Pokemon Reborn Episode 18 review *Spoilers*

[Ya Gorl]

So, recently I finished the latest episode of Pokemon Reborn, and as I finished it, I could only think one thing.

"Wow."

This game... It's so much. It's filled to the brim with rich and diverse interactions, and fun, lovable characters all throughout the story. I'll list the ones I can think of off the top of my head, in no particular order:

Julia, Cain, Victoria, Florinia, Shade, Charlotte, DJ Arclight, Luna, Aster and Eclipse, the Aqua/Magma Gang members, the Opal Ward trainers, ZEL, and many, many more.

You see, this game has something that the official games don't seem to have anymore: character development. You can see it everywhere, be it from barely noticeable characters, such as the Opal Ward trainers, to Aster and Eclipse, with each receiving levels of development that you wouldn't expect.

There are just so many small details that really show that Ame has put so much work into the story that this game follows, and has paid an immense amount of attention to even the smallest area. A great example of this is Reborn City itself. Once you've completed the Agate Circus arc, in which you face off against Samson, Terra, Ciel, Blake, Fern, Solaris (and optionally Taka), you can return to Reborn City to find that it's been completely revamped thanks to Adrienn's leadership and xeir community efforts. In this new version of the city, you can find numerous hidden details; the gang you joined before has disbanded and started properly helping people, trainers at Onyx Academy have new lines that give praise to your actions against Team Meteor, many areas have completely changed, and numerous NPCs have new dialogue that speak of the changes that have occurred.

 

But you may be asking, "Why is any of this important?"

This level of attention to detail isn't something you see very often in games these days; AAA publishers rarely bother to include anything that gives the game any exploration value, which massively holds them back. However, thanks to the much smaller team and the much larger scope of the game, Ame has managed to keep her vision in the product, which has allowed for an overall much more satisfying product. 

 

 

Now, I'm not just gonna tell you all about why I love the game, because I could go on for hours doing that. There are obviously some glaring issues in the game which I feel need to be talked about.

Firstly, I feel that some characters are somewhat left out for large portions of the game. For example, Serra is only given a very minor role, despite being heavily related to one of the main villains. She does get a grand return towards the end of Episode 18, though it is somewhat minor compared to the attention other characters receive after their arc is over. You can see this contrasted with Hardy, a minor character who was introduced early and then returned as a highly important member of the story. You could argue that she's going to receive more attention in Episode 19, though you could also argue this for many things.

Another character that receives this treatment is Julia; initially appearing as an ally in the fight against Team Meteor, Julia doesn't seem to have much relevance after the first half-hour or so of gameplay, even with her return during the attack on Titania and Amaria's house. This problem just seems to be an issue with characters that don't have much use to the story, by which I mean some characters just have wasted potential.

 

Secondly, difficult spikes. Boss fights always have one thing in common: "Oh you thought this would be an alright fight? Huh, little piss boy? No, you don't get to have nice things. Fuck you, RNG is going to ruin your chances of winning." I cannot tell you how many times I was completely fucked over by the field giving the enemy a random boost. It often feels artificially difficult, in that it forces you to rely on a chance that you can do certain things. Another way this happens is with the PULSE pokemon, which are often just a bit more than what you can handle at the time. I found myself grinding levels for hours in this game, just so that I could try a new strategy, as your first idea is almost always not going to work. The best example of this is PULSE Swalot, which is fought on the toxic water field. If you want to defeat it, you need to remove the toxic water, which means you have to use a specific move such as whirlpool, and then you have to try to break through its immense defense and special defense, which is even more difficult when it re-poisons the water, and by the end of it the fight just feels more like a slog than an enjoyable experience.

I want to stress though, this style of battles does give victory a far more satisfying feeling to it; The only time I have ever really felt satisfaction as good as this is when I beat Cynthia in Platinum.

 

 

So to conclude, I want to say that whilst excellent, Pokemon Reborn is not a game for those that are looking for a casual gaming experience, and does not show mercy. However, I still highly recommend it to anyone that I can, and I hope you reading this will to.

 

[Chains of Heaven]

ahahah I made an account to reply to this, you really summed up the reasons I love and struggle with Reborn in one post....! I started Rejuvenation recently, and it was only in experiencing another fanmade game of a similar caliber that I realize how truly amazing Reborn is. The amount of effort it must have taken to ensure cohesion in both the whole story and the characters just blows my mind. Like, the woman with that tiny patch of grass in Peridot who gets an entire lovely park after restoration? I think about that so much.

 

What are you hoping to see from Serra in E19, or how could her arc have been better? Personally I think adding more early on to justify her semi-isolation in Spinel Town, which is pretty far from the rest of the map, would do wonders. It kinda relates to her role as the Ice leader, if she wants to be cool and closed off physically too, and it might make for an easy way to relate to even Bennett, who would also just want to get out of the house like a normal teenager (along with....everything else he has going on...). Or does it make it better for the player to have to connect the dots about Bennett's actions? And and, not to encourage snooping as a good practice or anything, but it'd be cool if there were more mementos for the player to interact with in the Voclain estate. Maybe a family photo, or an old drawing from Bennett of a cool bug.....or is it more telling that there isn't anything at all? The groundwork is all there for theorizing about her, but the game itself doesn't really invite the player to do so, and that makes a lot of difference.

