>>43413941Late gen 4 is the best Pokémon has ever been. I love Platinum. It’s easily right behind GS and HGSS. However, I replayed Gold or Silver at least once or twice a year since launch year to that point and really wanted a remade Gold or Silver. The Pokeathalon is still the best side quest, and it’s not even close. Contests suck and Super Contests super suck. The sprites and art direction are second only to Crystal in my preference. People shit on the Safari Zone for the waiting thing, but it really adds quite a few new options to play with. Also, the waiting thing isn’t too bad, most of the egregious waits were for Pokémon I already caught in RS and Platinum and could just transfer over. I loved how you could replay very similar music to the originals, even if it’s not 100% perfect and the remixed stuff is decent and not total garbage like the Gen 1 remakes. In addition the expanded dungeons in both regions adds a nice extra layer of exploration. Sure, Johto doesn’t have the massive exploration with all of the detailed secrets of Hoenn or Sinnoh but Johto and Kanto combined is a little bigger than the single region games and there’s still plenty of secrets. I guess the minor knock against HGSS is that the level curve design here doesn’t account for the secret stat boosts of the original so there’s more grinding here. However, grinding’s a problem for me in Platinum, too. In Plat I usually grind for 3-4 hours just before the Elite 4 and in Johto I usually grind for 3-4 hours before the second Elite 4 rematch with another few hours before Red.
