Softlocking

[VisionofMilotic]

It is possible to reach a save state where you are stuck at a certain area. The game isn't frozen, but you can't progress in the story without resetting. This is a softlock, and it means that you have triggered a set of circumstances that the game developers didn't plan for, or a glitch.

I thought this might be a fun topic for previous gens because there were fewer mechanics in place in the old days to prevent the game from being softlocked. Are there any softlocks that you remember? Maybe you have heard stories about some notorious ones through reddit, seen a YouTube video where a player did this, or perhaps it even happened to you, either purely by accident or something you did just to amuse yourself and see if you could do it.

I have never been softlocked in an official release before, only in fan games. I do know of quite a few crazy softlocks though that can happen in the main line games though.

One that really gets me is in red, blue and green, if you just evolve your starter before delivering professor Oak's parcel. The game isn't prepared for you to have more than one pokemon at this point in the story because you don't have pokeballs yet. Of course, evolving a pokemon would register another species of pokemon in your dex, so if you do this the game wrongly thinks you got your pokeballs and dex from Oak already, so he no longer accepts the parcel from you or gives you anything when you talk to him, and just has dialogue to rate your pokedex. But because you never actually completed the quest you can't leave Viridian City either-- the old man in the road isn't programmed to move before you deliver the parcel. So you really are trapped.

What makes this softlock so unforgettable to me because while often softlocking requires a lot steps that would be unlikely to happen through normal game play, this one is so easy to do without meaning to by a new/young player who is still learning how to play the game, and just wandering around battling the early route pokemon, like I did as a kid. I probably would have gotten softlocked this way had it been my first game. Alternatively, I could see this happening to an experienced player just trying to do a solo run with their starter and level grind.

 

[Rock_Salazar]

I have never heard of this softlock before. I do not know if I should think the dev team was that incompetent or if the coding was just too much of a hassle to deal with. Speaking of softlocks a YT by the name of Pikasprey has made several videos on them. I myself have never experienced a softlock, only times where I thought I did. In D/P Eterna City's gym requires that you fight all trainers before you fight the leader, and since I was a terrible reader I thought I did something wrong. I spent like a week trying to figure out how to make the leader appear before I found I needed to fight all trainers. Feel embarrassed by that one. This is isn't the first time where I could not figure out what to do next in a pokemon game.

 

[Palamon]

Yeah, I've heard of that softlock and it's so weird and dumb. But, didn't they fix that softlock in the international games? I never did this in my R/B playthrough, though, but it is a really annoying oversight.

One of the softlocks I do know of is if you trade a Finneon for a Magikarp in D/P/PT and it is the only one on your team and you don't have any fishing rods, you can get softlocked But, in later games they made it harder to softlock like not being able to release the last Pokemon in your team that has an HM move and that hidden/secret Tentacool in Cianwood City.

But, in a lot of ways, getting yourself into a softlock requires setups past gen I, I think. I've watched a lot of Pikasperey's videos on Soft lock picking to know this.

Nowadays, softlocking is definitely not a thing with the removal of HMs.

I've definitely never gotten myself softlocked, though since they even put preventative measures to make sure you cannot transfer Pokemon with HM moves from gens iii to iv through the migrate feature. And I would never intentionally try to do so, either.

 

[Megan]

One that really gets me is in red, blue and green, if you just evolve your starter before delivering professor Oak's parcel. The game isn't prepared for you to have more than one pokemon at this point in the story because you don't have pokeballs yet. Of course, evolving a pokemon would register another species of pokemon in your dex, so if you do this the game wrongly thinks you got your pokeballs and dex from Oak already, so he no longer accepts the parcel from you or gives you anything when you talk to him, and just has dialogue to rate your pokedex. But because you never actually completed the quest you can't leave Viridian City either-- the old man in the road isn't programmed to move before you deliver the parcel. So you really are trapped.

That might have been fixed in at least the European version. And I'm very certain that I did indeed evolve my starter at least once before returning the parcel. And I did not run into any issue.

But I'm also aware that there were some fixes in the European version that the US one didn't have. For example we can't do the "Brock skip" glitch, either.

I don't think I ever got stuck, fortunately. I think there are some silly ones. Like getting stuck with a Fighting type using Rage against Lorelei's Dewgong spamming Rest all the time.

 

[VisionofMilotic]

That might have been fixed in at least the European version. And I'm very certain that I did indeed evolve my starter at least once before returning the parcel. And I did not run into any issue.

But I'm also aware that there were some fixes in the European version that the US one didn't have. For example we can't do the "Brock skip" glitch, either.

I don't think I ever got stuck, fortunately. I think there are some silly ones. Like getting stuck with a Fighting type using Rage against Lorelei's Dewgong spamming Rest all the time.

It could have been patched Dobbs, The poketuber who I first heard about this softlock from did not specify game regions. He showed footage from a player using a Japanese language version for reference, but it may or may not have been limited to Japan, not sure how it affects all international releases. I'm glad at least that your game wasn't able to trap you :)

Might as well share his video while I'm here, because it has lots of whacky and infamous softlocks fit for this thread.

 

[ReKoil]

I've never encountered any soft-locks myself in a Pokemon game.