 

I think Adrienn could have been fleshed out a bit more, too. Sometimes I suspect that xyr most prominent character traits are "nonbinary" and "hard worker, doesn't sleep", which makes xem always feel a little less three dimensional than the rest of the cast. This seems like an inevitable side effect of having so many characters with beautifully done arcs, though -- it's always gonna feel uneven in the end. Maybe that "fwends" feature in E19 and postgame can compensate?

 

UGH and difficulty spikes. I really like the challenge level of Reborn, but what messes with my head is the grinding. In Rejuvenation, there are EV training rooms that let you EV train full teams in just minutes. EVs are totally not necessary to play Reborn, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and don't like using mons that aren't EV trained (probably because I'm not very good at pokeman ahaha), and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. If leveling new mons wasn't so tedious, I probably wouldn't be Destiny Bond cheesing through so many battles. Is "get good" enough of a solution here? Reborn definitely makes better Pokemon players out of main series casuals.....

 

Beating Titania on the, like, fifth try with a janky weird half-sand team felt like seeing God's face though. That's a feeling you can't get anywhere else.

[Ya Gorl]

On 6/3/2020 at 6:24 AM, Chains of Heaven said:

ahahah I made an account to reply to this, you really summed up the reasons I love and struggle with Reborn in one post....! I started Rejuvenation recently, and it was only in experiencing another fanmade game of a similar caliber that I realize how truly amazing Reborn is. The amount of effort it must have taken to ensure cohesion in both the whole story and the characters just blows my mind. Like, the woman with that tiny patch of grass in Peridot who gets an entire lovely park after restoration? I think about that so much.

 

What are you hoping to see from Serra in E19, or how could her arc have been better? Personally I think adding more early on to justify her semi-isolation in Spinel Town, which is pretty far from the rest of the map, would do wonders. It kinda relates to her role as the Ice leader, if she wants to be cool and closed off physically too, and it might make for an easy way to relate to even Bennett, who would also just want to get out of the house like a normal teenager (along with....everything else he has going on...). Or does it make it better for the player to have to connect the dots about Bennett's actions? And and, not to encourage snooping as a good practice or anything, but it'd be cool if there were more mementos for the player to interact with in the Voclain estate. Maybe a family photo, or an old drawing from Bennett of a cool bug.....or is it more telling that there isn't anything at all? The groundwork is all there for theorizing about her, but the game itself doesn't really invite the player to do so, and that makes a lot of difference.

 

I think Adrienn could have been fleshed out a bit more, too. Sometimes I suspect that xyr most prominent character traits are "nonbinary" and "hard worker, doesn't sleep", which makes xem always feel a little less three dimensional than the rest of the cast. This seems like an inevitable side effect of having so many characters with beautifully done arcs, though -- it's always gonna feel uneven in the end. Maybe that "fwends" feature in E19 and postgame can compensate?

 

UGH and difficulty spikes. I really like the challenge level of Reborn, but what messes with my head is the grinding. In Rejuvenation, there are EV training rooms that let you EV train full teams in just minutes. EVs are totally not necessary to play Reborn, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and don't like using mons that aren't EV trained (probably because I'm not very good at pokeman ahaha), and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. If leveling new mons wasn't so tedious, I probably wouldn't be Destiny Bond cheesing through so many battles. Is "get good" enough of a solution here? Reborn definitely makes better Pokemon players out of main series casuals.....

 

Beating Titania on the, like, fifth try with a janky weird half-sand team felt like seeing God's face though. That's a feeling you can't get anywhere else.

Honestly the entire experience of going back to Reborn after playing something like Insurgence was kinda surreal for me, because I haven't really seen the kind of world-building like there is in Reborn anywhere else, and the best part is that Rejuvenation is genuinely just as good as Reborn in so many ways! They aren't really carbon copies of each other, to be fair, I feel that Rejuvenation does get a bit weird in places with the Garufa and the weird surfer people, but that's a discussion for another day lol.

 

If I had to name any one thing I'd want to see for characters like Serra, it would be optional sidequests where you can explore their development separately to the story. For example, with Julia, we could have a quest through the Peridot ward just going ham on criminals, since that's just the kind of thing you get from Julia. Or, with Serra, we could help her follow up on a lead on where Bennet has gone, since we know she was worried about him, and if I remember correctly she started looking for him.

Something like this would give a bit more depth and use for characters that don't really appear much after their first introduction.

 

EV training isn't massively difficult in this game like it is in the mainline games, but it is still extremely tedious when you're trying to get mons that give a specific type of ev and all you get are the ones that don't. Rejuvenation did address this by having the ev rooms, and by locking them behind cards unlocked with AP, which stopped people from getting everything given to them.

And don't get me started on levelling! The trainers that you can fight in Reborn Grand Hall are always just a bit too strong for proper level training, and they end up not being particularly great for it since you'll end up losing to them a few times at least. I found that at the end of the game the best way was to fight the Roulette Clown at Agate Circus, since he doesn't have much of a chance of beating your mons and taking all your money.

 

Titania was just hell. That's all I can say about her. That's it. She was annoying, overly tedious, and sucked hours of my life away from me with all the level training I had to do to get my mons close enough to the level limit, and when it was over I felt like beating her wasn't even worth it because she's still an ass to you after that. Even still, before she started talking I was happy about winning.