pokémon dead, 2 at half health, and 2 not nearly strong enough to carry me, so I get my ass kicked.
After whiting out, I take a small detour and enter my Blitzle, Zophie (Was going to be Sophie, but I opted in for Zophie since they're a zebra.) into the muscal. I gave her a top hat and a pink bow and nearly cried when they said she was cute and did her part very well.
I went back to the ferris wheel, whooped N's ass, then I ground all my Pokémon to level 30 and kicked Elesa's ass! Funny enough, my Panpour, Pampi, and Zophie were my aces since Pampi knew Dig, and Zophie used Shock to kill all the Emolga's in the gym.
After that, I've just been grinding feathers on the bridge to the next city. I honestly can't even remember what it's called :P. I was grinding in an attempt to find a rare Pokémon, but apparently only Duckletts spawn here o.o, so I'll probably move on, soon.
Current Thoughts
My thoughts so far are that I really love Pokémon Black! I'm having an amazing time running through this little world, and I'm very tempted to get a full living Pokémon for this verison (However hard that'll be) because I'm just enjoying myself that much! I'll post more as I progress in the game!