Tag: Fire Red

What a Terrible Night to Have a Curse: Pokémon Cursed Review!

Hello again my mortals! I wonder what potions I could make out of you!  It’s Halloween Month on Paradise!  So I am offering a lot of Halloween content! That means taking a break from most of my regular posts to find some spooky content! This can be a bit tricky for Pokémon! But recently I heard rumors of a very special Pokémon game that is amazing for Halloween. Today  I am talking about a Rom Hack called Pokémon Cursed.

Halloween in Saffron City

This is a Halloween themed game… although I must say “game”  might be a big word. This game is a Rom Hack of Pokémon Red but it offers only about 15 minutes of gameplay. It has a good and a bad ending… maybe even two bad endings.. depending on how you interpret things. It is up to you the kid of Sabrina to survive a very creepy Halloween. You only have your trusty Marrowak to help you and a cute Halloween costume to go trick or treating with. The game features some mini events and a nice little story that is a perfectly great Halloween adventure paying some homage to a classic little ghost story.That even involves you Trick or Treating across Saffron.  Some spooky tree decals complete the atmosphere.
You and your mother Sabrina are holding your classical Halloween Tradition of battling. However this is the year you finally win….at least if you know how to play Pokémon. Winning with a Marowak is no easy feat! In fact it is VERY easy for you to make the game rather impossible to win. 

When the title-card has nothing to do with the game, you know you are in trouble!

As expected you will be dealing with a lot of ghosts in Saffron City! However these ghosts  are all Gen 1 Pokémon. That means Gastley, Haunters and Gengar. Three Pokémon that have the Ability Levitate, which makes them immune to ground type moves.. and they are ghost and poison types.  Meaning they are also immune to fighting and normal type moves!
Now wouldn’t you know, Marowak at that level this game is played at (24-32)  ONLY knows normal and ground type offensive moves! So you are up a creek without a paddle straight from the get go! Luckily there is one move that can change the tides! Marowak has the move Foresight.. a move that can “identify” ghost types! While it is never specified by game text that means now a ghost can be hit by normal type moves. IF you go trick or treating first and try to replace this normally worthless move you lose the game then and there! There is no option to back out and you have to start from scratch… unfortunately that “oversight”  shows a design mentality that completely sours this game for me. 

Haunter! Marowak has a bone to pick with you!

Horror or Horrible

This game requires a basic knowledge of pokémon strategies, if you do not know how to play Pokémon this game is fairly impossible for you.  It isn’t clear about having multiple endings and kind of feels like a  .exe  game .. which always ends badly! So even if you manage to “finish” the game you might think there is just a bad ending. This game makes it feel that it just has a bad ending. The bad ending isn’t that cleverly written and doesn’t feel all that creepy!  It tries  to play into the “ghost of lavender town” hype but by choosing Saffron City as a setting .. there is a disconnect with that myth! There is an explanation.. towards the end of the good ending that actually makes this an interesting bit of lore but unfortunately the way to reach that ending is…. almost near impossible without a walkthrough! So while I will not tell you where to find all things I will tell you what you need to find. 

By having your flesh eaten you turn from a GBA sprite to a Game Boy Colour one! Creepy!

The goal in this game is to find 5 ghost shards.. but you do not know that. It is never said you need them! It isn’t even really implied.  You  get Castlevania 2 like descriptions like “I saw them falling from the sky, use this to find them!  This problem becomes increasingly worse when you realise that the item you should use  to find the items doesn’t work. You get an item finder but since the Ghost Shards do not seem to count as official items, for some reason the Itemfinder does not detect them. Which means the brunt of the gameplay is pressing the A button on every tile. Until you find them! Unfortunately they are also not at logical spaces like behind a crate.  They literally can be anywhere! So that already makes the game basically unplayably annoying. But silly as I am … I actually  hunted for the items and found half of them… a YouTube walkthrough helped me find the additional two! But I stopped there! I wanted to find the rest myself.. I proudly marched into the executive office ..hoping the shards would help ..but no….So without any hints you have to figure out how to proceed. So I went to talk to every single NPC I could find again.. but not a single hint….*sigh* I guess I will interact with all random items. 

