Thoughts on a blind (hard mode) run of Version 9.2

[Evan20000]

This thread is intended to be half review, half random observations on my (blind) runthrough of Version 9.2. If Jan is able to take anything useful away from this, great! If not, hopefully it will still spark some discussion. As of writing this, I have beaten the grass gym, so I'm not done yet, but I'm getting the feeling I'm approaching the endgame of the current build of the game. The only things I knew going into this game were that you could get rare pokemon from the starter machine if you aggressively soft reset, there's a really hard "lose this because the plot requires" battle at some place called Blacksteeple, and that the plot was out there. Also unmarked spoilers ahoy. You've been warned.

 

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I ended up spending about an hour and a half resetting for a good starter. Any of the jackpot starters would do. Eventually, Ralts popped out and I really lucked out. Not only was it Timid, but it had a 31 IV in speed, respectable special attack, passable physical defense and mediocre/bad everything else. It was also female, so Gallade wasn't an option, but given that it was Timid, that's okay. Now... after the first two tutorial fights, I experienced what can only be described as an oversight. When you leave Gearen Lab, if you go left, you run into a trainer with an Alolan Meowth that Ralts is completely unable to damage (and naturally, it has lots of high PP moves, so you can't wait for it to struggle without struggling yourself to death first). This is only a problem under unusual circumstances (a specific jackpot starter, plus going a specific direction), but I feel it's something that should be looked at either way, as it doesn't leave the best first impression. That aside, I went to the right and found the merchant begging for money. I gave him pretty much all of my money, expecting this to be similar to Reborn's Espurr event, and lo and behold, I got a Voltorb out of it! After promptly sonic booming that alolan Meowth back into gen 1, I returned to the lab to heal and this is where I discovered the best feature this game has: EV grinding rooms. Jan, you're a legend.

 

After doing some mucking about in the sewers and expanding my party a bit, I ended up beating up a Garbodor, meeting a colorful cast of characters and expanded my party a bit. I used Trubbish in Reborn, so I wanted to try Gulpin here... Unfortunately, Gulpin isn't nearly as good as Trubbish was, so he ended up being replaced after the 2nd gym. But I'm getting ahead of myself... I did some sidequests, got a Growlithe after a fairly tough fight. I also made the mistake of doing the "Battle Me" sidequest before Goldenleaf Woods and got absolutely destroyed. It seemed possible until she sent out Komala and proceeded to destroy the remainder of my team, one turn at a time. Fair enough, I'll come back later. Onto Goldenleaf woods, then.

 

I feel obligated to say that I really appreciate the scene with Melia here. It really sells that you've made a friend instead of the general "Hi person I've known for 5 minutes yet have developed a lifelong friendship with" deal that plagues most games. Which, naturally, means something bad is going to happen to her now that the author has tried to get us invested in her as a character, right? After stealing several shadow pokemon (including an Alolan Grimer who would soon become MVP of pretty much everything), you punch out a giant technicolor gyarados for ruining your picnic. The fight was a bit on the rough side, but nothing I couldn't handle. Turns out, you can actually lose here and the plot would keep going. It's hardly Solaris' Garchomp, but I appreciate the gesture, I guess.

 

Back in Gearen, we kick the stuffing out of Venam.... I wish I had something more insightful to say here, but I really don't remember how this fight went. Difficulty-wise, it felt easier than Julia by a large margin, but maybe that was the point? I just remember it being extremely easy for the most part. As I made my way to Amethyst Cave, I found the walking meme that is Nim. I.... If you haven't played this game, it's worth playing just to experience this one character. She's something to say the least. Stuff happens in the cave and you eventually move on to Sheridan.

 

