Pokémon Crystal Version (Game Boy Color)

Pokémon is a series that is, quite appropriately, constantly evolving as it continues, refining the mechanics of its battle system and adding many new monsters to collect with its new installments. However, there may not be any generation that was better off during its time than the second generation of Pokémon. The Gold and Silver versions were almost like expansions to the original Red, Blue, and Yellow games, building off of the foundations the previous game put down while adding in a bevy of new content as well. They adjusted the battle system, cleaned up programming bugs, added more lore and substance to many monsters, and continued the story of the first game like a true sequel. But if Gold and Silver were the refinements of what the first generation created, then Crystal Version is the refinement of those refinements, its new name perhaps perfect for a game that ended up so polished.

Pokémon Crystal Version features 251 different monsters to collect, trade, and battle with a huge variety of designs that can appeal to players of all ages and tastes. While not all of them are natively found in the wilds of this title, through trade, evolution, and special actions, players can collect monsters based on real world creatures, objects, elements, and even myths. There are cute Pokémon like the teddy bear Teddiursa or the many baby Pokémon that can be acquired through breeding, cool Pokémon like the enormous metal snake Steelix or the burly bipedal crocodile Feraligatr, and weird unique concepts like the worm living inside a rock named Shuckle or Girafarig, a giraffe with a separate evil-looking head on its rear. All of the 151 original Pokémon can reappear in this title, carrying over the same appealing designs of creatures like the fiery dragon Charizard and cute electrical mouse Pikachu while also offering the more niche picks like the bundle of egg-like seeds Exeggcute and the leek-carrying duck Farfetch’d. Many of the Pokémon introduced in this generation are related to these old monsters as well either as new evolutions, infant preevolutions, or ones with lore connections like the cow Pokémon Miltank essentially being the female counterpart to the previous game’s bull Tauros. It’s a hearty batch that feels like it its expanding the original set rather than replacing them, new ideas and old mixing well despite the gameplay mechanics meaning new additions like the Santa Claus-esque bird Delibird or the crow Pokémon Murkrow not really finding their niche outside of potential design appeal. There are even quite a few based heavily around gimmicks to give them strong identities even if they aren’t the best in battle though, such as the punching bag Wobbuffet who fights only with counter moves and Smeargle, a dog-like Pokémon with a paintbrush for a tail who can copy every move but is fairly weak. It’s a hearty and diverse bunch that is likely to appeal to any kind of player with at least one monster on offer.

There are many objectives a player can pursue in Pokémon Crystal Version, all of them tied to the acquisition of its special creatures in some form. Players begin their adventure by receiving one of three possible starter Pokémon who are decently strong early game companions, but from the moment they can acquire Poké Balls, players are able to customize their team based on whatever is available. Stepping into the grass, caves, fishing in water, or riding across the waves will cause Pokémon to spring out randomly, the player needing to weaken the monsters with some fighting first to make it easier to catch them and add them to their collection. While you are limited in what you can catch based on the areas you can access and the rarity of the Pokémon found in them, Pokémon Crystal Version does a decent job of rolling out new options in many of the areas you enter. There is a definite power curve in that stronger Pokémon are often found in later areas of your adventure, but there are still early game options that don’t fall off too badly, and for collectors, there is plenty to find wandering around each new area to keep that particular play style well fed.

In addition to the catching, Pokémon can evolve into new forms, most of these tied to the turn-based battling system. Once certain Pokémon have reached a certain level through acquiring enough experience points, they can evolve into a more powerful form that may have new attacks it can learn or new typing. Some Pokémon will only evolve under special conditions though, such as using the right item on them, trading them with another player, earning their love through constant use, and other conditions that make evolution just as interesting as catching Pokémon for a collector. The typing of Pokémon, however, is much more important for a player focused on battling. These creatures can have one or two types each, these representing elemental affinities such as Fire or Water or natural traits like being a Bug, having Psychic powers, or having a Dark inclination. There are 17 types total, all of them interacting with each other in that one might resist another, be weak to it, or treat it in a neutral manner. A Pokémon using a move of its own type will receive a power bonus to the attack, but moves they are weak to will deal double damage to them while resisted ones will have their strength cut in half when they hit. At the most basic level, Pokémon battles involve exploiting the relationships between the types, and for the most part, Pokémon designs are quite accommodating to a player in signaling their types. A creature’s color usually indicates if they have an elemental affiliation, certain design focuses like Fighting types tending to be burly make it easy to read their type, and if all else fails, a Pokémon’s name is often a portmanteau or pun derived from words that would further clue the player in on what type it can be. For example, Lanturn’s blue and yellow body signals its Electric and Water dual-typing, it’s shaped like an aquatic creature with lightbulbs on antennae, and its name is a twist on the word lantern, a light association that matches the electrical output. Flaaffy, however, shows it is not a perfect system, the pink sheep not signalling its Electric type well, but most types can be learned after an initial encounter in the worst case scenario.

