Johto

[Jayrodd]

In a world, slightly to the west of Kanto, things had to change. Lots of things. Some things changed for the better, some changed just because they could. Love it or not, Johto made a lot of changes to the Pokemon world as we knew it, and opened up a whole realm of possibility with it's creation.

• Discuss aspects of Johto that are started here, or are unique to the region
• Explain ideas you liked from the region that could be expanded on in later titles
• Share a memory of something you really liked about Johto!

 

[Radical Raptr]

I never grew up on Johto so I don't have some deep connection to it that blinds my view, at the same time it isn't one of my favorite regions either, but what it manages to do and how it incorporates 2 regions into the game is quite remarkable. It's not a simple rehashing of the same old experience, instead, the battles are much harder, the way you traverse the region is different, and areas like Viridian forest, that originally had ominous music indicating a sprawling, arduous adventure, are upbeat and give off a tone that resembles what you would expect for a seasoned trainer like yourself.

Johto utilized architecture and age as motifs for world building, where you explore ruins, see legends in traditional elaborate buildings and the ruins of old buildings, not to mention a feeling of rebirth of new legendaries coming out of the ashes, and becoming stronger through a dragon challenge set in the dank caves. It really pushed the limits of what it's predecessor had done, and not only had a coherent and unique style to set it apart as its own thing, it incorporated a newer modified version of the old region you had spent so much time in, and did it in such a way as to give the impression that you're coming back to a familiar place, but it has changed as you have changed.

It even included one of my favorite features in the remake at least where your pokemon followed you around, which honestly helped to set the idea that you were travelling with your pokemon as partners rather than a master ordering around tools to do your bidding

It's really interesting that Nintendo had never done anything quite like Johto, where you could revisit a past region, it was only unique to Johto, the only thing close is black 2 and white 2 where its the same region but new areas to explore, though that was a direct sequel and not a new generation. Sun and moon had made mention of Kanto, but refuses to deliver leaving everyone high and dry.

 

[Djaco75]

I'm honestly completely neutral with Johto. I do think it had a cool and unique concept, which I like, but there were a few things that I wasn't a bit fan of overall.

• I really liked the following Pokemon in the remakes. That was very unique (excluding Yellow) and I really enjoyed that.
• I also liked how the Johto was a continuation of the Kanto games. It gave a lot more depth to Team Rocket and their goals.
• I do credit Game Freak for creating the post game where you could travel to Kanto, but I wasn't a big fan of that. I feel like it was a bit too emphasised and took wayyy too long to do.
• I feel like a main thing that could be expanded upon for later games is the intricateness of the legendary Pokemon native to Johto. How you got them, the people who governed them and the overall graphics of how that was performed blew me away the first time I saw them. Not to mention revisiting locations like the Burned Tower to catch Ho-oh! This is certainly something that could be further expanded upon in new games.
• One memory I have about Johto is the absolutely frustrating time I had in the Ice Path. I was playing Gold and had to do it around 5 times to finally get out. By the end of the Ice Path, I think I added around 3 hours to my gameplay!

Overall, Johto was a pretty cool region, but I feel like other regions surpass it for their plot development with their evil teams. But that's another topic...

 

[Rhyden]

Well, there's a large nostalgia factor for me from gen 2 since I played a lot of Silver as a kid, but a lot of things as a whole would've not existed if Johto didn't come around to provide their foundations. Some of my favorites include:

• Togekiss.
• Mega Ampharos with its glorious hair.
• Baby Pokemon like Pichu.
• New Evolutions for already existing Pokemon like Scizor and Politoed.
• Gym Leaders for almost every type.
• Another Pokemon Stadium game.

I think my favorite memory with Johto was encountering the red Gyarados and then looking into what that was all about. It was a pretty neat way to be introduced to shiny Pokemon, especially after I had already seen different colored Pokemon in Pokemon Stadium.

P.S: I love Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2.

