Hamster Haze

Hello. I want to share my own ramblings on Reborn, as well as a bit of a review. I think there will be spoilers for some sections so just read at your own discretion, this is just me reflecting about the game. If you'll humor me, this is my own rambling of Reborn: A very special game to me :) Context, Background, and a false Jwittz(?) memory: My experience with this game all started a little over a decade ago. Being ten going eleven in 2012-2013, I was obsessed with Pokémon, starting with my first DS games with the BANGER storytellers Explorers of Sky and later, the gen 5 series of games. You can probably see why this game peaked my interest already, but how I was introduced to Reborn is lost to me now. For the longest time I thought the youtuber Jwittz talked about Reborn and other fan games in one of his videos, where I specifically remember gameplay video of the Obsidia Ward, the first vs cutscene with Fern and the ruined city as a whole. I don't know who made that video, or if the video even exists anymore, but I was aware of Reborn extremely early on, and I vowed to myself to play this "cool new fangame!" with the words "when they finish this." (I'm convinced I doomed people into waiting ten years because of that, but anyways...) With that seed of thought planted in the back of my mind, I went on with primary school, checking on the progress of Reborn, seeing the episodes release, watching Shofu's playthrough of the game and the funny evolution parts he did with Archer (rip that series btw what a tragedy ifykyk), and patiently waiting for this full game to be released. Eventually I got tired of waiting in 2015 and started my first playthrough of the game. I chose Oshawott, got to the Onyx ward and then dropped it because of my crappy attention span. I would pick it up every few months but never long enough to get whatever the current endpoint of the episode. This cycle continued until November 2018, The start of the longest wait of my life. (Small tangent before continuing: Knowing that the story of Reborn was a tribute to a league that the characters participated in was to me really cool, just mainly due to the fact that I had participated in something similar with Pokémon Showdown Side Servers. People would run leagues, similar to Reborn's and it was a nice tight knit community. Nowadays leagues and PS Side Servers have died in favor of draft leagues, but that history with the traditional leagues struck a cord to me and it was a nice personal connection to have with the game. It's a massive can of worms that isn't related but it was nice to mention.. ANYWAY-) Episode 18, and the longest wait of all time: In November 2018, I decided to sit down and actually do a full playthrough of Reborn. I remember being a junior in highschool around this time, rediscovering this game for the hundredth time, and was compelled to start over. Choosing Torchic, I restarted my adventure, and played the game on and off for three weeks, slowly and painfully solving the puzzles, dealing with the horrifically strong gym leaders (Shelly, Aya, Samson, Serra, ...Charlotte) and getting to my favorite battle of the entire game (even till this day): the Agate City Solaris battle. What a hella good climax to end Episode 18 with... and then the wait happened. I remember how hyped I was to play e19 and how naïve I was thinking that e19 would only take a few months to wrap up. While it tested my patience, I knew that in the end, no matter how long it took that the ending to the game and the postgame would be worth it. For three years I cheeked the Devblog weekly to see that progress bar increase every so often, along with the blurbs and notes at the end of each of them, I still have a lot of screenshots of those Devblog notes too. There was this anxiety however. You know it, I know it, everyone who was patiently waiting to play final episode knew it. That one small indie studio from Japan, one that shall not be named, but I think they made the games I mentioned above ^^, could have obliterated the development of this game at any moment, and there would have been no e19 to play. Thankfully that didn't happen, but that healthy fear of the big N was just a real mood killer. I definitely think the dev team made the correct decision to release e19 as the postgame and ending just due to the risk of never being able to finish the game in it's entirety, but it just sucked in the moment that it made the wait a lot longer. E19 itself: I personally got to play episode 19 on April 1st, 2022, on a Friday night. I remember it extremely clearly, I had literally just came home from work at 9pm, with a morning shift at 8am the next day, and I get the notification that the game was available to download. (Back in 2018 I joked that I would've been in my last couple years of college when e19 came out, and I hit the nail on the head). Like any reasonable person in my situation, I immediately got to downloading e19, and played the game from 10pm till 3am. Coincidentally, spring break happened the week after, so I got to experience the game uninterrupted for an entire week, and having the relief of finally getting to experience new Reborn content was mind-blowing to me. I don't know if I'm also misremembering this event but I swear the discord went into a frenzy, there was a few outages when this thing dropped, there was nothing like it. I completed the whole of E19 in a week of constant playing. Granted it was obsessive but It was worth it. Thoughts: For one, I just love this game if it wasn't obvious. I don't love everything about it, however its something extremely sentimental to me. I think it's excellent for a less traditional fangame, mixing heavy story content with the gameplay, there are games that do this but I like how Reborn does it slightly more. Field effects are probably some of my favorite in the game. Reborn doesn't have anything particularly unique with the Pokémon themselves, instead employing the tens of field effects that shake up the battles. I love how the gym leaders have full use over them, and the risk and reward system of some of them. The amount of characters is both a positive and negative to me, I definitely think having all these unique characters means the world is a lot bigger than it may seem, with small tangents and plot points with some groups. However the characters I dislike in this game I really hate (Amaria...Fern...). I don't think this is to Reborn's detriment, but ye. The puzzles in this game are actual puzzles, which both infuriate me (due to my own ineptitude for them) and I'm happy for. Shelly's gym puzzle and the victory road gem puzzles are the absolute worst I swear, and by god they really get on my nerves, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I think the main issue I have with Reborn are the two "Impossible" battles in the game that shift how the story is told. The first Solaris battle and El's Dittoceus. I refer specifically to how these battles interact with the hidden relationship point mechanic in the game and how not beating either of these completely change the ending to the game, and I personally just dislike that. I like that they exist but don't enjoy the outcomes at failing those battles because you're not really supposed to win in those scenarios. Besides that, I don't have much negative criticisms outside of that, and this isn't the post for it anyway. I'm more here to celebrate a year since its release, and how it's changed my life. I truly love this game, and I'm very glad I managed to stick around till the end for it. My teams:

