Normally I don't like to put out stupidly long reviews that are bullshit to read because they take like 10 minutes, but I felt very strongly about this one.
This is at its heart a good game, but that is simply because it remakes something so good. This game is a case of death by a thousand papercuts regarding its problems.
The biggest problem with this game is how cheap it all is. This game was made on a budget of coins found in the dryer and a fart. Is this actually true? I hope it is, otherwise its clear the money was spent on coke and hookers. Sorry for not legitimately looking up the budget like a true soldier of so retro.
The greatest way to describe this game is that it feels like a late-stage 3DS game, and one that feels low-budget even for that system. The animations are cheap or recycled from a 3ds game. Keep in mind the actual 3ds PMD games weren't lookers in the first place.
One thing the game really suffers from though is the story. That is maybe a shallow statement however. The story in the original game serves the game quite well. The problem is how it is presented in this game. I'm sure if you're taking the time to read this you've heard of abstraction in retro video games.
In the original game, the story was fairly barebones, but the nature of it allowed a sort of abstraction. Maybe I'm bold for saying that, I did play the original as a kid, and maybe nostalgia is blinding me. To be honest though, it's the same story. I haven't obviously memorized the script, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was word for word. What makes this game poor is that 3D models are much more literal, and there's nothing for our brain to fill in. We can imagine the sprites showing emotions when they do that little sweatdrop thing. When I see that same sweatdrop thing here, I just think about how cheap it looks. Lots of models just standing around shooting the shit in this game. It feels like a youtube video where a guy fucks around in Gmod giving the characters dialogue. It all feels so fake.
The gameplay is also just worse. Sorry. It just feels like if Super was bad. They decided to base the gameplay off of recruiting a lot of pokemon and getting rare qualities. This just feels stupid. All it does is give you more bodies to sacrifice in the middle of dungeons, making them completely trivial. They had to fundamentally change boss fights, and they made them utter bullshit. Be glad they give shower you with reviver seeds because you will absolutely need them. They wouldn't give you so many unless they knew it was bullshit.
The recruitment gameplay loop really is just poor. It feels like a new take on the system from Super, but that system was fun because it increased the power of your main guys. This system just gives you meatshields that you pray have long range moves and rare qualities. Rare qualities are a dumb system anyways. Once you get a teammate with steamroll you've basically got every tool you need to just steamroll the game in half.
This game keeps the link system and the move exp system. I don't believe these are supposed to co-exist. A system that rewards you for shitting out as many moves as possible and a system that lets you do it. It's just another step to demolishing the game. I played as Meowth and paired screech with fury swipes. The game played itself after this. Bosses HP melted away.
This game also just gives you movesets that are so good right at the very start that you will probably keep most of the moves until the end of the game. Super managed to give you like one decent move from the start to compliment the move exp system, but this game just gives you every tool you need. My partner Cubone started with a move that hits in a 2 tile circle (absurdly strong tool) and ended the game only swapping headbutt for bonemerang (might be the best move I've ever used). It adds to the feeling of the difficulty not even being balanced in the first place.
It all just makes this game play like worse Super. If I'm going to dedicate myself to play a game with a story that falls flat I'm going to play Super, because at least that game has challenging and rewarding gameplay and a story that is good in theory despite the bad execution.
Let me just rapid fire some small nitpicks. I don't like choosing your starter and think having it given to you makes the story better. Some of the songs kinda miss the point just a tad and it took me out of the scenes. Letting starter only pokemon become partners here takes away some of the pokemons unique charm. The graphics look a little blurry. The town doesn't seamlessly load the pelipper post office despite loading the pond and dojo. The removal of deadends from dungeons make the game feel toothless. Being able to see where all the items and enemies are makes the game absurdly easy and should've been an equippable item or rare quality. Giving you effectively three bellies pretty much makes the system pointless and only the longest dungeons will even make you engage with this system once.
Thats a lot of nitpicks. Aren't you glad I didn't make this even longer and stupider by elaborating?
If this game just came out and failed, that would've been fine. My biggest problem though, is that this game will be any new players introduction to the series. Despite what you may believe, the majority of people don't want to use an emulator to play a retro game when they can just go to walmart and buy an overpriced remake for their Splatoon machine. People will end up playing this game, and they'll say "wow, the story wasn't actually deep like all of those people said", and the gameplay is really an acquired taste so they probably won't like it either. When I hear people say they totally fell in love with this game I just get confused. How can you love a game so cheap and so poorly thought through? The worst part is I can't even say this game is awful, because it's a remake of a fundamentally good game, and that means it has fundamentally good elements.
