You love playing Pokemon, but you hate playing Pokemon. You hate starting out on new Routes knowing there will be tall grass, dead ends, and trainer battles. You hate surfing. You hate long, winding, random-encounter-filled deviations from the main Route that should have cool items in them, like Rare Candy, PP Up, Max Revive, etc., but that instead only have items that the game seems to think are cool, like Ether, X Speed, Heal Ball, etc. You hate running back to the pokemon center every ten minutes because you refuse to use too many potions on any one outing.







You hate catching a Level 6 something and then finding out that there are Level 9 ones in the same grass. You hate raising a pokemon that you know from the outset you’re eventually going to have to replace. You hate that your pokemon hurt themselves in confusion disproportionately more often than do your opponent’s.







You hate that you can’t have Arceus. You hate when a sweet pokemon looks silly from behind. You hate that you only ever land critical hits when you least need them. You hate that you always have to figure out where everything is whenever you get to a new town; and you hate having to figure out which houses or buildings have nobody of any importance in them; and you hate that it always feels too soon for another gym.







You hate having to grind before pretty much any major progress-related event. You hate how fleeting it is to have all your pokemon be higher level than everybody else’s in the game. You hate having to grind when all the wild pokemon near town are like 5 levels below your pokemon. You hate that the pokemon you need to grind most always has the Type that is the worst to have to grind in that area. You hate when random encounters suddenly start happening every three steps. You hate how random encounters always occur right as you’re about to make it out of the grass. You hate being unable to run from a wild pokemon until after it has paralyzed/poisoned/put your guy to sleep.







You hate waiting for it to finish saying, “Wild […] appeared!, Go […]!, […]’s Intimidate cut […]’s attack!, […]’s Anticipate made it shudder, It started to hail!” etc. You hate waiting for it to finish healing your pokemon. You hate waiting for it to let you Press Start to Begin. You hate waiting for it to finish saving (unless it’s “saving a lot of data,” then you feel accomplished).







You hate caves. You hate getting through a huge span of the game and then receiving the Item Finder. You hate that you can never bring yourself to actually use any of your rare candies. You hate having to waste precious move slots on mandatory HM crap. You hate that your [Type]-type pokemon only learns a good [Type]-type move every twenty levels. You hate how slow even the running shoes feel after awhile. You hate that after several hours you can’t remember why you even play this stupid game.

But dear player, you must suffer to earn your contentment. The game–not your rival, not Team Whatever, not the superhuman effort needed to needed to fill your pokedex–the game itself is the game’s true antagonist. To play it is to oppose it. To complete it is to defeat it. And to discuss it with other players is, my friend, alas, to commiserate.