Best Pokémon Johto experience?

[ChronoCloud]

I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who's tried all of these:
Polished Crystal (gbc)
crystal Advance redux (gba)
heart & soul (gba)
silver rival (gba)

And i was wondering which was the best

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

I'm a big fan of Sacred Gold / Storm Silver but they might not be exactly what you're looking for. It's a more complete version of the game but it also increases the difficulty.

Pokemon Sacred Gold / Storm Silver (Hack) NDS ROM – The Repo

Pokemon Sacred Gold / Storm Silver (Hack) NDS ROM Languages: English. For the NDS.

retrogametalk.com

 

[PupinDaTurd]

I just very recently played through all of Crystal Clear with my gal and while there's a lot of great stuff in it in terms of QoL and gameplay- I can't recommend it. By the end I sincerely regretted giving this to her as her first full Pokemon playthrough.
Primarily I was really sick of the Discord OCs showing up everywhere with their teams full of shinies and the open world nature of the game removed all of the dungeons and story line elements so it was basically completely directionless.
Also there's an OC that blocks you before the OC Elite 4 and his fucking Pokemon are stronger than the E4's basically. So you get beat by him then feel like you need to go get the rest of the Badges and then by the time you come back you're over-leveled.

So yeah, do not recommend unless you've done many others and are just looking for more.

 

[ChronoCloud]

I just very recently played through all of Crystal Clear with my gal and while there's a lot of great stuff in it in terms of QoL and gameplay- I can't recommend it. By the end I sincerely regretted giving this to her as her first full Pokemon playthrough.
Primarily I was really sick of the Discord OCs showing up everywhere with their teams full of shinies and the open world nature of the game removed all of the dungeons and story line elements so it was basically completely directionless.
Also there's an OC that blocks you before the OC Elite 4 and his fucking Pokemon are stronger than the E4's basically. So you get beat by him then feel like you need to go get the rest of the Badges and then by the time you come back you're over-leveled.

So yeah, do not recommend unless you've done many others and are just looking for more.

I had already written off that one

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Having played all three, I gotta say that Crystal offers the best overall experience — those animations and small bug fixes did a world of difference (even though, in true Game Freak fashion, they axed the built-in clock "hack" while they were at it).