Pokémon HeartGold is a pleasant surprise. I say this as a recovering and relapsed Pokémaniac. In the heyday of Red and Blue, I caught ’em all. I even used the GameShark to unlock the elusive Mew. I had the cards, and I watched the television series. But believe it or not, I had already outgrown my obsession by the time its first true sequels, Gold and Silver, rolled around.

I was in high school when Ruby and Sapphire hit, and Pokémon took on an ironic kitschy coolness. The same goes for Pearl and Diamond, which were released in 2007, and the college crowd is doubly into retro indulgence.

I say HeartGold is a pleasant surprise not only because I passed on the original, but because I couldn’t even finish Pearl. The series’ core formula really hasn’t changed since I played Red on my used GameBoy in 1996, and I was fed up. I hated having to teach my characters worthless, undeletable moves to progress in the story; I hated the grind of random battles in any cave or on any body of water; and I hated the tiresome road/town/gym, road/town/gym dynamic.

Then three years passed. If nothing else, Nintendo is brilliant for its commercial timing. HeartGold appealed to me because A) I hadn’t played it; B) I had read it was regarded by many as the series’ best; and C) time had healed Pearl’s wounds.

HeartGold was also a pleasant surprise in that none of my grievances had been addressed, yet I didn’t mind. To a large extent, these games live or die by the charm and personality of the creatures they create, and HeartGold wisely recycles many of its predecessor’s. Most of Red’s original 150 monsters had an elegant simplicity that today’s Bedoofs and Chimchars could never hope to. HeartGold draws on that original library and adds some welcome additions, which were new and surprising to me, though I suppose have been around for quite a while now.

You harness these critters in exactly the same way you did before, moving from town to town, battling and capturing wild Pokémon, collecting gym badges, foiling Team Rocket, and making your way to the “elite four,” the be-all end-all of Pokémon trainers.

What I actually found myself more deeply involved with this time around was Pokémon as a statistician’s game. Assembling a well-balanced team can be as simple as allowing the game to corral you into covering your bases via required HM moves and challenges from a diverse array of opponents, or as complicated as analyzing the strategic difference between, say, Bellsprout and Hoppip. With an understanding of their abilities on a more intricate level, features like item-holding and stat-pumping moves serve a higher function, adding yet another layer of complexity and really bringing Pokémon into its own. This optional depth is a big reason the series has been such a resounding success among subsets of adults as well as children.

HeartGold also offers a very lengthy adventure — longer than most in the franchise given that you can return to Red’s “Kanto” region after completing the main quest. In that respect, the game world is truly massive, and the unlockable region offers a compelling reason to continue playing after watching the credits scroll. There’s also the now-requisite wireless and WiFi support for the game, which allows players to trade or battle locally and over the Internet. It’s nice in theory, but I had a tough time finding a random opponent online. Anyway, I always found that human-on-human battling devolves into ceaseless character shuffling and ultimately a random winner.

The only major new feature here is the inclusion of the Pokéwalker accessory. A Tamagotchi of sorts, this pedometer is actually a pretty decent pack-in. Much like the “Pokémon Pikachu” digital pet Nintendo released in the 1990s (like I said, I was obsessed), the Pokéwalker generates “Watts” based on the amount of steps its wearer takes. It also adds a few minigames to the mix, allowing you spend your hard-earned watts in attempt to capture new Pokémon or search for items. Players can beam any character they’ve caught on their DS to the walker for some on-the-go training, though no matter how many steps you take, their levels will increase by only one when returned to the game. I suppose this is to prevent players from devising an expedited surrogate for in-game training.

It’s easy to dismiss the Pokéwalker as a gimmicky toy, and though it is really an afterthought to the game in earnest, it actually provides some amusing diversions, and that’s all I ever expected from it.

I think HeartGold carries the Pokémon series about as far as it can go in its current incarnation. For either longtime Pokémaniacs (recovering or relapsed) or newcomers (presuming there still are any), Nintendo’s latest take on the pocket monster phenomenon is the finely polished pinnacle of the formula they put forth in Red and Blue 14 years ago. It’s nice to hear that the upcoming Black and White are looking to change up a lot of the conventions, but this may be it for me. It’s oddly uplifting to think of HeartGold as my last Pokémon game. It’s a chunk of my childhood distilled. It’s Pokémon perfected.