Tag: Fan Game

Pretty Princess Pinkie Plays: Pokémon Xenoverse Per Aspera Ad Astra

Hear ye hear ye! Princess Pinkie has returned with a new Pokémon Post

Salutations my loyal subjects and island guests. Today I bring good tidings, I feel enamoured,  I feel buzzed… and I also cried a bit when it was over! For the past two weeks or so I have been playing a Pokémon fan game that is SO GOOD, that it without a shadow of doubt in my head is now my favourite Pokémon fan game EVER. Yet keeping it at that would be an understatement, this game might be one of my favourite Pokémon games ever…and I just might get some more after game in the future. Today I introduce you to the second item in my treasury (Phantom Menace being the first one)  today I introduce you to Pokémon Xenoverse.

Story

Did you know that the Italian word for Download…. is Download?!  With this knowledge I was able to downloaded the greatest Pokémon Fan game… the very best like nothing ever was.  I stumbled around an Italian website and found the download button. After fumbeling around for a bit I got the game downloaded for free.  This game has rose to prominence in the Pokétubing community  recently being picked up by more and more english people. What caused this strange event, I do not know. Perhaps it was the game being finished, perhaps it was the english version being fully available and kitted out. I do not know nor do I care. I got to play this game spearheaded by a man calling himself weedle.. and his team of italian geniuses. Spending over 70 levels with my Pokémon and almost every moment with them was great. It even began with a cool anime style opening and would feature a much more fleshed out story than regular pokémon games.

Afbeelding

The game begins showing a red haired man walking nervously in a hospital. This is the happiest day of his life.. but his heart is burdened with a secret.  None of it matters though when the nurse calls him to the bedside of his wife.  She asks her husband by the name of Versil to guess the gender of the baby. The player picks the gender.. so I chose a girl.  He guesses it’s a girl.. and Clover smiles. “Just like we always dreamed off”  she then asks Versil what he thinks is a good name for the baby. I can type in a name, and he says Pinkie.  Clover thanks her husband for coming up with such a wonderful name and we skip four years ahead in time.  Versil is playing with his daughter showing her around the area of her house that really lies in the middle of nowhere.  It is beautiful and serene, the visit the grave of Pinkie’s grandfather. Versil does not tell her a lot about him as it is not the time.

Xenoverse: Per Aspera Ad Astra - GameList

In the distance a sound can be heard and Versil goes out to investigate , his daughter tagging along. It did not sound dangerous so it was fine for her to tag along. Three pokéballs can be found abandoned by the road. A lizard with a mask, a cheeky fire lizard and an adorable blue baby dragon.  Versil tells his daughter to grab one.. just in case something dangerous is along. Of course his daughter would grab the blue cutey called Shulong…it has an adorable cry!  After she had chosen it, an ominous voice can be heard.  A man stands in the shadow addressing Versil.  They talk about something little Pinkie would not yet understand..but very quickly the man orders his Tyranitar to use a Hyper Beam on Pinkie.. Versil steps in front of the blast and everything goes white.

Pinkie wakes up…. that was a horrible dream. But it felt kind of different. Today is her 15th birthday. It has been years since her father left on a business trip… did she just dream up of a way to say goodbye to him? Walking downstairs her mother wishes her a happy birthday, gives her some gifts but as they start talking about the dream Clover goes silent. It was not a dream, it seems Pinkie has finally remembered what really happened.  The Pink haired girl wants to go find her dad!  Her mother sends her to her room angrily! “You are not going anywhere young lady”. Pinkie is upset in her room as her Shulong tries to comfort her. She named him Mooch! .. When Mooch finds out he can not comfort her he suddenly acts all brave and makes noises gesturing the two should flee trough her bedroom window.  As Pinkie picks up Mooch Pokéball , something he never been inside of much before.. the two set out  on the greatest journey of their live to find Pinkie’s dad!

Design

Afbeelding

With a story that seems a lot like the story of Fallout 3 , you go on a Pokémon Journey that is not like the others. Though sharing similarities with Pokémon Uranium, the pokémon Gym challenge is an afterthought here, a means to an end.  Everything is part of a bigger narration. Most gym leaders you defeat because you need a favour from them, even if it’s only the right to pass trough their town, sometimes you require their insight. All gym leaders in this world have second jobs. Most of  them like Drayden are the leaders of their respective town, yet others are the sheriff or even hiphop icons. It allows your journey to rely on them much more and give them much more characterisation. The same goes for  your rival who may turn out to be an actual love interest.  The same goes for the pokémon professor, who like Sonia in Gen VIII has a much more personal journey in this story and the champion whom you meet very early in this game so you can really grow to appreciate his strength.

Afbeelding

This game feels like an anime, and I don’t mean the Pokemon anime. I mean this feels legit like an exciting anime story, a story that can hold itself on it’s own but is increased 10 fold in efficiency if you have played through at least  the Kanto and Johto region stories. This game is a tribute to Pokémon and much more Geekiness.  The fact that beating  the Champion gives you the Plus Ultra! Achievement already will tell you something! Yet you will encounter so many colourful characters that many of them could hold an anime show on their own.. like the Pokémon variant of Ghostbusters “Geist” Or the Hiphop Gym Leader Wallace Daddy, who adopts a lonely Pokémon even though it ruined his big concert. There are so many great characters in here… and what is even better, the Fakemon are also great.

Afbeelding

Fakemon is the official term for fan made pokemon so do not think that the term is derogatory or anything. In fact I think these are the best starters  since Gen III (excluding Rowlet). There are a lot of clever ideas. How about a Habanero styled Pokémon that is a Grass and Fire type or how about a Hercules Beetle that is a Sumo Wrestler.. as it is a chunky warrior beetle from Japan?! It is awesome! How about a Vulture that also takes design elements from the Grim Reaper?! There are great ideas in this game troughout! It also offers Xenoverse variants of certain types.. like Regional Variants but often a bit beefed up to be more relevant as well. Like an Ice Type Galvantula or a Ghost type Sharpedo. Well over 75% of them looks truely amazing with very little stinkers in the entire lineup. And this game has 3 separate Pokédexes so that is an achievement.  If you do not like using fakemon, there are plenty of pokémon in the game as well, but why would you use a Pidgey when you can use a Bremand. A pokémon that is actually four pokémon all based on one of the Town Musicians of Bremen…all carrying my wished to be real “sound type”

Mechanics

Afbeelding

The game is not afraid to introduce new mechanics and it does so on many levels starting with this new , and by fans desired, sound type. And though I do not like how the typing is flavoured and the new moves lose the ability to bypass substitutes it does really balance the game out pretty nicely. The sound type is super effective against water, flying and fairy types, while being weak to Dragon and Electric types. This gives us a tertiary typing core. After Water, Fire Grass and Dark , Fighting, Psychic we now can build our teams around a Fairy , Sound and Dragon core. It gives Fairy types a bit of a nerf which isn’t a bad thing and boosts Dragons up a bit again. The Dragon Typing has become a bit of a dud since the introduction of fairies. A lot of classic pokémon that now have the sound type appear in the game as well. Jigglypuff, Ekans, Drowzee, Loudred and Chatot just to name a few.  Really giving the usage of electric types a boost as well!  So while the typing makes much less sense then it could have, the way it works makes the game really smooth and balanced to play!

Afbeelding

From the beginning of the game you can choose to use the old individual experience thing or the newer party experience style. I chose the latter because frankly I wanted to have this game beat by the time New Pokémon Snap Rolled around. Plus I want to see as many Pokémon as possible…and Fan games tend to be a tad difficult so I did not want to do needless grinding. As a result I always ended up somewhat overleveled, yet because the typings are so smooth and the movesets Pokémon learn great moves and Tm ‘s are so plentiful it doesn’t matter much either way. Individuals will give you more of a challenge , but I found myself in tough battles anyway. Your lead Pokémon gets more experience as the rest so I just had fun by going with more creative movesets rather than pressing the super effective button all the time.. and I had a wonderful time with it.  There were times I really needed to step up my game.. but I was also allowed to use a team I really wanted which is great.

HM’s have been replaced by holograms you summon from your gloves, fishing at times can be a minigame and other cute things like that can really enhance your gameplay experience.  You can play as you like with whatever monsters you like. This is how modern pokémon games do it and this is how it should be. It allowed me to bond more with my team.. and for the first time since a long time… I super bonded with my starter.  This game FORCES you to use your starter all throughout the game. Because much like you, your starter is involved in the story. It’s as much it’s journey as it is yours.  This is shown in the fact that it can enter places called Den’s , these are puzzle rooms your unevolved starter can access throughout the game, here you play your stater trying to find treasure or switches and avoid being kicked out by the den’s owner…. but how can you play the cute little guy if your starter evolves? Well the truth is your starter doesn’t evolve… it digivolves…. well kinda!

Presentation

Afbeelding

It became clear to me that your starter could not just evolve from the get go!  That is because your starter is involved in cutscenes, not only does it’s model show up on the overworld sometimes, it also has a portrait in dialogue. Everyone you talk to does, making the dialogue in this game feel much more like a visual novel in terms of presentation. This makes dialogue a lot more present to read. Important characters show expressions making dialogues seem dynamic. Like your starter padding it self on the chest to show it is brave! Or give it a worried look on it’s face once the protagonist is struggling.  It would not make sense that they would draw all those portraits for all evolution stages for your starter at the beginning of the game right? Yet SmallAnt or another Pokétuber would just grind it out jut to give it a try! However this game makes the briljant choice to “evolve” your starter .. narratively. 

Afbeelding

The evil team of this universe is called Team Dimension, which is basically the sequel to team Rocket, but since they lost so much influence they use robots instead of criminals. These robots take on Daft Punk designs (even their theme does)  but when facing their elites, you end up getting washed. Faced with inevitable defeat a passion burns inside you as an item you found suddenly overflows with energy, and equipping it’s sister item to your Pokémon allows it to transform shapes. It’s a sequence that feels extremely much like Digimon. The fact that your starter does not just happen to have 3 forms  but 4 enforces that Digmon feeling even further. Your Starter can go back to it’s base form by losing it’s item.. so if you enter a den with your stage 2 shulong you just take it’s ring for a moment and send the little guy for a adorable stroll. This does mean your starter has to be on your team for all important story moments and those dens… which  makes the bonding so much stronger. 

The game goes for a Gen IV like look, much like Pokémon Uranium, but it does an even better job at it. The Eldiw Region has a very spiritual aspect to it. A religion differently then Arceus, one that feels much more in line with nature worship and a lot of villages you visit seem to be based on ancient times. There is a medieval Fairy Town, with knights in Pink Armors and a Gym puzzle where you have to entertain and host a tea party for a princess. There is an ancient egypt area where you have to bring down a false god and the gym puzzle is to explore a pyramid, and there is a Wild West style area  where you have to clear a haunted  Saloon and where the gym puzzles involve hunting some criminals as a deputy.  It all feels unique and much more deep. Every town plays a role in your story, every location has a story line and routes are often much longer and less throwaway than in official Pokémon games.  Not all Pokécenters look the same, they blend into their towns,  every time zone and area has unique wild Pokémon battle music to fit it’s current theme.. and so much more, the presentation of this game is truly sublime.

The Flaws

Of course this still is and always will be a Pokémon Fan game, which means it is not as polished as a main Pokémon game…even though we do not get floaty trees. The game can crash so it is important that you save often.  The English patch is not flawless and on four or five separate occasions I found characters suddenly speaking italian in half of their text to me as some dialogue simply was forgotten to be replaced. Awkwardly it happens in one of the final battle scenes against the dark forces, yet otherwise it’s not as bad.  The Daycare guy does it repeatedly but most times these are just one offs. Nothing too horrible. It is just these tiny things that made me remember I was playing a fan-game.. and if these did not happen along with some slowdown (which you can reduce by playing in the old engine by clicking on settings in the launcher)  I would have probably crowned this my favourite Pokémon game. 

