#They were still fun. But not everyone can be explorers 🤷🏼‍♀️

[driftingballoons]

Playing the pmd games first definitely affects your perception of the rest of the franchise. I played explorers before i got into diamond and pearl, and i was shocked to learn after the fact that so many people hated bidoof in dp. If you played explorers first, you could never!

Yeah! Like all those pokemon you encounter in explorers…whenever I see them anywhere else it’s like that’s THE guy! There are permanently the characters to me lol. 

I definitely did feel it impacted my thoughts about the rest of the franchise as well. After explorers I played HG, and honestly it felt a little weird to be a pokemon “trainer” vs. one of the actively fighting “teammates”. Had to get used to having one fairly consistent team, as opposed to just cycling several in and out based on dungeon type advantages. Also has to adjust to how much slower the leveling up could be. I mean, there was a fair amount of grinding in pmd, but tying that to missions made it a little less tedious than running around in tall grass. Overall, pmd made the mainline games feel…kind of impersonal in a way. Less pokemon-centric. Like they’re certainly there, but you don’t get that pmd hero/partner relationship, and even though they have “personalities,” beyond the effects of battle stats, they seem mostly irrelevant. Plus, when they removed the overworld sprites, you really only really saw your team during battles or whatever mini game/gimmick they had going on, but it felt more like they were games featuring pokemon, as opposed to games about them. I always preferred the spin-offs; I think that’s where the franchise really gets creative and makes good use of the premise. It’s also fun playing as a pokemon—you get to be a human in most games, after all, but how frequently do you get the chance to play as a tiny lizard that can also kick your ass? Definitely a great game to enter the franchise with, and also the reason why I’m still So Normal about it, even today :)

[stylesthebrave]

hellooo!

firstly are u ok? the trip to the er sounds scary ! sending u extra love today !

your job sounds like a literal dream omg i would love to force everyone to listen to only the songs i like 😌😌

care to share about the person your heart yearns for? (u can tell you’re a writer and its brilliant hahahaha) or might they see this ? 👀👀

love that as an origin story, if only antis had the braincells to connect the dots like its right there in front of u guys 🙄🙄

for me, larry was always in my periphery but it was never something i explored in depth cause like you i was really young. but i left the fandom and kinda forgot everything but then came back as a solo harrie for approximately 5 minutes until i stumbled across a fimq video (😓💔) and was like hang on a minute 🤨 and then everything came rushing back and here we are 🤩🤩🤩

what are your favourite eras for h&l ?

ilyyyyyyyy

💞💞💞💞💞💞💞💞

- secret valentine

Hi…. Me finally answering this days later 😖😖 thank you so much for the love!! I’m feeling much better now!!

Hahah it does sound like a dream, doesn’t it? The only problem is that this station plays mainly country/bluegrass, but alas. It’s still kinda fun to do i suppose🤷🏼‍♀️ as for the person I mentioned… as I said, it’s a secret. A beautiful soul and kindred spirit if I ever saw one.

Exactly hahah!! FIMQ.. those were the good days, sigh 😔

Ooh! I like this question. I mean, is there any other answer besides 2015? Just look at them! Perfection😭😭

But aside from that, I love walls era louis and live on tour harry. They just have a special place in my heart. What about you???

Thank you for sending! Love youuu💖💖

[driftingballoons]

Do you have any opinions on the other mystery dungeon games? Like obviously explorers is the best but how do you feel about the others?

Ooooh you’ve opened the floodgates :D

I never played red/blue rescue team, but I watched a playthrough once, it looked like a lot of fun! I considered the remake, but it’s very $60, so still not sure.

I overall enjoyed Gates, really had fun playing with the new-at-the-time gen 5 pokemon (god that was eons ago). The whole twist with munna and hydreigon got me, I do like a twist villain/ally ahaha, although it felt a little like a rehash of explorers. Also I liked how they got kinda meta at the end, talking about how they wish you could come back while looking “at” you. I think the big issues I had were that I was going in still thinking about the impact of explorers of sky had, and the plot here just…didn’t do it for me. It all seemed kind of small scale, I found many of the characters quite forgettable, and the relative lack of post game was kinda disappointing. Also, while there were lots of beautiful visuals with the 3D art, I did miss the older style and sprites.

As for super, I think they improved over a lot of the stuff from gates. It felt like there more world building went in to it—I loved exploring all the different continents, lots of eye candy! I also liked the emphasis on connections throughout, and how each pokemon was more of an individual. It also made the missions more compelling than in explorers; instead of saving 1000 budews from various dungeons, the way you could do the mission for one and then see all their “connections” really helped flesh out the characters. Plus the callbacks—I’m a sucker for callbacks, so seeing all the past teams and everything was really fun (although it did make me question the timeline of explorers; the guild members and everyone were there, but also the future trio ahaha). The plot felt more compelling to me than gates as well, although again, I found the characters quite forgettable :( Also having partner be the one to disappear had more impact for me…cried more than gates for sure 🙈

other drawbacks…again the 3D sprites (I played as snivy and hnnng they kind of struggle to render it and it’s evolutions faces in 3D 😅). Otherwise maybe just the predictability of some of it? Like I was already expecting a twist villain, and having the main villain be another conceptual entity was a bit boring. Also, it felt like the great negativity it was supposed to be wasn’t as prevalent throughout the game as the hopelessness in gates. Also, the logic behind hero/partner losing their memories was a bit weird to me…like if you failed in past attempts, I should think you’d wanna remember so you can LEARN from your mistakes 🤷🏼‍♀️

explorers wasn’t perfect either, but I think the plot, themes, style, and the time it came into my life was what made it my favorite of the series :3