A solid remake, but Nintendo needs to look at ways to update the series beyond the supperficial.
Heart Gold and Soul Silver are updates of the classic Gold and Silver versions for the Game Boy Color. I remember countless hours of enjoyment sitting on the porch with Pokemon Gold shoved into my Pikachu Yellow Edition Game Boy Color all those years ago, and everything fun about the originals is still there. More than just a walk down memory lane, Heart Gold and Soul Silver truly stand on their own. They bring everything the Pokemon team have learned and improved on in the decade since the original Gold and Silver and integrate it seamlessly into the game. Basic gameplay involves wandering around the game's sprawling map catching monsters to train and level up or going mano a mano against the many NPC trainers scattered around the continent. These battles unfold in standard turn-based RPG fashion, with a variety of moves, buffs, debuffs, status afflictions, and items available to the player.
In addition to the driving storyline of the game, there are a number of stops along the way to keep your attention. One memorable stop is the metropolis town of Goldenrod City (the towns are named after plants), where the developers have created a horribly addicting puzzle game. Another great sidetrack is the pokeathalon, a collection of minigames put together to form a sort of Pokemon Olympics. There are also plenty of caves to explore, oceans to cross, puzzles to solve, and towers to climb in pursuit of fame and fortune.
The graphical treatment of the game is the same as the last DS series of Pokemon games…colorful and vibrant top-down 3D in the exterior sites with standard top-down 2D inside most buildings. It's in the actual battles that Pokemon starts to show its age. The battle screen looks the same as it always has…and there lies the problem. The DS clearly has the technological power to generate near N64-quality graphics (as has been displayed in a multitude of 3D games for the platform). There is, therefore, no excuse for the bland, 2D battle screen that continues to pervade the series. A much better execution for battles would be something along the lines of a watered-down Pokemon Stadium, with at the very least 3D models of the pokemon at the very least. In addition to the battle graphics, the pokemon calls are so wildly out of place sounding so screechy and non-realistic. Get some voice actors, Nintendo. We have the technology.
Speaking of technology, I find it hard to believe that there isn't enough space on the game cartridge for more game saves. For what I suspect to be 'tradition' more than anything else, the Pokemon team still doesn't let you play more than one game on a cartridge. This prevents you from starting a new game without deleting your old one. In this day and age, there really isn't an excuse for that.
Nintendo and Game Freak have created a winning formula with their Pokemon series and would be foolish to try and totally revamp the gameplay. The Pokemon games, aside from the reservations listed above, are fun and addicting. When playing, it's easy to fall into the 'just a few more minutes' mindset. But the developers need to look at ways to refresh the series beyond the superficial. For all its graphical updates and fine tuning of the game mechanics (which really do shine through and improve the experience), Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver are pretty much the same thing we've seen before. For the most part, that's okay…it's a formula that works. But that doesn't mean that the folks over at Nintendo and Game Freak shouldn't push their innovation to the next level.