It does have some flaws that did actively annoy me though. The first one is the inventory system.  For some reason the bag has been given separate controls of sorts to flip through. Being Q and W , which just doesn’t feel right to me! I hated using stuff in my bag during the entirety of my run. I never fully got used to it. The second issue I have with this game is not even a gripe as I can fully understand WHY they did it.. I just do not like THAT they did it.  A great many Fakemon in this region do not evolve by level up, which makes sense given how easy it is to actually level. However since the game is moderately hard, using unevolved pokémon will not get you that far. You need the power. There are a LOT of stone evolutions and a LOT of item evolutions in this game. Vroombug for example only evolves if you give it Spare parts, while Eevee can evolve into its new Eeveelutions Scaleon the Dragon Type and Bandeon the Sound Type by learning its Sound of Dragon Pledge moves. You hear the rumor from one guy while having to find the other guy to teach it the move.  If you want a fully evolved team you better talk to everyone!  There is a Wiki that tells you how pokémon evolve but it’s Italian only… I luckily have an italian friend who helped me or I would be one Pissy Princess.

To make up for that you have to talk to everyone though , they really went all out to make all dialogue interesting. If characters have boring things to say their names are oftenly references like Peach and Mario being two scientists that establish some world lore. Yet there are also some references that go very far. For example in one house I saw two couples at a table. A girl named Robin sat next to a guy named Barney who said his favourite Pokémon were Legen……wait for it ….dary.   While on the other side of the table Lilly set next to her partner Marshall, who was bummed out his friends made him give up his beloved hat.  While Upstairs I saw a depressed boy named Ted , wondering if he will ever find a special someone… on his desk, without explanation and without the model EVER being used elsewhere in the overworld was a Pinap Berry. Which is a reference to a very specific How I Met Your Mother episode. 

These references are everywhere, for example in an ancient temple I encounter Jojo’s Battle Tendency’s Pillar men!  That does not change the fact though that the evolution system gave me some anxiety. You can buy evolution stones fairly late in the game and by then you might have fallen in love with a new Fakemon and that other one never gets to live up to it’s potential, what if I missed a house and missed how to evolve my favourite team member. This anxiety was also there surrounding the crashes and the bag system felt like treading a needle at times… but if you play the game with google translate  and google to look up the evolutions you will have a blast. This is a pokémon game I would recommend to anybody! Even if you do not like Pokémon and just want a nice story based/anime esque game.. this is great!  This is the ultimate pokémon fangame and I honestly think that it shall hold this title for years to come. It might face some challenges, but through challenges it becomes stronger. Per Aspera Ad Astra.

Afbeelding

This genuinely is the best fan game I ever played, and since it is free, if you haven’t played it but like playing Pokémon I absolutely MUST recommend it to you! Just be sure to turn on “use old engine” in settings. This game really is THE pokémon game I always wanted. What is your favourite Pokémon Fan Game?! Have you played any?! How do you feel about Fakemon?! Tell me in the comments or dream about your ideal Pokémon. Because remember my sweeties! Friendship is magic but dreams are even more wonderful! Oyasumi!

SLEEPING ON 'EM - A Super Smash Bros. Wii U Jigglypuff Montage - YouTube

Yay! I am a Pokémon Princess: Pokémon Royal

Hear Ye Hear Ye, Princess Pinkie is here with a new Pokémon Post

My loyal guests and subjects, it is with the utmost delight that I am here to tell you about a Pokémon Fan Game that has eluded me for a while! I did not know of it’s existence until some sentai looking guy on YouTube told me this was among the best Pokémon fan games out there… he was not wrong!  Today I shall share my experience of the Pokémon Royal version with you!

Princess Pinkie in the Aristo Region

When I write this , I have only recently taken up the mantle of princess of Paradise Island , so I googled games in which you can be a princess. Not a lot came up, except for this super difficult Steam game with lots of stats and menus. I got bored and went looking for new Pokémon games to play!  Trough a YouTube Video I heard about Pokémon Royal! A game in which you play a princess.. or prince. As the youngest child of King Arthur and Queen Guinivere you are to embark on your very first pokémon journey… however this time.. if you win you do not just become the champion.. you the future king or queen! However for some strange reason, while you travel across the lands searching far and wide, something strange is happening, alternative forms of Pokémon show up.. not regional forms..but Pokémon from different times. It all seems to connect to a mysterious organisation named Team Knight! 

The Aristo Region features a classical Pokémon adventure, where you have to earn 8 gym badges, fight an evil team, can capture some legendaries here or there, and can capture pokémon from all 8 generations, as well as some counterparts for them of forgotten times. What’s more is the game isn’t as insanely hard as Pokémon Reborn, Insurgence or the likes, but instead ditches the “useless” stuff like worthless moves or “dead” abilities. It results in a fast paced Pokémon game that teaches you how to play at a semi-competitive level and think like a real trainer. The second gym already gives you Scald as a TM  which  is one of the best water type moves in the game and it really teaches you to keep a healthy balance between physical and special attackers, without feeling overly difficult.. it offers you plenty of variety but also shows you how a pokémon is properly kitted out.

The journey you take feels very much like Sword and Shield.. but from beginning to end basically let’s your monsters level from level 5 to right up to around 100 for the post game. When you get there though you are already around level 90.  The game throws you an exp share right away that works like the one in Pokémon Sword and Shield .. thus you can very easily get the team you want trough fairly minimum grinding Though keeping the challenge level of the orginal games with just a bit more oomph. The game features an original story that only uses Arthurian legend for namesake. Yes you will encounter Merlin, Morganna , Percival , Gallahad and Lancelot, but there is no magical sword there is no relation to the mythos .. it really is it’s own tale, that feels very Pokémon, not overly dark.. it completely feels like a legit pokémon game!  Which is nice for a change!  Fan games are either a lot darker or a lot sillier but this one gets the balance right.  Plus it does make me feel like a princess.

Pretty Princess, Silly Subjects

The game has been made by a fairly large group of people under the group of Norfolk Gaming.  They manage to create one of the best Pokémon regions I had the joy of playing trough. You bounce all across the map, unlock items to replace HM’s that willl grand you access to some part of the world but that path isn’t always in front of you. It really has puzzle elements and travel elements that remind me of Johto  and Hoenn and I mean that in the best way possible. We aren’t just walking circles, we trigger events that allow us to traverse a dynamic map! The battles are great , with trainers being much less bound to typings , unless it makes no sense otherwise (Swimmers due stick to water pokémon). The world feels alive, even bug catchers know to carry a pokémon that covers their weakness or so. 

As a result the game forces you to keep switching around in battles, healing items are a lot more sparce at least early in the game and revives aren’t available until after the fourth gym, which already is around the late level 30’s or early 40’s. This means the challenge isn’t so much in incredibly hard battles that constantly forces you to carry teams that are super effective against a specific type of trainer or gym leader, but rather invites you to build ONE team that covers everything and has some synergy amongst each other.. this is how I think Pokémon should be. I don’t enjoy those Kaizo roms. This makes you think.. yet still allows you to have fun and choose your own team…as long as it is at least semi functional. There aren’t much non functional Pokémon available anyway. No one would use shuckle for a game playthrough so why put it in the game… that’s this games motto and it makes  things great. The Temporal Pokémon, the special variants have super fun mechanics and puzzles are never a hassle so when it comes to your journey it’s such a delight.

For all the gameplay talent these developers had in their stable, they sincerely lacked pixel artists, their custom sprite work is  not good. When you see King Arthur for the first time you think… Oh boy.. this is gonna be a rough one… but no the game is great.. just the sprite work….and the name creativity I guess.   The third gym leader is a pirate, which for example uses Drake’s sprite.. but with a pirate head added to it.. but it doesn’t bland because colours aren’t adjusted. It just shows the creators aren’t sprite artists at all and at times it can really show compared to how polished the game is otherwise.  Most Temporal Pokémon are just recolours and they don’t always work.. with some great exceptions like my Hakomo’o!  Pink armored dragon yay!  But yes.. sprites can look a bit wonky and on area’s with special tiles the game can drop frames quite a bit. Which will be a constant reminder that this is a fan game, which is not a bad thing.. but some of these sprites would litterally take a minute or two to fix.. like Pirate Drake, or even King Arthur, he looks nothing like his back sprite or overworld variant.

Fit for a Queen

Like the models, the writing can be a bit hokey at times as well, plot twists are REALLY obvious and names of things are a bit to on the nose, no Morgana is not the leader of the evil team .. it’s still just names but seemingly innocent lines characters spout clearly show a hidden intention that is not revealed until much later.  There is a time travel element to this story that really reminded me of a movie about a time travelling prince, in fact the plot of this game is eerily similar to that movie.. but pokémonified.  It is not bad by any means but it is very by the numbers. It makes sense as a plot..but maybe it makes too much sense?! Every character has a counterpart it seems in the regular Pokémon world with your dad being a bit like the way Oak was originally intended and your brother being a Gary, even though his sprite is Hau… given how his mother and father look.. Hau did that happen *badum tsss quack*  While I point it out as a negative, this is really in line with how normal pokémon stories unfold though… and besides the lack of creativity here and there.. I really have no gripes with this game.

So much suddenly makes sense in this game, people actively mention that they would not like strangers in their house, but they welcome the Princess.. who may very well be their new queen, people are very friendly and helpful to you in this world as you are a somebody in this world.  So it’s not just.. “hey look a random 10 year old.. let’s give him a bike” .. no it’s OMA (Oh my Arceus)  the princess just walked into my bike store.. here have one of my bikes!  The whole Pokémon League and elite four thing is also much more a test to see if the Royal family is ready to defend the region! An elite four makes a lot more sense in a scenario like that.. as it is the gateway to a final tournament. People acknowledge that some parts of the world are more dangerous and have more dangerous pokémon so these areas are shielded from people who do not have enough badges, rather than them being locked because there is a sleeping pokemon in the way.

Areas and routes have much more a type bias with route 1 having bug and normal types, while route 2 may have some water pokémon and maybe some flying types.. The game starts you out with picking from a Dark, Fighting, Psychic core, with Zorua , Riolu and Espurr rather than the standard Grass Water Fire Core, which allows the routes to be more dynamic. Rather than hunting for random Pokémon you can hunt route 3 for a grass addition to your team, route 12 for a good ground type etc. This means you can build your party much , much more intentional with less clutter Pokémon. The Temporal Pokémon can diverge from these  biases though as do other event pokémon, which usually are good against upcoming gym leaders which makes exploring often worth your while as well, while the more generic pokémon you encounter often struggle against the gym leader.  For example when you cross the haunted forest, you’ll face the dark type gym leader next, when you travel through a rock Pokémon filled cave, you’ll fight the ground leader next.  However in case of the latter, you can find some event based water type pokémon by going off the beaten path!  I love this format! 

At the end of each track to a new town you encounter a repeatable trainer that can be challenged over and over again… so say you are stuck on the dark type leader you can go back to the route where you can find a lot of bugs or fighting pokémon, add it to your party then head back to the trainer right before the gym and repeat to make use of your exp share and level up your counter against said leader. Grinding can be knocked out within an hour that way meaning that even if you swap out your party a lot, you won’t end up putting THAT much time into grinding.. the game features a nifty speed up button that makes most grinding a matter of .. 30 minutes (provided you grind with at least some semblance of a plan).  I managed to beat the game in 5 evenings of playing with  the final stretch being a nice weekend day with a game I loved. This game has so many great ideas that it is worth picking up, and even if it doesn’t always stick to the landing of things it tries to achieve.. this game is a really great fit for any pokémon gamer who just wants another pokémon game! It might not be a Royal Flush.. but it is certainly a full house Queens over Kings!

