it's so so close to being awesome, but it runs so badly and its presentation in general is so far under par that it winds up feeling sad in a way. there are aspects of it that are enjoyable and cool for sure - the general exploration and snappiness of gameplay, the tendency to let the game shut up, and even the writing somehow - but everything besides those things came across as needing to be in the oven for much longer. like it boggles my mind that a pokemon soundtrack can drop and be so consistently worse than mid, yet we somehow got that. nothing in the game scales, and that choice is one I'm super mixed on. the designs look terrible to me. the list goes on.

more than anything, though, I think this game was a good final hurrah for me with this franchise. I'm not going to turn around and fully stop caring at all since pokemon still has been a big part of my life (and pmd isn't dead yet), but I have to thank this generation for finally revealing that there don't need to be any more airs put on that the franchise is keeping the things that I fell in love with it for. I don't have to scrutinize it much anymore in the way I did for generations 6-8 and I don't have to feel the need to pick up any of the newer releases in hopes that they've realized the world is what makes pokemon so special. from the mcdonald's playplace region with all the biomes in a disc shape to the meme tier pokemon designs and names to the lore just generally not trying to make sense anymore, I think it's easy to acknowledge that now pokemon as it once was is wholly over. hell, even for the anime i've heard rumors that ash may retire, and now we've even reached over 1000 pokemon - a huge milestone. oras is what started the decline of the worldbuilding this series was so great at, but i think this is the proper turning point game that is a lot of fun and one last fun ride before getting off and moving on. i appreciate it a lot for that. maybe going forward tpci will let game freak put more time into their games to let them truly shine in ways this game clearly wanted to.

has an industrial harbor level but features zero intermodal containers. if you put meteor herd OR mad space in a 10/10 game, either would drag it down to a 7/10. the tails stages are like filing unemployment paperwork and the knuckles stages are like having dreams about your old department store job, which makes the sonic stages like the distant dying memories of your fondest ten minute smoke breaks. ive watched SOV basement gore movies with better audio mixing. anyway its pretty good. i like rouge the bat.

Has some really great monster design, first of all; would adore to see the team behind this do their own game instead of expanding on this. Honestly was just really nice, as someone who almost never meshes well with Pokémon ROMhacks, this was perfect for me. It’s a scenario I know well, the Crystal Version’s story, so I can kind of not waste time figuring out what to do because I already know, so I just get to enjoy this artificial simulation of seeing a new Pokémon for the first time over and over :)

A lot of hacks try and mix old Pokémon with “Fakémon,” and sometimes the clashing design styles of official and fanmade creatures is stark. So, why not just remix all of the Pokémon? Take an original design’s general idea and stir it up! Porygon is a computer duck, so why not mix it up by making him Normal- and Water-type. Now he’s just a funky duck!!! And it’s the best shit ever! A really great vibe from this one, some of the spritework is really amazing. I always hate composing a team on the fly, though, and I have other games I want to prioritize, so I’ll come back to this one when I can take a look at the Pokédex and plan a team and zoom through.

game freak released a glitchy unpolished barely finished mess in 1996,,,,nobody bats an eye
game freak released a glitchy unpolished barely finished mess in 2022,,,,everybody loses their minds!!!!

Anyway if i had to guess im a bit under halfway through but this is easily the most fun ive had with a pokemon game in like a decade. The people putting that much ire on the visual glitches and how ugly n performance are right in that this is unacceptable from a company as big as game freak but this has done very little to actually take away from my experience. At its core its just a fun small lil open world game where you run around on a fun dinosaur and do goofy stupid shit for gyms and stuff and i like it.

Many point to the removal of random battles/trainers as the best change, but i think its easily the fact that they made the characters shut the fuck up after like an hour

Out of all the games to write a serious honest review on the quality of something as a video game... Plumbers Don't Wear Ties sounds like one of the funny ones to do.

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a game most known today from the AVGN reviews. It's weird, it makes no sense, it's loud, there's nudity; it's easy to remember its infamy. It's one of the earlier examples of what we would call a visual novel today... and even that is a stretch because I counted I think a total of 3 decisions in total that me, the player, could make.

Yes, it's weird. Yes, it tried something different. No, that doesn't mean it's remotely good. The game was clearly made to be a cheeky adult comedy game, but the game is infinitely more boring than it is humorous. Actually, I would argue it's literally anything else more than it is funny. Infuriating? Depressing? Ugly? They all work. I'm genuinely convinced that this was made by and for a porn company trying to tap into a different media market. They clearly didn't take making this game very seriously, allowing a small argument that it's self aware, but a bad game is a bad game. Even if it's self aware it's stupidly bad, that doesn't take away the fact that it's stupidly bad.

I give it the lowest score I can possibly think of, which to me is reserved best for games that have me sad someone had to waste money to discover how terrible/unplayable something turns out to be.