thought it might be fun to keep at least some kind of track of my new soulsilver playthrough on here. don't know how often i'll update, or how big the gaps between each update might be, but it's here now if i ever have anything in particular to talk about!

entry #1, 12th november '23

so as i mentioned, i'm currently replaying soulsilver with the intentions of finally beating it. i bought it physically waaaaaay back and i don't think i made it to Morty's gym before i stopped. i just remember that once i got eevee i immediately put it in the daycare with a ditto to start getting all of the eeveelutions LOL.
i vividly remember trying to grind their levels in the national park(which, as i'm sure you can imagine, was extremely slow and honestly probably why i fell off of the game because i barely understood what i was doing).

i don't think soulsilver was my first pokemon game; pretty sure black got that honor. but that remake in particular caught my attention so fucking much because holy shit your pokemon WALKED WITH YOU. how precious is that??? though it also haunted me that i not only never actually beat it but also barely even got that far into the game. i never beat black either(lol. lmao even) but i got much farther in that one, so it doesn't really scratch at my brain as bad. i'll definitely go back to it to officially beat it as well, but not right now.

and i genuinely cannot stress enough that in hgss your pokemon do walkies with you in the overworld and it's so sweet and cute that it makes me want to scream.


anyways, i started my new game just a few days ago, and i've already progressed much more in that time than i did in the probably weeks i spent playing back in the day. my team right now consists of my quilava, pidgeotto, togetic, onix, gyarados, flaaffy, and newly evolved umbreon that's currently being kept in the pc.
i also have pokemon with more varied typings waiting in my pc if i come across any particularly tough battles for my current crew. which, thankfully, hasn't been too much of an issue since i evolved gyarados.

right now i'm working on getting everyone up to speed after obtaining the fog badge before i continue on, which is going...uh...well it's definitely going. not exactly quickly, but it is steady. getting poisoned on the first battle and having to run back and forth is easily the most annoying part, but the grinding itself isn't terrible.
i'll be levelling everyone to 30 before i move on to a higher level grinding spot.

entry #2, 15th november '23

after getting the gang up to 30, i moved westward to olivine city, sniffing out hidden items and feeding a lil miltank some berries along the way, as one does. a quick trip up the lighthouse, then across the water to cianwood city and back, and i was able to get the mineral badge.
i was definitely worried about Jasmine's steelix, especially since i hadn't had a chance to grind to match its level, but thankfully it wasn't nearly as much of a nightmare as i was thinking.

after that, i went back to cianwood since it was basically just a hop and a skip away, and also got the storm badge without too much fuss. and with that obtained fly! VERY glad to finally have it because holy shit was backtracking starting to become a slog.
...not that i would be taking advantage of it for a little while yet, as now it was time for grinding.
as luck would have it, route 41 is a fantastic grinding spot, especially with the pokecenter being literally two feet away from the water. Lemon, my ampharos, was the first to hit 50, as his typing and surprising power made grinding there an absolute breeze. Chestnut, my pidgeot, was the second; he was a little weak at first so it was a bit precarious, but once he hit the late 30's and got wing attack it was much smoother sailing.
i'm having to go kind of slow and take breaks every once in a while because the repeated flashing of the battle intros gives me a headache if i'm not careful, but i'm definitely getting there. after i get all of the not-weak-to-water lads to 50 i'll probably move up to route 48 to continue my grinding.
once that's done, though...i think i'm gonna stay at goldenrod for a minute and breed some eevees.

entry #3, 18th november '23

after getting Mallow to 50, halfway through working on Levia i realized how slow the current spot was for the amount of exp she needed, and decided to move on up to route 48 early. got her to 50, then Ash, then Kai; and in doing so also realized how poor onix's attack power was across the board while trying to train Shale, so she's been put on the backburner to allow Kai to be a full time member.
while i was already there i got to work going through the safari and starting to fill out my dex properly. i've never actually bothered to do this before, but i think it might be fun to finally try out. especially in an earlier gen, where there aren't quite so many pokemon to have to get LOL.
i've gotten all but a few that show up during the evening, which i plan to try and take care of later today. then it's just a matter of waiting to unlock those special block things to get the additional pokemon there.

