Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver Review

By Keza MacDonald Published 6 April, 2010

The golden days return.

Version tested: DS

Like FireRed and LeafGreen on the GBA, Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver are updated remakes of older Pokemon games - in this instance, the original Pokemon sequels, which first arrived in Europe in 2001 on the Game Boy Color. I first played them when I was twelve years old, which, distressingly, was nearly a decade ago. Reaching the stage at which your own childhood classics start getting remade to delight a new generation is a sobering milestone in one's gaming life.

I'm probably a sizeable portion of HeartGold and SoulSilver's audience. We're in our twenties, now, the kids who were playing Red and Blue 15 years ago and taking Pikachu lunch boxes to school. A lot of us have probably failed to keep up with the series in the intervening years and find its ever-expanding menagerie of increasingly weird-looking monsters intimidating.

HeartGold and SoulSilver are artfully designed to draw us back in with familiar Pokemon in a familiar world, wrapped up in updated graphics and gameplay systems and packaged with a new gadget, the Pokewalker. The question is not so much whether HeartGold and SoulSilver are good games - they're excellent, always were - but whether they're good enough to merit buying again, or to draw in a new, nostalgia-immune audience.

Pokemon's innate appeal, certainly, is timeless. Its spirit of adventure and richness of imagination are evident from the second your young trainer sets off into a detailed and vivid world, kept turning by a touchingly symbiotic relationship between the people and the many different creatures that inhabit it.

Essentially, it's about hard work and empowerment. You rise from nothing to conquer the world by virtue of your own hard graft, through investing inordinate time and effort into a team of creatures that quickly come to feel like an extension of yourself. The rhythmic process of collecting, training and learning about the Pokemon is irresistibly absorbing; 15 minutes of exploration quickly turns into an hour of battling, or tinkering with your team, or hunting for an elusive catch.

'Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver' Screenshot 1

Oddly, Nintendo has yet to release any official screens, but we managed to dig this one up.

Every player's relationship with the game is unique. Pokemon has always understood the importance of personalisation and HeartGold and SoulSilver offer ample opportunity for self-expression, not just in your choice of Pokemon and the way you raise them, but in personalised trainer data cards and Pokegear skins. The games track your investment of time and effort with meticulous detail, and always make you feel that it's worthwhile.

There's a lot of necessary repetition in the Pokemon formula in the form of random battles, but the games are structured to minimise the grind. Rival trainers give the entire team a workout, and you find that your squad develops naturally and evenly thanks to the elegant balance of the battle system. The decade's worth of refinement that the Pokemon series has undergone is not lost on HeartGold and SoulSilver. It implements all of the tiny, incremental improvements to the complex and yet inexplicably intuitive type interactions and battle moves that form the core of Pokemon combat. By now, it is a thing of beauty: intelligent, exciting and never unfair.

Pokemon Gold and Silver always were especially notable for their sheer amount of content. As well as having more than 250 different Pokemon, the pair were also literally twice the length of Red and Blue. After progressing through Johto's eight Pokemon gyms and the Elite Four, you get to do it all again in Kanto before a final showdown.

The games' complexity is incredibly impressive and endlessly stimulating. The intricacies of Pokemon breeding and evolution, mysterious items and the day-and-night cycle unravel slowly over the course of the adventure, but it always feels as if there's more to learn.

Astonishingly, HeartGold and SoulSilver never feel old; they come across as extremely modern. If anything, these remakes highlight how forward-thinking the original games actually were. Pokemon understood sharing, trading and communal gaming before the Internet made it commonplace. Gold and Silver even predicted the smartphone in the form of the Pokegear, the PDA that stores your map and the phone numbers of trainers and friends that you meet on your journey through Johto. It's all intuitively displayed on the touchscreen, along with Pokemon team stats, the contents of your item satchel, the obsessively detailed Pokedex and your own personalised trainer card.

The touchscreen allows for a very clear display of information; this is a vast improvement over the original games, especially as there is just so much information in Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver. You can search the Pokedex by everything from a Pokemon's name to its height, weight, location, nature or type. Each individual creature has a different set of stats and personality traits to absorb. Every single move and item has its own chunk of descriptive text. Colour-coding and touch controls make the arcane knowledge and mathematics at the heart of the Pokemon experience easy to digest and simple to access.

