By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Just picked up Platinum.

I'm totally starting from scratch here, but I think I'm gonna take Piplup. The flaming monkey looks lame.

[WishMaster3K]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Empoleon is all sorts of win.

I'm impartial to Grass pokemon though; ALWAYS.

They've never released a defensive Fire starter, so that's always been a bummer....

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Only Fire starter I took was Charmander. I did fairly well with him, though all fell to the wayside after I got MewTwo.

EDIT:

Also, I just wanted to throw this in - I saw the Platinum guide in the store today and man that thing's thicker than the guides I've seen to Elder Scrolls games. You could brain someone with that strategy guide.

Kiddy game my ass. i was almost intimidated to pick up this game again after seeing that.

I didn't buy the guide, but still. This is like the "Magic: The Gathering" of handheld RPGs if there's that much stuff to cover.

[Durahansolo]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Also, I just wanted to throw this in - I saw the Platinum guide in the store today and man that thing's thicker than the guides I've seen to Elder Scrolls games. You could brain someone with that strategy guide.

lol, weren't most of the pages full of pokemon though rather than actual game content? I remember I used to have the Pokemon Yellow player's guide which was the only one I ever owned. My friend had the one for pokemon red or blue (I forget which) and sometimes i'd just borrow that one from him, but other than that I never really used one.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Pokemon Yellow was the first generation with Red/Blue.
Silver/Gold/Crystal was second generation.
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald was third.
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum is the current generation.

Currently, the Pokemon between the GBA FireRed/LeafGreen, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl and Platinum can been traded assuming you have a DS Lite and not DSi. I'm sure Nintendo will invent a workaround on that, though.

When the Gold/Silver remakes come out, we'll have a complete set.

So as you can see, there's just under 500 of the buggers and lots of stuff to cover.

Only two hours logged into the game thus far and I already have an Abra from the second town. I could have sworn he was much further in on the Diamond version. I'm happy about it anyway, though, this is the first time I've caught him in only one attempt.

Since SMT is still on my brain, I'm curious to know which Pokemon are straight-up vendor trash and which ones are worth raising. Makes me wish they'd take a page from SMT and give you a preview of what abilities they'll learn, just have them greyed out.

Also, I hate Bidoof, into Somone's PC with you.

[Armando]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Since SMT is still on my brain, I'm curious to know which Pokemon are straight-up vendor trash and which ones are worth raising. Makes me wish they'd take a page from SMT and give you a preview of what abilities they'll learn, just have them greyed out.

The best way to know is to check Smogon's Pokedex. OU = Over Used = Highest tier besides Uber (Ubers are banned from standard play.) UU = Under Used = lower tier. Some UU are just plain weak, others aren't as useful all-around (or simply not as used) as OUs, but some of them can compete in certain team setups. BL = Borderline, pretty much stronger than UU but not quite OU. NU = Not Used. The tiers are based off of Smogon's online battle server's statistics from last month. The tiers are based on usage.

You can judge them based on their base stats as well. 90 is average, 60-75 is awfully low, 95+ is high, anything higher than 110 is very high.

Another good site to check is Serebii.net. It has complete move lists and where you can find them the Pokemon, whereas Smogon focuses on giving competitive move sets and EV spreads.

But be forewarned that your team for your first run-through won't really be competitive. Competitive Pokemon are bred with better moves and specific natures. Since you'll be forced to battle random Pokemon and trainers, they also won't have a proper EV distribution.

They've never released a defensive Fire starter, so that's always been a bummer

Fire is a horrible type defensively, being weak to Ground and Water is awful. They'd have to make something rather weird like give it Levitate and possibly a secondary typing to make it work.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Well, for the ones that evolve, wasn't it better to hold that back for a bit anyway? Weren't there moves Pokemon could learn at lower evolution tiers that they couldn't learn at higher ones?

I figured bred Pokemon would be better in the long run (since Pokemon did draw its inspiration from SMT on many levels), its just I'm not at that point yet. Breeding was new back in Silver and that was the last one I seriously played, but I get the feeling Nintendo won't let you foree the results of breeding, so you have to weed out weak moves you don't want passed on.