Edit: I forgot to mention they removed the basic attack. This was like my biggest issue with the game so I'm not sure how I forgot to include it. Whenever you almost kill an enemy you just feel like you're wasting PP by using another attack. Just let me chip away at them PLEASE
This is at its heart a good game, but that is simply because it remakes something so good. This game is a case of death by a thousand papercuts regarding its problems.
The biggest problem with this game is how cheap it all is. This game was made on a budget of coins found in the dryer and a fart. Is this actually true? I hope it is, otherwise its clear the money was spent on coke and hookers. Sorry for not legitimately looking up the budget like a true soldier of so retro.
The greatest way to describe this game is that it feels like a late-stage 3DS game, and one that feels low-budget even for that system. The animations are cheap or recycled from a 3ds game. Keep in mind the actual 3ds PMD games weren't lookers in the first place.
One thing the game really suffers from though is the story. That is maybe a shallow statement however. The story in the original game serves the game quite well. The problem is how it is presented in this game. I'm sure if you're taking the time to read this you've heard of abstraction in retro video games.
In the original game, the story was fairly barebones, but the nature of it allowed a sort of abstraction. Maybe I'm bold for saying that, I did play the original as a kid, and maybe nostalgia is blinding me. To be honest though, it's the same story. I haven't obviously memorized the script, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was word for word. What makes this game poor is that 3D models are much more literal, and there's nothing for our brain to fill in. We can imagine the sprites showing emotions when they do that little sweatdrop thing. When I see that same sweatdrop thing here, I just think about how cheap it looks. Lots of models just standing around shooting the shit in this game. It feels like a youtube video where a guy fucks around in Gmod giving the characters dialogue. It all feels so fake.
The gameplay is also just worse. Sorry. It just feels like if Super was bad. They decided to base the gameplay off of recruiting a lot of pokemon and getting rare qualities. This just feels stupid. All it does is give you more bodies to sacrifice in the middle of dungeons, making them completely trivial. They had to fundamentally change boss fights, and they made them utter bullshit. Be glad they give shower you with reviver seeds because you will absolutely need them. They wouldn't give you so many unless they knew it was bullshit.
The recruitment gameplay loop really is just poor. It feels like a new take on the system from Super, but that system was fun because it increased the power of your main guys. This system just gives you meatshields that you pray have long range moves and rare qualities. Rare qualities are a dumb system anyways. Once you get a teammate with steamroll you've basically got every tool you need to just steamroll the game in half.
This game keeps the link system and the move exp system. I don't believe these are supposed to co-exist. A system that rewards you for shitting out as many moves as possible and a system that lets you do it. It's just another step to demolishing the game. I played as Meowth and paired screech with fury swipes. The game played itself after this. Bosses HP melted away.
This game also just gives you movesets that are so good right at the very start that you will probably keep most of the moves until the end of the game. Super managed to give you like one decent move from the start to compliment the move exp system, but this game just gives you every tool you need. My partner Cubone started with a move that hits in a 2 tile circle (absurdly strong tool) and ended the game only swapping headbutt for bonemerang (might be the best move I've ever used). It adds to the feeling of the difficulty not even being balanced in the first place.
It all just makes this game play like worse Super. If I'm going to dedicate myself to play a game with a story that falls flat I'm going to play Super, because at least that game has challenging and rewarding gameplay and a story that is good in theory despite the bad execution.
Let me just rapid fire some small nitpicks. I don't like choosing your starter and think having it given to you makes the story better. Some of the songs kinda miss the point just a tad and it took me out of the scenes. Letting starter only pokemon become partners here takes away some of the pokemons unique charm. The graphics look a little blurry. The town doesn't seamlessly load the pelipper post office despite loading the pond and dojo. The removal of deadends from dungeons make the game feel toothless. Being able to see where all the items and enemies are makes the game absurdly easy and should've been an equippable item or rare quality. Giving you effectively three bellies pretty much makes the system pointless and only the longest dungeons will even make you engage with this system once.
Thats a lot of nitpicks. Aren't you glad I didn't make this even longer and stupider by elaborating?
If this game just came out and failed, that would've been fine. My biggest problem though, is that this game will be any new players introduction to the series. Despite what you may believe, the majority of people don't want to use an emulator to play a retro game when they can just go to walmart and buy an overpriced remake for their Splatoon machine. People will end up playing this game, and they'll say "wow, the story wasn't actually deep like all of those people said", and the gameplay is really an acquired taste so they probably won't like it either. When I hear people say they totally fell in love with this game I just get confused. How can you love a game so cheap and so poorly thought through? The worst part is I can't even say this game is awful, because it's a remake of a fundamentally good game, and that means it has fundamentally good elements.
Edit: I forgot to mention they removed the basic attack. This was like my biggest issue with the game so I'm not sure how I forgot to include it. Whenever you almost kill an enemy you just feel like you're wasting PP by using another attack. Just let me chip away at them PLEASE