Pokemon White
I have the rom, and I have patched it with an Experience gain enabler. So far it works like a dream, except that I can't read Japanese.
The patch has allowed me to play the game with no freezing at all.
I'm going to write down some thoughts on Pokemon White as I play it for future reference.
Caution: [Spoilers!] [Ranting!]
- I'm not a fan of the clown-like water starter. I just can't get over the face. But the last evolution looks like the best final starter so I must start with it.
- The water starter has some sort of awesome ability which sometimes allows it to do a Double Team like animation. After this it proceeds to attack the enemy twice in a row. This can mean the difference between a loss and a win.
- The water starter evolved at level 17. The second evolution is some kind of sea ninja. It learns an attack where it pulls a shell off one leg and slashes it at the enemy. This physical attack is accurate and has a whopping 75 base power.
- A bald man blocks the road past the town where the first gym is. If you walk to the road on the right of the town a woman hands you a monkey of the opposite type to your starter. This will make your gym battle much easier. I did not know this and levelled my starter instead. I did get my fire monkey afterwards. Find the lady scientist back in the town on the second floor of a building to receive some items so the angry man will allow you to pass.
- The gym leader will be the one with the monkey which is strong against your starter type. I fought the grass monkey.
- The Pokemon Centre and PokeMart are now all in one building! :O
- To see the scene with the Plasma grunts beating up the dream Pokemon, teach someone HM01-Cut to enter the ruins.
- You have two rivals, whom you will find (and fight) often.
- I have the White version, and the black dragon (Zekrom) appears in the title screen, implying that in order to get the white dragon (Reshiram) you need to have the Black version. On the plus side, I get the cat Pokemon in the White version.
- When you get up to the electric rock cave, you can run into the blue crystals to move them out of the way.
- When you get up to a gym, or road and the way is blocked you usually have to find Team Plasma somewhere nearby and beat them. If you see your two rivals or the professor in a cut scene it means you are on the right track.
- HM 04 Strength is given to you by a blue haired man in a house to the left above the Pokemon Center in the ferris wheel town. You will need it to enter some ruins and to push boulders into holes.
- The 8th gym is blocked. You have to fly to the 4th town with the ferris wheel and head south into the desert area. To the north there is a sandy temple where you must fight more Plasma goons. Then fly to the museum in an earlier town and see another cut scene, before you can enter.
- *I have now beaten the Elite Four. This was the easiest Elite Four out of any game, especially since after the first four bosses you get to wander through an irritatingly long mansion with equally long corridors. Here you have access to PCs and healers so you don't have to stock up on too many potions.
- Extremely simple Victory Road. No need to do anything except travel upwards until you reach the gates.
- There are long, fancy spiral routes which make getting to each of the Elite Four slower. After you beat each one there will be four blue lights on the floor, meaning you can fall through the floor at the middle statue to see some trippy cut scenes.
- I can confirm that at the 5th elite four boss ('N') you will battle and catch Zekrom if you have the White version. If you make it faint you will be forced to catch it anyway. You then are asked to replace a Pokemon in your party for the dragon you caught to be used against N's dragon. N will heal your team after you catch your dragon - isn't that nice of him?
- After you beat N, his likely father will then fight you. He is the 6th Elite Four boss and the most difficult, although still very easy because if you have been using the Lucky Egg on your starter could be at level 77 during this final fight. His Pokemon levels hover around the low 50s mark.
- There is talk of a 'twist ending' for B/W. What twist? Evil man raises his son to hate people and bond with Pokemon instead, son eventually realises his father is an idiot. Father secretly raised his son like crap so he could take over the world. Son sees the light and starts to befriend main character.
THIS SUB-PLOT IS SEEN IN ALMOST EVERY ANIME SERIES EVER RELEASED.
