Oh, and that mysterious egg I was given yesterday? Well, it hatched, and unless you've ever played Pokémon before you'll be surprised to hear that it contained a Togepi. I seem to recall always naming my Togepis (Togepies?) of the past Eggbert, but this time I went with Egg Shen, after my favourite character from the classic Big Trouble in Little China (everyone always rooted for Lo Pan, but maybe because of 3 Ninjas, I had a soft spot for Victor Wong).
Now, already I'm noticing that I'm playing SoulSilver a little differently now that I'm older. EVERY time I've played Pokémon in the past, my strategy was basically making one Pokémon (usually whichever Pokémon I started with) really strong and just kicking ass as I went, while the other five Pokémon were just there “for the HMs”.
This time, however, I've been kind of spreading the wealth (or experience points, as it were). Trying to level up lower Pokémon as we travel, so that instead of having one super-powerful Pokémon in my lineup who does all the work, I have six fairly strong Pokémon, all of whom function together as a cohesive team.
And you know what? It's a shit hell of a lot more frustrating.
Pretty much halfway between any two cities, I'll have lost half my party trying to level up inferior goddamn Pokémon, while the other half are all paralyzed or some shit. It's goddamn annoying, and all I have to show for it are a bunch of mediocre Pokémon with crappy moves. The upside, though, is that I can try to catch wild Pokémon without having to worry about accidentally killing them in one hit, as none of my Pokémon are strong enough. I don't want to abandon this training method and return to the "one Pokémon to rule 'em all" strategy, because even though it may work better, it feels cheaper.
In any event, I've also added a level 5 female Zubat (named Morrigan) a level 10 female Poliwag (Ursula), a level 6 female Paras (The Flood), and a level 12 male Drowzee (Morpheus) to my Pokédex. There's not really much strategy to the catching yet, as any time I encounter a wild Pokémon there's a good chance I don't have it yet. It'll be when I've covered most of the wild ones that I'll really start caring about the hunt.
On top of that, I caught a Ponyta on my Pokéwalker. While I was pretty pleased with myself about this, it was slightly dampened by the fact that I was out at a nice restaurant with Rebecca and my sister Laura at the time. Laura actually had to hiss at me to turn the sound off, since the beeping coming from the Pokéwalker was apparently obnoxious and rude in public.
So, exactly 6 hours into the game, and I've caught 18 Pokémon. That's not bad, averaging about one every twenty minutes. At this rate, I should have them all in 164.333 hours.
Where doing it man. Where MAKING THIS HAPPEN.
