Pokemon: Pearl

Date Acquired: 4/22/2007

Date Completed: 3/29/2010

Thoughts: I completely missed the Pokemon craze when it was raging through the late nineties. I had a gameboy, but was way beyond playing games in black and white by that point. Plus I was in college, so I couldn't just buy any game that got a good write up. I didn't really even know what Pokemon was beyond the card game and cartoon. I didn't know a thing about the gameplay or why it was so popular. When the sequal came out, it was the same story for me. I was in school, and not particularily interested. Same for Ruby/Saphire, same for the remakes Fire Red/Leaf Green.

So why did I finally buck the trend and buy this game? Mainly it was the sense that I was missing out on something. I felt I needed to at least try the game that had generated so much buzz and word of mouth. In the months leading up to the release of this game, I debated the merrits of buying Fire Red/Leaf Green, but ultimately passed on it and just waited for the new game. I didn't know if I should get Pearl or Diamond, but my buddy Dan got Diamond, so it made sense for me to get Pearl in case we ever decided to trade critters. Several months later, we did just that, and even had a battle. Unfortunately for him, while I began with the water Pokemon, he began with the fire monster, and my characters were all 10-15 levels higher than his. It was a slaughter.

I saw the appeal to the game immediately, and loved capturing the new animals, testing out their moves and attempting to evolve them. I chose the Penguin as my character, a no brainer for me, because I love Penguins. And I'd probably call it the best of the 3 primary monsters. I was so fixated on the game that I bought a 2nd used copy of the game and traded myself the other starting Pokemon creatures and then traded it back in. So I got to play the game with all 3 starting creatures.

Like most games, I began with great gusto and fizzeled out in the middle somewhere. Who can say the reason why exactly? I picked the game up again 2 years later and pushed through it some more, collected the 7th (of 8) badges necessary in completing the game, but I stopped playing when I got to the legendary pokemon. I got frustrated trying to capture them and gave up.

Now here it is March of 2010 and a new Pokemon game has been released. New games always tend to spur me into playing the original, and this was no exception, but perhaps the motivation was slightly different. It's my understanding the pokemon from this game can be traded to the new game, but doing so removes them from the old game completely. So if I decide to get Soul Silver or Heart Gold (and I likely will) I will need to be finished with Pearl before I can transfer the pokemon to that game.

So it was with that motivation that I returned a third time to Pearl. I quickly took care of the legendary Pokemon, tracked down the 8th and final gym badge, and then made my way to Victory Road where I ran into some really dull grinding that was necessary to get past that part (and I usually like grinding), but then paved the way for me to push past the Elite 4 and master trainer.

To Do: Not a whole lot. I have a full pokedex at 150 (that just means I've seen all 150 creatures, I've only caught 92). There's an area in Victory Road that was blocked before and is now open. I played through it a little after finishing the game, but ran into a Pokemon trainer who had a monster for me to fight who used no offensive abilities at all, he could do 2 things: Increase his evasiveness and heal. It was incredibly frustrating. I would attack him 10 straight times, miss him every time, on the 11th I would hit him, but not enough to kill him, and then I would watch him heal himself while I missed another 10 attacks in a row. Eventually he ran out of heal moves and I was able to kill him, but most of my pokemon were out of moves also, so I had to end my journey through the cave prematurely. I may go back to that just to see what's in there, but for the most part I'm done with the game. The next time I plan to revisit the game will be when the time comes to transfer the pokemon from Pearl to Soul Silver.