More stuff happens and then Keta decides to bash your teeth in with a crowbar.... errrr... challenge you to a gym battle. This fight was hard. Like, as of writing this, the hardest fight in the game. Growlithe (and almost anything else) takes massive damage from Hawlucha, even after an Intimidate. After cycling Growlithe in and out to stack Intimidates, I was able to set up a few calm minds on Kirlia.... only to get promptly walled and oneshotted by Lucario. Okay, next attempt, I set up on Hawlucha, sweep until Lucario comes in, switch and sacrifice something to it, cycle more intimidates (my team is getting pretty beat up in the process here) and push past it. But wait! Hariyama can tank almost anything and one shots mons left and right! After repeating the cycle 1 more time setting up on Hariyama, I was able to make it stick and get Kirlia to sweep. Kirlia was the sole survivor of that fight. Solid 5-6 attempts, total. While it was rough, I really appreciate boss fights that push you to think about how you want to set up instead of just piling on boosts and mowing through them. After that ordeal, Keta buggers off without giving you a badge. Wonderful. Anyway, you go into not-Pyrous Mountain and do some stuff, but most noteworthy is the security robot. This right here is a prime example of what I enjoy about this game's writing: the dialogue. It's usually quirky while not being so wacky as to completely kill the mood, but at the same time gives a good chuckle. I also got a Salandit who would become a major contributor on my team, replacing Growlithe. Arcanine is a cool pokemon and all, but I used one in Reborn and wanted to try something different here. While this did leave me without any intimidate-cheese, it felt worth it for the sake of variety. Anyway, after you go through the mountain, you find a Xen base. At this point my Voltorb and Kirlia have evolved, just in time to bash Mewtwo's face in. After Keta senselessly sacrifices himself, you go club a seal (Volcanion) and go fight Keta's ghost. I was expecting more of the pain from before....

... It didn't happen. He only has 4 mons and just keels over. I would normally be disappointed, but making this fight tougher while still not just being a copy/paste of the first would be difficult to do, so I can give it a pass.

 

In the next route, I kick the stuffing out of a Kingdra statue before realizing I don't have flash afterwards to fight the Zubats turning that into a colossal waste of time. Moving onto Goldenleaf.... Ren, what are you doing? Meanwhile back in Gearen, you stumble upon a mansion. This game is exceptionally good at being creepy when it wants to be. The atmosphere for here, Krystaline Tower and Darchlight Woods is top notch. Well done, Jan. Anyway, after a lot of fetchquests, you fight Marianette and it's quite a fight. Heliolisk is probably her most dangerous mon, and thankfully it's the one she leads with, so you can prepare accordingly. After using Eerie Impulse with Electrode to cripple it, I spam Minimize with Grimer and proceed to hax my way through the fight.

 

All of that, finally, gets us into Goldenleaf and one of the best sub-arcs in the game. So far (as of writing this, not at the goldenleaf point in the game), I'm not too big on the game's overall plot for reasons I'll get into later, but the area-specific arcs are phenomenal. After an amazing series of events, a really cool gym puzzle and a fight with Ren, you fight Narcissa. This fight... I was honestly really worried when the game started tossing Max Revives at me left and right before the fight. I was expecting it to be a slaughter.... and it was. Just not the way I anticipated. Salazzle proceeded to horrifically murder her whole team after a Nasty Plot. Around this point, I go do some backtracking/sidequests and stuff. I end up picking up a Nidoran, evolve it into Nidorino. I also pick up a Phanpy, breed Endeavor onto it, and evolve it. However, after a bit of playing with it, I ended up deciding against using it, so I boxed it. I figure the combination of Endeavor+Sturdy will do me good at some point though. On the next route, we run into Nim again and this dialogue is seriously amazing. What's not amazing is that this is a point of no return for a while with your only warning being Nim's (a character that's supposed to be a bit strange) pleas not to proceed. Anyway, after you enter the Agate Circus town, you get kidnapped by about a hundred Team Xen agents with wings and jetpacks and dumped in Blacksteeple Prison. This was the point where I heeded my warning prior to starting the game, reloaded my save and made sure I had my affairs in order for a scenario similar to Solaris. I rather enjoy finding weird cheesy ways to bring down these fights you're not supposed to win. Anyway, here you meet Saki, Valarie, Adam, your mom, a talking Braixen, Meila, and Jerry Springer. Only one of those happens to be incorrect. So yeah, lots of plot happens here. Also gamestopping bugs. A quick visit to the bug thread and I got a patch to fix it... Unfortunately, it didn't open the door after I had passed the scene where the variable was supposed to be set on the prior version, so I had to open RPG Maker and do that myself. Sorry, Jan!