Pinkie Plays: Final Fantas VI – Return of the Dark Sorcerer Episode 3 : Old Love

Hello Little Lights, I once more return to one of the more bizarre Rom Hacks I have played. My favourite Final Fantasy got transformed into a bizarre mix of RPG and Anime references. So far we recruited Cloud Strife, fought enemies from Dragon Quest and Disgaea and in the last episode we fought against Predator, Vega (from Street Fighter)  and of course Raditz! The heightened difficulty might make this a bit troublesome though! Let’s see how our adventures go this time and if we will go for a fourth instalment!.

It’s Boring Again

I just left from a fairly challenging dungeon so I expect the game to go lenient on us, yet the first enemy of the new area is a Mind Flayer, which takes a lot of violence to take down, two ki blasts, a poison nova and and Blade Beam from Cloud!  Why don’t I mention Aurora! Didn’t see anything? No she did not because she got turned into a pig! Now this is a change from the status Toad.. but I would think a Toad is a bigger punishment?! So why a pig?! Doesn’t  Gi Nattak, the creator of this Rom Hack know that frogs are better than pigs?! Except as pets!   Bulbasaur is a Frog and Tepig is a pig… and guess which one is the better starter! I do like the little light the mind flayer has on top of it’s staff though! I feed the party pig a Tulaberry and it turns back into Aurora.

I decided to level everyone up to at least level 12 and kind of make a promise to myself that in each new area i will gain one level for everyone… However I do spend very long grinding and getting this done!  However the result is pretty good! Aurora learns a spell that should petrify but for now seems to insta kill at the cost of costing a lot of Mana and Ronan learns a new combo.. as I try to master this new combo I  spend a fairly long time to familiarise myself with it, the shoulder buttons followed by up down seems simple but for some reason I kept messing it up! After what seems like a long time for search an early level however everyone is the level I want  them to be and I can enter the lair of the Crimson Blades and speak to Astral.

Unfortunately for me Astral is not the spirit thing from Yu-Gi-Oh ZeXal, I didn’t really expect it to be.. but that was the only Astral I know and with how this game has been going I would not even be surprised to fight the Robot Micheal Jackson from Moonwalker so who knows!  It’s just some fruity old wizard who upsets Aurora by talking about Pandora’s box though!  She got controlled by the slave crown and all that.. but once again I find myself a bit disinterested when the story takes itself so seriously. I know this stuff happens in the original game and I like it there but here it is just told much less adequately which comes from the lesser sound design 

Bonetrousle on a Rivier… with Rick James

This game shines best when it is being out of the box and here the creators are once more stumbled by their own ambition. Cloud begins talking about how someone important to him was killed by the Empire and that is kind of interesting.. is it Aerith?!  Locke had a sleeping beauty of his own … will Aerith be that person..does that mean Tifa will be Celes?!  The scene is ruined though by his second line “I joined the Crimson Blades to avenge “That Person” .. that’s not how you talk about people that are important to you! You address them with a proper pronoun.. I might be nagging here.. but this is annoying to me.. it just feels like a fake line to keep us in suspense. It feels written. FF VI was so organic.

I decide to let Aurora join the rebels without much issue and the river scene is next, for some reason the trees are blue  and the rocks are green.. it does feel nice and otherworldly and Ronin plays like a bunch of Moogles. He can inverse (shift the enemy to a backrow)  or cast Miracle which I think is a group heal but I am not fully sure what it does!  Choosing my directions I assume the choices will differ from the original so I go wild and pick! I do find some treasure underway but nothing all THAT special! The music here though  is killer! It has this Sega Genesis Vibe to it that I really really like! See this game is at it’s best when it is like this! I make my way down the river fully expecting a hard boss battle. I spare Aurora from using her magic!  So she can nuke the boss which normally is Ultros… but this time it’s… RICK JAMES?!!

No just kidding,  it’s Ultros.. whose saying he is Rick James! That’s ..random?!  Ultros does look a bit different though all orange like and more defined.. like in later editions. Bonetrousle plays as the boss theme! What the heck am I in for?! Turns out it’s nothing special! Ultros is a bit of a push over! It does spout a lot of referential stuff though. Boondock Saints, Lord of the Rings and much more!  He even calls people out on their class which is kinda cool!  Then the whole Not-Sabin gets separated from the group bit and that will lead to what normally is the Cyan meet.  Or I could play as Cloud and meet what would be Celes.  Thirdly I can play the main party and go back and go Fraust… that one I will save for last! ..I guess I will go Cloud’s adventure first! I assume this will lead to meeting Tifa. She seems to fill Celes role in more ways than one! 

Shape Shifters

So for the first part of Cloud’s Story I am going to have to do that weird item trading thing that happens in Final Fantasy 6.. however this time random NPCs are replaced with characters throughout gaming history. Shang Tsung wants a drink for example..why?! Not sure!  He fills no role but they edited the sprite to look like him! It just gets better after that though! Cloud buys a Silk Dress.. seeming very eager to buy it too!  When the sales woman asks him if it is for his girlfriend he just says.. yeah  something like that! Oooh this is going to be good! Little did I know it then.. but what follow would be a sequence of events so good I could not tear myself away!  So I am all writing this after  I stopped playing at this point! The goal here was simple.. find a merchant that gives you a Hourwatch,Give that Shang Tsungs grandson for access to another part of town, by the silk dress Cloud is known for.. a guard meanwhile has lost at cards and will let you on if you beat the guy who took it from him. From there on out you can go to the inn, beat a shady merchant for some rum and give that to Shang Tsung who gives you a riddle towards a secret entrance..

However there is so much more in town, the love returns, random houses have completely customised sprites such as the I am Error Guy from Legend of Zelda II.  He looks like a 16 bit rendition of the original who said it while it would have been way easier to just let another guy say it , the reference would have landed anyway.  There are little things like this everywhere. In the secret base Cloud transforms into his crossdressing form and he can investigate the enemy base. Inside there is a room for playing children. Much like normal..BUT, this time there is a Chrono Trigger pet in the room,  there is this gameboy creature that is a reference I do not get and there is a Yoshi doll on the table. Non of it has a function but it all moves and is interactable with. Then you find the Dungeons and my suspicion turns out to be true!  Tifa indeed does take the role of Celes!

Gameplay wise however she is a combination of Sabin and Setzer and Celes’s Magic. Tifa can cast a few good White Mage spells, such as Protect, Shell and Cure as well as some ice magic. She also can punch twice with both her weapons equipped. However Tifa also has Reels.. her Limit Break ability makes an appearance in this game so  the character feels sooooo much like Tifa. Get three boxing gloves in a row and you get Beat Rush as an attack, get three slimes in a row and you get Water Kick..  get a non matching combination and you get Lucky rabbitt a weak heal that also casts Esuna on the entire party clearing them of any negative effect. Tifa is really powerful in this game and I really like playing as her.  While her dialogue is a bit stale when it comes to seeing Cloud, they barely know each other in  this world, and she wonders why he cross dresses. You have to rescue some other prisoners before you leave and the key the enemy drops is the boss key from the legend of zelda. It’s not on screen for more than two seconds yet the original item was painstakingly replaced with a new item . Kudos .  During all of these events various Final Fantasy VII music plays. I love being a gamer!

The Trip to Fraust

After escaping town you’d think we would be just about done with the awesomeness, but no, we get two random Crimson Blades travelling with us. One is called Gus.. and the other.. I forgot his name already.. something like Winston. Winch.. Winny! It’s getting late and I got sucked in so I forgot to take a proper screenshot of his name!  Let’s call them Good Guy Biggs and Wedge for convenience sake!  GG Biggs has  the ability Mimic, which  allows him to Mimic whatever party member goes before him.. although at a bit lower power… this is awesome! It means I can cast Cloud’s Limit Break .. TWICE.. Tifa’s Reels.. Twice.. and well GG Wedge is a dragoon so he can leap up and come down.. and GG Biggs can copy that as well.  It feels so delicious!  Do I risk it all on the slots?! Those sure are my most powerful moves but there is risk involved, if I pull if off though I totally decimate the field and I love it.  It feels a lot easier to get pairs than with Setzer as well, I miss about 1 in three times I think  Which means that fighting with Reels is about as effective as attacking normally, with Reels more focussing on burst damage and normal attacking on reliability.

The final boss of the chapter is the iconic Guard Scorpion, the final  boss from Final Fantasy VII , while it’s appropriate boss theme plays as well. But that’s not all, it’s being pilotted by classical final fantasy monster Tonberry… it’s so hard to notice but my friend pointed it out to me while we were discussing how awesome this is!  Suddenly that Dragoon Jump ability is super useful because the Guard Scorpion targets people for it’s more powerful attacks.  Jump.. kind of works like fly in Pokémon so imagine seeing your enemy use Solar Beam on you and then you choose Fly.. dodging the Solar Beam next  turn. I felt nostalgic seeing those attacks being rendered in 16 bit.. and after that false start I had a blast with the gameplay session I had.  When this game is paying tribute to stuff it is amazing! Cloud and Tifa have a cute interaction before leaving and now I have to pick if I will follow Ronan’s story or Aurora’s. I will go with Ronan’s story next and that will be our next episode!

That episode will be an important one as well. For now I have established that the content that Gi Nattak makes to highlight our amazing geeky history is amazing.. but the story content they create themselves.. is much less captivating. If I enjoy Ronan’s story I might play this game until it gets too hard for me to progress (I know I will hit that point)  if I do not like it I will play the game up to the Esper Transformation and remember the amazing refferences fondly… but I will move on to a new project cancelling the show after a season finale as it were.. soon we will find out…but not today!

All Posts in this Series!

Pinkie plays Poirot with Pokémon: Theft on The Magnet Train Express

Hello Island Guests, I played another Pokémon Fan game! A Detective one at that!  Based on the Hercule Poirot Novel, Murder on the Orient Express I shall have to investigate some thievery shennanigans on my way too of from Goldenrod city! I can’t completely tell which one.. but in this one hour romp I can most certainly  tell you I will be investigating a “Theft on the Magnet Train Express”

Going for Gold

Theft on the Magnet Train express is a fun fan rom game  that is set in the world of Pokémon Gold and Silver.  Using Gen 5 Battle mechanics.. but deliciously old school 8 bit graphics we immediately get something that distinguishes itself from all the other fan games. For the vast majority of fan games and rom hacks out there all use the gameboy advance (Gen III)  tilesets and sprite work.  So from the get go we get a very unique game. This comes with it’s own strengths.. such as having a great atmosphere, the excitement to see sprites of Generation newer generations get a downgrade to 8 bit and the delightful nostalgia factor.  There really are very few games feeling this unique when it comes to the rom hacking scene.It does come with some flaws as well though. This is arguably a non issue for those who do not dabble in Pokémon fangames on a regular basis.. but among all fan games there usually is a consensus on how these games are controlled.  z,x and c are your main keys to operate menus and save while a or s activates sprint and either the f-keys or the keys surrounding s are used for registered items.

Theft on the Magnet Train express uses x to cancel actions but spacebar and enter as confirmation buttons. This is quite annoying.  It’s very manageable but it feels very unnatural for me. There is this muscle memory and during that entire hour of playing this game it never really grew on me. I managed to pull it off but it never felt as comfortable as z , x , c. Now I could try again for the multiple endings this game has.. as it has 3 of them but  this branching path does not come into play until the very last moments, almost making it more feel like an Endscreen difference than a different route. Which isn’t bad ..but it makes back to back replayability low. I will go back to experience the other two endings and find the hidden Pokémon.. I just won’t go back right now.. or anywhere this week! It’s one of those “I have an hour to spare.. let’s give that another shot type of deals’.So while I do commend them for choosing the harder and untrodden path you can sense and feel that the lack of proper assets kind of played a factor into making this game. Going for Gold .. made it a title only worth the silver.