Only a few things seem old-fashioned. The map annotation system, which is hidden so well that most people probably wouldn't even know it existed, only lets you choose from preset phrases rather than write your own notes, which feels weirdly anachronistic. The phone calls can get annoying, too; it's all very well for a bug catcher to ring up and offer to share his berries with you when you're getting started, but when he's still doing it twenty hours into the game it starts to grate. Being able to rematch challenging trainers is a great feature, but you'll also get a lot of phone calls from the small-fry kids you were battling back when your Typhlosion was still a Cyndaquil. And for some reason, I felt bad about deleting their numbers from my Pokegear.

'Pokemon HeartGold / SoulSilver' Screenshot 2

The Pokewalker: part Tamagotchi, part fitness device.

Pokemon's real achievement is the way it makes you care about the little creatures on the screen, even though they're not really anything more than a collection of numbers and pixels. It's such a personal and involving and comprehensively enthralling experience, and it makes perfect sense that it's managed to hold generations of captivated kids and receptive adults in its spell.

HeartGold and SoulSilver build on the natural bond that develops between the player and his or her Pokemon with little personality descriptions and visual cues; any Pokemon can walk around with you in the world, and they respond positively to your attention. It's amazing how a simple three-line text description of your Bellsprout playing with a twig can become a vignette in the narrative of your relationship with the game. It's difficult to fully understand the magic that Game Freak works, here, but that it works is undeniable.

The Pokewalker pedometer, in theory, enhances this sense of connection by allowing you to carry a Pokemon with you wherever you go, transferring it from the in-game PC to the gadget in your pocket. Walking and playing basic minigames on the wee LCD screen earns your chosen friend experience and in-game currency; they can only gain one level per transfer, so it's not as much of an exploit as it might be. It keeps you thinking about Pokemon, though, as if you needed any encouragement, and though the gadget is hardly a reason to buy the game, it's not just a gimmick, either.

HeartGold and SoulSilver aren't re-releases, they're remakes, and they're more or less perfect examples of how that should be done. They're neither a careless rehash of old material nor crammed with pointless neophiliac nonsense. They combine everything that was best about the older Pokemon games - namely, the more likeable monster designs and inventive spirit - with the much-improved looks and streamlined battle system of the fourth-generation ones. They recapture the energy and imagination of the Pokemon series at the height of its creative and commercial power. And as a lapsed but once-obsessive Pokemon fan, they've recaptured my imagination, too.

9 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of Keza.

About Keza MacDonald

Read more articles from Keza by visiting the Keza MacDonald archive page.

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Comments (60) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Skandalle #1 2 years ago

    More Pokemon games on DS can only be a good thing!
    Glad it got received well, my DS has been gathering dust as of late!

  • Der_tolle_Emil #2 2 years ago

    Impressive. I have only played the original Gameboy games (and Pokemon Stadium) so there should be lots of new content for me too see, even though it's "only" a remake. I'm pretty sure I will get this.

  • Eraysor #3 2 years ago

    Absolutely brilliant fun so far; easily the best Pokemon game I've ever played. Plus, the Pokewalker is ace.

  • Lexx87 #4 2 years ago

    But does it still have the shitty sound effects from the very original? Beep beep bloop?

  • Psi #5 2 years ago

    May have to get this, pokewalker just sounds wrong mind lol

  • Cid #6 2 years ago

    It wouldn't be the same without the Gameboy sound effects.

  • mowgli #7 2 years ago

    I've been bloody addicted to this for a while now. I even bought the girlfriend a copy so I could get the extra pokemon and a guide (which is actually very good). The reason being that I've sworn that this will be my last ever Pokemon until they update the graphics so I want to make the most of it. Having so much fun with it though. Just got my 7th badge.

    /air punch

  • mowgli #8 2 years ago

    Oh and the pokewalker is clever but quite poorly implemented into the game. They shouldn't have made it such a fuss to connect it.

  • DFawkes #9 2 years ago

    I love the Pokewalker, I take it everywhere. Being able to level up, catch Pokemon and get items just by walking about is ace. I've even started walking more to make good use of it, which can only be a good think for my health.

    Bit of advice though - if you level up a Pokemon by walking to a level that it'd evolve or learn a move, it won't evolve or learn that move. It'll still evolve next level, but be careful not to miss out a move you'd want to learn.