I have read that N is actually some kind of angel-like being who had his wings ripped off by his father. Also something about a puzzle which results in N getting his wings back after you defeat him. I had no idea that it was supposed to be a secret that N was leader of Team Plasma - you see him everywhere you find Team Plasma grunts. What happened after I defeated him is this: He shakes his head, releases Reshiram, and disappears. Roll of bland credits! If this is the true 'twist ending' I still don't see how it is so shocking and fabulous - Pokemon had more sense before, it is incredibly strange to be introducing a Jesus-Angel-like entity into the story.
*After playing through the Engilsh version as well, there is still no mention of anything to do with N. He simply gets on his dragon and flies off into the sky during the end credits. Nothing to do with him being an angel, and still a disappointing ending. Even the end credits look like they were thrown together at the last minute.
**There is a huge problem with Team Plasma logic. They claim to want to 'liberate' all Pokemon by freeing them from their trainers. Except they do this by actually fighting trainers with Pokemon themselves, beating Pokemon up and stealing Pokemon from other trainers. This hypocrisy is not properly explained, unless you count where N's father admits that the entire liberation scheme was all a lie just so he could be the only one to control Pokemon for world domination. World domination you say? Why, that's the same old thing all the previous evil teams wanted! I think in this generation, an attempt was made to make the Pokemon world seem 'deep'. But it was far too rushed, and no amount of fancy dialogue could make it all add up.
- I just want to mention that Team Plasma seem to be the most poorly designed bad guys yet. Look at their logo, a five year old could draw it in 2 minutes. Also, they are wearing semi-religious clothing which makes them look silly. Their teleporting ninjas are kind of nifty though.
- **Now been through all the towns. There are a few old Pokemon from all earlier generations available to be caught after the Elite Four. Not nearly enough, though. Nothing much to do or see as far as I'm concerned, and I can't be bothered going after any legendaries considering their sprites.
- Nintendo apparently filed a lawsuit against Pokebeach for leaking the new Pokemon sprites. This makes no sense to me other than perhaps they are attempting to hide their poorly designed new Digimon... er, 'Pokemon' from the rest of the world. Hmm. I'll be keeping my money for once this time, Nintendo.
Opinion of the game:
- In short, this is not a good Pokemon game as far as I can tell. True, I can't read Japanese but to me this game seems sloppy; There aren't any flashy cut scenes (except for maybe that one with Zekrom and Reshiram) and the story seems to have gone the way Yu-gi-oh! went. I am absolutely appalled at most, if not all of the new Pokemon designs. So if there is no epic story, no desire to catch them all (or anything really), and no memorable locations... the game is not going to be very enjoyable. Hopefully they are not thinking of doing card games... I mean Pokemon battles, on motorcycles next.
*Now finished B/W in English - Opinion remains unchanged. :<
- There are no old Pokemon in this game, which means you're left with training all the new ones. My starter is level 72 because I can't bear to level up anything else I have seen in the game up to the Elite Four.
- There are few good TMs available up until before Victory Road. The only one I've used so far is Dig, which is now 80 base power. The plus side is you can now use TMs as many times as you want.
- I really didn't like the fact that there are so many buildings and routes blocked off. Also, I disliked forests and areas which seemed to go somewhere but really were just one big dead end. The world seems small and simple, unlike G/S/C and R/S/E which both had huge areas to explore and get lost in.
- I would have liked to have been able to just walk into a town and immediately challenge the Gym.
In this game there are detours before the Gyms which usually involve beating off a few Plasma grunts. Why does their purpose interfere with Gym leaders? I don't know. It seems weird. Remember in G/S/C, when Team Rocket was trying to take over all the Pokemon using an evil Radio Signal? And in R/S/E, when Team Magma/Aqua were trying to use legendary Pokemon to control the weather? I accept those as plausible evil motivations. On the other hand, I have no idea what D/P's Team Galactic was trying to accomplish. And I played through that game twice. Anyway, I suppose B/W 's team have similar vague evil plans.