Every attack has a typing as well that plays into the weakness and resistance system, but many moves feature extra abilities that begin to add to the complexity of Pokémon’s battle system. Some can inflict statuses like the gradual health drains of Burn or Poison, the disabling Sleep and Paralysis conditions that lead to Pokémon missing turns, and the Confusion and Attraction sub-conditions that can lead to possible self-damage or cancelled attacks. There are more abstract ones as well, such as Encore which will force an opposing creature to repeat its last move over and over, and many of the battle system’s most interesting elements tie into the traits that make battles more than going for the strongest super effective move all the time. Rollout is a Rock type move that gets stronger as it is repeatedly executed, Dynamicpunch is an incredibly powerful hit that guarantees confusion but is very likely to miss, but a move like Lock-On can guarantee the accuracy of your next attack. A simple damaging move like Sludge Bomb might also have a chance to inflict a status effect, and moves like Icy Wind might lower an opposing creature’s stats. The RPG stats featured are exclusive to each Pokémon, with the typical Defense, Attack, Speed, and Health also joined by Special Defense and Special Attack as Pokémon moves are sorted into either Special or Physical based on their typing. Later generations would handle the Special/Physical split better and more logically in a way that allows certain Pokémon to shine more than they can here, but it works in the state its found in Crystal Version well once you know where a type lies. Balance in general is something Pokémon will never truly get right in that some Pokémon and their types and available moves will always be weaker, but you can still sort out entertaining competitive battles with friends if you rely on some house rules to ensure players don’t just bring the deliberately overpowered legendary Pokémon to the fight.

Battles are granted further depth by the introduction of held items, special tools like stat-enhancers, consumable healing items, or gimmicky tricks that can change how a battle is fought. The complexity of the battle system provides a strong reason to come back to Pokémon Crystal Version, but it does its job well during regular play too. In fact, one of the great strengths of the Pokémon series is that every foe you face is bound by the same rules as you, because despite a little bending of the rules with what levels enemy trainers have acquired their Pokémon at, you will always be facing something you can technically own yourself. Any knowledge you gain about the titular creatures and their attacks is universal, and battles are not about unfair power imbalances or the enemy having unique resistances but instead player and game-controlled opponent being subject to the same rules. You can only have up to six Pokémon in your party who each have four moves each and must forget one to learn any new ones. A robust team that covers many types, has decent stats, and has a wide pool of move types can even punch above its weight class, but Pokémon’s design does allow for a few approaches outside of trying to play it optimally as a role-playing game. You can choose to simply overlevel one Pokémon and use it like a wrecking ball on most foes, although if one trainer has a workaround you may hit a roadblock. You can try to raise only Pokémon you like even if they aren’t very good, and overleveling them through grinding up experience points will make it eventually work. Neither of these are optimal ways to play compared to constructing a balanced team but are technically possible with persistence, adding more ways to play just like the difference between a collector or battler’s approach to the Pokémon formula.

There is also a story to be pursued for those who simply want a more typical gameplay experience as well. The main storyline involves your player of choice, Crystal Version offering the option between a girl or boy protagonist in a series first, heading off to face the eight gym leaders of Johto so they can face an exceptional set of Pokémon trainers known as the Elite Four. Each gym leader specializes in a type, but fighting them will require building up a team of capable Pokémon through adding new members, training against other trainers or wild Pokémon, and sometimes participating in the side stories. Gym leaders may have puzzles to their gym or require some action to be taken in the game world before they’ll fight you, with a secondary story relating to the attempted resurgence of the Pokémon stealing organization Team Rocket follows up on the events of the first game. It’s not a straightforward dash from one city to another, many little story beats, encounters with a rival trainer, the search for the legendary Pokémon on the box Suicune, and other small tasks adding color to the world and sending you into different dungeons and locations that can provide puzzles, battle gauntlets, and more. Certain skills called HMs are an unfortunate but small piece of these, the need to have Pokémon with certain moves to cross water or cut down bushes blocking your path often requiring using a creature more like a tool, but you can usually just grab a Pokémon for the required work and then get back to regular play with monsters of your choice. Pokémon Crystal Version progresses at a pretty strong pace without getting stale thanks to the diversions away from the gym challenges, but there is an undeniable quirk to the level curve. It has perhaps been exaggerated somewhat by the fandom, but later gyms and the Elite Four are considerably higher in level than a player team trained on most available trainer fights would be, although the game does offer some strong assistance with available Pokémon like Suicune and the raging sea serpent Gyarados to mitigate it. You will likely need to do some extra training to conquer the Elite Four all the same, but having to go against stronger trainers can also force out better tactics and the use of things like items that can heal you up or increase your team’s strength in a battle. After all, a hard-earned victory can be much more satisfying because you overcame a power discrepancy.