[Firewind]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

As a general rule anything works ingame. You only really need to care about EV's and competitive movesets if you plan to be doing a lot of online battling.

It's actually not hard to predict which moves will be passed on to bred pokemon. Compatable moves can only be passed on by the father and moves that can be passed on via breeding only will take priority over moves that can be learned naturally. As a general rule it goes something like Egg Moves > TMs/HMs > Natural moves.

Serebii.net probably has the best list for moves as it lists every single move a Pokemon can possibally learn naturally via levelling up, via TMs/HMs, breeding, via move tutors etc.

Like I told Feba, Persona 3 and 4 are easy enough to come by. Its the other installments of the franchise you'll have to hunt for. I do highly suggest Persona 4 as a primer for the rest of the series, since it was the installment that made learning the terminology of the franchise a whole lot easier, but SMT Nocturne is easily the most hardcore of the PS2 installments of the series. Plus they let you recruit Dante as your pokedemon!

I'd actually if you plan on playing both P3 and P4 I would suggest playing P3 first. Once you're done with P3, you'll appreciate the gameplay tune-ups they did for 4. That and I never did manage to finish P3: FES after finishing P4 largely because I couldn't stand not being able to control the whole party. The AI for party members is just so bad in these games is feels like I'm playing Neverwinter Nights all over again.

I don't know about the US but SMT games aren't terribally hard to find in the UK; I can name you four games stores within five miles of my home that sell SMT games not called Persona. It just takes a very long time for the games to get here. If I remember correctly you guys got Persona 4 well before we got Persona 3 FES

They've never released a defensive Fire starter, so that's always been a bummer.... .

If I remember correctly Heatran (Fire/Steel), Camerupt (Fire/Rock I think) and Torkoal are all defensive fire types. All are UU though since none of them can really switch in safely against an Earthquake user and they all have a Stealth Rock weakness.

Stealth Rock is the one most broken moves in the game though IMO because of the typing. Not only does it over centralise the battle when it's deployed but seeing my beloved Charizard switch in with half health makes me a sad panda

[Armando]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Well, for the ones that evolve, wasn't it better to hold that back for a bit anyway? Weren't there moves Pokemon could learn at lower evolution tiers that they couldn't learn at higher ones?

Unevolved Pokemon learn moves at lower levels. Sometimes, they get moves their evolved forms can't get, but that usually applies more to starters, and weird things like Eevee.

And yeah, bred moves are set in stone, there are ways to force certain natures 50% of the time. What you can never force is a Pokemon's Ability, and its genes/IVs (3 of these are chosen at random from either parent, so getting what you want is a probability game.) Problem is the game doesn't give you a means of checking IVs easily.

If I remember correctly Heatran (Fire/Steel), Camerupt (Fire/Rock I think) and Torkoal are all defensive fire types. All are UU though since none of them can really switch in safely against an Earthquake user and they all have a Stealth Rock weakness.

He specified starters though. Heatran isn't fragile but it's more offensive than defensive anyways. Camerupt and Torkoal suck, Fire/Rock is a horrible, horrible typing

Stealth Rock isn't broken, its trade-off is that it can be resisted. A lot of OU Pokemon get screwed over by Stealth Rock such as Gyarados, Salamence, and Weavile. Besides, there are ways to combat it; Rapid Spin being one, Wish support being the other.

Charizard is just (unfortunately) badly typed. Fire type is already a bad type as it is, the Flying type removes one weakness (Ground) but adds a new one (Electric) and compounds another (Rock.) Many Pokemon have x4 weakness, but these weaknesses are generally there to compensate for their insane power and allow them to be OHKO'd with ease (Heatran, Heracross, Salemence/Dragonite/Garchomp, Tyranitar, Celebi, Swampert, Weavile, Scizor, Gyarados, Gliscor.) Charizard isn't an enormous threat like the perviously mentioned Pokemon, so all the quadruple weakness does is gimp him.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

I never see where people are coming from when they say the AI was bad in Persona 3. It was wonky for the boss fights at times, but for general fights if you made use of your party's oracle character and scanned all enemies, the information gained was extended to your AI partners and they exploited the proper weaknesses.