Inspector Pinkie on the Case

In this game you play a woman named Ellen. After a blackout occurs in the magnet train from Goldenrod to Saffron city…. or the other way…  Ellen goes out to investigate what is wrong and stumbles upon the best detective in the Pokémon world.. Looker! I love him and his theme has been given a 8bit rendition which made me squee with joy!  There is a lot of love for the franchise in here and it shows in the tiny details. He challenges you for a Battle and I discover I have a Shiny Vulpix on my team. I beat the lookers Croagunk.. which I love because it is his signature Pokémon, and he names his deputy researching the strange events on the train.  I will have to make way through the dangerous carriages of the train that are invested with trainers , Pokémon and even Team Rockett to solve a mysterious theft.. of something worth over 4 million Poké-Dollar.

Much more than just Pokémon battling you are engaged with solving this mystery! You do this by finding a certain number of items in each carriage.. Looker is such a good detective he exactly can expect how much evidence you can find in each carriage furthering your case.  Some people want to battle you and with 30 ultra balls on you.. you also have a chance to start catching your own squad of Pokémon to assist your Vulpix. Some follow the wild grass mechanics but for the special ones.. you will have to go through some effort. What makes this game shine so much is that the story is not told through you to the things you need to do.. but through the things you CAN do. The Evidence you find will not cue the player in on what’s going on.. it all seems random.. but then if you check that other bookcase and find some exposition you suddenly start to piece stuff together.  Depending on how well you piece things together you may get an ending for better or worse!

Inspector Pinkie is on the Clock!

Because of how the game is structured it let’s YOU do the work. It drops hints on what is going on, or where to go next but it never holds your hand.  That one character that mentioned an item may become relevant three carriages later and you have to go back.. but where was he or she?! The game doesn’t tell you… it just whispers to you.. did you not talk to a person mentioning said item earlier?! The same style is chosen for the battles. Every Pokémon hits hard!  You have a Vulpix so it’s defensive stats are not high even though it levels all wild Pokémon by level 10. It brings this new level of strategy to the table, you can easily knock out wild pokémon but trainers can easily knock you out as well. Even the wild Pokémon can!  So you are going to have to strategize. Use Will o Wisp to burn and weaken physical attackers, yse Payback when you are being outsped.. go for high damage with flamethrower. You have a lot of options.. but you will also need them. You will need to work for your success.

The game never gets insanely hard but you are not used to having a pokemon with 0 IV and EV investments at level 35..  so the game feels weird. You need to work for success. From beginning to end you need to keep your head screwed on straight.  There aren’t a bunch of  healing items you can buy.. you are stuck on a train you will have to do with whatever you find. Burn your resources too much and you might get a bad end. I ended up catching a Sneasel for my team which I named Tracy and a Skiploom which I named Nancy.. which later evolved into Jumpluff.  Tracy would use Hone claws to boosts it’s attacks and use Beat Down to strike down hard while Nancy would use sleep powder, mega drain and leech seed to stall my opponents to their doom!  Vulpix would inflict burns  and deal big damage with Flamethrower and Extra Sensory! I also had a Lickitung named Sherlick  but he was just there to power up Tracy’s beatdown! I would have loved to use him.. but I could not make him useful enough other than giving me more leech seed stalls and bigger Beat Downs! All of it felt more “designed” and “clever” than my average Pokemon teams!  So I like that here you really have to put in work.

Riding the Rails

While I do not mind putting in the work .. the game at times can feel a bit to chore like. That is mostly due to it being set in a train. You find enough evidence to unlock the next set of carriages go back.. talk to Looker..  and now you can access the next part.   There is a road block so you need to go back.. grab an item.. make progress again, find the evidence, go back to Looker and so forth. It is all due to the fact that you are only on a train. It makes for a great setting for a mystery but too many of your events are contained in these new rooms. I would have loved it if old rooms now would trigger new events as well.. maybe there is something going on in the engine room, perhaps some earlier passengers are getting rowdy and you have to pacify them with a battle. Give us a reason to go back to these locations other than to just fetch an item. Looker is doing his own investigation while you do yours, have him get into trouble, have him instigate an event instead of you it would help the world feel more alive. Other Pokémon games do this as well. In fact even in Gold and Silver .. other characters than you “further’ the plot and you stumble upon it. This game lacks that element and as a result.. it feels a bit “colour by numbers”.

The mystery is also not THAT nicely paced. About during the middle part of the adventure you will have all the clues you need to figure out what is actually going on and while that might actually be by design I think it could have been paced a bit better. Let that one bookcase stand in a carriage near the end not near the middle. Maybe I am too trained into these type of stories that I  figured out what was going on..but I think most of you would get it right away as well.  A good thing about that though is how it is all very much discoverable with in game resources.. you do not need to know lore about Carkoal or about the Magnet train from Gold to understand what is happening here. It is a satisfying plot that does feel like it can be lifted from an actual Pokemon game.. thus not being overly dark.. it feels like it can be a part of the world. Some fun characters are created both in the present and the past of Pokémon so while the ride is very enjoyable it arrives at the second to last station early.  Being early can be amazing..but since it’s not the station you need to disembark from you don’t get the benefits.. you know the train will just sit there and wait arriving at the end as scheduled. You can appreciate the environment a bit more.. but in the end it’s a bit of a  moot advantage.

The Usual Suspects

To properly find out how this Pokémon detective game did we need to check how it functioned as a Pokémon Game, as a Mystery and as a game in general.  Let’s start with the latter because that is where it scores the highest. For the hour that this game is long it is nice to see a non- hand holding game that lets you explore some rooms, uncover evidence but also sleuth for the REAL story yourself.. as you will notice inconsistencies. I really love that part of this fan game and I think this is my favourite short fan game all together.  As a Pokémon game however this game falls short. It is great that they use the gen II tileset but  Pokémon it plays into my nostalgia so hard and the music in 8 bit is FANTASTIC! I LOVED LOVED LOVED.. that..  yet it also comes with some hefty downsides. The Pokémon count is REALLY low! They had to make a lot of old looking sprites and while they do look amazing I would have wished for at least a few more.. Pokémon in it’s very concept is something of abundance… and while I do get that what I want makes no sense on a train I just don’t think the setting and core concept are that great of partners. 

As a mystery it offers a very satisfying story and the way the mystery unfolds before you , I have rarely seen done better.  Usually we all get all the important clues highlighted and here the important stuff is in the subtext! I adore that! We are just given a bit too much stuff to uncover that subtext. Some dialogue is a bit to on the nose. There are several characters that are aware of a situation that really tell you how everything works. It would have been more satisfying to encounter them closer to the end.. or have them experience the same confusion everyone in the train is experiencing.. enough to make you feel “hey something isn’t right here.. we got two conflicting stories here” At least it made me feel SUPER DUPER smart for figuring it out so fast!  So that is nice.. but I loved this little romp so much that I wished I ended up just a bit more surprised.. and that’s what makes me grade this game with a medium high score. It is still one of the better short games out there.. when it comes to Pokémon.. yet it also misses some crucial elements.. it hyped itself up in the beginning..  just to let it weaken in the mid-section!  it is passable by all accounts.. and it looked like it was going to knock it out of the park.. but the landing rough!  I would love to see them tackle another short detective game in the same vein in a bit more open setting. That way it is easier to miss clues, put in more pokemon and get that extra diversity! A nice demo for a hopefully bright future! Please make another Looker game soon guys!

The Biggest Pokémon Fan Game Pinkie Ever Played: Pokémon Rejuvenation

Hello again my sweet island guests! Yes this will be my second post of the day!  As we will do that now!.. Not always but I am for it!  While I try to do an animini each day I will also try to keep up my regular content…with the option to more freely skip one of my bigger posts here and there! So strangely one to two posts a day is most likely going to be less work! Those hours saved I can invest in this Pokémon Fan Game I have been playing! Pokémon Rejuvenation.

Pokémon What?!

Pokémon Rejuvenation is a HUUUGE pokémon fan game from the creators of Pokémon Reborn.. that Pokémon game with hookers, suicides, murders and pokémon being tossed into acid. While I loved the game for it’s dark tones, in hindsight Pokémon Reborn might have been a bit needlessly Edgy. Having a criminal team member cut a gym leader in half is fine and all.. but tossing her pokémon in the volcano and forcing her bisected upper half to watch her pokémon melt.. was a bit much.  Seeing a gym leader lose it all after alianating his daughter is fine.. and then him commting suicide ..does bring awareness that these are actual humans sure… but having his corpse plummet into the room of his daughters best friend, who then goes catatonic and put into an Asylum where she recieves Electroshock therapy by electric pokemon torturting her… might be overdoing it a bit.

Rejuvenation gives us the pleasure of having a slightly more “contained” story.  There still are deaths….but they are more so implied. The game brings some elements of magic to the story. People using the power of Arceus for themselves, people finding abilities through ancient spells to compete with pokémon a bit and people utilizing the more advanced technology and pokemon powers more into their everyday lives. Thus this game becomes more like a classical Pokémon story but made for an adult demographic. You play a main character that is significantly older than 10 years old as well and more in 16 year old to young adult range. In this game your mother gets kidnapped by a cult and the ship you are on gets sunk by the evil Team Xen. This attack seems to tie into you or your mother.. but you have no idea why!  There is also a connection to a sacrificial and apocalyptic cult that sends people to Arceus..for this world is certainly doomed. A young girl is trapped to relive this cycle of being sacrificed over and over again…but maybe in your generation she fights back.

Like in Reborn you can choose your own prefix and He/Him, She/Her, They/Them , separately from your avatar. This is always nice, though only important characters will really address you as the correct gender. Most characters will address you Gender neutral… which is still better than the endless being called him of other fan games. The game also has another big advantage over it’s older brother and that is… EASY mode.  Yes I know. .. that sounds like a babies way out but if you ever played Reborn and like me do not want to have to IV and EV train everything and carry 18 different teams and level them up.. this is a godsent.. and while the game indeed is easy compared to Reborn, next to the official Pokémon games easy mode still provides more than a challenge. With many special field types like in reborn affecting your attacks.. it still provides plenty of chances to be tactical for you and your enemies. With some confidence I can say that this is THE Pokémon Fan game for Adults…maybe next to Pokémon Fire Red Rocket Edition.

The Trainers

That is a lot of praise for me to give to a game I haven’t even completed yet. However after spending over 60 hours in the game, and probably over 70 by the time you read this, I have a fairly good impression what this game is about. one of its major strengths are it’s characters. During your journey you encounter a lot of trainers that seem to be based on the archetypal pokémon characters.  For example there is one boy who really wants to be the very best.. like no one ever was… but he doesn’t really have the skill to back it up. As a result he gets into a lot of trouble and is disillusioned and somewhat bitter. We encounter him a few times and we have to make choices…at one point we face a Gymleader of a xenophobic town.. she staged a play to show that outsiders can be powerful and inspiring.. right before the battle we face and defeat him and get a choice whether or not to let him face the gym leader before us. However there is too much at stake.. an entire town might never trust outsiders if we let the boy go first.  So we have to step on his dreams.

Then there is the poison gym leader called Venam. She is a brash girl living with her mother..but she is extremely loud and a bit Tsundere, we see how in a way she is similar to the character of Misty but instead of being an anime character we do get a lot of exposition on why she is the way she is. We get motivations that interest us in her as an adult. She tries to break free of her mold.. but that results in her mother kicking her out.  She has to deal with things like an adult.. like how is she going to survive and pay for food. All of it contributes to her character. We also have a battle girl whose father works for the criminal team. We see her believes being shaken and see her go on a journey  that fits someone who is on such a journey…much more than just doing the gym challenge she is doing her journey as a little soul search. Then there is you as the character. While you do not have THAT much development the way your journey across the gyms is being done is great. You are facing an evil organisation..of tremendous power.. you do not take the Pokémon Journey to be the champ.. no you use that journey as a measuring stick for your abilities. To see if you are good enough to face those who wronged you!