at that point, i remembered that i never actually went to the lake of rage despite passing by earlier, and decided i might as well go back and catch that free shiny. shiny got, named her Scarlet, explored a little bit more, and then talked to Lance who proceeded to take me along on a rollercoaster ride that, had i known about beforehand, i would've just went to goldenrod city first to start breeding before i continued the story.
anyways, i rampage through rocket hq because my entire team is level 50 and these guys weren't even in the 30s yet, and then i figure...well...the gym here is open now...i've already grinded more than i could need to at this point...might as well go ahead and do that!!

this would be my final mistake.

after getting the glacier badge, elm called saying that the radio broadcast was being weird talking about team rocket. 'oh, right,' i think to myself, 'that whole bit of the plot, right. i have to go to the radio tower in goldenrod and kick their asses out of dodge, right right i'll do that later after i get my eevees, i'll already be right there in town anyways so it's fine.'

assuming everything was settled until i felt like dealing with more story, i finally went over to the daycare and bred a couple of eevees. the plan was to evolve one into a leafeon, since i wanted a nice grass type to be able to switch out to if needed since i didn't really have one yet...aaand then i doublechecked the wiki to be sure and discovered that there isn't a way to get leafeon without trading from another game that has moss rocks, as hgss doesn't.
which really put a damper on things considering i'd already named the one i was going to evolve & was attached. >>_>> at this point i'm stubborn enough to start a d/p/pt game just long enough to get access to a moss rock, trade them over, evolve them, and then trade them right back.
that'll have to be an endeaver for another day, though.

by the time all of this was said and done, it was late irl and i shut the game off for the night. 'i'll work on getting that other eevee to an espeon tomorrow,' i told myself.

hey guys guess what happens when you get to this point in the game. yeah team rocket 'takes over' the city and you can't talk to the friendship lady or get massages. which were both things i needed to do to get an espeon in an even remotely timely manner.
fueled by impatience and an impending headache, i barreled through dozens of grunts, then petrel, then silver, then even more grunts, then proton, then ariana, and, finally, archer. throughout all of these battles not a single one of my pokemon even hit yellow health range.
i like to imagine my trainer flipped everyone off while yelling 'GET OUT OF MY FUCKING WAY I HAVE AN EEVEE TO EVOLVE'. i have my priorities in order, after all.
after all that, i got my eevee their massage and checked their friendship levels; about halfway at this point, nice. i'm going to level them up a bit before just running back and forth in goldenrod to get them that last eek of friendship if necessary.
and then once that's done, i want to breed three more to get the rest of the eeveelutions available to me. i'll probably get that taken care of tonight at the same time as the safari catching.

and then...honestly, i kinda feel like trying to go find entei and raikou before carrying on with the story.


(i also managed to get a look at my physical cartridges a couple of days ago; i plan to work on the memoirs page tomorrow so i can get that info up! i got a lot farther in some of them than i originally thought, wow)

entry #4, 20th november '23

so, i lost about half my progress today due to savestates. ::']
i thought it would come in handy while hunting entei and raikou so i wouldn't have to chase them around for as long since reloading a normal save changes their locations and a savestate doesn't, but in the end it ended up wasting even more time than it would've taken me just chasing them around in the event of a failed capture attempt.
i'll be honest i don't know why it's even an option when it's so damn finicky...??

my only saving grace is the progress that did save(thankfully...) was me catching the rest of the safari mons except one morning mon, breeding three more eevees in preparation for when i get the appropriate stones, getting entei & raikou to low health, and then plucking Pearl out of the box and catching her up to speed so she could trap & sleep them for the best catch rate.
which, in the universe that no longer exists, she ended up helping me catch them both in less than 10 ultra balls. here's hoping that luck can find its way back to me in this reality, somehow...
i also lost my progress of getting the rising badge, defeating the kimono girls, and reaching lugia. granted, these things won't be the worst to re-do, as it doesn't actually take up much time when my team is overlevelled to the point of oneshotting basically everyone(oops) and i now know exactly where to go.
no, the most frustrating thing will be running around the entire map after those two dumbyhead beasts; which is why i even risked bothering with savestates in the first place.
sure learned my lesson with that one.

