The Faults of GenII

[PokemonKnight]

Poor level curve.

Horrendous Pokemon placement.

Lack of Johto Pokemon for the Gym Leaders.

Kanto Pokemon ruling Johto.

The friendship/happiness evolutions for Espeon and Umbreon instead of using the Sun and Moon stones.

Having to trade for Steelix/Scizor.

And more.

 

[TikTok13]

Don't get me started on the level curve. It is so annoying! I restarted my game a few weeks back, and I'm still training at Mt.Silver with Pokémon in the 40s, ready to fight Red's level 80 Pokémon! It's just far too inconsistent.

 

[PokemonKnight]

Don't get me started on the level curve. It is so annoying! I restarted my game a few weeks back, and I'm still training at Mt.Silver with Pokémon in the 40s, ready to fight Red's level 80 Pokémon! It's just far too inconsistent.

That sounds terrible.

But hey, it has 16 Badges!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the games, but they are heavily flawed on a foundational level and by no means the best in the series.

 

[Nidogod]

GSC are my favorites as well, but I'll throw in how ridiculously hard it was to get evolutionary stones/items. You should be able to fully evolve all your Pokemon before the E4.

 

[adamtaylor792]

For me the biggest problem was how empty the world felt. Not just in Kanto which was just a run through of the previous game in a different order but in Johto too. There are large areas where there is just nothing and the wild pokemon selection isn't great to make up for it. The whole region just felt very static and not alive.

 

[Cellfaction]

In those days, leveling pokemon and fully evolving some Pokémon was so hard, but recently I decided to make a GSC/RBY run on an emulator, and time capsule combined with the Missingno glitch makes leveling up the Kanto Pokémon easier, since you can get a good amount of exp points while battling the Missingno, and you can use some TM to teach them good moves, or use evolution stones to make them evolve.

 

[ChloboShoka]

I love gen ii but leveling up is so slow and I think gen II is the most challenging out of all of the gens due it's level curve.

 

[Wednesdayz]

I love gen ii but leveling up is so slow and I think gen II is the most challenging out of all of the gens due it's level curve.

Makes me wonder why Game Freak didn't notice the horrid leveling curve when they play-tested Gold & Silver. Like, did they not worry about the difficulty of leveling up...?

 

[Benny™]

Some of the obstacles like the salesman that sells you candy make no sense, and you don't even get rid of him, he just leaves after you make a certain amount of progress.

 

[Captain Jigglypuff]

A few faults I can think of are the Time Capsule having serious issues that could affect the games, making several "new" Pokémon such as Slugma or Murkrow available only after defeating the E4 and having to go to Kanto to get them (Larvitar and Misdreavus can get a pass since they were best suited for Mt Silver and not early on), making some of the time based Wild Pokémon limited to a small arch of grass or water area despite the area they can be found has plenty of space to put in more grass for encounters, the NPCs you get numbers calling at random times and saying utterly useless things that hold no value to game play, and the Ruins of Alph puzzles that had a couple of pieces that look almost exactly the same that even staring at the identical looking pieces made it hard to tell which piece was which.

 

[CrimsonAce777]

I thoroughly enjoyed them, i will say tho, that the flash caves were kind of an annoyance, wondering in on accident, only to find that I need rock smash (which isn't an HM, iirc, which means having to remember to never delete it from someone's moveset.) strength, and flash, to navigate them properly, the lack of a guard infront of the tin tower/ whirl Islands (Gen 1 had the guy block off cerulean cave) to tell you when to come back to explore them, granted you do need the specific wing item to make Ho-oh and Lugia appear, but still, I randomly found Ho-oh one day because I just happened to stumble into the tin tower. And make it to the top and was like whoah?! What is that?! And caught it with the master ball. Granted I guess that adds a level of explorability to the games, gen 1 was the same way, randomly going into doors until finding the one to go in, and even then it was rather linear. So some form of direction would be nice. I always hated that the whirl islands had 4 doors, remembering which one lead to lugia... wait I still don't know which one leads to Lugia

Also... roaming pokemon... why nintendo?! Why?! I will never forget bumping into Suicune right after it left burned tower (that patch of grass just south of the city, the one where you find stantler.) and thinking "this thing looks awesome!" Only for it to run, and me to proceed walking in that grass for like 2 hours trying to find it again, only to finally check the dex and see that it wasn't found where I was, which led to my general confusion. It wouldn't be until my friend got his nintendo power later that week that we'd discover they moved around at random everytime you changed routes. Still salty about that...

The "kurt" balls being generally useless and he'd only make 1 every 24 hours was another pain. But hey, at least ultra balls work better than great balls in gen 2.

