Heart Gold/Soul Silver - Ultimate Pokemon Game?

Monday, 14 September 2009

Heart Gold/Soul Silver - Ultimate Pokemon Game?

It's out in Japan and word is coming out: It's frakkin' awesome.

Take the word of my pal who imported Soul Silver. He gave me a rundown of all the game's new features and, if I may be so bold, it sounds like the best Pokemon game there could be. Here's what he let me know:

The game is about speed, speed, speed. EVERYTHING is faster. Menu navigation is faster. Saving is faster. Moving is faster. Everything is much more convenient now. You don't even have to use the buttons. There's a designated A button on the touch screen for talking to NPCs and investigating the environment. The running shoes can be turned on and off via the touch screen, too. And the menu is always there on the touch screen! One second you're walking, and the next you're healing Totodile with a potion.

The item menu has been improved dramatically. There are shortcuts to the item sections so you don't have to cycle through them, and you can cycle through all your items in a flash simply by tapping arrow keys. You flip from page to page to get what you need.

The Pokedex is also more convenient. You just slide it open and you've got everyone in view. You don't move from one page to another, everything's there. You just tap a Pokemon and it instantly appears with its data on the top screen, no transitions or anything. It doesn't even make its cry unless you want it to

And when you want to check Pokemon locations? Instead of dragging the sun from one place to another, which was neat, you just tap the morning, day or night buttons and it shows you not only where they can be found on the map, but the names of those locations as well.

The Pokemon selection screen is also very convenient. They combine the Pokemon selection screen and summary screens into one thing. The top screen shows a Pokemon's stats and ability, while the bottom shows its moves. There are two other buttons, too, one for its general data like where it was caught and its nature, and another for its ribbons. You can instantly switch between one Pokemon and another by tapping it. They're all accessible all the time on the right half of the touch screen. Switching Pokemon around is a matter of dragging and dropping.

The PC is also much easier to use, dragging and dropping and instantly jumping from one box to another via touch screen.

And the music! A big change from the originals, they rearranged everything.

The original tune
The new version
Can you taste the difference?
They added lots of environmental sounds too. You can tell whether you're walking on grass, sand or gravel and you can hear the water when you stand near it. The background music even quiets down to make way for it making for a great deal of immersion.

Also, as initial screens and footage show, your partner's out of its Pokeball all the time -- whichever one's at the head of your team. You can talk to it, and its responses are quite amusing, and different each time. Sometimes it appears cheerful, sometimes confused, sometimes distressed, sometimes annoyed, sometimes curious ... Depends on what you've been up to.

Taking a cue from EarthBound, there are some places where you can take group pictures with your whole team out of their Pokeballs. As you go through the game, you find these places occasionally where the opportunity will arise. You can even take pictures with gym leaders later in the game, and they'll want to trade with you and challenge you again with Pokemon from every generation on their teams!

Of course, the game features all of Platinum's Wi-Fi improvements including the Global Terminal for battle videos and such, and the battle frontier, unchanged from Platinum. So Heart Gold/Soul Silver players can do everything with Platinum players!

Phew, think we're finished? All nine starters from the first three generations can be obtained, too, and all the places they removed from Gold and Silver that were present in Red and Blue are back. So you will see all of Kanto (first generation -- Pikachu, Squirtle, Charmander, Misty, Brock and the gang) in all its glory, intact in Heart Gold/Soul Silver. HELL YEAHH!!

There! Sounds stellar, doesn't it? Spring 2010 can't come soon enough. We've had a few Poke-articles here at Hardest Level, so, still excited? Or does Pokemon still need more features and improvements?