LONG BLOG
Pokemon 20th Series Retrospective Generation 4: Diamond, Platinum and Heart Gold
Generation IV
months : July - August
Diamond, Platinum, and Heart Gold
I don't remember much of the build up to gen IV. I think I really liked Lucario's design. I remember watching the Pokemon movie he was in and liking him. I was confused when he turned out not to be legendary at the same time kinda happy, I love Mewtwo but I wanted a non legendary replacement, Lucario fit the bill well. By this point I had bought a DS Lite. It's a good device minus the hinge breaking off at one end.
Pokemon Diamond
starter: Chimchar
stars: 2
Diamond is a wired game when it comes for memory for me. I don't remember buying it or playing it all that much. In fact I was surprised when I turned on the game to find out that I had 2 stars. Turns out I had sunk 200 + hours into this one. That's when it came back to me. I played this one at work when I had a retail job with one of my best friends. We ran around the underground capturing flags and setting traps for each other. Eventually we even got the “capture enough flags star”. I still remember him complaining that he hated Drifloom even though it was one of his strongest Pokemon. This game also held a bit of disappointment for me; see I was very excited to get a Lucario but I somehow missed the quest were you get it's egg, otherwise it wasn't capturable in the wild. To my surprise I ended my game with a tank of a Gastrodon, a Luxray and, of course, Infernape, and Dialga. Gastrodon stands out for me because it was one of those Pokemon that happened to be good maybe a third of the way through the game but then just never seemed to get rotated out of my team. In this game I also got a shiny Baggon in a trade so he was helping me out in this game. I also moved my shiny Bellosom, and my 2 level 100 Pokemon, Gengar and Charizard.
I looked through all of the remaining trainer stars and the only one that kind of made sense was the pokedex. I tried a few times to win contest with the Miltonic I transferred from Ruby, but lost in 4th every time. I didn't even get close to beating the battle tower, the leader of that came and smacked me down every time I started winning. I didn't collect all the Pokemon, I did complete the Kanto pokedex though so that's cool. While completing the Kanto pokedex my Groudon hit level 100! interestingly enough I had gotten a shiny Pichu and legendary dogs from a promo at EB Games. Overall this game is good but forgettable. It is again improved upon in most ways by its successor. Pick up that one if you want to experience these games,
Pokemon Platinum
Starter: Chimchar
Stars: 1
I don't really remember getting this game. I think I might have been kind of burning out on Pokemon at the time. I caught Giratina but I did'nt do any of the rest of the post game stuff. That being said, damn did I have fun with this game. I had tons of my new favorites trained up, Porygon Z, Leafeon, Scizor, and a Rotom.
I didn't even get close to getting another star in this game, I spent so much time on Diamond that I ran out of time for this game. I booted up with about a month to go, and found I didn't even have the national dex. I caught Uxie and got the national dex but by that time I was way too far off to even get close to completing a star. This game also had the shiny EB Games Pokemon. I think I liked my time with this game a lot better. I have to say with confidence that I still wasn't fully back “in” to Pokemon when this came out. I left a ton of post game stuff undone. Looking back the best thing from diamond and pearl has to be Cynthia, She's a bad-ass.
Pokemon Heart Gold
Starter: Cyndaquil
Stars: 1
Heart gold was supposed to reignite my passion for Pokemon. It didn't. Its not that the game was bad, rather, I think it's was how I played it. I restricted myself to Pikachu coloured Pichu, spiky eared Pichu, and the three shiny dogs and shiny Gyrados. Basically I prevented myself from playing the game to the point that playing became a chore. When I picked up the game I hadn't even beaten the elite 4.
So I beat the Elite 4. I brought along Charizard, Gengar and Groudon. But I beat them. I did this on the 31st so I did no post game stuff. This is definitely the best way to play Gold and Silver. They include a bunch of really cool optimization like allowing you to always be running.
To me Generation 4 is the forgotten generation. It introduced some awesome Pokemon like the new eeveelutions and Rotom but the games themselves are largely forgettable. It will be interesting to see if they can beef them up when they are remastered in a few years time. Honestly if I had to pick one of these to recommend its a toss up between Heart Gold and Platinum. I like Heart Gold better but I feel I haven't spent enough time with it to definitively recommend it over Platinum.
LOOK WHO CAME:
