u/zancrash

Sixth slot is reserved for Metagross 😎

Just beat Platinum again since the first time it released, here are my thoughts on it:

Pros:
- The early game is great, I enjoyed it a lot, though the mid game from Pastoria to up to Snowpoint is a bit of a slog.

- Mt Coronet, Spear Pillar, and the Distortion world were all really fun, I enjoyed it more than the Sootopolis climax of Hoenn (Emerald was my first game) as well as Unova’s story climax. Spear Pillar especially was just fantastic

- Cyrus and team galactic are pretty good villains, ik Ghetsis is considered the most evil by fans, but Cyrus just seems way more of a threat because of the higher stakes.

- Barry is a fun character and rival, I enjoyed him.

- Excellent music.

- Just a really good Elite 4, people hyper fixate on Cynthia, but the rest of the league is great too.

Cons:
- Several mid-game towns look and feel the same, Pastoria, Solaceon, and Celestic all blend together and might as well be copy pasted, wish there was more variety in their designs.

- Was surprised by how little Cynthia actually does against Team Galactic, it’s mainly Professor Rowan and Barry doing the heavy lifting, one moment that stood out is before Pastoria where the Galactic grunt straight up says to her face they’re gonna do a bombing and she doesn’t react to it at all.

- Victory Road was really short, I like dungeon crawling so I wish it had been a bit longer

- HM usage. Yeah Hoenn had the same problem but diving was at least novel, rock climbing just sucks.

As for my team, I’m kinda regretting some choices in hindsight.
Weavile turned out to be useless, got outsped and one shot by Garchomp. Thankfully Gyarados came in clutch with Ice Fang.
Gardevoir was meh
Togekiss an investment wasn’t really worth it
Luxray also pretty meh, at least it looks cool

Plan was to catch the remaining legendaries, explore the post game area a bit then replay BW2, though I’m tempted to rebuild my team for an E4 rematch
Gardevoir -> Espeon
Luxray -> Electivire
Togekiss -> Gliscor
Weavile -> Lucario

On a final note, I’m not sure where the complaints about the regional dex come from, I feel like it’s pretty good, more-so than Emerald at least, I remember being annoyed as a kid that so many Kanto Pokemon were unavailable without trading.