I have a Ghost Glock and a Ghost Desert Eagle!

A computer earlier gave me a mystery message, so I figured that was where I would start. It did not work.. but another random computer worked! Yay I guess?!t told me the elevator had unlocked and it did not.. instead on a normal wall somewhere in the building a secret elevator had spawned……… a random elevator spawned after interacting with a random item.  That elevator takes you to the final battle.. I got wiped in that battle. Your evil father shows up and he has a Porygon that is setting up powerful attacks.. Eventually he one shots you with Tri-Attack.. if he doesn’t his second Pokémon has priority moves which will without a doubt finish you off. You are going to catch a Ghost Pokémon to nullify his Porygon.. but there are no Pokéballs in this game… unless….. you interact with a specific cabinet in the game. Dear Rom Hacker..placing items in random spots is not a puzzle! But I must admit playing through this is rather horrifying. I was scared I would not be able to finish a simple pokémon game. There is no Pokémon game I can not finish! So I endured.

That is right! One of those people stupid enough to play this “game”

Deader than a Ghost

Is that everything that sucks about this game? Unfortunately no! To catch the ghost Pokémon there are a few trainers that are actual ghosts you can fight. Because they look like people IF you play Pokémon they look like trainers.. so it seems like you can’t catch them. Actually you can… but if you are anything like me  by the time you can do this you have already defeated all the ghosts you can battle… luckily there is a way  to battle new ghosts…. you talk to random people multiple times in a row making them repeat their dialogue six or seven times.  Because that of course is the instinctual way to catch Pokémon. All in all this game is really an unplayable mess of non logic that is barely even a game! There are two interesting battles in the game, against both parents and I really liked the battle puzzle idea they went for.

This happens every time I let a friend sleep on my couch after a night of drinking!

Unfortunately that puzzle needs to be solved once and after it is just a rinse and repeat.
The game tries it’s best to help you get some boundaries to the world but unfortunately  that is oftenly glitched. I spent over 30 minutes searching a room after I discovered I could clip into it.. I felt it was a secret entrance and I needed it.. .it was a glitch however and time was wasted. My player sprite had some issues at times, Focus Energy the move does not seem to work properly and the fact that you can deadlock yourself at multiple moments forcing a complete restart makes this 15 minute game still a slog to get trough! If you need to find the items you are searching WAAAAAY longer. 

Because Candy > Family

I expected a lot of this game as I saw it in a top 10 scary Pokémon games. Clearly that list only based it on scariness and not on quality as this rom hack has NO quality!  The good thing I will say about it is that it is cool to be Sabrina’s daughter celebrating Halloween with her. The audacity to make Blaine the dad however.. two characters who weren’t even close in age or demeanour ruin the idea of having an evil dad. The spooky tree texture in the background of the city is the best idea this game has. Mamma Sabrina is  great as well .. I really like it!  But yeah that’s it… as much as I want to like a Halloween game more this isn’t it!

I love those trees though!

 If you want a spooky Pokémon game you are most likely better off playing Pokémon Snakewood , I gave that my lowest rating before but at least it offers some content!  The first five hour of that game is fun and it has Kamina as a trainer. The quest for a good Pokémon Horror game goes on. Where I compared Snakewood to watching Family guy but as a pokémon experience I guess this one is like watching Troll 2 with the funny scenes taken out.  I am really sorry for the Pokémon games I still love you… I just really dislike this game!
But  I am keeping Sabrina’s daughter canon!

Lowest Score on the Spook Meter.. and since it isn’t a game.. it doesn’t even get a cocktail flavour!