 

[Radical Raptr]

Well, there's a large nostalgia factor for me from gen 2 since I played a lot of Silver as a kid, but a lot of things as a whole would've not existed if Johto didn't come around to provide their foundations. Some of my favorites include:

• Togekiss.
• Mega Ampharos with its glorious hair.
• Baby Pokemon like Pichu.
• New Evolutions for already existing Pokemon like Scizor and Politoed.
• Gym Leaders for almost every type.
• Another Pokemon Stadium game.

I think my favorite memory with Johto was encountering the red Gyarados and then looking into what that was all about. It was a pretty neat way to be introduced to shiny Pokemon, especially after I had already seen different colored Pokemon in Pokemon Stadium.

P.S: I love Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2.

Gotta agree with you man, pokemon stadium 1 and 2 are amazing, we totally need a VC version with the connectivity involved, or a true remake.
Onto the topic at hand, you reminded me that another things Johto had started was the inclusion of Roaming legendaries, which has remained a staple of the series since its inclusion. Another thing, though I'm not sure if it really counts but Johto was the first to introduce old characters in newer games, such as oak making appearances, or characters from other regions showing up in other games.

 

[kirlial]

Pokemon gold is the game I grew up with and I definitely have a soft spot for it. It's got a lovely aesthetic with all of its old towns and the game feels so full with different areas to explore as almost every town has a cool area to explore.

It expands on Kanto brilliantly, bringing new Pokemon, including evolutions of existing Pokemon and new types. The new mechanics (time-based events, hold items, rematches, breeding) it introduced are welcome additions. That Kanto is accessible through Johto is excellent, and I'm not sure I saw it coming the first time until I talked to the guy who informed me I've just stepped into a different region.

As far as the layout of the region is concerned, I feel like it all links together nicely, with paths back to earlier cities opening up the more you play (though it's hardly unique in that regard).

One thing I must criticise it for is the absolutely atrocious level curve post-Ecruteak however. For some reason they make Mahogany town available to explore once you have surf and then decide to keep levels lower to match. This means that by the time you're fighting team rocket, they're so much weaker than you that it's not challenging. However, with less experience in that section by the time you actually get to the Pokemon league, you're probably seriously under levelled. I always am, at least. The level curve in general is just messed up, with Jasmine's demonic steelix shortly after Chuck's much easier team. Why didn't the remakes fix this? Is it so hard to prevent access to the lake of rage until you have six badges and then make the later opponents tougher?

 

[Evan]

Yeah, like people said before, Johto comes with a bit of a bias--Pokemon Silver was the first game I've ever owned, so it follows that I'll be more inclined to like Johto than not. BUT I'll try to be as even handed with it when I mention why I think Johto is my favorite region (and maybe ways in that it doesn't quite match up to other regions:

• The Pokemon designs of Johto in my mind are the creme of the crop. While it was a smaller generation of Pokemon, it, to me, defined what a Pokemon was. Gen 1 had mishaps and things that I think today would not pass as Pokemon, but I think every design in Gen 2 was exactly how I imagine a Pokemon to be. Ampharos, Tyranitar, Espeon, Quagsire, and all the others are just pillars in how I look at the Pokemon design process.
• The area was a perfect foil to Kanto, and wasn't over the top at all. Where Kanto was a metropolis, Johto was centered around a more cultural area of Japan, the Kansai Region. The vibe was really neat and allowed for more legends to arrive. While Mewtwo was a more about corrupted technology in cloning, Johto's legends really went into the more mystical, which felt very nice in the game.
• The region may not have been as topographically diverse as, say, Hoenn or Alola, but it felt unified and diverse enough for itself.
• Team Rocket had realistic plans and were great antagonists, along with Silver.
• HGSS's time traveling side story is still one of my favorite things in Pokemon, along with Giovanni's suicide.
• Plus, Johto introduced us to Breeding, Day/Night, Shiny Pokemon, Held Items, Special Defense, Battle Tower, etc.

Big Fan. #1 region. Johto was NOT a mistake.

