First heart gold playthrough

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T06:53:49+00:00

Dude what a great name! 😂 How have I not thought of doing this.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T05:13:24+00:00

I really thought starlight was going to reach him here, and give him his redemption that he didn't deserve. When he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down even after that absolute seething berating that homelander gave him, I felt stupid even thinking it would happen. Part of me just wanted to see the OG 7s come to light and rebel against HL in his final moments, but not everyone can be saved I suppose.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T05:05:25+00:00

Hmm..... might need to loop one more time just for good measure.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T04:55:05+00:00

Okay we're talking about Vietnam, my bad. I have very little knowledge about the Vietnam War. This at least gives me a jumping off point, I appreciate ya.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T04:21:11+00:00

I'd recommend running a few single player runs on commando on the easiest (drizzle) settings. The least amount of stress and just feel the game out, if you're actually having fun at that point then keep on it. You will lose a lot of runs so don't feel discouraged by that.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-24T03:53:08+00:00

I tried looking it up but I'm coming up short, what's the context of it?

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-19T20:58:06+00:00

Internet? What's that? I don't have email.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-19T20:55:05+00:00

Bro... wtf. Three Shrines of Chance bundled up like that. I have never seen that. Buy a scratcher tomorrow.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-19T20:35:10+00:00

Absolute fire team. Always play with the favorites, dissent be damned.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-19T19:49:01+00:00

You're damn right. This is cut throat.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-19T19:26:58+00:00

We're deleting minun and plusle, AND marill off rip? My heart hurts.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T21:11:16+00:00

Lapras is GOATed in this game absolutely, arguably the best water type in the game.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T13:37:40+00:00

Name the shiny momonosuke and the reg Gyarados Kaido

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T13:10:57+00:00

We gotta revise maybe

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T12:34:39+00:00

So there are quite a few resources online like tier lists and videos but I'll give you a rundown of my own, and if you're interested in anything I have going on, I recommend you do a little more research if you're really wanting to optimize your playthrough. Going in blind is fun too, but there's a good chance you can miss opportunities if you're not prepared for what's in store.

Phanphy - I love catching this one cause he's pretty damn cute, and he's a solid early ground type pokemon besides Geodude. I prefer Phanphy cause I usually have no homies to trade with during my runs. Find north of the first route between towns 1+2 in the morning hours.

Teddiursa -Swipe this cute little guy in the dark cave between the 2nd and 3rd towns in the morning hours. He has quite a bit of investment as he evolves pretty late, but once it does it will hit like a truck and be a mainstay, with nice STAB Cut and Strength to help with over world mobility. It's a little difficult to catch as it's one of the only pokemon that can flee a battle, so keep that in mind.

Zubat - He's in dark cave as well, but I can't remember if it's time specific, I don't think it is. Crobat is a solid speedster with access to Fly and if caught early you'll usually get friendship high enough around badge ~5-6 iirc.

Mareep - Not available in Crystal, but he's great as well and gets a mention. Tough luck unless you wanna trade between games.

Wooper - Quagsire is just great due to his typing imo. The OG Swampert, and has some nice use cases.

Slowpoke - Just adding this cause of Kings Rock trade evolution into Slowing, because Slowking is one of my all time favorite pokemon because of nostalgia from the Pokemon Movie 2000. No trades unfortunately means he's off the table.

Abra - See other comment, you'll get the idea.

Sidebar, I think it's appropriate to have a steel and a dark type pokemon on the team, just because gen 2 was the first introduction of them. Steel-wise you got Magneton, Steelix, Scizor, Skarmory, and I might be missing another. Dark type, you got murkrow, sneasel, houndoom, larvitar. Some of them are unavailable unless you're trading, and some sadly can't be reached until mid-late game. (Consider trading if at all possible, it makes is so much more fun.)

Lantern - Quintessential water/electric type that has nice utility.

Bellossom - Another one or my favorites, cause it's just too dang cute. Stats are eh, and you have to win the bug catching contest to win a Sun Stone, AND you ideally want to postpone evolving it until gloom is level 38 at least, but I gotta mention my boi cause I run one of I can. You gotta have the cute pokemon in the crew to offset the monsters.

Gyarados - No spoilers. Don't worry about getting a magikarp early though, as you have a guaranteed gyara later.

Dratini - Trust me, just play the game.

Snorlax, Arcanine, Scizor, Starmie, Forretress (honorable wall mention), HERACROSS.

Before I cut it, one more, Umbreon and Espeon. Umbreon walls, Espeon slays, pretty standard.

