Thrust into the limelight by visiting a famous Pokemon professor's laboratory and choosing one of his three rare Pokemon for your own, you can then go about your quest to capture more Pokemon, battle other trainers, and ultimately gain the sixteen badges that each of the Gym Leaders in Johto and Kanto have for you. Your quest is elementary enough to understand, and is again quite familiar to those who have already played games in the series. Once captured, the Pokemon joins your team and you can level up that creature, exploit its strengths, and use it against other Pokemon as you go about your quest. To catch Pokemon, one uses a Poke Ball (or a variant thereof) in battle with a wild Pokemon. What are Pokemon, and how do you train them? Well, Pokemon are wild animals which are wildly popular in Johto and Kanto (where the main game takes place), but these animals can be captured and pitted against other Pokemon (whether wild or captured) in battles between the temporary enemies.

In the game, you play as a main character (who you name, pick the gender of, et cetera) who wants to become a Pokemon trainer. Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver is a multifaceted RPG. However, if this is your first Pokemon game, you might be confused as to just what the game's all about, what you're supposed to do in the game, and how the game is ultimately beaten. Those who have played a Pokemon game before won't need to read this section, because the series has changed very little since the 1990's.

If you choose to change the controls manually in the game, keep in mind that the control explanations above will thereafter be false.

The controls described are only for the default scheme.

Y - 'Register' shortcut, mostly for Key Items.

Select - Use on inventory menus to move items around.

D-Pad - Use to move your character around and to navigate through menus.

B - 'Cancel' button used to backtrack through menus, cancel decisions, etc.

A - 'Main Button' used to talk, execute commands, examine, etc.

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