The game offers you a few moral choices which influence the world around you to an extent. Most of it is by experiencing the story but the game also offers you a subquest  system. For example you have to deliver a love letter from one guy to another.. and include medicine.. However if you are like me and are too poor to do the quest at that time you end up seeing them becoming friends rather than lovers. A psychic girl who has powers akin to those of trainers in the main games.. can’t help but abuse her powers, they corrupt her to an extent.. not into a bad person.. but into a different one all the same. Each location you visit and all important people you encounter have logic behind them. A city close to the woods is built from Lumber, a city worshipping Giratina over Arceus has found themselves being the subject of religious persecution in the past.. however while the rest of the world grew up.. and grew past their old bosses these people never could. We really get a WORLD we treat trough.. not just a map!  We even get Shadow Pokémon you can snag and purify! So it just about brings everything Pokémon ever offered in a single cohesive world as well.

The Pokemon

This game uses the classical pokémon up to generation VII , so no Galar Pokémon… right now.. the game is still being updated so who knows they might arrive soon! Some Galar music already made it into the game.  Much like Reborn the game introduces some new Mega Evolutions and their own variety for story events called Breach Pokémon. These are pokémon from a different Dimension that function like boss encounters throughout the game. Movesets of Pokémon have been slightly altered to be less “broken” and not give you access to anything overpowered early game. Sometimes enemies get their own signature moves. For the most part though they do remain the same. This does mean that to an extend you can use Serebii to help you build a team to encounter some obstacles. However that is not the way I like to play it.. because this game also has custom shinies. These are VERY well done shinies and almost all are unique and vibrant.. you’ll WANT to see a shiny and you can.. because shiny encounter rates are at almost 1/100.. compared to 1/8192.  So I play this game using only shines.. I only hunt the first I find per route and then I have to move on.. easy mode allows me to play this way and I am having a blast discovering these new forms.

Trade evolutions have been fixed and as you go along pokémon get increasingly higher base stat totals.  Which means that if you have a new shiny.. you’ll most likely want to put it on your team and some of your old one end up phasing out.  With the exception of a few statics here and there ..(which are pokémon you can see in the overworld and can only encounter once)  you slowly upgrade your team, your flying bug type vivillon gets traded in for the flying fire type Talonflame.  Your Ambipom gets traded in for a Traveller and so on. You are constantly upgrading your team and even though this game features a lot of mandatory grinding the high shiny encounter rate and the fact that you are always upgrading keeps the game fun.  With the difficulty on easy you can still use Pokémon you really like..as long as it isn’t Shuckle or Dunsparce ,yet you are very much encouraged to have a team larger than six. You swap out your pokémon, and to facilitate this there are pokémon switching stations everywhere! To help you train new team members or give you a more tactical advantage.

Grinding is made very doable by giving you access to a speed up mode, and high level wild encounters. In fact most wild encounters have higher levels than the trainers you encounter. The trainers however use more solid strategies. Each gym caps your level at a certain point after which in easy you can’t progress and on higher difficulties makes your Pokémon rebel against you…which you can undo by feeding them reverse candy. So you can not over-level either way.While it is pretty doable to level your main team with story content, if you need a specific pokemon or encounter an upgrade to your team you  can grind those up within a few minutes. You get the Exp Share early and grass encounters give plenty of XP so the creatures in this world really fit and facilitate the game.  Habitats also make sense if you know the pokémon. For example inside cities you will encounter doves, cats and trash eating pokemon, while the wooden cottage type of village has plenty of bugs. It does do better with this logic than the actual games so hey good on them! And if you don’t like hunting Pokémon.. there are a fair few achievements you can hunt to buy battle items for your Pokémon.

The Atmosphere

So this game provides a great and vibrant world,that feels much more like a living pokémon world than most officially produced worlds, with exception for stuff like Twilight Wings for example,  and they offer the perfect biological diversity in that world to be exactly the game they want to be.  This is Pokémon for adults. This is also reflected in just about everything else.  The music is stellar, recomposed tracks from all the other games, but those rethreads are amazing and SO atmospheric.  The controls are the standard RPG maker controls that are used for just about every other fan game I ever played, with a few extra conveniences such as a soft reset button and up to four registered items being assigned to the F-Keys. The game expects a certain type of player, someone who is passionate about pokémon and geekdom in general and it facilitates towards that rather than offering full on accesibility. Which is great… this is a fan game.. out on the internet for free.

My Graveler’s shiny pattern for example is based on Steven’s Universe, other shinies refer to some other products geeks will likely have seen or at least heard of. There is a museum in the game and the art on the walls are Gen I sprites of Pokémon.  Dialogue has subtle references to movies , anime or other geeky matters without being too obnoxious and  in  your face. Everything this game does oozes that is is made for people like me. It takes a heavy pro LBGTQ stance with you encountering many gay or bisexual characters and it being made a non issue. We get no Big Gay Al, or a gay couple getting better treatment in the story than other characters.. they are just a part of the world. It all has a great atmosphere, almost as if you are at a convention.. as a geek you understand all these characters, either from a cosplayers perspective or deeper down.

The game manages to use technology in a much more sensible manner than the regular pokemon games. Spinny panels are a thing.. but they exist not as a puzzle in this world they exist as a security measure.. they send you over an electric surface that will paralyse you if you do not know the password to turn it off.. or an alarm tile.. will not just send a pokemon towards you..it will get you captured. Gameplay and atmosphere are interwoven in this game. A puzzle never is there just for the puzzle’s sake. If a pokemon traps you in their lair and you have to do a jump puzzle.. it’s not just doing a jump puzzle.. it’s the collapsed area of an old passage that said pokémon have turned into a place for them to play it’s layout exisits for a reason in game as well. Often the game answers these things right about as questions pop in your head, this game knows the kind of person you are and uses that to deliver a potent package.

The Negatives

The game isn’t perfect, there are a few minor issues such as the fact that during a puzzle with some followers you are able to trap yourself.. if you save it then and there you might have to restart the game. I also experienced slowdown during my shiny hunts  if I was watching a youtube video alongside it.. so while it’s not a big issue.. this game really wants you to shiny hunt and not being able to have something to distract you can be tedious with longer encounter strings.  The game doesn’t always play fair some bosses see, to use gen I like AI that chose moves based on your input. Gym Leaders often have custom moves that can at times be brokenly OP if you do not have an encounter. Yet these are all very minor issues.

One bigger issue I have though is the lack of a journal. Where regular games are mostly a track from A to B and then to C and so on… this game has a lot of “Did you hear that Venam was training with a new move” kind of hints. Oftenly these lines are only ushered once so if you come out from a battle with speed up on and you miss an important line of dialogue there is NO way to retrieve it and find out where you need to go next.  This would be fine if you did not have to backtrack as much as you do. You do visit old cities on a regular basis and thus your next step can be anywhere around the HUGE world map.  So it’s best to keep a little notepad lying around if you do not play regularly. Nothing would suck as bad as forgetting you have to speak to this person two towns back next time you play.. and then a week later you forget.

Another issue I did encounter more then once is that some NPC’s are placed in front of objects you need to interact with. I am not sure if this is a part of the puzzle because if you look REALLY well you can just barely make out a few strange pixels behind said character but it would be quite a stretch to call it noticable. There game has a forum where you can search or ask for answers but the player base isn’t THAT big, you could be stuck for a while.  Some characters require materials like Shards as payment like the difficulty adjusting guy you can meet in the first town..however it’s not made very clear that he needs shards. He says he can give you a free difficulty change the first time.. so if you think Easy is to simple you can switch..but if you are like me and then realise that Normal is so much harder to a point it’s not as fun for me… you can not change it back until you obtain shards after the fifth gym. Luckily I had not saved since changing .. .but the game can be obnoxiously vague!

The Score

I still think the Rom Hack of Pokémon Rocket Edition is better for the hardcore pokémon fan, the little insights in the official story is much more appealing to everyone, this is much more a do your own thing  kind of situation where they basically create a whole new alternative world with pokémon.  I do very much enjoy that myself but it is a bit “novel”-like  there is a lot to read and not a lot of reading you can skip either. Since these people talk like normal humans they will not neatly end with the line where to go next. They will say bye.. or thanks for helping out last… which will be the line on repeat so prepare to read! 

The flaws it has though in no way hold a candle to the great atmosphere it has, the briljant way everything seems to be connected and the almost flawless pokémon/world design.. I mean Pokémon design as in.. who lives where. This is definitely a treat to play for both inexperienced as well as experienced trainers IF you at least manage to comprehend the typing chart a little bit.  This game treats you like a gamer.. like someone who is capable of forming a strategy and using their obtained knowledge of pokemon in a meaningful manner. This is a pokémon game for me… and I can even play a girly trainer with pink hair!
This is THE game for me! This is Pokémon for adults… playing it does feel rejuvenating.

Mutations and Surf Ninja’s : Pokémon Uranium Review

Hello Island Guests, Today we are finally back to our normal content! If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed I completed another Pokémon Fan Game recently!
This time it’s time for for a very powerful Pokémon game that is also a bit toxic! It is time for Pokémon Uranium.

Pokemon Uranium is an RPG maker fan-game filled with Fakemon but also houses a handful of the originals, which are either given an extra evolution like Dunsparce , Corsola or Primeape or are now given a Mega Evolution, Like Arbok  and Whimsicott.  We also start in an entirely new Region called the Tandor Region which I must say is a pretty interesting region to travel through, despite  few flaws.. like it has two maps and you can’t fly from one to another.  Which is annoying since the Pokémon League and move Deleter are on different maps. The  game  shows us some interesting new features such as HM gadgets that render these pesky moves obsolete once you have overcome a few challenges that require the move, battles with special rules like being unable to use items and even has a few bad endings.

That is right you can die in this Pokémon game. In fact.. the whole region can die if you perform poorly! With an engine that is mostly based around Diamond and Pearl  or at least the tileset this is also a better looking game than 90% of the Pokémon Fan games out there. As Diamond and Pearl is the fourth generation game..with DS assets while the majority of fangames uses Ruby and Sapphire! The story is darker and a bit deeper but still feels quite pokémon esque unlike for example Pokémon Reborn which  goes much further. Still this game feels quite unique and then we haven’t even discussed the main unique feature of this game. 


Most Pokémon games try to have their one unique thing they introduce at least. Be it Double Battles, Contests, Mega-Evolution, Dynamax there is almost always something. This game follows that trope and in doing so feels more like a real pokémon game that plenty of others.
Where normal rom hacks or fan games usually mimic the style of one game or another, Pokémon Uranium introduces a new mechanic that makes it feel more like a hypothetical new generation game that stays fairly true to the core game. I could see this be a  generation between Gen IV and Gen VI. Their fakemons are mostly cleverly designed..with some stinkers but overall a strong lineup.. and their  special feature. Nuclear Pokémon.

Nuclear is a typing that can be occur on pokémon and replaces their second typing. Nuclear attacks are called stuff like Gamma Ray or Half Life among a few others and are  Super Effective on ALL Pokémon types except nuclear, but never doubly so.  Yet every other type can hit them super effectively as well. Nuclear types are super powerful.. but a pokémon that went nuclear (like pokémon that also exist in another variant)  will disobey you as if you do not have any badges.. so they are very tricky to use!  Until a later point in the game, yet the also counter any typing shortage your team might have! A double edged sword.