  • jonsaan #10 2 years ago

    1up guys reported that taking an empty pokewalker out with you results in finding more pokemon who then start to level up.

  • thedaveeyres #11 2 years ago

    I've played most of them and this is the definitive Pokemon game.

  • Praetorianer #12 2 years ago

    Lots of screens

    <a href="http://www.pok emon.co.jp/special/hgss/
    ">http://www.pok emon.co.jp/special/hgss/
    </a>

    [link url=http://www.4gamer.net/games/091/ G009105/screenshot.html?mode=thumbs&move=reverse
    ]http://ww w.4gamer.net/games/091/G009105/...[/link]

    http://ww w.4gamer.net/games/091/G009105/...
    Edited by 2 at 06/04/10 @ 12:25

  • Toothball #13 2 years ago

    Oh, I'd just started University when the first Pokemon games arrived here, so this is now making me feel old.

  • DDevil #14 2 years ago

    Same here. I graduated university in 2001 :(

  • kaerber #15 2 years ago

    Uhm, what should I gather from this review if I have never played a single Pokemon game? "I love Pokemon"?

    Sure it helps.

  • thedaveeyres #16 2 years ago

    If you've never played a Pokemon game, this is the one to get. It's superb - better than 99% of so-called adult RPG's.

  • Hantheman #17 2 years ago

    tempted to get this actually. I'm 22.

  • tiredoldandy #18 2 years ago

    @Hantheman

    So?

  • Hantheman #19 2 years ago

    Becaues its quite funny that I'm supposed to be mature but I still love pokemon?

  • Oli Verified Reviews Editor, Eurogamer.net #20 2 years ago

    Guys, Keza is a child and a freak of nature, don't worry about it.

    ...

    :(

  • tiredoldandy #21 2 years ago

    Er, right. I didn't realise being 22 or above and liking an RPG, even one aimed at children, was so taboo.

    And since when were 22 year olds generally considered mature?

  • ZuluHero #22 2 years ago

    "Oddly, Nintendo has yet to release any official screens, but we managed to dig this one up."

    Pokemon Marketing 101.

  • Hantheman #23 2 years ago

    wow tiredoldandy you're in a grouchy mood aren't, picking arguments when there isn't one? I'm saying I like pokemon yet you take exception to it? Maby you should get a bit older before you spout off.

  • tiredoldandy #24 2 years ago

    Actually I'm older than you big boy, but that's irrelevant.

  • carrotcake #25 2 years ago

    Beat the japanese soulsilver in september and not tempted to do it again. Should be noted that the next generation pokemon games are due to be revealed this week on japan's pokemon Sunday tv show (11th April). That's the new games with new pokemon such as zoroark the illusory fox. Oh, great review by the way, really captured the magic.

  • McFly55 #26 2 years ago

    Loving it so far, just got my 8th gym badge. Whats annoying me is the ad for it, random bird going on about how her favourite is chancey and "its just like having a baby", with screens from the original gold/silver on gbc. How the fuck is it like having a baby? Im no parent but im fairly sure you dont raise kids by having them fight other kids
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 13:11

  • WinterSnowblind #27 2 years ago

    @carrotcake
    All they said was there would be a "shocking announcement".
    Expect to see more shadows of new Pokemon that won't be revealed fully for months, rather than any actual information on the new games.

  • alcides #28 2 years ago

    The cut/surf/strenght system of progression is archaic and takes up a good deal of your movesets. It actually works AGAINST you building a real custom gameplay for yourself, as you have to have them all the time.

    Getting rid of them and using only FLY to move around keeps you aways from large areas. AND you have to clear the path EVERY F**** TIME!!!

    I don't get how such abysmally moronic design elements can survive through 15 years! Like the whole mess about not being able to know which move is learned how and how your pokemon's stats will grow if you kill this or that critter without having a pokemon encyclopedia at hand!

    So, no, the pokedex offers NO info of any relevance to the game, except a 3 line backgroud and creatures' location.

    Moves should be switchable. At least at SOME point in the story or when you've maxed up a certain level cap for your pokemon. I'm not even asking to do it on the go! In pokemon centers!! At NO COST, no heart scale bullshit!

