Pokémon Reborn: A Year Hence

[Yeshua_Kristos]

About nine years ago, my college classmates and I had a free period where we were supposed to gather data for our news articles. Instead, we hid in an empty classroom and played Ib. The game was terrifying, it was gorgeous, it was funny—it was also my first exposure to the world of RPG Maker.

 

Three years after that, I saw one of my friends playing romhacks. He offered to pass me copies of them, but I turned him down. An attitude I carried at that time—and still carry to this day, albeit reduced—was, “Why play romhacks at all? They’re basically just the vanilla games with a coat of ‘difficult’ paint. I want to play something original.”

 

Then, while browsing TV Tropes, I saw repeated references to a game called Pokémon Reborn—references to how it depicted mons as superweapons and instruments of murder. (Which is basically part of the reason fearmongering churches preach against canon Pokémon, ha! This just occurred to me.) I peeked at the game’s page on the site, and this line caught my eye:

 

“Interestingly enough, Pokémon Reborn is not a ROM hack, but an RPG Maker game.”

 

Now that certainly sounded interesting! However, I had no time to indulge my curiosity before I fell into a depressive spiral, my brother got horribly ill, and I had to pull out of school for a year. My brother did get better—physically, at least. As for me…well, I’m not sure I ever got out of that spiral. But that’s a story for another day…

 

Once my life got back to relative normalcy, I decided to learn more about Reborn while writing my autobiography for one of my classes and playing my first nuzlockes. (That biography got me an A+, btw. And I won my nuzlockes.) I watched Lord Wallace’s videos. I watched boss battle compilations. I read past dev blogs. Finally, I took the plunge, made an account on the forums, and downloaded the game for myself!

 

…whereupon my playthrough fizzled out in Tanzan Base. Yeah, well—between how slowly the game ran, the killer combo of hard bosses and tedious EV & level grinding, and IRL commitments creeping up on me, I got tired of playing the game myself. I settled for keeping up with the dev blogs and chuckling at Ame’s Twitter posts.

 

Then the pandemic happened, and I had a lot more free time on my hands. Even still, I settled for playing more nuzlockes and keeping a close eye on the dev blog. “Why should I touch the game in its incomplete state when it’s close to being finished? Eventually?”

 

Then “eventually” turned into “soon.” Then “soon” became “in April 2022.”

Finally, the game’s community beta started. By that time, I had become active on the Discord server, so after a few technical hiccups, I started my own thread and played a fresh run.

 

It’s been a year since then. In that time, I’ve cleared both postgame routes, completed the Reborn prompt list, and launched a crackship involving a psychotic jeweler and his office. To celebrate, I want to talk about all the things I love about Reborn.

 

(Disclaimer: I HIGHLY recommend you clear the game, postgame included, before you read further. Or at least watch someone else’s playthrough.)

 

COMMUNITY

I lurked on Smogon before, even making an account—but I only posted once before I swore off becoming active there. They cultivate a LOT of elitism there, not to mention all the dirty laundry they have.

 

Now, Reborn was also a competitive battling site before it was a game. And yes, there are a few elitist people around. Emphasis on few. The community overall has been welcoming as HECK.

 

Call it the logical consequence of Ame creating a safe space for all sexualities and genders to congregate, call it the tough bosses and puzzles of Reborn beating the elitism out of people—people make you feel welcome here.

 

They answer your questions. They say “good morning!” They cheer you up when you’re struggling. Whether you’re a writer/artist, a challenge runner, or just a blorbo who likes to say “hi ily uwu” to people, there’s always space at the table that is the Reborn community.

 

…Unless you make people uncomfortable. Or harass them. Or make them feel bad for losing repeatedly. Or lob unfounded accusations. Then you find out the hard way why people around here can afford to be nice. To create a safe space, one must come down hard on unsafe elements.

 

Anyway! This community has been very welcoming to me, and to many others. It’s the one Pokémon fan community where I feel like I can be honest and vulnerable. So I’ve been doing my best to pay it forward. I hope I’ve been succeeding!

 

HUMOR

Reborn is not primarily a comedy game. It has a reputation for being “Edgy” (derogatory). That said, it has both a silly sense of humor, and a dark sense of humor—things that appeal to me, a Filipino guy who inherited a strong sense of black comedy from his dad.

 

Reborn’s dark humor lies primarily in the ways characters die. There’s Corey, who jumped off the same bridge his spouse used to jump off of for kicks. There’s Dr. Connal, who got told “You might feel a little shock…” right before Lin—one of the very children he used to say that to constantly—shoved him into the PULSE Mime’s machine. And there’s Sirius, who got pushed into lava by the daughter of the couple whose house he burned down.

 

And of course, there’s my favorite moment of dark humor in this game: right after MC and Ame survive the train bombing at the start of this whole adventure, the game introduces Julia—a woman who loves to blow up things for fun. And she also insists she didn’t blow up the train! (She really didn’t, but STILL!)

