Is this remake worth another trip to the game store?
Pokémon SoulSilver Version (DS)
[starreview]
Developer: Nintendo
Release date: March 14, 2010
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
My very first Pokémon title was Pokémon Red, way back in 1998, when I was ten years old and $30 was enough money to buy the world. After thoroughly enjoying this game for several yeras, I proceeded to never play Pokémon again until Pearl came out on the DS. I treated myself to that game, and then Platinum, and now I’ve moved on to SoulSilver. After three games, though, you can really tell that the gameplay isn’t really going anywhere with these titles. SoulSilver is still an excellent example of a fantastic RPG franchise, but if you’ve already picked up another Pokémon game recently, I’m not sure that there’s a real need to get this one too.
The gameplay is still great, of course. You battle and collect Pokémon and add them to your party, with each one having different elemental abilities, or particular strengths (offense, defense, etc.) Each Pokémon can only learn four battle moves, so if they want to learn another you’ll have to delete an existing move, a decision that can be a bit agonizing for some of us. You can boost their stats with items, or by battling other wild Pokémon or other trainers. At its heart, it’s a turn-based RPG with lots of strategy to take into account; a surprisingly deep gameplay experience lurks behind the cutesy exterior, accompanied by a long adventure game in a large, alive game world. But most of you have already heard this many times before.
If you’ve played Gold and Silver in your youth, you’re familiar with many of the things that this remake brings to the table; most importantly, the real-time clock, which dictates certain events that happen only at certain times of the day or week, or what Pokémon will be available for capture at what time. You also still have your PokéGear, which implements a radio, a phone for calling trainers, and an easy-access world map. You can breed two Pokémon together at the daycare in a bid to get more powerful Pokémon, or ones knowing certain moves.
The only really new features that SoulSilver brings about are the Pokéathlon and the Pokéwalker. The former is a series of touch-screen minigames that you can participate in, in order to win medals and points that can be redeemed for items; this is a fun way to spend an hour or two, mixing and matching Pokémon teams to see how many medals you can win for yourself. The Pokéwalker is a small pedometer-style device that you would transfer a Pokémon into, then take it with you on a walk or jog. Depending on how far you travel, you can level up your Pokémon, unlock more routes, and obtain watts, which are useful for catching more Pokémon.
This game does offer quite a bit more replay value than other recent titles, however, if only for the extra-long main adventure. For most Pokémon titles, you’ve basically won once you collect your eight Gym Badges and defeat the Elite Four at the Pokémon League, but SoulSilver, like the original, has another adventure waiting for you after that; you head to the Kanto region to explore another land, collect eight more badges, and finally face the ultimate trainer atop Mt. Silver. And that’s without you catching all the Pokémon, also; getting all of them to fill your Pokédex is a gargantuan task, with hundreds and hundreds of species to catch, and you’ll never get all of them without going online to trade Pokémon with players around the world. I’m 30 hours into my game already, and I’ve not even made it to Kanto yet.
This is mostly because of my one recurring beef with the series, and that’s the sudden difficulty wall I always run into at the Elite Four. I’ve accepted that I will always be incredibly underleveled at the end of any RPG, but usually I’m able to concoct a strategy of sorts that gets me past the final boss to the end credits. In SoulSilver, I am completely crushed when I get to the endgame, forcing me to do the worst thing any game could force you to do: level grinding. When a player is forced to undergo a monotonous task, battling over and over just to get your Pokémon’s strength up, just to be able to complete the game, somebody has failed somewhere along the line, I believe. Perhaps I should have been grinding all along, but I feel that the best games are going to let me continue once I’ve seen all I can of the world that came before. All things considered, though, it’s a minor complaint in an excellent game, and I’ve been able to last more than thirty hours without running into this trouble.
Having said that, it’s a bit tough to think of a whole lot to say about this game. What didn’t come from one previous title (the PokéGear and items from Gold and Silver) came from another (the 3D graphics and online connectivity from Diamond and Pearl), and there’s not much new stuff to talk about. That aside, however, this is still the same game formula that we’ve been playing for a dozen years; there’s still a lot of depth to it, and there’s no doubt that it’s a great game series with tried-and-true gameplay. If you just picked up Platinum last year, though, it’s basically the same core game with different dressings, and you may feel a little cheated.
In summary, SoulSilver is a fantastic game in its own right, offering up a deep, and very long, RPG experience that’s very hard to match on the Nintendo DS; the game’s filled to the brim with charm to boot, making it a great package. It’s just that we’ve seen most of it before, and very recently, too. If you’re going to buy your first Pokémon game, make it HeartGold or SoulSilver, but if you’re waiting for the next leap in the franchise, you’re better off waiting for Black and White.