 

[MadDeodorant]

Well, like Starrcasm, I also tend to have a bias toward Johto due to SoulSilver being the first Pokemon game I've ever owned, though I started with Sapphire. It is undoubtedly my favorite region. Why? It is the one that portrays the countryside the best. I usually think of Kanto as the Industrial region, Johto the countryside, Hoenn and Alola as resort-like, Sinnoh as a countryside during winter, Unova as a big foreign metropolis and Kalos as the beautiful tourist region. Living in a warm country kind of throws Hoenn's and Alola's tropical vibe off the window. Kalos, Unova and Kanto being very city-like don't appeal to me as much because I live in a big city too. Sinnoh is one of my favorites but falls a little short when it comes to variety in the region. So, Johto, being the little country side region that it is, made me feel like I was in my second home. Peaceful, filled with tradition and mythology, both with cities like Goldenrod and Ecruteak and small towns like New Bark and Azalea. Ah... Johto. You might have been a mistake, but what a wonderful one you were.

 

[Tomix9tomix]

I've only played soul silver and that was my 2nd non-emulator Pokemon game.
I honestly loved it, and enough to play a nuzlocke of it some years later. So here are some things I loved about it...
-Most of the cities were pretty unique and had a special feel and atmosphere towards them
-The Mareep line
-Following Pokemon
-PokeAthlon was lots of fun to play with my family
-The non-linear post game

Some things I didn't like:
-The plot didn't feel all that refreshing or good (although I don't value plot with main Pokemon games all too much)
-Roaming Pokemon. It is a unique way to do legendary encounters but it can be super tedious and annoying.

That's about it, it is definitely up there in my favourite regions, it was hard to think of a placement for the pole, but I ended up picking 3rd.

 

[Shgeldz]

Man, what can I say about Johto. I think that, as the second game I played, it blew my mind that I went back to Kanto afterwards, but having known Kanto like the back of my hand at that point, I think it was great to explore another region. Still, there are some issues. There's not that many unique locales and the atmosphere of the region is largely similar to Kanto. All in all though, there's some memorable places, and while I don't agree with a lot of the way they actually placed the Pokémon (no dark types until like, mid game, when it was new, really?), it was still great, and done better in HGSS. Kooky side note, I remember getting Pokémon Gold for my birthday and being so excited that the Pokémon had TWO health bars. Experience bar :/ hahaha.​

 

[Aki]

I think my favorite unique things in this region include (tabs cuz I'm ranting):

Spoiler: Day and night cycles

It's a clear visual difference just to play, and it affects what wild pokemon are appearing. There were also those police officers who were passive during the day, but would act like trainers at night.

Spoiler: More time based events

like certain NPCs that give you an item, and special pokemon like Lapras only appearing on certain days of the week. For a kid playing every day that was really magical to me that the game could still have something new to show me, and I think it relaxed my play pace even more than usual, wanting to see everything that could happen.

Spoiler: The Pokegear's Radio

I had a lot of fun with this thing, certain tunes like the biking or surfing one can get really old but with the radio I could at least pick the repeating tune. And there were different radio stations! With different effects! You could play songs to increase or decrease the number of wild pokemon encounters, or just listen to Oak's talk show which, I think at least in the HeartGold/Soulsilver remakes, gave away lotto answers or something you could use at the radio tower didn't it? I love how it complemented the region too. The player has a radio, so they can use the different radio stations for fun or effects and investigate weird signals at Ruins of Alph, but there's a radio tower, and the radio tower actually plays a role in the plot when Team Rocket takes it over, which they have a completely reasonable reason to want to take over!! They were broadcasting a signal in a desperate attempt to contact their old boss! During that time the radio stations on the pokegear were literally taken over by the Rocket broadcast, it made the situation feel so real when it actually impacted my gameplay in a personal way. The theme of the radio was still brought back later when Team Rocket was using a similar technique of broadcasting weird waves to affect the red Gyarados at Lake of Rage. The whole thing just ties together this gameplay feature with real locations in the world plus a plot point and the plot even calls back to it really cohesively and I love it.

