SoulSilver Log Part 2:

Happy Passover.  And now for Pokemon.

The story so far:  Blue once again set off in New Bark Town, having been given a Chickorita from Prof. Elm for an errand.  This time, however, Blue was a girl, something he hasn't been since "Crystal".  Why be a girl?  Well, Blue tried started a boy, but the game accidentally reset on Boy-Blue, killing him, his Pokemon, and all record of his existence.  So Girl-Blue is now taking over this adventure.

While Blue was out performing her errand to find a Pokemon Egg*, her rival, Red came along and stole a Cyndaquil.  But while Red has the massive disadvantage of being an artificial being moving a fixed path, Blue is control by an external power that already predicated these turns of events.  So that power ordered her to level up Chickorita to at least level 8, guaranteeing a victory.  And once Red was beaten for the first time and Blue said goodbye to Mom, she began her journey to be the very best, that no one ever was.

The great power soon, however, revealed its limitations.  Having only seen Blue's universe back in archaic time, which it called "the original games on the Game Boy Color", it was surprised to see how much the universe had changed.  For example, now there was a new person in Blue's life, a childhood friend named Ethan, who looked exactly like the erased Boy-Blue.  Blue was annoyed by this character.  "What the heck is there to see in a guy with a Marill, anyway?", she though.  "It isn't going to happen, Ethan.  Total creeper."  The great power consorted some vast mysterious well of all the knowledge of its universe called "the Internet", and assured Blue that Ethan would be gone very soon.

Along the way, the great power that spoke to Blue told her that Chickorita would be essentially worthless for half the gyms in the game.  So he called upon Blue to capture a Bellsprout.  Blue was quite confused by this, wondering how capturing another Grass-type could at all help her out strategically.  But what Blue didn't know was that in Violet City a nice man was willing to trade a glorious Onix, named "Rocky", for that Bellsprout.  Blue thanked the great mysterious power for helping her out once again, and went ahead to beat Faulkner.  The great power was immediately disappointed in two things:  1) the remakes did not help at all distinguish if Faulkner was a boy or girl, and 2) that Rocky turned out to be a horribly disloyal piece of garbage.  Apparently raising it up from level 5 to 14 was not enough for Rocky to love Blue, it was incapable of love.  Blue still won, but already she was beginning to doubt the great power.

Next up was Bugsy, master of Bug Pokemon and even more androgynous than Faulkner.  Along the way, Blue caught a Mareep because she liked sheep.  Rocky was punished by being thrown into a Box at the Pokemon center for his lack of faith.  Bugsy proved difficult, and Blue felt her first defeat.  The great power demanded that Blue restore Rocky to full status, as bugs would be unable to get through the hard rock.  Blue did as she was told, and proved triumphant. Rocky, however, was so worthless that he nearly lost, again.  Along the way, she once again ran into Rival Red, who was no problem at all.

The next gym leader was none other than Whitney.  Blue was shocked to find that the great power trembled just from hearing her name.  What in the world could make such a mysterious and omnipotent force shake with terror.  All the great power could say was a warning:  "ROLLOUT!  ROLLOUT!"  Not knowing what to make of that, Blue decided instead to catch a Vulpix.  During the climatic battle with Whitney, which was so epic that the great power left Blue's side to weep in a corner, Rocky once again proved a failure.  Whitney's Miltank, the master of the "horrible" Rollout, made Rocky fall in love with it.  The Onix, despite having every advantage in the universe, was defeated.  Luckily the others were able to take up the slack and win the battle.  Blue had a special punishment for Rocky:  "welcome to a box, you loser".  Worse yet, in a fit of rage, she released it out into the universe.  As for as Blue was concerned, Rocky was dead.  Dead forever.

From then on the great power gave Blue various gifts:  a Ralts that would evolve in Gardevoir, a Glaceon, and a Feebas.  The great power told Blue that Feebas must be given a haircut every night for eight nights, then it will evolve into a force mightier than anything she had ever seen.  Blue, however, didn't want to use the Glaceon yet, and instead made a Vaporeon**.  Three more gyms were taken down with Blue's growing party.  But there were rumblings in the wind.  Legendary Pokemon were running wild across the land.  An evil organization from the past was on its way to return.  And Chickorita, now a Meganium, was proving to be completely worthless***.

Will Blue be able to defeat the scourge of Team Rocket?  Will she ever reach the rank of Pokemon Master?  Where do I, the narrator and usual central character, fit into all this?

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* How is it that in the world of Pokemon, the field of Biology is so poorly advanced that people don't even know how Pokemon reproduce?  Its like they're all shocked to find a Pokemon hatching from eggs.  We're supposed to be in modern times in Pokemon.  In the real world, humans could tell you how a good deal of animals reproduced by at most 8000 BC, by the time we began domestication on a large scale.  Then the dudes at the Day Care Center act all coy when an egg is found when my Vaporeon was left alone with a Ditto.  "Look, an egg!  Where did that come from?"  Look, I know its a children's game, but we can at least admit that the parents are actively involved in the creation of children on some level, okay?

(On the other hand, I really don't want to be involved in the process.  Please no minigames where I use the stylus to artificially inseminate my Rapidash.  Thanks.)

** You can very easily get evolutionary stones in this remake.  In the original, those stones were next to impossible to find.  Here, all you have to do is compete in the Pokeathlon. The Pokeathlon is this collection of minigames where you compete against the computer or other humans if you so wish.  The games generally are okay, not exactly the best ever, though.  Some are quite poor, in fact.  I recommend the Stamina games, since its pretty much impossible to lose the first two games no matter what party you have.  By the way, Blue looks cute in her track suit.  All together, this is a much better game than that stupid Beauty Contest crap back in the last generation.

*** Grass-type Pokemon are easily the weakest of the main starting types.  They're weak against Fire, Ice, Flying, Bug, and Poison attack, and can only really work effectively against Water and Ground types.  But there are much better ways of being effective against them.  I figured this out years ago, but for some reason this time around I decided to start out with a pure-Grass type just to be different.  Meganium is not going to be in my/Blue's final party.