HGSS Review

Few game franchises are as monumental and impactful as Pokémon, and few game franchises have done as much for me personally as Pokémon. I played LeafGreen as a kid on my Gameboy Advance, and got hooked on the franchise. I didn't play a new Pokémon game until X on my 3DS, which left me feeling a little empty after playing it for upwards of 100 hours, so I decided at the time to work backwards and play HeartGold afterwards.

HeartGold almost immediately became my favorite Pokémon game of all time, as well as one of my favorite games of all time. It continues to hold that position, and with each Pokémon game I play, either new or old, I realize more and more how emphatically I believe that generation 4 was the peak of the franchise, and that HeartGold is my favorite therein. Nothing in the Pokémon franchise compares to how I feel about HeartGold and SoulSilver, thought Diamond/Pearl/Platinum come close, as do the generation 3 games due in no small part to my own childhood nostalgia bias. Regardless, I truly believe that HeartGold and SoulSilver are some of the best Pokémon games ever made.

For starters, these games are gorgeous. Not just for the DS, but in general, the overall art direction is unmatched both in design and execution, creating - in my opinion - the most beautiful Pokémon world ever explored. Everything is just so rich and vibrant, alive and tangible, truly pulling you into the Pokémon world and filling the shoes of the trainer you embody.

The soundtrack is also beautiful, truly one of the greatest soundtracks composed for DS. Go Ichinose truly outdid himself, not only reviving the sound of the original 1999 games these remake, but also bringing new life into them for the generation of the DS.

Shigeki Morimoto directed these titles, the original battle designer for the franchise, a programmer since Red/Blue, and also the designer of Mew! This was the first and only time that he was given a directorial position on a Pokémon title, but I think his experience with the first three generations and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum gave him the perfect set of skills and perspective to make this game what it was.

Being a generation 4 Pokémon game, HGSS are compatible with the Sinnoh games of DPPt. As a result, the Johto region received many updates and upgrades that are related to this generation, such as expanding the Johto regional dex to include new evolutions like Tangrowth and Mamoswine, which evolve once they learn a certain move in their new generation learnset. There are also several of the new gen 4 evolution stones, such as the Dawn Stone, which are place in the post-game areas for players to later discover.

Generation 4 in my opinion perfected the battle UI and mechanics of Pokémon, which only a few small adjustments from modern games feeling absent. HGSS somewhat sped up the notoriously slow Sinnoh health bars in battle, as well as more versatile usage of the touch screen compared to DPPt. While HGSS sadly lacks the Super Contest from DPPt, it instead has its own set of touch screen-based minigames called the Pokéathlon, which can be participated in single or multiplayer.

The game itself, overall, is simply a masterfully crafted game in the Pokémon series. Everything feels intentionally and done with love and care and attention to detail, trying to give an authentic remake experience that is true to the Johto region, but also the feel of a brand new game that does not feel dated in the slightest. This game could have been brand new in 2009 and no one would have been the wiser, but instead it is a wonderful love letter the the 1999 games, as well as a new life for the Johto region and the trainers who call it home.

It's not without its downsides, as all things are. The first things that come to mind personally are HMs and TMs. HMs are still mandatory learned moves that a Pokémon on your party must know and use in order to navigate the world, making team comp and moveset planning a little harder for it. Thankfully, some moves like Flash and Headbutt are simply moves with field effects and not HMs. This was also the last Pokémon game to have consumable TMs, as the games immediately after HGSS, generation 5's Black and White, made TMs an infinite-use bag item, which is a change that has stuck with the series since. Speaking of generation 5, this was also the last game to have the 1/8192 Shiny odds, before gen 5 raised them to 1/4096. Gen 5 also introduced new quality of life features, such as DSi Internet support, cartridge-to-cartridge local IR communication, etc. Granted, HGSS came out a year before the DSi, but the lack of higher-end Internet security support is certainly a negative in the long run for this game's life post-DS era.

Something that some people also complain about on occasion are the "days of the week" events, and the level curve of the Johto region. I want to both acknowledge the shortcomings of these features, and also offer a brief defense of their purpose in-game.