Spoiler: The Pokegear's Phone

Okay sure most of its' function was letting random NPCs interrupt you with nonsense and it got annoying, but before that point where I knew how each call was about to play out it felt really cool. First, it's my choice if I want any person's phone number or not, unless they're someone important like Mom. Next there's the functional calls. I know exactly when that NPC I like is ready for a rematch, I know exactly when and where a swarm of rare pokemon appears, and I get calls from people who just want to give me an item. I've never even noticed swarms in other gens because I need to go look that crap up on some gatehouse's scrolling news board or watch the right TV show or something.

Spoiler: Banking system

Finally, my money is safe from my own stupidity. Sometimes I don't pack healing items and white out to some random trainer. Or sometimes I lost to a gym leader but I don't wanna reset even though I saved, because my party got some sweet level ups during that fight. In any other gen I'm hoarding any nuggets and starpieces in my bag untill I need that money, because otherwise I've got no insurance. In Johto, Mom saves my money! She even buys me cool stuff that's impossible to get otherwise! I mean yeah sometimes it's a potion but those are so cheap why would I waste time being mad, plus the PC item storage actually got a use there.

Spoiler: Environment

Just one last thing I wanted to note is that Johto had some really strong themes in each of it's cities, but a repeating them through the whole region was the tower. Bellsprout Tower, Goldenrod Radio Tower, Bell/Brass/Burned Towers, Glitter Lighthouse, and in the remakes they added a Battle Tower and Embedded Tower. I notice this architecture theme because it's something the player has to interact with- climbing these towers. Other regions usually have a tower and an indoor themed puzzle dungeon usually run by the evil team, but Johto really ran with this tower theme throughout.

I've allways liked Johto, much more than Kanto for sure; the main thing I didn't like much about the game was the inclusion of Kanto at the end. In a more meta sense I've grown to really dislike it because it created the idea of people wanting multiple regions in a game and I'm so...I just cannot understand the fascination of playing through another game's worth of content, but with no story at all, no rival to keep things intersting, no roadblocks because you have all the HMs, no direction because it was kinda like that already but again with the last point, no progression because again with the having all the items and the HMs and powerful pokemon already, nothing new or even different because you've played this game already, and no challenge untill you get to Red at the end! [/End Rant]

*pants* I guess that last bit really needed to come out, sorry.​

 

[Radical Raptr]

@Aki
I just realized there was so much I took for granted...
Johto introduced so much integral mechanics!!! Among what you mentioned, they added breeding, new types, allowing pokemon to hold items, newer pokeballs, and so much more I can't think of, basically everything cool was started by johto!!! damn!!! gen 2 was a mistake??? more like gen 1 was a mistake, step it up kanto, damn, riding the coat tails of johto's post game??

I just remembered: it also added quality of life mechanics, so when you walk into water, you just click it and it asks if you want to surf rather than forcing you to open the menu, little things like that make this game a cut above the rest

 

[manta]

Yeah Johto, it alright.
Like Kanto, due to the technical limitations at the time, it wasn't too detailed, really. HGSS fixed that somewhat, by sprucing up Ecruteak's pagodas and Cianwood's beach... stuff.
Anyway, Gen 2 brought many useful mechanics still in place today. In my opinion, it wasn't an region of beauty, but a region that progressed game mechanics and built foundations for future games.

 

[Atomic Reactor]

I think the reason Johto stands out to so many older fans, me included, was because of the time frame and context of the release. Pokemon was taking the world by storm with RBY. As a young kid, I couldn't fathom what the future held for the series. None of us had any idea how far they'd go. So when GS were released it was an amazing experience. A sequel to one of my favorite games was a must play. I think what makes it stand out so much has to do with what @Aki touched on. All the new small mechanics they added, along with the 100 new Pokemon and beautiful colored palette made for a great sequel. Ever since GSC, there's always been a little bit of disappointment from me when new games don't include a second region.

I wanted to say more but have lost ambition and would probably just repeat what others have said above. I think nostalgia is a huge driving force behind why people cherish GSC/HGSS so much. It also was the FIRST sequel to Pokemon to be released. Every game after that, logically, can't be the first sequel, but second and third sequels. I don't think there's an experience quite like the first sequel to a series.