 

Of course, the game has moments of conventional silliness and levity. How else can you describe Ame saying “Watch out, or you’ll get wasted!” as she advises you how to fight Aya? Or the fact that—just like in canon Pokémon—every gym leader’s name is a pun on their type specialization? Or the chase scene at the end of the Hoopa quest? Pretty much every scene child Lin and Terra are in?

 

That chase scene, by the way, made me laugh non-stop for 30 seconds the first time I watched it.

 

Reborn is not primarily a comedy game, but it has a great sense of humor. Even its violent & dramatic moments are funny when you look at them a certain way.

 

NONVERBAL STORYTELLING

One of the things I love about canon Pokémon games—especially the original Red and Blue—is how they use the environment to tell a story. The dialogue and plot are simple enough for young kids to understand. However, analyzing the environment of the game is like seeing a story within a story.

 

Why is the population mostly composed of (pre)teens, young adults, and seniors? Why are there so many graves in Pokémon Tower? Why isn’t there much forest cover across the region? These are intriguing questions about Kanto, but the dialog itself doesn’t touch upon them much, if at all—you’d need to be aware of the game’s contemporary socio-political background to grasp the significance of these elements.

 

Reborn takes this strength of canon and improves upon it by weaving its environments, plot, and dialog together.

 

We’re told that many people either fled the region or were killed in Meteor’s attacks, and we see it in how small the city’s population is relative to its size. We’re informed that Meteor crippled Reborn’s economy, and we see the effects of that in how many homeless people and petty criminals roam the streets.

 

We’re told that Reborn used to look very beautiful. We see just how beautiful once we can fly back to the city after defeating Ciel. Additionally, looking at the progress of the restoration speaks to just how good Adrienn is as a community organizer.

 

Reborn has a lot of dialog, but it knows when to let its setting speak for itself.

 

AESTHETICS

This is a huge part of why the environmental storytelling is on point. 

 

The music, the art, the move animations, the character sprites, the sound effects…they are SO GOOD! And they all work together in tandem to set the mood for areas, scenarios, and battles.

 

When this game wants to frighten or unnerve you—like it does in Shade's gym and during the early Anna route—it succeeds. When it wants you to stop and marvel at how gorgeous a new location is—like in Aegir Cave or Amaria's and Titania's gyms—it succeeds. When it wants you to catch your breath after a tense moment—like when you first reach Belrose Manse after fleeing Yureyu—it succeeds.

 

It's all thanks to how the dialogue, plot, sound design, and graphics work together to tell the story of Reborn. 

 

SPACE FOR HEADCANON

This game relays a lot of information about its characters, both verbally and non-verbally. We know that Cain and Aya do not have a good relationship with their parents. We know that Ace and Ciel are cousins. We know that Sirius and Radomus used to be friends. 

 

However, we don't know literally EVERYTHING about these characters— just enough that we have guidance to fill in the blanks as we please. What was Arclight's life like before he became a DJ? What was Adrienn's life like before xe fell into the Citae Astrae? What was Victoria's life like before she entered Apophyll Academy? 

 

A good example of the game providing fuel for headcanon is how I came up with the idea to ship Sirius with his office in Meteor's Yureyu base. He seems awful proud of it when you encounter him there—and then when it blows up and you meet him at Belrose later, he seems angrier about its destruction than about the deaths of grunts on his watch. Thus, Sirius/Office was born. 

 

But there's more—I fleshed this out further when I thought about canon elements of Sirius' backstory. He really didn't take Radomus' betrayal well, if he's willing to badmouth him right in front of his daughter's face. And he had to have been exposed to the energies of the four keys when he crafted them into jewelry.

So, pain of betrayal plus exposure to the energy of the four keys equals an insane man—one insane enough to use violent means to get the four keys back AND hear his living spaces, his office included, talking to him.

 

Thus was Sirius adopted as my poor little meow meow—and thus did my friend Torre start to become sad every time poor Paul failed The Floor is Lava in Victory Road.

 

There are enough throwaway lines and background details in this game that even the most esoteric headcanons have basis in reality. And even for characters that don't interact at all, we have a solid grasp on how they'd interact because of how fleshed out they are as individuals. ^_^

 

AUTHENTICITY

By now, it should be common knowledge that the Reborn League characters were just that—characters, played by Ame, her friends, and her site staff. So no checking public records for news of psychiatrists arrested for illegal ECT practice, please! 

 

However, just because they weren't actual people does not mean they are not authentic.

 

We've all seen—or even lived as—some of these people in our lives. Depressed people who nontheless get up and fight every day. People who have so much hatred in their hearts that their love is stunted or even choked out entirely. Abuse survivors who try to break the cycle and succeed—or fail miserably. People who have every reason to go apeshit—yet stand up and choose love anyway. 

 

Ame's willingness to publicly talk about the things she's experienced that inspired this story—on Tumblr, in Twitch streams, in what she says in the dev room—drives home how authentic the story is. She's clearly had a colorful life, and she drew from it to craft this tale beautifully.

 

POWER OF FANWORKS

There's a reason I've long admired fan creators of all kinds—especially Pokemon fan creators—whether they make games, fics, art, whatever. 