The story is definitely of the style that it provides plenty of reasons to explore new areas and face foes to test your team against, with there being interesting characters but nothing really profound or shocking. It’s a story of a kid’s adventure to collect strange creatures and the complications along the way, but when it does wrap-up, Pokémon Crystal Version reveals a robust post-game which provides an even greater homage to the original Red, Blue, and Yellow versions than the main story’s already referential but independent content. The post-game story provides a few extra hours of content different from the main game in both who you fight and the available Pokémon, this already on top of a game that ensures longevity with extra goals like creating a strong team for battling other players or trying to complete your collection of Pokémon. Admittedly, most of what has been said before is all true of Pokémon Gold and Silver versions as well, but certain enhancements were made in Crystal like lightly animated creature sprites, the addition of the Suicune subplot, and the selection of Pokémon to catch doesn’t match either Gold or Silver perfectly to encourage the use of the trade feature. While many may criticize this slight upgrade for not going far enough, it’s dishonest to imply it’s somehow worse than the games that it’s enhancing, and since it provides improvements to an already amazing generation of Pokémon games that built off the original games and fixed their issues, Pokémon Crystal Version ends up being a marvelous realization of the original ethos of the series: battling, trading, and collecting all of these wonderful creatures found in a fictional world devoted solely to these magnificent beasts.

THE VERDICT: Pokémon Crystal Version is the uncompromising culmination of all the versions that preceded it. Its battle system has been refined to be accessible in regular play but deep enough for competitive approaches. The roster of Pokémon has expanded to include many wonderful, weird, and unique creatures. The game world mixes in the old and new for a long and hearty adventure that, despite a wonky level curve, still provides plenty of room for customizing and developing a team of creatures that are subject to the same rules as the foes you’re facing. Pokémon Crystal Version is as radiant as the name implies, and while it’s not too different from Gold and Silver, those were similar sterling examples of the excellence of the Pokémon RPG design.

And so, I give Pokémon Crystal Version for Game Boy Color…

A FANTASTIC rating. I tried to temper any love I have for the older Pokémon games in writing this, I even selected a version I technically hadn’t played before despite playing through Gold and Silver multiple times. However, while it is easy to look back at certain aspects of this early game as inferior as we continue to see the Pokémon battle formula refined more and more over the years, the charm and design of the game still prove to stand the test of time. Perhaps the best analogy for why Pokémon Crystal Version can still be fantastic would be to say it’s a bit like the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building was always a wondrous piece of architecture from the day it was finished being built, but renovations since have added things that made it better like greater energy efficiency, better safety features, and new observation decks, all while still being built on the same strong base the world fell in love with. Looking forward in the franchise we see the battle system continuously refined, we see more Pokémon, but that doesn’t mean they were suddenly worse in the older titles simply because they could be better. A Fantastic rating has never been a claim of perfection, but the mix of elements here comes together wonderfully despite hindsight giving us some ideas for improvement. Besides the easily overcome level curve that doesn’t require too much grinding unless you approach it with the team composition freedom the game already graciously allows, Pokémon Crystal Version is a well curated game world that keeps offering up a strong selection of creatures to interact with. Their robust designs, utility, and the attachment the adventure and six monsters per party limit instills between you and your team makes Pokémon interesting as fighters, as collectibles, and even as companions. The series may never get down true competitive balance, but the world of opportunity it provides means there are so many different ways to approach playing that isn’t harmed by the imbalance.

Pokémon Crystal Version was essentially the capstone to Pokémania, where the series would go from a cultural phenomenon to… well, still the most profitable media franchise of all time, but one without the same inescapably enormous cultural footprint. It truly feels like the culmination of the original concepts of Pokémon expressed as strongly as the Game Boy Color could. It has an enjoyable and customizable RPG battle system, a deep collection quest, competitive and cooperative multiplayer components, and a world with plenty to find while exploring. It doesn’t feel lacking even if we know certain additions that future games used to enhance the play, and judged by its own design, Pokémon Crystal Version is really just an excellent way to experience a series with good music, great creature designs, and a battle system that is both accessible but incredibly open-ended and diverse.