Pokemon’s Classic Hard Mode

Hello and welcome to my bad idea of the week. As I said back in my ‘Low Dex’ Run of Pokemon FireRed, you might have expected me to do the classic Pokemon Nuzlocke someday. You’ll be glad to know that today is finally the day I do a Pokemon Nuzlocke. For those that are unaware, a Pokemon Nuzlocke is a special rule set that can be used to make any run of a pokemon game much more difficult. The two main rules are that if a Pokemon faints, it’s considered dead and cannot be used for the rest of the game, and you can only catch the first Pokemon you catch in each area. There’s a plethora of extra rules one can apply if they desire to modify the experience. In the past I only played about half of a Pokemon Pearl Nuzlocke up until my main damage dealer had fainted and I didn’t feel like grinding my Pokemon to catch up. Level grinding and knowing the biggest challenges a game has to offer are two of the most important things you need to form your strategy. For example, if you pick Charmander in Pokemon FireRed, you should either make sure you have a pokemon with a fighting type move or overlevel your charmander to the point where it can sweep Brock’s entire Rock type gym or your run will end right then and there. For my run today I’ll be playing Pokemon Emerald and using Mudkip because he’s a viable pick for the entire game. In retrospective I should have added the No Duplicate Pokemon clause so I didn’t get three Poochyenas in a row. Overall I think it’s a fun playstyle if you want to mix things up for your next pokemon run.

4 Comments so far

  1. Ryan on April 19th, 2020

    I have never tried to play this way, but I remember playing through the game and not trying to catch the same Pokemon that i already had, no matter how good they were.

  2. Ethan Maurice on April 21st, 2020

    R.I.P to my Hitmonlee who was knocked out by Lance’s last pokemon, ruining my Nuzlocke of Pokemon Leaf Green

  3. Logan Meyer on April 25th, 2020

    I used to play pokemon all the time when it was on the Gameboy, this was so addicting because there is so much to do in pokemon and it is o addicting. I love that you tried the hard difficulty, i can’t even imagine how hard it is.

  4. Newlong Lor on April 27th, 2020

    I played a lot of Pokemon blue and gold as a kid, but I never imagined that there was a hard difficulty setting to play it this way.

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