Looking for Pokémon Halloween content turned out to be a bust.. so I guess I have to make some myself…..wait.. make some myself…..that gives me an idea!!! Mwuhahahahaha. Mwuhahahahahahaha! Mwuhahahahaha! Oh.. right! If you feel wish to pass on some money to be in case the ghosts get to you before you get to enjoy it, feel free to help me out via Ko-fi! I suspect a big fictional electricity bill is soming…as well as some real stuff of course! Check out my Ko-Fi page to see what ever project it is that I am working on. Projects! Mwuahahahaha.

A Bitter Girl in a Pokémon Candyland: Pokémon Sweet 2th Review

Hello Island Guests, as you know I search the lands far and wide to play interesting Pokémon Rom Hacks and fan games. One of my all time favourites was Pokémon Sweet Edition, a game where Pokémon turn in all sorts of pastries and sweets and their typings get replaced by flavours.  It was adorable. The only thing that was annoying was that it was set in canydised Kanto.. we have seen that region so much before! So when the sequel offered us Mega Sweets and a region they built from the scraps of Kanto.. I could not wait. However lighting never strikes twice apparently.

Lemony Road

Pokémon Sweet version did not offer a wide variety of candies, by my guess there would be like 90 or so?! I am not fully sure! This game was marketed as more candies, more variations, bigger regions and a story about mega evolutions. Or Mega Sweets..  I may use original terminology here to make this all a bit more understandable. Immediately the game starts with a bit of a set back. You see this game offers you the exact same starters as the first game. Browniesaur, Strawmander and Squirpie! While cute and actually pretty balanced Pokésweets there is a problem. The prequel already allowed  me to obtain all three and I ran most of them.. so I did not feel that compelled to use them. So I started with Squirpie the candy that I did not get to use enough the last time. An apple flavoured candy. After picking a starter something interesting happens though.. a choice that seems so smart but makes this game even more of a hassle.

Depending on what starter you pick you are locked in a certain route! You see in this game Pokésweets (the name for candy pokemon) have an ability to use a HM-move by instinct. Or they may not there is no real way to tell as far as I am aware. Browniesaur can cut trees, Squirpie can surf on the cream and Strawmander can roll around rocks. This is not explained very well so if you follow your trainer instinct you end up being stuck straight away. Each route leads to a Battle Bakery, which are basically gyms! Here you fight the head baker for a medal. If you have 8 medals you can participate in the pokéweets league. So far so good! Well.. the issue is the open ended route of this game. We can land at three separate gyms at first.  Either one you can challenge first depending on your starter.  While this sounds great it brings issues. Once you past the first one, the next two are no challenge at all and after them there is a lot of grinding to do because the game has to guide you to gym A B and C before moving on to D & E.. so while Pokémon felt super linear this feels like you are backtracking a lot! There are alternative ways to get somewhere but you need the pokésweets of routes anyway so instead of walking in a line we now zigzag our way through.

I do like the concept of a more open ended pokémon world but  you really need  a sliding leveling scale for that to work. Now some parts are super easy and starting on a next tier is super hard. The way the world map is designed is UGLY as well. It kinda feels like a kid has drawn a map with just some random aspects scattered anywhere. In Kanto , even in Pokémon’s sweet version everything felt unique. It had a reason to be there! There was a harbour town, there was a mining town, there was a town by ocean and a village of the dead.  Here most towns are copies of another with one having slightly more milk ponds or having the Pokésweet Center and the shop swapped around.  In the end I could not find the final badge I was missing because I felt .. I had been to that down before.. because it looked that much like another town. No village has a purpose.. it’s just a few houses.. in one house you get a move to teach your pokémon , in one house you get maybe some potions or have to trade some soda and in others there isn’t anything. The battle bakery sprites look really ugly in the world and lots of buildings have no doors. It just feels so sloppy. Put an asset on the world just so you can have an asset.

Since you need particular Pokésweets through travel through certain areas it quickly becomes tedious! I for the life of me could not found a Sweet that learned Rock Smash and if I gave up on a Pokésweet for not liking it’s design I often had to get it back still, because it was the only one who could roll away a boulder or cut a tree. It isn’t all bad though There are a few cool areas such as the halloween fields or the inverse world, where typings are different.. but those are few and far between. Weirdly I’d rather be playing Kanto yet again.. so unfortunately the world left a sour taste in my mouth. And it’s super pink! I loved it the last time around so why do I think it’s so ugly now?! Well because there went no love or thought into this.

