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SINNOH

Ah the Sinnoh region. A region I both love and hate for various reasons. One thing to love is, entire region is extremely beautiful and the original gen 4 games have a wonderful soundtrack. They also were released alongside my favorite Pokemon related game of all time, Pokemon Mystery Dungeons. Generation 4 was probably peak pokemon time for me because I was still young and exploring the series and various mysteries. Mystery Dungeons is the one game I think holds my interest in the same way it did when I was younger, which I can thank generation 4, and therefore Sinnoh, for, but I digress.

This was probably the first generation and region I got to watch other people play because my cousin closest to my age had just become pokemon age (read old enough to read). Memories of watching them play aren't very detailed, but I do have a vivid memory of watching them go through solceon ruins (mainly I remember the unown). My own journey with Sinnoh started a bit after this. I had already played through SoulSilver and craved more pokemon. SoulSilver, especially the elite four, had been difficult for me at the tender age of seven. While they are far easier now, I still think the battles hold up well enough. Cynthia, however, is another story.

Cynthia is by far (in my opinion) the strongest champion. Everything after her went down hill. Even playing as adult with a smidge more skill and understanding, her battle is still formidable. Whenever a new game tries to convince me their champion is the strongest (this is about Sword and Shield if you couldn't tell), I am inevitably disappointed! I think her difficulty is a combination of factors, from older games forcing you to grind if you want your entire team to out-level the elite four, to a lot of good moves for a lot of pokemon being locked behind level 55+. While these weren't exactly ideal "features", they did increase the difficulty of the games.

Now onto my gripes with the Sinnoh region. We must now address the elephant in the room: they forgot(?) to add fire types. This doesn't completely ruin the game; I can still get through it just fine (as an adult, will talk about my issues as a child further down) but it does ruin a lot of its replayability for me. In diamond and pearl there are two fire type lines: the chimchar line and the ponyta line. There is absolutely nothing wrong with chimchar and infernape, in fact, I really like the whole line! However, it does force you to choose it every time, unless you would like to opt for ponyta. Sorry ponyta and rapidash fans... they are very cute but the late evolution level and meh stats turn me off from having one completely, so chimchar line it is. This would be less of a problem if I didn't want to use other starters at some point! Which I do they have really great designs, especially torterra in my opinion. Alas I am stuck with infernape... unless...

In Platinum they finally added two other fire lines (3 if you count flareon). This, however, did not mean much to me. I'm glad they increased the fire type pool a little bit (even if Fuego Ironworks is like, super out of the way), but the fire types they added were so meh to me. don't get me wrong I like houndour and houndoom but by the time you run into them, you needed a fire type two gyms ago! Such a bummer! On the upside, I do like the other pokemon available in the game and want to try and play with many different combinations of them. Maybe houndoom will still prove to useful!

Despite my (unoriginal) complaints, I really love the Sinnoh region, even if it is behind both PMD Explorers and SoulSilver in terms of being my favorite. Overall, it is still a game I find myself wanting to return to and rexperience (being able to beat Cynthia with a little more ease helps this fact as well lol).