Pokémon White 2
Pokémon White 2 is probably one of the first Pokémon games that I got on release. While my original save isn't intact, my brother's is. Our adventure began on October 7th, 2012, and we entered the hall of fame only a few days later. These are some of the Pokémon I've held onto since and it looks like my playtime only lasted a month based on those saves.
Many people widely regard Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 as some of the best games to ever release on the DS, and I can tell why. With these games coming out over a year and a half after the release of the 3DS, these were the last games made by Nintendo themselves to release on the platform. By this time, the developers were masters of the DS and really pushed the system to it's limit.
The game is gorgeous with the best sprite work in the series. Areas in the game just have so much character, and there's so much more to the world since the events of Pokémon White. With plenty of more Pokémon to catch and so many more side modes to explore, you can sink thousands of hours into this game if you really wanted to.
While many of the online aspects of the game went offline only a short while after it's release, there are now other ways of reliving these. Entralinked is a great little tool to help with Game Sync. There's also fan servers that you can use to get some old events if you don't want to use something like PKHeX.
So after using a mono fire-type team in White, I wanted to mix things up again. I have never used a grass starter in my life so I decided to pick up Snivy. I also wanted to use more Pokémon that I haven't used before so I ended up with Scolipede, Cofagrigus, Haxorus, Bisharp, and Vanilluxe. Because I also had my brother's save intact, I was able to start the game in "Challenge Mode" which makes the game a bit harder as well. And boy was it a challenge.
Vanilluxe genuinely sucks. You're only able to use "Ice Beam" with it and it pretty much fails at any other aspect save for "Mirror Shot". Sure some Pokémon get better moves via TM or tutoring, but many of these will be locked behind post-game. Cofagrigus is a great special attacker, but it's so slow that you'll almost always be moving last. Scolipede was fine, but Serperior can really just use grass moves and that's it. Haxorus and Bisharp are amazing but with half of the team not being great, it was rough getting through the game. I'm glad I did it as I wanted a challenge, but I really felt like I was truly limited in what I could do.
Despite the difficulties, it was so much fun revisiting this game. There's plenty of things I've still got left to do so I'll get back to it in due time.