ThePokemonfranchise has a special place in the hearts of the many gamers who grew up playing the series. As those players grew older and the games seemed to grow easier, they came up withchallenges that increased the replayability of their favorite gamesand also added on some difficulty. One self-imposed challenge that was recently completed was to play through the entire series without using the same Pokemon more than once.
Pokemonfans have quite a few ways to impose challenges on themselves to increase the difficulty of the games. One popular ruleset is called a Nuzlocke, the basic rules of which include players may only capture the first Pokemon they encounter on each route and any Pokemon that faints is considered dead and can’t be used anymore. Others seeking harder challenges limit their use of items, Pokemon Centers, or use randomizers to make each encounter and battle unique. Some players even limit themselves to one Pokemon, like one player whosolo ranPokemon Swordwith Wooloo.
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Reddit user Volman99 undertook a different kind of challenge: complete every game in the series starting withRed, Blue, and Yellow, without ever using the same Pokemon. He set the rules for himself and documented the journey for others to enjoy. He allowed himself the use of “HM slaves,” a term that players have given Pokemon who can learn multiple game-advancing moves and are used solely for that purpose but not in the final team. He decided to play each variant of each game, including thePokemonremakesand second versions, such as playing both the original games andFire RedandLeaf Green. The final exception was for Pokemon with multiple evolution lines could be used for each one, and they would count differently.
According to Volman99, the hardest part of the challenge was the burnout, which set in around the time he had to playSun,Moon,Ultra Sun, andUltra Moonback to back. Throughout the journey, Volman99 encountered the stat-boosting virus Pokerus three times andfound one shiny Pokemon. Overall he ended up using 388 different Pokemon to complete the challenge. When asked about it, he said “Will I do it again? Probably not, but I’d like to continue it for as long as it is actually possible as new games come out. It was a really refreshing way to play Pokemon and see how the series evolved over time and I got to use a lot of Pokemon I would probably never touch otherwise.”
The challenge itself is one that anyone with all of the games can take on, and may consider if they’re looking to breathe some new life back into the games. Some fans of the series even thinkchallenges like the Nuzlocke challenge are the bestthing to happen to the older games. Any players who love the games but grew bored of them have plenty of options for challenging runs with the rule lists on the internet.
