RPG-Maker – Pinkie's Paradise

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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!

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.