It’s time someone stood up for Johto. The plucky underdog ofPokemonregions, Gen 2 is unequivocally the pinnacle of the series, its remakes are the finest Pokemon games ever made, and the monster designs are hard to top. Tyranitar, Houndoom, Feraligatr, Sudowoodo, Espeon, Umbreon, Crobat, Scizor, Piloswine. Every one of the Legendaries is perfect. And then you can go back to Kanto for a reworked version of the original challenge.
It’s disgusting how much hate Johto gets, how many people overlook Crystal in discussions of the best Pokemon games – oh, who am I kidding? Younger fans may have their Sinnoh, new fans may hold Paldea close to their heart, but Johto is widely regarded as a great Pokemon region, and the Gen 2 games (and their remakes) as showcases of Pokemon’s brilliance.Everyone loves Johto, and rightfully so. Everyone, it seems, except for Niantic.
The Pokemon Go developer constantly overlooks Johto, and the Pokemon therein. It was a big deal when the Gen 2 monsters were released back in 2017 but since then, there’s been very little love. In fact, it was a couple meagre spawns in the most recent event, Galarian Expedition, that reminded me how long it’s been since I encountered a Johtonian Pokemon.
This week I’ve seen Mareep and Totodile spawn, which is especially odd considering the Gen 8 focus of the event. Maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised though, as the collection challenges include catching Abra and Nidoran (Gen 1); Spheal, Beldum, and Absol (Gen 3); and Foongus (Gen 5), so I’m not sure where the Galarian part of this expedition comes into play. Zamazenta is in raids, I guess, and the shiny Galarian birds are now available, butI’m never going to catch themso they may as well not exist.
However, these two Pokemon (Mareep and Totodile) triggered a special research task of mine. Catch 285 Pokemon from the Johto region. Confused, I scrolled through my tasks to ascertain which research had this requirement. It turned out to be the Wish Granted Masterwork Research, which gives you a shiny Jirachi at the end. This research started over 18 months ago, and I still haven’t completed the first step.
I’m fully committed to only playing Pokemon Go casually these days, but the other two tasks on the first page of Wish Granted are to catch the same number of Pokemon from Kanto and Hoenn. I completed these so long ago that I forgot this research existed. In fact, I caught the 151 Kanto Pokemon necessary forRediscover Kanto(released just six months ago) quicker than I finished this task.
Pokemon Go has always had a soft spot for Kanto, so it’s no surprise that this anecdotal evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that Gen 1 Pokemon appear more frequently than Gen 2. But that’s a shame. I understand it’s difficult to balance hundreds of Pokemon and it would be impossible (not to mention poor game design) to get them all to spawn equally, but Gen 2 needs some love.
Dynamax is taking some of the interest away from Mega Raids, which could showcase the likes of Ampharos, Houndoom, and Tyranitar. But the Dynamax Pokemon also avoid Gen 2. We started with the Kanto starters (what was I saying earlier?), moved onto Beldum for the Psychic Spectacular event (could have been Espeon) and then got the Galar starters and Falinks. I get the latter, because Dynamax originated in the Galar region, but I can’t help but feel that Gen 2 has been unceremoniously skipped again.
This reminds me that it’s a crying shame that the Gen 2 starters never got Mega Evolutions.
Pokemon’s second generation is the one that cemented it as a great JRPG series, the games that iterated on everything Game Freak did in the original games and took them further. We got baby Pokemon, we got incredible legendaries, we got shinies, we gotSkarmory. Pokemon Go needs to remember how important Gen 2 is to Pokemon, and more importantly, how important it is to me personally. If this clear bias doesn’t shift soon, I’m going to be forced to dig out my Nintendo DS and play through SoulSilver again instead.
