Pokemon Crystal

⭐ 6.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

This one pains me because this was my first ever video game and I beat it probably fifty times. Until a week ago, I would have said this is in my top ten favorite games ever. I really wanted to love this game again.

Man, did this game makes some weird decisions after gen 1. Everything is SO SLOW in this game. Leveling is slow, walking is slow, battle animations take forever, you never learn any good moves so battles are a grind. This game was not a joy to play like the first one. That one was janky as ever, but at least it was charming, fast paced and gave you a real sense of progression. In gen 1, by the end, it's a constant battle of titans. In this game, I was battling the Elite Four with a Magneton level 36 with its only move being thundershock.

Now, with that said, this game goes all out on fun end-game stuff, capping off with an epic battle against Red! However, the end game stuff is not as cool as I remembered with zero challenge until you actually get to Red which is an absolutely massive jump with no way of getting your guys to a good level without a ton of grinding. You go from battling trainers with a level 32 Nidorino to Red with a level 75 Snorlax. The jump at the elite 4 and Red are pretty ridiculous considering how slow progression is until then.

So yeah, this game is perhaps perfect for 10 year old me with all the time in the world and unlimited patience, and no cooler, funner games in my inventory. Now? It's a slow painful grind. Still gotta give it love for being the game of my childhood, plus it really does have an awesome feudal Japanese aesthetic, some awesome music, great pokemon designs (though no actual good new mons), and an awesome endgame design that hasn't been matched in Pokemon since.

My final squad: snorlax, espeon, gyrados, magneton, machoke, crobat. I kinda did the Nuzlocke, though failed once at the Elite Four, and redid Red many times. Didn't release any dead mons after the E4.