  • Psi #29 2 years ago

    Hang on Pokemon is like raising a child? Dear god thats such a stupid thing so say lol.

    Although if I can get paternity leave for Pokemon that would be awesome!

  • Xnoybis Verified Senior Software Engineer, Holition #30 2 years ago

    "Im no parent but im fairly sure you dont raise kids by having them fight other kids"

    Try visiting Aberdeen some day....

  • Zidargh #31 2 years ago

    @McFly: If you're a pikey you do.
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 13:44

  • spatss #32 2 years ago

    I only use my ds for personal trainers and such but I have a sweet spot for pokémon in my heart. Looks good.

  • Senate #33 2 years ago

    Try visiting Aberdeen some day.... LOL!

    I would like to revisit this game but the whole EV thing, the planning, catching one with the right nature etc might get it anyway :)

  • technotica #34 2 years ago

    Man I feel so old at 30, reading things on the internet like a twenty something reminiscing about the good old days when Pokemon came out. Time really flies on the interweb. :p
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 14:03

  • Tyranix #35 2 years ago

    It's a great day when we can say that a Pokemon game is ten times more in-depth than the latest Final Fantasy. Love it.

  • Dave797 #36 2 years ago

    Oh the memories, I think I must have been 12 or 13 when I played Pokemon Red and it was addictive as hell even then! In the name of nostalgia I may just pick this up, great review!
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 15:20

  • CaptainBinky #37 2 years ago

    Sorry, what?!? The little kids who had Pokemon are in their *twenties* now? Cheers for making me feel old ;)

  • jamhead #38 2 years ago

    I am in my thirties and missed the whole Pokemon thing. Am I too old to enjoy this (especially as there will be no nostalgia value)?

  • wizlon #39 2 years ago

    @jamhead You're never to old to enjoy a good game. Pokemon is sort of an RPG for normal people, it's easy to understand and difficult to master and it's just really good fun. And what isn't fun about ensnaring animals against their will and forcing them to fight each other until one passes out.

  • darc #40 2 years ago

    I'm 41 and therefore so short on time that I can't read the actual review. But I did get far enough to chuckle at someone distressing at being in their early 20's. :D Buck up, kid, it's all relative.

  • JeroenZM #41 2 years ago

    You write pretty good for a 21-year old, Keza. I'm a writer myself so I know how tricky it can be at times.

  • Futaba #42 2 years ago

    Nice review, Keza.

  • Coldwine #43 2 years ago

    Well this is the best Pokemon game that I've ever played (and um my first LOL). Gameplay is simple but very deep, and of course the story is almost nonexistent. Look for the next game to be released in 3D, on their new system.

  • Shadzter #44 2 years ago

    Wow, talk about late to the party. I'd have thought a main game from a top selling series like this would be a review priority. Loving the game so far and I too would have to give it a 9/10, the original Gold and Silver games were amazing and this is a good remake.

  • TruSmiles #45 2 years ago

    Pretty much everyone at my Uni has been playing this religiously the past week or so :)

  • theonomous #46 2 years ago

    I first played Red as I was graduating from university, too. It made my top ten games list for a long time. There really is a lot of stat tracking and manipulating in the Pokemon system, ranking in complexity with any of the contemporary console/portable rpgs. And they manage all these interlocking systems better than games which they exceed in complexity by a few orders of magnitude.

    Wonder how this compares to Diamond/Pearl.
    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 18:39

  • pogomeister #47 2 years ago

    av never played a pokemon game but keep getting tempted,would you say this is the best one to start with or should i go with platinum.am 29 in case thats important ha ha!

  • AphoticCosmos #48 2 years ago

    Silver remains one of my favourite games ever.

    However, I need to get a DS first. Once I do then Soul Silver here I come ;)

  • Bloodloss #49 2 years ago

    "Rival trainers give the entire team a workout" - Really? So it's not like every other game in the series where they'll have a lesser evolved starter, and generally don't know their arse from their elbow?

