Playing this game has been a miserable existence

Needed to vent after a nightmare experience trying to acquire my ideal team for this game. I never liked HGSS as a kid but came back as an adult after hearing how it’s widely considered the best in the entire series.

I’ve been determined to play through it with the team I dreamed of as a kid. It has been so, so miserable.

Typhlosion and Ampharos were easy enough.

Umbreon required serious lvl catch up as it’s only acquired as a gift after 3rd gym. Then you have to increase friendliness and ensure it lvls up at night.

If you want Larvitar or Horsea before the very end of the game, you have to grind for hours to catch up to your teams lvl, until you lose all sanity. Trying to catch even one Larvitar in that safari zone is it’s own hell. 2 hours, 30+ encounters, 60 balls, and I came out with 2 damn Larvitars 20 lvls lower than my whole team.

Then for Scizor and Kingdra… I had to catch two Pokémon with specific abilities so I could catch a Magnemite holding a metal coat and it still took me nearly two hours. Same for Kingdra’s dragon scale. And I haven’t even traded them across to another console yet.

Call me crazy, but a Pokémon game that requires ridiculous amounts of grinding and research + multiple consoles just to get the Pokémon you want, is not a good Pokémon game. It’s excusable in the OGs, but not the remakes.

Platinum was my favourite growing up, but looking back, it had a lot of the same issues. Say what you will about BDSP, but at least it made hard-to-obtain Pokémon more accessible. I understand there are emulators with fixes, but these games rose to the top of the community when handhelds were still the main way of playing.

Going from Black 2 to this has been one heck of a downgrade.