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

I always thought this was one of my favorite games, but i haven't played it since it came out so I wasn't confident saying that. Now I am.

All the levels are challenging in a fair way that I feel respects me as a player. Alterna had decent levels from what I remember but they all felt easily beatable by a child, kind of like a Mario game. Octo Expansion gives you the real shit. Levels with timers are usually strict as hell and getting to the goal in some levels is a legitimate challenge. It is worth noting though that no stage is completely backbreakingly difficult, this isn't some kaizo romhack combo meal supreme. Girl Power Station is quite a significant challenge though, and Inner Agent 3 is a damn good challenge.

Something I liked is how it cuts the shit. I honestly never liked the hub worlds. I liked going into levels. Alterna misses the point of the gameplay formula by having a hub, even if that one isn't as long. Octo Expansion sticks you on a train and you just do levels. It feels so good.

It's also important to note what it was like to play this when it first released. This was the first time we directly interacted with the dark side of Splatoon. This game isn't really like some gritty grimdark thing by any means, i'm an adult and this game is made for kids, but it is definitely more mature than previous games. I first played this as a teenager, and a teenager who was not crazy good at Splatoon. I actually DID think this game busted your balls a little with the difficulty. I thought the agent 3 fight in the story and the statue painting were actually quite hard.

I could write a lot more but I don't want to put up a massive wall of text that takes ten minutes to read. This is the best Splatoon campaigns have ever been, and although I hope this isn't true, is probably always gonna be the best.

As someone who deeply loves Splatoon 2 this was an amazing campaign. I don't really like roguelikes normally but this game managed to draw me in.

I don't think they'll ever make something that can top Octo Expansion but this is definitely a successful attempt. Agent 8 just being a really good jobber is always funny and Off the Hook will always be the best idols.

I'm marking this as complete but i'm not nearly done, i'm definitely gonna be 100%ing the game.

I started to think you couldn't construct a single-player pokemon campaign that is satisfying the whole way through, but this certainly gave me a kick in the ass. This game is pretty much the perfect pokemon game, and I'm not sure any other games in the series even come close to it. It's simply the best.

The main campaign has a decent little story. You're definitely not playing for the actual story, but it's the best out of every normal pokemon game, not that it's a high bar. What it does perfectly though is guide you through the game. It always felt like a push to keep exploring and moving forward rather than an actual main focus.

The teambuilding is astounding. It manages to give you every tool needed to make an absolutely perfect team with so much room for gimmicks and weather, whatever you want. I ended up running a sort of "hazard stack lite" with webs and rocks. I was able to fall in love with Minior after catching it on route 1. It was always a pokemon I liked but it was nothing I really loved because I never used it in my life. Now it's one of my absolute favorites. I really loved using Metagross and its line. It felt useful the entire game, even in that awkward period where it has to just be an eviolite tank. It became my best pokemon after it could mega. The other super notable pokemon I got was the Zygarde I hunted down. I got it after the 5th gym, and was actually super disappointed by how bad it was. Before the seventh gym I was gonna drop it, but then I taught it dragon dance by tutor and found the tm for earthquake and suddenly it became a complete monster, carrying my lategame on its back.

There is a lot of worthwhile side content in the game too. I took my sweet time combing through every town and doing quite a few missions before I even hit the post-game, and it was all fun. I found most NPCs had something valuable to say, and I think that's super cool. The quest to even get my Zygarde required a lot of exploration.

The game also has a full brand new ost. It's like, a full one, not like Insurgence that just has like ten songs. This game has a great soundtrack that I actually would say is better than the majority of official pokemon games, which I already rank quite high on this front. They definitely nailed the normal battle theme, I can't imagine getting sick of it.

Absolute perfect package. Proof that Gamefreak really are hacks. Fan games like this are what make me stay a pokemon fan throughout the years.

Pokemon Diamond: oh boy, I love being the slowest game ever!

NxC waiting to grapesoda without the gsoda him:

Also I hate this tiktok newspeak but i literally saw a guy on here get banned for saying the R word so, lol. How are you a gamer who gets offended by bad words thats a contradictory statement

They finally made a good pokemon experience. I didn't think it was possible. When I played this DLC expansion, I didn't think "It's good but..", I just thought it was enjoyable.

The music is good as always. The music is always phenomenal in these games so it's no surprise, but the final boss theme and wild battle themes especially were great.

When I played the DLC I used pokemon that were on par and sometimes below trainer levels, and with that being said, the DLC is challenging. I didn't use a hyper-optimal team, I just used an amalgamation of my in-game teams and new pokemon I caught in the terrarium, but I felt I used actual strategies, and the games tough. I can imagine a more casual fan who has less mechanical knowledge would probably have to grind to near max level. Luckily because i'm an untouchable video game messiah I was able to beat all my fights at the same level.

The fights were honestly just mechanically interesting. opponents used cheap stuff like intimidate and stuff. Kieran uses a VGC style Incineroar.

The new section below area zero is honestly just a bit of a letdown. No new pokemon to catch is the real reason, unless you want to count Carbink, but unless that thing has some weird scientific name I don't care. The final boss is phenomenal though. It's quite possibly the best final boss the series has ever had actually, although really the only competition is like N and Ghetsis.

Kieran is probably also the best mainline pokemon character, maybe ever? He just has a really satisfying arc and you honestly feel bad for him even when he's being an ass. I still dislike that we lied to him about Ogerpon in the first DLC, because I wouldn't of and my character is supposed to be a self-insert, but I can live with it if it means I get to fight him with Ogerpon and see him just get all pissed off at me.

Overall just a great pokemon experience. I will likely replay the game next year in order to play both DLCs simultaneously with the story rather than just slapping it on top. That is clearly how Kitakawmi is supposed to be played anyways. Perhaps my overall opinion on the base game will go up.