- The gyms are sloppy compared to D/P, which at least had effort put into the puzzles. This game has two true gym puzzles, the Ice and Dragon gyms. Leaders all have 3 Pokemon, which means you will steamroll them with your level 72 starter.
- The city shown in those B/W preview videos is the only one in '3D'. Other than that, nearly all other true '3D' parts of the map are bridges and stairways. The camera zooms out when you cross a bridge, making it so you can't see the tiny character sprites clearly. This instantly made me think of this game as being rushed and thrown together at the last minute. I can't see anything really special about the 3D town either, other than you walk into some buildings from a sideways angle.
- The eighth gym, yet again is run by a dragon leader. We did this better in Gold/Silver. In this game the final leader is a small girl. (Or an old man, depending on which version you play.)
- Personally, I really wish they had not tried to change the 4th and 5th generation games to '3D'. Everything looks choppy, and trainers in the distance look like blurry glitches. I think they already had it right in R/S/E.
- The one thing that I really liked about this game is that the professor gives you the Lucky Egg at the electric rock cave. It doubles your experience, making levelling those new Pokemon much faster!
- I found the bobbing sprite designs of all the Pokemon in this game very disappointing. All my favourite old Pokemon have almost identical sprites as previous games, only with more choppy blurred edges.
- After all this time, the backgrounds during battles remain the same as R/S/E, perhaps even blander. Pokemon still do not make any contact during battle or show any expressions when they win or faint. I really wanted to see a fainting animation of the Pokemon or maybe a victory pose after a win. Nothing. In fact, Emerald had better sprites in my opinion. At least they were clearly drawn and not just bobbing up and down.
- I kind of liked the contests in R/S/E. The Pokemon still had dignity. Now you get to dress up your Zekrom/Reshiram up like a parasol lady - I'm sure they're praying for a swift death. And I don't think forcing your Pokemon to dance is appropriate either.
- If you have tried the Musical Theatre, you will know that you get to dress your Pokemon up in accessories. This might have been okay if they actually fitted any of your Pokemon. Except they don't fit at all, they just sort of layer the images over the normal Pokemon sprite. And then the same unmoving sprite is bounced around the screen and rotated to make it seem like it is 'dancing'. It truly made me sad to witness this. Please, for the love of cats, bring back R/S/E contests.
- Secret bases in R/S/E were great. I'm never going to see them again in any other games, am I?
- Although I don't read Japanese, I noticed a lot of 'flashy' choppy 3D visual additions in the game but little substance elsewhere. I finished playing White in Japanese and was not at all impressed with what I saw. Kind of made me want to start playing Yu-gi-oh, actually.
- Too many spiral '3D' stairs and what-not in this game. I get it, you're trying to make it appear 3D. Please stop, it makes everything look faintly glitchy and takes up time.
- My advice now since Pokesav for this game is out, is just to load all your beloved old Pokemon onto B/W at the beginning of the game and destroy everything in your path. Use Max Repels all the time, because chances are you won't want to see 99% of the new Digimon in the wild. Doing this will at least allow you to feel some connection to your Pokemon, rather than having to train that Garbage bag thing with bubblegum stuck all around it's face.
- Overall... if your favourite game was D/P you may enjoy B/W. As my favourite is G/S/C, to me this game is another nail in the coffin for Pokemon. As much as I really wanted this to be a better game than G/S/C or even R/S/E, it just wasn't. I think I got my first clue when the water starter was released. And then confirmed.
- And for the above reasons, this will be the first Pokemon game that I will not go out and buy a copy of. I can only hope they release another generation of Pokemon which I can enjoy again sometime in the future.
- Note that I have not experienced any new online content. 'Dream World' looks to be the only thing special about B/W, although Pokesav allows you to give whatever ability you want to your Pokemon in any case.
- It is going to be very difficult to recover from B/W, after adding 156 terrible creatures to the Pokedex. There were already many poor critters introduced in D/P which I already cannot accept as Pokemon. If only I could produce my own Pokemon game...
