Why Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver Best Introduce the World of Pokemon to New Players
Exploring Heart Gold and Soul Silver as a New Player
One of the best things about games in the Pokemon series is that every game does a pretty good job of introducing you to the mechanics of catching Pokemon, battling, items, stats, etc. There really isn’t a *wrong* first game to start with, but Heart Gold/Soul Silver (HG/SS) has the most advantages in being beginner friendly and giving you the experience of the older titles.
Get to the point. Give me the rundown on all these Pokemon games.
At the time of writing this article, there are 8 generations of the mainline Pokemon series. If you’ve never played a Pokemon game before, there are multiple games in the same generation that have the same setting and characters, but with small differences. The first generation included Red/Blue/Yellow, second included Gold/Silver/Crystal, etc. Then there’s generations like the third generation that have Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Fire Red/Leaf Green. It’s one generation with 2 sets of games in different regions. I could keep listing the rest of the generations, but that would be information overload. You can’t go wrong with picking either Heart Gold or Soul Silver!
HG/SS is a remake of the second generation games in the fourth generation. This means they have all the same mechanics and options as the games also released in the fourth generation. If you wanted to experience the second generation games, this is a really good replacement of it. But that’s not the only reason.
What’s so good about Heart Gold/Soul Silver?
These games do the best job of introducing you to the world of Pokemon. The tutorial section at the start isn’t too short and it isn’t too long. You’ll be able to start on your journey relatively quickly and the game will do a good job of explaining battle mechanics, tactics, and other interesting things you can do every step of the way. HG/SS does a really good job at starting out as a beginner friendly game, especially if you don’t play a ton of RPGs. Plenty of NPCs have some useful advice!
The level scaling and the AI in this game is good. For the first 2/3s of this game, I would say it’s catered to people new to playing RPGs in general. You probably won’t run into any tough battles for a while. However, the last third of the game definitely ramps things up a bit, so if you’re playing the game and looking for a challenge you will get that in the endgame.
The music in HG/SS is superb. All of the soundtrack is remade from Gold/Silver/Crystal with some different instrument usage. I do actually prefer some of the original songs over the ones in HG/SS, but I think the OST is still very strong. If you get nothing else from this article, I just want you to listen to this very relaxing piano song that plays during National Park:
Why shouldn’t I play Generations 1–3 first?
You can if you want. I don’t think they’re truly worth playing unless you turn into a super Pokemon fan. The big thing to know about every generation of Pokemon is that they are always changing and adding new things. The difference between generation 1 and 4 is huge. A lot of the battle mechanics in generation 1 are not even present in generation 2. Things in generation 2 and 3 have carried over to generation 4 and to even the rest of the series (i.e. dark/steel types in generation 2 and Pokemon abilities in generation 3). They’re fun games in their own right, but you’re not truly missing anything from skipping them. After playing HG/SS, you could easily hop into any other game in the series.
Why don’t I just play the newest Generation 8 games?
You can if you want, but they’re not the greatest entry point to the series. At this point, there are so many Pokemon, items, abilities, mechanics, and other things that can be quite overwhelming for someone new to the series. HG/SS has about 493 different Pokemon in the Pokedex, while Sword/Shield in generation 8 has 898 different Pokemon. Though you won’t ever encounter anywhere near those amounts of Pokemon in your first playthroughs, the options in Generation 8 could be a bit too much if you hadn’t played a Pokemon game before.
Why don’t I play the other Generation 4 games, Diamond/Pearl/Platinum first?
My biggest reason for Heart Gold/Soul Silver over Diamond/Pearl/Platinum is the region the games take place. It takes place in the same region as the generation 2 games and there is more content in another region (which I won’t go into more detail).
You’re basically getting more content and experiencing a lot of the things you would’ve experienced if you played some of the older games.
Wrapping things up
I try to keep these “Hey, play this game” articles short and relatively spoiler free. If it feels like I didn’t explain a ton, it’s because I didn’t. You have to explore through HG/SS yourself and learn all the little things that make this game so fun and charming!
I have tons of nostalgia for Pokemon, which is why I like it so much. But I do think even without all that nostalgia, the series is very enjoyable. Anyone can still hop in and play these games and have a good time.
Thanks for reading!
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