Gotta Catch 'Em All

Almost three months ago now, I set out on a journey. I met a lot of friends along the way, and suffered many hardships, but I remained steadfast in my goal, to be the very best. I would do something I had never done in a Pokémon game previously. I would catch 'em all.

Not a task to be taken lightly, for sure. Attempting this in the latest generation of Pokémon games (Pokémon Black and White) amounts to 649 creatures in total, a nearly unimaginable number. But here I am, 622 in tow. I'm on the final stretch, so join me as I take a look back at my journey thus far.

My journey began on March 7, 2011 with my acquisition of Pokémon Black. Actually, no, it started before that. A few months before Black released, I bought HeartGold, due to the number of people I had met who were playing it. However, I went about it the wrong way. Instead of simply playing through the game, I focused too hard on "properly training" Pokémon, making note of natures and EVs, which is not something easy or worthwhile to do early in the game, and as a result, I ended up burning out rather quickly and not actually finishing it.

Part of the reason for that was the impending release of Pokémon Black. I decided with this game that I would try something different. Pokédex completion was something I had aspired to in the past but I could never quite get it off the ground. This time, I decided, I wouldn't worry too much over the individual Pokémon I was training, because that didn't work too well for me in the past. Instead, as I was progressing through the game, I caught every single Pokémon available to me on the routes I passed through, regardless of how rare they were. There were quite a few that only had a 5% appearance rate in shaking grass (i.e. you have to run around until grass starts to shake, then move to that particular shaking spot) but I stuck it out and caught them.

My pace through the game as a result of this was understandably slow, so I ended up clocking a lot more hours just to keep up with some friends who were playing. The end result of that was by the time I reached the Pokémon League, I was only a few evolutions away from finishing the Unova dex. There were just a few (Haxorus, Hydreigon, Ferrothorn and Klinklang come to mind) that couldn't be found in the wild. I found that there were a lot more fully evolved wild Pokémon in this game than in previous games, which made the task a bit easier. Some of the evolutions would wait until later when I was strong enough to rebattle the Elite Four, but I pretty much had the Unova dex in the bag.

The Unova dex was one thing, but it's not even a quarter of the fight! Beating the Elite Four unlocks the National Dex, giving me the chance to catch all of the other 493 Pokémon from previous games. I progressed through the new areas of the game that opened up, continuing to catch all the Pokémon there, but there's still a fair amount that can't be obtained in this way. White Forest was home to a lot of them. Playing Black, I would have to borrow a copy of White in order to catch them, but the difficulty we had in figuring out how to change the available Pokémon (there are 30 exclusive Pokémon there but only up to 10 at a time) this didn't work so well. Of the Pokémon that were available, most needed to be evolved or bred to get their other forms, so a lot of my time was spend in the Nimbasa stadiums (before I was strong enough for the Elite Four) evolving, or on Route 3 breeding.

Finally, after I was done exploring and catching pretty much all I could find, I opened the gates to the PokéTransfer. I had many Pokémon I needed, caught in previous games. I scoured Diamond, HeartGold, Ruby and Emerald for what I needed, evolving and breeding as I went. When all was said and done, there was only about 50 I was missing. Some of these were a few I neglected to catch in previous games, so I played those games to catch them, and imported them without a hitch. Glameow was a curious one, since it is only available in Pearl of all places. (That means it's not in Diamond, Platinum, HeartGold, SoulSilver, Black or White!) Some others were tricky to catch so I had the assistance of a few friends to get those ones. One was Espeon, whom I purposely did not obtain because of an upcoming official event where I would be given one for free. (Got a Modest one, just need to train it!) The rest were legendaries.

Ah, legendaries. The bane of my existence, these things are. Every generation introduces a whole slew of them, and rarely is any method provided to obtain them in future generations. So I would have to play more of HeartGold, and all the way through Emerald and Platinum to get the ones I needed. Thankfully, I was not without assistance, as the lovely MapleRose was kind enough to offer to play Emerald for me. I picked up and played through Platinum.

And here I am. Emerald is finished, I just need to go catch a few legendaries (namely Groudon, Kyogre and Latios). Recently beat the Elite Four in Platinum, so I can go out and start catching in that one too. Then there's just a few more I need to get in HeartGold and I'm done. As done as I can be, at least. Event legendaries are a problem within a problem. I caught a Celebi event for HeartGold, and two friends were awesome enough to give me Jirachi and Mew, but I am stuck without a Deoxys, Darkrai, Shaymin or Arceus. Sucks, but there's nothing I can do about that.

When I started, I had no idea that I would actually get this close, and being here, it's actually pretty exciting. While I'm not pursuing legendaries at a breakneck pace, as I'm juggling that with continuing to train Pokémon in Black and, you know, other things that are going on in my life. But it's certainly something, isn't it? One man's journey to catch 'em all. I'll post an update when it actually happens.