A mixed Bag

Luckily there are the cute Pokésweets right?  Yes you are half right! Pokésweets are still very cute! For the most part! I got a really quite Chefchop which was a machop in a chef outfit with pink hands. I also got a muffloom which is a Muffin Gloom.. I could not evolve it though no matter how hard I tried.. some Pokésweets are a bit bugged. They might not actually evolve! So heck! I was stuck! Also for some weird reason. my Muffin Gloom could fly?! I am not complaining..but it’s pretty weird since I also had a banana bird who could not fly! These bugs were present in the original though and they come with the territory of Rom Hacks.. it’s a shame but you learn to deal with and move on. There are a lot more sweets this time around and there are some very very nice designed ones. Like Noibats sweet version. Who looks very pink and tasty. It has a bit of a donut-like quality. I also really liked oddish and Muffloom as I said before and here and there there are a few great new clever Pokésweets. So there is a charm to this! ..And then there are the “new” new ones.

In this game it is clear that you can tell who knew anything about pixel art and sprite design ..also who was invested in Pokésweet design and who is not. All those Pokésweets from last time look amazing and there are a handful of hits here as well.. There are also Pokémon that are just sprite swaps. Give Pignite a wine colour and it’s a grape flavoured Pokésweet. Same goes for Torchic and for about 60% of the new roster.  Pokemon either have one random element added to it.. like Treecko having a little mint leaf hat that clearly looks added.  It gets even worse that some sprites even get cut off. Like if Pignite fully evolves you get an Emboar that has no arms or leg as the sprite is cut off.  Same goes for Blaziken! The first game showed so much love, and this feels like a rushed project where most people don’t even seem to care. I wish I could go softer on it..because there ARE people who care in that team.. but there are also a lot of people who very clearly don’t and it’s just sooo noticeable.  

Now I could forgive bad sprites if the other flavouring was intact. It was super cute to see Pokémon use flavoured type moves like . Apple Claw, Zester or  Karate Choc! I used about 10 pokésweets during my journey and I have only gotten about 9 moves with candy-themed names. Four of them are on my Starter.  Which means 29 moves were just their literal game translation. A few Pokésweets never EVER learned a name based on sweets including Blaziken..whose sprite gets cut off. So now I have a yank Blaziken sprite.. with the same moves as a normal.. also Blaze Kick is a Strawberry movie while Ember counts as a lemon type move or something?  This may not be an actual example but it does happen that some moves just have been retyped randomly. This also leads to broken Pokesweets. For example Wineboar.. never learned any grape type moves. He learns a lot of lime ones.. but he doesn’t get the same type attack boosts thus suffers. You can feel that this group who designed the game lacked synergy. It feels fundamentally broken and given how great the first game is I can not forgive them for giving us THIS as a sequel.

No more Bug Types.. But there Sure are Bugs.

Still I would be willing to forgive them, it’s a fan game. Not everyone can design a great world, not every pokésweet you design can be a hit. Yet there is so much wrong with this game that in fact you almost nearly did not get a review!  It happened when I found a rare move I could move by pushing a Boulder, luckily I had a Sweet who could do that.  I got stuck! I saved my game and I got stuck!  Saving booted me to a menu and it resetted the rock position leaving me in a box from which there was no escape. By then I was, including grinding,  about four hours in the game and I had to restart my entire game. Luckily I had save stated before (I do not know how pokémon evolve so I do save states to quickly experiment)  Had I not.. all game progress would have ended as I would have locked myself in a game over type situation! Surely this counts a game breaking error. You can get trapped. Then there are pokésweets that should not evolve even if they should. Making your grinding them up a waste.   There are a few visual glitches and  the entire map has so little design in it that there are invisible walls everywhere! You can almost at EVERY  spot travel to the boundaries of the world and just bump the invisible wall. Pokémon at least brings some confines by placing mountain ranges in between.. or peer buoys or whatever. Here this is just part of the map map you can’t walk onto. Or even a pixelated mess of assets to form a barrier.