Overall I had a pleasant journey through the Tandor Region and a nice adventures. That is mostly due to the aesthetics this game has. It looks really beautiful for a fangame. I love 80% of the new pokémon and  some of these fakemons I might have a trouble with letting them go as Real Pokémon. They are that real to me.  Fakemon like Owten who is a pokémon you encounter very early game really feels like it could be something you find in the games.  Most of the team I ran during my Uranium Journey had those traits. The black and green design of all the Nuclear Pokémon is also very good and help this game have it’s own distinct visual style!

Instead of a female or a male trainer you can choose a masculine, feminine or androgynous looking sprite and choose the way you wish to be referred as in dialogue! A nice little touch,  that makes that can really help you relate to your trainer a bit more.  All these sprites feel unique and have a healthy dose of personality.  I choose the most bright looking sprite and while human art from the front isn’t always great, the quality of the backsprites in this game is amazing! I like them a lot better than most of the other sprite work, which weirdly encourages me to capture stuff that have lesser artwork to check out if their back sprite is any good. 

The music is also very pretty while there isn’t to much original music in the game all of these pieces have been rearranged and fit their environment beautifully! Gen IV had a bit this mechanical feel ot their sound and here it feels a bit more natural at least for the cities and exploration .. which works great because when you face Uranium Pokémon or go into battle against trainers it gets that “electric” quality this really  makes you feel the contradictions of a 11 year or 12 year old to venture into the world versus the harshness of reality when it comes to battles.

If you lose the wrong battles.. you don’t get send back to a pokémon center no you get a message that your senses faded away and you were never heard from again. You are dead! Meanwhile outside combat you collect cute creatures explore luscious jungles, white sand beaches and beautiful cities! Tandor has a very interesting geographical layout filled with all sort of unique feeling locations! It doesn’t feel like a moved around Sinnoh.. this feels like it’s own thing. That is what this game does REALLY REALLY well! It feels like Pokémon throughout..but it also feels like it’s own thing! Looks-wise, soundwise, onewise! This feels like a Pokémon game you want to play.

For the most part this is also true about the games story!  It has its own feeling to it while keeping enough of the tone of the original to not immediately feel as a fangame.  The game starts inside a nuclear power plant. Your mother Lucille is tending to a station when a Meltdown suddenly becomes imminent. While the plant is evacuated she dives into a room to do something and then the power plant explodes.. and your mother is never heard of again.. and we skip a few years into the future! Your dad once a loving family member now has become cold and distant.. consumed by his duties as a Pokémon Ranger and you are raised by your elderly aunt.

When professor Bambo’o is recruiting two new research assistants you finally get of your aunt’s back and start a journey to win all eight gym badges but also investigate what is happening at the Power Plants..as they all begin to explode and poison the region. A mysterious entity by the name of Curie..who speaks in green letters for some reason.. is gather Uranium to power up her Pokémon Urayne so it can plunge the region into years of darkness. It feels a bit if Fallout met Pokémon.. but the rules and consequences of the Pokéverse still mostly apply. The story feels dark but still makes classic choices honouring it’s roots.

While the main story seems like.. any pokémon plot really! This story is quite a bit better executed. Where in Red and Blue we only learn about Mewtwo very late in game, the sense of things going on, the ideas of where the story is going is present from the first moments. Dialogue comes back later, a character trait early game will play a role later on.. or sets a character up for growth. It feels like a much less “static” story as it is in most pokémon games. Things do do not happen because the plot demands it, things happen because of earlier things set in motion. A character makes a mistake based on events that happened before.  It all feels more logical and rewarding.

Your rival in this game Theo, might be one of the best rivals I have ever seen in a Pokémon game. He starts out from a super annoying whiny kid but due to the events of the story he is forced to grow up fast. The game also establishes a sense of time passing.Theo ages up a bit during the adventure, making it feel much more a story that spans months than it feels like a story that spans days.  His journey makes ours even more impressive! Quite well done! Other clever ideas like implementing a pokémon speech translator also gives you a chance to do things you  can not do in other pokémon games and allows for some interesting side stories. 

Unfortunately the writers are their own worst enemy. While world building is quite consistent there are a few characters that fall so aggravatingly out of tone it drags you out of the story. I do mind Garlikid, the pokémon super hero as he is actually kind of cute.. but when you finally get the HM for Surf and need to make your way to a city that is basically Venice in name and look, you suddenly encounter Surf Ninjas..out of nowhere. They do not fit the world but are still there. While I would not mind them to be played for laughs for a bit this goes on and on. Eventually you become the Hokage of the Surf Ninja Clan and they rescue you from Pirate Jack.

Then there are characters that are go like Ai I am G1RL G4M3R bo11iii!  I do not mind fourth wall breaking pokémon games.. like Pokémon Clover but not when you try to tell this story this way.  You build such an impressive world and then you put in this humor that doesn’t connect with the world but instead with the people reading the text.  Eh.. I can’t be and immersed in a world AND enjoy fourth wall breaking humor at the same time.  That would be as if Deadpool suddenly was placed in Lord of the Rings. Humor in a dark game is great, it can relieve the tension and keep the story more digestible but some of the Meta humor here doesnt work. You can turn on L33T speak as the actual in game language, which reminds me of of the unlockables of old..but never did it clash this much with the product it was in! Luckily this only effects mostly the second act of the game but still it’s a shame. Yet it is no where near as bad as it’s biggest flaw.


The game so far is amazing , except for a pesky flaw this game so far is one of the amazing ones in it’s set up.. technically it is very impressive, though the game can really experience some frame drops and tends to slow down a bit. Which would not have been that much of a problem except for one element of this game is truly off.  That unfortunately is the gameplay. This game is INSANELY grindy. In an attempt to raise the difficulty of this game I think the enemies raise in level so fast that I resorted to cheating in a xp boosting item for the sake of being able to review this game without having to grind for hours .. due to a lack of a speed up button, unlike most rom hacks and even some fan games. 

Even with a Lucky Egg for all my team members (which boosts experience to 150%)  I ended up so underleveled that I barely could take down a pokémon in the grass without losing a pokémon. The routes between cities are very long, there were routes where I really had to avoid trainer battles until later, just so I would not run out of usable moves on my team. Being underleveld really eats at your power points more .. so often even when I was at 75% of a route, I had to backtrack to the last city to heal and get PP back and defeat the remining trainers for experience. At the Pokémon League I was 8 levels behind.. on my strongest pokémon and I did not run away from wild encounters all that much either. If you do not cheat you basically can not swap Pokémon if you encounter a new more interesting one.. and in a Fakemon game where every pokémon is new. .you kinda want to do that.

A fair few evolutions require trade, a special item, a unique move or whatever so if you really want a good team you’ll find yourself being forced to use guides a lot. Because you are so underleveld you need to play flawlessly or grind for hours and hours on end.  This game cleverly chose to let most pokémon only evolve once so they can have more diverse fakemon to it rather than 3 times the same one slightly different.. now you only need 2.. yet this results into the big flaw that XP per encounter is relatively low..Fully evolved pokemon offer more xp but since there are so many evolution lines.. encountering a fully evolved pokémon is much harder.

Even at level 41 you still encounter basic pokémon that just evolve 1 level after you capture them. Because evolutions are cool to see. Yet it still means if you defeat it in combat it’s bad xp. Movesets of pokémon are usually really good and diverse, borderline competivie by default which in turn means.. if your pokémon can not one-shot everything .. they are going to take a lot of damage.. making the grinding even less fun because now you also have to constantly spam items or run back to the pokécenter. I do not mind this increased difficulty for trainer battles as those can be strategised by using typings.. however with grinding you just try to put experience on a specific monster so with movesets this good.. you’ll take a lot of damage.. since grinding is needed.. backtracking is needed and so the game spirals downwards fast.

That being said there is nothing wrong with running an underleveled team and to be fair the game gives you a lot of money , which can be used for healing items, it also gives you the best easily findable  Technical Machines I’ve ever seen in a pokemon game, so move and healing item wise you can make progress in this game under leveled… but then you reach the Pokémon League which is an actual league.. props to them for that. In which you face random opponents you faced earlier with a themed team at level 70. The problem is.. in the pokémon league you can not use items!

If you lose the league you might get other opponents. So if your team lacks 1 one counter while it is under-leveled.. you can flat up lose without any fighting chance.  Every team has weakness-coverage as well..so if you lose your steel type or poison type user against that ground type they have on their fairy team you pretty much wipe out, because you have to build a team that can literally face anything. If you do manage to reach the champion that match is interupted by a lvl 85 Legendary Nuclear Type. Here it gets worse If you do not outspeed it and you are not near level 70 at the very least.. or using a full nuclear team… you do not stand a chance. Realistically this means grinding your team to level 70 plus taking one or two nuclear types along to beat the league..since except for Eevee’s Nuclear evolution Nucleon don’t listen to you unless you beat all the gyms and then some you probably did not train those up.. and you do not encounter new ones after level 45.. so good luck!

I do not mind grinding when I can speed up, but when you grind this game slows down instead of speeding up! I do not mind training like how it is done in the new pokemon game, with these candies or shared experience. I do mind a game a 150% boost , while commiting to a single team, plus full exploration and defeating everything during that exploration is not enough to have a semblance of a chance. Mind you I could look for a guide and find out what type every pokémon is going to be so I get a balanced theme.. but this is a Fakemon game.. I really want to try a few of them out and see what they are all about! Pokémon should be a game where you use your favourites to win, not a game where I spend hours on mind numbing EV training minigames just so they can win something while underleveled.

I should not have to grind for hours when I use the best item to gain xp to train. There are a lot of repeat trainers and even a metro station to fast travel.. but there are only three metro stations and in the first and last part of the game you can’t find any that are usable. You only get fly after the eight batch! So while the game offers a solid rematch system that grands amazing experience..I can not actually use this system because it would mean grueling backtracks. I do not like grinding in the Diamond and Pearl formula because attacks and hp rolls are very slow. I can not stomach this much of a grind on unevolved Pokémon because they offer bad xp. Even if I would this game slows down a lot in a lot of the battle areas so I do not like to walk there!  This completely ruins the game for Nuzlockes to in my opinion because that means even more grinding.. Grinding levels, Grinding EV’s , Grinding Money to buy stuff, The challenge of this game is not in good enemy AI .. it’s simply requires you putting in time..and that is not a good way to increase difficulty.

I did have fun exploring the Tandor Region, but I am fully aware I  had fun because I used Cheat Engine. Now it isn’t hard to do that and if you are willing to I can really recommend this game to you! Use Cheat engine when you play this game and determine your own pace. Be your own Dm.. how much grinding is worth a level? Hack in some rare candies to level you up after so and so many fights. Pick your down difficulty and challenge than this game is great.  Some pokémon like Daikatuna are mostly there for a pun, so are most of the stories jokes.. but there is still a lot of understanding and love for the world of pokémon. The game is just poisoned by it’s own ambitions. It tried to do to many things at the same time. Every choice on it’s own I support.. larger difficulty, more seperate evolution lines, accessible EV training, better movesets. Basic Field Encounters , allowing me to evolve and get that joy. Using the Diamond and Pearl engine. All of these are GREAT choices on their own but together they create a nigh unbeatable slog.

Now I get there are a lot of purists in the Pokémon world who like this old school Tedium. For them this is your game…yet these purist are also a bit averse to new pokémon and new ideas, and this game has a lot of ideas. Regardless of that this review is based on the “casual” pokeémon playstyle. I love the games and a shiny hunt here and there, completing the dex can be fun to. Yet I don’t put hours and hours into making a Pokémon perfect! I want to love them for who they naturally are and be able to use my favourites! For people like me ,the game has a fine story that feels both like Pokémon but also a bit more mature. It also wants to get those laughs and aims them wrong. There are a lot of super cool new pokémon some even better than a few in the official games . Technically I can only conclude this is a good game. Everything there is stuff we want, it is challenging, pretty and interesting..there is only one problem.. it isn’t actually all that fun to play. It is rewarding,, it makes you think..but due to how end-game unfolds it just isn’t fun.

