spoiler [Spoiler] A thought on the battle for Mount Valor

[El mostacha]

Hello everyone, I recently got into Pokémon Rejuvenation, and it is amazing! I can’t believe we can have such a complete, high-quality game for free. (If there’s a Patreon or something like that, please send me a link!) Also, it’s my first time posting, so if there are any special rules about spoilers, please let me know.

 

I’m currently on my first playthrough and just finished the battle at Mount Valor. Managing to beat Zetta and Geara after quite a few tries was satisfying, but the ending of this storyline left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Route 6 was just a road, and the high-level encounters left for later made it feel like I wasn’t storming the Team Xen fleet before taking their fortress after all my adventures on Terajuma. Instead, I felt like I was sneaking past some powerful grunts and quietly slipping onto the island’s beach.

I mean, when I fought Angie, I was so hyped! That amazing scene where our friends and the rangers fight her minions was incredible. They barely managed to create a breach for us to get through and confront her. It was one of the best scenes in the game so far, in my opinion.

 

For Mount Valor, however, we simply go through Route 6, reach the top of the mountain, and follow some classic dungeon-crawling with a few puzzles (though Saki is hilarious, as always). It doesn't really matter, the climb up the mountain is not as important as what happens once we’re on top.

Once we reach the summit, we get an AMAZING setup: Team Xen is trying to take control of the island, and our team of friends we made along the way is pushing them back. We manage to fight off Giratina, and Professor Jenner sacrifices himself to take out Team Xen’s reinforcements. Then Geara, being the evil bastard he is, murders our friend right in front of us. This is it. We’ve been abducted, our mother was murdered, and now Team Xen is trying to take over the island and enslave the very people who gave us shelter when we were at our lowest. The whole chapter has been building up to this moment.

The battle is as hard as we expected, but after trying again and again, we finally manage to beat them. And then... they just decide to use their fists instead of their Pokémon. Geara sucker-punches (pokepun intended) Venam and pushes us into the lava. We die. Everything was for nothing. Crescent appears out of nowhere, brings us back to life, frees Giratina, captures Zetta in a Pokéball, and sends Geara back to Madame X. So the whole quest ends up feeling useless—we could have walked in with a level 2 Rattata, yeeted ourselves into the lava, and gotten the same result.

I felt a little disappointed. If our friends had saved us, it would have been different. But no it’s the same character who keeps saving us. I didn’t feel like a great Pokémon Trainer who overcame adversity with a ragtag group of friends made during my adventure. I still felt like the same poor boy from Chapter 1 who keeps getting saved at the last minute. Crescent saves Terajuma with little to no effort, and we’re just witnesses to how much better she is compared to us.

I completely get that this is the middle of the game, so of course, we still have some build-up to do. At some point, we’ll become more powerful than her and take on Madame X, and then we’ll feel like a great Trainer. However, after such a big buildup for the battle, simply getting pushed into lava felt underwhelming.

I feel like some small changes could improve player satisfaction while keeping what the devs intended for this scene. For example: A scripted battle against an “unleashed Giratina” that wipes the floor with us right after the Zetta/Geara encounter would be more impactful than simply having Geara throw punches. Or, after we beat Zetta and Geara, Mount Valor could start to erupt, and Tapu Koko saves us at the last moment (think eagles saving Frodo and Sam on Mount Doom), while a cutscene shows Crescent picking up Zetta, freeing Giratina, ... Or hell even getting punched but being saved by our friends instead of Crescent would feel better.

What are your thoughts on this ?