Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver The Official Pokemon Kanto Guide National Pokedex: Official Strategy Guide [ペーパーバック]

The guide to the Kanto Region is useful, following in the same pattern as the Johto guide already released and the Sinnoh guide released for Platinum. However, the real use for this book is the complete Pokedex.
The 'Dex has every pokemon in it, with the useful charts we've all been waiting for. Using this guide you can easily see the full set of moves a pokemmon can learn, from levels gained, TMs, egg moves, and moves taught by the Move Maniac or learned through the Battle Frontier. This is all on top of the basics you would expect from a Pokedex, being a list of abilities, egg groups, stats, pokedex entries, and even Pokeathlon perfromance. Also listed are ways to obtain each pokemon in all five of the fourth generation games.
Overall a very useful guide to some of the best games to hit the Nintendo DS.

Pokemon games have generally been released a few every generation. The original games (Red, Blue, and Yellow) for the GameBoy are considered the 1st Generation games; the sequels built for the GB Color(Silver, Gold, and Crystal) are considered 2nd Gen, etc. That makes the DS gen games the 4th Gen PKMN games, and this PokeDex/Guide is built with that in mind. New and/or revised move-sets, Pokemon types, evolutions, natures, etc. are detailed and described as they are in the newer 4th Gen games, that is Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, PLatinum, and the new SoulSilver and HeartGold. In other words, those looking for a complete PokeDex for any other game should look elsewhere. Those interested in the 4th Gen games are in for a real treat.

The ultra large (500+ pages) book does exactly what its title says; its a full Kanto guide and a full PokeDex, and it does both, for the most part, extremely well.

The Kanto guide contains full and detailed maps (as are seen in-game), tips, and a complete walkthrough. The walkthrough doesn't start just as you enter the Kanto region, however, it assumes you've already beaten the Elite Four and have gained admission to the Hall of Fame. the guide features things like what Pokemon are found in what location, where items are, and dungeon "connections" (doorway "A" leads to this part of the map). The Battle Frontier, tips for the PokeWalker, the Saffari Zone, and a beefy section that details new battle strategies and PKMN teams all help to make this guide stand out from a simple bare-bones walkthropugh. A nice feature i found was a complete list of what event happens at what date, given that SoulSilver/HeartGold rely heavily on a real time clock, this feature is unbelievably important. Another neat feature was a simple recommend route to completing the entirety of your Kanto quest. The Kanto region is much less linear than the Johto region, and this "recommendation" could be very helpful to some.

One noticeable and disappointing omission is lack of any "real" info on regular trainers. Gym Leaders have a list of used PKMN as well as tips on how to defeat them, but regular trainer have just a name. The guide doesn't show what PKMN a trainer uses. Its unfortunate and is the only reason why this product gets **** instead of 5*.

The PokeDex section includes ALL 493 PKMN, and everyone has a half page devoted to it. Within its space things like possible abilities, moves (learned, TM, Move Maniac, Egg, and Battle Frontier moves all covered), evolutions, info (the same as the in-game PKDX info about the PKMN), egg type, and specially useful for completionists is the location in which you can find the PKMN (and in what 4th Gen game).

All pages have an abundance of color and are never boring. Art, images, and tips can be found in EVERY page. The edges of the pages have a mostly solid color (EX, Walkthrough = orange, Dex = Red) that makes quickly opening up the book to a certain section very easy. The same concept is applied to the Dex, where 1st Gen PKMN can be found in the pages with a green hue on the top/bottom. remember that these colors can be seen while the book is closed, so the navigation is the 500+ page book is simple.

The product is just about everything any PokeFan could wish for (the only flaw being the skimpy trainer detail), tips, strategies, PKMN info, maps, etc. Its built with a sturdy frame, is large, and the pages are nice and thick. At the very reasonable price, im very easily recommending it.

I'll agree with Veotho on essentially every point, I'd add that the Pokewalker information is also extremely useful, I'm a little disappointed that there isn't information on the Yellow Road special course that you get for going online with the game, because there are secret special Pikachu's to be had if you know the secrets readily available online. Other than that, it's a bargain and at Amazon prices they are way more reasonable than you'll likley find anyplace else.