most important fights are obnoxious rather than fun or challenging, the story is difficult to enjoy with its amateur fanfic-esque writing, and the side content is monotonous. it is a very impressive romhack with a large pokedex, megas, z-moves, custom tilesets, custom music, new items, new region, and new battle mechanics, but the gameplay is not there, and it made for a bad experience.
Pokémon Unbound is widely regarded as one of the best rom hacks you can play and I can (mostly) see why.
First, for a game that is a rom hack and not a fan game made completely from scatch this game is insanely edited to be something unique. The advantage rom hacks have over fan games is the lack of performance issues which is very noticeable here. Such a smooth experience start to finish! Also, it just looks so good.
Important: I chose to play on the "vanilla" difficulty, because I don't really play Pokémon for a challenge, but it was nice to still be able to have more of a challenge than with modern games in the main series. Now, let's see the positives and negatives of this game:
POSITIVE
+ Character customization. While you can't change much except your outfit (rarely) after starting your adventure, the character selection screen allows you to choose between multiple looks and not just skin color.
+ Good characters with unique designs for a Pokémong game
+ A lot of Pokémon from almost all generations available
+ Interesting story with some pacing issues, but overall fun
+ New way to evolve Pokémon who usually need to be traded
+ diverse region to explore
+ Gyms actually have interesting puzzles and each gym has its own extra challenge to overcome within battles
+ difficulty settings including "NG+" after beating the E4
+ a lot of quality of life changes from older gens (using repels again without going into the bag, multiple usage of TMs, HMs don't need to be learned by a mon, you just need a mon that can learn it in your party)
+ Mega evolution and raids are in this. While they mostly seem like an afterthought, the way these very implemented and handled visually is honestly astounding
+ Perfect length for a playthrough
+ good post-game content (new quests, new mons to catch, Battle frontier on the latest version and more)
NEGATIVES:
- The route design in this game is horrible. Some seem to like it, but all the backtracking and fifty different turns you can take... just no. I am a big defender of linear Pokémon games and this was not for me.
- while diverse and well designed visually, the Gym leaders and E4 lack personality and are not integrated into the story at all or very rarely
- the questing system is just not working for me. I barely did any of them. The only good thing about it was, obviously, the rewards you got for them and actually checking the main objective sometimes if you're lost
Overall this game is much better than even a lot of the RPG Maker Fan Games that came out in recent years. I just feel like a Rom hack gives more stability and seeing how this is a completely new game from start to finish and really has nothing left from the rom it's based on, the only reason to use RPG Maker over rom hackin is probably because it's easier to use. I would highly recommend this to casual and hardcore fans.
Played on Steam Deck via Emulation.
First, for a game that is a rom hack and not a fan game made completely from scatch this game is insanely edited to be something unique. The advantage rom hacks have over fan games is the lack of performance issues which is very noticeable here. Such a smooth experience start to finish! Also, it just looks so good.
Important: I chose to play on the "vanilla" difficulty, because I don't really play Pokémon for a challenge, but it was nice to still be able to have more of a challenge than with modern games in the main series. Now, let's see the positives and negatives of this game:
POSITIVE
+ Character customization. While you can't change much except your outfit (rarely) after starting your adventure, the character selection screen allows you to choose between multiple looks and not just skin color.
+ Good characters with unique designs for a Pokémong game
+ A lot of Pokémon from almost all generations available
+ Interesting story with some pacing issues, but overall fun
+ New way to evolve Pokémon who usually need to be traded
+ diverse region to explore
+ Gyms actually have interesting puzzles and each gym has its own extra challenge to overcome within battles
+ difficulty settings including "NG+" after beating the E4
+ a lot of quality of life changes from older gens (using repels again without going into the bag, multiple usage of TMs, HMs don't need to be learned by a mon, you just need a mon that can learn it in your party)
+ Mega evolution and raids are in this. While they mostly seem like an afterthought, the way these very implemented and handled visually is honestly astounding
+ Perfect length for a playthrough
+ good post-game content (new quests, new mons to catch, Battle frontier on the latest version and more)
NEGATIVES:
- The route design in this game is horrible. Some seem to like it, but all the backtracking and fifty different turns you can take... just no. I am a big defender of linear Pokémon games and this was not for me.
- while diverse and well designed visually, the Gym leaders and E4 lack personality and are not integrated into the story at all or very rarely
- the questing system is just not working for me. I barely did any of them. The only good thing about it was, obviously, the rewards you got for them and actually checking the main objective sometimes if you're lost
Overall this game is much better than even a lot of the RPG Maker Fan Games that came out in recent years. I just feel like a Rom hack gives more stability and seeing how this is a completely new game from start to finish and really has nothing left from the rom it's based on, the only reason to use RPG Maker over rom hackin is probably because it's easier to use. I would highly recommend this to casual and hardcore fans.
Played on Steam Deck via Emulation.