Mega evolutions are a cool new addition but I have not seen a single mega evolution work. Except for my Back Sprite, if someone uses a MEga evolution but me I see they activated it but the sprite does not activate.. it only activates if the pokémon is switched out, then the next pokémon that swaps in will show up as the actual mega sprite. So as cool as Mega evolutions are.. they are not in this game for you to see. Also it’s a wild guess who evolves! Besides from my starter I was unable to find any! Apparently Arbok mega evolves..into a blue form.. but I barely saw it..because I oneshot that Rattitart that it actually was. I got to see a few sprites during the final fight against my rival which I named Mailman! He used six Mega evolutions sweets but those are the only six sprites I saw. To fight him however you have to find all 12 mega sweets which are named after their flavour not the pokésweet that can evolve with it.  These can be given by any random people on the map or trough story. Which seems like a cool concept.. however the world is open now. Which means each town you can reach in three or four ways. So you have to interact with every single npc, on every single route and there is no clear indicator of items you have and dont have. If a mega sweet happens to be in your pc.. and you forget.. there is no way the game shows you have it.  You can be lost forever.


Pokéballs don’t break this time around, they are reasonable.. but if you try to switch bals you lose a pokeball of any type you used during that catch. While it has a major glitch this system is actually quite great! Just buy once and you only lose a ball upon a succesful catch! This makes the catching aspect really appealing and since this is a game where you really want to collect good on them! I managed to catch three boxes full of pokesweets in my journey and still I missed a lot of those that I already catched in the prequel. It also makes it pretty useless to buy any other pokéball than a sweet ball/pokeball.  Yet in later towns you can only buy the more expensive ones… so you have to backtrack. This game has so many great ideas but it’s just that everything and I mean everything ends up in a broken mess.

Artificial Sweetner

The story last time was kinda clever, featuring the evil team trying to steal all the rare candies to create the ultimate army. That is a great story! Dark Chocobun trying to betray humanity and you having to try and stop her felt pretty satisfactory. This time your rival is just a capital D who wants to rule the world. He fled into another world where all typings are inverted, which again would be clever..but the movesets are so random that it barely leaves an impact. The Chocolate bunnies who are deities of the candy world help you stop the guy ..and then there is a Pokésweet league that is not even part of the plot. All dialogue felt super lazy and while I actually cared and was invested in the plot of Sweet Version, Sweet 2th did nothing for me.  It’s just an evil guy! No twists, no development.. nothing! How? Clearly you had a great writer on board last time what happened here?! The last one was good?! It was really good.

Never ever have I seen such a drop in quality between the first and the second part. The first game I love to bits and if you want to play a Pokémon game filled with the delicious looking monsters that is the way to go! This one feels like it’s deformed , barely viable brother. I am sure it’s parents will love it..but that is about the extent the love goes. The map is horrible, un-inspired and very frustrating to traverse. It basically requires you to carry specific pokésweets all the time.. or at least typing wise. You can get trapped in several spots due to how bad the world is made.  Save a lot.. and use save states to avoid this.  While the original candy monsters are all sweet and adorable the majority of the new ones is either lazy or broken, their movesets have not been adjusted to fit their new flavouring what so ever. If you want a fun team you have to play the game “what do I think is the developers favourites , because not every pokésweet gets the same love.. With some bad luck like me you can have a team without any of the unique flavour but with all the broken stuff. Every cool system this game has comes with a huge downside due to not being balanced, as a result it is a glitchy mess that is playable and finishable but not enjoyable. The lackluster story finishes it off perfectly.