 

Not having a profit motive, not subject to executives’ whims, not overseen by editors and/or a Standards and Practices board—fan works have a TON of freedom. Even works like Star Trek or Avatar: The Last Airbender had execs and stockholders telling them what they could and couldn't do. 

 

Yes, many times, this sheer freedom results in absolutely crappy drivel that makes one question how much of a "fan" the creator actually is. But there are golden moments where a fanwork takes full advantage of its freedom to openly, unsubtly, and beautifully tackle subjects canon can't/won't touch.

 

Subjects like the bad and good sides of religion. The different facets of depression. The sobering reality of institutionalized bigotry. The difficulty of breaking through generational trauma. The plight of the urban poor. How a body would look when it's fried by a million volts—thanks Pulse Mime (derogatory)!

 

With no oversight but that of their Patrons and each other, the dev team are free to tackle multiple grisly topics head on—and do it maturely and wisely. 

 

SKILL EXPRESSION

People will never stop saying, "This game is hard!" But for those of us who have gotten good, we can appreciate how Reborn is made by competitive players, for competitive players. 

 

Part of what makes the game fun is how it asks you: how well can you make use of the resources available to you? And it doesn't just ask you this in earlygame, where you only have a limited selection of items and mons—it also asks you this in lategame and postgame, where you have so many options, you might get crippled by choice paralysis! XD

 

Thankfully, the game is also flexible enough that even when you're deliberately limiting your mon selection, you can clear maingame AND postgame—with set mode and no item use, to boot. 

 

Of course, I'm sure the devs never accounted for the mad people who tried—and succeeded—at clearing the entire game with only Vivillon, or with baby Fairies, or under hardcore nuzlocke rules with zero deaths, but hey! That just speaks to how flexible this game truly is.

 

Those runners are still insane, though. <3

 

The best part of Reborn's difficulty? While bosses are hard, training is easy! Gone are the days when one had to grind from one to ninety to take on the Glass Gauntlet—now you can just feed your mons candy and vitamins, then go ham. Runs of all kinds become much less tedious because of this, allowing us to express our skills freely. ^_^

 

POINTS OF IMPROVEMENT

Much as I love Reborn, I recognize that it isn't a perfect game. And I wouldn't want to be disingenuous by saying Reborn is flawless when it's not—that would be dishonest and disrespectful. So, here's what I think could be improved about the game, if ever it gets another update. 

 

1. It's fun to watch the Nightclub fill up more and more as postgame progresses, but fewer people comment on returning characters than I was expecting.

 

For just ONE example: it's nice Aya is happy about Cain returning, but what do Shelly and Heather have to say? Hardy? Victoria? Radomus? Noel? Luna? Ciel, Samson, and Terra? Surely, having shared quite a bit of screentime with Cain in maingame, they'd have something to say about his rescue…

 

2. With a cast this big, juggling screentime for everybody is hard. But, there are moments when it becomes obvious who got the short end of the stick—especially in postgame.

 

Much as I love them, do Terra, Victoria, Taka, the Sorority, etc. really need more screentime over Heather, Blake, Ciel, and Samson? Much as it's fun to see Rejuvenation and Desolation get shouted out, do we need to spend time with these two ASSHOLES (derogatory) instead of, say, helping Heather cope with her grief over Corey? 

 

3. Partners are wimpy as heck! Why are Florinia and Julia so low-leveled during the Fiore gauntlet? Why does Reborn Taka only have IV's of ten on his mons? Whose idea was it to give Hardy's Nihilego physical Attack EV's???

(Note: does not apply to Pavilion partners. They're good.)

 

4. When puzzles are hits, they're hits. But when they miss, they really miss—and many of the puzzles that miss are the ones you can't skip without the NG++ mod! Minecarts and color mixing, my beloathed…

 

5. Laura's full-body sprite hits the uncanny valley for me. Her eyes creep me out, truly! A shame, too—her VS portrait and her overworld sprite are cute as heck.

 

6. Lin's antics can get ludicrously grating. Sure, it's intentional. Sure, I know kids in real life who are like her. That doesn't mean I don't want to ground her ass when I find her—she is my adopted daughter, after all. This sheer nosiness and noisiness is part of why I like Anna route more—her relative silence puts in perspective how lonely the New World is. 

 

CONCLUSION

Reborn very good. And so is Ame, for bringing all of us together to create this beautiful community. 

 

Thanks Ame. <3

 

 

[CrystalStar]

A beautifully written message 

6 hours ago, Yeshua_Kristos said:

When this game wants to frighten or unnerve you—like it does in Shade's gym and during the early Anna route—it succeeds. When it wants you to stop and marvel at how gorgeous a new location is—like in Aegir Cave or Amaria's and Titania's gyms—it succeeds. When it wants you to catch your breath after a tense moment—like when you first reach Belrose Manse after fleeing Yureyu—it succeeds.

I agree with this completely, Reborn's maps in general portray the setting beautifully, i genuinely was extremely creeped out by Shade's gym back when i first played the game and even managed to get jumpscared recently lmao

 

i agree with almost everything said in this

 

truly, reborn is an amazing game with a wonderful community.