Ep 19 has been everything I wanted and more and genuinely exceeded my expectations. I still have to do a full replay of the game since beating the new content during the beta test but I'm very excited for it. I have a million other thoughts that I've went on and on about over the past few weeks- years (at this point) so ill just say this,, thank you. To Ame for committing to this endeavor and to all the devs that actually got this shit to work beautifully, reborn is truly one of a kind.

E19 finna be a movie I swear, In really excited to see what everyone uses for their teams, good luck everyone!

If the recently browsing shows THIS MANY users on the site, I can't fathom amount of accounts when e19 releases for community beta! On an unrelated tangent, I remember years ago when the dev sidebar had a progresss bar, like what rejuvenation has. And I would check it every week just to see how much more progress the respective episode received and going "OH MY GOD THEY GOT 5% MORE DONE"! It's a weird feeling to not have that anymore because now the game is going to be here but I will always remember it fondly as my patience paying off for this moment

3 years of my off time has been spent in this forum, on top of the 10 years that reborn has been in the back of my mind, guess it's actually coming to an end now ;-;

hot damn your art is insane, looking forward to what you make next

yea

Bold of you to assume he's only a random npc, he's also -

Santiago's return with his fucking jigglypuff

she meant 20222*, but dont tell anyone i told you

huh, interesting. I wonder if all the loose ends including names will be revealed for e19

Would you count the "impossible" battles as part of the nuzlocke though, I wouldn't if I didn't have specific cheese counters for it

This is actually a great point I think a lot of people miss. The one person who we see the most in sabotaging Meteor is in fact Taka, the son of the leader of the whole organization. For someone who was born into something where he was borderline forced to join, he really breaks the cycle of hate in a way by becoming his own character, which is pretty neat. I think the reason Meteor has been shown to be so evil is because of people like Sirius and Lin poisoning the original group's intentions. As it's gathered in the Reshiram route, Meteor was originally a group of protectors.