This game could have been passable if not for it’s sublime predecessor. It shows just how incapable this game is. This game has been done better, more balanced, more functional, more flavorful and a LOT sweeter.  Unless you want to really play Pokémon on a map that feels like a 10 year olds custom age of empire map or Tony Hawk Pro Skater custom course, I am gonna have to see I can’t find ANY reason for this game to exist. It does not expand the story of the first game, the new sweets are neglectable Therefore this is the first pokémon fan  game.. and perhaps even a pokémon game that gets my lowest rating. Guys I loved your first game to bits… but this feels like the Beta test of Pokémon Sweet that did not work out. Clever ideas.. is all it has..and a cute Noibat!   The first one is briljant still … this is it’s broken little brother! Pass on this one guys! It’s a waste of your time.. and teeth.

If you like me to play better games please consider supporting my Kofi so I can buy some decent ones! Or feel free to suggest a fun pokémon fan game/rom hack in the comments if you do not have any money to burn! I hope you all will check out the prequel! Despite everything I all wish you a sweet day!

Gotta Steal them All: Pokémon Fire Red Rocket Edition

Prepare for Trouble! Horsea use Bubble!
 To protect Kanto from Devastation! To steal peoples pokémon across the nation!
To denounce the evils of Oak and Lance!  I now play a Rom-hack on Gameboy Advance!
Pinkie
Plays!
Team Rockets  New Rom-hack of Fire Red!
So boot up the Rom.. and start with a rat!

Pinkie! Reviews that!

For the first time since pokémon Gold, I am a male Pokémon Trainer! And not just any pokémon trainer.. A Team Rocket Grunt… with pink hair! His name is Pinkie… how fitting! Pinkie is not me because he is one mean S.O.B… well he had the chance to be either a good spirited Rocket who doesn’t steal much Pokémon or be one who steals everything.. given how this game is actually about being evil it did not seem to make sense to go with the goody two-shoes route as it would invalidate one of the special mechanics of the game.

That would be kind of like installing a mod in Skyrim that improves human custom characters.. and then you play an Argonian. Or installing an extra hard difficulty level.. and then play on Normal. So this Pinkie had to be one S.O.B.  But let me stress that this guy is not me! He gets a Rattata out of a box of Rattata as we start our adventure in the Cerulean Game Corner Rocket Hideout.  That is such a clever idea! We also meet Ronnie.. an enthusiastic looking fellow that is a new recruit as well. He teaches that since we are lowly grunts we can only steal from young children and old people! As we can intimidate those into handing us their pokémon!

He takes me out to Celadon City Square and we find a girl playing with her two new pokémon she got for her birthday! Rattata  beats up  her Pidgey and her Spearow and I get to steal one of her beloved new friends!…Oof This is going to be harder than I thought. I just have to remember I am not this Pinkie! I reluctantly steal her Pidgey. Troughout the remainder of the adventure I would never steal from someone who only has one pokémon. Because Ronnie stole her Spearow.. leaving the girl with 0 friends.. the poor thing.  I wasn’t even going to use the Pidgey but I had no choice!  I decided to nickname my Pokémon very random names. Like Xibu and Ipsor.. just a random collection of consonants and vowels so I don’t see them as other peoples pets! Still getting Pokémon this way is kind of interesting! It reminded me a bit of the Coliseum games! Yet more evil! A few towns in and I was stealing left and right.. with the only rule never to leave someone without a single pokémon! Because everyone deserves a friend!

Otherwise I tried to be as evil as possible.. in a game where you have to be mean , you better be mean so I beat up people’s boyfriend, I snatched someone’s gold tooth , I robbed a Pokémart and more! Evil. it pained my heart at times but sometimes it felt good! like when I stole a hooker from a Pimp and gave her a better life in a pokécenter whose Nurse Joy was fed up with it all. It felt wrong.. but also right! I was so happy I was a male trainer.. because this guy was not me! He was someone else.. that became my most important rule in this game and I would need it for the story that was to come.