The patch has allowed me to play the game with no freezing at all.
I'm going to write down some thoughts on Pokemon White as I play it for future reference.
Caution: [Spoilers!] [Ranting!]
- I'm not a fan of the clown-like water starter. I just can't get over the face. But the last evolution looks like the best final starter so I must start with it.
- The water starter has some sort of awesome ability which sometimes allows it to do a Double Team like animation. After this it proceeds to attack the enemy twice in a row. This can mean the difference between a loss and a win.
- The water starter evolved at level 17. The second evolution is some kind of sea ninja. It learns an attack where it pulls a shell off one leg and slashes it at the enemy. This physical attack is accurate and has a whopping 75 base power.
- A bald man blocks the road past the town where the first gym is. If you walk to the road on the right of the town a woman hands you a monkey of the opposite type to your starter. This will make your gym battle much easier. I did not know this and levelled my starter instead. I did get my fire monkey afterwards. Find the lady scientist back in the town on the second floor of a building to receive some items so the angry man will allow you to pass.
- The gym leader will be the one with the monkey which is strong against your starter type. I fought the grass monkey.
- The Pokemon Centre and PokeMart are now all in one building! :O
- To see the scene with the Plasma grunts beating up the dream Pokemon, teach someone HM01-Cut to enter the ruins.
- You have two rivals, whom you will find (and fight) often.
- I have the White version, and the black dragon (Zekrom) appears in the title screen, implying that in order to get the white dragon (Reshiram) you need to have the Black version. On the plus side, I get the cat Pokemon in the White version.
- When you get up to the electric rock cave, you can run into the blue crystals to move them out of the way.
- When you get up to a gym, or road and the way is blocked you usually have to find Team Plasma somewhere nearby and beat them. If you see your two rivals or the professor in a cut scene it means you are on the right track.
- HM 04 Strength is given to you by a blue haired man in a house to the left above the Pokemon Center in the ferris wheel town. You will need it to enter some ruins and to push boulders into holes.
- The 8th gym is blocked. You have to fly to the 4th town with the ferris wheel and head south into the desert area. To the north there is a sandy temple where you must fight more Plasma goons. Then fly to the museum in an earlier town and see another cut scene, before you can enter.
- *I have now beaten the Elite Four. This was the easiest Elite Four out of any game, especially since after the first four bosses you get to wander through an irritatingly long mansion with equally long corridors. Here you have access to PCs and healers so you don't have to stock up on too many potions.
- Extremely simple Victory Road. No need to do anything except travel upwards until you reach the gates.
- There are long, fancy spiral routes which make getting to each of the Elite Four slower. After you beat each one there will be four blue lights on the floor, meaning you can fall through the floor at the middle statue to see some trippy cut scenes.
- I can confirm that at the 5th elite four boss ('N') you will battle and catch Zekrom if you have the White version. If you make it faint you will be forced to catch it anyway. You then are asked to replace a Pokemon in your party for the dragon you caught to be used against N's dragon. N will heal your team after you catch your dragon - isn't that nice of him?
- After you beat N, his likely father will then fight you. He is the 6th Elite Four boss and the most difficult, although still very easy because if you have been using the Lucky Egg on your starter could be at level 77 during this final fight. His Pokemon levels hover around the low 50s mark.
- There is talk of a 'twist ending' for B/W. What twist? Evil man raises his son to hate people and bond with Pokemon instead, son eventually realises his father is an idiot. Father secretly raised his son like crap so he could take over the world. Son sees the light and starts to befriend main character.
THIS SUB-PLOT IS SEEN IN ALMOST EVERY ANIME SERIES EVER RELEASED.