Pokémon Uranium is a Free fan game that is still quite find-able on the internet. I’d tell people to play the game up until they have to move trough the Jungle area and call it quits there or use Cheat Engine to help you along the way.. it’s a great game to experience..but not a very fun one to play. Check out someone’s play trough on it or something!
What Pokémon would you like to see go Nuclear let me know in the comments!

Poké Ball Z?! Pinkie Reviews: Dragon Ball Z Team Training

My sweet Island guests! Hi how are you doing today?! Hope you are well! Two of the fandoms I am most active in is Pokémon and Dragon Ball, so when you get the chance to play a rom hack that combines these two things are bound to be good. Time to evolve to a Super Trainer and use Explosion on a wild Yamcha as we venture into Dragon Ball Z team training!

<Editting Pinkie Here! What Bad Luck I lost my own images! I posted them in a wrong place and now I can no longer acces them so while the images you see will not be of my journey! I can assure you I definitely finished the game!>

Dr Brief introduced my female trainer Pinkie to the wonderful world of Dragon Ball, in this world I have to train up powerful fighters and make my ways across gyms all across the land so I can prove my worth as a fighter trainer and eventually I can take on the four Kais. It’s a journey that will take you through locations such as Mount Paozu , Namek, The Red Ribbon Army Base and Makyo City.

Yet before I can venture out into this , slightly,  Dragon Ball themed world I have to pick my starter first.  We get the choice out of Goku, Vegeta and Adult Gohan. All can evolve multiple times. With Gohan being able to go Super Saiyan and Ultimate, Vegeta being able to go Super Saiyan and Majin Vegeta and Goku being able to go Super Saiyan and Super Saiyan 3.  However End game all can go beyond, with everyone learning super Saiyan God and even Super Saiyan Blue.. and Goku being able to go Ultra Instinct as well. Goku also is able to go Golden Oozaru and Super Saiyan 4 and if you pick Goku you can also catch a Vegeta later on and can fuse them together.  Goku gets a tiny bit more love than the other two ..but hey  that’s how the show does it as well!

I picked up Goku…as I really wanted to make him go Ultra Instinct.. mostly because I wanted to see how ridiculous his stats would be!  I did not give him a nickname because… well I kinda feel bad giving these characters nicknames as they have their own names so ..I decided to go nickname-less. If I had chosen to go nicknames I would have made silly ones…like naming Piccolo Eggplamber or something! Still I had a serious job..defeating the four Kais.  So I grabbed  hand full of capsules and began tossing them on Krillin and Piccolo  as I build myself a team of canonical good guys! Choosing that route proved to be a mistake. 

Dragon Ball Z has always been about transformations, stronger opponents and bigger challenges, this is reflected in the game as well.

Perfect Cell at level 30 has way higher stats than Lvl 30 Final Form Frieza. Lvl 20 Super Saiyan Goten is stronger than Lvl 20 Yamcha, by a fair margin. This makes the game get it’s unique feeling.. your team is always changing. Krillin is quite good to have until level 25 or so but after that he becomes utterly useless as even the wild encounters you meet will have better stats. My level 22 second form Frieza had better stats than my level 31 Krillin. Some characters are exceptions to this, for example Piccolo stays fairly relevant throughout the game in terms of power, he can match with the non legendary characters. Not being that much weaker than Perfect Cell or even Kid Buu. 

He does however..get in trouble later on because he does not learn any good new moves. The third gym lets you fight the androids (Cell is the fourth gym)  so around the low level 30’s Piccolo learns Hellzone Grenade and after that.. nothing really.  Capsule Moves  you find can help.. but overall .. Dragon Ball Z Team training focuses on advancing getting better stuff rather than making stuff work.. so it plays quite a bit different from regular pokemon. It’s a change I hated at first, but later came to appreciate. It is willing to move away from Pokémon to be more Dragon Ball, not the Dragon Ball Hero stuff either.. where suddenly characters all become hyper powerful.. no it follows the Z story..if a character stops being relevant in the story it kinda becomes less relevant as a game character as well. That does make this game a bit grind heavy though…and for the first time ever in a Pokémon game.. I had to use 3 legendaries plus two characters who have near Legendary stats in order to win against the Kais.  You always have to be aware of more powerful creates and you have to make that swap. (Well unless you like grinding into insanity.. but still your better of improving) 

This does mean the game is not as tactical, rather it’s a bit of a resource management like game. Finding fighters with good stats or move pools, searching for fusing items and good techniques and the best way to do this is to know stuff about Dragon Ball Z. You’ll want to pick fighters that evolve and how do you know people evolve? By having watched the series but also the extra content. Super Saiyan Bardock is a thing, but you can also transform him , Raditz or Nappa into an Oozaru using a Moonstone. You can catch a Trunks and Goten and fuse them together into a Gotenks and yes you can even make Gogeta or Vegito. If you do not know about these though, you’ll never guess the Fusion combinations because there are well over 100 fighters in the game. If you do not know Frieza is stronger than Aqua or if you don’t know Bunyon and Giran are just from Dragon Ball , you will struggle to know what is good on your team. So If you are a  just a Pokémon Fan, wanting to play a interesting Rom Hack this isn’t for you. If you are a Dragon Ball fan who knows nothing about Pokémon but just want more content..this game has a few quirks and issues as well. So this game is only for fans of both. It’s literally a fusion!

While on the surface combining these two ideas can still result in a rather interesting game, this Rom Hack doesn’t really pull it off for me.

Mostly due to its poor balancing. There are only a few types that really matter in the game, being Fire, Fighting, Steel and Dark.  Ice , Grass and Electric are in there as well as a few rock and Psychic type moves but it’s extremely sparingly.  Officially typing matchup should have remained the same.. but I don’t think quadruple damage is a thing..or maybe it’s only quadruple damage that is a thing.. I can’t figure this out. Hitting Frieza who is a Dark Ice type with a fighting  type move is super effective, while hitting him with a Kamehameha is effective normally. I can not just forget the old typing system and since it does still refer to the old typing system this is something I seem unable to master. Fire not super effective against Ice? I just don’t get it.. Electric still beats water, fighting beats dark. Who knows! 

As a result I just end up doing “something” spam powerful attacks, 90% of the moves are fire of fighting type moves anyway.  This feeling is enlarged by the fact that the game is mostly based on the Japanese version of Dragon Ball Z. What I mean by this is that we for example do not get Android 18 but instead C-18..as in the original they are referred to as cyborgs or just numbers. That isn’t a bad thing but it might leave you scratching your head if your a dub kid. What IS a problem for Dub-people is that all the techniques are phonetic Japanese as well. So  Special Beam Cannon is Makankosappo, Solar Flare is Taiyoken, After images is Zanzoken and the Spirit Bomb is the Genkidama. I love the sub and I know the techniques by those names but if you are one of those Dub is better folks, you’ll wonder what techniques are which.. and since half of the charm this game is recognisability of all the characters and such I can see that being an issues for you! There still is plenty there and once you get used to it , it will be fine but I can imagine how this would not feel as YOUR Dragon Ball… so  this is a a game for fans of both Dragon Ball and Pokémon but mostly catered to those that watch subs?! That’s a specific niche right there.

While that did not effect me I felt it did needed to be said, what did bother me however is how poor the artwork can be at times. While I do use techniques for my content very similar to these.. like using pre-existing assets wherever possible this game really uses a lot of different styles. Most character sprites come from games like Dragon Ball Z Super Sonic Warriors, but Bunyon’s sprite is from Dragon Ball Advanced Adventures, while some sprites like general Red are made by the team itself. As a result it can feel a bit hotchpotchy.  Goku base form for example is a very thick outlined sprite and when he evolves he goes into his Super Sonic Warrior Sprite, while Gohan and Vegeta  already use earlier sprites from the get go. It just takes a bit of consistency out and makes some evolutions feel REALLY disappointing.The same can be said for the order towns are laid out in, while we do progress throughout the story , Pewter City is Saiyan Saga, Into Cerulean being the Namek Saga, into  The Android saga.. we suddenly get Makyo town after that which is Garlic Jr’s story…which takes place before the Android saga.. I do not mind persé that stuff is out of order.. but I have a bit of trouble with doing  both in AND out or order it makes the game feel needlessly sloppy.

Since this game is a Romhack the map is exactly the same as it was in Kanto.. just buildings have replaced sprites , like Mount Paozu having capsule homes and Namek having green water and blue grass.

Yet in its core the game is still the exact same game as it was in Kanto, the official Pokémon game however explained way better where to go to next. If you do not know, this game can have you search a bit.  Some buildings and locations HAVE been replaced however, for example both “rocket hideouts” are  now in the same town. Capsule Corps and the Game Corner are both in Gingertown, While Satan City now has the developer building. The way to the Power Plant is also different. So since it is so familiar but randomly tosses stuff around , it can also be a bit confusing to fans. It’s a shame  the game choose for this half and half route as I like that some things are different but treading familiar ground for 90% of the adventure makes those 10% a bit frustrating. I actually do love to explore, but when something is so familiar with for like the majority of the game.. .Either I find myself disappointed they did not do more stuff like that.. or I search around aimlessly as they chose to change one trivial thing.

The game would also have been more fun if they chose a story slightly more Akin to fighters where not everyone can use their full abilities so the playing field could be more even. I at first struggled big time during the pokémon league. Everyone around their level 50’s  gets so little Power Point in moves that you burn out in no time and the level hike was quite large. I was seriously underleveled by the end.. but since every Kai had something like A Krillin or a Zarbon 2 in their team I just send out Shenron, let him boost up his attack  since weak characters can barely damage it, heal up and sweep a team. This also worked if I used Broly, or Frieza or whoever had a setup technique. Everyone has that one weak fighter that completely unbalanced any fight. It was nice that some technique was required for the final part.. but it felt more like an exploit and not that excited.

I was going to play the post game and get myself a Ultra Instinct Goku but the post game is locked behind having to have caught 60 fighters. Since most of them are so useless, I did not particularly bother with catching so I had just so many work left to do that I just gave up. Dragon Ball Z Team Training is not a bad game, it’s just a crazy little Dragon Ball experience but the system is to unbalanced and fighters are too useless to sell me on the collecting aspect. In the end these two franchises do not mix very well.  I had my fun exploring the world, I had an enjoyable time but I would have had a better time playing either pokémon OR Dragon Ball Super Sonic Warriors. In the end I’d compare it to a Peep Box.. it’s fun to stare at it for a while wondering where everything goes and discovering the scene but if you stare at it long you notice some things are cut out a bit iffy and there isn’t that much going on. Fun to experience  but in the end what you get is only paper thin. It’s fun to recognise things but not particularly fun to play.

The Verdict!

I had some good times time with this game but mostly in the first half the second half got quite frustrating having to substitute my entire time all the time, also I do not really know who this game is for.. it really asks some knowledge of Dragon Ball Z and Pokémon to play.. and in terms of Dragon Ball the sub specifically. Do you know of a Rom Hack or Fan Game I should play next? From now on once per 4 weeks I shall review a Pokémon fan game! You can help me determine what is next! Thank you for reading and if you like my content and would happen to have some funds you do not know what to do with..consider supporting me on Ko-Fi and join Camp Coconut!

I Love The Darkness: Pokémon Reborn

When we think of Pokémon we think of a colourful world full of creatures to befriend. We think of lighthearted stories or in the case of Sword and Shield.. barely any story at all. We think of happy clefairies dancing and lickitung sushi eating minigames. Yet what if we look at pokémon in a different way? What if we go darker? This is what the amazing Rom Hack, Pokémon Reborn is about. 