Pokémon Fire Red: Rocket Edition follows the story of Red and how he stops Team Rocket and Giovanni’s scheme to take control of Kanto and the Pokémon Mewtwo. Yet we do not follow it through the eyes of Red.. we follow it through the eyes of Pinkie who is not me! Fresh off the boat we get send to Mount Moon to obtain some fossils when the group gets stopped in their tracks by a Spikey Haired kid with a Wartortle and an even stronger kid with a cap and Charmeleon. We then get to meet Giovanni for the first time who wonders why these two kids have War-Pokémon. We then realise something.. the world Red sees is not the actual world. It’s the world through the eyes of a kid the actual world is much more dystopian. Bill, Oak, Blaine, Surge, Koga heck even that old guy with back troubles in Viridian city.. everyone has secrets but they would never tell that to a kid. The kid would not be able to comprehend… He also never really speaks to asks questions he is just a good boy to Oak.

It doesn’t take long for us to meet Bill. Apparently Blaine had been making Porygon for Team Rocket.. as a way to provide them with income..having an infinite supply of porygon for their game corner ..so people waste their cash for such a rare but secretly not so rare pokémon.
Since Blaine is to scared to help the crime organization we have to ask Bill.. bribing him with some goodies which include two tickets aboard the S.S. Anne Cruise. He doesn’t like that gift ..but he likes the other stuff we give him so it’s all good. We also sell trade steroids to LT Surge so we can use the SS Anne to smuggle Pokémon.. stuff like that. Yet we discover there is more about Team Rocket than we originally thought. They are not just criminals.. they want an Independent Kanto. We find out that Kanto lost the great war to Johto and it’s general Lance has taken over from the Elite Four of Kanto. Oak, Fuji, Giovanni.. and Shingeki.. or something.. a name I keep forgetting and that doesn’t come into play until much much later.  During the war these were involved to create the ultimate weapon. A Pokémon that could destroy Lance.. based on the DNA of Mew.. codename Mewtwo.

I will not spoil the story any further but for those interested in finding out I am more than willing  to spoil on demand, let me just say that the story of this game is quite amazing. It utilizes so many fan theories along side with later made revelations. We see how Silver became the douche he is in Pokémon Gold and Silver, seeing the toxic relationship with his father Giovanni and his mother Arianna. We see the man Giovanni and his convictions to bring back the Kanto he once loved through extreme measures. We even see the dark side of Professor Oak. No one in the Pokémon World is a saint. The team Oak had in Blue and Red that got scrapped but still was in the code..comes into play here. We see Oak use these pokémon. We see why  characters walked away from the Mewtwo project and we even see what link that old man in Viridian city has with the creature on the east coast of Cinnabar island. There is so much lore here, it is very impressive.

The game offers some interesting new mechanics. Due to how easy it is to steal Pokémon, managing your team is quite a bit harder. We get less XP , Less Money and more Pokémon.. as a Rocket it doesn’t take long to feel like we are behind the curve in levels.. to reflect your status as a Rocket.. we may be able to beat trainers but it’s a lot harder for us than it was for Red.  There is a promotion system that actively changes our sprite as we move from Grunt to Executive to Admin and even beyond. 

Ranking up allows us to steal pokémon from a wider pool of trainers. Like Teens and girls when we become an executive, males when we become an Admin.. and eventually we can even steal from Gym Leaders and Elite Four members. Yet there is always an upside and a downside to things. Steal a Pokémon from a Gym Leader and you do not get a Technical Machine. Get a high enough bounty and team rocket will reward you with powerful battle items like a life orb, or a kings rock. Keep your record clean long enough and the police might reward you with an Exp Share, A lucky egg or powerful moves.

So there are several ways of power, the Rocket way allows you to battle more viciously while the good way makes the game a bit easier.. as if you where playing an actual normal main character.  It is also interesting how the world acts around a character that in the original game would be considered an “npc”. You can not get the coin case you normally get because that is meant for Red.. people do not want to give it to a Rocket Criminal. People rip on Surge gym puzzle because when you are not a kid you realise how stupid that particular puzzle is.  We see how people interact with you while you do not have a trainer passport.