I have read that N is actually some kind of angel-like being who had his wings ripped off by his father. Also something about a puzzle which results in N getting his wings back after you defeat him. I had no idea that it was supposed to be a secret that N was leader of Team Plasma - you see him everywhere you find Team Plasma grunts. What happened after I defeated him is this: He shakes his head, releases Reshiram, and disappears. Roll of bland credits! If this is the true 'twist ending' I still don't see how it is so shocking and fabulous - Pokemon had more sense before, it is incredibly strange to be introducing a Jesus-Angel-like entity into the story.
*After playing through the Engilsh version as well, there is still no mention of anything to do with N. He simply gets on his dragon and flies off into the sky during the end credits. Nothing to do with him being an angel, and still a disappointing ending. Even the end credits look like they were thrown together at the last minute.
**There is a huge problem with Team Plasma logic. They claim to want to 'liberate' all Pokemon by freeing them from their trainers. Except they do this by actually fighting trainers with Pokemon themselves, beating Pokemon up and stealing Pokemon from other trainers. This hypocrisy is not properly explained, unless you count where N's father admits that the entire liberation scheme was all a lie just so he could be the only one to control Pokemon for world domination. World domination you say? Why, that's the same old thing all the previous evil teams wanted! I think in this generation, an attempt was made to make the Pokemon world seem 'deep'. But it was far too rushed, and no amount of fancy dialogue could make it all add up.
- I just want to mention that Team Plasma seem to be the most poorly designed bad guys yet. Look at their logo, a five year old could draw it in 2 minutes. Also, they are wearing semi-religious clothing which makes them look silly. Their teleporting ninjas are kind of nifty though.
- **Now been through all the towns. There are a few old Pokemon from all earlier generations available to be caught after the Elite Four. Not nearly enough, though. Nothing much to do or see as far as I'm concerned, and I can't be bothered going after any legendaries considering their sprites.
- Nintendo apparently filed a lawsuit against Pokebeach for leaking the new Pokemon sprites. This makes no sense to me other than perhaps they are attempting to hide their poorly designed new Digimon... er, 'Pokemon' from the rest of the world. Hmm. I'll be keeping my money for once this time, Nintendo.
Opinion of the game:
- In short, this is not a good Pokemon game as far as I can tell. True, I can't read Japanese but to me this game seems sloppy; There aren't any flashy cut scenes (except for maybe that one with Zekrom and Reshiram) and the story seems to have gone the way Yu-gi-oh! went. I am absolutely appalled at most, if not all of the new Pokemon designs. So if there is no epic story, no desire to catch them all (or anything really), and no memorable locations... the game is not going to be very enjoyable. Hopefully they are not thinking of doing card games... I mean Pokemon battles, on motorcycles next.
*Now finished B/W in English - Opinion remains unchanged. :<
- There are no old Pokemon in this game, which means you're left with training all the new ones. My starter is level 72 because I can't bear to level up anything else I have seen in the game up to the Elite Four.
- There are few good TMs available up until before Victory Road. The only one I've used so far is Dig, which is now 80 base power. The plus side is you can now use TMs as many times as you want.
- I really didn't like the fact that there are so many buildings and routes blocked off. Also, I disliked forests and areas which seemed to go somewhere but really were just one big dead end. The world seems small and simple, unlike G/S/C and R/S/E which both had huge areas to explore and get lost in.
- I would have liked to have been able to just walk into a town and immediately challenge the Gym.
In this game there are detours before the Gyms which usually involve beating off a few Plasma grunts. Why does their purpose interfere with Gym leaders? I don't know. It seems weird. Remember in G/S/C, when Team Rocket was trying to take over all the Pokemon using an evil Radio Signal? And in R/S/E, when Team Magma/Aqua were trying to use legendary Pokemon to control the weather? I accept those as plausible evil motivations. On the other hand, I have no idea what D/P's Team Galactic was trying to accomplish. And I played through that game twice. Anyway, I suppose B/W 's team have similar vague evil plans.
