Being Ame For a Day - An Exercise in Game Critique By a Fan

[Chase]

This thread is going to need some pretext, because I can be a bit blunt or brash when explaining things and that doesn't particularly sit well with everyone who may read this.

 

The point of this thread is to share what I think I would do if I were either "Ame for a day" or someone who was allowed to make suggestions regarding the game's aspects before the project would hypothetically be released with a price tag and Nintendo Directs start talking about season-passes and potential DLC.

 

ANY CRITICISM that is found here is not meant to sound "holier-than-thou" or disgusted. It's simply being given due to the times. Pokémon Reborn is nearly completed as a project - and while I'm not expecting a huge marketing push and/or the game to be made available for sale for obvious reasons - I want to try and come at the game as if Amethyst really was working on a mainstream Pokémon game for Game Freak and Reborn was the project she delivered hypothetically.

 

In other words, the critique is not meant to seem "necessary" - but if it sounds like the frustration  of a player who has experienced the game is coming through, well, you kinda have to play the game before you can leave any kind of criticism or suggestions right? As long as people have read the context above, then people will at least know where I'm coming from.

 

Furthermore, I'm also interested in seeing your responses to my criticisms, as well as allowing you to join me in offering some of your own. This is kind of an important invitation, because I don't REALLY have many negative things to say about the gameplay itself. So I might NEED someone who may know more about Pokémon as a game to point other things out that I miss.

 

Also, if Ame is out there reading this, it would be kinda neat to hear what she'd have to say about her own game if she were to put herself in a critic's shoes. I'd get a kick out of that - especially because I know Ame would understand the hypothetical situation at hand and perhaps that would influence how she feels about different aspects of the game - or at the very least she can explain why the product IS suitable for a mainstream Pokémon game and that would be cool to know too.

 

Alright. Here goes.

 

---

 

1. If this game were to ever become a part of Pokémon's franchise, Pokémon Reborn has a bloated cast of characters that compound the issue of having a bloated cast by giving each and every member a backstory, their own goals and motives, and tying it all into the game's plot.

Spoiler

(In these spoiler tags, I will offer some reasoning behind the criticisms I make.)

 

Now, I am aware that when you have to take on Gym Leaders representing all 18 types (which would never happen in a mainstream Pokémon title as far as we know to this point), the Elite Four, the Champion (or.....someone like N who defeats the Champion before you do and inherits the title in some capacity) and various members related to the evil organization that offers the game rising action, plot, and at times the climax of a story, then yeah, you're left with a bunch of characters. It would seem like a bit of a necessary evil.

 

Except Game Freak has shown a deft ability to lessen the run time and keep the plot relatively focused by NOT doing what Reborn does in regards to the cast as a whole. Many of the traditional gym leaders are stoic fixtures of their Gyms, who only exit them for one or two events max if the story calls for them to do so. Their stories aren't really explored in the games so much as they may be in other mediums such as manga or anime adaptations. SOME of the Gym Leaders or League officials may make repeat encounters and give relevant exposition to make them stand out as characters, but they aren't ALL jockeying for importance.

 

With Reborn, you have TEN more Gym Leaders than usual and MOST of them have dynamic story moments if not all of them, as well as backstories and other lore that may or may not be revealed to the player immediately, and for these types of NPC's, it doesn't seem like the traditional Pokémon Trainer would actually give much of a rip about them. You also have more Team Meteor Admins than most canon evil organizations carry, and there are a sizeable handful of other interesting characters (Rivals, powerful trainers, repeat event NPCs such as Corrin Rouge) that also have relative importance.

 

This kind of leads to an experience that just seems too long - and the final part of the critique - tying each character to the game's plot - only marginally helps the central theme of Reborn's rebuilding community working together to better the region - and comes with more of a need to pay attention to each and every NPC's issues and goals which can be totally lost when having to keep track of all....what, 30 characters?

 

There is NOT a need to change any of the cast at all for a refined version of Reborn. There probably IS a need to make some of the Gym Leaders static and potentially remove some of the events tied to those Leaders or convert them to post-game content to keep the main story a bit more focused and speed it along.

 

    2. There is seemingly SOMETHING missing with Team Meteor in the beginning of the game, and its ties to Arceus (which is probably Reborn's box art Legendary given the events that surround it) are not truly explained as vividly as they could be because of the thing that needs to be expounded upon the most in regard to the evil organization. Its DISorganization.

Spoiler

It took me a while to get to this conclusion... but Team Meteor is a very compelling and well done example of an evil organization that was once an organization that wasn't nefarious at the start, kind of like the Aether Foundation in Alola. Also like the Sun and Moon antagonists, you have multiple factions that group together for a similar purpose (Team Meteor itself, the New World Orderlies that were formerly working for Dr. Connal at his orphanage, and New World Cultists that may have been tied to Meteor before Lin took over the operation.)

 

There are two issues however. Team Meteor does a lot of extreme things with a pretty thin and naked reasoning. "We don't want Reborn City to exist, so we're destroying it and killing it's inhabitants."

 

This does get expounded upon, but it takes a long time for it to happen and it even still feels thin unless you're an adept adventurer and you do some of the game's sidequests.

 

Meteor is more complex than Team Rocket, but not as meta-physical as the reasoning behind Team Plasma. The reason for its complexity however comes from the various personalities having DIFFERENT goals from one another, almost as if they are competing against one another to steer the direction of the organization. You don't get the sense of this until the FIore Mansion raid, and that's only through a quip made by Sirius after Solaris enters the mansion having given his orders, and Blake has some snarky comment to follow up.

 

So, Reborn oversimplifies its best selling point in my opinion, Team Meteor, for far too long in the beginning. It also doesn't highlight Meteor's best trait, the multiple goals of its multiple admins, far into the game's runtime as well

 

Finally, the lore behind pretty much ALL of these agents is buried in optional sidequest locations. For some, this is totally fine. For ALL of them however, it's a bit of a shame.

 

I have some more, and I may either add them in a response post, or put them here if the thread isn't generating a lot of a buzz. I've already typed a good deal already, so I'm going to see what the first two points bring up and give my wrists a break.