First of all, the "days of the week". The gen 4 Pokémon games use the DS internal clock and calendar to time certain events in-game. For example, a Drifloon appears outside the Valley Windworks in Sinnoh every Friday. In HGSS, this times events like the Bug Catching Contest, when you can rechallenge trainers and leaders, when shops like the Discount Shop are open, what rewards are available at the Pokéathlon Dome, and so many other things. This mechanic is somewhat contentious among players, with a recurring comment I've heard being that people don't like to wait around for the thing they need to become available on a specific day (something of an extension of the "time of day" complaint). Personally, I would also find this annoying on any console other than the DS. As a matter of fact, it's a big complaint I had with Sword/Shield and completing that Pokédex. However, with the form factor of the DS, and the design philosophy of so many DS games, I think HGSS fits in perfectly with the many games that use portable, on-the-go, minutes-at-a-time, daily gameplay styles to propagate long-term players, with games like Nintendogs or Animal Crossing: Wild World being the biggest proponents of this. When played in this context, I believe it can shift perspective on why these games do what they do, and hopefully justify and add some whimsy back to these mechanics.

People also often complain about the level curve of the Johto region games, namely with how slow exp grinding is, and how low the levels of the Pokémon League is by the time you become the champion. It's true, Johto keeps your levels super low for the entirety of the journey, and you even Champion Lance's ace Dragonite is only level 50. You might still have unevolved Pokémon on your team at this point! A lot of people complain about that, and also the fact that one you enter the post-game Kanto region, wild Pokémon levels are insanely low in most areas compared to the expectation of a post-game area, not to mention there are plenty of underpowered trainers as well. It can create a somewhat lopsided feeling to entering Kanto and exploring the region, especially with the expectation of a post-game. However, this is not an arbitrary balancing decision, it's the same idea as the Hoenn rechallenge circuit in Emerald. Let me explain.

In Emerald, after you become the champion, the post-game is not only access to the Battle Frontier, it's also the ability to obtain a Johto starter from Professor Birch, and travel the Hoenn region again to rechallenge the gym leaders, whose teams will now scale their levels to the player's highest level party member. This allows you retread the region with a new level 5 starter and rechallenge the league along the way, essentially giving you a second experience as the champion to re-explore the Hoenn region's Pokémon League with a fresh team.

To that point, HGSS is the same and also not at the same time. The gym leaders of Kanto are not reset like a lot of Kanto's level curve, with the first gym leader Brock having a team that begins at level 51, carrying on from Lance's ace. The wild Pokémon and some trainers are underpowered compared to your power as the fresh champion of the Indigo League, but this is to do two things: 1, it allows the wild levels to more closely match their appearance in Kanto-based games like FireRed/LeafGreen, keeping some in-universe consistency; 2, it allows you make a fresh team and explore the Kanto region with a fresh team made up of Pokémon you hadn't yet discovered in Johto, and challenge a new roster of gym leaders with that team if you take the time to train them up, just like Hoenn does. Notably, when you eventually find Steven Stone in the Silph Co. building in Saffron City, he will gift you a Hoenn starter at level 5, serving the purpose of a fresh starter Pokémon like in Emerald (even if a Kanto start isn't awarded until defeating Red).

HGSS doesn't have an average level curve compared to other Pokémon games. This can be off-putting to some people, but like the calendar mechanics, I believe that when you understand why it is the way it is, you can start to play into it the way it was designed, and hopefully inject a little whimsy back into these designs.

I love these games. They're very dear to me, not only for the memories it brings back from that period of my life, but also for the many wonderful memories they've given me now, with my current loved ones on my 200-hour save file. I love these games more than anything else in the Pokémon series, which I think speaks not only to my experience with them, but also to their quality that I have a total of more than 500 hours across two saves files now. Few other games have every hooked me in quite that way, and I hope that it continues to hook more people through the years yet to come.

I recommend it more than any other Pokémon game. It has an experience catered to new and old fans alike, and makes them both feel at home in a world of dreams and adventures.

~ Alex Amelia Pine

This post is a part of the series Game Reviews