  • byakuya83 #50 2 years ago

    i played red and blue a lot on release, as did my brother and sister who are both younger than me. i think i was 14/15 whilst pokemon was big, even ant and dec were loving it. i even entered a pokemon contest organised by official nintendo magazine, we all went to get mew transferred to our game.

    i had stopped playing by the time gold and silver turned up, but my youngest sisters then got into it. they both had the yellow version as well, where pikachu follows you round. i had a look at ruby, sapphire, emerald, pearl, diamond and platinum - all of which my sisters now own.

    they've asked me to get this for them as well - it just annoys me that it looks like pretty much the same game. nintendo have never taken advantage of improved visuals or audio, the battle animations are terrible and online features were never really developed.

    the fans have been crying out for a pokemon mmo or more online functionality yet nintendo just keeps rehashing the same things.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #51 2 years ago

    How can you call a DS remake of a GBC game not taking advantage of the newer hardware and thus improving visuals and audio? Do you even know what a GBC game looks like?

    So far every platform had its own Pokemon game with more than enough new features. I really don't see how this is rehashing the same thing over and over.

    Edited by 1 at 06/04/10 @ 22:32

  • alcides #52 2 years ago

    It's dishonest to claim that it doesn't get a little redundant with each iteration. By little I mean HUGELY.

    But then since silver/gold we got natures, special abilities, double battle on GBA. Then, on the DS, types were not linked to a particular pokemon stat but subdivided in physical and special attacks. That made a lot of shitty pokemons worthwile again.

  • jthorne19 #53 2 years ago

    Quote reviewer:

    "HeartGold and SoulSilver aren't re-releases, they're remakes, and they're more or less perfect examples of how that should be done. They're neither a careless rehash of old material nor crammed with pointless neophiliac nonsense. They combine everything that was best about the older Pokemon games - namely, the more likable monster designs and inventive spirit - with the much-improved looks and streamlined battle system of the fourth-generation ones. They recapture the energy and imagination of the Pokemon series at the height of its creative and commercial power. And as a lapsed but once-obsessive Pokemon fan, they've recaptured my imagination, too"

    all that they have added are the much - improved looks and the streamlined battle system and that warrants a remake? thin line if you ask me considering you use these two points to show how much they have change. take the resident evil remake on the game cube, that had improved graphics but it also had entirely new areas, bosses, monsters and all the trimmings. My point is that this game does not offer enough for anyone to consider buying it again in my opinion. I understand that it is a lengthy game but not enough content for my liking.

  • fantabulo #54 2 years ago

    it feels very strange to be older then (or the same age as) the reviewer

  • Wyrm #55 2 years ago

    Can you walk diagonally yet?

  • youhavenomail #56 2 years ago

    I think I might have spent a few minutes with someone's Blue or Red cartridge back in the day. I never really got into the Poke phenomenon, but the Pokewalker tempted me to break with tradition. I love the game and I love the Pokewalker. As a first timer, this is clearly the greatest thing ever.

  • Mughes #57 2 years ago

    Ahh, I have such fond memories of Gold & Silver. I still remember getting Silver from Toys R Us all those years ago and getting a free GBC case with it. Good times. Though I dread to think how many hours/days I spent on it...

  • My1stLoveJak #58 2 years ago

    Don't do it unless you want Pokemon to take up even MORE of your time, but this website has everything you need to know about PKMN and more:

    Serebii.net

    I was excited when I realized just how deep the games really were, learning about EVs and Natures. Got into competitive battling for a while, had a lot of fun with it. Just DON'T look into IVs, though, that's more than I wanted to know.

    Oh, and I join the 22club in May! Excellent review, Keza. Check out that site if you want to re-discover pkmn..I'd recommend playing through at least half the game first, tho, so it doesn't spoil the experience. Silver was one of my fave games - it's huge, so much to do. I can't think of any other game that'll give you more 'bang for your buck'

  • InternetRed #59 2 years ago

    I want so bad to get into Pokemon, but a few things put me off.
    The EV system means I'm more than likely never going to play it unless I have a guidebook or the internet nearby
    The fact that your other pokemon never level up, other than the ones you use, means that I'll suddenly realise pokemon X is useful, and then have to go through hell and back to level it up (normally having it out first, then swapping it asap). Even if all the pokemon you caught recieved 1/8th of the experience of the main six... It will still be more useful.

    If though, they are not too important, I'll dash out tomorrow and buy it. :p

  • ljorg #60 2 years ago

    "The fact that your other pokemon never level up"

    They do, once you get the Exp. Share. Equip it on a party pokemon and it'll receive half of the battle's Exp, just as if it was switched in.