Boss fights were a bit more trial and error, but Arisato was supposed to lead the way for them by experimenting with various personas to find the weakness. Once they knew the weakness, again, they'd exploit it. Additionally, if you learned each character's strengths, you knew who was the best buffer, the best mage, the best debuffer and best healer and set them to those AI modes.

Seriously. go back and set Akihiko to be your debuffer and Korumaru as your buffer. They're awesome. One of the best things about Pokemon and SMT is that debuffs always work. Anywhere. Even bosses. Certain Mind spells may miss but debuffs never do. Akihiko cripples everything.

In Persona 4, I'd control my party through the initial runs through an area, but after felt I had all the Scan data I needed, I'd set them to being controlled by the AI so things would go faster. Then when I was ready for the boss or optional boss, I'd take control of all party actions again.

The real frustration of Persona 3 was not knowing what skills meant when your Persona gained them from fusion or learned them as they leveled up - the game would not tell you what the skills did, so you could only choose them or choose to discard them. This was a horrible way to implement passive traits, but until Persona 4, it was universal across the series. Persona 4 came with a help feature that told you everything you needed to know about skills you could learn. It took a lot of trial and error out of the game and let me actually learn the terminology of the series much more easily.

Devil Summoner 2 not only lets you know what the passive traits are, all of them get inherted from the parent demons to the child demon in fusion and passive traits can be chosen by the player from that list if inherited skills. Passive skills are also separated from the main skill set, so your allies are able to learn more buffs, debuffs and attacks without passives sharing space in the standard eight skill slots.

Devil Surivior is taking that even further. All skills will be passed from parents to child in fusions and you'll be able to pick which ones to apply in both the passive and active categories. Granted, you don't get demons by negotiation here, but by auction, so getting demons is never a sure thing if you get outbid. I suppose making fusions more of a sure thing (though I'm sure accidents still happen), was a way to offset the randomness of Auctions.

On the pokemon side:

Current lineup is Piplup, Abra (still hasn't learned anything, but I know he will), Psyduck and Shinx. I really didn't expect to come upon Abra so early, though. Looks like I get an advance on of my favorite Psychic types.

[Firewind]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Well the breeding system isn't really as in depth as the fusion systems in SMT. Actually I'm fairly certain that most of my playtime in my first Persona 4 run was basically experimenting with fusions and inheritance. The breeding mechanics in Pokemon are pretty simple and when you figure out what gets passed on and what doesn't it's really easy to control things so you get exactly what you want.

Catching an Abra was also a pain if you didn't have a fast sleeper. I'm not sure if I have the patience anymore to catch one at the beginning. In my current playthrough I just caught a Kadabra and bred it

Unevolved Pokemon learn moves at lower levels. Sometimes, they get moves their evolved forms can't get, but that usually applies more to starters, and weird things like Eevee.

What Armando said. Unless it learns a move the evolved form can't learn then there are no real advantages to holding off an evolution. That and you can pass on the unevolved pokemon's moves via breeding anyway so you can simply just hold off evolution, get the move then breed it.

It's also worth remembering that there are move tutors that well teach a pokemon an old more.

I'll use my Charizard as an example. He evolves from Charmeleon at Lv36 but as soon as he evolves at 36 he will learn Wing Attack but only if he evolves at Lv36. If I hold off evolving my Charmeleon so he will learn Flamethrower at lv39 (Charizard won't get it until Lv42) I will not be able to get Wing Attack on my Charizard. However he can still learn the move from one of the tutors.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Sooooo....

>.>

<.<

Is there any way I can get hooked up with some starter Pokemon from the other games minus Piplup? No frills, just what they start out with o.o/

[Armando]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

I can hack my save file so I can pretty much hook you up with anything.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

K I'll ask ya later.

I'm trying out this Global Trade Center thingy. Pity I can't ask for things I don't have listed in my pokedex. I've seen some very realistic requests, like level 100 Dyoxsis for level 5 Turtwig.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: By the way, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver Remakes Confirmed

Apparently, it seems all I need to do is get the Pokemon I want logged into my Pokedex, catch or breed OUs and put them up on the Global Trade System to get the Pokemon I want. Of course, with the execption of Legendaries.

Put my Abra up and got a hatched Turtwig pretty quickly.