09 | Pokemon Soulsilver

After a month of looking for good monster taming games i ended up beating the main story of Pokemon Soulsilver for the Nintendo DS. Soulsilver is a remake of the Generation II Pokemon games for the Gameboy Color called Pokemon Gold/Silver.

In all of the Pokemon games you collect Pokemon (Pocket Monsters), fight battles vs. other Pokemon Trainers and collect Gym Badges from 8 different arena leaders. Beside that you fight various terrorist groups called Team Rocket, Team Aqua/Magma, Team what have you and so on. 

You explore the world of Pokemon and discover City after City, Cave after Cave and Pokemon after Pokemon. The longer you battle with a Pokemon the stronger it gets. You unlock new battle skills and some of the pokemon evole to even stronger beasts. 

The standard Pokemon Main story goes something like this: 

1. You get your starter Pokemon (Choose one out of three). 

2. You go from city to city and beat gym leader after gym leader to collect 8 gym badges. 

3. On the way you fight Team Rocket/what have you until they are beaten. 

4. After you collected all 8 gym badges you go to Victory road to deafet the Elit Four (very skilled Pokemon trainers). 

5. At last you get to fight the games End Boss in form of yet another Pokemon Trainer. The Pokemon League Champion. 

Endgame: After you beat the game you get the chance to complete the game (which is somewhat a insane thing to do). You could catch all the pokemon that are in the game. You can fight even stronger Pokemon Trainers somewhere hidden in the map. You can try to catch so called legendary Pokemon and so on. 

The thing with Pokemon Soulsilver or Pokemon Silver is that after you beat  the main story you are able to discover the hole region of Pokemon Red/Blue called Kanto. There you can beat yet another 8 gym leaders, that are even stronger than the the first 8 ones. With two hole regions to explore and about 495 pokemon to find, this titel could keep you playing 80 hours or more.

So here is what i managed to do in about a week. 

I beat the main story (20 hours). 

I beat all gym leaders (Jotho and Kanto - 16 badges). 

I caught both legendary Pokemon - Lugia and Ho-oh.

I collected 70 Pokemon.

My favorite Pokemon of this title has to be the legendary Pokemon Lugia.

To sum this up. Here are the things i really like about Pokemon as a monster taming game in general.

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1. The way you capture monsters.
Even though the pokeball system is old and didnt change much, it is a really
good system. Specially when it comes to capture rare pokemons you really have
to have some strats or else you will fail. That makes the game challenging in a good way.

2. The Pokemon World and NPCs
The game does a great job giving you as a player the feeling to be in this world.
You can discover every corner and every NPC in the game has something to say.
The great thing with Soulsilver is that the NPCs and the World in Kanto (Pokemon Generation I)
changed over time. Many people tell you storys about the first Pokemon Heros Blue and Red.
For example can you discover the bike shop where Blue/Red got their first bike. In Soulsilver
the shop is empty. You meet the shopkeeper who teels you that after Blue/Red got their bike
his bussiness boomed and he moved to Jotho and left the old shop behind. It is a living and breathing world
with lots of funny things to explore and secrets to find.

3. The Monster managing system
Pokemon has the best mechanics when it comes to the question
how to manage the monsters you have collected so far. Another very great thing here
is the fact, that you can trade Pokemon via Generations. It is possible to trade
Pokemon from Soulsilver all the way up to the very new Pokemon X/Y.

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1. Pokemon Trainers
The thing that bothers me still the most with Pokemon, that i can not decide myself if i want
to battle all those Pokemon trainers on the way or not. I could live with all those random encounters
in caves and stuff. But the fact that I am forced to battle all those trainers is a pain in the ass.
Choice as seen in the new Bravely Defaut would be a nice solution.  

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How to catch Ho-oh.

To round this post up i want to tell you how i caught Ho-oh. 

It took me about 1 hour to figure out a decent strat to catch it. 

1.
Here is what you need: 

You need a tank pokemon around level 63 to 70 witch is able to tank 

the damage Ho-oh will be doing to you in the first 10 rounds or something. 

I used my level 63 Lugia for it. 

You need a pokemon with a sleep skill. 

Around 20 Hyper potions and 40 Ultraballs. 

2.
The strat: 

Ho-oh got 3 or more attack skills. Each of those skills can only be used 5 times. 

His last skill is a guard skill witch guards him from skills like sleep, paralyze, posion and so on. 

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In the first phase Ho-oh will attack you. 

The important thing here is: Whatever the cost you must not attack him. 

Just throw pokeballs at him and heal your tank pokemon. 

Very soon Ho-oh will used up his main attacks: Sacred Fire, Ancient Power and Punishment.

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Then Ho-oh will start to use Safeguard over and over again. He will not attack. 

Thats the time you bring your Pokemon with the sleep skill into the battle. Ho-oh will use

Safeguard until he is out of skill points for it. Dont attack Ho-oh ever! 

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When he is out of Safeguard he will use its last skill: Struggle. 

Struggle does not do much damage to you. A level 52 pokemon will tank enough damage to stay

functional. But Struggle does decent damage to Ho-oh itself. When its life sank under 30% sleep Ho-oh and

throw Ultraballs at him until you eventually catch him. 

Thats the way that worked for me.