Name_Redacted
2013
2016
2012
This review contains spoilers
Mainline pokemon WISHES it could tell a story anywhere near as good as this. The game does have it's lows (namely the slow beginning and often repetitive gameplay keep it from being a perfect 5/5 for me), but the highs are so damn high that it has some of the single best moments of any video game I've ever played. Even if you don't care about spoilers for pokemon normally, I suggest you reconsider for this game, as it's got an absolutely exceptional one that I'll get into below.
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So, we all know that moment where we defeat dusknoir, and find out that we're going to disappear if we save the world. But I wanna talk about what comes immediately after that- the scene where our partner is off in the distance getting the ship or whatever ready. Something about that scene felt weird to me at first, but I couldn't quite put a finger on it, then it dawned on me- I wasn't used to seeing the partner character alone. In fact, throughout the whole course of the game, from when the player first meets the partner up until this point in the game, there has NEVER been a scene with the partner in it where you aren't by their side. And that makes sense- you're directly involved in their growth as a character, being the reason that they learn to be confident and brave, and to better themself. So having this moment come immediately after Dusknoir tells the player that saving the world will make them disappear gives the player a moment to realize what this means- them disappearing will leave their partner all alone again. This scene where the partner pokemon is alone might be an extreme outlier right now, but soon it'll be their whole life. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but I loved that moment so much and it solidified the game as an all-time favorite for me.
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So, we all know that moment where we defeat dusknoir, and find out that we're going to disappear if we save the world. But I wanna talk about what comes immediately after that- the scene where our partner is off in the distance getting the ship or whatever ready. Something about that scene felt weird to me at first, but I couldn't quite put a finger on it, then it dawned on me- I wasn't used to seeing the partner character alone. In fact, throughout the whole course of the game, from when the player first meets the partner up until this point in the game, there has NEVER been a scene with the partner in it where you aren't by their side. And that makes sense- you're directly involved in their growth as a character, being the reason that they learn to be confident and brave, and to better themself. So having this moment come immediately after Dusknoir tells the player that saving the world will make them disappear gives the player a moment to realize what this means- them disappearing will leave their partner all alone again. This scene where the partner pokemon is alone might be an extreme outlier right now, but soon it'll be their whole life. Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but I loved that moment so much and it solidified the game as an all-time favorite for me.
2011
The best online battle simulator not just for pokemon, but for games period. Not just video games. The UI is perfect, the process of making accounts is super simple, the gameplay is super streamlined, spectating is a breeze, new pokemon from new games/DLC are typically added within under 24 hours of realese, matchmaking and sending challenges are implemented extremely intuitively, and, perhaps most crucially, you can take teams that you'd normally need to spend dozens of hours making on cartridge and spend hundreds of dollars on all the games for, and go ahead and make the team you wanna build in less than 5 minutes on here. You can even try using sample teams with a process that is literally just copy and paste- which is excellent for helping you get into the dozens of metagames you can play on here, and making it easier than you could possibly imagine to find a favorite way to play. There's a reason that even VGC players use showdown's teambuilder when making videos, testing teams on ladder, or sharing them with the world- showdown is simply the PERFECT tool for competitive pokemon.
THAT BEING SAID, this website will ruin your life. Do not be tempted. Competitive pokemon is genuinely fucking terrible, you will never be good at it, and you should find a better hobby before wasting years of your life chasing improvement that will never come.
THAT BEING SAID, this website will ruin your life. Do not be tempted. Competitive pokemon is genuinely fucking terrible, you will never be good at it, and you should find a better hobby before wasting years of your life chasing improvement that will never come.
2007
2017
2023
2007
An absolute must-play, and my favorite multiplayer game of all time. Despite the current state of the game and it's community, if you just ignore all that, boot it up, and play a round of casual, it might take a few tries to find a game not infested with bots, but once you do, you're guaranteed to have a blast.
The game that made me finally accept that I have a massive fucking backlog. I love this game and I really do wanna finish it, but every time I get close to picking it up again there's another steam sale and I pick up another cool-looking indie game for $8 and then an old 2000s-era classic for $2, and by then I add another 20-50 hours to my backlog... Absolutely LOVE this game though, even if the investigation segments are relatively boring.
2000
To compare this game to the classic Paper Mario games as so many have would be to undersell just how incredible this masterpiece of a game is. Seriously, go play it. Now. It was great in all the ways I hoped it could be and even in some ways I never expected it to be. There are only two times a video game has made me cry, and this game was both of them.
2016
TBD