but, anyways, i'll deal with all of... *gestures vaguely* that tomorrow. instead, i spent my remaining time tonight finishing up work on my memoirs page. now you can see the exact point in my life where i was like 'oooh finnish so pretty' lol. granted, some of them ended up working as actual, nice nicknames, but, others are very much like naming your pet dog 'Canine.'
hence why i've been calling Kaus, Kaus instead. still a nod to his og name, but not quite as dumb sounding to someone that actually knows finnish. (it's just the word for 'love,' as in the literal emotion not a petname. young-me had their heart in the right place but not necessarily their brain)

entry #5, 21st november '23

got bored last night, so i got a little headstart on catching the current beasts. caught entei early on, but raikou continued to elude me, and after a while i said fuck it, i'll have all day tomorrow to chase it around, i'm not losing sleep over this.
so, i clocked in almost as soon as i woke up thinking it was still 'morning' by the game's standards, hoping to snag that safari machoke first thing, buuuut the game considers any time after 9:59AM to no longer be morning. so i shut it back off to enjoy some breakfast and general checking-on-the-next-day-internet routines. once i was done, i went back in to start running in circles after raikou.

and boy oh boy did we run circles.
okay granted it didn't exactly take all day, but it damn sure took longer than it did when i was using savestates. at least it ended up not taking that many balls to get them...



after that, i went back through the new areas to fight trainers and get items, again, and got the rising badge, again, and defeated the kimono girls, again...and got back to lugia. again.
for the briefest nanosecond, i considered SRing for a shiny, as i do enjoy lugia's shiny colors.
i then remembered all of the '50,000+ SRs for *insert legendary here*' videos i've seen and immediately told myself NO.
(that's what gpx is for, nowadays.)
anyways, after a not-insigificant amount of resets, i finally caught it with an ultra ball, and now i'm free to decide what to do next.



i think i want to go looking for ho-oh, if it's available at this point. it might be locked behind the league though...i'll have to look it up to doublecheck. if not, then i'm going for it next. if it is, then it's looking like it's finally league time.

entry #6, 23rd november '23

after some brief research i discovered that you get the rainbow wing in kanto, aka afer the elite four, so with my quest to get ho-oh before then thwarted...looks like it's league time!

except hold on let me catch all the unown that i can rq.

after doing that, though, i finally made my move for victory road.



again, my whole team is a liiittle overlevelled, so i made my way through and even defeated silver with very little trouble. when i finally got to the elite four i sat down and figured out who would do best against their teams, and then it was off to the races.
which...again, a bit overlevelled, so it wasn't much of a struggle on my part LOL. i only had two faints across all five battles and one of them was due to counter bullshit. >>_>>
BUT aside from that, my lads faired pretty well; Lemon and Levia, especially, were demons. Levia swpt every single one of Lance's dragonites and even got the final hit off while paralyzed, and even when Lemon went up against a type that he wasn't effective against he still absolutely bodied everything.
everyone else did good too, ofcourse, but i had to be a bit more careful with their matchups lol.



with everything said and done, though, i finally beat soulsilver. the deed is done.




...except not really, obviously!

kanto awaits!

entry #7, 28th november '23

upon arriving in kanto, my first course of action was to get the thunder badge from surge. noone on my current team has ground moves, so it was a little bit of an uphill battle, but nothing too bad. after that, i kind of just...wandered around for a bit. there were so many gyms immediately at my disposal and everyone kept mentioning the power plant being broken, but i wanted to get a lay of the land first before making any more 'proper' progress.
in doing so, i found not just one but two excellent grinding spots in the way of rematches. i sat with them for a hot minute getting everyone up to level 60 before i decided to carry on with story stuff.
(well...mostly everyone LOL. even when using Levia as the main exp share trainer with her slow levelling rate she still managed to out-level everyone else in the end by a good margin. oh well, she was already a powerhouse)
got the marsh badge, went to get the cascade badge but quickly discovered that both misty AND suicune were gated behind the power plant, so i zipped over there and returned the missing part so that i could continue. got the badge, and suicune, finally. <3



by this time it was getting late and i was getting hungry, but i wanted to do at least one more gym since i knew i had been loafing around for a bit long. i ended up hopping over to celadon city after realizing the route there was just open, and ended the day by getting the rainbow badge.