Oooh yea! Bug catching contest, why the heck was winning that thing so hard? Looking at you Lass Beth, with your stupid caterpie that always managed to be like .000000000003 bigger than my catch, regardless of what I caught. I think I only 1 like 1 time in all the years I played that game.



I guess the level curve was bad? But I really don't remember any of that. Although trying to get a tyranitar or dragonite did take ages even with EXP share...

 

[Leonhart]

Don't get me started on the level curve. It is so annoying! I restarted my game a few weeks back, and I'm still training at Mt.Silver with Pokémon in the 40s, ready to fight Red's level 80 Pokémon! It's just far too inconsistent.

This is a perfect example of what I meant before. When I faced Red at the top of Mt. Shirogane/Silver in Gold version, I was barely capable of raising my strongest Pokemon to around mid-Level 50. I was hopeless against Red due to the level curve.

 

[Swagga09]

It was weird how some gen 2 pokemon could only be caught in kanto

 

[Leonhart]

It was weird how some gen 2 pokemon could only be caught in kanto

I remember Yamikarasu (Murkrow), Magmag (Slugma), and Delvil (Houndour) being found in Kanto instead of Jouto in G/S/C, which did kind of bother me since I wanted to use a Delvil in Jouto when I first played Gold. I wonder why Game Freak decided to do that.

 

[Magiclapras]

I'm surprised no-one has brought up Moomoo Milk yet.

A discovery I made today. Everyone knows that if you want to buy multiples from the farm, you need to have a Pokemon hold it, correct? Because if it's in the bag, the game won't let you buy another.

What I discovered today was that the same rule applies if you try to Thief one from a Miltank. I even put the one I had in the PC, and STILL didn't get one.

 

[Aquarelle]

I'm surprised no-one has brought up Moomoo Milk yet.

A discovery I made today. Everyone knows that if you want to buy multiples from the farm, you need to have a Pokemon hold it, correct? Because if it's in the bag, the game won't let you buy another.

What I discovered today was that the same rule applies if you try to Thief one from a Miltank. I even put the one I had in the PC, and STILL didn't get one.

I think the issue with wild Miltank is that they're not guaranteed to hold Moomoo Milk.
Even though the Serebii Pokedex lists Moomoo Milk as a 100% chance hold item for Miltank, a couple of other sites claim that it is NOT a 100% chance (the two seem to disagree on the exact chance, but both claim it's not 100%).

I was curious about this, so I tested it myself. I just went to Routes 38-39 (with a Moomoo Milk already in my bag) and captured three Miltank. The first two didn't have anything, but the third one was holding a Moomoo Milk.

So, it seems like Miltank just has a chance of holding Moomoo Milk, and you were just unlucky to not get one.

 

[ToonsJazzLover]

I remember playing Crystal a decade ago and I think my biggest flaw was Kanto Pokemon dominating the Johto region. (There's only 100 new Pokemon at that time, but I feel like the Johto Pokemon were overshadowed, especially the gym leaders team using mostly Kanto Pokemon).

 

[Leonhart]

(There's only 100 new Pokemon at that time, but I feel like the Johto Pokemon were overshadowed, especially the gym leaders team using mostly Kanto Pokemon).

It did bother me in regards to Hayato (Falkner), Tsukushi (Bugsy), and Matsuba (Morty) in particular. Hayato could've had a Hoho (Hoothoot), Tsukushi could've used Ledyba and/or Itomaru (Spinarak), and Matsuba should've had a Muuma (Misdreavus).

 

[Magiclapras]

Huh, so Serebii's listing is wrong. My bad.

 

[ArcanineShrine014029]

A lot of people are bringing up the level curve issue, but I find that fighting all of the wild Pokemon you encounter tends to alleviate it, although by just a little. That, or making a team of five and having an HM slave.

-I know this is an issue for other games as well, but the amount of moves you need out of battle can be a lot to handle. 8 HM's, plus rock smash, and headbutt if you want to encounter Pokemon from trees.
-The unavailability of several evolution stones until Route 25 in the postgame hasn't been mentioned yet. If I want to use Arcanine in-game in Gold, I'll have to trade Growlithe back to RBY and buy a stone from Celadon city.
-The complaint about Johto gym leaders using Kanto Pokemon is probably manifests itself the most in Morty's Gym, where the only Pokemon used at all are Gastly/Haunter/Gengar. Why not have Morty use Misdreavus, and furthermore make Misdreavus available in the Burned Tower? I think an NPC talks about kids going missing there. It would make sense for Misdreavus to be available in the Burned Tower to give it more atmosphere, or even just earlier in the game, as opposed to Mt. Silver.