 

My only complaint with this arc is that a few of the devices feel.... unnecessary. What's the point of the talking Braixen? It doesn't do anything in the later scenes it appears in (so far), so I'm not really sure why it's there. If you are actually going somewhere with this in a future version, disregard this criticism entirely though. Anyway, after your prison break, you fight an admin, followed by Madame X. Madame X leads with a level 100 Yvetal. Oh... goody.... Thankfully, endeavor-cheese Donphan was enough to dispatch it. Now, after fighting her, I read that at one point she had a full team of 6. I'm legitimately curious why that was changed, as I'd have enjoyed trying to find a solution to 6 ridiculously overleveled mons. And I say that without an iota of sarcasm; these "puzzle bosses" are neat. After you beat her, she decides that using the avatar of death to solve her problems isn't good enough and whips out a sword before chasing you off the tower. Plotmagic keeps you from going splat, and somehow she doesn't go splat either, despite clearly landing feet-first. Maybe she isn't human? Actually, there's hints that a lot of the characters aren't exactly human.

 

Then we go from stranded on one island to stranded on another. That said, the Terajuma island arc is quite fun. This wall of text would double in size if I went into details about everything here, so I'll keep it concise: A. Why are there Deoxys on the beach? It's never really explained where they came from and they're not mentioned again afterwards.  B. Crawli's gym is one of the best designed ones I've seen to date in a Pokemon game, fanmade or official. C. Amber is terrible. You did a good job making the player hate her, but the problem with that is that we're supposed to forgive her later and it's really hard to do so. C. Everything regarding Angie's subplot is amazing. This section is just so incredible and capped with a really well done boss fight too. D. Texen is Fern-tier in terms of how much you want to punch him in the face. Excellent job. E. The difficulty as a whole seems to ease up on this island until you fight Amber. Like everything from Valarie up to (but not including) Amber just felt so subdued. That's not to say the fights weren't fun, because they were, but for hard mode I feel like I bought a bag of chips and it's filled with even more air than usual. The chips are still good, but the air leaves me thinking of what could have filled that space

 

Now, special mention to Charlotte 2.0 errr Amber for being one of the tougher bosses in the run. However, once I realized Rotom was choice'd I was able to exploit that. You dun good, Jan.

 

After all of that, you get dumped into the past. This is where the plot gets a bit weird. I'll hold out on making any final judgments until the game is "complete" and I've done a couple of playthroughs so that each scene has more context, but at the moment it feels like the plot is sorta just wandering around without any real clear sense of direction. The throwback to Gen 3 is cool though. While I was here I inexplicably found several books on shadow and rift pokemon. Why are those in a random house here? After stopping a fantasy-standin-for-a-nuke, you return to the future and find your old buddy Garbodor has been turned into a Rift and is causing trouble. Thankfully, you have the book to presumably save it. If you miss the book, does he die? That's actually pretty heart-wrenching. Either way, this scene is pretty well done. Then you battle Erick who has either the most obnoxious signature move in the game, or I'm just exceptionally unlucky. It either paralyzes every time it hits, or RNG is just out to get me. Despite this, it only took 3ish attempts to beat him.

 

Then you hop on a train, run into Krystal who TOTALLY ISN'T THE CHAMPION, I SWEAR. I'm calling it now, she's the champion. >_> After your train-ride has a predictable hiccup, you end up stranded on the side of the tracks. You find the bridge is out and meet Florin and Flora. Flora however turns out to be up to no good and eventually you can tell Florin about this who calls the cops on her. Florin is quite a rough fight, in part due to his team's strategy and also because RNG hates my soul. His shaymin managed to get 4 flinches in a row with air slash on one attempt, followed by 3 in a row on the following attempt. On my 4th try, I pulled through, but damn.

 

Now, onto the nitty gritty. Rejuvenation tries a lot of new things compared to reborn, namely having several softer sections to make the darker plot-heavy sections have that much more impact. For the most part it works and the transition between each isn't too jarring, but like I alluded to above, I really don't see where the plot is going. It seems to be meandering around and leaving a ton of open plot threads every time it changes course. As I also said above, I'll reserve judgment until I can really give it a fair shake, but at the moment it's certainly not the selling point of the game for me. What is the selling point are the sub-arcs, the dialogue, the well crafted bosses and variety of areas to explore. In terms of difficulty, I'd put this (on Intense/Hard) as definitely harder than Reborn, but easier than Reborn: Hardcore, so if you're looking for a middle ground, this is probably right up your alley.

 

Overall, this game is excellent so far and I'd really love to see it developed more. Hell, this and Reborn have collectively inspired me to start development on a Pokemon game, despite the obvious legal risks it entails. Well done, Jan and everyone involved in it!

 

I had no idea that wall of text would be so huge. I'm so sorry....