Pokemon SoulSilver DS

Pokemon SoulSilver is the newest addition to the Pokemon series. It is the Generation IV remake of the old Pokemon Silver. This time, instead of starting in Sinnoh as it did in Diamond, the game now takes place in the Johto region. There players can team up with the Starter Pokemon Chikorita (Grass), Cyndaquil (Fire), or Totodile (Water), received from Professor Elm. As with all Pokemon games, the goal in this game is to become the best trainer in the Johto and Kanto regions. This is done by raising Pokemon, completing the Pokedex, defeating all sixteen gyms in the Johto and Kanto regions and also the Elite Four and the Champion. During various points of the game, your rival will also challenge you to test your skill level. This time, your rival is a purple-haired boy (You get to create your own name for him), whose personality more resembles Paul in the anime. Like with the previous games, your rival's starter Pokemon depends on what you choose as a starter, possessing the Type that is advantageous to yours. Also, instead of facing Team Galactic as you did in Pokemon Diamond, you'll be facing Team Rocket this time.

A new feature in this game that actually proved to be quite cute is that your leading Pokemon is now able to follow behind you wherever you go instead of residing in a Pokeball. Players are also able to turn around and interact with their Pokemon. Most of the time, the interaction will result in a random action (such as your Pokemon chasing after a butterfly or sneezing), but there are also times (if lucky) where your Pokemon might have picked up an Item, though these events are much rarer.

Unlike in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, Pokemon can now compete in a sports event known as the Pokeathlon. Pokemon Contests have completely been deleted from the program, which might be a good thing for some people. The game utilizes the DS Touchscreen, and your Pokemon will be able to compete in events such as hurdling and frisbee-catching. Each Pokemon has their own stats. Some Pokemon will be better at jumping than at running. For each course, you will enter three Pokemon. Each course consists of three different events that is based not only on the stat skill of the overall course name. You'll be controlling all three of your Pokemon at once, so make sure that you're not focusing only on one Pokemon. I personally am best at the Jump, Power, and Stamina courses. I fail at the Speed and Skill courses mainly due to one event: Pennant Capture. It rather annoys me that the Pokemon of the other teams move faster than I do and keep bumping into me, thus either stealing my points or slowing me down considerably.

You'll be assigned points in the Pokeathlon and you can later use these points to buy prizes at the Prize Exchange counter. If you win an event, you'll be rewarded with an additional 100 points. Nice! Prizes vary from day to day but you can get a lot of items that are not available anywhere else in the game here. You can get Apricorns (around 200-300 points), Full Restores, Heart Scales to change your Pokemon's movesets (1000 points), Rare Candies to increase your Pokemon's level, and various evolution stones. More evolution stones (i.e. Dusk, Dawn, Shiny Stones) will become available after you receive your National Dex. These stones can be purchased for 3000 points (The stones before the National Dex cost 2500 points). Getting the points you need can be quite annoying and take a long time. Often times, you'll have to play the courses for about seven or more times (depending on your score and your original amount of points) in order to rack up the points needed.

One new addition to the game is the Pokewalker, a device that is very much like a pedometer. It is included in every game package, and can be considered as Nintendo's attempt to get kids to become more active. It can connect to the DS console via infrared signals. Players can transport their favorite Pokemon into the Pokewalker and walk along with it to increase its happiness. Players walk to save up a currency known as "watts", which they can later use to unlock new routes to obtain special Pokemon. I've tried using the Pokewalker and it can be quite annoying to use. For one thing, it doesn't record accurately. Sometimes my Pokewalker doesn't even record at all. If you want to do anything, such as search for an item or Pokemon, you'll need to consume watts. Watts are hard to come by as you gain only one watt for every 20 steps you take. Considering that I'm mainly using the Pokewalker to get a Milotic and Froslass, this will most certainly take awhile as the route to access them requires 30,000 watts. Think how many steps that will take!

Also, one other quite annoying thing with the Pokewalker is that there is no Off button. Once you pull out that little piece of paper stopping the flow of current to the battery, your Pokewalker is officially turned on until the battery dies (According to the manual, the battery lasts for about 4 months if you use it to gain 10,000 steps each day for about half an hour). To conserve battery, the Pokewalker goes into Sleep Mode but, as you can see, this still consumes battery life, only less of it. The only way to turn your Pokewalker off is to either remove the battery or reinsert that little piece of paper you took out earlier. Be careful about your Pokewalker's battery life as, if your battery dies, then all information on the Pokewalker you collected is lost. (Don't worry, your Pokemon can still be retrieved. It'll only be more of a hassle now).

As with all Pokemon games, there are always some things that I find to be annoying. The most annoying thing I find to be is the fact that you are always constantly attacked by wild Pokemon or young trainers. While these events do help you train your Pokemon, they really slow down your progress. Sometimes I just want to travel from one town to the next without any hindrances. Of course, there are ways to stop these random encounters, and that is to make use of the various levels of Repels. These items will stop Pokemon from attacking you for a certain number of steps, but they do cost money with the better Repels costing more money. However, they can be stocked anytime in any Pokemart across the region. 

Another thing that I still find to be annoying is the limit of moves your Pokemon can learn at one time. Your Pokemon is only allowed to learn four moves at a time, so it really takes a lot of effort to decide which movesets are the best for your Pokemon. Ask yourself if you want a moveset that focuses mostly on defense or offense? Not only that but since most of your Pokemon in your party end up needing to learn HMs in order to continue the game, you're really down to only three options. Plus the fact that the more powerful attack, the less PP it has can really make the game challenging if you run out of PPs. Of course, your Pokemon's old moves can be relearned but these will require the payment of Heart Scales. The Move Tutor can be found in Blackthorn City.

Unfortunately, leveling up your Pokemon's happiness takes a rather long time and can often times be extremely expensive. However, if you want some cool Pokemon such as Roselia, Umbreon, or Lucario, then you'll be forced to work through your Pokemon's happiness. You might even need to evolve your Pokemon via maximum happiness in order to complete your Pokedex. The only fastest way I know of to increase your Pokemon's happiness is to first catch your Pokemon with the Friend Ball (Green Apricorn). This increases the base happiness of your newly caught Pokemon from 70 to 210. Then equip your Pokemon with the Soothe Bell and give it lots of vitamins and a daily massage from Daisy Oak in Pallet Town from 3-4 PM.

One thing that really annoys me is that you can't complete the Pokedex unless you utilize the GTS. I don't have WiFi in my house so I'll have to run to a cafe just to use this feature. You can't get any Sinnoh or Hoenn Pokemon unless you use the GTS. However, you can capture a few of these using the Hoenn or Sinnoh Sound on your Pokegear after you get the National Dex. The only other way would be to use Objects in the Safari Zone to attract some rarer Pokemon.

As with all games, Pokemon starts out to be very fun but the game starts to become extremely boring halfway through because there's nothing for you to do but to run around in the grass, encounter some wild Pokemon, and gain EXP to increase your Pokemon's level (which, by the way, takes FOREVER if your  Pokemon is at a high level). There really are no good places to train unless you battle trainers on the SS Aqua and only then this can only occur on certain days. All the Pokemon in Kanto are extremely low level (around level 5). But, hey, it's Pokemon, so you can't complain too much I guess.