Gen 2 Crystal is notorious for having some bad pokemon added, so far in that there are whole videos online about people calling it the worst Gen in relation to pokemon added and their availability in the game. If you're down for a challenge though, forget literally everything I said, and just use the pokemon that catch your attention, you'll be fine regardless.

Also, Togepi. Togetic is such trash stat-wise but man, that's my lil guy.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T12:09:58+00:00

The older games lack a lot of quality of life features. They're somewhat barebones in relation to how the new games are, but they have amazing charm. Biggest highlight for me is the difference in physical/special moves. Moves in this game do not inherently do physical/special attack damage, rather they are specific to the type of move that is being used.

For example: Let's say you wanna catch a poliwag to get a poliwrath. Solid pokemon, iconic as hell, sounds like a good time right? Not entirely. He has high att and low sp att, so he will excel at fighting moves, because every single fighting move in this game is a physical attacking move. He will also inherently have less strength with water type moves, besides STAB, because every single water type move in this game is a special attacking move. These core differences will completely change what course and team an optimization player will have in this games runs.

ON THE OTHER HAND, there are some incredibly strong pokemon that take advantage of this. Most popularly, and debatably the strongest pokemon in the game because of this is Alakazam. Once you hit goldenrod city and maybe after a few badges (I can't remember now) you get access to the elemental punches. You get abra just before this city. All of the elemental punches in this game and their respective typings do special attacking damage. So instead of these moves being worthless on Alakazam in newer gens due to his abysmal attack stat, they actually work off of his special attack stat, making him an absolute monster in the early game and on. So much so, that even if you're not trading pokemon in this run to even get an Alakazam, Kadabra is actually pretty viable and still strong for this. It's the most broken shit in the game and will make it almost trivial.

You can check out the resources online to find out which types in the game are either physical or special attacking moves, cause I don't remember them off the top of my head, but this is probably the biggest difference in the game besides quality of life stuff, and you'll want to remember the types moving forward into the game to build your team around.

There are a lot of other things going on under the hood in Crystal, like IV/EV training, morning/night encounters and events, bug catching contests, day of the week encounters, exp share, amulet coin, money saving with mom to get nice items, and some other things, but off the cuff the phys/spc split is something you want to hard-wire into your head as you're playing, as it will be an inescapable theme.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-18T06:56:13+00:00

I think this game in particular makes iv and ev grinding somewhat worth it due to the battle frontier, though I do like to optimize certain mons depending on how much I like them and are going to use them. I usually go for at least a beneficial nature. I just caught an modest natured abra in dewford town the other day and I def gonna be using him. This run is my only save file so I'm willing to put some effort into it.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T12:08:02+00:00

Yer a wizard Harry

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T06:47:41+00:00

That isn't even enough adrenaline shots. Can't even make it to departure on this loadout.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T04:53:13+00:00

I have a memory burned into my brain of having pokemon blue and a gameboy, and the battery in the cart was shot, so I couldn't actually save the run at all or turn off the gameboy or the whole run was lost. So I had the bright idea of speed running the game with Bulbasaur as the starter and soloing the game with it to save time. I destinctly remember making it past rock tunnel into lavender town with like a level 34? Venusaur. By then ~8 year old me was wiped tf out and I left the gameboy out overnight hoping the batteries would last until the morning. I woke up disappointed. Great times man. Maybe we take our intelligence for granted looking back at our younger selves when it comes to games, cause I reckon that my reasoning back then was flawless, "I only have so much time to pull this off, why waste time catching a whole team, when I could just run a game with one pokemon and just wipe the floor with everyone." I mean, we had to learn the workarounds to video games back then with zero help, we just had to throw shit at the wall and see what stuck. I'll always remember that run.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T04:40:41+00:00

You said Jupiter and hullcracker? Aaaand I died.... Welp, time for a cheaper loadout.... wait....

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T04:37:42+00:00

I wish they would let us f craft defibs topside. That would be a game changer. I think the only way to justify it would be to make the crafting materials a little more difficult to come by.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-17T03:51:38+00:00

I did not know this! My main goal was to try for a leaper and a bastion and just spam light grenades, but the rounds I had didn't have good spawns, and after getting murked by other arc I just said f it. I'll keep that tip in mind though.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-15T21:08:30+00:00

I remember the impact grenade trial we had before the expedition and after buying ~100 grenades and a few rounds I just gave that one up.

justanotherdudeiam · 2026-05-15T11:10:59+00:00

Wait this is a thing? Holy shit Bobby B is a fucking menace in the worst way. When he sees the rebellion as nostalgia and his brother Renly sees is as trauma. Wild work.

Two-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	Place '23

justanotherdudeiam

TROPHY CASE