This may seem like an odd question, but how do *you* play Pokemon? I mean, we hear all of your philosophical and abstract stuff which of course is amazing, but when you actually sit down to play one of these games, what do you do? Do you like to catch everything you see, or are you selective? Does your play-style change if you are replaying a game? Do you take competitive strategies into account or do you just brawn your way through?

*shrug* Sorta depends what I’m doing.

The very first time I played Black version, I caught every new species I encountered because I wanted to figure out what made them tick.  I also chose Pokémon to use without really having any idea what I was looking at or how it would evolve (when I decided to train my Larvesta, Invicta, I knew she’d be worth it in the end, but had no idea what she’d actually become or how long that would take – turned out the answer was “a while” but at least I had an Eviolite).  You only get one chance to play like that, and I think it’s a lot of fun because it really pushes the theme of discovery that’s so important to the series.

When I replay a game, sometimes I like to impose rules on myself, because Pokémon is a lot of fun but (let’s face it) not all that difficult.  The ‘Nuzlocke Challenge’ is one set of rules, but there are other ways you can do it – sometimes I limit myself to using Pokémon of only one type, other times I get my best friend to pick out a team for me and provide me with a bunch of eggs.  The Pokémon he picks are invariably awful, because he is a sadistic bastard – on one memorable occasion, I played through Leaf Green with a Beedrill, a Farfetch’d, a Lickitung, a Primeape (easily the strongest member of my team), a Tangela, and a special attacker Rhydon.  And you know what?  That Farfetch’d kicked ass.  Relatively speaking, anyway.  Sometimes I’ll just limit myself to using Pokémon I’ve never seriously used before.  That led to an interesting Ruby version playthrough with a four-man team of Masquerain, Armaldo, Solrock and Kecleon (since Masquerain was going to be my only Pokémon for a while, I prepared for this one by breeding a Surskit with Hydro Pump, because seriously, it’s Surskit).

As for competitive strategies… well, the thing to realise is that a lot of stuff that you have to think about when you’re preparing for a Battle Tower run or a battle against another person just doesn’t apply to a playthrough.  Trying to EV-train your Pokémon is just a waste of time, you’ll have limited access to TMs, you probably won’t be breeding your Pokémon so egg moves are out, you won’t have access to move tutors, and your opponents will rarely switch, which means that moves like Spikes and Stealth Rock are much less useful unless you plan to spam Whirlwind.  The other thing is that, since the AI opponents’ Pokémon never have any EVs until you get to Battle Tower type facilities, later in the game your own Pokémon will almost always be faster than them unless they have a massive advantage in level (which, granted, the Elite Four and Champion often will), which drastically changes the value of fast and slow Pokémon.  In short, I think it’s good to be aware of good competitive strategy because a lot of the properties that make Pokémon competitively strong do still apply, but you also need to remember that you’re actually not playing the same game.