One of the greatest tragedies that I must now bear for the rest of my days is the fact that the PMD game with the strongest core gameplay is the one condemned to the hells of being a Japan-only WiiWare title. The game with the most inventive mechanics and that best plays off the strongest aspect of the series - the Pokemon themselves - is doomed to remain unknown and unplayed by even passionate fans of the series. This game deserved so much more than it was given.
There's a bit of a push-and-pull with its existence as a WiiWare title; it's not the same length as a standard PMD game, and concessions had to be made to cram it into a shorter package, though not all of these are actually detrimental. The game drops a lot of tutorialisation and just introduces all the standard PMD mechanics near immediately - you can recruit Pokemon and swap your leader as soon as you finish the initial tutorial dungeon, and traps and Monster Houses follow not long afterwards. The result is a game that might be a little overwhelming for someone new to the series (though you'd have to be nuts to go out of your way to play this one before any of the others), but cuts away the initial fat for those who just want to get stuck in with the dungeon crawling. There's hardly any story, which might be a negative for some people but personally doesn't bother me all that much - the story that is there isn't fantastic, but I still found it very captivating in its awkwardness. The main negative of the scope for me, was the fact that the game pulls a pretty steep difficulty spike near the end. It's far from insurmountable - the tools that the game gives you are more than enough to snap the game into tiny little pieces if you use them right - but it does make it far more punishing. Which, to be fair, every PMD game weaponises its own level of bullshit to wipe you in comical ways, but this is the only one where I've felt genuine horror accidentally dashing into something with a sleep move.
This level of punishment, as well as the creativity and potential to shatter the game into pieces, are both enabled by the core gimmick of the game: Pokemon Stack. Pokemon can stack on top of each other and, at the cost of natural HP regeneration, all gain combined HP pools and can all use their moves in tandem, similarly to Linked moves in PMD1/2. On the player's side, it opens up an immense amount of player control and creativity. Firstly, and maybe most importantly, you can actually tell your teammates what to do when they're stacked! But the potential opens up when it comes to teambuilding. Any Pokemon stacked above the bottom doesn't spend any PP on its moves, but the order in which you're allowed to stack is dictated by weight class - heavier Pokemon can't stack on top of lighter ones, and no more than two of the same weight class can be stacked in a row. These, combined with the fairly tight pool of available Pokemon, both made it really fun to stumble into a really powerful setup, and also make me excited to keep playing into the postgame and try to create some of the even more absurd setups that I've theorycrafted! And on the opponent's end, it gives individual encounters the potential to be tough and require thought - for instance, you can knock down a stack with a thrown item and try to take them individually, but then you're spending a turn dealing negligible damage - and the game even plays around with its own gimmick in cool ways, with a fun early example being Lightningrod Electrike stacking on top of Starly, effectively just negating one of its weaknesses.
Coming face-to-face with such a cool game, one that feels like it really makes strides with what the series is capable of, it's easy to feel like it wasn't done justice, and that it deserved to be fully realised into a standard PMD experience. But at the same time, would a full-budget PMD game have allowed such a radical warping of the core gameplay? Maybe it would - after all, Super feels quite distinct with the Looplet and Emera mechanics - but this specific flavour of innovation feels like something only a weird throwaway title could deliver. And besides, the game we got isn't just a case of missed potential - it's still a great game!
There's a bit of a push-and-pull with its existence as a WiiWare title; it's not the same length as a standard PMD game, and concessions had to be made to cram it into a shorter package, though not all of these are actually detrimental. The game drops a lot of tutorialisation and just introduces all the standard PMD mechanics near immediately - you can recruit Pokemon and swap your leader as soon as you finish the initial tutorial dungeon, and traps and Monster Houses follow not long afterwards. The result is a game that might be a little overwhelming for someone new to the series (though you'd have to be nuts to go out of your way to play this one before any of the others), but cuts away the initial fat for those who just want to get stuck in with the dungeon crawling. There's hardly any story, which might be a negative for some people but personally doesn't bother me all that much - the story that is there isn't fantastic, but I still found it very captivating in its awkwardness. The main negative of the scope for me, was the fact that the game pulls a pretty steep difficulty spike near the end. It's far from insurmountable - the tools that the game gives you are more than enough to snap the game into tiny little pieces if you use them right - but it does make it far more punishing. Which, to be fair, every PMD game weaponises its own level of bullshit to wipe you in comical ways, but this is the only one where I've felt genuine horror accidentally dashing into something with a sleep move.
This level of punishment, as well as the creativity and potential to shatter the game into pieces, are both enabled by the core gimmick of the game: Pokemon Stack. Pokemon can stack on top of each other and, at the cost of natural HP regeneration, all gain combined HP pools and can all use their moves in tandem, similarly to Linked moves in PMD1/2. On the player's side, it opens up an immense amount of player control and creativity. Firstly, and maybe most importantly, you can actually tell your teammates what to do when they're stacked! But the potential opens up when it comes to teambuilding. Any Pokemon stacked above the bottom doesn't spend any PP on its moves, but the order in which you're allowed to stack is dictated by weight class - heavier Pokemon can't stack on top of lighter ones, and no more than two of the same weight class can be stacked in a row. These, combined with the fairly tight pool of available Pokemon, both made it really fun to stumble into a really powerful setup, and also make me excited to keep playing into the postgame and try to create some of the even more absurd setups that I've theorycrafted! And on the opponent's end, it gives individual encounters the potential to be tough and require thought - for instance, you can knock down a stack with a thrown item and try to take them individually, but then you're spending a turn dealing negligible damage - and the game even plays around with its own gimmick in cool ways, with a fun early example being Lightningrod Electrike stacking on top of Starly, effectively just negating one of its weaknesses.
Coming face-to-face with such a cool game, one that feels like it really makes strides with what the series is capable of, it's easy to feel like it wasn't done justice, and that it deserved to be fully realised into a standard PMD experience. But at the same time, would a full-budget PMD game have allowed such a radical warping of the core gameplay? Maybe it would - after all, Super feels quite distinct with the Looplet and Emera mechanics - but this specific flavour of innovation feels like something only a weird throwaway title could deliver. And besides, the game we got isn't just a case of missed potential - it's still a great game!
faea
1 year ago