We do not have a pokédex either so our inventory feels so weird. As a result this game feels so unique yet so familiar and right. A lot of thought went into this and while the plot really delves deep into fanfiction and fan theory .. every piece of dialogue and every option you have fits into that.. they even go as far as to explain why mechanics in the original games worked like they did.. stupid little things you never wondered about suddenly fall into place. To a certain extend even going as far as to explain why Samuel doesn’t know his grandson’s name.

This game is such an easy recommendation to anyone who loves the franchise but thinks it’s just a bit to kiddy and to lighthearted. It’s great for anyone who thinks Pokémon is just a bit to easy. It’s amazing to everyone who at least knows the story of the first generation a bit basically. It’s infinitely better if you read some theories though, Missing No for example is a story element, if you at least know how to get it things will resonate more strongly.  If you noticed that Blue suddenly stopped Raticate in his team and afterwards he can be found in Lavender city.. things will immediately click.. it’s faith has always been a popular theory but here you finally get the talk from the other side. We see why Blue is so bitter and why he eventually becomes the Viridian Gym Leader. There is so much to experience..and for an amateur it’s just .. a simple more mature version of pokémon with a crime mechanic.. for those who know Kanto trough and trough.. this is the ultimate fan fiction experience.

The strongest point is the story, but also the gameplay has been updated. Even though it’s fire Red.. all the 18 typings, including fairy types and new movesets exist. So they even dealt with my biggest gripe, having to remember old systems. Special Attack and defence is split,  moves can hit physical and specially regardless of their type and all those things have been brought into pokémon as we know it. Add a backstory in the veins of.. Pokémon as we  suspect it was.. and a twist story that reveals the existence of a counterpart of Mewtwo and these are a few hours well spend to anyone who either watched the first pokémon movie or played the first game. The more you know about Pokémon the more there is to love!  I had a blast! Even if my character ended up in jail for 46 years!  That’s a good thing.. he was a bad man.. and definitely not me! He got what he deserved.. and with this game. .as a fan I got what I deserved too!

This game is such an easy recommendation to anyone who loves the franchise but thinks it’s just a bit to kiddy and to lighthearted. It’s great for anyone who thinks Pokémon is just a bit to easy. It’s amazing to everyone who at least knows the story of the first generation a bit basically. It’s infinitely better if you read some theories though, Missing No for example is a story element, if you at least know how to get it things will resonate more strongly.  If you noticed that Blue suddenly stopped Raticate in his team and afterwards he can be found in Lavender city.. things will immediately click.. it’s faith has always been a popular theory but here you finally get the talk from the other side. We see why Blue is so bitter and why he eventually becomes the Viridian Gym Leader.

There is so much to experience..and for an amateur it’s just .. a simple more mature version of pokémon with a crime mechanic.. for those who know Kanto trough and trough.. this is the ultimate fan fiction experience. While strongest point is the story, but also the gameplay has been updated. Even though it’s Fire Red.. all the 18 typings, including fairy types and new movesets exist. So they even dealt with my biggest gripe, having to remember old systems. Special Attack and defence is split,  moves can hit physical and specially regardless of their type and all those things have been brought into pokémon as we know it.

This game is us!.. Pokémon as we  suspect it was.. and a twist story that reveals the existence of a counterpart of Mewtwo and much more! These are a few hours well spend to anyone who either watched the first pokémon movie or played the first game. The more you know about Pokémon the more there is to love!  I had a blast! Even if my character ended up in jail for 46 years!  That’s a good thing.. he was a bad man.. and definitely not me! He got what he deserved.. and with this game. .as a fan I got what I deserved too!

I got everything I expected and so much more! There are some glitches..but for what this is I could not expect more!

I would like to thank you all for reading! Feel free to ask questions about the game if you are interested! Or tell me your experience with in the comments. Did you feel as badly as I did when you stole pokémon?! Do you not like to steal? Do you prefer to reverse steal?! Well have I got good news for you! I have a Ko-Fi thingamajig! Just saying! Not robbing you here!

This is now a button!