My dear José Feliciano :P
There are thousands of amazing DS multiplayer experiences. I can name tons, if you ask, ranging from Tony Hawks to Slime Morimori or whatever. And the 1 cart = multifun thingy was da bomb back then! :)

Yes, I agree so much! It might have the rock-paper-scissors mechanics in the Pokemon type, however what's more important in the newer generations is the individual stats, abilities and moves of your Pokemon, as well as the overall team strategy and placement.

Personally I have Pokemon White, but unfortunately since the WFC shutdown I can't change the theme or download all those Pokemon and berries I got on the official online site. Well, I can always try transferring my save to my PC and then to a flashcart using a workaround I found, but it kinda sucks that they couldn't leave it on. I don't mind that much though because I discovered the new gen doesn't really interest me that much, the EV training just made it like a grind to me and it's annoying that if I want to have a good, non-glass canon electric Zebra (forgot the name of that Pokemon), I have to catch about 40 different versions - I caught about 20 and then either gave up or started training the new one, I'm not sure. I much more preferred the first two games where you just catch a Pokemon, train them and fight, and all you have to do is select your moves and which team you want and that's it.

Well I did not have "close" friends in the DS days. And the school I grew up in was very "restrictive"

Haha yeah! :) You wanna join us for some gaming?

If we can get enough people together, we could organize a tournament!

It made me sad, I mean it ;(
But glad you can enjoy it now in some way, right?

Wish I could (especially for some Metroid FPS action), but alas: I do not have an Action Replay to skip the server authentication :(

I'm not sure what your issue is here. The new super-training is an optional feature, you can still EV train the same way you could in previous generations if that's your preference. Yeah, the mini-games are repetitive and time-consuming, but no moreso than any of the EV training methods that existed in previous generations. It's more of a lateral move, really.

It is very nice to have an in-game way of checking your current EV distribution, though. That was completely hidden in older generations unless you exported it to PC and used a save-state editor to peek.


Again, not sure what your issue is here. Getting good IV's and your desired nature/ability has never been easier. I totally agree that it's still mindless grinding to get a perfect IV pokemon, which is why I prefer playing on simulator, but the series has actually been getting more lenient on this issue with each passing generation.


Um, what? The IV system has existed since the very first pokemon game. Each successive generation has actually made it incrementally easier to catch and breed pokemon with above-average or even perfect IV's. Heck, as of generation 6 all legendary pokemon you catch are guaranteed at least three perfect IV's so for casual play you don't need to save scum at all.

The IV system is mostly superfluous nonsense that has as a whole, ruined the metagame.

Oh, I agree; as I've already stated I plan on simulator precisely so I can avoid raising pokemon for perfect IV's. However, you can't go faulting the later generations for a problem that it's been there since day 1. If anything, it has been getting better.

I don't have a 3DS, so I haven't played the 6th gen, I was talking about 4/5.

I don't care about IVs, especially in the first two generations as most Pokemon you caught were great, I was talking about EV. I hate the EV system, and this is a new thing - could you go through a cave with only Geodudes and get 0s in practically all your stats because of it? No.

That's why I mentioned it in connection to the Zebramon - you have to go and fight against specific Pokemon just to raise your stats in a desired way (eg. raise its defense), and unlike Gen 1 and 2 you can't just catch any Pokemon and expect it to be generally good, you really have to look for the right combination of its abilities and starting stats if, like me, you couldn't check the IV since I have the real game and it's not on a flashcart. But I see why you got confused by my statement.
Huh, I remember that the first three games were great, the first two even more - I never cared about any of that, I just caught a Pokemon and kept it, and usually it performed awesomely. It was only in later gen where I could catch a Pokemon that would be knocked out by one or two hits by a same or even lower level Pokemon using an attack which is weak against it! That had never happened to me until Diamond/White. I played Diamond only briefly though, because of the cave incident mentioned above. White either fixed it or improved it, or I was prepared for it by that time, but now I just don't feel like playing it precisely because I don't want to go through the game grinding and keeping track of the EVs. And I play it for the single-player experience and plot. For competitive matches I can always go online and use one of those websites where you just put your team together and fight people. :)

And this seems to confirm it - you can train all your stats to maximum and the

Sorry, I misunderstood you there. I though you were talking about reasons why the 6th gen games didn't interest you.

Pomeg/Kelpsy/Qualot/Hondew/Grepa/Tomato berries have existed ever since the current EV system was introduced (generation 3), so you can easily remove unwanted EV's and retrain them later. For competitive play you need your EV's (particularly speed) to be exact, but for casual play you can usually just get away with letting them grow naturally and flushing out unwanted EV's with berries.

While the EV system from generation 1 and 2 worked differently and you couldn't accidentally give your pokemon bad distributions, it also took a lot more grinding to max out. EV's aren't miracle workers. They can't turn a slow lumbering monster into a speedy attacker, and they can't turn a glass cannon like Zebstrika into a tank. Zebstrika is just plain fragile no matter how you raise it. Pokemon like this have always been shoe-horned into glass cannon roles.

For the purposes of casual play, I have to fundamentally disagree with you. I've done things like "solo Butterfree run", with nothing more than scumming for a modest-natured Caterpie and scarfing down kelpsy berries to remove unwanted attack EV's. The singleplayer game is designed for kids, there's plenty of room to use sub-optimal pokemon and still rock out. In multiplayer... well, you want every advantage you can get and that's a different matter. You can figure out the range of possible IV's from those starting stats. There are plenty of online tools available to do it. If you actually care about "perfect", there's an NPC in every game who will "rate" your pokemon and will remark about any stat in which they have perfect IV's.

Oh, I see. I sort of assumed that all the games were dependent on some kind of infrastructure that Nintendo provided, since Nintendo branded the whole thing as "Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection" a bit like Xbox Live or PSN. But I guess either Nintendo didn't really provide any infrastructure for third party games, or at least they chose to bypass it.

Or both?