- The gyms are sloppy compared to D/P, which at least had effort put into the puzzles. This game has two true gym puzzles, the Ice and Dragon gyms. Leaders all have 3 Pokemon, which means you will steamroll them with your level 72 starter.
- The city shown in those B/W preview videos is the only one in '3D'. Other than that, nearly all other true '3D' parts of the map are bridges and stairways. The camera zooms out when you cross a bridge, making it so you can't see the tiny character sprites clearly. This instantly made me think of this game as being rushed and thrown together at the last minute. I can't see anything really special about the 3D town either, other than you walk into some buildings from a sideways angle.
- The eighth gym, yet again is run by a dragon leader. We did this better in Gold/Silver. In this game the final leader is a small girl. (Or an old man, depending on which version you play.)
- Personally, I really wish they had not tried to change the 4th and 5th generation games to '3D'. Everything looks choppy, and trainers in the distance look like blurry glitches. I think they already had it right in R/S/E.
- The one thing that I really liked about this game is that the professor gives you the Lucky Egg at the electric rock cave. It doubles your experience, making levelling those new Pokemon much faster!
- I found the bobbing sprite designs of all the Pokemon in this game very disappointing. All my favourite old Pokemon have almost identical sprites as previous games, only with more choppy blurred edges.
- After all this time, the backgrounds during battles remain the same as R/S/E, perhaps even blander. Pokemon still do not make any contact during battle or show any expressions when they win or faint. I really wanted to see a fainting animation of the Pokemon or maybe a victory pose after a win. Nothing. In fact, Emerald had better sprites in my opinion. At least they were clearly drawn and not just bobbing up and down.
- I kind of liked the contests in R/S/E. The Pokemon still had dignity. Now you get to dress up your Zekrom/Reshiram up like a parasol lady - I'm sure they're praying for a swift death. And I don't think forcing your Pokemon to dance is appropriate either.
- If you have tried the Musical Theatre, you will know that you get to dress your Pokemon up in accessories. This might have been okay if they actually fitted any of your Pokemon. Except they don't fit at all, they just sort of layer the images over the normal Pokemon sprite. And then the same unmoving sprite is bounced around the screen and rotated to make it seem like it is 'dancing'. It truly made me sad to witness this. Please, for the love of cats, bring back R/S/E contests.
- Secret bases in R/S/E were great. I'm never going to see them again in any other games, am I?
- Although I don't read Japanese, I noticed a lot of 'flashy' choppy 3D visual additions in the game but little substance elsewhere. I finished playing White in Japanese and was not at all impressed with what I saw. Kind of made me want to start playing Yu-gi-oh, actually.
- Too many spiral '3D' stairs and what-not in this game. I get it, you're trying to make it appear 3D. Please stop, it makes everything look faintly glitchy and takes up time.
- My advice now since Pokesav for this game is out, is just to load all your beloved old Pokemon onto B/W at the beginning of the game and destroy everything in your path. Use Max Repels all the time, because chances are you won't want to see 99% of the new Digimon in the wild. Doing this will at least allow you to feel some connection to your Pokemon, rather than having to train that Garbage bag thing with bubblegum stuck all around it's face.
- Overall... if your favourite game was D/P you may enjoy B/W. As my favourite is G/S/C, to me this game is another nail in the coffin for Pokemon. As much as I really wanted this to be a better game than G/S/C or even R/S/E, it just wasn't. I think I got my first clue when the water starter was released. And then confirmed.
- And for the above reasons, this will be the first Pokemon game that I will not go out and buy a copy of. I can only hope they release another generation of Pokemon which I can enjoy again sometime in the future.
- Note that I have not experienced any new online content. 'Dream World' looks to be the only thing special about B/W, although Pokesav allows you to give whatever ability you want to your Pokemon in any case.
- It is going to be very difficult to recover from B/W, after adding 156 terrible creatures to the Pokedex. There were already many poor critters introduced in D/P which I already cannot accept as Pokemon. If only I could produce my own Pokemon game...