Terrorists and Hookers

The game begins rather uniquely. You can choose a gender, including non-binary and up to six avatars regardless of what gender you choose to identify with. A nice touch, now you can play as whatever avatar you like best.  After that we get a wholesome train scene. Some guy talks to you about the Reborn region and the gym challenge there. Then it starts. A mysterious incident happens on the train.. and while you drive into the train station of reborn city, the train explodes. Terrorists have struck! While you arrive at the station you encounter a happy and bubbly girl, who was fascinated by the explosions.. she claims to be the first gym leader and tells you to meet her soon. At this moment you get control and you can walk around. Normally there is this guy who tells you that science is amazing explaining new features of the game. That guy is also walking around here! I decided to talk to him. “You were on that train?” He asks me?  “So was my wife”. We all know what happened here and it hit me like a truck!

Just like my hometown!

When we exit the screen we get a cut away scene,  to a policeman who captured the terrorist responsible. The terrorist is tied in a small room, cuffed to a metal chair. When he refuses to talk the policeman takes out his torkoal and tells it to super heat the chair. With the screams of the terrorist we are told we aren’t playing any random pokémon game. We are playing Pokémon Reborn. We get taken to a building where we get one of 21 starters. All the pokémon up to gen 7 are in this game and you can choose each starter. I chose Piplup a choice I came to deeply regret. As soon as we leave the pokémon lab we can battle a few trainers. These are all hoodlums or hookers.  The hoodlums use your standard Team Rocket Esque pokémon while the hookers named Doxies, use baby pokémon who use charm and attract. When you win.. you win 3 or 4 pokédollars…because these people don’t have any money. After a few battles I encounter a group of ruffians who are bullying a zigzagoon (but it can be a bidoof as well if I am not mistaking) they are scaring it and threatening to toss it off a bridge. I call out Piplup to school them! Piplup has a bad nature ..(for now) and I end up losing the fight. When I return to them to save Ziggy.. it is gone. It was tossed off the bridge. I then find out the water is acidic in Reborn City, and the zigzagoon died. I can’t live with myself and reset the game.

Can’t let a good boy die!

A real Gym Challenge

It is time for a new run, I choose my main boy Bulbasaur instead. This game is hard and I will need it’s bulk! Zigzagoon is alive again! Unfortunately .. the wife of the technology guy… is still dead. This time I know what’s ahead and I grind a bit, I even manage to catch a bidoof to assist me. We win. When healing up I see someone selling pokémon for 500 bucks! Sure I will allow myself to be Magikarp scammed! I’ll use a Gyarados!  Unfortunately this is not Pokémon..this is Pokémon Reborn.. I basically get robbed of my money and end up without a pocket monster! However I’d advise anyone to buy that pokemon as it will grant you a side quest that will encompass a fair few hours as you get revenge and go find your promised pokémon. After exploring the first ward in the city I got a hand full of okay pokémon. Bidoof already evolved to Bibarel and I think this is the perfect time to take on the first gym.  I was dearly mistaken.

This is like a Pokemon Game where all leaders are Whitney!

Pokémon Reborn treats gym leaders like actual competent people. Every single gym leader (which includes gyms for each type)  uses a full team of six Pokemon. Not only that each gym leader uses actual tactics. The explosion loving girl is the electricity type gym leader, and while you can not really find any ground type Pokemon to counter her.. her move sets are made to compensate any flaws in her team. Bulbasaur can take electricity fairly well… so virtually every single Pokemon on her team has a move that can hurt it normally.  Not only does this apply to the gyms it also seems to apply to wild monsters to an extent. It seems as if Pokémon in this world have developed better defenses against this hostile environment.

To distinguish gym battles from regular battles though, all gyms are hosted on special fields. These are like the terrains in Pokémon Main Games but more complex. For example during the steel type gym fight, the entire room is covered by mirrors. Every beam type attack is powered up.  Every special attack.. when missed is reflected off the wall and has a second chance to hit..if they dodge that.. you need to dodge as well. If you miss with a physical attacks some of the mirrors shatter and those who miss take damage of glass shrapnel. The Dark type gym is shrouded in darkness.. which empowers dark type moves..but by using electric moves you can turn on the lights weakening dark moves instead. Using electricity again will power up your electric move but short circuit everything out going back into darkness again.  Those are some deep strategies! Now this is a challenge.

Blub!

Suffering and Sorrow can be great!

Now you might think you can just grind levels and overpower your enemies one by one.. but no you can not. You see in Reborn pokemon and human are further apart, so when something is overleveled it stops obeying you regardless if it is traded or not.  Essentially this means the Gym Leaders ace is always the strongest pokémon and you can NOT outlevel it.
Now your monsters can still gain xp and it would be a shame to lose your pokémon because it because unresponsive so the makers made a clever new item. The common candy, an item that brings your pokémon down a level. This way you can still always focus on your team.  The fact that I do use these things a lot is a testament of how easy it is to actually level .. and that is a good thing.. because you might have already figured this out if you read between the lines… the gym leaders use a full team of six that can benefit from their fields. Essentially this means that you have to have a solid team to face them each gym. You can’t just pick Bulbasaur and hope to steam waltz through everything.. you can not  waste a slot on Bulbasaur in a psychic or fire type gym. You are going to need a team made for your next challenge. Gone are the days of coasting you need to work to be a master in this game. 

The difficulty can be somewhat relentless at times, you are constantly fighting a battle against the unknown. The evil organisation in this world is experimenting with forced mega evolution and augmenting or mutating pokémon, which means you never fully know what to expect.  Fairly soon in after the game I encountered a street that was fully torn up.. huge rifts torn in the streets.. a girl crying as her boyfriend just fell to his death by this event… the reason for this is a giant weaponised tangrowth who the evil team is using to tear the ground asunder to unearth something they want to find. You have to navigate across these chasms by bursting through gang territory, by raiding warehouses and saving a popplio from dissolving in acid. The game while difficult encapsules that atmosphere.. you are not meant to make this in one go.  You need to push as far as you can.. retreat to a pokémon center and lick your wounds. You need to adapt.. say goodbye to the pokémon you want to use.. and take that one that offers you an advantage. We are not in Agatha’s ideal world… the stakes are real this time. At times it can feel “not fun” it can feel like you are struggling and suffering..but that in a way is the point. In Reborn you shall not feel powerful.. in Reborn you make due.. and try to get by the skin of your teeth.

Hey no fair!

Reborn is one of my favorite pokémon fan games ever, even if I have yet to complete it. (Updates are brought episodic and I am not sure it is fully finished yet, but at least there are 18 gyms already so safe to say you are good for a solid while). The feeling of this world is so unique and gut punching real that it is truly a sight to behold. We all wonder why people alway play by the rules in pokémon right?! Well in this world they don’t. At one point you challenge a sick fighting master. Yet the evil team is on her trail. She battles with the leader and when she is putting up a good fight, the team leader uses his garchomp, not to attack her pokémon but to cut her in half.  Her distraught pokémon promptly tossed in the volcano and dies as well. People use pokémon as weapons in this world not as friends and somehow it manages to balance it’s difficulty to reflect that. While I loved my Pokémon during my runs of the game, I had a team of about 20 that I had to use. So I did not bond as much to that one pokémon in my party.. as in this game you should really not do that. 

Cause Bulbasaur can’t do *censor peep* against huge Steelix!

This world feels cold.. and sometimes victories can feel hollow. For example a certain gym leader upon his defeat will get so depressed by his defeat that he ends up committing suicide by taking jumping of a bridge. One of the next gym leaders, his daughters best friend witnesses this event as she lives right next to the place where he landed. The sprite of her house even shows stains indicating where he landed. As a result this girl is traumatised and put up in a mental ward. Which uses Electabuzz to experiment with electroshock therapy on children. You have to rescue her from these experiments which leads to an even bigger story line that will have you flee reborn city for a while. Trying to keep this vulnerable kids safe.  Never do you feel in control though. Never do you feel like the champion, you feel like you are being chased and as such this game gets a bit of survivor horror genre vibes. Which resources do you use.. do you stay there and gather or do you try to push on. Which battles have consequences and which reset you? Pokémon Reborn doesn’t feel fair.. it’s not about winning, it is about surviving. 

And evil machine Pokémon!

Amazing design

Obviously a game with this tone can not really use the original soundtrack assets from pokémon. It would not fit theme wise..so the soundtrack has been very overhauled and it is truly amazing. The songs in this game feel broody and dark, dystopian. Gym battle themes feel like you are facing someone truly powerful and boy are they powerful. I managed to beat about 7 gyms so far (like official badges..not including any invalidated ones)  and while they changed it up a bit in the more recent updates I can say nothing but praise for this soundtrack. Each area is so memorable. Simple decisions can be super effective. One gym leader..who feels barely human has the gym leader theme others have played backwards, causing you to feel very uncomfortable. The sound mixes so well with the theme of this game that I would think this is an official product. Very little about this feels ..fangame to me!

 While it uses GBA style graphics and to an extend borrows from  the original pokémon tilesets it goes completely it’s own way. From the water that is a rusty disgusting brown to all the derelict graffiti covered  buildings. From the ash covered beaches of a volcanic island to a toxic wasteland that has it’s grass turn into a sickly purplish shade due to all the chemicals leaking into the ground. This is pokémon like we have never seen before.  The boss pokémon look a bit less official with some sloppy sprite work here and there but they do feel properly twisted for this story. The game also features increased shiny rates and many shinies have received customisations that look absolutely stunning. On one of my attempts, I managed to get a Golem (you can get an item to get trade evolutions)   whose core had a magma-ish glow while it’s rock have been darkened I squealed in excitement. Shinies in this game look absolutely amazing and with the higher encounter raid they made the much needed grind quite a bit more exciting.

Not Pokémon

This game is definitely not going to be for everyone. There is a steep learning curve, and I mean steeeeeeeep,  but for those who like a challenge this game is truly excellent. The writing feels somber but not needlessly edgy..well maybe a bit..but at least it’s consistent to the entire world so never feels out of place.  There are plenty of lighthearted bits as well to make it all tolerable and digestible! It has a pretty great story that does feel like it respects what pocket monsters can truly do. It respects the power that inside. Yet at the same time this did not completely feel like a Pokemon game to me. It feels like a JPRG more akin to Final Fantasy VII or Nier. It feels as if the pokémon are a mechanic .. in a non franchise game.
I’d say they more take on a role more similar to the concept of “magic”. A mage in one game is not persé like a mage in the next. These creatures are not your pets.. and there is no one to evaluate your pokédex and give you shoulder pads. These are your shoulders and together you fight to survive.

These guys don’t Muk around!

Pokémon Reborn is free to play and is fully made in RPG maker. It features online trading and online battling (though I would not expect to much out of that)  and to any gamer who likes darker RPG’s I say definitely check this one out. At a certain point it even gave me Chrono Trigger Vibes (especially in the future bit) .  There are a handful of colourful locations as well but to the pokémon fans who are in love with Pokémon Go and Let’s Go, I’d say.. this is not like that at all. Puzzles are as hard as the battles and require you to actually require you to read some dialogue. However unlike in other fan games where you can get quizzes that  need you to look up stats of pokémon or so on the internet.. or know them by heart ..this game does offer you all the right tools. While hard and grindy it never really asks you to EV train.. or breed… like some of the more hardcore fangames do. This one is all about strategy … and surviving… and I love it dearly for that.

For those interested you click here to get Pokémon Reborn yourself!
Let me know if you decide to play! Remember I love you all! Keep Smiling and Stay Positive! Even darkness can be amazing!

XO
Pinkie